The Communications Revolution
Program #9-94:  "Democratic Access to Government Information"
KPFA Radio - August 30, 1994


Panelists:  Chris Casey, Sonia Jarvis and Jim Warren
Project Director:  John Rieger
Host:  Jude Thilman
Executive Producer:  Bari Scott
Associate Producer:  Carol Klinger
Managing Editor:  John Rieger
Associate Editor:  Claire Schoen 
Feature Producer:  Claire Schoen 
Technical Consultant:  Tim Pozar
On-Air Engineer:  Jim Bennett
Administrative Assistant:  Indigo Som


Introduction by Jude Thilman

Quick!  Should we invade Haiti?  How about tax-free vouchers for private
schools?  Should DNA tests be admitted in criminal trials?  Just hit the "Yes"
or "No" buttons on your TV remote control and YOU can make public policy!  Is
this the new electronic citizenship?  Computer access to government.  I'm Jude
Thilman and this is "The Communications Revolution."

The White House is on-line.  So are some Senators and Representatives.  Some
State Legislative and City Council minutes are on-line as well, at least a few
of them.  Computer access to speeches, agendas, and people is in its infancy. 
But already, tens of thousands of E-mail messages are flowing.  Are we on the
verge of a new era of electronic citizenship?  Will it change the whole
political equation, with social action and not money, becoming the major
influence on our government?  Our panel today is well equipped to discuss the
ups and downs of high-tech tools for citizen involvement. 

From Monitor Radio in Washington, D.C., we have Sonia Jarvis who is the
Executive Director of the National Coalition on Black Voter Participation,
working to increase access to the political system for African Americans and
other people of color communities.  Chris Casey, who is the Technology Policy
Advisor to Senator Kennedy.  He created a computer system for constituents to
E-mail the Senator -- one of only about ten members of the Senate offering this
form of access.

And in our studios at KPFA in Berkeley we are joined by Jim Warren, who is a
long-time writer and organizer on issues related to government access.  He was
influential in passing the legislation that makes California the first state to
offer its records free of charge over the Internet.

We'll talk about access to government through cyberspace after this report from
Producer Claire Schoen.

Feature by Claire Schoen:

[Morse Code telegraph sounds] 

(Morse)  "It is obvious that this mode of instantaneous communication must
inevitable become an instrument of immense power..."  (narrator) A century and
a half ago a new technology, the telegraph, changed forever the way people
communicated.  Grand predictions of its potential to influence our political
institutions were made by many, including its inventor, Samuel Morse.  (Morse) 
"I trust that one of its effects will be to bind man to his fellow men in such
bonds of amity as to put an end to war."

[Morse Code beeps segue into Modem sounds]

(narrator) Today's breakthroughs in telecommunications also provoke grand
predictions, such as claims that ordinary citizens, using databases and
electronic mail can effect political change and revitalize an apathetic
populace.  David Wiesner, a self-employed computer consultant, is one
individual who has hopped onto the Net in a one-man campaign for government
reform.  (Wiesner)  "I first heard about the Lobbyist Gift Ban from a news
program in which they showed Senators and Lobbyists skiing down sloped in the
Rocky Mountains for some supposed charity event.

(Reporter)  "Many of the Senators are here with their families for some light
competition and some heavy partying with corporate bigshots and lobbyists who
pick up the tab.  American Express, U.S. West...." 

(Wiesner)  "Then, they would get together in the evening for a chat and drinks
over by the fire and talk about legislation."  

(Reporter)  "As just a taxpayer, you'd be lucky to get even a moment with your
Senator.  But when special interests lure him off on one of these $7,000
vacations, they get his ear for three days and nights."

(Wiesner)  "Senator Lautenberg proposed a bill to ban this activity, to ban
gifts by lobbyists to members of Congress."

(Reporter)  "Senator Lautenberg has proposed a law against it.  And what are
his fellow Senators saying about that?"

(Senator L.)  "I can't use that language on the air."

(Wiesner)  "And boy was I mad.  And I really wanted to take some action.  So
the next day I called up Senator Lautenberg's office.  I found out that his
bill was stuck in the Senate government operations committee.  They weren't
going to do anything about banning lobbyists' gifts.  And I said, 'This cannot
stand.'"

(narrator) David Wiesner was determined to get the Gift Ban bill passed.  He
got in touch with Gary Ruskin, director of Ralph Nader's Congressional
Accountability Project which fights for legislative reform.

(Ruskin)  "I gave David a wide variety of information.  Most of it having to
do with bills, calendars....  It's critical to know, for example, when a bill
is going to be on the floor, he needed interpretations of other laws, and
strategic and tactical advice."

(Wiesner)  "It became apparent that I had a great deal of access to
information.  But I had no way of distributing that information.  So I tried to
understand what my tools were that were available for me to do something about
this.  And one of the first things I noticed was that I had this great Internet
mail reflector available to me." 

(narrator) David had discovered an avenue on the Internet through Bill
Selmeier, an electronics marketing executive who is personally interested to
see how the Net can be used to organize.  Involved in Perot's United We Stand
America, Selmeier created something called a network "reflector".

(Selmeier)  "It's simply a mail list.  It's simply a list that has a whole
bunch of electronic mail addresses on it.  We send it to UWSA@shel.portal.com,
it will get distributed to over 100 people who are on this list right now.  And
in fact our reflector includes people from Puget Sound to San Diego to New
Hampshire to Miami.  And you can marshal a large number of people very quickly
this way.

(Wiesner)  "So, I started a newsletter which I called "Ban Bribery Now,"
because I wanted to get people a little bit riled up.  What I was doing is I
was getting the scuttlebutt that I was getting from the people in Washington,
and I was writing it in this newsletter.  And then I would go and I would tell
people in a section called "Action Now" exactly what they could do and where
they could do it to be most effective."

(Selmeier)  "He took this thing and he put it up on the reflector and people
all over the country could pick up these messages that Dave would publish and
then re-publish them with his blessing.  So on E-mail it went into America
On-line, it went into Prodigy, it went into Compuserve, it went into Genie, it
went into Delphi..."

(Wiesner)  "Most importantly, it started generating thousands and thousands of
letters to Congress saying Ban Bribery Now.  And it really scared the daylights
out of them, cause they had no idea where this was coming from.  They didn't
even know that anybody even knew about this bill."

(Chair)  [sound of gavel banging]  "Clerk will read bill for third time."

(Clerk)  "Calendar number 419S1935.  A bill to prohibit Lobbyists and their
clients from providing to legislative branch officials certain gifts...."

(Chair)  "Yea's and nays have been ordered, clerk will call the role."

(Clerk)  "Mr. Akcaca, Mr. Bacaus...."

(Wiesner)  "Congress simply jumped and ran over each other in a kind of a game
of chicken trying to toughen up the bill when it finally got to a floor vote."

(Selmeier)  "Tell them what the outcome was because it was an amazing vote."

(Wiesner)  "The final vote was 95 in favor, 4 against."

(Chair)  [sound of gavel banging]  "On this measure, the yeas are 95 and the
nays are 4.  The bill is passed."

(narrator) For David, the Internet proved to be a cheap and easy tool to
educate and organize.  However, gaining access to computer databases to
research Congressional legislation, information he needed to wage his campaign,
that was a different matter.  He was lucky to have his contact in Washington,
Gary Ruskin.  (Ruskin)  "Getting any of this material is difficult.  You have
to get it from a series of magazines like Roll Call or National Journal or
Congressional Quarterly, which are not in everybody's library.  Sometimes
legislation is hard to get a hold of and so you have to beg and plead with
staffers to get you a copy."


(Wiesner)  "Right now, any Congress person can dial into the legislative
computer and get full information about these bills.  So the technology is
already in place, the only thing that they haven't provided is a link for the
citizens."  (Ruskin)  "I got almost none of it, or none of it on-line.  Which
is terrible because, you know, if you live out in Kansas and you're trying to
do this kind of work, you're basically out of luck."  (Wiesner)  "I think the
reason is simple.  Access is power.  If you can restrict access to information,
you retain power to the people who have that information." 

(narrator) However, in California, citizens have now gained free on-line
access to information about their state government, thanks in large part to
computer activist Jim Warren.  (Warren)  "Assembly Bill 1624 is a mandate that
essentially all already computerized public legislative information be made
available to all of the public via the Internet.  And that same thing is
happening in other states.  There're bills in Washington, Oklahoma, Texas, New
Jersey, New York."

(Coyle)  "We become a community through communication.  Human beings interact.
 And we no longer have interactive communication that we had when we had a town
hall, when we had a public square, when we could all fit into our city council
meeting."  (narrator) Karen Coyle works with Computer Professionals for Social
Responsibility.  She feels that telecommunications can help us rebuild this
lost sense of community.  (Coyle)  "People talk about community on the
Internet.  And it's all happening, really, electronically over these wires. 
And it's astonishing to watch news pass across the Internet.  Something can
happen somewhere in the world, and within minutes that information has covered
the entire globe."

[telegraph beeps]

(Morse)  "It is not visionary to suppose that it would not be long ere the
whole surface of this country would be channeled to diffuse, with the speed of
thought, a knowledge of all that is occurring, making, in fact, one
neighborhood of the whole country."

(Senate Floor)  "Mr. Bingaman, Mr. Dashel...."


This is Claire Schoen, for "The Communications Revolution."


******

Host Jude Thilman:  David Wiesner's fight for a gift ban bill is not over.  As
of our broadcast, the bill sits in Conference Committee.  Its sponsors promise
it will make it to the floor for a vote.  Activists like Gary Ruskin believe it
could die a quiet death.

Some people will always wax enthusiastic about the potential of technology to
create a better world.  We just heard Samuel Morse say that the telegraph would
turn the world into one big neighborhood and put an end to war.  Let's turn to
our panelists with this one:  Sonia Jarvis, you are devoted to increasing
participation by citizens of color in the voting process, now that's certainly
one important aspect of democracy.  But would you agree that with E-mail, fax,
computer voting, we're on the cusp of a golden age of democracy?

Sonia Jarvis:  Well, certainly Jude, if we find that the safeguards that we've
built into our system over 200 years are also applied to this technology.  I'm
certainly very excited about the prospects of making democracy work for average
Americans.  But, to go back to a point that was raised in your intro when we're
making comparisons between the old town hall meetings and the town hall square,
a lot of the people I represent were left out of those meetings in the past,
and I just want to make sure that we don't see history repeat itself with these
new technologies.

Host:  And with these new technologies people are beginning to acknowledge we
are creating a world of haves and have and nots, Jim Warren, a world in which
some people have access and most of us don't.  A growing technological elite,
if you will.  Now, how can we ensure that this technological elite doesn't have
unfair access to the ear of our public officials?

Jim Warren:  It's my contention that essentially the foremost barricade to
access is the ability to read and write.  The second biggest barricade is the
ability to type.  All of the rest of the barriers to access are trivial in
comparison to those barricades.  The cost of access to the Internet or to
on-line communications is in the order of $15 - $30 a month in most
metropolitan areas in the United States right now, and it is expanding
radically by the month.

Host:  So you don't think there are that many barriers... let me throw it back
to you Sonia Jarvis.  If you had to choose, what would you say is the single
greatest obstacle to the kind of two-way electronic information we're aiming
for?

SJ:  Well I take issue with Mr. Warren, just in this sense, that when we're
hearing from our education department that nearly half of the adults in this
country have trouble dealing with complex information, then I'm not feeling
comfortable that simply having an ability to read and write is going to be
enough to enable people to use these networks well.  That an important aspect
of this whole notion of universal access, that I'm sure we'll get to, is also
the question of training.  If you have a computer, and many schools around the
country have computers now, but no one's using them because they never received
the training to use them.  So I think it's a bit more than just a question of,
"can you read and can you write?"  I think it goes also to questions such as
culture, such as an encouragement of math and sciences and other capabilities
that make it easier to use these new technologies.  And that's what I'm
focusing on when I look at the voting process.  For example, we know that a
number of people can read and write, but that does not automatically translate
into a vote at the polling place.  And having been involved in that difficult
process of bridging the gap, I'm just concerned that we not overlook that as
we, as a society, move toward these new forms of technology for doing the
public's business.

Host:  People have to have the political will as well, is what you're saying. 
Chris Casey, let's bring you in to the discussion.  Chris you set up an E-mail
system for your boss, Senator Ed Kennedy.  Are you finding that you're getting
interaction with people out there among the citizenry that you didn't hear from
before, through E-mail?  Or can you tell?

Chris Casey:  I think, without question, certainly the ease with which someone
can send an E-mail message is quite quicker to send off a thought or concern to
your representative than perhaps the amount of time it might take you to write
a letter.  And I think we are hearing from a lot of individuals who might, just
in a moment, send off a thought, ask a question, that they might otherwise not
have gone to the trouble to.

Host:  But you're receiving, right now, about 20-30 E-mail messages per day as
opposed to... you still receive about 4,000 letters per week, so, it's clearly
not out of hand yet.  

CC:  Absolutely, and I believe it will be quite some time, but what's
important to note, I think, is that, while we've opened up this electronic
avenue for reaching Senator Kennedy, we haven't closed any of the more
traditional means.  And, in an attempt to make sure that we don't create an
electronic elite among constituents for reaching us this way, we ask people who
send E-mail to Senator Kennedy to include a postal address.  They'll get an
auto responder that acknowledges the receipt of that message, but what the
congressional office ends up with is the message with a return address and
they'll get a reply with a letter.

Host:  Does that work?

CC:  Absolutely.  People are very happy with that, and what it does, as a
first step towards increasing acceptance of E-mail as a way of reaching a
Congressional office, is it ensures for us that E-mail is treated no better or
no worse than any communication or question that came with a stamp on it.

Host:  Well, let's back up.  I'm intrigued by the notion of how we can use
these technologies to, perhaps, heighten the political will power that Sonia
Jarvis was referring to a little bit earlier.  Let's get back to, say, voting,
which is certainly an easier act than writing an E-mail message.  In terms of
trying to influence our government.  There were a number of kiosks with
touch-screens used in South Africa this past Spring of '94 to educate people
who were not necessarily literate, and who were voting for the first time in
their lives, using graphics and other means to show what an election means, why
voting was important, where and how to vote and that sort of thing.  Could
technology perhaps, Sonia Jarvis, encourage more political will, if you will,
more interest, less apathy on the part of electorates?

SJ:  I certainly think so, and I applaud the efforts of a number of cities
around the country.  Especially a number in California, a number in
Massachusetts and also in the Washington area that are trying to put the daily
workings of government on-line and in an available form.  Kiosks, as you
mentioned, is one way to do that because then you're not relying on people to
be that adept at using computers.  They can touch a screen or they see a
picture that they relate to and that can lead them through the system.  And I'm
certainly in favor of any type of technology that helps us to do that.  I think
that your broader question of course is, will these technologies be a way for
those of us who are trying to reach out and encourage greater voting across the
board, will these technologies be a way to do that?  And I certainly think they
can be.  I just want to make sure that we're also taking into account the ways
that it can be used in a harmful fashion.  During the Persian Gulf War, for
example, a number of service men and women were able to vote back at home by
using voting by fax.  Which I think is a wonderful idea, but on the other hand,
once that fax is received, we want to make sure that it is also protected the
way a normal ballot would be protected.  That's, I think, a good example of
what I'm talking about.  The fax capability allowed those service personnel
serving our country in the Gulf to cast their vote in a positive productive
fashion, but at the same time, on the state level, we have to be concerned with
how those ballots are going to be protected.

Host:  Privacy and secrecy issues, very good issues for the technology to take
into consideration, I think, through some sort of protection of identification,
Jim Warren?

JW:  Well, privacy is a major issue through this whole thing, but, to the
issue of access for a second...  This is a temporary problem.  It's like
horseless carriages before electric starters were on them.  Not very many
people used horseless carriages until electric starters were on them, then a
whole, much expanded scope of people were willing to use them because they were
easy.  We're in exactly the same thing with computer-based access to public
information and to elected officials, and most importantly, to the body politic
itself.  Us communicating to ourselves as a political entity.  The technology
is very rapidly improving to a point in click technology, to icons or graphic
pictures, that make it much much easier.  For instance Women's Wire, which has
something like 70-80% of its participants are women.  It uses a very friendly,
human-friendly as opposed to nerd-friendly, interface that makes it palatable
for people who don't like computers, don't want to learn computers, and so on,
nonetheless to be able to use them.  That's happening very rapidly all across
the Net and all across the electronic communication system.

Host:  Just speaking was Jim Warren, he's a writer, a teacher, an organizer on
issues related to government access.  You're listening to  "The Communications
Revolution."  You can contact us via E-mail at kpfa@well.com.  And if you're
one of the fortunate few who are techno-literate and you're on the Internet,
you're an Internet user, you can join our Internet chat, after the show to
continue the discussion, by heading for the site trp9 on the Internet.  

Chris Casey, this thing about touch screens, and access to government info
that making it more accessible to people who aren't necessarily
propeller-heads, if you will excuse the phrase.  Do you see any sign among
elected officials, in Senator Kennedy's office, for example, that there are any
technology initiatives that would make what Kennedy is doing on a day to day
basis, more available to his constituents in that way?

CC:  I think so, and I think what our office has done has been a good example.
We've had certainly a lot of other congressional offices contact us who have
said, "We've heard from people who have found Senator Kennedy on the Net, tell
us what you're doing because they're asking us how."  We've certainly
benefitted from assistance from the Artificial Intelligence Lab at M.I.T.,
which is good help to have, but what's exciting is, as Jim pointed out, it is
becoming easy enough to be point and click using an application called Mosaic
to explore what is called the World Wide Web.  Citizens in Cambridge,
Massachusetts can now drop in to a public library, sit down in front of a
computer that has city directories, local information, and so on about the city
of Cambridge, available and then one click away, they can be visiting Senator
Kennedy's office.  From our office they are a click away from exploring all
other kinds of Massachusetts resources as well as other federal government
servers.  And so, the ease of use truly is reaching a point where people can
learn about an issue and then explore that issue at all levels.  Whether it's
at the local city level, state or right on up to the federal government.

Host:  Sonia Jarvis, just one click away, just point and click.  Are these the
kinds of answers to your problem of trying to get people involved in
government?

SJ:  I think it's one-half of the answer, and I'm very excited about the type
of user-friendly, in the positive sense, interfaces that both Jim and Chris
have mentioned.  And I should point out, that even looking at Mosaic, which a
number of offices are now trying to adopt was developed at a university in
Illinois.  That's the type of thing that I think I certainly want to see
encouraged.  But if we allow this entire effort to be driven by commercial
interest, we're not going to see necessarily, I don't think, that type of
outreach  to make sure that these technologies are widely available.

Host:  I'm glad you brought up commercial interest, which is the other side of
the equation.  It's not just citizen input to government, but getting
information about what government's doing.  Right now government uses a lot of
commercial information servers, is that not true, Jim Warren?  There was, I
think, a project where Taxpayer Assets Project, which is a consumer protection
group, tried to get some basic legal records, judicial records, and were unable
to obtain them through the Freedom of Information Act because the Department of
Justice said, "I'm sorry.  We contract them out to West Publishing Company"
which in turn, turns around and sells them to citizens.  So, in effect, we're
getting billed twice.  Once our taxes are paying for the Department of Justice
to contract this information out, and then we have to go buy the information. 
Is this common for the government to sell government information?

JW:  It is both common for government to sell information and also for it to
buy it.  I have no objection at all to private sector companies computerizing
government information and selling it for whatever they can get from it.  I
have a great objection, however, to a government agency granting a monopoly
control over public records that have been paid for by tax funds and granting a
monopoly control over electronic access to that information to a single
for-profit information purveyor.  And that's very common, although, a lot of us
are fighting to change that, and in fact the bill last year to make state
legislative information in California available for free, turned that problem
around.

Host:  But there's a problem with that bill now, isn't there?

JW:  Not with that bill.  That one's already implemented, and it made
California the first state in the nation to provide free on-line access to
legislative information, from anywhere in the world, via the public networks,
namely the Internet and everything connected to it, which is almost everything.
 What's in trouble right now, here in California, is that... alright.  That was
the legislative information.  We got that done, now we've been going after the
executive branch information and everything was fine up until about two days
ago, or a week ago, when they amended in language that said, "If you're already
selling it for profit, you government agencies, you are exempt from making it
available for free."

Host:  So any existing contracts get to stick.  We're discussing access and
participation in democracy through new interactive computer technologies.  Cost
to citizens, whether there should be costs, and how citizens can offer their
electronic input.  You've been hearing from Sonia Jarvis, who is the Executive
Director of the National Coalition on Black Voter Participation; Jim Warren is
a writer and advocate of government information availability on-line; and Chris
Casey is the Technology Policy Advisor to Senator Edward Kennedy.

I'm Jude Thilman and this is "The Communications Revolution."


****break****

(Ruskin)  "A lot of information concerning Congress is available on-line.  But
ordinary citizens can't access it because it's too expensive.  The
Congressional Record now costs $375 a year on-line, the Federal Register is
another $375 a year on-line.  And so most citizens are red-lined out of that
market.


Host Jude Thilman:  Are most people red-lined out of the market of government
information?  And why should it cost anything to access the Congressional
record by computer?  We're talking about access to your government and whether
computers and modems are going to make it any easier to find out what the
government is doing.  You can offer your comment on today's topic by calling us
1-800-848-2298.  Why does the information cost so much, Jim Warren, and what
can we do about that?

JW:  Sometimes it costs a lot because a for-profit entity is making profit off
of it.  Often, however, it costs a lot because the public agency itself is
using public information, often acquired, if you will, at the point of a gun,
to make  profit.  Selling that information in its useful form, that is, in its
electronic form, at high profit to people who can afford to pay for it.  It
creates an inequity of access that is, in my estimation --or opinion,
inappropriate in a free society.

Host:  What do you mean by, "attained at the point of a gun?

JW:  When they say, "you will give us your name and address and height and age
and weight" and put it into a Department of Motor Vehicles Drivers' License
Record, then turn around and sell it for millions of dollars a year, that's at
the point of a gun.

Host:  Absolutely, Let's bring our listeners in.  From San Francisco we are
joined by Martin.  Welcome to the program Martin.

Caller #1:  Thank you.  We were wondering about this issue as it might apply
to a specific in a locality, let's say San Francisco or one of the areas that
interest at the moment, and the discussion for public policy is the setting up
of an agenda for charter reform.  Now if we want to include people who might
not have access, say, to a PC in the home or elsewhere or might prefer the
public arena, is it do-able at this point, or how difficult is it to set up a
network with the public libraries or other local facilities that would have
access -- where people of all economics would have access?  

Host:  Thank you for your call, Martin.  Jim Warren?

JW:  There are a variety of access alternatives for the public, for members of
the public if they don't have a computer and a modem at their own home.  One is
through the public libraries, and that is rapidly falling out to be a, sort of,
default standard of access channel for public to get information.  Just as it
has been for over a century.  Other alternatives are to go through schools,
through non-profit agencies.  In San Francisco there's even a network system
that has computer terminals in cafes that are coin operated.  It's a private
sector operation, but it's very inexpensive and, among other the things, the
homeless -- many of the homeless in San Francisco -- are using that.  They'll
borrow a quarter, drop it in there, and then know enough to log on and pick up
their electronic mail because they are moving around constantly.  Find out
where homeless shelters are still open instead of having to travel all over the
city from place to place to find out that they got there too late, find out
where meals are available, where various kinds of health and childcare services
are available, and so on.

Host:  These may exist in theory, but are they really used by homeless folks
to find out information?  How's that measured?  How is that gauged?  Can you
tell who's using it and why they're using it?

JW:  I would suspect that... you can tell that it is being used -- I mean, the
system manages, the system operators, have an idea of how much their system is
used.  

Host:  ...and what information is requested off of it?

JW:  Probably not.  Now see, that raises a privacy issue.  The system
operators should not be monitoring who's using the system to access what
particular item much less read their E-mail and see what they're talking
about.

Host:  Let's bring in Susan from Oakland.  Hello Susan, you're on the air.

Caller #2:  Hi.  I would like to see politically progressive organizations and
media do a better job of letting people know how they can communicate with
their governments at all levels because, I don't know if my assumptions about
who has computers or not are naive, but it seems to me that we might be able to
get the jump on the "fundees" who are quite well organized when it comes to
old-fashioned communication.  They've got their phone trees and they deluge the
legislature with letters.  But, I'd like to think  that progressive people are
more, perhaps greater represented or greater degree among people who do have
computers, and if we could just get organized, we might be able to do a little
better job of lobbying on issues.  I had an occurrence to think about this last
week.  In the community where I live, I live in Fremont, the local school board
canceled a play that was being shown to high school students all over the state
about AIDS.  Because there is a very vocal "fundee community" that are very
loud.  And I would have loved to have been able to get on my computer and send
a message to the school board telling them what I think of them for their
cowardice, but I don't know how to do that.  I don't know how to get in touch
with my local government.

Host:  Susan, let me ask you, what is a "fundee community?" 

Caller #2:  The religious right.

Host:  The religious right.

Caller #2:  Yeah.  They organized and mobilized to...  Fremont is the only
community that has refused to show this play to high school students about
AIDS.

Host:  Okay.  Thank you very much, Susan.  You're referring to
fundamentalists, Christian fundamentalists.  Go ahead Jim Warren, you're
chaffing at the bit here.

JW:  Well, one of the first problems you'd run into is probably the school
board members are not on-line.  However, it's not only progressive groups that
are using the Net, but Libertarian groups, Libertarians have a major presence
on the Net.  The Ross Perot -- although Ross Perot's headquarters was not
on-line during his campaign, the Ross Perot grass roots activists certainly
are.  But in the progressive area things like Eco-Net, Conflict-Net -- for
conflict resolution workers, Peace-Net, are all, long time, very powerful
progressive communication systems.

Host:  Chris Casey, could you let our listener know what some E-mail addresses
might be that she could contact?

CC:  Absolutely.  You can start with ours, Susan: senator@kennedy.senate.gov -
will reach our office, and from that you'll be getting a responder that will
help point you to other government resources.  An E-mail message to
congress@hr.house.gov will give you a reply that has a list of members of the
House of Representatives that are using E-mail.  I thought Jim pointed out
earlier that on Capitol Hill, as in a lot of places, we're at an early stage as
far as implementation.  And I think, without a doubt ultimately, it will be as
routine for a member of Congress to have an E-mail address -- and to make
information about their activities available electronically -- as it is for a
Congressional office to have a telephone.  And yet, at this stage of the game,
there are still only the early few who are doing it.  All members of Congress
have access to Internet E-mail and all have the ability to make information
available on-line, and it's really up to the public and individual citizens,
like Susan, that are interested in that kind of access to demand it.

Host:  Okay, and again that E-mail address to find out who in Congress is
on-line is congress@hr.house.gov -- for the House side.  Let's bring another
caller into the program.  Patrick from Long Beach.  Hello Patrick.

Caller #3:  Good, it's a good program.  I have a question.  I'm a Cable TV,
Public Access producer in Long Beach and I'm very much in ---- of the right of
the public to public access whether it is cablecasting or broadcasting, and I'm
becoming more computer literate myself, but as an --- activist I don't have
access to information that would help me, and other people in my community make
informed choices politically.  I usually read about bills in the legislature
after they have been passed, unfortunately.  And it sort of precludes us as the
general public from making informed choices.  I mean, I do support the right of
public on-line services, but my question is, how would it be funded without...
so people could use them without necessarily owning or buying an expensive
computer and modem?

Host:  That's a very good question.  Thank you for your call, Patrick.  How
are we going to make this information accessible electronically to all the
people out here who don't have computers and modems?

SJ:  I'd just like to respond to both Patrick's and Susan's concerns on that. 
For starters, in addition to the addresses that Chris gave, this week in the
Washington Post on the Federal page, the Post is running a series showing the
actual Internet addresses for Senators, for members of Congress, for government
documents that are available on-line, the addresses of various agencies that
are already in place with electronic communications systems.  But, beyond that,
I think Patrick's point is getting to what I think you started the program
with, and that is the whole notion of public right of access.  That, at this
point, that concept is one that is being discussed.  In fact, Senator Inouye
has introduced a bill, Senate Bill 2195 that talks about actually reserving
some of this communication spectrum for use by local government, non-profit
groups, and other groups working in the public interest.  I think it is
important that we not lose sight of the need for that.  Otherwise, without that
type of protection, we'll see that this entire spectrum is taken up by
commercial interests, and I certainly don't have any problem with that, I just
think it's important that we do protect a portion of this new emerging area for
use of the public.  And one of the ways we do that is by allowing non-profit
groups, whether we're talking about the Computer Professionals for Social
Responsibility or other groups that you mentioned in the introduction, that are
poised to give Patrick the kind of information that he's asking for.  "How do I
find out about legislation?  It's nice to know that it is available, but if I
can't get to it, I can't use it."  And that's what we're trying to do, we mean
a number of non-profit groups around the country, were arguing for the need of
non-profit rates in much the same way we have non-profit rates in the postal
system.  

Host:  One group that we're in contact with, Taxpayers Assets Project,
suggested, and to further answer Patrick's question, the government currently
spends about $15-million per year on just two contracts with Lexus and Westlaw
to sell government information on-line, and that perhaps they could better use
that money to make it available in libraries and other public locations for
people who don't have computers.  I do feel the need, also, to tag on one thing
about the Telecommunications Act of 1994, Sonia Jarvis that you're referring
to.  Senator's Inouye's section of that, SB2195, did originally specify 20% of
the access of the new Information Superhighway to be for public interest.  It
has been whittled down through compromises to about 5%.  So that's something
that we all need to keep an eye on.  Let's take another caller.  Paul in Taos,
New Mexico.  Welcome to the program, Paul.

Caller #4:  Thank you.  I think one of the things we need to address here,
we're talking about the issue of access and we have access coming from two
directions here.  We're addressing this where the non-profits are giving people
access to computers or to the network in order to get access to the government
information and we need the government information to be available.  What I
want people to think about is the community networking movement that is
happening in the country now.  We're based in Taos, New Mexico, we are setting
up a tele-community center where individuals from the community can come in,
sit down, get educated on how to use these networking tools and have access for
free to the Network for 15 hours a month.  

Host:  That's good information.  Thank you Paul, Jim?

JW:  These types of systems which are local civic systems are generally
referred to as civic networks or community networks.  They are exploding into
existence across the nation.  In large cities and towns (such as San
Francisco), in small communities (such as Taos), medium sized communities (such
as Cupertino, California), and some of them are operated by a government
agency, a local government agency, others are operated by a private, non-profit
organization often using a system called "Free-Net."  And they charge, for
instance, Silicon Valley Public Access link charges $20 a year for access.  Not
a month, a year.

Host:  Fairly inexpensive.  Our number here, again is 1-800-848-2298 if you
want to join our discussion about getting and giving information and opinions
to and from government electronically.  1-800-848-2298.  I have a question,
Chris Casey, and to anyone who would like to respond.  What about government
secrecy?  It seems that, we certainly saw in the report at the beginning of the
hour, government would like to not be held accountable in terms of interest
groups buying their ear for a couple of days at Vale ski resort or what have
you, but also, couldn't Ollie North, or Nixon in Watergate hide the evidence of
their misdeeds better by putting it in some electronic file in Switzerland
someplace?  You know, when we no longer have a paper trail, how are we going to
do good muckraking journalism?

CC:  Actually to the contrary, I think Oliver North got in trouble
specifically because he left an E-mail record of his ongoings and forgot about
backup tapes.  But I do think any technology that offers individual citizens
more direct access to the kind of timely information that perhaps only lobbyist
groups, until now, have been able to afford to get access to, certainly should
and can help make government more accountable exactly because they get the
access in a timely manner that is useful to them.  For example, Senator Kennedy
is one of the original sponsors of the Technology for Education Act a bill that
would help promote networking and network access in K-12 elementary schools. 
Earlier this spring after the bill came out of Subcommittee and was sent into
the full labor committee for mark up, we made the text of the bill available to
the Internet, let Massachusetts constituents as well, actually the whole
Internet world, made them aware that it was on-line and encouraged them to
E-mail their comments and so rather than learning after the fact about a bill
that had passed or hadn't passed, they had the information in a timely manner
which allowed them to actually have real impact.  What needs to happen, of
course, is rather than just a scattered bill here or there being available, for
all legislation that is under consideration to be available like this.

Host:  We bring another listener in at 1-800-848-2298.  From Oakland, let's
hear from Danielle.  Welcome to the program.

Caller #5:  Thank you.  I'd like to address two areas.  The political will
that was mentioned earlier that is connected to the access issue, and also
securities involved in using modems.  I think that having tele-community
centers or as the caller was talking about all over the state and country is
excellent, but teaching people how to use the technology is not enough.  And,
in terms of political will, I think that if people don't understand the
legislative process itself, along with any technology, then it will not be able
to use the technology effectively.  So I think that has to start at the school
end.  Right now, school curriculums, I think, don't do a good job of teaching
people how to become activists, and I think that there is a policy reason
behind that except that perhaps individual teachers who make it their own
agenda to make sure that people are fairly well educated.  So I think we need
to start at the schools, the educational level, before we even get into
technology.  And in terms of the modems, I think it was Covert Action Magazine
reported a while back, on a program, that it was hi-jacked from the commercial
company that developed it.  It was used for monitoring judicial files and it
was spread, basically, around the world and it's been used in diplomatic
offices to basically pick up modem transmissions in diplomatic offices for
various countries.  So what is to prevent a government agenda such as --- that
happened 10 or 15 years ago, from connecting onto people's modems and putting a
lid on all of this activism that we're developing?

Host:  Thank you very much for your call, Danielle.  You might want to tune in
to our next show when we will be doing exactly that last subject that you bring
up.  Government intrusion into citizen and business electronic communication,
which doesn't mean we can't talk about it in this show as well.  But Sonia
Jarvis, first to you because she is talking about education on computer
technology very early in the classroom.  Is that going to be sufficient to
produce an informed and involved electorate?

SJ:  Well I think Danielle's question is right on point.  I think we're almost
expecting too much of our schools these days.  We expect them almost to be
social agencies and deal with every important issue in our communities, and yet
some of the basic functions of school, that is educating the citizens of the
future, is sometimes lost.  And I think that we see, over the last couple of
decades, a de-emphasis on basic civics education.  So much so that a lot of
people don't know the basics of how local government operates much less how our
federal government operates.  And I certainly would welcome a re-emphasis on
basic educational information on how our system works regardless of how you get
in touch with the government.  Whether it is through the telephone or through a
modem.  And in terms of her larger question, which you're going to address in
your next show, I think it starts at the heart of what is one of my major
concerns.  How can we make sure that very important rights and civil liberties,
that have been earned and fought for over two centuries, are not lost in an
instant because we have become fascinated with this new technology?  And the
only way it's going to be different, to make sure that those safeguards are
there, is if ordinary citizens, like the ones that have been calling in today,
make their opinions known, and communicate their concerns to others within
their community, however that community is defined.

Host:  Jim Warren, you're anxious to get in on this, go ahead Jim.

JW:  Three or four points.  One is we're finding that there is a new
generation of kids coming up who are using the Networks in schools to
communicate with each other.  And it's a generation of kids who can actually
read and write, that is express themselves in written form.  That's a change
from the television generation.  Secondly, many of the best teachers about
using the computer-nets in elementary and high schools, are the kids not the
teachers, because they can pick it up faster.  They don't know how complicated
it is and they just learn it.  Knowledge of the legislative process.  Last year
when I helped push through this legislation in California through a series of
action alerts, just like Chris has done or just like David Wiesner did with the
Ban Bribery Now Bill, I got a number of comments back from people that were
reading my Action Alert saying, "I've learned how the legislative process
works, just by seeing what all is going on."  And, if you think about it, the
best way to learn anything -- language, anything else -- is to use it.  Not
study it in school, not study it in the abstract or in a academic form, but go
out and use it.  That's how David Wiesner learned it, that's how I learned it,
that's how every effective political activist learns it.

Host:  We want to bring another caller on, but let me ask you real quick Chris
Casey, what about digital signatures on this E-mail?  How do you know who's
sending you E-mail is who they say they are?  And how can you just... perhaps
one person is sending ten or a hundred messages?

CC:  Without a doubt, that happens.  That's one reason why, as a first step,
we requested individuals to include postal address.  An Internet address
doesn't always reveal the geographic clues you need to know exactly who the
sender is, and any elected official is going to want to know whether they're
hearing from a constituent of theirs or not.  It is very typical with postal
mail that interest groups, or lobbyists, try to get a message across by sheer
inundation, by postcard campaigns, and mass mailings that will get a message
across by bulk.  And, certainly, with E-mail, you make that easy for any
interested individual to tell their computer to send this message to Senator
Kennedy over and over and over again.

Host:  Electronically -- right.

CC:  And rather than just boxes of mail piling up in the mailroom, now you're
talking about bits and bytes and megabytes on our computers.  This is an
instance where an unexpected benefit of the auto responder approach has been
helpful, because we give back as good as we get.  For those who feel it is
somehow better to send a message over and over and over.

Host:  Let's bring in another listener in.  From Santa Ana let's hear from
Dan.

Caller #6:  Yes, hello.  Thank you very much for your knowledgeable guests,
and I guess first off I would like to find out information on his Action Alert.
The second thing is that I'm a commodity trader and I'm looking to attempt to
retrieve information about the exchanges over the Internet.  I want to know if
that is possible, and possibly to... I don't know if there's knowledge on
Globex, possibly retrieving information on the Internet pertaining to Globex. 
The second thing would be, is it at all possible, or are there any programs
right now that are at the level to work with Internet to achieve a Bachelor's
Degree?  And the last thing would be I had heard you mention something about
the Federal Register, and having access to that information.  Is it possible to
get that information through the Internet without cost?

CC:  Certainly, I know there's a lot of concern and discussion about the fact
that, although the Congressional record and the Federal Register are available
on the Internet now, it's quite pricey and too expensive for the casual
individual browser, and hopefully perhaps, that might change in the future. 
But access to that information is made available to 1400 Federal Depository
Libraries.  And, we've mentioned earlier in the program, that libraries are an
obvious starting point where the public can not only gain the Internet access,
but hopefully find a librarian with knowledge of finding information and can
help point them in the right direction.

Host:  At this time, though, libraries are being threatened with being shut
down.

CC:  In some cases, but there are other examples.  Recently the state of
Maryland announced a program called --- through which they plan to make
Internet access available to the public at all Maryland public libraries.

Host:  Let's welcome Dave to the program from San Francisco.  Hello Dave.

Caller #6:  Hello.  I wanted to ask your guests if there were any effort being
made to bring all of the information from various government information
sources together under one... like for instance, a government information
store.  Something that would do away with the plethora of confusing ways of
getting to information on-line?

Host:  It's a question I've had myself.  Thanks Dave.  You know, there's a new
disease that accompanies this technology, the Information Overload.  How can
you get through all this stuff?

JW:  There's too much information to... I would not want to have a single,
omnipotent agency be the source of all information.  That's too much power in
the hands of one agency.  It's appropriate to have the information come from a
variety of sources.  And, just like when you get old-fashioned paper
information, you have to figure out which source to get it from.  Librarians
can assist, information workers can assist.  A lot of the "Net Nerds" who
search the Net regularly, are outstanding sources of either the information
directly, or at pointing to where the information is.  And it is very common
across the Nets to post a question, say, "where can I find this item of
information?" and get an answer back before you can drop off-line.

CC:  I would like to add to Jim's point. I agree with him that multiple
sources are a benefit, but there are efforts, NTIS runs a bulletin board --
National Technical Information Service in the Department of Congress...

JW:  And they charge for it.

CC:  No they don't.  FedWorld is available... well it's dial up in DC, I
believe it is available via TELNET as well.  And, no, there's no charge for an
account, and it provides gateway access to other federal government bulletin
boards.  So by connecting to this first source without a separate call, or
without having to know separate bulletin board numbers or Internet locations
you can then gateway out and find yourself, I think, in over 200 other federal
government runs.

Host:  Thank you Chris Casey.  We are out of time, I want to apologize to our
earlier caller Dan, for not getting to all of your questions, but do call us
back, we'll see if we can help you out.  That is all the time we have for this
interesting subject this hour.  My guests have been Sonia Jarvis, Jim Warren
and Chris Casey.  Our thanks to all our listeners, to those who called into the
program and thanks to Monitor Radio for their help.  Join us again, next time.

I'm Jude Thilman for "The Communications Revolution."




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