Whitehouse "dissident" web site monitoring?

[Brian Davis]

On Tue, 12 Sep 1995 an215712 at anon.penet.fi wrote:

> 
> - ----------------------------------------------------------
> 
>       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!!