Re: Whitehouse "dissident" web site monitoring?

[Brian Davis <bdavis@thepoint.net>]

On Wed, 13 Sep 1995, Duncan Frissell wrote:

> 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.
>
I am not familiar with this incident, but I note that state authorities, 
not federal, were involved according to your post.  Was the consent 
decree also filed in state court?  And even if it was in federal court, 
was the legal theory on which the plaintiffs proceeded based on NY state 
law or federal law??  
 
> 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.
> 
The White House also reads publicly available newspapers and magazines (I 
assume).  How is accessing a Web site different from that?

> 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

Is the World Wide Web your idea of "electronic surveillance 
technology"??  I would agree that packet sniffing is a different problem, 
but accessing an open Web site seems reasonable to me.  Would you prefer 
that the staffers use home computers to do this (in an attempt to hide 
their tracks)?  As far as I know, this was all done openly and the Web 
site chose, right or wrong, to reveal the contents of their log files to 
someone.  Again, what about the complaints heard in this forum recently 
about law enforcement's obtaining similar log files from the Web site set 
up regarding the child's kidnapping?

> 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.

Not only "those in power" but those in the public eye/public figures.  On 
that rationale, Phil Zimmermann is probably a public figure with respect 
to encryption ...


> DCF
> 
> "There are more of us than there are of you."
   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
That, of course, depends on what you mean by "us" and "you."

EBD


Not a lawyer on the Net, although I play one in real life.
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Flame away! I get treated worse in person every day!!