Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Read no evil

In a remark open to multiple interpretations, George Bush, during the same interview in which he claimed to use "the Google", was asked whether he used email:

“I tend not to email or — not only tend not to email, I don’t email, because of the different record requests that can happen to a president. I don’t want to receive emails because, you know, there’s no telling what somebody’s email may — it would show up as, you know, a part of some kind of a story, and I wouldn’t be able to say, `Well, I didn’t read the email.’ `But I sent it to your address, how can you say you didn’t?’ So, in other words, I’m very cautious about emailing.”

He didn't want to sound like he was saying that his legal experts have told him to avoid email so as to keep deniability intact (and to sidestep the fishing expeditions that his allies used against Bill Clinton) but he comes pretty close to doing it anyway. Note also his transparent fear of the technology, springing from ignorance, as corporations have long since found ways to deal with the concerns that he expresses. Do his oft-expressed denunciations of Osama bin Laden spring not from Osama's body count, but from awe at his mastery of the Internet?

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