Live data from Hacker News

Obama Promises Disappear from Web

sunlightfoundation.com

1–10 of 174 posts

Re: Obama Promises Disappear from Web

#2
~Protect Whistleblowers: Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance. Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government. Obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistleblower claims and whistleblowers have full access to courts and due process.~

Ouch.

Re: Obama Promises Disappear from Web

#3
I agree with the first commenter on the link. This is quite a reach. It's unlikely that the order to take down an old, unmaintained site would have come from someone who's in on some sinister agenda to revise history.

Re: Obama Promises Disappear from Web

#4
post #2

~Protect Whistleblowers: Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in…

So much for that

Re: Obama Promises Disappear from Web

#7
One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

Whistleblowers are frequently viewed by people who disagree with them as whiners, complainers, disgruntled people with axes to grind, and frequently they are all those things, often with nothing more than circumstantial or spurious claims.

Not everyone's a Snowden.

Re: Obama Promises Disappear from Web

#8
post #2

~Protect Whistleblowers: Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in…

wow. ironically, that's the most eloquent political statement on whistleblowers I can recall reading.

Re: Obama Promises Disappear from Web

#9
This is a simple discovery, but an important one. Change.gov was the President's official transition website, and included a vision for his presidency. It's a central piece of the historical record of the US, and they yanked it from the Internet.

It doesn't matter whether or not the Administration was trying to remove something specific: taking down the content at Change.gov is un-American and un-Internet.

Re: Obama Promises Disappear from Web

#10
You know, ending the mass surveilling would be a huge achievement on its own (probably by repealing the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act) - but what I'd really like is to get so much support from the people and the Congress, to eventually impeach him. Now that would remain in history, and would teach future presidents a lesson about overextending themselves with the spying. Obviously people like Alexander, Clapper and Holder would be gone in the next second, too, and the FISA Court disbanded.
Post reply on HN