Oops, They Did It Again … Or Did They?

By: Stephanie O'Neill | Posted: 2009-12-01

Have you heard the one about the couple who crashed President Obama's first state dinner at the White House? Sorry, there's not really a punch line - at least not yet. But I have to say, I find it extremely hard to believe anyone, no matter who they are, could successfully crash an event at the White House - at least not without insider help. I've actually been in a room with a former president (I imagine the security is much tighter for a sitting president), where the Secret Service outnumbered the guests 2:1 (well, it seemed like it), and those guys are serious business. There's no way they'd let someone slip through the cracks because it was a rainy evening. Seriously, what PR pro came up with that excuse?

Now you might be wondering what the point is, especially since I am writing a software-as-a-service blog post. As I have been watching this story unfold in the media with a lot of speculation, I have been waiting with bated breath for the big "E" to surface - email. Much to my glee, it did last night, and I can't wait until that evidence comes to light.

I've said it more than once, and here I am saying it again: we live in an electronic age, and email will come back to bite you. It remains to be seen whether Tareq and Michaele Salahi, senior Pentagon official Michele Jones, the Secret Service or someone else is to blame for this apparent security breach, but yet again, email appears to be the smoking gun. And if the powers that be at the White House and Pentagon were using a cloud-based email archiving solution, this he said, she said case could have been put to rest before we finished digesting our Thanksgiving dinners.