[From Jim Warren's _GovAccess_ online newsletter.] A Call to Action! - Specific Political-Action Techniques for Netvolks [Part of my April, 1995, BoardWatch column --jim] In that issue of BoardWatch, after detailing a sequence of specific threats to constitutional civil liberties in current congressional proposals, I wrote: All of this can have a massive chilling effect on freedom of (electronic) speech, freedom of (net-based) press and freedom of (online) assembly. It's Up To Us Especially in the case of technology-related threats, it is up to the online community to sound the alarm and pursue redress. Congress critters and their aides are generally naive and ignorant of the complexities and ramifications of computerized information and borderless global networking, and their ramifications for traditional civil liberties. They are easily sold a bill of goods by adroit bureaucrats seeking - in all sincerity and good faith - evermore power and more convenience for its exercise. The general-circulation press - including, God help us!, the broadcast "press" - are normally the Fourth Estate of government, responsible for warning and educating the body politic about threats from the government. However, with too-few exceptions, most of the working press is almost as naive and ignorant as are the federal legislators. So it falls to us to inform them and urge their diligent attention to these technology-related public-policy issues that - if ill-considered decisions are permitted - can end freedom as we know it. Fortunately, we have the two absolute prerequisites for a free society: Timely access to adequate information on which to base sound decisions about our national and global community, and operational mass-communications mechanisms that permit about 35-million members of the body-politic to conduct timely communications with itself. We must use this power to help reach the remainder of the public, educate the press, and pursue Congress - to inform, to advocate, and shine the bright light of informed insight on technological policies that will impact the entire nation. The first mechanism for escalating press and legislative attention is to escalate public attention. Tell your friends, business associates and neighbors. Spread the word online and in the "real" world. Do it now. (First, Flame the Press) Sadly - infuriatingly - the general-circulation print press, with a few laudable exceptions, systematically refuses to explain the issues and policy alternatives to their general readership. "It's too complicated." Translation: The editor can't figure it out or a reporter can't make it entertaining. "Our readers wouldn't be interested." Translation: We'll give front-page coverage to the FBI's arrest of a computer-cracker, but we won't devote a solitary column-inch to explaining how the FBI aids crackers by opposing crime prevention via standardized, end-to-end robust encryption in global datacomm and cell-phone broadcasts. "There's not room for it." Translation: After the four-paragraph daily report on O.J.'s afternoon snack, there's no room left to mention the multi-decade impacts of national information and communications policy. "We've covered it - just look in the business section." Of course! Where else would the average news-paper reader look for articles about congressional [in]action and national policy that will impact everyone's daily lives for decades to come? And as to the broadcast "press" - Computer-cracker Mitnick in handcuffs is only useful for one or two inaccurate and incomplete voice-over explanations by an ill-informed news-anchors who wants some angle that won't offend their credit-card, cell-phone and personal-computer advertisers. In its endless preoccupation with what's "interesting" - entertaining to adults with 5th-grade reading skills - most of the Fourth Estate is totally-failing its most crucial responsibility to the nation - to spread the word about the long-term ramifications of major national policy-proposals. In fairness, however, they did give extensive coverage to the Exclusionary Rule "Reform" Act and its efforts to demolish what remains of the 4th Amendment. But they did so in what was for the most part, pallid, passionless presentations that made nary a mention of even one of the numerous abuses of police power - historical and current - that led to the 4th Amendment and the Exclusionary Rule in the first place. Okay, now that that's out of our system ... HELP the Press It's not that the press doesn't care - it's that most editors and reporters don't understand the ramifications of computers and networks, don't have the time or resources to learn, and don't realize its universal public importance. Help them: It's said that all politics is local. Contact your local newspaper(s) and local teevee news desk. Arrange to meet with the editor-in-chief, editorial-page editor, political reporter(s), political columnist(s) and the technology reporters who are usually imprisoned in the business pages. Contact the evening news shows' producers and assistant producers - and broadcast reporters if you can. Write to them, and write letters to the editor for publication. (Understand that they don't have any time and will be wondering about your motives in contacting them.) Vigilantly limit letters to one page, but include enclosures if needed. Approach issues in terms of information and communications - which is their turf - rather than computers and networks. Especially emphasize FOI issues - freedom of information, and agency's attempts to suppress it. Hot stuff for journalists. Urge that these public-policy issues be covered in the news and features sections, rather than relegating all technology-related stories to the business pages in lockstep fashion. Urge the technology reporter(s) to give more attention to the public-policy issues, rather than monastic preoccupation with gadget stories and money reports. Most of 'em would love to weasel some stories into the general-news pages. If it bleeds, it leads. Reporters do not write about theoretical generalizations and political philosophy; they write about people. Emphasize the human aspects and community impacts - on everyone - of technology-related public-policy decisions. Where possible, cite one or several actual cases that involve local people, that illustrate your points - preferably without going to extremes for the examples. Every time there's a policy-related technology story, immediately fax a letter to the editor that pitches a policy point that needs to be publicized, springboarding off of the story. E.g., every time there's a story about billion-dollar cell-phone fraud, or computer crackers, or phone phreaques, use it to hammer the point that our government is leaving us unnecessarily defenseless to these losses and intrusions. And Oh Yes, Congress ... Essentially use the same tactics on Congress. Don't go for your elected representative, unless you are an "important person" or know them personally or are going in representing a group - they're honestly too busy for the 500,000 or so mere humans that they represent. Go for their aides - these are the folks who do have access to your representatives, and do have time to talk with you. And much of the time, they are the ones who actually develop policy and legislation anyway, often guided by their legislator. Meet with them in person, whenever possible. In spite of my vitriolic, sarcastic cynicism and paranoia, assume that almost all cops, bureaucrats, public officials, elected representatives, congressional staffers, reporters and editors ARE honest; ARE trying to do a good job; DO work hard; and, ARE trying to make things better. In all the experience I have had, I have found this true - though one sometimes gets to quibble over what's "better." Either we do it - or we've had it. Let's get on with it.