Interesting People mailing list archives
IP: Re:you should be outraged that a few members [I know I am djf]
From: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1998 12:03:22 -0400
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1998 11:01:15 -0500 To: farber () cis upenn edu From: Stephen Haynes <haynesmn () ix netcom com> Dave - People, hopefully including IPers, will be using a variety of methods to respond to this Congressional action. Personally, I wrote my Representative and both Senators via their web pages or email addresses the following, which might serve as a model for others: I understand that as part of a House/Senate Conference Committee rewrite of a recent "intelligence authorization" legislation, the Committee inserted a provision that authorizes broad "roving wiretap" authorization. I consider this a gross violation of civil liberties. If you voted for this bill including this provision, knowing or unknowing that the wiretap provision was included, shame, shame! I should like to know your position on this matter, and what steps will be taken to rescind this authority. Stephen Haynes At 08:05 PM 10/13/98 -0400, you wrote:
X-Sender: jcp () mail jcphome com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.0.1 Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1998 16:41:14 -0700 To: farber () cis upenn edu From: "Joseph C. Pistritto" <jcp () jcphome com> Subject: Re: IP: you should be outraged that a few members [I know I am djf] I addition to being outraged, its important to note this form of attack is almost impossible to defend against because there's so little visiblity beforehand. One of the *least* transparent parts of our government is the conference committee process. I certainly know I never heard about it in civics
class...
I dont know how long the conference to floor-vote interval was on this bill, but a casual reading of the Thomas system records on another bill I was involved with shows about 36 hours from conference report to the full House till passage by BOTH houses. Not a lot of time to influence the process. This is one reason people have lobbyists ON the Hill. To catch things like this in flight (or in the decision process leading up to conference) and influence them on the spot. Given the fact that stuff like this tends to happen at end-of-session, when everyone is distracted (especially this year, with both Clinton and the budget late in the session) I kind of suspect a bumper-crop this year of this stuff. Lobbyists *know* when this stuff is likely, thats what they're paid for... Like i say, this process is pretty un-transparent. One might even say
opaque.
Best regards, -jcp-
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- IP: Re:you should be outraged that a few members [I know I am djf] Dave Farber (Oct 14)