George W. Bush, 2005: "You know, I don't email.. I don't want you reading my personal stuff."

[seafan]

..... And to answer your question, I believe in open government. I've always believed in open government. Rich is right. You know, I don't email, however. And there's a reason. I don't want you reading my personal stuff. There has got to be a certain sense of privacy. You know, you're entitled to how I make decisions. And you're entitled to ask questions, which I answer. I don't think you're entitled to be able to read my mail between my daughters and me.

-----George W. Bush, April 14, 2005

Bush Looks to His (Secret) Legacy

By Jason Leopold
Consortium News

July 11, 2008

George W. Bush, who has expanded his power to access the e-mails and other electronic communications of Americans, is resisting congressional demands that White House e-mails be saved for later research by historians.

Bush signaled he would veto a House-passed bill that seeks to overhaul the Presidential and Federal Records Act to ensure that e-mails and other government documents are preserved in the age of the Internet.
The measure passed the House, 286-137, on Wednesday, after congressional investigations revealed that the Bush administration apparently purged millions of e-mails and that dozens of administration officials used e-mail accounts maintained by the Republican National Committee to conduct official White House business and thus evade federal records laws.

Watchdog groups -- Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, and George Washington University’s National Security Archive -- sued the administration last year alleging the White House violated the Presidential Records Act by not archiving e-mails sent and received between 2003 and 2005.

.....

The Presidential Records Act states that the records of a President, his immediate staff and specific areas of the Executive Office of the President belong to the United States, not to the individual President or his staff.
The act further states that the President must "take all such steps as may be necessary to assure that the activities, deliberations, decisions, and policies that reflect the performance of his constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties are adequately documented."
By coincidence, Bush issued his veto threat – against this legislative “intrusion” into the handling of his internal records – on the same day that Congress gave final approval to a law granting Bush broader authority to intercept e-mail and other electronic communications by American citizens.

.....

Since taking office in January 2001, Bush has sought to limit the public’s right to see historical records from past presidents, including his father. In one of his first acts, Bush delayed the scheduled release of documents from the Reagan and first Bush administrations.

.....

Rep. John Dingell, D-Michigan, said many of the missing White House e-mails coincide with some of the Bush administration's biggest scandals, depriving the public a historical accounting of an already secretive administration.
"Whether it is Vice President Cheney's secret Energy Task Force meetings or the cover-up of the outing of Valerie Plame, the Bush administration has gone to extraordinary lengths to conduct its affairs in secret and to hide key documents from those investigating wrongdoing," Dingell said.

.....

"White House e-mail is very problematic," (David) Gewirtz (expert on e-mail and the author of the book Where Have All the Emails Gone?) said. “What offends me as an IT professional is that none of these problems are insurmountable. In fact, most of them are easy to solve. What's worse: not a single private-sector CIO would be allowed to get away with negligence on this massive scale.”

[BridgeTheGap]

1. "I'll get people/businesses to break the law to listen in on you, but you

can't check in on me!"
What a crock!

[HCE SuiGeneris]

2. He is playing with only half of a deck...

[KansDem]

3. Yeah, and it's all jokers...(nt)

[CJCRANE]

4. Wiretap Bush-Cheney.

See how they like it.

[bdamomma]

9. exactly.

[LeftishBrit]

5. Yep, but he's happy to read everyone else's...

including MINE quite possibly, when the EU and USA start sharing data.

And after all, why should he mind if he's got nothing to hide?

[Tangerine LaBamba]

6. Jason Leopold?

Perfect. One liar writing about another.

[zbdent]

7. wait a minute ... our emails are fair game to govt. scrutiny without a warrant

(or a reason, for that matter) ... and yet his personal e-mails are off limits???

[bdamomma]

8. maybe we should say the same thing to him

we don't want you reading our personal stuff.