Thursday, May 16, 2013

White House Scandals: The Role of Technology


White House Scandals: The Role of Technology

by Meg Curtis, PhD

Even Americans living under rocks know how hard it is to hide the truth in 2013. Where do Americans go without their cell phones and internet service? These amenities carry a price, however: Where they go, digital records accumulate. Is this fact news to the White House?

Teachers cannot get students off their phones. Schools and businesses do not function without the internet now. Pedestrians step into traffic without so much as looking up. Interviewees rudely interrupt their future to take a call or leave a message for Darling or To Whom It May Concern.

Telecommunications workers absorb this lesson in American history faster than the general population, perhaps, but does anyone really believe that Obama, Biden, Hillary Clinton, General Petraeus, and everyone in America's hottest hot seats can claim: "I dunno" to critical questions?

Did this gang disappear into a shower together? Were they lost in the Appalachian Mountains on a safari? Maybe they went into lockdown, and all their digital devices suffered collection? Wasn't Obama famous long ago and far away--a few months maybe in DC—for being a Blackberry guy?

Privacy died the minute cell phones were born in all their silver wonder. Americans can mourn this loss as much as they like. What they cannot do is accept that the most heavily guarded individuals in the World can escape the same surveillance they dish out to everybody else and his half brother.

The answer "I dunno" is unacceptable in the Innformation Age. FYI to Jay Carney: This answer is not only "inappropriate," but it is also incomprehensible, inconsiderate, and smacks of a stunning lack of preparation for public speaking. America is on the worldwide web right now, Jay!

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