Can the President of the United States surf the web freely?

He can, but he doesn’t know how.

Props for PupnTaco, that made my day!

A recent president smuggled a girlfriend in and out of the White House. Confidentiality is paramount there (note: I didn’t say secrecy).

It’s seems feasible that he could have a black machine and internet connection that was “off the books.” On the other hand, since he is never really free from scrutiny, wouldn’t someone copy his “history” and sell it to the National Inquirer or something? Probably not worth the risk.

@PnT Best quip o’ the week! I gave you lurve.

What if George w made a facebook account, flickr, myspace, or even a fluther account? That would be pretty entertaining.

I’m pretty sure Dubya uses the “internets” to go on “tha google” at times.

Wow, look what’s already happened to the expectation of privacy and anonymity on the Internet! The idea that (a hypothetical theoretically intelligent) president of the USA would have trouble getting anonymous access to the Internet… wow, that’s sad.

The president would need to trust someone and have some security people in order to avoid the kind of spying that our government does (sniffing and decrypting connections, extorting ISP’s, using TEMPEST systems to remotely view displays). No doubt there’s already a counter-intel team for the White House and other government offices, and major threats against any leaking of information.

I thought that the Internet was just a series of tubes.

pneumatic tubes!

Don’t worry, even if he was online, they’d illegally destroy the evidence and find a court to back them up.

The evidence would be… fingerprints on the pneumatic tube capsules?

@Zaku Are you guys saying the President has his fingers on his tube?

Well. When he first was elected, he probably spent the whole day looking at german fetish porn. So then he was banned.

@Marina – I suppose that is what I was asking. Some topics drift into unexpected pneumatic tubes sometimes.

NO. The president is not allowed to use email. All of his activity online is actively monitored by the secret service. CNN had a nice segment about this. I can’t find it online, but heres a pretty decent and funny CNN video about George Bush’s internet use and how he misses using email

It’s just as well. The spellcheck software would probably overload and set the computer on fire.

I can see how email is monitored and why that’s important, but I think the president could at least SURF the internet without too much scrutiny. Of course, I’m just talking about surfing, not actually inputting anything into the internet, like forums and such. (that sort of input, like email, would have to be monitored). But otherwise, if he’s just checking out the sports/news for a few minutes, why not?