Brought to you by the Information Liberation Front Reproduced without permission from Communications Week Editor's View E-MAIL DESTINATION: BLACK HOLE, WHITE HOUSE Is the Clinton adminisration really an ally of the communications and networking community, or are the politicians only jerking our strings? The answer to this imortant question seems to vary day to day. A few weeks ago I received four elecronic-mail communiques from the White House Office of Media Affairs. This caught my attention for several reasons. First, the administration is not in the habit of communicat- ing with the trade press so I was impressed with this outreach. (Cool move, guys.) Next, the messages were targeted at key journalists using the preferred medium du jour: electronic mail. (Very cool!) Finally, all four messages were dispatched the same day. I was most interested in a message detailing the administration's efforts to communicate over electronic networks. The Clinton administration's Electronc Public Access Project has achieved some important milestones during its first year. According to the project's press release: lt has received over 100,000 E-mail messages to the president and the vice president since it started on June 1, 1993; It established Internet addresses and accepts E-mail from the public; It has electronically processed over 220,000 requests for information since September 1, 1993; 1,600 public documents were published electronically last year; It established forums on America Online, CompuServe, GEnie and MCI Mail. The project plans this year to publish the national budget and other public documents on CD-ROM. It also plans to refine existing electronic com munications techniques via the Internet. I applaud the administration for these innovations. But I also have some reservations. For one, it's looks great on the surface that the administration has set up so many channels for communication. Yet this is the key question: Is anyone really listening? E-mail questions do not get electronic replies from administration officials. Questioners (if they are lucky) get back a letter -- via the U.S. Postal Service. This sounds more like a black hoel than a viable communications process. The president did respond at least once via E-mail -- to a group of fifth-graders in Oxford, Ohio, last spring. At best the opinions of communications and networking experts seem to be ignored; at worst they have been rejected by the president. An example is the president's recent adoption of the socalled "Clipper Chip." This encoding/decoding scheme was devloped by the National Security Agency to assist government agencies to evesdrop on digital communications. Virtually every major computer and communications company, opinion maker, and civil rights group opposes the use of this technology. apparently, however, the president doesn't care what we think. This action has jilted our enthusiasm for the administration's avowed embrace of communications technology. It's beginning to look more like a charade to keep techies playing with their toys instead of a mature partnership in molding our technological future. Send reactions to 542-9851@mcimail.com on MCI Mail or the Internet, or by fax, 516-562-5055