Date: Fri, 14 Oct 1994 15:49:44 -0700 From: Jim Warren Subject: GovAccess.076: lawn'order, Cal un-pub info, So.Cal civnets?, GAO online My apologies, and yes, I would dearly love to get my act together well enough to meter these massive missives out to you folks more like one every day of two, rather than the flood-n-famine approach that I've tended to use. I continue to have delusions of catching up. (I've had 'em for years.) Oh well, at least GovAccess is worth every penny ya pay for it. :-) --jim ------------------------------ FIRST A NATIONAL ID CARD, NEXT $500M WIRETAPS, NOW FINGERPRINTED VOLUNTEERS -or- GEEZ! GEORGE ORWELL WAS WRONG ... BUT ONLY BY TEN YEARS [If a Red-baiting Richard Nixon can open up communist China, and an Evil-Empiring Ronald Reagan can crack open the USSR, I guess it takes a once-monitored peace-activist, liberal Bill Clinton to really move this nation towards the police-state that technology now makes possible -- for whatever current or later administration decides to take advantage of the power thus implemented for them. Do we all feel safer, now? (Well, if you don't have anything to hide, you shouldn't care ... right?) --jim] Date: Fri, 14 Oct 94 08:50:56 EDT From: lethin@ai.mit.edu (Rich Lethin) To: pagre@weber.ucsd.edu Subject: finger printing Date: 13 Oct 1994 23:22:56 -0400 From: Dan Harmon Newsgroups: ailab.cypherpunks I was at a Cub Scout rountable meeting tonight and a real interesting item came out. It seems that a provision in the recently passed crime bill requires all adult volunteers for orginazitions be finger printed. This is a real nightmare. The Boy Scouts are very upset. Most of the parents at the meeting seemed to be upset or disturbed by the news. This is a real down to the masses invasion of privacy. It may sink in this time, but I'm not going to hold my breath. More as I find what is going on. Dan Harmon ------------------------------ IN MEMORIUM: CALIFORNIA'S 1994 EFFORT TO GET PUBLIC INFORMATION ONLINE >From listserv@Sunnyside.COM Thu Sep 1 14:40:14 1994 To: Multiple recipients of list Hi everyone -- Now that the Legislative session has drawn to a close, I'd like to bring you up to date on A.B. 2451, our bill to put state public info on-line. First of all, I want to thank all of you for your help. We would not have been successful without it. People from all over the state and from every walk of life wrote letters, sent emails and phoned their legislators. This grassroots effort was central to our success. When we undertook this effort, we knew we were in for an uphill fight and that we could easily lose in the first committee. After all, no legislation of this scope had ever been proposed anywhere in the country. The bill passed both houses of the Legislature without a single 'no' vote. However, during the year, a number of cutting-edge policy issues were raised by legislators, the Governor's staff and citizens. The calgovinfo discussions on many of these issues, such as the format for information, was invaluable to me. As the bill moved through the Legislature, we continued to wrestle with new and emerging policy issues: protecting confidential information, access to email, sanctions for non-complaince. In late August we learned the official estimated cost of the bill. It was significantly more than our initial guesstimates. It was clear that this bill would not pass unless state costs were eliminated. This raised additional policy questions: filling the $6+ million gap the state earns from selling a small portion of its information, funding the ongoing operation of the bill given the state's empty coffers, and developing priorities for what information would go on-line first. jjj We had answers for some of these issues, but not for all. The Governor's staff proposed amendments which would, in my opinion, have encouraged further commercialization of public information. We could not accept that. However, I am hopeful that we will be able to work something out with him or a new Governor. In the end, I decided not to send the bill to the Governor this year. We need to address a number of fundamental policy considerations that arose during the legislative process -- we need only to look at the DMV fiasco to see what can happen when things aren't planned. Our interests will be better served through more comprehensive legislation which I plan to re-introduce in January. The decision not to send the bill on to the Governor was reinforced by rumors that the federal funding with which we planned to fund the bill might not come through this year. I believe we have built an important base in the Legislature for continued efforts. A half dozen good bills were proposed this year on computer access, and I hope even more will be next year. In the coming months, I hope we can continue our 'on-line town hall'. This bill is a huge undertaking. Let's take time to think through the issues that emerged. Feel free to post your ideas on this bill or other legislation. You can also write directly to my aide, Rachel Richman at richmarb@assembly.ca.gov To each of you who wrote a letter, made a phone call, offered advice, comments and ideas -- thank you. You made our success possible. Tom Bates Member of the Assembly ------------------------------ FOR THOSE WHO EMAIL TO CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE'S STATE ASSEMBLY Don't include ais0 in an email address to people at the assembly. You only have to put smithrc@assembly.ca.gov They had a problem with E-Mail earlier when they switched from a class C to class B network and Teale couldn't forward email with the machine name in the address. ------------------------------ A PROVINCIAL QUERY: ARE THERE ANY CIVIC-NETS IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA? My apologies to the California masses and voting majority living beyond my teenie weenie San Francisco Bay area, but I've heard rumors of some So. Cal. civic- or community-nets, but have no details about none of 'em (except the "first" civic-net, Santa Monica's PEN system). I also receive some number of press queries along the general lines of, "Isn't anything happening in Southern California?" (Even from So. Cal. pressoids.) I plead ignorance -- which is easy for me. I assume So Cal Civnets exist. I'd be delighted to circulate summary info about 'em. Write soon. :-) To: jwarren@well.com . Many thanks. --jim ------------------------------ GOVT ACCOUNTING OFFICE REPORT ON INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY + OTHER GAO GOODIES >From farber@eff.org Tue Oct 4 13:58:21 1994 Date: Tue, 04 Oct 94 14:23:06 EST From: gao-docs@mailhost.gao.gov (gao-docs) The U.S. General Accounting Office, the Congressional watchdog agency, has recently released the following report: INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY - ISSUES AFFECTING DEVELOPMENT (GAO/RCED-94-285) September 30, 1994 This report is available both in print and electronically. 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Keith Bonney Information Services Center Office of Information Management and Communications U.S. General Accounting Office Room 6530 Washington, DC 20548 202-512-4448 VOICE 202-512-3373 FAX ------------------------------ Mo' as it Is. --jim GovAccess is an email distribution-list of irregular postings, maintained by Jim Warren, columnist for MicroTimes, Government Technology, BoardWatch, etc. 345 Swett Rd., Woodside CA 94062; voice/415-851-7075; fax/<# upon request> jwarren@well.com -or- jwarren@autodesk.com >> Permission herewith granted for unlimited reposting and recirculation.<< >> Past postings are at ftp.cpsr.org:/cpsr/states/california/govaccess << >> To add or drop the GovAccess list, email to jwarren@well.com . <<