E-mail ripped from the President's hands

As a bit of a follow-up to the story that Barack Obama will be the first YouTubing sitting president, here is an interesting (and sad) story via the New York Times. Apparently, it is expected that he'll have to give up things like e-mail, twitter, blackberrys, etc:

"But before he arrives at the White House, he will probably be forced to sign off. In addition to concerns about e-mail security, he faces the Presidential Records Act, which puts his correspondence in the official record and ultimately up for public review, and the threat of subpoenas."

The Presidential Records Act of 1978 (as per the archives.gov archive of it) established all correspondence by the president as public record if it has "administrative, historical, informational, or evidentiary value," subject to the review of the Archivist of the United States.

Another big issue here is security... how much email can a president send out before his account his hacked in some way? I don't know a lot of the details of the hyper-secure email world, though, but the assumption is that when a lower level staffer sends the same email it is somehow safer? I doubt it.

Some ideas:

Even though it seems to be a foregone conclusion by those in the know, here are some ideas.

1. Check out Executive Order 13233. This amendment to the Presidential Records Act affords the status of protected correspondence, based on factors of executive privilege, to basically every letter by the president. This was signed into Executive Order in 2001 by George W. Bush, in an effort to protect items of national security.


2. As referenced in 13233, the Supreme Court has said "Unless [the President] can give his advisers some assurance of confidentiality, a President could not expect to receive the full and frank submissions of facts and opinions upon which effective discharge of his duties depends." A modern leader uses e-mail like someone else would use an in-person conversation. Can't these all be considered discussions with advisers?


3. Finally, the security issue that is dropped a couple times in this article, but never really fleshed out: I think the government is at its best when it sees a need for a technology that is not readily available. What do they do? Throw a lot of money at it and bring it to life, so that everyone can enjoy it. (Think: the Internet itself.)

Its sad to see that a president can't use email, but considering the only president who came into office during the Internet Age has been Bush... I guess its not terribly surprising. At least Obama says he will be the first president to have a laptop in the Oval Office.

The nature of the president’s job is that others can use e-mail for him. [...] It’s a time burner. It might be easier for him to say, ‘I can’t be on e-mail'
(Diana Owen, leader of the American Studies program at Georgetown University)