Date: Wed, 29 Apr 92 17:23:37 EST Errors-To: Comp-privacy Error Handler From: Computer Privacy Digest Moderator To: Comp-privacy@PICA.ARMY.MIL Subject: Computer Privacy Digest V1#005 Computer Privacy Digest Wed, 29 Apr 92 Volume 1 : Issue: 005 Today's Topics: Moderator: Dennis G. Rears Re: Should political speech be censored online Call for new moderator? Re: ... Speech censorship, an ammended prespective. Re: Should political speech be censored online? Re: Should political speech be censored online? Re: Should political speech be censored online? Hatch Act & Petitions Re: [Glenn S. Tenney: Should political speech be censored online?] The Computer Privacy Digest is a forum for discussion on the effect of technology on privacy. The digest is moderated and gatewayed into the USENET newsgroup comp.society.privacy (Moderated). Submissions should be sent to comp-privacy@pica.army.mil and administrative requests to comp-privacy-request@pica.army.mil. Back issues are available via anonymous ftp on ftp.pica.army.mil [129.139.160.200]. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 29 Apr 92 17:03:22 EDT From: "Dennis G. Rears " Subject: Re: Should political speech be censored online Evidently the issue of me deciding not to run Mr. Tenney's posting has caused a lot of debate. This issue of the digest will be dedicated to this subject. I would say a couple of things: o If I feel an article belongs in the digest, I will not let *ANYONE* stop me from forwarding it to USENET or the digest. If I feel my employment can be affected from doing this, I will post/email from a nongovernment account. o In about 3 to 5 months I hope to get an account on a University system or on a commercial service where I will then run this forum on. I welcome any help on this. o I do not know all the details about the Hatch act. I do know that it is one of the few things a government employee can be burned on. If I felt the article was within the charter of the newsgroup I might have been willing to push the issue. The truth of the matter is I felt the post was inappropriate. If there was no Hatch act I would not have published it. I might have put a short blurb to the readers that Mr. Tenney is running for office on a privacy platform and you can read the following newsgroups for the o I felt that Mr. Tenney post was inappropriate to the forum (telecom-priv) and even this one. I felt his post was more of an advertisement for himself than discussions on privacy. The charter of this group reflects on the effect of technology on privacy not privacy itself. Granted there should be a lot of leeway given. Issues like "should newspapers publish names of rape victims?" don't belong here. o I do not want partisian politics to invade this forum. Mr. Tenney was able to post this to many other newsgroups which he did. o Incidently that is the only post in about 140 issues of the digest that I ever rejected. As moderator I compile articles, weed out excessive signatures, drop/add requests, and compile the digest. I do censor things I don't like but I reserve the right to not publish things that are not appropriate. o I would like to get off this subject and start dealing with items relating to the effect of technology on privacy. If there is still interest in this topic I will publish another digest on the topic. Dennis ====================================================================== Dennis G. Rears INTERNET: drears@pilot.njin.net USPS: Box 210, Wharton, NJ 07885 Phone(home): 201.927.8757 ====================================================================== ------------------------------ From: Stuart M Castergine Subject: Call for new moderator? Date: Tue, 28 Apr 92 21:21:24 EDT If the moderator for this group has employment conflicts that conflict with his duties as moderator, perhaps we need another moderator. On this group in particular, I feel uncomfortable thinking that our posts are going through some sort of government censor before being approved. I hate to criticise while not being willing to walk in his shoes, but I don't have the ability to be a moderator for this group. This is only a student account and, in any case, I have no idea how moderating a newsgroup works. My own system, waltham.columbus.oh.us, has only a uucp feed, and *very* limited news capabilities. -- scasterg@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu -- Stuart M. Castergine "Deep down in our hearts we know that we have bankrupted America and that we have given our children a legacy of bankruptcy.... We have defrauded the country to get ourselves elected." --Sen. John Danforth ------------------------------ From: William Pfeiffer Subject: Re: ... Speech censorship, an ammended prespective. Date: Tue, 28 Apr 92 22:18:14 CDT Dear readers (and moderator) In my last article I stated that I leaned toward the position of the gentleman running for office, in his claim that his messages were being censored. While I still abhore censorship, I am forced into reflection by the words of some other posters on this issue. While I still, deep down, believe that the gentleman's message should have been allowed on the net, I can understand Dennis's position too. I think the real issue here is not Dennis's choice to omit the article, but the basic system under which he HAD TO omit the article. I am no expert on this 'Hatch Act' (or hatchet act, more aptly :->), but it seems like such an act is, perhaps, intended to keep government officials from using their inside position to make political statements on belhalf of some individual. It would seem to me that such a law is, however, contrary to basic freedom of speech/press if it can be used to force (induce?) a group moderator to omit an article by someone who is NOT covered by this Act. Perhaps Dennis could just place a disclaimer saying that the following article was received unsolicited, and does not necessarily represent the views of the US Army, US gov't or anyone connected with the publication of this newsgroup. Maybe not, I don't know. But if such a disclaimer is insufficient to clear Dennis from any problems with his commander, then I believe that the issue is not Dennis, but a system which is strangling Dennis's constitutional rights to freedom of speech and press. Perhaps such a disclaimer could be put in the opening remarks of every digest. Just a thought. As one poster in the last digest put it (paraphrased), While thousands are being disenfranchised by the Hatch[et] Act, ... The President, and all incumbants use free postage, air travel and other (tax-payer supported) perq's to further their political future, while Dennis worries about his job for printing a submission from a reader that might be construed as 'political' by some army big wig. I appologize, Dennis, I mistakenly attributed the censorship to you. Now I see that you had little choice. Geez! A little wiser, William Pfeiffer wdp@airwaves.chi.il.us -- ------------------------------ From: "Glenn S. Tenney" Subject: Re: Should political speech be censored online? Date: Wed, 29 Apr 92 06:33:13 GMT Apparently-To: comp-society-privacy@ames.arc.nasa.gov In article abc@brl.mil (Brinton Cooper) writes: >X-Computer Privacy Digest: Volume 1, Issue 003, Message 6 of 10 > >Glenn Tenney argues that his political candidacy should be announced in >this newsgroup/mailing list and that he checked with the "Office of >Special Counsel" who, HE alleges, "is in charge of administering the >Hatch Act for the Federal Government..." He argued, "...the staff >assured me that there would be no violation of the Hatch Act, yet the >moderator still refused to allow my postings to go out." To clarify (trying to be brief): It was not just a political candidacy announcement, but as an online candidate I was raising many technology and privacy issues which I thought/think are related to the charter of the list. It was the people at the Office of Special Counsel who said that THEY are in charge of administering the Hatch Act, not I. I did give the moderator the name and phone number of the person with whom I spoke. > >Glenn Tenney fails to take into account a few things: > > 1. The computer from which this forum originates is on a U.S. >Army installation and is under operational control of the U.S. Army. > > 2. The moderator of this forum is a federal civil servant. He >is not directly responsible to the "Office of Special Counsel" but to >his supervisor and the Commander of his installation. Again, the OSC said that ALL Federal Employees come under the Hatch Act, while military personnel do not. It does get confusing when the person is not military, but the computer is. > ... >Glenn Tenney proposes to become a member of the U.S. Congress. Perhaps >he should find out how the typical, hardworking U.S. taxpayer feels >about using machinery and communications funded by the U.S. taxpayer to >advertise his candidacy for the Congress. This is a bogus comment since that is just not the way the nets work. The cost is borne by each node, and my campaign pays the going rate for net access. If it were a strictly political note, I could understand your concern. I still feel that the issues raised were directly related to the charter of the mailing list. I also don't think your comments about "hard working" were at all appropriate since I make my living working very hard developing software and hardware systems. >... >Glenn Tenney asks, > > When should a moderator censor postings to this newsgroup? > Should the moderator even BE a Federal employee if there > is possibility of restrictions on article submissions > imposed by the government (or his superiors)? Isn't this > medium of a moderated newsgroup/mailing-list more analogous > to the moderator being a letter carrier? etc. etc. > >One answer is "When no one else will do it." This is how so much gets >done in our society: by those who, in an imperfect way, working through >imperfect institutions, try to make things better. Shutting down the >newsgroup solely to make a point in behalf of Glenn Tenney's candidacy >seems hardly worth the cost. Perhaps you misunderstood. The moderator is (and has been) doing a great job. I had/have no problem with his many volunteer hours, quite the contrary. I was trying to raise the question via this experience the impact of having a moderator who is precluded from accepting postings which is somehow perceived as violating the Hatch Act (rightly or wrongly, and for sake of discussion otherwise appropriate for the newsgroup). Where you saying that just because no one else will volunteer the umpteen hours we should accept the fact that some postings will never appear because some supervisor interpretted the Hatch Act differently than the people who say they are in charge of administering it? What other newsgroups and mailing lists have been affected that we don't know about? Would you mind if your postal letter carrier refused to deliver certain mail to you? > >Perhaps, somewhere in one of these fora, we should discuss the fairness >and equitability of the disenfranchisement of millions of people via the >Hatch Act while President, Vice-President, and thousands of "political >appointees" in the executive branch merrily go about spending taxpayers' >money on efforts designed solely for partisan political ends. Now you've got it! Why SHOULD millions of Federal employees be kept from campaigning... oops, you're right, that is a topic for some other newsgroup... Glenn Tenney Democratic Candidate, U.S. Congress ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Should political speech be censored online? Date: Wed, 29 Apr 92 0:12:41 PDT From: Brad Templeton While I can't comment on whether the Hatch act applies here (which might mean that the moderator should use an independent site for moderation) I will (for the Nth time) dispell the myth that commercial (or political advocacy) messages are not "permitted" on USENET, or mailing lists. USENET is not the Internet. Even the NSFNet is not the internet. The NSFNet and a dwindling number of regional networks have acceptable use policies that restrict some, but not all, commercial uses. USENET however, is a multi-national privately owned cooperative network which happens to flow, in some of its links, over some of those restricted networks. Some suggest it is bound by those networks rules because of this. Would they also suggest that if, say the South African networks over which USENET flows banned postings by non-whites, that USENET would be so bound? Hardly. Groups like comp.newprod, misc.jobs.offered (#2 group on all of USENET) and others demonstrate the clear presence of, and demand for, the right kind of "advertising." Which is to say advertising that is novel, on-topic, non-hypish and not repeated to death -- this is not just permitted, it is encouraged in the right places. And moderated groups can ensure that only this sort of desired commercial information is sent through. [Moderator's Note: I stand corrected. ] ------------------------------ From: Colin Plumb Subject: Re: Should political speech be censored online? Date: Wed, 29 Apr 1992 04:02:56 -0400 [This is more to the moderator than the list, but the moderator may post it if he likes.] In article you write: > [Moderator's Note: I was the moderator of telecom-privacy. A couple > of points: His submission was an announcement and a copy of his > platform. To me there was little difference between his submission and > advertising which is generally prohibited from the net. If a third > party would have sent me something along the lines of "There is a > candidate running on privacy issues and he believes in this and that" > I probably would have publish it just like if a third party likes to > reccommend something in misc.consumers. Dennis ] H'm. this is tricky. On the one hand, this is obviously interesting to readers of comp.society.privacy, and I'd like to hear what Mr. Tenney has to say. The Hatch act legalese, well, I don't care. The advertising prohibition, that's tricky. The real objection people have is to *uninformative* advertising. Content-free prose like press releases. (I find I can typically extract about three lines of information out of a one-page press release.) Subtler things like companies posting descriptions of their new products, participating in debates over the virtues of their products, or even providing informal support over the net (e.g. comp.sys.amiga.* is frequented by Commodore employees), is generally tolerated as useful. I think the objection is to having to spend time considering, and providing transport mechanisms for, messages of advantage only or mostly to the manufacturer. (Messages of interest only to the poster are called "noise" and have a long history on usenet.) I'd like to say that, as long as Mr. Tenney tries to keep his postings informative and avoid an advertising tone, I'd support seeing his postings. Possibly add a moderator's disclaimer, but as long as it's of interest to a large number of people, I think anything you'd accept from a third party, up to and including polite requests for dontations, is acceptable. CS conferences regularly post announcements to the net, which I actually think *is* advertising, but everyone approves because it's sufficiently targeted that it's not wasting their time. Comp.org.eff.*, gnu.* and so on. On the net, it takes carefully reasoned prose to come across as anything but a boor. You can't SHOUT, you can't play tricks with fonts, pictures and background music, or many of the misleading tricks typically pulled in advertising. You can outright lie, and engage in delicate circumlocutions, but I'd really like to participate in an experiment of real life politics on the net. So please, as an experiment, give it a try. I really don't think you'll get flamed too badly if you're careful about it. The official position paper, prefaced by a "for the record, here is the official position paper," seems perfectly fine. You may want to add a disclaimer of the form [This originated at foo.netcom.com, a site paid for by the Elect Tenney committee, and is being posted here on a trial basis, in the belief that it is of interest to comp.society.privacy readers.], and with that, I can't see any problems. -- -Colin ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 29 Apr 92 8:24:23 EDT From: Tim Driscoll Subject: Hatch Act & Petitions Speaking of the Hatch Act...does it allow a Federal Employee to sign a petition advocating the placement of a name on the ballot for president. Can't seem to get a straight answer on this question. [Moderator's Note: As long as it is not done on government property or government time it is ok. Dennis ] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Timothy Driscoll fdrisco@apg-9.apg.army.mil ------------------------------ From: "Ehud Gavron 602-570-2000 x. 2546" Subject: Re: [Glenn S. Tenney: Should political speech be censored online?] Date: 29 Apr 92 17:41:00 GMT Reply-To: sunquest!Diamonds.ACES.COM!gavron@uunet.uu.net In article , abc@brl.mil (Brinton Cooper) writes... # #Glenn Tenney argues that his political candidacy should be announced in #this newsgroup/mailing list... # #Glenn Tenney fails to take into account a few things: . # # 1. The computer from which this forum originates is on a U.S. #Army installation and is under operational control of the U.S. Army. # # 2. The moderator of this forum is a federal civil servant. He #is not directly responsible to the "Office of Special Counsel" but to #his supervisor and the Commander of his installation. . If all these things prevent a law-abiding network-user from posting a legitimate news article then perhaps the list ought to be moved to where censorship and policy do not impede freedom of expression. #Such a finding would also likely result in the loss of the use of the #moderator's installation computer to operate the forum. Sounds like that would be A Good Thing because then the forum could move to an _open_ forum. [Moderator's Note: I believe this is an open forum. The purpose of my moderation is to improve signal to noise ratio, cut out drop/add requests from appearing in the forum, and establishing a USENET/mailing list dual gateway. If I was a censor I certainly would not have allow Mr. Tenney to start this thread in the first place. Dennis ] #_Brint Ehud -- Ehud Gavron (EG76) gavron@aces.com ------------------------------ End of Computer Privacy Digest V1 #005 ******************************