roundtable: TAP - U.S. Information Agency (USIA) (fwd)
roundtable: TAP - U.S. Information Agency (USIA) (fwd)
TAP - U.S. Information Agency (USIA) (fwd)
James Love (love@Essential.ORG)
Thu, 27 Apr 1995 19:52:58 -0400 (EDT)
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 1995 19:52:58 -0400 (EDT)
From: James Love <love@Essential.ORG>
To: roundtable <roundtable@cni.org>
Subject: TAP - U.S. Information Agency (USIA) (fwd)
Message-Id: <Pine.SUN.3.91.950427195243.16158C-100000@essential.essential.org>
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TAP-INFO - An Internet newsletter available from listproc@tap.org
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TAXPAYER ASSETS PROJECT - INFORMATION POLICY NOTE
CROWN JEWELS - US INFORMATION AGENCY
April 26, 1995
THE U.S. INFORMATION AGENCY ON THE INTERNET
NOT FOR AMERICAN CITIZENS?
April 26, 1995
by James Love (202/387-8030; love@tap.org)
(this may be freely disseminated on the Internet)
- Federal Agency with budget of $1.4 billion and 7,600
employees produces television, radio, and text news services
for dissemination in foreign countries, but not in U.S.
- In 1994 the USIA launched new Internet services, providing
access to the text of news dispatches, and audio feeds from
radio programs. These services are provided at various
Internet ftp, gopher and World Wide Web sites.
- Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) has reportedly objected to the
Internet services, as a violation of the Smith-Mundt Act,
which prohibits USIA from disseminating information in the
United States.
- In response to objections, USIA recently moved large amounts
of its WIRLESS FILE text dispatches from the USIA "domestic"
gopher (gopher.usia.gov) and Web (www.usia.gov) sites, to
other sites with addresses that are "secret" from U.S.
citizens. TAP has identified one "foreign" site containing
the East Asia/Pacfic WIRELESS FILE text reports (hk.net), a
portion of the files that were removed from the "domestic"
interest sites.
- The USIA continues to provide access to transcripts and
audio files from its Voice of America (VOA) broadcasts from
the gopher server, gopher.voa.gov, but the agency claims it
cannot tell Americans the URL for the site.
- U.S. citizen access to USIA information is blocked by the
1948 Smith-Mundt Act (22 USC 1461), which prohibits USIA
from disseminating information "within the United States,
its territories, or possessions," except for limited onsite
inspection at USIA offices by members of the press or
scholars, or to be "available for examination only to
Members of Congress." [The full text of the statutory
provision is given below.]
- According to USIA officials, U.S. commercial television and
radio interests have lobbied to retain the Smith-Mundt Act
restrictions on U.S. citizen access to the information, in
order to limit "competition" from this U.S. government
information service.
WHAT DOES USIA DO?
The United States Information Agency (USIA) is a $1.4
billion agency employing more than 7,000 persons. It produces a
huge array of information products and services. According to
the USIA mission statement:
- The Voice of America, the U.S. global radio network,
transmits almost 1,000 hours a week of programming in 46
languages to tens of millions of weekly listeners worldwide.
- Radio Marti, established in 1985, broadcasts 24 hours a day
in Spanish to Cuba. TV Marti, which began full broadcast
operations in August 1990, broadcasts 17-1/2 hours a week to
Cuba. The programming consists of news, information and
entertainment acquired from a variety of sources.
- USIA's satellite television network, WORLDNET, transmits
programs live to foreign audiences through American
embassies, USIA posts, and foreign television networks using
the latest technology.
- The WIRELESS FILE is a daily text based press service,
disseminated in five languages, linked by computerized
communication systems to all overseas USIA posts. The
Wireless File provides time sensitive information, including
full transcripts of speeches, press conferences,
Congressional testimony, etc., and texts of published
articles and interviews.
- The Agency also produces a number of publications, in both
printed and electronic form, dealing with issues of
democratic development, market economies, trade, security
and other transnational issues.
USIA RESTRICTS U.S. ACCESS TO NEW INTERNET SERVERS
TAP was recently contacted by Peter Ide, an American who now
works for a foreign government aid program. Peter had been
following the USIA WIRELESS FILE dispatches, which were available
on GOPHER.USIA.GOV, searchable by keyword. A few weeks ago the
WIRELESS FILE data and other USIA information disappeared from
the USIA gopher. After inquiring, Peter received the following
letter:
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 95
From: "McGregor, James" <jmcgrego@usia.gov>
Subject: Disappearing USIA Gopher
Mr. Ide,
You received a cryptic message from my colleage Neil Lehrer
about the reason for the changes in our Gopher. The
"Smith-Mundt" act he referred to is legislation that
prohibits USIA from distributing materials intended for
overseas audiences within the U.S. We split our servers
into an overseas portion (which contained the "latest
items") and a domestic version, which is far less
interesting but more legal.
I assume from your domain name that you are in the U.S. We
are not permitted to give you the address of the server that
contains the "latest items" and other material you saw in
the original version. If you are overseas, please let me
know.
Regards.
James P. McGregor
USIA
Mr. Ide, advised USIA's McGregor that he was working for a
foreign government, but failed to obtain the name of the
"foreign" internet site from USIA. In an April 25, 1995 email
message, Mr. McGregor said:
We are under strict prohibition from giving out the name of
the site in the U.S. However, your office in . . . can
contact the information section at the U.S. Embassy and get
the overseas address. . .
BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE SMITH-MUNDT ACT
TAP contacted USIA staff and reviewed the agency's
authorizing statutes to understand the nature of the problem.
Under a 1948 statute, known as the "Smith-Mundt" act, (22 USC
1461), USIA is prohibited from disseminating information "within
the United States, its territories, or possessions," except for
limited onsite inspection at USIA offices by members of the press
or scholars, and should be "available for examination only to
Members of Congress." The Act makes an exception for "Problems
of Communism," and "English Teaching Forum," both of which may be
made available through the Government Printing Office. [The full
text of the statutory provision is given below.]
There are two current reasons for the dissemination
prohibition. First, Congress did not want the USIA to subject
the American public to government controlled news broadcasts.
Second, commercial broadcasters, who have lobbied to keep the
Smith-Mundt Act bar to U.S. dissemination of USIA information in
place, do not want competition from a free source of news.
The USIA Internet service began in early 1994. On January
14, 1995, the Washington Post ran an article written by John
Schwartz which was critical of the USIA decision to provide
information on the Internet, because of the Smith-Mundt Act.
Schwartz described the USIA information as "forbidden fruit" or
"propaganda," which "has been carefully withheld from Americans
lest it brainwash them." Schwartz quoted Carl Malamud of the
Internet Multicasting Service as saying:
They're [the USIA] winking at those very fundamental
mandates from the U.S. Congress -- Ye shall not do news
to the American Public. . . It's important that we
understand that cyberspace is part of the real world .
. . Just because it's on a computer, it doesn't mean
that the basic rules don't apply.
Schwartz also quoted from an article by former FCC
Commissioner Newton Minow and Annenberg Fellow Alvin Snyder, whom
expressed support for eliminating the legal barrier to
dissemination of USIA information to U.S. citizens.
Shouldn't we have the opportunity to know what the United
States is saying to people in Bosnia, Russia or South
America . . . Yesterday's fear that such programs will
'brainwash' the American public is senseless. We get a
steady stream of government views in speeches, briefings and
press releases, and we are capable of reaching our own
conclusions.
According to USIA officials, after the Washington Post
article appeared, Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC), the chair of the
Senator Foreign Relations committee, began to press the agency to
rein in the Internet program. Senator Helms is also said to
favor the elimination of many USIA services, to be replaced by
the private sector. Senator Helms' office indicated that Foreign
Relations Committee staffer, Chris Walker, is working on this
issue. Mr. Walker did not return telephone calls from TAP.
USIA WIRELESS FILE DISPATCHES ON THE INTERNET (at least for
now, if you can find them)
Mr. Ide, using standard Internet searching tools, later
identified hk.net as one gopher site which provides access to the
East Asia/Pacific WIRELESS FILE, from the American Consulate
General in Hong Kong. The data are only a subset of that which
had been previously available from gopher.usia.gov. We assume
that other sites contain additional files.
USIA was created to present a distinctly "official" view of
the news, and is clearly designed to promote U.S. foreign policy
objectives, but much of the reporting is quite impressive. TAP
looked at samples of the April 24, 1995 dispatches. The story
"CLINTON SEEKS INCREASED FEDERAL POWER TO COUNTER TERRORISM"
contains a 3,504 word verbatim transcript of President Clinton's
interview for the CBS-TV show 60 Minutes, from April 23, 1995.
In the April 24, 1995 story, "OKLAHOMA BOMBING: TERRORISM, 'MADE
IN THE USA' (World Opinion Roundup)", USIA distributed a 2,958
word article providing excerpts from news and editorial reports from
31 foreign countries. The article, "SHATTUCK SEES REASONS
FOR ENCOURAGEMENT, CONCERN IN INDONESIA, (Transcript: Press conf.
by U.S. human rights official)" is a 4,082 word report of an
April 20, 1995 news conference by Assistant Secretary of State
John Shattuck, held at the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta.
USIA NEW INTERNET RADIO SERVICE FOR VOICE OF AMERICA (VOA)
BROADCASTS
In addition to the WIRELESS FILE dispatches, USIA has also
launched a new Internet radio service that allows persons to
download audio files containing Voice of America radio broadcasts
in several languages, including english. According to a USIA
news release, posted on the "domestic" gopher.usia.gov.
...sound is our native medium, as radio broadcasters, and
the new audio service is especially exciting to us because
it breaks the language barrier. Newscasts are available in
Arabic, Cantonese, Standard Chinese (Mandarin), Czech,
French, Hindi, Hungarian, Korean, Polish, Russian, Slovak,
Spanish, Swahili, Ukrainian and, of course, English. The
programs are transmitted as analog signals along a wire that
connects VOA Master Control to our computer machine room,
where they are digitized and installed on the public server
in three different formats -- at least one of which should
be digestible by almost any computer that is capable of
playing digital sound. We offer two newscasts a day in most
of the languages, one in the morning (local time for the
target audience) and one in the evening. Newscasts from
VOA's "Worldwide English" program thread, which follows the
sun (i.e., on a morning cycle and an evening cycle) are
recorded almost every hour.
The Voice of America is the first international broadcaster
to offer an audio service on anything approaching this scale
and the response from "the Net" has been encouraging. During
the two weeks following the inaugural of the new service,
users in 29 countries "downloaded" (stored on their own
computers) more than 4,000 newscasts in all 15 languages.
That is, of course, a metaphorical drop in the proverbial
bucket: we currently estimate that 92 million people listen
to VOA's direct broadcasts every week, and many more people
hear our programs on affiliated local stations.
TAP contacted the Voice of America (VOA) to ask where the
Internet Radio broadcasts are located, and was told "I can't
legally give you that information." Taking a wild guess, I tried
gopher.voa.gov, which was indeed the "secret" VOA gopher address.
And, true to life, it contains a number of files that can be
downloaded and played using fairly standard multimedia tools.
For example, files are storied in Microsoft windows .wav formats,
compressed using pkzip. The VOA gopher also includes a number of
english language text stories, although these are short, because
they are written for radio. I found several brief but
interesting articles on the recent french election.
I later received a fax from someone at VOA who apparently
had not been informed to keep this information secret. The fax
contained the address of the voa gopher and ftp site (the ftp
site is ftp.voa.gov), as well as an email address, info@voa.gov,
for instructions on how to receive some text files by electronic
mail. I also found gopher.voa.gov from links at many official
government Internet sites, such as the White House and Library of
Congress World Wide Web servers, suggesting that the location of
the audio files and text from VOA radio shows isn't much of a
secret.
The more indepth and more unique WIRELESS FILE reports
remain quite difficult to locate, however, now that they have
been removed from gopher.usia.gov. (Indeed, if you find additional
regional sites, please let us know.)
THE TAP VIEW
Few Americans are aware that as taxpayers they are spending
$1.4 billion per year to produce news, public affairs and
entertainment programming for radio, television and print
publications that the government cannot disseminate to its own
citizens.
Even before the Internet, American citizens were free to
obtain USIA information from overseas sources, shortwave radio
frequencies or satellite feeds, and use it as they saw fit. The
Internet makes it technically much more difficult to restrict
U.S. citizen access to USIA information.
Lawyers consulted by TAP believe that the Smith-Mundt Act
prohibitions, which were written long before the Internet
existed, may be unconstitutional if challenged today.
The world has changed greatly since 1948, and there can be
little fear that access to USIA dispatches, which are available
to everyone else in the world, present a danger to our democracy.
The USIA information is plainly presented as a product of the
United States Government, and there is an avalanche of news and
public affairs programming competing for our attention. Many of
the WIRELESS FILES dispatches are very interesting reports on
topics that are rarely reported in such detail by general
interest commercial news organizations. We found the selection
of topics and editorial point of view to be an interesting and
important perspective on official U.S. foreign policy,
particularly when examining the regional reports. Indeed, we
find it astounding that Americans cannot receive copies of
transcipts of Voice of America broadcasts, WIRELESS FILE
dispatches or other materials the goverment is disseminating
throughout the world, in order to find out what views our
government is presenting to the outside world.
In our view, U.S. citizens should have ready access to the
WIRELESS FILE dispatches, transcriptions and audio files from
Voice of America Broadcasts, and other USIA information products.
Indeed, we hope to someday see an Internet server with several
years of backfiles of WIRELESS FILES, VOA transcriptions and
other USIA publications, searchable by key word.
To express your views on this issue, write to the members of
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. A list of members, and
their telephone and fax numbers, can be obtained through the
essential.org gopher site.
jamie love (202/387-8030; love@tap.org)
STATUTORY LANGUAGE PREVENTING DISSEMINATION OF USIA
INFORMATION IN THE UNITED STATES
Here is the statutory language which prohibits the USIA from
disseminating information in the United States (obtained from the
GPO Access version of the U.S. Code.)
[wais.access.gpo.gov]
[Laws in effect as of January 24, 1994]
[Document not affected by Public Laws enacted between
January 24, 1994 and January 3, 1995]
[CITE: 22USC1461]
TITLE 22--FOREIGN RELATIONS AND INTERCOURSE
CHAPTER 18--UNITED STATES INFORMATION AND EDUCATIONAL EXCHANGE
PROGRAMS
SUBCHAPTER IV--PARTICIPATION BY GOVERNMENT AGENCIES
Sec. 1461. General authorization
(a) Dissemination of information abroad
The Director is authorized, when he finds it appropriate, to
provide for the preparation, and dissemination abroad, of
information about the United States, its people, and its
policies, through press, publications, radio, motion pictures,
and other information media, and through information centers and
instructors abroad. Subject to subsection (b) of this section,
any such information (other than ``Problems of Communism'' and
the ``English Teaching Forum'' which may be sold by the
Government Printing Office) shall not be disseminated within the
United States, its territories, or possessions, but, on request,
shall be available in the English language at the Agency, at all
reasonable times following its release as information abroad, for
examination only by representatives of United States press
associations, newspapers, magazines, radio systems, and stations,
and by research students and scholars, and, on request, shall be
made available for examination only to Members of Congress.
(b) Dissemination of information within United States
(1) The Director of the United States Information Agency
shall make available to the Archivist of the United States, for
domestic distribution, motion pictures, films, videotapes, and
other material prepared for dissemination abroad 12 years after
the initial dissemination of the material abroad or, in the case
of such material not disseminated abroad, 12 years after the
preparation of the material.
(2) The Director of the United States Information Agency
shall be reimbursed for any attendant expenses. Any reimbursement
to the Director pursuant to this subsection shall be credited to
the applicable appropriation of the United States Information
Agency.
(3) The Archivist shall be the official custodian of the
material and shall issue necessary regulations to ensure that
persons seeking its release in the United States have secured and
paid for necessary United States rights and licenses and that all
costs associated with the provision of the material by the
Archivist shall be paid by the persons seeking its release. The
Archivist may charge fees to recover such costs, in accordance
with section 2116(c) of title 44. Such fees shall be paid into,
administered, and expended as part of the National Archives Trust
Fund.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
(Jan. 27, 1948, ch. 36, title V, Sec. 501, 62 Stat. 9; July 13,
1972, Pub. L. 92-352, title II, Sec. 204, 86 Stat. 494; 1977
Reorg. Plan No. 2, Secs. 5, 7(a)(1), 42 F.R. 62461, 91 Stat.
1636, 1637; Aug. 15, 1979, Pub. L. 96-60, title II, Sec. 208, 93
Stat. 401; Feb. 16, 1990, Pub. L. 101-246, title II, Sec. 202,
104 Stat. 49.)
Amendments
1990--Pub. L. 101-246 designated existing provisions as
subsec. (a), substituted ``Subject to subsection (b) of this
section, any such information'' for ``Any such information'' in
second sentence, and added subsec. (b).
1979--Pub. L. 96-60 substituted `` `Problems of Communism'
and the `English Teaching Forum' which may be sold'' for ``
`Problems of Communism' which may continue to be sold'' in
parenthetical clause.
1972--Pub. L. 92-352 substituted provisions relating to the
prohibition, except as otherwise provided, on the dissemination
of information within the United States, its territories, or
possessions, other than ``Problems of Communism'' which could
continue to be sold at the Government Printing Office, for
provisions relating to the availability of press release or radio
scripts for examination by representatives of United States press
associations, newspapers, magazines, radio systems, and stations,
and, on request, Members of Congress.
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