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For a Washington Job, Be Prepared to Tell All
- ovi256 18y agoIt is intrusive. However, I think they are doing it to prevent any embarassing scandals. Be assured, journalists will (as they should BTW) do the same thing to you if you become a WH employee.
- josefresco 18y agoThe original NYTimes headline is much better: For a Washington Job, Be Prepared to Tell All
- Alex3917 18y agoSo apparently the change candidate wants to start by weeding out anyone who has ever spoken up against the status quo.
- DanielBMarkham 18y agoAnd the "no lobbyists on my staff" rule is out. New rule is "nobody who has lobbied in the last year"
- time_management 18y agoMy assumption would be that he just wants to know about it. If he rejects everyone out of hand who has skeletons, he won't be able to find people. I agree that the questionnaire's invasive, but it's not like many people are going to be rejected based on minor embarrassments.
- jsdalton 18y agoNeither the article nor the policy mention anything about speaking up against the status quo. They appear instead to be looking for "conflicts of interest" and "possible sources of embarrassment." There's a difference.
- Alex3917 18y agoWhat do you take "possible sources of embarrassment" to mean in the context of one's personal diary or blog?
- modoc 18y agoRacist comments, photos of you doing lines off a hooker's ass, getting "McCain 2008" tattooed on your forehead, etc...
- Alex3917 18y agoYes but I think he's already severed his connections with Reverend Wright.
- jsdalton 18y agoMy personal definition would be "anything you wouldn't be comfortable seeing splashed across the masthead of The Drudge Report."
- tptacek 18y agoThe proposed National Parks Director writing a personal essay about why we should turn them into private game reserves? The proposed HUD director writing that HUD should fund plasma TVs in public housing?
- Alex3917 18y agoSo, basically, have you had any ideas you weren't supposed to have? (Or spoken up against the status quo, as I said originally.)
- modoc 18y agoI'd think that speaking up against the status quo is fine, as long as your goals are in line with the new administration's goals. It would make no sense to appoint someone who wants to push an opposing agenda.
- rgrieselhuber 18y agoCurse you NYTimes and your annoying, intrusive password requirements and your bugmenot disabling.
- Goladus 18y agoheh completely unrelated, but our smartfilter is at the moment, for some reason, blocking the NYTimes as having a "malicious web reputation."
- rkowalick 18y agoSpyware and popups aren't the only way to gain a reputation like that!
- spydez 18y agoTry the BugMeNot plugin for Firefox. Then all you gotta do to get around NYTimes annoyance is right-click on the username field and say "log me in with BugMeNot"...
- rgrieselhuber 18y agoI use BugMetNot but NYT is getting more vigilant about disabling those passwords.
- swilliams 18y agoThat's pretty in depth. On one hand, the controversial stuff will be dug up by the media or someone else anyway, but on the other, it's asking quite a lot to hand over every bit of privacy you might have had.
- jaycee 18y agoI think it might be worth pointing out that this is only applicable to "those seeking cabinet and other high-ranking posts." It's not like every possible White House employee is being asked to hand over the keys to their online lives. And the submission headline here is a little misleading: the questionnaire appears to focus on affiliations and past financial associations, not facebook pages and IRC logs.
- tptacek 18y agoHugely misleading title: the questionairre is for cabinet posts and senior staff. The positions they're talking about are Senate-confirmable: the Obama administration is asking for these details, but the Senate can subpoena for them.