Work For Obama, Lose Your Privacy?

Late last week, we saw how an Obama staffer's simple, all-in-good-fun Facebook photo could cause a mini-firestorm resulting in embarrassment, apologies, official statements, and, possibly, 50 push-ups at the feet of Rahm Emanuel.

On Friday, speechwriter extraordinaire Jon Favreau forgot to remove several unflattering photos of himself and a buddy getting friendly with a cardboard cut-out of Sen. Hillary Clinton, and thereby broke rule No. 63 of the Official Rules of the Obama Transition Team Justice League of America to Applicants of Obama Administration Jobs, which is, "please provide any other information ... that could ... be a possible source of embarrassment to you, your family, or the President-Elect." You live, you learn.

Now, Politico's Eamon Javers is asking, after an estimated 15,000 applicants submit their private information--including Facebook data--to the Obama transition team, what happens to it?

Team Obama isn't saying.


Spokesman Reid Cherlin would not reveal who would have access to that database, where it would be kept or what would eventually happen to it all. "I can't comment at all on that," he said.

According to the National Archives, all information gathered by the presidential transition is the property of Barack Obama himself, not the government. Therefore, the data will become official presidential records, subject to the Presidential Records Act.

Then it would all wind up at the National Archives.

But don't fret, Obama applicants. "There are very clear guidelines that protect people's privacy," says Susan Cooper, a spokeswoman for the National Archives and Research Administration. "Just because you end up in the National Archives doesn't mean that it will become public information."

Imagine that, your Turks & Caicos vacation photos displayed next to Abraham Lincoln's telegrams.

B. Brandon Barker can also be found here.