Re: Whitehouse "dissident" web site monitoring?

[Duncan Frissell <frissell@panix.com>]

At 06:03 PM 9/12/95 -0400, Brian Davis wrote:

>Unbelievable!!!  To add to this distressing truth, I have learned that 
>the White House also subscribes to a number of newspapers and periodicals 
>which are reviewed for things of interest to the Administration and to 
>the President. I I I I I I ammmmmmmmmm shocked!

The government, as you no doubt know, sometimes operates under different
rules.  Thus when the "Red Squad" (Intelligence Division) of the New York
City Police (located in that big building on the North side of Vandam
between Greenwich and Houston BTW) was sued for maintaining files on "lawful
protest groups" they entered into a consent agreement to refrain from this
sort of thing.  Later, the courts said that this agreement meant that the
cops couldn't even listen to WLIB radio (NYC's favorite radical
African-American station) to find out in advance where rallies were going to be.

Since the White House is doing this reading of sites with public funds and
since that institution is the most powerful in the world --- it can nuke its
enemies, for example --- people are naturally interested to discover if they
are the subject of an investigation.

This is a demonstration of the unintended effect of electronic surveillance
technology.  The fact is that it can do more harm to the authorities than to
the public.  The Nixon Tapes/The Thompson Square Park Riot Video/The Rodney
King Video.  Since those in power are more interesting than ordinary people,
they represent a more "target-rich environment."  Information about their
activities has greater commercial value and is thus more likely to see the
light of day.

DCF

"There are more of us than there are of you."