A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation ISSN 1062-9424 -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==- In this issue: Accessing the Federal Government -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==- ************************************************************************ Over the past two weeks, the White House and the U.S. House of Representatives each announced that they had set up systems for receiving electronic mail through the Internet. These official announcements, as well as other reference materials for accessing federal government information online, are included in this issue of EFFector Online. ************************************************ ***E-MAIL TO THE PRESIDENT AND VICE PRESIDENT*** ************************************************ THE WHITE HOUSE Office of Presidential Correspondence __________________________________________ For Immediate Release June 1, 1993 LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT AND VICE PRESIDENT IN ANNOUNCEMENT OF WHITE HOUSE ELECTRONIC MAIL ACCESS Dear Friends: Part of our commitment to change is to keep the White House in step with today's changing technology. As we move ahead into the twenty-first century, we must have a government that can show the way and lead by example. Today, we are pleased to announce that for the first time in history, the White House will be connected to you via electronic mail. Electronic mail will bring the Presidency and this Administration closer and make it more accessible to the people. The White House will be connected to the Internet as well as several on-line commercial vendors, thus making us more accessible and more in touch with people across this country. We will not be alone in this venture. Congress is also getting involved, and an exciting announcement regarding electronic mail is expected to come from the House of Representatives tomorrow. Various government agencies also will be taking part in the near future. Americans Communicating Electronically is a project developed by several government agencies to coordinate and improve access to the nation's educational and information assets and resources. This will be done through interactive communications such as electronic mail, and brought to people who do not have ready access to a computer. However, we must be realistic about the limitations and expectations of the White House electronic mail system. This experiment is the first-ever e-mail project done on such a large scale. As we work to reinvent government and streamline our processes, the e-mail project can help to put us on the leading edge of progress. Initially, your e-mail message will be read and receipt immediately acknowledged. A careful count will be taken on the number received as well as the subject of each message. However, the White House is not yet capable of sending back a tailored response via electronic mail. We are hoping this will happen by the end of the year. A number of response-based programs which allow technology to help us read your message more effectively, and, eventually respond to you electronically in a timely fashion will be tried out as well. These programs will change periodically as we experiment with the best way to handle electronic mail from the public. Since this has never been tried before, it is important to allow for some flexibility in the system in these first stages. We welcome your suggestions. This is an historic moment in the White House and we look forward to your participation and enthusiasm for this milestone event. We eagerly anticipate the day when electronic mail from the public is an integral and normal part of the White House communications system. President Clinton Vice President Gore PRESIDENT@WHITEHOUSE.GOV VICE.PRESIDENT@WHITEHOUSE.GOV ************************************************* ***E-MAIL TO THE U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES*** ************************************************* ANNOUNCEMENT OF ELECTRONIC MAIL SYSTEM BY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Chairman Charlie Rose and Ranking Minority Member Bill Thomas of the Committee on House Administration announced today the pilot program of the Constituent Electronic Mail System. This groundbreaking new service will allow citizens to communicate directly with their Member of Congress by electronic mail. The House of Representatives has established an electronic gateway to the Internet, the vast computer network that is used currently by over 12 million people worldwide. Participating Members of the House have been assigned public mailboxes which may be accessed by their constituents from their home computers. In addition, many libraries, schools and other public institutions now provide, or soon will provide, public access to the Internet. The Members of the House of Representatives who have agreed to participate in this pilot program are: Rep. Jay Dickey (AR-07), Rep. Sam Gejdenson (CT-02), Rep. Newt Gingrich (GA-06), Rep. George Miller (CA-07), Rep. Charlie Rose (NC-07), Rep. Fortney Pete Stark (CA-13), and Rep. Melvin Watt (NC-12). These Members will be making announcements in their congressional districts within the next few weeks to make their constituents aware of the new service. The Constituent Electronic Mail System represents a significant effort by the House of Representatives to expand communication with constituents. With the tremendous growth of electronic mail over the past several years, and the increasingly inter-connected nature of computer networks, the new service is a natural addition to the current methods of communication available to constituents. At the present time, House Members involved in the pilot program will largely respond to electronic mail messages from their constituents by postal mail, to ensure confidentiality. Constituents of House Members participating in the pilot program who wish to communicate with those Members will be asked to send a letter or postcard stating their interest to the Member's office. The request will include the constituent's Internet ``address,'' as well as that constituent's name and postal address. This process will allow Members to identify an electronic mail user as his or her constituent. The pilot e-mail program will continue until sufficient feedback from participating offices has been collected to allow improvements and modifications to the system. When House Information Systems and the Committee on House Administration are satisfied that the system is sufficiently error-free, other Members of the House will be allowed to add this new service as technical, budgetary and staffing concerns allow. For more information, Internet users are encouraged to contact the House of Representative's new on-line information service. Please send a request for information to CONGRESS@HR.HOUSE.GOV. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES CONSTITUENT ELECTRONIC MAIL SYSTEM We welcome your inquiry to the House of Representatives Constituent Electronic Mail System. Currently, seven Members of the U.S. House of Representatives have been assigned public electronic mailboxes that may be accessed by their constituents. This effort represents a pilot program that will be used to assess the impact of electronic mail on Congressional offices and their mission of serving the residents of a Congressional District. This initial project will be expanded to other Members of Congress, as technical, budgetary and staffing constraints allow. Please review the list of participating Representatives below, and if the Congressional District in which you reside is listed, follow the instructions below to begin communicating by electronic mail with your Representative. If your Representative is not yet on-line, please be patient. U.S. REPRESENTATIVES PARTICIPATING IN THE CONSTITUENT ELECTRONIC MAIL SYSTEM Hon. Jay Dickey 4th Congressional District, Arkansas Rm. 1338, Longworth House Office Building Washington, DC 20515 Hon. Sam Gejdenson 2nd Congressional District, Connecticut Rm. 2416, Rayburn House Office Building Washington, DC 20515 Hon. Newton Gingrich 6th Congressional District, Georgia Rm. 2428, Rayburn House Office Building Washington, DC 20515 Hon. George Miller 7th Congressional District, California Rm. 2205, Rayburn House Office Building Washington, DC 20515 Hon. Charlie Rose 7th Congressional District, North Carolina Rm. 2230, Rayburn House Office Building Washington, DC 20515 Hon. 'Pete' Stark 13th Congressional District, California Rm. 239, Cannon House Office Building Washington, DC 20515 Hon. Mel Watt 12th Congressional District, North Carolina Rm. 1232, Longworth House Office Building Washington, DC 20515 INSTRUCTIONS FOR CONSTITUENTS If your Representative is taking part in the pilot project, we encourage you to send a letter or postcard by U.S.Mail to that Representative at the address listed above requesting electronic mail access. In your correspondence, please print your name and INTERNET ADDRESS, followed by your postal (geographical) address. When your Representative receives the letter or postcard, you will receive a reply by electronic mail that will include the Representative's Internet address. After you receive this initial message, you will be able to write your Member of Congress at any time, provided you follow certain guidelines that will be included in that initial message. We are aware that it is an inconvenience for electronic mail users to be required to send a post card in order to begin communicating with their Representative. However, the primary goal of this pilot program is to allow Members to better serve their CONSTITUENTS, and this initial postal request is the only sure method currently available of verifying that a user is a resident of a particular congressional district. In addition, constituents who communicate with their Representative by electronic mail should be aware that Members will respond to their messages in the same manner that they respond to most communications from constituents. That is, Members will generally respond to messages by way of the U.S. Postal Service. This method of reply will help to ensure confidentiality, a concern that is of utmost importance to the House of Representatives. COMMENTS AND SUGGESTIONS Please feel free to send electronic mail comments about our new service to the Congressional Comment Desk, at COMMENTS@HR.HOUSE.GOV We will make every effort to integrate suggestions into forthcoming updates of our system. Thank you again for contacting the House of Representatives' Constituent Electronic Mail System. We are excited about the possibilities that e-mail has to offer, and will be working hard to bring more Members on-line and to expand our services. We feel that this pilot program is an important first step, and we urge your cooperation and continued interest to make the program a success. This message will be updated as necessary. Honorable Charlie Rose (D-NC) Chairman Committee on House Administration ************************************** ***FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (FAQ)*** ************************************** WHITE HOUSE ELECTRONIC PUBLICATIONS AND PUBLIC ACCESS EMAIL -- FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS Updated April 7, 1993 Table Of Contents I. Signing up for Daily Electronic Publications. A. Widely Available Sources. B. Notes on Widely Available Sources. C. Direct Email Distribution II. Searching and Retrieving White House documents. - WAIS - GOPHER - FedWorld BBS III. Sending email to the White House. - CompuServe - America OnLine - MCI - Fidonet - Internet I. HOW DO I SIGN UP FOR ELECTRONIC PUBLICATIONS BY THE WHITE HOUSE? The White House Communications office is distributing press releases over an experimental system developed during the campaign at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. You can obtain copies of all the press releases from a wide variety of on-line services or discussion groups devoted to either national politics in general or President Clinton in particular. These are listed in sections I and II. Section I.C. explains how you can sign up to receive press releases directly from the experimental MIT system by using an automated email server. The present system was not designed to handle high levels of message traffic. A more powerful system will become available in due course, and in the meantime, it would be appreciated if you used this service sparingly. One appropriate current use is secondary redistribution and archiving. If you use it, you will be carried forward when the more powerful system that replaces it. A. WIDELY AVAILABLE SOURCES 1. On USENET/NETNEWS, electronic publications are found on a variety of groups: Direct Distribution alt.politics.clinton alt.politics.org.misc alt.politics.reform alt.politics.usa.misc alt.news-media alt.activism talk.politics.misc Indirect Distribution misc.activism.progressive cmu.soc.politics assocs.clinton-gore-92 2. On CompuServe: GO WHITEHOUSE 3. On America Online: keyword WHITEHOUSE or THE WHITEHOUSE or CLINTON 4. On The WELL: type whitehouse 5. On MCI: type VIEW WHITE HOUSE 6. On Fidonet: See Echomail WHITEHOUSE 7. On Peacenet or Econet: See pol.govinfo.usa. B. NOTES ON WIDELY AVAILABLE SOURCES [Editor's note: #1 seems to be missing from the original file] 2. CompuServe's White House Forum (GO WHITEHOUSE) is devoted to discussion of the Clinton administration's policies and activities. The forum's library consists of news releases and twice daily media briefings from the White House Office of Media Affairs. CompuServe members can exchange information and opinions with each other in the 17 sections in the forum's message area. The message board spans a broad range of topics, including international and United Nations activities, defense, health care, the economy and the deficit, housing and urban development, the environment, and education and national service. 3. On America Online the posts are sent to the White House Forum, located in the News & Finance department of the service and accessible via keywords "white house" and "clinton." The White House Forum on America Online contains the press releases from the White House, divided into the categories "Press Briefings," "Meetings & Speeches," "Foreign Policy," "The Economy," "Technology," "Health Care," and "Appointments." The area features a message board so you can discuss the releases with other AOL members, and a searchable database for easy retrieval of releases in the topic that interests you. 4. MCI Mail users can access daily information on the administration's programs provided by the White House through MCI Mail bulletin boards. The available boards are: WHITE HOUSE ECONOMIC, WHITE HOUSE FOREIGN, WHITE HOUSE SOCIAL, WHITE HOUSE SPEECHES and WHITE HOUSE NEWS. A listing of these boards can also be obtained by simply typing VIEW WHITE HOUSE at the COMMAND prompt. C. DIRECT EMAIL DISTRIBUTION If you don't have access to the these accounts or if you would prefer to receive the releases via email, then the next section details how to sign up for this service. The server is not set up to answer email letters, comments or requests for specific information. To reach this MIT server, send email: To: Clinton-Info@Campaign92.Org Subject: Help The server works by reading the subject line of the incoming message and taking whatever action that line calls for. If you want to sign up to automatically receive press releases, then your subject line would begin with the word RECEIVE. You can then specify what kind of information you are interested in receiving. The categories of information are: ECONOMIC POLICY -- Get releases related to the economy such as budget news, technology policy review, etc. FOREIGN POLICY -- Get releases related to foreign policy such as statements on Bosnian airdrop, Haitian refugee status, etc. SOCIAL POLICY -- Get releases related to social issues like National Service (Student Loan) program, abortion, welfare reform, etc. SPEECHES -- All speeches made by the President and important speeches made by other Administration officials. NEWS -- Transcripts of press conferences released by the White House Communications office, as well as the President's remarks in photo ops and other Q&A sessions. ALL -- All of the above. So, if you wanted to sign up to get releases related to the economy your email message would look like this: To: Clinton-Info@Campaign92.Org Subject: RECEIVE ECONOMY When you send a signup message to the clinton-info server, it sends you back a status message letting you know what distribution streams you are signed up for. If you ever want to check on what groups you are signed up for send the following message: To: Clinton-Info@Campaign92.Org Subject: STATUS You can stop receiving email releases by sending a REMOVE message to the clinton-info server. The word REMOVE would be followed by whatever distribution stream you wanted to drop. If you wanted to stop receiving message about the ECONOMY then your mail would look like this: To: Clinton-Info@Campaign92.Org Subject: REMOVE ECONOMY You could substitute SOCIAL, FOREIGN, SPEECHES, NEWS or ALL for ECONOMY in the above message and you would be dropped from that distribution list. If you send the subject line REMOVE ALL, then you will be taken off the email distribution system all together and will not receive further releases of any kind. You can also ask for help from the automated server. Send an email query as follows: To: Clinton-Info@Campaign92.Org Subject: HELP The server will respond by sending you a detailed form that will guide you through the process of signing up for the various distribution streams. As you will quickly discover, there is a automatic form processing interface that parallels the quick and easy subject line commands discussed here. More detailed help is available by sending an email query as follows: To: Clinton-Info@Campaign92.Org Subject: Please Help! Finally, if you want to search and retrieve documents, but you do not have access to the retrieval methods discussed in section II, you can do this via email through the MIT server. You can obtain the WAIS query form by sending an email query as follows: To: Clinton-Info@Campaign92.Org Subject: WAIS Once you have identified the documents that you want, be careful not to request them all at once, because you may be sent a message containing all the documents and this message may be too big for some mail delivery systems between the email server and you. II. HOW DO I RETRIEVE WHITE HOUSE PUBLICATIONS FROM INTERNET ARCHIVES? Various sites are archiving the press releases distributed . What follows is an incomplete list of some of the sites containing the documents that have been released to date. This FAQ will be updated to reflect new sites as they become known. SITE DIRECTORY 1. SUNSITE.UNC.EDU /HOME3/WAIS/WHITE-HOUSE-PAPERS 2. FTP CCO.CALTECH.EDU /PUB/BJMCCALL 3. FTP MARISTB.MARIST.EDU 4. CPSR.ORG /CPSR/CLINTON 5. FedWorld BBS 703-321-8020 8-N-1 Notes: The following are notes on how to log in and get information from the above sites. 1. Office for Information Technology at University of North Carolina maintains the full collection of White House electronic releases available for search with WAIS and also accessible via Gopher. 1.a WAIS (:source :version 3 :database-name "/home3/wais/White-House-Papers" :ip-address "152.2.22.81" :ip-name "sunsite.unc.edu" :tcp-port 210 :cost 0.00 :cost-unit :free :maintainer "pjones@sunsite.unc.edu" :description "Server created with WAIS release 8 b5 on Feb 27 15:16:16 1993 by pjones@sunsite.unc.edu These are the White House Press Briefings and other postings dealing with William Jefferson Clinton and Albert Gore as well as members of the President's Cabinet and the first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, Chelsea, Socks and others in Washington DC. Dee Dee Meyers and George Stephanopoulos. Other good words: United States of America, Bill Al Tipper Democrats USA US These files are also available via anonymous ftp from sunsite.unc.edu The files of type filename used in the index were: /home3/ftp/pub/academic/political-science/whitehouse-papers/1993 ") Folks without WAIS clients or gophers that act as WAIS clients may telnet to sunsite.unc.edu and login as swais to access this information via WAIS. 1.b GOPHER is a distributed menuing system for information access on the Internet developed at the University of Minnesota. Gophers are client-server implementations and various gopher clients are available for nearly any computing platform. You may now use gopher clients to assess the White House Papers and other political information on SunSITE.unc.edu's new gopher server. You may also add links from your local gopher server to SunSITE for access to the White House Papers. For gopher server keepers and adventurous clients to access SunSITE you need only know that we use the standard gopher port 70 and that our internet address is SunSITE.unc.edu (152.2.22.81). Point there and you'll see the references to the Politics areas. For folks without gopher clients but with access to telnet: telnet sunsite.unc.edu login: gopher The rest is very straightforward. Browsing options end with a directory mark (/), searching options end with an question mark (?). There's plenty of on-line help available. 2. No special instructions. 3. The CLINTON@MARIST log files which contain all the official administration releases distributed through the MIT servers are available via anonymous FTP. These logs contain in addition to the official releases, the posts that comprise the ongoing discussion conducted by the list subscribers. To obtain the logs: FTP MARISTB.MARIST.EDU - the logs are in the CLINTON directory and are named CLINTON LOG9208 thru CLINTON LOGyymm where yymm stands for the current year and month. Problems should be directed to my attention: URLS@MARISTC.BITNET or URLS@VM.MARIST.EDU. Posted by Lee Sakkas - owner, CLINTON@MARIST 4. Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility is providing all Clinton documents on technology and privacy at the CPSR Internet Library, available via FTP/WAIS/Gopher at cpsr.org /cpsr/clinton (and in other folders as relevant). For email access, send a message with the word "help" at the 1st line of text to listserv@cpsr.org. 5. The FedWorld Computer System, operated by the National Technical Information Service, archives White House papers in a traditional BBS type file library. Connect to FedWorld by calling (703) 321- 8020. No parity, eight data bits and one stop bit (N-8-1). FedWorld accommodates baud speeds of up to 9,600. White House papers are located in the W-House library of files. To access this library from the main FedWorld menu, enter