For those who have a goal of getting involved in the political landscape, these rules of monitoring your online presence is almost mandatory. I know there has been stuff from my early 20's that would be hard to explain in the political spotlight. The rules are changing, though. Until recently, there wasn't the digital footprint available, so many things could be ignored or pushed under the rug. However, with the press' insatiable appetite for information, a real vetting process must occur.

@Allison -- agreed. This basically eliminates anyone who uses a computer/the internet.

@Norcross-- Yeah, these rules have definitely have become almost mandatory for anyone in politics. It only works right now though, because there's still that technological divide between those who are old enough to never have gotten in to social media, and those of us who have grown up with it from the start. I suspect things will change a lot in a few years when no one can escape from this.

@junger-- Thanks!

Wow. I can't say I'm surprised about this, if you're going into politics, you always have to watch what you do, but its goes completely against what the Obama team to win the campaign. In the future, this stuff won't be a big deal, because it will be impossible to find anyone that doesn't have a little bit of embarrassing info posted about them on the internet.

Interesting - what stage of the application process is this? Apparently I haven't gotten to it yet.

Wow... I would suggest just do a Google search & attach it!! On any given day my name shows up between 59K and 72K times. My application would be a book. How silly is that???!!

If they are going to ask for these things at least make it easy.

By the way, I would be awesome advising Obama on how to really make effortless and effective change happen. This is my expertise. No one can touch what I know. But, no way I'm going to fill out a book to help. Craziness.

Warmly,
Pam
~ Pam Ragland - Human Behavior and Change Expert
http://www.AskPamRagland.com

Great post!

@Ryan Healy, I completely agree with you. In 10-15 years, everyone will have "embarrassing" and slightly incriminating information about themselves online, so that will be old news. People will become desensitized to seeing party pictures of political figures from their college years because they would have been seeing that from their own friends for years.

This all sounds very Big Brother-ish to me.

I understand the importance of evaluating the nature of the online behavior of any candidate for a white house job. HOWEVER, I also understand what Nisha is saying. I'm 22, I have had my own computer since I was 12 and I can't imagine having to dig up every email (lycos, hotmail, yahoo, gmail...I can't even remember how many accounts I've ever had), every blog post comment and certainly not every news article I've written as a journalist. So while I promise that no one will ever find a picture of me in downtown Athens, Ga. on a Saturday night in a drunken stupor, I don't think I'd be eligible for a job in Obama's administration. I couldn't even complete the application.

I'm sure that there's a solution to this problem. The more people become attached to their PDAs and communicate virtually, the more impossible these requests for info are going to seem. However, Obama ran on a platform of change. Figuring out a new and more efficient way to vet job candidates would be a great way to embrace it.

It is quite funny how all of the Obama supporters are following him as blindly as the Bush supporters have followed him. The truth is that Obama plays for the same team. Do some actual research. Obama was selected as president by the Bilderberg Group and the Tri Lateral Commission in hopes of furthering the agenda of the New World Order. In fact Google New World Order in Google News and the first headline from today is "G20 hopes to discuss plans for New World Order". Obama will carbon tax people and install militarized youth groups. He even mentioned youth brigades in one of his campaign speeches. He mentioned that they will be as well funded as the US Army. Scary thought huh. Well I know in the zest to change this country people voted for what looked like obvious change and they will indeed get change. Change that will cripple the US and allow the large multinationals a chance to gobble up all of our land and assets.

@Kristen -- I'm not sure. Check the link at the beginning of the post -- that was where I first read about it.

@Adam -- I definitely think the diaries thing is kind of invasive. And it is impractical to list everything one has ever written online. You'd practically have to just do a google search and print it out like Pam's suggestion!

@FeltMoses -- I think you make a valid point that little things probably won't matter. But for Obama, who won his campaign in part due to his use of social media and the internet, it seems strange to me that his transition team doesn't understand the impossibility of the task they're asking, which is documentation of all our online activities.

@Irina -- Thanks! It definitely does sound Big Brother-ish now, but I think (at least I hope) it will definitely change in the future.

@Bryan -- Interesting, but when I made that comment that this practically eliminates anyone who uses a computer, that was a touch of sarcasm. And my point was more that this makes it exceedingly difficult to even finish the application for most people because it's a little naive for the Obama team to think that anyone can track down everything they've ever written online. However, I do still think it can harm people. What if they supported a Republican in their past and wrote some comment about it somewhere? Or they wrote something about Obama during his Senate run in 2004? Or participated in some kind of protest in college? We've seen how past activities can get dragged out -- Obama got slammed for mere associations with Bill Ayers and even Rashid Khalidi in his past.

Also, in the interest of full disclosure, I didn't write the headline.

@B.Carter-- I agree, a new and more efficient way to vet these candidates does seem necessary.

@Anonymous-- yeah, deleting stuff could be one way to solve the problem, but a lot of things, once posted, are still cached and can still show up in search results.

The Internet is the greatest possible implementation of Bentham/Foucault's Panopticon...

The author of this post is the most literal person I've read in a while.

Obama is simply filtering-out voyuers and exhibitionists, which describes many young folks today.

If you want to work for Obama, then just google yourself and attach the results. Also attach all of your social networking crap.

I think that internet voyuerism is awesome - it filters out so many people who would otherwise be viable competitors to folks like me who want to get ahead.

I've never posted anything on the net with my name on it. And won't.

If you don't want people to post anonymously, don't allow anonymous posting. Conversely, if it's allowed, it's acceptable.