'Daily Show’ chides Kundra, Chopra, and burns TSA

While testifying before a Senate task force today federal Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra and federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra took a little ribbing from Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) about being featured on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

“I didn’t get a chance to see it, but my understanding is that in light of the open government announcement earlier this week, that both Mr. Chopra and Mr. Kundra were the subject of Jon Stewart last night,” Warner said to the two technology leaders, who chuckled.

Warner continued: “I’m anxious to see the video. There was some great expose about the open government boys here. I’m sorry we don’t have that clip but I hope to have it so we get a chance to share it with you. Without objection, perhaps we could make it a matter of record?” he concluded to the room of laughing onlookers.

Kundra and Chopra are shown during a few awkward moments from the Open Government Web chat of Dec. 8 (the rest of the Web chat went off without incident). Most of the Daily Show segment is devoted to skewering the Transportation Safety Administration over the leak of redacted information, with Stewart making predictably silly recommendations on how government workers should redact documents. For the real deal, see In wake of TSA breach, a refresher on redacting PDFs.

See the full video of the Open Government Directive announcement here, or watch directly from YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXp3yumdGhU.