The White House should purge any personal information collected on Americans as part of their initiative to investigate “fishy” information on healthcare being propagated in emails, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said Monday.
“‘m glad the White House recognizes its own bad idea, and have disabled their data collection program,” Cornyn said in a radio actuality released by his office. “They’ve finally come to their senses and acknowledged that this is compromising citizens’ free speech rights by causing them to be concerned whether complaints will be compiled into some sort of ‘enemies list.'”
The White House had set up an email list (flag@whitehouse.gov) to which bogus healthcare claims could be forwarded for investigation.
But that campaign had been targeted by Republicans, who had claimed that it encouraged Americans to “snitch” on each other to the White House.
Cornyn said that questions still remain about the information collected by the administration, and demand that any information be purged by the White House.
“Questions still remain about information that’s already been collected over the last few weeks, and I’d still like to know what steps the White House is taking to purge all names, email addresses, and other personal information they’ve collected on private citizens as part of their data collection program,” he said.