Google Buzz Blunder Reveals White House Deputy CTO's Closest Contacts

When Google launched Buzz, the service immediately became a lightning rod for criticism from privacy advocates. Many people ended up having their list of most frequent Gmail contacts exposed to the entire Web. One of those people included Andrew McLaughlin, the Deputy White House CTO.

This would, of course, be of little concern to anyone, except that McLaughlin's list of most frequently e-mailed contacts included several senior members of the Obama administration, including CTO Aneesh Chopra, and several former colleagues still employed at Google, including lobbyists and lawyers for the company.

After conservative blog BigGovernment.com broke the story, Representative Darrell Issa, the ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, sent McLaughlin a letter (PDF) requesting information about his contact with the individuals on his Buzz list. Meanwhile, the group Consumer Watchdog filed a Freedom of Information Act request, seeking copies of his correspondence with Google employees. At issue here is the Presidential Records Act, which requires all White House employees to keep copies of correspondence related to official government matters.

It is entirely possible, and highly likely, that McLaughlin keeps in contact with his former Google coworkers and members of the administration in the off hours for purely personal reasons. That a former executive at Google and current White House employee travels in a circle of "movers and shakers in high-tech, Internet public policy, and venture capital," as BigGovernment.com put it, is no surprise. But that doesn't mean we're letting McLaughlin off. As the deputy CTO, he has enormous influence over policies that affect both Google and its competitors, so the indication that he is in constant contact with lobbyists at the company is cause for concern.

McLaughlin has since deleted his Buzz account, but we're sure this isn't the last we'll hear of this incident. The Obama administration has thus far had a pretty good (though not exactly spotless) record when it comes to government transparency. Here's hoping they do the right thing and get McLaughlin to hand over the e-mails. [From: Huffington Post, BigGovernment.com and ConsumerWatchdog.org]

Tags: AndrewMclaughlin, buzz, FreedomOfInformationAct, GoogleBuzz, government, ObamaAdministration, PresidentialRecordsAct, privacy, top, WhiteHouse