- ---------------------------------------------------------- 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) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To find out more about the anon service, send mail to help@anon.penet.fi. If you reply to this message, your message WILL be *automatically* anonymized and you are allocated an anon id. Read the help file to prevent this. Please report any problems, inappropriate use etc. to admin@anon.penet.fi.