Politicians Caught in the Web

It wasn't very long ago that a politician could derail his campaign with a badly-timed photo op (or paparazzi shot): Gary Hart on the boat with a jeans model, Dukakis in a tank (I see this one in my nightmares), or even very recently with Kerry windsurfing. You think to yourself, "Knowing the scrutiny they were getting in the middle of a campaign season, how could they let themselves be caught in so unflattering a manner?"

Well, now it is 2007. A politician can be so lucky as to have a gaffe only caught in a picture in a newspaper. Post-George Allen, it is a Brave New World. Not only will a pol have to be "on" (as they say in acting) all the time, but they will have to be vigilant of who is in the vicinity in their least guarded moments (take heed John Edwards, and lay off the spittle, Wolfowitz!). And in the wake of the Hilary Big Brother (Sister?) viral video, controlling the message just got a lot more difficult. I offer this as a primer for the technologically inept politicians of how they can try to do their best at controlling their image (and words!).

"Macaca" Meltdown Moderation:

• Assume you are being taped at all times. Why?


• Digital Video camcorders are ubiquitous and tiny--they fit in pockets


• Most telephones now have digital video/audio capabilities and nearly everyone has one


• Resist the urge to try to be funny; remember: you're a politician, not a comedian


• If you're making a TV appearance, remember there's a camera in every room

Control the Message:

• When a viral video breaks, make sure you have a response: just like the old publicity saw goes, "any publicity is good publicity"--you need to use it to your advantage.


• If the video of you serenading a coat rack at an orgy becomes a huge hit on YouTube, well then you might have to get creative (I don't know how to get out of that one, maybe hire Mel Gibson's agency!)

Online Polls:

• Online polls are the worst sort of polls--there is no scientific sampling whatsoever: NEVER QUOTE THESE


• Never put these on your site, either


• On the other hand, when you're on a sympathetic Web site, you definitely need to have a high total, because it does mean that Internauts are paying attention; this information might help in fundraising and knowing where to put ad money

A final point: your history is pretty much publicly available. As you have no doubt seen in the last few months, the charities, political groups, and organizations to whom you've contributed is freely available on the Web, and "mash-ups"--so called because they mash together information from many disparate sources into one (from the hip-hop/dance mash-ups putting different songs together and still forming one beat) are really changing the political environment. They have caused Rudy Giuliani, to his credit, to run a basically honest campaign--that is, he at least can't lie about his support for gay rights and pro-choice (the record on terrorism: the jury is still out!).

So if you're going to run, you should definitely 'fess up about any cyber-skeletons in the cyber-closet, because otherwise, the Blogosphere will own you.

"Missing" or "Lost" Karl Rove of-the-RNC Emails

When I first heard about this a couple weeks ago, the politics of the situation were the most intriguing element of this story: Did Karl Rove, adviser to the President, try to subvert the Hatch Act, which provides for full accounting of all communications from, to and within the White House, by using his RNC-funded and maintained email for his secret, and potentially, illegal work as an employee of the American people?

For most people, that alone is intriguing. For me, though, I also liked the fact that this little debacle has brought to a more public light some little known facts:

• In cyberspace, there is almost always a server with something that's passed through it, with traces and back-ups of email.
• While email could certainly be completely lost (any NetAdmin will tell you that files can get corrupted, either in Microsoft Exchange Server or with any Linux flavor, and also be in between backup times...), it is pretty unlikely.
• The sender has to delete it from "sent items", then delete it from "deleted items"
• the receiver has to delete it from "received items", then delete it from "deleted items"
• the best practice in the IT industry is to create archive folders for a user to personally retrieve old emails, so most users actually just archive their email. So to delete it from there, you have to perform another delete action (that's three, so far!).
• Depending on the business, some backup servers also back up hard drives on user's workstations, so it would have to be deleted from there, as well.
• Then, on the server side, the typical time for data to reside on an email server is 30 days, but that is backed up every day, so theoretically, depending on the back-up practices of the company, you might have several years worth of backups on tape.
• Current practice due to Sarbanes-Oxley is to archive every month of data going back 7 years in "easily retrievable formats" which has been taken by many CIOs and IT Directors to be DVD-ROM discs, so any publicly traded company should have these at least back to 2004. Other companies are adopting these as best practices for IT and accounting purposes.
  
• The receiving server also keeps data at least for 30 days. Depending on the company practices of these backups, these might also exist.
• It is pretty easy to willfully delete emails if there is a strict policy of doing so on the sender's side, but not so easy on the receiver's side, so more than likely, copies of these emails could be retrieved. I've heard of IT departments of law firms charging approximately $2 per retrieved email as a standard cost, but I'm sure it could be more expensive depending on the above-mentioned standards implemented.

It is interesting that 35 years ago, tapes were erased by a secretive White House that did not want the Public (or even just Congress) to hear what it had said. If the RNC and Rove did their jobs well, and did indeed erase any of the evidence that illegal things were done in the Administrative Branch of the United States, then we might never be able to answer some of the questions about how we were led to war, what the political reasons were for firing state's attorneys, or what happened in the energy commission chaired by Cheney & Rove.

But I'm willing to bet that we CAN retrieve this information, that is, if it is legally allowable, because technology allows this capability.

Welcome to My Blog!

And I'm sure I mean that literally, considering that the average readership of a blog is 1!

Despite that, I will try to post weekly, but if topics come up that are of interest and immediacy, I will at least attempt a quick note.

Who am I and why should you bother to read my blog? I can answer the first, and give inducements to the second, but ultimately you will decide whether your time is well spent here. Hopefully there will be lively discussions and a minimum of A**holes.

Answering the first question:
I am Dave Tainer, Director of Information Systems at GMHC, a New York City-based Non-Profit dedicated to the national fight against AIDS. In my role, I support the great staff at GMHC by providing them with the tools and the technology to do the best possible job. I offer strategic technological vision for the organization in its fight. Most importantly, I offer technological solutions to the myriad projects in organizing, testing, administering, counselling and record-keeping that are necessary on a day-day basis.

I've been involved in technology, directly or indirectly, since the dawn of the personal PC era, working for the government (Dept. of Energy, FEMA, both at Argonne National Labs), for-profit businesses, and teaching in the computer science department as adjunct faculty at DePaul University. Because I've worked in many different areas of IT (networking, programming, project management, strategy, vision, management, operational), I have a well-rounded view of all that technology can do, as well as what it can't.

I am also very interested in politics and can therefore speak of how technology is affecting our political culture and our political process. What has really sparked me to start this blog is the latest tech-related political flaps, namely, the following:

• Karl Rove's and the RNC's "lost" emails (hardware/software technology)
  
• the "1984" Hillary/Obama ad (viral video)
• The Giuliani campaign Website SQL flaw (Web/Internet)
• Voting Machines (hardware/software)
  

These all made me think that technology and politics are fast becoming like technology and business, heavily intertwined and inseparable. This is already ushering in a change in how campaigns are executed, financed, and viewed culturally. I will try to treat these topics in a journalistic fashion, that is, to tell the truth without distortion of my personal view of things. For the record, I'm socially liberal, but fiscally conservative, which, in these days, the loudmouths of the right refer to as "radicals". In any case, the blogosphere will act as my ethics board!

Let's hope this is the beginning of long friendship (just hope it's not with myself only)!