Legal Commentary

The New York Times reports that applicants for a job in the Obama Administration will have to disclose an enormous amount of information, from the usual income and tax information to information about domestic help and, most interestingly, information about applicants' Web presence.  In particular, the application asks for emails that might be embarrassing, blog posts, email aliases and Facebook pages.  I haven't looked at the actual application but from the article it doesn't seem like the Web questions are time-bounded -- that is, they ask for all of this information going back all the applicants' lives.

The transition team's demand for applicants' Web information is understandable.  As we all know, information placed on the Web potentially stays there forever, and thus retains its capacity to embarrass.  But if application screeners take a hard line on potential embarrassment then youthful indiscretions could derail many applicants' hopes for a government job.

I hope this doesn't happen.  People (like me) who grew up before the Internet age got a pass on our youthful stupidities.  Scrawl something regrettable?  The wall got washed off or the notebook got tossed.  Take an embarrassing photo?  It's forgotten in a shoebox somewhere, or lost since lost in one of the moves we made in our 20s.  Make a porno like Zack and Miri?  It's on a disintegrating Super-8 reel so no risk there.

I'm sure that a sense is growing among teenagers and young adults that some media come and go but the Web potentially stays forever.  I wonder, though, if some cohort -- maybe people in their early 30's now, those just old enough to aspire to a political appointment -- are part of the generation that was young when the Web was just exploding, before these cautions became part of whatever general Web awareness young people have now.   That might mean they're caught in a generational trap; all of their youthful indiscretions will remain available, and subject to reporting, for the rest of their careers, even though nobody fully understood this at the time.

More generally, it seems to me to be asking a lot of people in their teens and 20's to censor themselves to the degree necessary to ensure they could truthfully answer the questions on the Obama application without risking a denial from an overly-cautious screener.  Indeed, to the extent particularly careful teens and 20-somethings do censor themselves, what does that say about the people most likely to survive that screening and get jobs in future administrations? 

Again, though, I can see the risk to the administration.  Still, I hope that screening -- now, and in the future -- takes account of this different world and that, in the rush to be above reproach or avoid a gotcha from political enemies or an enterprising snoop, veterans on the Obama transition team don't demand of the new generation what they would never would have thought to demand of themselves.