The contractor shall provide the necessary services to capture, store, extract to approved formats, and transfer content published by EOP on publicly-accessible web sites, along with information posted by non-EOP persons on publicly-accessible web sites where the EOP offices under PRA maintains a presence, throughout the term of the contract. The contractor shall if possible, capture, store, extract to approved formats, and transfer content published by EOP on non-public websites. The contractor shall include in the information posted by non-EOP persons on publicly-accessible web sites where the EOP maintains a presence both comments posted on pages created by EOP and messages sent to EOP accounts on those web sites. Publicly-accessible sites may include, but are not limited to social networking sites. The contractor shall provide a user-friendly way of organizing and searching captured information. The contractor shall properly transfer the captured information, as identified by EOP, to NARA in an acceptable format for both preservation in NARA's Electronic Records Archive and presentation at the future Presidential Library. The Contractor shall provide a method to separate content posted by other EOP component offices as required.
I mean why didn't they just ask if you could come to the interview in your black helicopter, right?
This is where it becomes evident that paranoia is not sufficient for modern conservatism. You must possess substandard reading comprehension skills as well.
This is the beginning of the sentence in question:
The contractor shall provide the necessary services to capture, store, extract to approved formats, and transfer content
oh, oh, looking bad...
published by EOP on publicly-accessible web sites,
Oh, nuts. See, that "published by EOP (The Executive Office of the President)" bit does something we call "modify" the meaning of the sentence. We might even say it "restricts" it. What this sentence is asking is a contractor to archive stuff the President's office publishes on websites.
Scary stuff. I thought it was better when we just had Shrub bypass that by plotting anything illegal in off-record emails with no retention policy, run by the NRC. So much better.
But wait, what about later in the description? There's this:
along with information posted by non-EOP persons on publicly-accessible web sites
Oh, oh, brown shirts! I found 'em.
But once again, basic grammatical processing saves the day. Turns out that another one of those modification thingies follows:
where the EOP offices under PRA maintains a presence, throughout the term of the contract.
So it's not just any site, it is any site where the Office of the President is interacting with members of the site.
Can anyone think of a reason why they might have to do that? There's a hint in that paragraph. An acronym.
Anyone? Anyone?
Right. PRA is an acronym, and when we see acronyms we don't recognize, we look them up. In this case it turns out PRA most likely stands for the Presidential Records Act. That act, which established the ownership of all Presidential Communications was public, not private,does the following:
1. Defines and states public ownership of the records.
2. Places the responsibility for the custody and management of incumbent Presidential records with the President.
3. Allows the incumbent President to dispose of records that no longer have administrative, historical, informational, or evidentiary value, once he has obtained the views of the Archivist of the United States on the proposed disposal.
4. Requires that the President and his staff take all practical steps to file personal records separately from Presidential records.
Now that we have looked up that acronym and understand the purpose of this contract, we can understand another hint on why you would do this from later in the RFP description:
The contractor shall include in the information posted by non-EOP persons on publicly-accessible web sites where the EOP maintains a presence both comments posted on pages created by EOP and messages sent to EOP accounts on those web sites.
Oh, this is devious. The White House is not just going to archive the comments it posts on social networking sites. It's also going to archive messages to the presidential staff on these sites, just as is already done for email!
To give you an example of how insidous this is, imagine if Gibbsy posted a comment to the Organizing for America site saying
I agree. And we are going to get this done, possibly next year.
What this amazing super-spy software would do is allow you to see the comment Gibbsy was responding to!
How incredibly fascist of a government to archive, for the public record, all government communications in a way that will allow future generations to understand, through these unfair transparency in government laws, what their administration actually did.
Feels a lot like Pol Pot's Cambodia to me.
[I should make a brief note that a conservative friend of mine forwarded this link to me, and this is in no way an attack on his initial reaction after skimming the contract description, but rather an attack on those who have actually published this "conspiracy" news which should make it up to Glenn Beck tonight if history is any guide.] |
