National Legal and Policy Center

A Case Study in Right-Wing Myth Making

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Thursday, 9/3/2009 5:27 pm

I feel like I've been writing a lot about WorldNetDaily recently, but since the website seems to always be at the nexus of emerging right-wing conspiracy theories, allow me to point out that it is happening again.

Earlier today I wrote about this claim being made by the National Legal and Policy Center that the "Obama White House Has Secret Plan To Harvest Personal Data From Social Networking Websites":

NLPC has uncovered a plan by the White House New Media operation to hire a technology vendor to conduct a massive, secret effort to harvest personal information on millions of Americans from social networking websites.

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air quickly debunked NLPC's claims,  but it didn't matter because "news" of the plan was already spreading around to, and being further spread around by, right-wing groups like the Family Research Council.

And now, of course, WND has picked up the NLPC's "scoop" and is reporting it as fact:

On Facebook, MySpace? Obama's got your e-mail
White House spammer-in-chief wants contractor to track critics
Posted: September 02, 2009

By Chelsea Schilling
WorldNetDaily

The White House is hiring a contractor to harvest information about Americans from its pages on social networking websites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr.

The National Legal and Policy Center, or NLPC, revealed the White House New Media team is seeking to hire a technology vendor to collect data such as comments, tag lines, e-mail, audio and video from any place where the White House "maintains a presence" – for a period of up to eight years.

Now that this "story" has shown up in the "news," we can expect it to get picked up by more groups and media outlets as it slowly begins to work its way into the overall right-wing narrative and perhps eventually into mainstream media coverage ... despite the fact that even the conservative blog Hot Air declared immediately that the NLPC's analysis is "faulty" and "overblown."

How Not To Spread Rumors On The Internet

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Thursday, 9/3/2009 10:44 am

In yesterday's "Newscall" post on the Family Research Council's "Cloakroom" blog, Krystle Weeks, FRC's web editor, included this item:

HotAir.com asks a good question: Does Obama plan to spy on social networking sites? After all, CNet, there is a bill proposed in the Senate that would give the President emergency control of the internet.

I have a question of my own:  did Weeks even bother to read the Hot Air article?  Because if she had, she would have known that Hot Air was not "asking" this question, but was rather debunking this claim, which is being circulated by the National Legal and Policy Center:

NLPC has uncovered a plan by the White House New Media operation to hire a technology vendor to conduct a massive, secret effort to harvest personal information on millions of Americans from social networking websites.

The information to be captured includes comments, tag lines, emails, audio, and video. The targeted sites include Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and others – any space where the White House “maintains a presence.”

Ed Morrissey points out that NLPC's claims are entirely bogus:

I’m not sure that highlighting a public contract offer amounts to “uncovering” a conspiracy, especially since their analysis turns out to be faulty. Contrary to NLPC’s take, the contractor would be collecting data required to be kept by the White House — by law.

...

Which brings us to the common-sense check on the rumor. How much time and resources would it take to effectively monitor every entry on Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, and every blog in the blogosphere? And to do that secretly, while archiving all of it? The NSA would have to take that on full time, and even then … best of luck just keeping up with the archiving, let alone surveillance ... [T]his is nothing more than a big, pointless archiving project, one which may stimulate the economy of a handful of people, but otherwise inconsequential. There are a lot of good reasons to be worried about the Obama administration, but this doesn’t appear to be one of them.

Note to Weeks: if you are going to try to spread unfounded rumors about the Obama administration, be sure to link to the people creating those rumors, not the people debunking them. 

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A Case Study in Right-Wing Myth Making
SUBMITTED BY: Kyle Mantyla, Thursday 09/03/2009, 5:27pm
I feel like I've been writing a lot about WorldNetDaily recently, but since the website seems to always be at the nexus of emerging right-wing conspiracy theories, allow me to point out that it is happening again. Earlier today I wrote about this claim being made by the National Legal and Policy Center that the "Obama White House Has Secret Plan To Harvest Personal Data From Social Networking Websites": NLPC has uncovered a plan by the White House New Media operation to hire a technology vendor to conduct a massive, secret effort to harvest personal information on millions of... MORE >
How Not To Spread Rumors On The Internet
SUBMITTED BY: Kyle Mantyla, Thursday 09/03/2009, 10:44am
In yesterday's "Newscall" post on the Family Research Council's "Cloakroom" blog, Krystle Weeks, FRC's web editor, included this item: HotAir.com asks a good question: Does Obama plan to spy on social networking sites? After all, CNet, there is a bill proposed in the Senate that would give the President emergency control of the internet. I have a question of my own:  did Weeks even bother to read the Hot Air article?  Because if she had, she would have known that Hot Air was not "asking" this question, but was rather debunking this... MORE >