Obama Staff Does NOT Understand the Responsibilities of Working in the White House

Or that seems evident from this Washington Post article.

Two years after launching the most technologically savvy presidential campaign in history, Obama officials ran smack into the constraints of the federal bureaucracy yesterday, encountering a jumble of disconnected phone lines, old computer software, and security regulations forbidding outside e-mail accounts.

What does that mean in 21st-century terms? No Facebook to communicate with supporters. No outside e-mail log-ins. No instant messaging. Hard adjustments for a staff that helped sweep Obama to power through, among other things, relentless online social networking.

I think these staffers need to understand that they are now in charge of the most powerful nation on the planet. We have the capability of wiping out all intelligent life on Earth with the single push of a button. These staffers shouldn't have time to be Instant Messaging their friends when they are facing 2 wars and the greatest financial calamity since the great depression.

They should have known from the start they they can't have access to outside e-mail. That is a security breach of the first order. As Sarah Palin knows an outside email account could easily get hacked by a 17 year old boy let alone a trained Chinese or Russian Cyber-Spy. This part is especially funny:

One member of the White House new-media team came to work on Tuesday, right after the swearing-in ceremony, only to discover that it was impossible to know which programs could be updated, or even which computers could be used for which purposes. The team members, accustomed to working on Macintoshes, found computers outfitted with six-year-old versions of Microsoft software. Laptops were scarce, assigned to only a few people in the West Wing. The team was left struggling to put closed captions on online videos

Oh my God! They have Office 2003 on these machines and not ILife or ITunes or whatever passes for productivity software in Macland. I'm sure this guy resigned on the spot after learning that he has to touch a hated Micro$oft product and sully his hands with dark age software like Office 2003.

Plus someone needs to tell this fool that laptops are scarce because they have the potential to leave the White House with a document on them labeled "nuclear_secrets.xls" or "secret-intelligence-briefing.doc" on them. I'm pretty sure that the "few people in the West Wing" that have laptops also have the very top level clearances and know the potential damage that a lost laptop could cause.

Here's some words of advice for the Obama's "sleek, new iPhone kind of future" team. The time for sending out Chat requests to your friends or updating your Facebook status are over. You can no longer search for a new apartment on Craigslist because it might just be listed by Chinese spies who have filled the place with listening devices and secret cameras.

You are now in a job that one intercepted Tweet to the wrong person or one laptop that walks off in the hands of a Iranian spy could spell the deaths of thousands of even millions of people. Your hacked Yahoo mail account has the potential to hurt national security or even get Americans killed.

I think the sooner that these Obama IPhone Officials 2.0 understands that they are now in charge of the well-being of the entirety of the United States of America the better they will be equipped to keep us safe. Until then their Facebook Status should be set to "Busy. Doing America's work. Check back in 4 years."