The White House needs you (to rat on your neighbor)

From the the White House’s official blog – they want to you to report any political speech that they don’t agree with?

If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

And it gets a little more interesting since this is a privacy grey area. According to Senate Judiciary Committee lawyers any info gathered in this way is

• not covered by the Privacy Act, which prohibits government agencies from keeping any records
• not covered by the Freedom of Information Act, which means it would not have to release any information on the plan to members of the public who make a request.
• likely will be covered by the Presidential Records Act, which requires the White House to preserve and maintain its records for permanent storage in a government database.

So if that is true this becomes a secret database of people who disagree with the presidents policies (which they can of course act on) which does not have to be disclosed for at least a decade.