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EFFector Online Volume 9 Number 11
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EFFector Online Volume 09 No. 11 Aug. 2, 1996 editors@eff.org
A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation ISSN 1062-9424
IN THIS ISSUE:
ADDENDUM
ALERT: Terrorism Bill to Fund Nat'l Wiretap Network Without Action NOW!
News
The Problem
WHAT YOU CAN DO NOW
Upcoming Events
Quote of the Day
What YOU Can Do
Administrivia
* See http://www.eff.org/Alerts/ or ftp.eff.org, /pub/Alerts/ for more
information on current EFF activities and online activism alerts! *
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: ADDENDUM
-----------------
ADDENDUM to EFFector Online Volume 09 No. 11
Aug. 2, 1996 editors@eff.org
The Digital Telephony funding provisions have been *REMOVED* from the
modified House anti-terrorism bill. That bill *has* passed the House, but
from what we know from CDT, HotWired, and others physically on the scene,
the bill contains primarily provisions for beefing up airport security
and other useful things, plus calls for various commissions and studies,
and does not contain any anti-privacy measures. Word has it that primarily
objections from the ACLU led to removal of the DT funding section (that
is, unlike in last night's deliberations, surveillance privacy issues may
have actually be taken seriously this time.)
This removes the immediate danger of Senate passage of, and Presidential
signature on, DT funding as part of a rushed terrorism bill. However, DT
funding is part of an already passed House appropriations bill as well,
to be reviewed by the Senate before long. The Senate has adopted no such
provisions as of yet.
* Action to take:
Write or fax *your own* legislators, and urge them to *reject* CALEA
("Digital Telephony") funding in the CJS Approriations Bill emerging from
the House.
* Find Out Who Your Congresspersons Are
Writing letters to, faxing, and phoning your representatives in Congress
is one very important strategy of activism, and an essential way of
making sure YOUR voice is heard on vital issues.
EFF has lists of the Senate and House with contact information, as well
as lists of Congressional committees. These lists are available at:
ftp.eff.org, /pub/Activism/Congress_cmtes/
gopher.eff.org, 1/EFF/Issues/Activism/Congress_cmtes
http://www.eff.org/pub/Activism/Congress_cmtes/
The full Senate and House lists are senate.list and hr.list, respectively.
Those not in the U.S. should seek out similar information about their
own legislative bodies. EFF will be happy to archive any such
information provided to us, so pass it on!
If you are having difficulty determining who your US legislators are,
try contacting your local League of Women Voters, who maintain a great
deal of legislator information, or consult the free ZIPPER service
that matches Zip Codes to Congressional districts with about 85%
accuracy at:
http://www.stardot.com/~lukeseem/zip.html
Computer Currents Interactive has provided Congress contact info, sorted
by who voted for and against the Communcations Decency Act:
http://www.currents.net/congress.html
[This addendum has been added to the issue to which is refers, and
supercedes the action alert in EFFector 09.11.]
Subject: ALERT: Terrorism Bill to Fund Nat'l Wiretap Network Without Action NOW!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[NOTE: This alert has been superceded by the Addendum, above.]
August 2, 1996
REPOST THIS ALERT WHERE APPROPRIATE
DO NOT REDISTRIBUTE AFTER AUGUST 7, 1996
____________________________________________________________________________
Contents:
News
The Problem
WHAT YOU CAN DO NOW
____________________________________________________________________________
* News
Though the "antiterrorism" bill did not pass last night, due to polical
squabbles, the House Rules Committee has stripped the bill of some but
not all "controversial" provisions, and is pushing the House of
Represenatives to pass the legislation *TODAY*.
This partially stripped version of the bill, according to ACLU people on
Capitol Hill, does not have the new wiretapping provisions, unlike the
version from yesterday, nor does it attempt to restrict or ban encryption.
____________________________________________________________________________
* The Problem
However, this newly amended terror bill *calls for funding the FBI's
"Digital Telephony" wiretapping wishlist*, with "extra" intelligence and
law enforcement funds.
The FBI until now has been required to follow a public review process
before proceeding with this wiretap-the-nation proposal. The plan is so
big-brotherish and wasteful that it has been stalled repeatedly, despite
waves of terrorism hysteria. The new House action threatens to override
the public's right to participate, passing highly controversial wiretap
funding with no oversight or even meaningful comment from the people.
If the House passes this provision, the Senate is highly likely to do so
also, before the upcoming recess. The President will certainly sign any
"antiterrorism" bill that is passed.
____________________________________________________________________________
* WHAT YOU CAN DO NOW:
Please call and fax these key legislators IMMEDIATELY.
Contact House members first.
House members:
Dist ST Name, Address, and Party Phone Fax
==== == ======================== ============== ==============
6 GA Gingrich, Newt (R) 1-202-225-4501 1-202-225-4656
3 MO Gephardt, Richard A. (D) 1-202-225-2671 1-202-225-7452
6 IL Hyde, Henry J. (R) 1-202-225-4561 1-202-226-1240
14 MI Conyers Jr., John (D) 1-202-225-5126 1-202-225-0072
Senate members:
P ST Name and Address Phone Fax
= == ======================== ============== ==============
R MS Lott, Trent 1-202-224-6253 1-202-224-2262
D DE Biden Jr., Joseph R. 1-202-224-5042 1-202-224-0139
D SD Daschle, Thomas A. 1-202-224-2321 1-202-224-2047
R UT Hatch, Orrin G. 1-202-224-5251 1-202-224-6331
R PA Specter, Arlen 1-202-224-4254 1-717-782-4920
D VT Leahy, Patrick J. 1-202-224-4242 1-202-224-3595
Urge them to move Digital Telephony (CALEA) funding out of the
current proposal, and onto the "controversial" list.
Talking points to get across:
* The FBI wiretapping plan has, to date, met with shuddering, scorn and
outrage from the public. The scheme calls for wiretapping as many as one
person in every major city block, simultaneously across the nation.
* The US has never before been so close to becoming a police state as
*right now*.
* Funding this nightmare, especially in circumvention of the public
review process, is anything but "non-controversial".
If you don't have time to come up with a detailed message, here is a
sample communique:
Dear _________,
Please do not rush the passage of counter terrorism legislation;
I'm concerned that Congress is rushing without carefully
considering the implications of privacy. I'm from <city, state>.
In particular, the funding for CALEA ("Digital Telephony") needs
to be removed from the bill before any further action. This funding
is extremely controversial, and has met with almost unanimous
opposition from not only civil liberties organizations, but the
informed public as well.
Thank you,
For more information on the dangers posed by the Digital Telephony scheme,
see:
http://www.eff.org/pub/Privacy/Digital_Telephony_FBI
http://www.epic.org/privacy/wiretap
Press contact:
Stanton McCandlish,
Electronic Frontier Foundation
+1 415 436 9333
mech@eff.org
------------------------------
Upcoming Events
---------------
This schedule lists EFF events, and those we feel might be of interest to
our members. EFF events (those sponsored by us or featuring an EFF speaker)
are marked with a "*" instead of a "-" after the date. Simlarly, government
events (such as deadlines for comments on reports or testimony submission,
or conferences at which government representatives are speaking) are marked
with "!" in place of the "-" ("!?" means a govt. speaker may appear, but
we don't know for certain yet.) And likewise, "+" in place of "-"
indicates a non-USA event. If it's a foreign EFF event with govt. people,
it'll be "*!+" instead of "-". You get the idea.
The latest version of the full EFF calendar is available from:
ftp: ftp.eff.org, /pub/EFF/calendar.eff
gopher: gopher.eff.org, 1/EFF, calendar.eff
http://www.eff.org/pub/EFF/calendar.eff
See also our new Now-Up-to-Date HTML calendar at:
http://events.eff.org
Aug. 5- * Progress and Freedom Foundation; annual summit held in Aspen,
6 Colorado, will feature EFF Chairman Esther Dyson, Alvin Toffler
and Congressman Rick White and Senator Bill Bradley; "An
exploration of the Electronic Frontier's impact on American
society."
Info: +1 202 289 8928 Email to: mail@pff.org
Aug. 5-
9 + International Conference on Computational Linguistics;
University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Email: coling96@nttkb.ntt.jp
Aug. 8 - Registration deadline for SAB96, Sep. 9, 1996.
Aug. 8-
10 - Conference on Computing and Philosophy; Carnegie Mellon
University, Pittsburgh, PA. Deadline for submissions: Feb. 19.
Contact: +1 412 268 7643
Email: rc2z@andrew.cmu.edu
URL: http://www.lcl.cmu.edu/CAAE/CAPpage.html
Aug. 14-
16 + Information Seeking in Context: an International Conference on
Information Needs, Seeking and Use in Different Contexts; Tampere,
Finland. Deadline for submission of abstracts: October 15, 1995.
Contact: +358 31 215 7039 (voice), +358 31 215 6560 (fax)
Email: inf@uta.fi
Aug. 14-
17 - 7th Macintosh Summit Conference; learn the latest tips, tricks
and techniques of the Mac platform from the Mac giants.
University of California, Santa Barbara.
Contact: Fati Erdogan
Tel: 805 893 2811
Fax: 805 893 4943
URL's: http://www.metatools.com/metauniv
http://www.xlrn.ucsb.edu
Aug. 21-
23 + China-U.S. Meeting on Global Information Access: Challenges and
Opportunities; Beijing, China.
Email: leeh@ohiou.edu
Aug. 26 - ACM SIGCOMM '96: Applications, Technologies, Architectures and
Protocols for Computer Communication; Stanford University,
Stanford, CA
URL: http://www.acm.org/sigcomm/sigcomm96/
Sep. 2-
6 + IFIP96, 14th World Computer Congress; Canberra, Australia.
http://www.acs.org.au/ifip96.html
Contact: +61 6 257 3299 (voice), +61 6 257 3256 (fax)
Email: IFIP96@acs.org.au
Sep. 9-
11 - Connect 96: The Global Summit on Building Electronic
Communities; information society leaders will discuss the challenges
of developing electronic infrastructures; hosted by Smart Valley,
Inc., and Stanford University (event is on campus);
contact: Leslie Kareckas (408) 562 7747 or email: lesliek@svi.org
Sep. 9-
13 - From Animals to Animats, 4th International Conference on
Simulation of Adaptive Behavior (SAB96); Cape Cod,
Massachusetts, USA.
Email: sab96@cs.brandeis.edu
URL: http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/conferenc/sab96
Sep. 17 + Advanced Surveillance Technologies II; Ottowa, Ontario, Canada.
Email: pi@privacy.org
Sep. 18-
19 +! Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners, Ottawa, Ontario,
Canada. No Contact Info.
Contact: Conference Coordinator, 112 Ketn St., Ottawa,
Ontario, Canada, K1A 1H3
Phone: +1 613 995 2410
Fax: +1 613 947 6850
Email: jroy@fox.nstn.ca
URL: http://infoweb.magi.com/~privcan/
Sep. 24-
26 - Electronic Publishing 1996; an international conference in Palo
Alto (USA) organized by Xerox Palo Alto Research Center;
Contact: EP96; Xerox Corporation; XSoft Division;
3400 Hillview Avenue PAHV-127; Palo Alto, California 94304; USA
tel: +1 415/813-7293; fax: +1 415/813-7188
email: ep96@xsoft.xerox.com
------------------------------
Subject: Quote of the Day
-------------------------
"A peace that comes from fear and not from the heart is the opposite of
peace."
- Gersonides
Find yourself wondering if your privacy and freedom of speech are safe
when bills to censor the Internet are swimming about in a sea of of
surveillance legislation and anti-terrorism hysteria? Worried that in
the rush to make us secure from ourselves that our government
representatives may deprive us of our essential civil liberties?
Concerned that legislative efforts nominally to "protect children" will
actually censor all communications down to only content suitable for
the playground? Alarmed by commercial and religious organizations abusing
the judicial and legislative processes to stifle satire, dissent and
criticism?
Join EFF!
http://www.eff.org/EFFdocs/join_eff.html (or send any message to info@eff.org).
Even if you don't live in the U.S., the anti-Internet hysteria will soon
be visiting a legislative body near you. If it hasn't already.
------------------------------
Subject: What YOU Can Do
------------------------
* Digital Telephony/Comms. Assistance to Law Enforcement Act
The FBI has been seeking both funding for the DT/CALEA wiretapping
provisions, and preparing to require that staggering numbers of citizens be
simultaneously wiretappable.
To oppose the funding, write to your own Senators and Representatives
urging them to vote against any appropriations for wiretapping.
In the wake of the Olympics bomb, the US government, both legislative and
executive branches, are hot to pass new wiretapping laws, and fund the
DT/CALEA wiretapping provisions. SPEAK OUT NOW. There is not a moment to
lose! See lead article in this issue for more information.
See http://www.eff.org/pub/Privacy/Digital_Telephony_FBI/ for more info.
* Anti-Terrorism Bills
Several bills threatening your privacy and free speech have been introduced
recently. Urge your Congresspersons to oppose these unconstitutional and
Big-Brotherish bills, which threaten freedom of association, free press,
free speech, and privacy. One such bill passed some time ago, stripped
of some of the more onerous provisions. It could have been worse, and
could yet still be worse: A new anti-terrorism bill posing many threats
to YOUR privacy is nearing passage. SPEAK OUT NOW. There is not a moment to
lose! See lead article in this issue for more information.
Keep up the pressure. Write to your legislators: No
secret trials and deportations, no expansion of wiretapping scope or
authority, no national or "smart-card" ID systems!
For more information on some of this legislation, see
http://www.eff.org/pub/Privacy/Terrorism_militias/
* The Communications Decency Act & Other Censorship Legislation
The Communications Decency Act and similar legislation pose serious
threats to freedom of expression online, and to the livelihoods of system
operators. The legislation also undermines several crucial privacy
protections.
Business/industry persons concerned should alert their corporate govt.
affairs office and/or legal counsel. Everyone should write to their own
Representatives and Senators, letting them know that such abuses of
public trust will not be tolerated, that legislators who vote against
your free speech rights will be voted against by you in the next elections.
Join in the Blue Ribbon Campaign - see http://www.eff.org/blueribbon.html
PARTICIPATE IN BLUE RIBBON ACTIVISM EFFORTS:
http://www.eff.org/blueribbon/activism.html
Support the EFF Cyberspace Legal Defense Fund:
http://www.eff.org/pub/Alerts/cyberlegal_fund_eff.announce
For more information on what you can do to help stop this and other
dangerous legislation, see:
ftp.eff.org, /pub/Alerts/
gopher.eff.org, 1/Alerts
http://www.eff.org/pub/Alerts/
If you do not have full internet access (e.g. WWW), send your request
for information to ask@eff.org.
IMPORTANT! KEEP AN EYE ON YOUR LOCAL LEGISLATURE. All kinds of wacky
censorious legislation is turning up at the US state and non-US
national levels. Don't let it sneak by you - or by the online activism
community. Without locals on the look out, it's very difficult for the
Net civil liberties community to keep track of what's happening locally
as well as globally.
* New Crypto-Privacy Legislation
Urge your Represenatitives to support the Pro-CODE crypto export bill
(and to fix the few remaining bugs in it).
For years US export controls on encryption have hampered the development
of secure communications online. This technology is vital for online
commerce, for national security, and for YOUR electronic privacy.
The new Pro-CODE legislation will go a long way to rectifying the situation.
Join in the Golden Key Campaign - see http://www.eff.org/goldkey.html
PARTICIPATE IN GOLDEN KEY ACTIVISM EFFORTS:
http://www.eff.org/goldkey/activism.html
Support the EFF Cyberspace Legal Defense Fund:
http://www.eff.org/pub/Alerts/cyberlegal_fund_eff.announce
See also:
http://www.eff.org/pub/Privacy/
http://www.privacy.org/ipc/
http://www.crypto.com/
for more info.
* The Anti-Electronic Racketeering Act
This bill is unlikely to pass in any form, being very poorly drafted, and
without much support. However, the CDA is just as bad and passed with
flying colors [the jolly roger?] in Congress. It's better to be safe
than sorry. If you have a few moments to spare, writing to, faxing, or
calling your Congresspersons to urge opposition to this bill is a good
idea.
* Medical Privacy Legislation
Several bills relating to medical privacy issues are floating in Congress
right now. Urge your legislators to support only proposals that *truly*
enhance the medical privacy of citizens.
More information on this legislation will be available at
http://www.eff.org/pub/Privacy/Medical/ soon. Bug mech@eff.org to make
it appear there faster. :)
* Child Privacy Legislation
A new bill to protect children from unethical marketing practices (e.g.
tricking kids into revealing personal information by offering prizes or
games) has been introduced. EFF and other civil liberties organizations
like, and dislike, various points in this bill. The legislators
sponsoring the bill appear interested in resolving the problems in the
statutory language they have proposed. More information on this will be
provided soon.
* Find Out Who Your Congresspersons Are
Writing letters to, faxing, and phoning your representatives in Congress
is one very important strategy of activism, and an essential way of
making sure YOUR voice is heard on vital issues.
EFF has lists of the Senate and House with contact information, as well
as lists of Congressional committees. These lists are available at:
ftp.eff.org, /pub/Activism/Congress_cmtes/
gopher.eff.org, 1/EFF/Issues/Activism/Congress_cmtes
http://www.eff.org/pub/Activism/Congress_cmtes/
The full Senate and House lists are senate.list and hr.list, respectively.
Those not in the U.S. should seek out similar information about their
own legislative bodies. EFF will be happy to archive any such
information provided to us, so pass it on!
If you are having difficulty determining who your US legislators are,
try contacting your local League of Women Voters, who maintain a great
deal of legislator information, or consult the free ZIPPER service
that matches Zip Codes to Congressional districts with about 85%
accuracy at:
http://www.stardot.com/~lukeseem/zip.html
Computer Currents Interactive has provided Congress contact info, sorted
by who voted for and against the Communcations Decency Act:
http://www.currents.net/congress.html
* Join EFF!
You *know* privacy, freedom of speech and ability to make your voice heard
in government are important. You have probably participated in our online
campaigns and forums. Have you become a member of EFF yet? The best way to
protect your online rights is to be fully informed and to make your
opinions heard. EFF members are informed and are making a difference. Join
EFF today!
For EFF membership info, send queries to membership@eff.org, or send any
message to info@eff.org for basic EFF info, and a membership form.
------------------------------
Administrivia
=============
EFFector Online is published by:
The Electronic Frontier Foundation
1550 Bryant St., Suite 725
San Francisco CA 94103 USA
+1 415 436 9333 (voice)
+1 415 436 9993 (fax)
Membership & donations: membership@eff.org
Legal services: ssteele@eff.org
General EFF, legal, policy or online resources queries: ask@eff.org
Editor: Stanton McCandlish, Online Activist, Webmaster (mech@eff.org)
This newsletter is printed on 100% recycled electrons.
Reproduction of this publication in electronic media is encouraged. Signed
articles do not necessarily represent the views of EFF. To reproduce
signed articles individually, please contact the authors for their express
permission. Press releases and EFF announcements may be reproduced individ-
ually at will.
To subscribe to EFFector via email, send message body of "subscribe
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you to a subscription list for EFFector.
Back issues are available at:
ftp.eff.org, /pub/EFF/Newsletters/EFFector/
gopher.eff.org, 1/EFF/Newsletters/EFFector
http://www.eff.org/pub/EFF/Newsletters/EFFector/
To get the latest issue, send any message to effector-reflector@eff.org (or
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at EFFweb. HTML editions of the current issue sometimes take a day or
longer to prepare after issue of the ASCII text version.
------------------------------
End of EFFector Online v09 #11 Digest
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