The White House Has Pulled Down its Flag

August 18, 2009 (LPAC)—With some fanfare, on Aug. 4 the Obama White House set up the email address, flag@whitehouse.gov, for people to report information about "fishy claims" they had heard or read about the regime's Nazi health-care plan. As of today, emails to the site bounce back with: "The email address you just sent a message to is no longer in service. We are now accepting your feedback about health insurance reform via: http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck."

As politico.com and other political websites noted, the White House move to purportedly counter rumor with fact generated a furor about how the submitted emails would be used. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs had to deny that the White House was collecting names.

"Of course the White House is collecting names," countered Texas Sen. John Cornyn (R). "It is inevitable. Anyone with access to the flag@whitehouse.gov account has access to the names and email addresses that are collected in that account. How are they purging names and email addresses from this account to protect privacy?"

So, with no fanfare, the flag address was taken out of service.

Sunday night, Aug. 16, the White House also acknowledged that it has been forced to change its email sign-up procedures, and discontinue the practice of funnelling people's email addresses to its favorite "advocacy groups." Recipients of health-care emails have complained that they had not asked to receive them.

"We are implementing measures to make subscribing to emails clearer, including preventing advocacy organizations from signing people up to our lists without their permission when they deliver petition signatures and other messages on individuals' behalf," spokesman Nick Shapiro said in a statement.