Tag: BARACK OBAMA

Political blog The Hill may have called the recent announcement by Peter Orszag, the White House budget director, that the government is saddled with "outdated technology" a "startling admission," but it sounds to us like old news. As of January 2008, the Bureau of Indian Affairs still lacked Internet access, and during the transition from campaign to presidency Obama spokesman Bill Burton ...

Highlights from this morning's other big tech headlines.... It only took seven months, but President Obama has finally appointed a cybersecurity chief. Because "protecting the Internet is critical to our national security," the President has selected former Bush administration cyber-consultant Howard Schmidt to officially serve as the White House Cybersecurity Coordinator. [From: Washington ...

Facebook is no stranger to the debate over freedom of speech. As the networking site grows, and as its increasing number of users make their opinhions known, the site has had to draw its own boundaries between acceptable self-expression and open hostility. The most recent controversy, though, has worried even the Secret Service. Using a third party application that allows users to create and ...

The Presidential Records Act of 1978 ensures public access to government documents so that United States citizens can be aware of the actions of the nation's highest office. According to the Washington Times, the government is asserting that the same act enables the White House to have access to statements made by the public. More specifically, the Act apparently allows the government to monitor ...

Listen, children, we've warned you about posting your youthful indiscretions on Facebook and the likely ramifications. We've told you to be wary of what you post, as employers -- actual or potential -- will almost certainly scrutinize your profile, possibly firing or declining to hire you if they don't like what they see. We've given you example after example after example. So, what do you do? ...

Barack Obama is no stranger to spurious claims about his heritage, citizenship, and religious beliefs, but most of these claims have been met with little more than stolid dismissal by our secretly Muslim, terrorist-fist-bumping, Kenyan-born president. Start attacking the man's policies with deceptive chain e-mails and viral videos, though, and you might just find yourself on the losing side of a ...

Accusations are flying over leaked e-mails (warning: PDF) that the EPA suppressed an internal report that casts a skeptical light on using regulations to reign in carbon emissions and reduce global warming. The 98-page report (warning, PDF), primarily authored by Alan Carlin, argues that there is no reason to regulate carbon dioxide in the U.S. since much of the science cited by the ...

When's the most embarrassing moment possible for your cell phone to ring? During a church service? How about a college lecture? A funeral, maybe? Nope, nope, and nope. Try being the poor sap whose phone not only rang, but quacked, during a recent press conference by President Obama. During a live broadcast of a speech about gay rights yesterday, a White House correspondent's cell phone quacked ...

Look out respectable citizens, because here comes 'The Obama Time Capsule.' What is it, you say? Well, 'The Obama Time Capsule' is a $35 coffee table photo book, available through Amazon, that can be customized with images and words of your choosing. It's like some bastard love child of Web 2.0, grassroots politics, and those cheesy 'put-your-kid-in-a-story-book' carts at our local mall. The ...

Soon, Barack Obama will finally be getting a beefed-up BlackBerry worthy of his office, the Washington Post reported yesterday. The President, whose affection towards his BlackBerry is well documented, has actually been using a combination of two devices (a regular BlackBerry and an NSA-supplied security attachment called the Sectera Edge) while awaiting delivery of his uber-secure, top-secret ...

Hey, what do you know? All those meetings over the proposed National Broadband Plan has amounted to something: a "yeah, we should probably hit this up." Today, the FCC has kicked off an immensely ambitious project to bring "high-speed internet access to every corner of the United States." $7.2 billion of the economic stimulus package has already been allocated for the task, but it'll be ages ...

No, this isn't an April Fool's joke. President Obama met today at Buckingham Palace with the Queen, and our forward thinking commander-in-chief brought along a little tech for gifting purposes. Obama presented Elizabeth II with an iPod containing video from her 2007 visit to the States. In return, the first family received what is apparently a standard present for visiting dignitaries to the ...

Remember that new Chief Information Officer (CIO) that President Obama recently appointed? As was the case with many of the other seemingly ill-vetted appointees, it now seems like Vivek Kundra too has a couple of skeletons in his closet that almost stopped him from accepting the position for the newly created post. As with Tom Daschle, Nancy Killefer, Charles Freeman, Ron Kirk, Timothy ...

Classified information regarding President Obama's helicopter was recently found in a peer-to-peer sharing folder on an Iranian computer, according to Computerworld. Chris Gormley, C.O.O. of Tiversa Inc., told Computerworld that the company's analysts first located the leaked information on February 26th, determining it to have been taken from the system of a U.S. defense contractor. Since last ...

Vivek Kundra has been named the first Federal Chief Information Officer (CIO) by President Obama. The CIO for the White House is a newly created post that will carry a variety of responsibilities, not the least of which is overseeing how the technology budget is spent by the federal government. Kundra will be responsible for making sure that federal agencies are able to communicate and share ...