On Thu, 13 Jul 1995, Timothy C. May wrote:

I'd hardly call my view "throwing in the towel." What I said clearly enough was that the Washingtonians can throw out repressive legislation much faster than we can--and I speak in terms of "we" as being the EFF, EPIC, NRA, ACLU, etc., and _not_ the Cyherpunks, who have no lobbying activities to speak of.

I'm glad you brought this up, Tim, because Pat Farrell, Carl Ellison, and I have been discussing the possiblility of doing just that over the past week or so. The three of us, in addition to many others (we like to call ourselves "The Mid-Atlantic Cypherpunks") are very near DC and thought we might take advantage of this on behalf of others who don't have the luxury of living near their legislators. Our idea (and it was originally limited to lobbying against the CDA, but we can expand it now to lobby against that and S.974) was to have Cypherpunks send letters (yes, authentic _snail mail_) to a Cypherpunk willing to go deliver it in person, (namely me) and talk to whoever is there, be it the congressperson or one of his/her aides. The strategy of this action would be to say,"hello, we represent <insert your organization here> and we oppose <insert appropriate legislation title here> and we feel this way because <insert very reasonable and diplomatic explanations in easy, mono-syllabic words so that the congresscritter can understand here> and here is a letter from one of your constituents who feels the same way we do." A simple lobby. I thought this might be effective because it seems that a lot of representatives are difficult to get in touch with, since not all of them have e-mail addresses. I think there is a certain advantage in this kind of action from an educational standpoint, considering that the House doesn't seem to have a strong backer for this bill like the Senate did, and the many Congresscritters who know nothing about the net only need someone to explain the consequences of such a bill to them. Furthermore, to those ignorant of the net and its ways, a printed out list of names and e-mail addresses collected through the web is completely foreign and perhaps intimidating to them, and therefore not all that helpful to us, IMHO. Hand-signed letters (or hand-written, if your printing is more legible than mine) in good, old-fashioned envelopes is just what critters of this sort need to see. If any US citizens here would like me (and hopefully some older, wiser cypherpunks willing to join me on this trip) to deliver a letter to their congressperson please send a letter to this address: The Hon. Whoever c/o Kathleen M. Ellis TSU box 898 Towson State University 8000 York Road Towson, MD 21204 On the envelope you must include: The name of the congressperson (if I have to open the letter to be able to tell who it is meant for it'll lose some of its authenticity) My full address (yes, all five lines of it, or i'll never get it) If you can get it, the office location of representative (building name and room number) printed on the back or something, if you can't find it don't worry, I'll find it, but if you can find it I'd appreciate it. You can get it at the URL below. A return address A postmark from your district The letter must have: The specific bill you are against; its number, title, and sponsors (the CDA is H.R.1004/S.652 sponsored by Senator James Exon, from Nebraska) Possible alternatives (my suggestion is H.R. 1978, sponsored by Cox and Wyden) A polite introuduction, a concise body, and a gracious conclusion :). Your address and signature. If you need more information for your letter, good URLs on the subject are: http://www.cdt.org/cdw.html http://www.cdt.org/petition.html http://www.eff.org/pub/EFF/Issues/censorship/Exon_bill/ http://uvacs.cs.virginia.edu/~hwh6k/public/S314_stuff.html http://www.phantom.com/~slowdog http://www.panix.com/vtw/exon/ If you don't know who your representative is, try to find her/him through http://www.house.gov and look for a familiar looking name from your state. Unfortunately there's no "point-and-click" US map to refer to to find out which district is yours, but you should be able to find out fairly easily by looking for familiar names. If you really get stuck, try your local League of Women Voters. The main thing is, I need these letters soon. In order to have a shot at getting to talk to anyone, I must make appointments with the offices of the respective representatives. The house is expected to vote on this topic any day now; the clock's a-ticking. I ask that all letters be sent so that I can recieve them by July 23rd. I aim to raid congress on Tuesday, July 25th. This date could be changed, depending on the definite responses I get from people willing to help. I have lobbied before, and I'm up to the task, but it would be nice to have some other politically-oriented cypherpunks along for, at the very least, moral support. Anybody interested, Please Please Please send me some e-mail. Carl or Pat might go, and if we get enough people to help we can split the workload among teams. If anyone has comments/questions/suggestions, don't hesitate. I'd appreciate whatever isn't necesary to go up on the list to be sent to me privately, so's I don't get into trouble for "inciting spam". -=Kathleen M. Ellis=- kelli@zeus.towson.edu http://zeus.towson.edu/~kelli/ GAT d? 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