White House archive rules could save its Twitter followers' messages

Followers of the White House's Twitter accounts could someday discover they are in fact part of the federal government's official archives.

The longstanding Presidential Records Act of 1978 -- which requires White House staffers to preserve all communications -- could apply to public replies and private messages that voters send Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and other members of the Obama administration's communications team, Gibbs said Tuesday. "We have dating back -- I don't know when it dates back to -- but presidential records require that if I go on a site like this, and send out a message, that message has to be archived for the future, just like any e-mails I send or get are also archived for the future," said Gibbs, who just recently joined Twitter. He added the law is "intended to preserve the paper and records of the administration." Initially, the White House's communications shop was unable to join such platforms as Twitter, mostly because federal guidelines lagged years behind advances in online social networking.