Obama’s Illegal Warrantless Surveillance Program: Laws “Are Stubborn Things”

Someone in the Obama White House broke the law on Tuesday.  Now, the White House is no stranger to violations of the law, most famously with the Watergate, Iran-Contra, Monica-gate, Plame-gate and Gates-Gate scandals.  What’s interesting about this crime is that it took place on the White House blog.

In a post titled “Facts Are Stubborn Things”, Macon Phillips attacked Internet rumors about Obamacare and asked Obama supporters to snitch on any email or web content that doesn’t tow the party line.

Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

David Hardy posted about this in the blog “Of Arms & The Law”.

Evan Coyne Maloney suggests the request may be illegal under the Privacy Act and the Dept of Justice’s statement about its purpose.

As a recovering bureaucrat, I can point to a much, much, bigger illegality under that Act.

5 US Code §552a(e)(7) commands that any Federal agency

“(7) maintain no record describing how any individual exercises rights guaranteed by the First Amendment unless expressly authorized by statute or by the individual about whom the record is maintained or unless pertinent to and within the scope of an authorized law enforcement activity;”

Persons posting to the web or sending emails are exercising First Amendment rights. I can’t see how gathering this information is expressly authorized by statute, nor within the scope of an LE activity. It doesn’t get much clearer than that.

This presents a Catch-22 for the Administration. FOX News analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano explained the trap the White House set for itself.

“The White House is in bit of a conundrum because of this privacy statute that prohibits the White House from collecting data and storing it on people who disagree with it,” Judge Andrew Napolitano, a FOX News analyst, said Friday.

“There’s also a statute that requires the White House to retain all communications that it receives. It can’t try to rewrite history by pretending it didn’t receive anything,” he said.

“If the White House deletes anything, it violates one statute. If the White House collects data on the free speech, it violates another statute.”

The White House claims it is not collecting an “enemies list”, but skepticism is abound.

The White House Thursday denied that it was playing “Big Brother.”

“Nobody is collecting names,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said. “We have seen, and as I’ve discussed from this podium, a lot of misinformation around health care reform, a lot of it spread, I think, purposefully.”

Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who has called on Obama to end the program, rejected the White House explanation.

“Of course the White House is collecting names,” he said, arguing that anyone with access to the e-mail account has access to private information.

“The question is not what the White House is doing, but how and why,” he said. “How are they purging names and e-mail addresses from this account to protect privacy? Why do they need the forwarded e-mails, names, and ‘casual conversations’ sent to them instead of just the arguments that they want to rebut?

Well, we at Douchebag Report feel that we’re nothing if not fishy (probably not using enough of our namesake), so feel free to send links from our site to flag@whitehouse.gov. We could use the hits.  Or Vodkapundit has another, more creative idea.