Change.gov and Cluen: A Case Study in Privacy

Surely you've heard of the Obama-Biden Transition Project and know it's a 501c(4) organization, right? Have you visited the official website at change.gov, read the blog, and shared your vision for America?

If you think like I do, perhaps you agree with Josh Bernoff's three tips about how change.gov should be improved?

In my last post, I quoted co-chair Valerie Jarrett saying the transition process between now and January 20 will be "transparent." I thought that would be a step in the right direction.

I still hope transparency is possible in the government, but a curious investigation led me down a path to conclude that transparency is the tip of the iceberg and change.gov is not what it seems.

With a desire to work on social media efforts for the Obama Administration, I recently applied for a job on change.gov. Nothing fancy; just a simple contact form.

I saw an email response yesterday, pointing me to continue the application process by filling out a 7-page, 63-question tell-all survey that New York Times reporter Jackie Calmes summarizes:

"Applicants are asked whether they or anyone in their family owns a gun. They must include any e-mail that might embarrass the president-elect, along with any blog posts and links to their Facebook pages.

The application also asks applicants to 'please list all aliases or "handles" you have used to communicate on the Internet.'"

Declan McCullagh of CNet News expands upon Calmes' summary with a closer look:

"Translated into English, this means that President-elect Obama wants to know far more about you than his predecessors did. That requirement would force applicants to disclose information about Facebook and MySpace pages, profiles posted on dating websites, and even what was posted on websites like CNET and YouTube that allow readers to append comments."

If that doesn't bother you, go ahead and fill out the application at change.gov/jobs/apply_app/ -- but the information is not stored at change.gov.

Notice the bottom of the page where it says the application system is powered by Cluen technology?

Click the link and be redirected to the Cluen Corporation, an 18-year-old private firm that provides recruiting software solutions.

The basic idea behind the company's Searchlight technology is a recruiting agency can collect data through online forms that are masked to be at the agency's website and the data is stored on secure Cluen servers.

A tactic used by a recruiting firm should be different for a presidential transition team, right? Surely, job data would be stored on a government server somewhere?

Think again.

Check out https://searchlight2.cluen.com/CandidateLogin.asp?compid={BBCFD5B2-E18C-4307-BEFA-BD007B34C07D}&layout={D3264583-16A1-451A-A7DC-3BC1F4F61B56}, which provides the true "power" of the attribution line at the change.gov application page.

In other words, not only are prospective applicants asked to submit 63 answers with personal information, but the data is stored at the Cluen Corporation. Perhaps this is included in the change.gov privacy policy under "physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards."

Maybe I'm off my rocker, in which case you can donate money to the 501c(4) here.

If I'm not off my rocker, what are your thoughts?

Link to original post at AriWriter

Read more reaction from HuffPost bloggers to Barack Obama's victory in the 2008 presidential election

Comments

[lastcallmd]

Transparency is way overrated. Think about difficult or sensitive situations in your own life at work, personally, financially and so on. Many things are better solved through a quiet back channel than on the front page of the newspaper.

[jsarets]

Is this application process really an example of lack of transparency? If anything, it errs on the side of excessive transparency.

[propitiousmoment]

It sounds to me like you are conflating transparency and personal privacy.

In order to provide transparency, they might do well to post a notice on the application site that tells users where the data is stored, and explains the security in place for protection of your sensitive info. That way no one is surprised later.

If your worry is privacy, nothing is really private anymore - health care, credit history, whatever else you do online. They can provide whatever protection is available, and it is pretty good these days, but stuff happens all the time anyway. We all just have to live with it, or do without bank accounts, medical insurance, credit and other loans, or an e-mail account. And social networking sites are meant to be public; asking for the URL is nothing more than for convenience on their part, so they don't have to look it up. Judging by the way O has handled this operation up to this point, I'd be willing to bet that the security is the best in the business.

If your unease is about divulging the embarrassing stuff, it does put you in an interesting position as an applicant, makes the relationship with your potential employer a little different from the average new job where you have done nothing but brag about your past in order to get hired. (Well, we voted for change, did we not?) Starts you off on an up-front, honest footing; hopefully that will be continued.

[NationalTreasure]

+Ari:

either you want transparency or you don't in either case transparency is not mutually exclusive of using an application form that is very indepth

what is of concern is the privacy issue and the fact that a private for profit company has your personal information -- this is a very different matter than lack of transparency

[livesimply]

It's true that some "vetting" is important, but I do think this is going too far.

[kristycu]

you maybe right- but if you really want that job. you will answer those questions. you always have a choice to say no- the WH has to be sensitive to these things because there are people out there who save stuff just to bring you down. If O knows about it- he can shut the rumor mill down before it starts- you are working for the highest of highest jobs, where things can be used against you and work against you- you have to be prepared

[pdxsteve]

I don't know what sort of companies you have all worked for, but today, it is simply standard practice for employers to check up on their employee's digital lives. This is especially true if you work for an enterprise that deals with confidential information on a regular basis (Like, I don't know, the Executive Branch...). What I am surprised at is that they asked the employees up front, many companies simply take it upon themselves to snoop around for your online information. Quite frankly, if you are willing to post something on a website (like Facebook or Match.com), you should be willing to say the same thing in a crowded public area, because that is exactly what you are doing. Furthermore, I concur with those who have pointed out that just because you might have written a hotly-worded blog or the like, does not mean you will get disqualified.

[kristycu]

I agree and like i posted earlier, it might not disqualify you, but if you did and you still got hired, the administration will not be surprised when someone starts trouble, they won't have to scramble for the information they can acknowldege it and defend their decision.

[rjmiller]

Thats a good thing. Government systems are required to use approved forms of encryption, and "approved" should be read as "breakable." Cluen likely uses far better encryption than any government computer.

[ElBruce]

Could you imagine how long it would take to set something up if he had to do it all through the government? The Republicans may get a lot of the privatization they've always dreamed of, but not in the areas they'd hoped for. The simple fact of the matter is that the gov isn't set up to move quickly enough to take advantage of new technologies. If Obama wants to use them (and he does) then he has to get the services from the private sector.

I'm confident that the transition team's lawyers have this company locked down in a contract so tight that it's probably actually safer in their hands than in the government's.

[DragonMama]

ever hear the phrase "forewarned is fore-armed"? They're not saying you won't be hired if you might have an embarrassing past (err... look who he picked as a VP for evidence of that), just that they want to KNOW about it before the tabloids find it for them. That way Barack can shrug and say "So? Old news. So-and-so does good work. Why don't you try that for a change?" and it's diffused before it can become a distraction. Kudos Obama team, from my opinion.

[QueenTiye]

Is the concern that applying for the job, disclosing more than would be required on a regular job, you necessarily are possibly setting yourself up for problems with regular job searches?

Otherwise, I'm sorry to be missing the point - but I am... :(

QT

[XME]

I don't really get the problem. First, I think it's GOOD that the application asks for so much info to help cut back on possible surprises to them in the future should they hire someone!

As for the info being stored on the server of a private industry, this also doesn't seem like a big problem to me. I used to work for the state government in an area where we had personal info for private citizens. Because of this, we had "containers" throughout our buildings where potentially sensitive trash would be placed. The containers were secured (sort of like a public mail box), and once a month, they were emptied by a PRIVATE company who was responsible for completely destroying the contents.

There are occassions when the gov has to depend on private companies to handle sensitive info, and it probably happens a lot more than you might think. They just need to do their homework to ensure they're dealing with responsible entities, make them sign all kinds of paperwork about their responsibility, privacy, etc. And...hold them responsible with serious charges if their are leaks.

[CanisLatrans]

Alarmism. Under the circumstances, and the skeleton-in-a-closet hunts that the media loves to indulge in, I don't see this as a problem. I actually think you're in more danger (so to speak) when all the credit card and advertising agencies get together to collaborate over your name, spending habits, credit reports, etc.

[Querent]

The President-Elect is not the President yet. He doesn't have access to "government" servers. Therefore his transition organization has to rent space on private servers. The data stored there, under contract, will belong to the transition team. Are you worried about this data being retrieved by hackers? I'm not sure what your objection is.

[MsCanadian]

Hmm...sounds as if they are demanding a little too much personal information.

[BeyondKen]

I applied for an Administration job at that website. It didn't ask me about guns. It didn't ask me about E-mails. It didn't ask about my Facebook page. It didn't ask about 'handles'. It didn't (thankfully) ask about my dating history.

It did ask what sort of work I was interested in and what my experience was.

Ari's off his rocker.

[tompoe]

Ari: It matters not where the government servers are located. I'm sure Cluen has a federal contract that calls for a data center management system to be put in place, with transparent procedures to collect, manage, store and retrieve the data for the Obama/Biden Project. The contract will be provided to anyone seeking to learn the details. After all, that's what change is all about, right?