geekosystem

I guess it was only a matter of time. The White House has slowly made itself completely and totally a part of the Internet by invading social media like Twitter, so it's not all that surprising that they'd branch out to engage with people in other ways. Still, an official White House Tumblr? Yeah, that's a thing that exists now.

The Associated Press just got their Twitter account hacked, and the damage might have been done to your 401k. A tweet sent out from the account earlier this afternoon brought the thankfully fake news of a bombing at the White House in which the President was injured. Though the story was a fake, the repercussions of it are quite real, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average taking a 100 point hit in the moments following the fake tweet.

When it's not wasting time answering demands to build a Death Star, the White House's We The People online petition site can actually be used to get real responses to legitimate concerns on issues facing Americans. Today, in response to a petition signed by over 114,000 people, the White House issued a response on the issue of it now being illegal to unlock cell phone. The response? They agree it should be legal, because of course it should.

In an address this morning, President Obama outlined his plan to curb gun violence in America. That plan laid out 23 points, and included reinstating the ban on assault weapons, limiting magazines to 10 rounds, and ordering the Center for Disease Control to study a possible link between violence in video games and violence in the real world. We're interested in seeing what they come up with.

Since the Obama administration launched online petition site We The People in September 2011, the digital team at the White House has learned some valuable lessons about human behavior on the Internet -- namely, that if you offer people a forum for voicing their opinions on the Internet, they are mostly just going to troll you with demands for Death Stars and official state Pokemon and that they be allowed to go start their own country because they really don't like the way most people voted, which is how democracy works. While it's kind of disappointing that the digital team for the White House didn't apparently see this sort of thing coming -- you've seen the Internet before, right digital team? -- it seems like they're starting to get a handle on things, or at least stemming the tide of petitions that will require action. Yesterday, they announced that they are quadrupling the number of electronic signatures a petition needs to get to merit an official response from the government from 25,000 to 100,000.

Yesterday we covered the White House's response to the petition asking them to build a working Death Star. Sometimes though, people try to use the government's We the People petition program to try to accomplish things that might be possible. Anonymous has posted a petition to the site asking that the US Government officially declare Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks to be a form of protest, and not a crime. This stands about as much of a chance as the government building a Death Star, and the response probably won't be nearly as funny.

As you may or may not be aware, there's a petition over on We the People, which is where folks post petitions to potentially receive an official response from the United State government, requesting that the Obama administration "[s]ecure resources and funding, and begin construction of a Death Star by 2016." Like, Star Wars Death Star. Ordinarily, this would just be an amusing blip on the radar, covered by our sister site The Mary Sue back in December. That was before Paul Shawcross, Chief of the Science and Space Branch at the White House Office of Management and Budget, penned an official White House response to it.

At what point do we start classifying something as a "cyberattack" rather than "malicious spam" when it comes to email? Apparently, that line is drawn when it involves the White House. After some reports were made that a brazen attack occurred that compromised the security of the United States' nuclear commands, the White House has confirmed that they were, in fact, the target of a "cyberattack" insofar as an email was sent to them that contained malware. Most everything else about the hyperbolic first reports, however, they claim to be false.

YouTube walks a fine line between hate speech and protected speech. The problem exists in determining between what constitutes unpopular speech and what's outright hatred. The clip that ostensibly caused the protests in Libya that resulted in attack on the United States consulate is one of these items. After a request from the White House to review whether the video violated YouTube's terms of use, the video giant refused to take it down.

The White House is on Google+, are you? If you aren't, you might want to get involved if you want the chance to be part of a Google Hangout with the Prez himself. The White House joined Google+ two days ago, announcing its intention to make use of the Hangout feature. Now the -- understandably complicated -- details of exactly how it will work have come to light.

Piracy is bad, mmkay? No, that's not exactly what this new White House-backed anti-piracy PSA says, but it would be far more effective than its mantra of "only a few dollars," which is as irrelevant as it is nonsensical. Yes, there's a new entry in the tradition of painfully misguided anti-piracy PSAs and this one aims all its ire at strange, peripheral targets and only hits them ineffectually. Hey guys, buying counterfeit DVDs directly causes crime, and leads to drugs apparently.

At 2 pm yesterday, the National Emergency Alert System was put to the test with a message sent from the White House. The system is designed, in theory, to interrupt all television (cable and broadcast) and radio to alert all Americans of a crisis. It was created way back in 1963 to alert the nation of impending nuclear war. What? You didn't see the test? Well, that's not all together surprising, because it failed miserably.

If you haven't heard, Congressional Republicans are threatening to shut down the government at midnight today if Democrats don't bow down to their budgetary demands, and since some of them entail things like eradicating funding for Planned Parenthood, it's a safe bet that that won't happen. What's that got to do with tech? Well, according to the National Journal, White House staffers have been harshly warned not to use their government-issued BlackBerrys during a potential government shutdown. Apparently, they "face the threat of up to two years in jail"  if they don't comply.

"People are VERY clear on not using BlackBerries [if they're nonexempted] after a shutdown,” one source said, speaking on condition of anonymity in discussing an internal White House matter with the press. “Same with nonexempted [employees] using their personal BlackBerries [for government work]. Total nonstarter."

Well, at least there aren't any good apps to tempt them. (via National Journal. h/t @gabrielsnyder)

There's been a lot of WTF-news making the rounds recently. Try this one on for size: Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), at it again, proposed a bill last week that would effectively bestow the president with the authority to "seize control of or even shut down portions of the Internet," writes CNET.

Bill S.3480, or the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act (PCNAA), has been dubbed the Internet "kill switch." According to the legislation, in the case of national emergencies, any private company that relies on the U.S. "information infrastructure" would be forced to comply with any orders (e.g. encrypt data, install a patch, or block web traffic) given by the president via the National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications (NCCC), a proposed agency that would be created under the Department of Homeland Security. I guess American freedom only goes so far!

ABC News is reporting that the Obama White House, in response to the SEC's suing Goldman Sachs for fraud, bought an ad for the Google search terms "Goldman Sachs SEC" as part of an online ad campaign for financial reform. A simple search for those terms led to a page titled Organizing America that serves as a call to action for people frustrated with Wall Street. According to Phil Noble, founder of Politics Online:

A keyword search for advertising is nothing new, but they have incorporated keyword searches into their daily war room activities. These guys are reacting to what's in the news and creating a minute-by-minute strategy.

Goldman Sachs' people weren't slouches about it either: