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Whitehouse "dissident" web site monitoring?
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WHITE HOUSE MONITORING OF DISSIDENTS ON THE INTERNET
The National Security Agency presumably can monitor
subversive communication on the Internet without leaving any
trace by "sniffing packets" at traffic nodes. For purely
political purposes, however, the White House may be forced to do
the monitoring in-house, which means that they leave traces
everywhere they go.
With just a superficial search for such traces, The
Washington Weekly has uncovered intensive monitoring of
"dissident" Internet sites by the White House.
It turns out that computers from inside the White House have
kept pretty good tabs on information available on Whitewater,
Vince Foster, and Mena at a few key repositories on the World-
Wide Web, a subset of the Internet.
Just three such sites: "The Washington Weekly, "The
Whitewater Scandal Home Page" and "Whitewater & Vince Foster,"
were accessed 128 times by four computers from the Executive
Office of the President between August 28 and August 31. If the
White House is showing a similar interest in other sites on the
World Wide Web, that would amount to a monitoring operation of
considerable magnitude. Tim Brady of the Yahoo! World-Wide Web
index says that his company alone has indexed approximately 725
political sites. That monitoring effort would be nothing,
however, compared to the effort required to follow all anti-
Clinton discussion on the Usenet, another subset of the Internet.
The White House did not respond to an inquiry (attached
below) asking for an explanation and asking whether this
constituted "casual browsing."
Interestingly, the week after the White House snooping of
files, which included a series of articles by J. Orlin Grabbe on
Vince Foster's ties to the NSA, the following little piece
appeared in Newsweek Magazine:
"Conspiracy theorists perked up when Deborah Gorham told Senate
Whitewater investigators in June that her boss, the late deputy
White House counsel Vince Foster, asked her to put two secret
notebooks from the National Security Agency in a White House
safe. The suggestion that Foster dealt with the NSA sparked
feverish speculation on the Internet that he was involved in
espionage. The reality appears more prosaic. The White House
won't give details, but sources say Foster's files dealt with
legal questions about national emergencies...."
Does the White House follow anti-Clinton discussion on Usenet
newsgroups just as closely? The White House posts press releases
to Usenet in collaboration with the Artificial Intelligence Lab
at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But MIT System
Administrator Bruce Walton says that the White House does not use
the same server for reading netnews. It would be difficult -
although not impossible - to find the server that the White House
uses for reading or receiving netnews and check for traces on
that server.
Readers may be tempted to post a threat to the President on a
newsgroup just to see if they get a visit from the Secret Service
the next day. That experiment is not advisable. It is a criminal
offense. But Usenet just might be a faster conduit for getting
the attention of the administration than the email address that
the White House has published for the president.
Attachment:
THE WASHINGTON WEEKLY
_________________________________________________________________
August 31, 1995
Virginia M. Terzano
White House Office of the Press Secretary
The White House
Dear Ms. Terzano:
It has come to my attention that several dissident sites on
the World Wide Web have been visited by White House computers
this week. Apparently, all information regarding Whitewater,
Foster, and Mena has been transferred to White House computers.
Specifically, the sites,
"Washington Weekly" (http://www.federal.com),
"The Whitewater Scandal Home Page"
(http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~crow/whitewater/)
"Whitewater & Vince Foster"
(http://www.cris.com/~dwheeler/n/whitewater/whitewater-index.html)
have been visited by White House computers ist1.eop.gov,
ist6.eop.gov, ist7.eop.gov, and gatekeeper.eop.gov between August
28 and August 31, and a total of 128 files have been transferred
to those White House computers. For all sites, this constitutes a
significant increase over previous access by White House
computers.
In light of this information, I have the following questions:
(1) Does this constitute "casual browsing" by White House staff, or
is it, in light of the considerable time and effort spent during
regular business hours, part of a monitoring or intelligence operation?
(2) For what purpose is the information transferred to the White House used?
(3) Does the White House keep information from these web sites on file,
and does the White House keep a file on the persons responsible for
these web sites?
(4) Is the April 9 statement by David Lytel of the White House Office of
Science and Technology to Amy Bauer of Copley News Service that the
administration does not monitor anti-Clinton activity on the web still
operative?
Thank you very much for your cooperation in this matter.
Sincerely,
Marvin Lee
The Washington Weekly
Copyright (c) 1995 The Washington Weekly (http://www.federal.com)
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