White House deleting hard drives etc.

The founding fathers. You think that terrorist such as Timothy McViegh gave a damn about the founding fathers? Do you think that other malcontents who may muster the courage to act on the idea that they "have a better idea" give thought to the ideas of the founding fathers?
Government has the honor to have the duty to protect the people from foreign and domestic threats. Tying their hands and holding them responsible, then accusing them of incompetence when they fail simply makes no sense.
Investigative organizations, including media are the watchdogs who can insure righteous behavior by agencies with the task of finding threats to the nation.

The proverbial roses wilted and died on 9-11-01.

Is making "all" verbal activity in the oval office available a matter of law?
Should all conversations taking place in the offices of senators and congressmen be recorded as well?
Perhaps a new department should be developed. The office of monitoring elected official's conversations.

I wonder if all verbal exchanges and other guttural sounds produced in Bill Clinton's office when Monica was present were recorded.....?

I have no problem with phone calls being monitored. If some agent wants to sit and listen to me talk love talk to my wife, he may learn the value of respect and true love. He may also get to know some electrical terminology if he listens long enough. I suspect when he hears no reference to bio-weaponry or bombs or drugs, he'll lose interest quickly.
I suspect that if congress is ignorant enough to legislate laws forcing themselves to install listening devices in their offices, they are not stupid enough to carry on incriminating conversations within that office. So, we'll be paying for installation of worthless devices and a lot of dinners where unscrupulous conversations will actually occur.

I believe you. I also believe that immediately after a terrorist attack, you may well be one of those with the accusation of "incompetence and neglect".

We have perfectly legal and constitutional means of perusing terrorists, and to bypass that is to forebode the constitution. If you cannot pursue and monitor a suspected terrorist under the stipulations dictated by the constitution then that makes me wonder about the honesty and legality of those actions. Again as i've questioned and as others have "how many terrorists have been caught as a result of the patriot act?

"Those who forgo their civil liberties for temporary security deserve neither..."
-Benny Franklin

Well, just remember when the Boston tea party occurred and the revolution beagan, the 'founding fathters' were terrorists to the British Monachy.
The media is no watchdog, obsessed with ratings and public opinon, hardly a rockbead of stabalised monitoring are they.
Again, consider what the American People fought for all those years ago, think what ALL the imigrants, religous communties and general waifs and strays of sociey saw in your country, the last bastion of freedom from archaic monachy's, where freedom of speech meant something and religion did not interfere with politics. The idea was right and it worked for 200 years until the turn of the 20th ceuntuary.

There is lots to admire about America, slowly but surely it is being taken away from you, day by day, right by right. In the name of terror. How many terrorists have been arrested, tried and imprisoned in the, say, last 2 years?

Just think what you are giving up, hw many people have terrorists killed versus the amount of people gunned down on your streets each year,....think about it. How many have died since 9/11 on your streets in your neigbour hoods at the expense of guns.

Do you honestly think a buch of rag tag terroristare going to take ove rthe US, c'mon man wake up. You should be more affraid of your owns streets then Osama's mob.

1. You do realize that a proper backup system is required under this thing called "Federal Law", right? Billy had such a system in place and rockin' solid. Lotus Notes at that... effective, but I am sure their techs were mainlining caffeine for eight straight years.

Enter W and suddenly... this perfectly working system... just goes away.
Why?

2. Your attempts to defend W and his cronies for THIS screwup by pointing at someone else just won't work here. They had a system that met federal law. They trashed it. They then failed to have one FOR THE ENTIRE RUN OF THE PRESIDENCY. Not only that, but the setup is botched so badly that it's gonna take two to three YEARS to straighten out. There's no possible way for you to reasonably explain this... hence your whining and ranting about Bill and "oh should everything be recorded?".
Still, I'd love to hear you doublethink your way outta this one.

We have perfectly legal and constitutional means of perusing terrorists, and to bypass that is to forebode the constitution. If you cannot pursue and monitor a suspected terrorist under the stipulations dictated by the constitution then that makes me wonder about the honesty and legality of those actions. Again as i've questioned and as others have "how many terrorists have been caught as a result of the patriot act?

"Those who forgo their civil liberties for temporary security deserve neither..."
-Benny Franklin

1. No. That is why I asked the question.

2. Sorry you saw my statements as defending the president.
Truth is, I simply don't believe presidents should be monitored as they conduct their business. Including presidents I do not vote for.
If they are guilty of committing a crime, let their accusers use law enforcement to investigate them as they investigate other crimes.

And that's why I am taking the stance I am... nobody knows that this is required by law. Worse... nobody knows that this law is being broken, and has been broken every day for the past eight years.

Presidents are monitored for more reasons than gooey inside info. Security reasons... we need to know who, what, when, why and how the President is communicating at all times. Things like this are crucial to both his and our protection. If he gets kidnapped... that's one of the places the feds will look first... who's he been talking to, who else knew where he was gonna be?

On another side of this, look at Nixon. Wouldn't you like to know what were in the "missing" documents and tapes.

You said the two key words that justify the requirement of such a system: "conduct business". Again, look at the law... employers can monitor their employee's communications and do so often. Is the President not the employee of us, the American citizen?

Finally, the word you are using here is actually quite inaccurate. Monitoring is not they key... proper data archiving is. In a situation as high up as this, EVERYTHING needs to be backed up and archived. Who knows when we'll need some blurb of info that came across the White House servers to protect us from another attack. If we need to see if our employee has been up to no good, it serves that purpose as well. In the tax world, this is generally referred to as an "audit"... making sure you're following the rules.

Also, as I stated in a post earlier in this thread, and can now confirm... the data archiving system I use to handle my anime is more robust, effective, and secure than the one used to handle the documents at the highest points of this country's power.

Chew on that one for a bit. Excel Saga and Asatte's Dance are given better treatment than the documents that could make or break America.

You've given me a lot to chew on.
You're very good at spitting out reasons to "proper archive data".
I will agree that in times of crisis it may be a good thing to archive conversations between the president and other relevant people.
However, it should be easy for any president to side step the archiving equipment by stepping into another room or even outside of the white house. Thus making all that equipment wasted tax payer money.
President Nixon taught future presidents that simple lesson. He actually thought people would respect his office and his privacy. lol