Sunlight Foundation Gives Congress Email Addresses
from the shouldn't-congress-have-done-that? dept
The Sunlight Foundation has struck again where the government failed to act. If you've tried to contact your elected representatives in the US Congress, you may have noticed it's not that easy. You have to go through a layer of annoying forms that seem much more designed to get you to not contact your elected officials. However, the good folks at the Sunlight Foundation, working with inspiration from EFF, have decided to do something about it, working through the forms to create an actual email address for every member of Congress that avoids having to go through the full form process. So, if you go to Rep. John Boehner's page you now see the email address that Sunlight Foundation / OpenCongress have given him:The first time we get an email from you, we'll send one back asking for some additional details. This is necessary because our code submits your message by navigating those aforementioned congressional webforms, and we don't want to enter incorrect information. But for emails after the first one, all you'll have to do is click a link that says, "Yes, I meant to send that email."This is a small step forward, but good to see no matter what.
One more thing: For now, our system will only let you email your own representatives. A lot of people dislike this. We do, too. In an age of increasing polarization, party discipline means that congressional leaders must be accountable to citizens outside their districts. But the unfortunate truth is that Congress typically won't bother reading messages from non-constituents — that's why those zip code requirements exist in the first place. Until that changes, we don't want our users to waste their time.
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Filed Under: access, congress, email
Companies: eff, sunlight foundation
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Response from Joe Congressperson
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In a related story...
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Re: In a related story...
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It's one of those cases where the goal is noble, the reality is more failure and less success for everyone.
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I can't see that it would be any easier for automated mailing systems to use this service than it would be to auto-fill the form themselves. I don't live in the US, so can't confirm what the experience is like.
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If money is speech....
If they accept money from outside the district and money is speech and speech meets the 'redress for grievances' part of some 'goddamned piece of paper' then "party discipline" is the least of the worries.
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EW - Electronic Warfare
The warfare part is as mentioned, all the forms requirements for extra input like zipcode for example is a EW FILTER to filter out all voices not in that location. Meanwhile there are oath breaking scum passing firearms grabbing Constitution hating nonsense which DO effect the people in other locations outside that ZIP. Not to mention the unconstitutional spying and endless undeclared war
When I first loaded this article up, I was HOPING you were going to say you got their ACTUAL email address, you know, so I can fire up thebat or kmail or something and TYPE the
address in. (not that I will bother to write them anymore, as it feels more like writing the enemy now ~ EXAMPLE: via the Feinstein Form Bullet Point Propagand Reply's. (you know the emails you get from her with PDF attachments, and bullet talking points having absolutely NOTHING to do with the specific points you were talking about, and furthermore providing ZERO context to your original body of TEXT you sent. Scum dual ISRAEL/US citizen oath breaker mosad warmonger psychopath)
This is only Form Link workarounds --- the data might be filled in wrong when one or more of the Senators Forms change on their contact page(s).
Again, why would I bother writing to MOSAD about Security again?
I will give ya this, It makes it possible for SOME com's with these so-called rep's, it doesn't solve the underlyin problem however.
So my only question is which two people are going to start the TREASON cases against these oath breaking scum?
Cause until they are gone, none of this matters, You can spend 18 + hour days on POPVOX and get your email stuffed with a bunch of crap by these oath breakers too. I know cause I been down that ROAD ALREADY! And what's worse is trying to track your LOCAL gov. You know CAFR audit, City, Waste Management, Chemtrail/geoengineering, Sports arenas/Tax, High Speed Trains/UN Agenda 21, Cannabis (funny how states can nullify feds when it is important), BLM/ Agenda 21 land grab/sustainablity cruft/ICLEI and co. Yeah try to keep up with Sacramento's assembly. uh huh.. yeah.
I've been treated to heaping doses of arrogance, propaganda, lies, ignorance, different spins on the delphi technique, obvsucation, propriatary formats, systems down/broken//glitched/no index/no search engine(using GOOGLE for City-State websites!!!) On and on and on and on
TIF SCANNED PDF's as CAFR reports!
I have seen DIRTY ASS TRICK AFTER DIRTY ASS TRICK
The only thing they understand is INDICTMENT FOR MALFEASANCE/MISFEASANCE/TREASON
I don't know what else to say anymore. In the past decade I have watched as they have completely gutted the constitution and bill of rights.
So What next?
Nazi Germany 2.0 (electronic version) that's what.
America has become Fascist Amerika
And psychopath commie mosad warmongers behind the thieving murdering banksters have us in this pickle.
There's nobody to VOTE for, why are you bitching about their EMAIL at this point?
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Re: Re: In a related story...
2. the idiotic 'forms' TOO MANY companies, etc give you to 'email' on their web site are usually crappy, as far as you get a -literally- postage-stamp-sized dialog box to input your 500 characters (or whatever they feel like limiting you to)...
3. for me, one of the major drawbacks, is you have NO RECORD (assuming you didn't go to the bother to cut/paste after you enter the text) of the correspondence... ESPECIALLY annoying when attempting to contact businesses with a question or complaint that may go back and forth...
4. from what i have been told repeatedly about contacting kongresskritters, email is at the bottom of their priority list: the order of most effective contact is, personal visit, phone call, fax, written letter, and email sucks hind titty... i doubt it goes beyond their staff droids who *MIGHT* tally them up 'for/against' a particular issue...
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committees
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Re: EW - Electronic Warfare
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Re: Re: Re: In a related story...
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This kind of completely erroneous thinking is part of the mythos surrounding spam. It's not only wrong, but it's damaging.
Spammers have myriad ways of building (and verifying) immense databases of addresses. They've gotten VERY good at it. If an email address is in use: they have it. You can't hide it. You can't obfuscate it. You can't bury it behind forms. Oh you can try...but it won't work.
That doesn't necessarily mean that they'll use it. They often don't for various reasons, ranging from programming errors to deliberate avoidance. But it is a serious strategic error to presume that just because a particular address isn't targeted that it isn't known to them.
The best course of action is to simply publish them -- unobfuscated -- and then to use the defenses that we've developed over 30 years of fighting spam. Any mail system admin worthy of the title should be able to block 95% of spam (with a tiny false positive rate) in an afternoon. Given a week that should be up to 99%. It doesn't take appliances and services and it certainly doesn't take outsourcing email to the ignorant newbies at Gmail: it just takes uses open-source software and well-known, tested, documented techniques. They work beautifully when properly applied, they scale, they're quite difficult for spammers to game, and they use minimal computing resources.
There's no valid reason for making people jump through hoops, fill out badly-designed forms, etc. It does nothing except impair communication and waste a lot of time.
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Re: Re: Re: In a related story...
Three different Congresspersons, three different reactions to email.
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Re: committees
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Privacy Act of 1974
Not sure if this applies to the legislative branch of the fed. gov.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/13/102.22
13 CFR 102.22 - Requirements relating to systems of records.
(b) Requests for information from individuals. If a form is being used to collect information from individuals, either the form used to collect the information, or a separate form that can be retained by the individual, must state the following:
(1) The authority (whether granted by statute, or by Executive Order of the President) which authorizes the solicitation of the information and whether disclosure of such information is mandatory or voluntary;
(2) The principal purpose or purposes for which the information is intended to be used;
(3) The routine uses which may be made of the information; and
(4) The effects on such individual, if any, of not providing all or any part of the requested information.
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Re: Response from Joe Congressperson
They can email you, but you can still continue to ignore them.
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Congressional email addresses
So please do open up ALL of these emails.
Many thanks for what you are doing.
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Temporary solution but ultimately won't work
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Re: Temporary solution but ultimately won't work
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1) Not displaying e-mail address to avoid spam? Um, these people are the law-makers: if they get too much spam, then pass a law with stricter penalties for sending spam.
2) Although your technical information for creating spam filters is good, this is the same government that created healthcare.gov, which was massively screwed up even well past it's launch date. Every programmer knows (or should know) how to stay on a deadline, but apparently, the site was launched as an early Beta version.
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Re: Re: Temporary solution but ultimately won't work
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Helpful first step
For example, the House Subcommittee on Communications is a big one, and telecom policy issues are "my thing", but my Congressman is not on the committee, so who do I write to?
I understand the purpose of the limitation but it severely restricts the usefulness of this effort.
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