Dems block anti-Google witness

On Thursday afternoon, the House Oversight Committee's Subcommittee on information policy, census and the National Archives will hold its hearing on federal agencies' use of Web 2.0 technologies, and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is expected to continue his campaign to find out if White House staffers have used third-party websites and personal e-mail accounts in violation of the Presidential Records Act.

The hearing has already been canceled and rescheduled once, and now GOP lawmakers are frustrated the subcommittee will no longer allow their one witness, John Simpson of the nonprofit Consumer Watchdog, to take the stand. Instead there will be one panel of all government witnesses who will focus the implications of the federal government's increasing use of social media for the Federal Records Act.

In a copy of his prepared remarks obtained by Hillicon Valley, Gregory Wilshusen, director of information security issues at the Government Accountability Office, lays out the challenges facing agencies that use sites such as Facebook or Twitter to communicate with the public:

"For example, a government agency that chooses to establish a presence on a third party provider’s service, such as Facebook, could have limited control over what is done with its information once posted on the electronic venue...Privacy could be compromised if clear limits are not set on how the government uses personal information to which it has access in social networking environments."

Wilshusen writes that members of the public interacting with the government via Web 2.0 media might provide personal information for specific government purposes and might not understand that information could be collected and stored by third-party commercial providers as well. "It also may not be clear as to whose privacy policy applies when a third party manages content on a government agency Web site," he writes.

Wilshusen also notes that the National Archives and Records Administration has already indicated content created by interactive software on federal government websites is considered part of the agency's records and should be preserved as such. "These requirements may be challenging for agencies because the types of records involved when information is collected via Web 2.0 technologies may not be clear ... The potential complexity of these decisions and the resulting record-keeping requirements and processes can be daunting to agencies," he said.