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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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