re: #1208 iceweasel

Right, issue here is this:

While it is unclear at this point what the government is doing with the information it is collecting, critics of the administration’s health care proposal should not fear that their names will end up in some government database that could be used to chill their right to free speech.

I mean, this is the ACLU, people. They’d be the very first ones to leap on this if they thought it was an issue, and they already have lawsuits against the Obama admin on various civil liberties issues.

I read the article. Help me understand from your POV if there are any legal issues. In asking this I’m not implying anything about WH intentions, just wondering if from a pure legal standpoint this is completely hunky-dory or is there some odd relationship between the Privacy Act of 1974 and legal requirements for archival/records retention that present any technical legal conundrums. Has WH counsel itself made any official statements on this (which I presume would carry more weight than Gibbs/Burton/etc on this kind of matter)?