For a Washington Job, Be Prepared to Tell All

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/us/politics/13apply.html

by frisco • 18 years ago

14 35 18 years ago

Curse you NYTimes and your annoying, intrusive password requirements and your bugmenot disabling.

Goladus• 18 years ago

heh completely unrelated, but our smartfilter is at the moment, for some reason, blocking the NYTimes as having a "malicious web reputation."

rkowalick• 18 years ago

Spyware and popups aren't the only way to gain a reputation like that!

spydez• 18 years ago

Try the BugMeNot plugin for Firefox. Then all you gotta do to get around NYTimes annoyance is right-click on the username field and say "log me in with BugMeNot"...

rgrieselhuber2• 18 years ago

I use BugMetNot but NYT is getting more vigilant about disabling those passwords.

ovi256• 18 years ago

It is intrusive. However, I think they are doing it to prevent any embarassing scandals. Be assured, journalists will (as they should BTW) do the same thing to you if you become a WH employee.

josefresco• 18 years ago

The original NYTimes headline is much better: For a Washington Job, Be Prepared to Tell All

Alex391710• 18 years ago

So apparently the change candidate wants to start by weeding out anyone who has ever spoken up against the status quo.

DanielBMarkham• 18 years ago

And the "no lobbyists on my staff" rule is out. New rule is "nobody who has lobbied in the last year"

time_management• 18 years ago

My assumption would be that he just wants to know about it. If he rejects everyone out of hand who has skeletons, he won't be able to find people. I agree that the questionnaire's invasive, but it's not like many people are going to be rejected based on minor embarrassments.

jsdalton2• 18 years ago

Neither the article nor the policy mention anything about speaking up against the status quo. They appear instead to be looking for "conflicts of interest" and "possible sources of embarrassment."

There's a difference.

Alex391710• 18 years ago

What do you take "possible sources of embarrassment" to mean in the context of one's personal diary or blog?

swilliams• 18 years ago

That's pretty in depth. On one hand, the controversial stuff will be dug up by the media or someone else anyway, but on the other, it's asking quite a lot to hand over every bit of privacy you might have had.

jaycee• 18 years ago

I think it might be worth pointing out that this is only applicable to "those seeking cabinet and other high-ranking posts." It's not like every possible White House employee is being asked to hand over the keys to their online lives.

And the submission headline here is a little misleading: the questionnaire appears to focus on affiliations and past financial associations, not facebook pages and IRC logs.

tptacek9• 18 years ago

Hugely misleading title: the questionairre is for cabinet posts and senior staff. The positions they're talking about are Senate-confirmable: the Obama administration is asking for these details, but the Senate can subpoena for them.

For a Washington Job, Be Prepared to Tell All

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