There’s an interesting debate going on at the Volokh Conspiracy about Obama’s “report traitors” program. Here’s a glimpse into the discussion of what value the Obama speech police can get from the email they collect.
"A system of records is a group of records under the control of an agency from which information is retrieved by the name of the individual or by some identifier assigned to the individual." So, if Wikipedia is correct, unless the WH has created a spreadsheet sortable by name/email, no Privacy Act violation exists."
Wrong.
By its very nature, an email server such as Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Notes or any other is a fully searchable database. So are email clients such as Microsoft Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird.
Thus, as soon as the email is received at turnthetraitorsin@whitehouse.gov, the message becomes an integral element in a "system of records" both in its major and minor definitions.
Moreover, all emails (and other electronic records) received by the Office of the Executive must be preserved in their entirety.
Once the loyal American has turned you in, you are in the permanent records.
What could be done with this information? Plenty. A little datamining, for example, would identify the people the White House has said it wants to uncover: the people below the surface. They don't have thousands of Facebook Friends or Twitter Followers. But they have a somewhat sizeable group they communicate with. Doesn't take much to link names to IP addresses and, in many cases, uncover the true identities of these subversives - dispatch T-shirt clad operatives to beat the crap out of them.
Think I'm paranoid? Ask the guy the union guys beat up a couple of days ago for exercising his (former) First Amendment freedom. You know: the one that has been declared inoperative by the Obama White House.
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