Whitehouse "dissident" web site monitoring?
- ---------------------------------------------------------- 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.
On Tue, 12 Sep 1995 an215712@anon.penet.fi wrote:
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WHITE HOUSE MONITORING OF DISSIDENTS ON THE INTERNET ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^!!!
Unbelievable!!! To add to this distressing truth, I have learned that the White House also subscribes to a number of newspapers and periodicals which are reviewed for things of interest to the Administration and to the President. I I I I I I ammmmmmmmmm shocked! Ooops. Dog bites man. And do you really think the White House couldn't hire a couple of net gurus to sniff packets if they wanted to hide their "monitoring"(=reading). EBD
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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Not a lawyer on the Net, although I play one in real life. ********************************************************** Flame way! I get treated worse in person every day!!
Ooops. Dog bites man. And do you really think the White House couldn't hire a couple of net gurus to sniff packets if they wanted to hide their "monitoring"(=reading).
Yes, they are far too cheap to hire, they would go off somewhere and smochze the info outa folks. If they ever want an anonymous proxy server they are wellcome to use ours. Seriously folks I'm very pissed about the abuse of log file information. The Whitehouse restrict browsing privilleges to a chosen few. The attempt to make a big deal out of it could have cost someone their job (it didn't in this case). If we are serious about privacy I think we should be very clear that we respect the privacy of Whitehouse staffer and staffers in the Senate and House. I'm not being partisan about this, I have put a lot of effort into getting participation from the right as well as the left. I've just not been very successful in that area. Phill
Phill wrote: | If we are serious about privacy I think we should be very clear that | we respect the privacy of Whitehouse staffer and staffers in the | Senate and House. I'm not being partisan about this, I have put a | lot of effort into getting participationfrom the right as well as | the left. I've just not been very successful in that area. Sure. I'll respect their privacy as much as they, and the organizations they oversee, respect mine. I'll use as the respresentative organizations the IRS and the Social Security Administration, which respects my pricvacy so much that they use prison inmates to process paperwork. If I was in a nasty mood, I'd add the USPS. Sarcasm aside, they show no interest in other people's privacy. Why should we go out of our way to do anything but show them how bad the situation is? Adam -- "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -Hume
Hang on a sec, what is meant to be the conspiracy? I don't see any relationship to cryptography here. The material in question was published very publicaly. If you make a public statement about a person then they have a right to hear it. I see that the message on log file confidentiality is not getting through though. I happen to know that the US government is very interested in hearing the views of its citizens, and also the views of citizens of other countries. They are interested in particular about views relating to the actions of the US government, what the government is doing and what it could do. "anti-president views" are of great importance if it is known why those views are held. In my country we call that listening. I have just spent a couple of days talking with a group of people looking at how we can do that better. There is a considerable barrier to being involved in the political process, perhaps the Web can reduce that barrier. The problem being how to handle the massive amounts of input.
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.
DO NOT DO THIS. The secret service is required by law to investigate every single threat. This costs a very considerable amount of money which comes from your taxes. There is no discresion in the matter. Hence the only method of reducing the number of alarms is to arrest people and make an example of them. Unless you want to be the example do not do this.
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
I don't know which those machines are, however there are a large number of Web browsers in the Whitehouse and there are a large number of staffers. There is also a Web browser outside the oval office for visitors to use while they are waiting. If you make it your buisness to print nasty material about people then don't be suprized if they read it. The material has probably been picked up by a search engine in any case. There is no conspiracy here unless you are very determined to find one. Given the nature of the article it does not appear that a balanced view of the administration was being sought in any case. I happen to know that Newt Gingrich's staffers and Weld's staffers also surf the Web, are they "monitoring anti-Newt dissidents?", I suspect not. I don't get the impression that our anonymous source has sent a complaint in that direction. I spend a considerable amount of time getting people in power to listen to the net community. I get very pissed off when a bunch of conspiracy nuts try to make out that they have been doing anything wrong when they do. As a matter of ethics I consider information in log files private. This was certainly considered to be the case in the Marty Rimm affair. The posting was clearly designed to intimidate the Whitehouse staffers into not visiting those sites, it was possible that they might have lost their net.access entirely as a result of the complaint. I consider the letter sent to Terzano to be unethical since the staffers had a right to expect their privacy to be preserved. If people want to talk about cryptography and the President we can discuss whether he should put a digital signature on his press releases. I think the use of the word dissident in the message is an insult, both to the dissidents in the Eastern Europe and other places who have suffered genuine persecution and to the democratic institutions and people of the United States. Phill Hallam-Baker Not speaking for anyone else.
participants (4)
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Adam Shostack -
an215712＠anon.penet.fi -
Brian Davis -
hallam＠w3.org