White House bashed for health care 'snitch' program

Senator says there's no precedent for citizens reporting 'fishy' comments Posted: August 05, 2009 9:28 pm Eastern By Bob Unruh © 2009 WorldNetDaily Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, today demanded that President Obama either halt a program already widely known in the blogosphere as the "snitch" program or define how he will protect the privacy of those who send or are the subject of e-mails to the flag@whitehouse.gov e-mail address. The White House announced the program only a day earlier, pleading with people around the nation to forward to the White House e-mail address anything they might see "about health insurance reform that seems fishy." "I am not aware of any precedent for a president asking American citizens to report their fellow citizens to the White house for pure political speech that is deemed 'fishy' or otherwise inimical to the White House's political interests," the Texas senator wrote in a letter today to Obama. "By requesting that citizens send 'fishy' e-mails to the White House, it is inevitable that the names, e-mail addresses, IP addresses, and private speech of U.S. citizens will be reported… You should not be surprised that these actions taken by your White House staff raise the specter of a data collection system." [CONTINUE READING]