Twitter Banned From White House (UPDATED)
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs mentioned casually to CNN today that Twitter is blocked on official White House computers. Gibbs clearly doesn't appreciate the value that can be derived from the innovative social network; he jokes about it as if it is a tool for personal exhibitionism.
Many readers here will no doubt recognize that there's a whole lot more that can be done with the service than that. This is from the same administration that won't let its employees at the State Department use Firefox (State Dept. for IT admin reasons), so perhaps nothing is surprising. The Twitter admission by Gibbs was excerpted in a video embedded below, originally reported by Andrew Malcolm of the LA Times.
Update: On Monday morning, Rachel Sklar at Mediaite reported that some White House staff do in fact have access to Twitter from White House computers and there is work underway to extend that access to a larger group of employees. That sounds like good news to us.
Malcolm points out the irony in the White House having several official Twitter accounts, but blocking the service from its employees' computers. Perhaps that's why President Obama hasn't been able to update very often since being elected.
Some cynics will say this is great news, that taxpayer money isn't being wasted on using Twitter on White House time. Note, though, that Energy Secretary Steven Chu recently took to Facebook to have conversations with the public about energy policy, for example.
When it comes to rapid, public conversations and easy relationship building, Twitter is better than Facebook. There is a long list of very innovative "Government 2.0" advocates moving conversation along quite quickly on Twitter. Beyond conversation, the network of people on Twitter offer rapid research assistance, some of the fastest news delivery on the planet and other clear sources of value for knowledge workers. If the White House doesn't want its employees to have access to resources like that while at work, it's honestly a loss for all of us.
Update: This isn't surprising, but long-time tech innovator Mitch Kapor said last night, on Twitter, that despite the ban "staffers tell me they use own iPhones or other own devices to read Tweetstreams." There's clearly a demand from some staff for access to this valuable service, even if some people like Gibbs don't get it.
You can find ReadWriteWeb (via editor Richard MacManus) on Twitter, as well as the rest of the RWW Team: Marshall Kirkpatrick, Bernard Lunn, Alex Iskold, Sarah Perez, Frederic Lardinois, Jolie O'Dell, Dana Oshiro, Steven Walling.
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Ahh... the transparency. I was waiting for that campaign promise to come to fruition!
Hey Marshall, it was CSPAN. Check out rexblog.com for a post I wrote that echoes your sentiment.
Posted by: Rex Hammock
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July 24, 2009 4:51 PM
Had no idea... I'm astonished and saddened at the same time (and a Democratic Precinct Chair who actively uses Twitter for civil engagement). Ugh.
Posted by: Sam Harrelson
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July 24, 2009 4:52 PM
If the White House employs people who would be prone to waste a lot of time tweeting in a pointless, nonsensical way, Twitter itself isn't the problem. Obviously. This corporate IT department attitude they seem to have is a bit disturbing. Maybe at some point Obama himself will put a stop to it.
i think it actually makes sense, twitter is so fast that something said in haste which causes a misunderstanding or worse can instantly reach millions of people.
Seems like a inconsistent choice after Obama's successful usage of the platform during the campaign. Why wouldn't the White House want to use one of the most popular ways of communication to disseminate important information? I agree with a commenter, Dan, if the employees are wasting time on the social network then why are they White House employees? Seems like a waste of tax money :)
Use it for good and not evil!
This is really interesting in light of the big Gov 2.0 push that social media directors at CDC, FEMA and DHS and other federal agencies are making use those channels to broadcast government info and interact with the average Joe. I am probably following several dozen US govt. employees from those agencies and others on Twitter as sources for reporting I've done.
Michelle Rafter
I'm going on the extreme with this comment, but Twitter is a communications tool. So is a printing press. Twitter is banned in the White House now. How long before it's banned in Congress? Banned in private offices of the Judiciary? The ban concept filters down to state government branches? These kind of stories make me nervous.
I don't like this administration. Never have. Never will. Neither do a lot of other Americans. Including people that voted for Obama.
I already pay for my employees to waste time on twitter.
I don't need to pay for someone in the White House to waste time on twitter. They hopefully have more important things to do.
I kind of understand it considering how any tweet coming from the White House would be scrutinized to infinity and beyond. But, still, isn't this supposed to be the "transparency administration?"
This is probably in order to comply with the national records laws that requires communications between white house staff in regards to government business be preserved for later review or posterity. It's probably similar to why im clients are sometimes banned at financial firms in order to comply with SOX regulations.
Hm. Several obvious fallacies concerning the opinionated portions of this post.
1. Regarding the criticism of the administration not using Firefox: I'd imagine that the oversight of technologies in the State Department is kind of a big deal. If it's easier for them to manage just one browser in order to oversee its use in within the infrastructure of the State Department, I'm not sure that I see a problem with that...
2. It's probably safer for administration officials to use Twitter outside of the White House...
3. I see absolutely no hypocrisy in the fact that Obama has a Twitter account despite this "ban." Furthermore, the idea that this "ban" illustrates the lack of use of @BarackObama since the election is probably misleading; I'd think that it probably hasn't been used as much because it was a tool for winning the election, and since he won, he has so many other channels to be seen (inside AND outside of social media).
On some fronts, I agree that the ban is ludicrous, but just wanted to make note of these ideas.
jezzus this post is a bit biased... marshall... first of all just cause you find value on something doesn't mean its valuable for everyone, and in a complicated environment like the white house i see no problem in blocking twitter or facebook or you can only e-mail using their software or other restrictions... it makes sense having a better control of computers that have sensitive and private information, i'm sure cell phone calls from inside and around are also being monitored...
also last time i checked not all the staff, ministries, IT folk and political machine are concentrated in the white house, so i'm sure someone on his staff will update his twitter and facebook and keep everyone informed, as for transparency, there is so much one in that position can do about that... if he goes around saying absolutely everything he does, it can be used against him or the USA.
Posted by: fiend.s2r.org
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July 24, 2009 6:30 PM
They are doing better than Iran. Even Iran couldn't silence twitter. I thought the President did a tweet just a few days ago about a press conference. Interesting as these layers of the Obama Admin peel off.
Funny as I read some of the comments. If Bush had done this people would be screaming, In fact one poster is actually saying that something twittered could be used against him or the USA. Now where had I heard that before?
Take things as they come.
I tend to personally agree with Dan. The "problem" is not Twitter; it's the people who would abuse it. IN this respect, it is not unlike the phones, email accounts and other tools - for the most part they are not abused, sometimes they are, government can screen for that, there can be penalties. But Twitter has a reputation as "silly" and a "time sink" so it is completely banned. It is unfortunate.
I like to tell the anecdote of a senior person at work who emails me with Microsoft Outlook (which I can only check at work) a Microsoft Word email attachment of a newspaper article copied into it, to let me know about some breaking tech news. And I say, Yes, I heard about that on Twitter two days ago. He is how government works, not me.
You all might be reading the situation wrong--might be an IT issue, not some administrative control trip. My own workplace recently started blocking both Twitter and Facebook, not because employees were spending too much time using them, but because numerous people followed links they found there to virus-disbursing websites, disabling their workstations and in one case a part of the local network. You really wouldn't want that happening at the White House...
IToast – As for the comment I made, IT issues and administrative control go nearly hand in hand. I didn't mention it, but thanks for making me clarify.
actually it makes sense, twitter is very nice to use and so fast and beside that can instantly reach millions of people for twiiter is awsome :)
The Governments use of Twitter is really only a one way stream. Therefore, there is no incentive to use it as opposed to an official channel, like change.gov. Just because the White House isn't embracing Twitter, which is really just a soap box, doesn't mean they aren't embracing transparency.
Nothing surprising here. I know that Twitter is blocked from workstations on the Coast Guard data network. Like at the White House, the boss, the Coast Guard commandant, tweets, but not from inside the firewall. Well, not from Twitter inside the firewall.
If the staffers in the White House are anything like the hacks in the Coast Guard, they've found work-arounds. The die-hard tweeters in the Coast Guard certainly have, using alternative web-based tools to tweet and follow Twitter. And I'll not say any more for fear of letting the owl out of the bag...
Posted by: peter.a.stinson.myopenid.com
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July 24, 2009 10:25 PM
It's probably because so many republican's use it effectively. You wouldn't dare want them to hear the voice of reason, or catch any conservative cooties, lol!
And I was just working on a blog post about how I learned at #OGI that parts of the govt are so far ahead of their corporate counterparts
C'mon everyone. I agree to the benefits that Twitter has, such as better collaboration, relationship building, etc. However, this is the WHITE HOUSE: Security is of the highest priority! This is why they have blocked Twitter. Imagine if someone started leaking classified information out to the WORLD through Twitter? This is why financial services company block Twitter as well -- insider trading.
In this case, security and risk is greater than any of Twitter's "synergy building" benefits.
makes sense(orship)
Posted by: k3x.myopenid.com
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July 25, 2009 6:56 AM
I've got to agree with many of the other posters who think the administration's decision has merit. You're fooling yourself if you think a great deal of the time people spend on Twitter during the day isn't completely wasted and a huge distraction. You really think those guys would be completely on point, only twittering and reading about the innumerable tasks at hand? Yeah right.
When will we get to the point where Shirky's excess cycles going into collaborative filtering and such on the Internet are stolen back not from TV but from Twitter. I don't see a lot of Twitter use as that different from TV to be honest (two-way web conversation, yeah I get it), although the hornets nest of Twitterers (who waste half their days Twittering) will surely disagree.
I'm pretty active in the Gov 2.0 space and it's really not surprising. Access is still a big issue in most agencies with Facebook, Twitter, and many social media sites are blocked.
However, this is also true with many large corporations and is tied into the Security departments and site blockers like Barracuda that most large places own.
A lot of the best studies of "Gov 2.0" are done off computers with air cards and off the network since the Fb/Twitters of the world are often blocked.
Steve Ressler
GovLoop.com
When I spoke at a CIA | State Department conference on "blogs & democracy" the most powerful thing I took away from the members of those groups who were in attendance was fear and resentment (see link to my post on the conference).
Administrations change. The barnacles in civil service by and large do not. And my experience is that a combination of fear for their careers and resentment at change has kept things locked down.
Here was my conclusion from the conference:
"I fear the great mass of experience and knowledge that the presenters brought to these government intelligence officials has fallen on deaf ears. This, despite the manifest failures of intelligence leading up to 9/11. I believe few, if any, of the attendees will push for these new communications technologies to become a part of their toolset and they will almost certainly not propose their various departments risk workload budgets or career trajectories to implement social software to promote and defend democracy and to debate issues of U.S. actions and global democracy with the world."
I don't want to say nothing will change, but I can't help thinking that nothing has.
Good! Twitter can be done on spare time, but not when there's more important things to think about. I'm seriously sick of the whole Twitter phenomenon. There IS more to life than Twitter.
No there's not Charnita! :)
I know it's fashionable to focus on the political dimension in these discussions, but the plain fact is that espionage, malware, are the critical concerns on white house systems.
Let's walk through a scenario:
White house staffer tweets from whitehouse system.
Staffer receives lots of tweets. Clicks on short URL.
Twitter takes them to malware infested webpage.
Malware "rootkit" loaded on machine.
Rootkit hides from OS and AV tools.
Rootkit "piggybacks" on routine communication and downloads more malware.
Hacker uses "platform" to look for other systems to hack.
White House compromised.
Imagine being able to hack Obama's travel schedule and the risk that would pose to him?
That's has to be a key issue for the white house people. I know its fashionable to focus on the political dimension, but that's not the real issue. You are right that there is a desire to control information release, but its the information release that's invisible that the Secret Service is more concerned about, in my view.
Gibbs (like Twitter founders) sees it as a microblog for the question "What are you doing?" but early adopters MADE it into a 2 way channel.
The RWW article fails to mention what the local DC press already know (http://www.wusa9.com/rss/local_article.aspx?storyid=88935): the block is due to the Presidential Records Act, which requires all official communication to be archived. If they would keep to the facts, we could discuss more important things, rather than seeing a conspiracy around every corner.
Posted by: Nils Sandin
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July 25, 2009 12:46 PM
Nils: Agreed.
Posted by: Holden
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July 25, 2009 12:48 PM
@Nils (Commenter #34) Thank you for bringing that to light.
This is a "workplace" policy, not an administrative policy. It's not like any employee who has Twitter on their phone can't still tweet. Twitter, the great communication tool that it is, can be a huge, time-sucking vampire to people who don't know how to manage themselves. Like any good workplace, if you've got to limit access to certain websites to keep your employees out of trouble, that's better than wasting your time having to repeatedly address the behavior.
Wow that is so cool dude!
RT
www.real-anonymity.pro.tc
More Openness from the current Administration.
Certainly an enlightened bunch.
Its fairly odd to talk about the "Administration" as if its a body that speaks with a single voice. I seem to remember this website covering the ridiculous amount of effort Obama made in trying to keep his blackberry - surely you must know the same "risk avoidance at all costs" security folks are still in place there.
Anyone who has worked in a large scale organization has encountered these folk. And the greater the risk, the greater the risk avoidance. Furthermore, these people will have very detailed and very real evidence backing up their decisions. To imply this decision is under the rubric of their openness & transparency efforts (or implying that Obama's folks personally weighed in on the State Dept's Firefox banning), as some of the comments here have implied, is just silly.
Yes, the goal should be risk mitigation strategies over risk avoidance, but even if lots of pressure is applied, as was the case in the Blackberry thing, its still a tough road to hoe.
archiving tweets is perfectly straightforward. do you think they do not know that? Not too likely.
Posted by: Bob Boynton
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July 25, 2009 2:01 PM
This article is classic click bait. But, let's get a grip here for a second.
How exactly is Twitter of ANY value to the White House? It is an UTTER waste of time and bandwidth. For those that will argue in Twitters favor, please compare its pathetic reach in comparison to international television, radio and the much maligned newspapers. Twitter is a pissant. A pathetic waste of time. An epic failure waiting to happen.
The great thing about Twitter and all of it's banal "content" is that it will simply disappear when everyone is done. There won;t be any mess to clean up. No environmental hazards, no recycling, just poof and all the banal bits are gone!
Additionally, could we please get a clue before any further comments about the inability of one government agency to use Firefox. Get educated on the issues of running a network or sizable IT department before making glib and asinine statements about how someone else runs theirs.
The Firefox software might not have a price tag. But, rolling out an application in a large IT environment cost real hard currency and lots of it. Just pushing out the latest Adobe Reader patch, free software, costs money in any organization. There are non-trivial expenses for planning, implementation and maintenance. And for those that argue that they should be allowed to install it themselves; unrestricted workstations, those that the user has administrative access, are the most expensive to maintain regardless of the software.
This article misses the point that the White House does not want the staffers to build a relationship with the public. There is a press secretary for a reason: to provide a single point of contact for the press and to keep the administration's message focused on point. If random staffers start tweeting whatever comes to mind that can easily lead a PR disaster. So yeah, blocking Twitter is a good idea. I'd also block gmail, facebook and other external communications tools. I'd let staffers request access to one of these tools if they needed it for work-related reasons. Staff who wanted to use the tools for personal reasons could request access, but only after they agreed to a long set of restrictions about what they could send out.
Twitter is cool and useful, but the idea that everyone should always have access to it is nothing but "twitter-fanboi-talk".
Interesting post here! Twitter and Firefox out of the white house now?! I can understand Firefox to some extent but now Twitter? Why would Obama enforce this? Perhaps because inside workers are updating their twitters with confidential info that could be leaked to the press too easily?
some times every thing can not be shared. twitter can be used in personal space not in work
Gotta run. Invading NKorea. Tonight, I hear. #tweet#
So this is not what I consider a violation of transparency in the White House. Its what I call common sense. Lots of people work in the White House. That is a ton of people to be accountable for. Despite how smart these staffers et al may be, we are all quite prone to doing things we later wished we had not done. The White House does not want to have to walk back dangerous, uncontrolled drivel from staffers and this is a logical consequence in that effort. I don't want people tweeting from the White House, just as I do not want someone with an IQ lower than my own as President of the United States.I simply cannot comprehend how anyone could find this problematic. I really don't.
To those who say "their" employees waste time on ... whatever... they better take a course on management and leadership... fast! Tools are what we make of them... educate the teams... inform, assess, observe, coach... set rules and if needed penalties (social action for the community and further education might work wonders) for those who won't comply for the wrong reasons. If you are already thinking of your teams like that: they waste "your" time and money... then maybe you shouldn't be leading them...
Change...transparency....LMAO
@astonished observer : http://dilbert.com/fast/1994-02-22/
Like most posters: great job on banning twitter!
Just to clarify some misinformation in this thread...
1) White House does have a Twitter account that the Web team updates: @whitehouse
They also run a Facebook page and other social media accounts. You can find those accounts from Whitehouse.gov.
2) Many federal departments and agency's IT departments block many Websites and freeware, and yes, the younger, savvier, federal employees may not like it but they deal with it. This has been the case for years, and has nothing to do with which President is in power or left/right politics. It has to do with network security policy; the respective agency's CIO/IT department makes the call.
Ya.........Itx actually a good move..
Say a case of rumuor or something of that sort can spread quickly through twitter..These spread may somtime lead to charisma..Way to go White House
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