THE CONTRA COSTA TIMES FILTERS EMAIL

Did you know that the Contra Costa Times is a newspaper --an American newspaper-- that filters email? And that they don't tell either their subscribers or their Internet customers that they do so? We have asked them for an explanation. There responses are below.

First, our initial email inquiry to them.

Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 18:31:05 -0800 (PST)
From: [Internet Frontier]
Subject: Why Does Your Newspaper Filter Incoming Email?
To: jarmstrong@cctimes.com, griggs@cctimes.com

I would be interested to know if you are aware that the Contra Costa Times filters incoming email. What valid justification could a newspaper in the United States ever have for doing so?

Please note that I am not referring to the content of an email message. What I am referring to is the systematic blocking of email by the Times (or your Internet provider, which amounts to the same thing) before it ever arrives in the intended recipient's emailbox.

Thank you,

[signature]
on behalf of Internet Frontier, Walnut Creek
3/1/2000
__________________________________________________

Then, their response to us.

--- George Vanner From George Vanner Mon Mar 6 11:11:57 2000
X-Apparently-To: [Internet Frontier] via web1305.mail.yahoo.com
Received: from castle.cctimes.com (HELO cct-mx.cctimes.com) (208.142.153.34)
by mta140.mail.yahoo.com with SMTP; 6 Mar 2000 19:11:46 -0000
Received: from SMTP agent by mail gateway Mon, 06 Mar 2000 11:11:46 -0800
Received: from cctimes.com ([166.108.161.20]) by
cct-mx.cctimes.com (Netscape Messaging Server 3.62) with ESMTP id 124; Mon, 6 Mar 2000 11:11:47 -0800
Message-ID: <38C402FD.DD771B68@cctimes.com>
Date: Mon, 06 Mar 2000 11:11:57 -0800
From: "George Vanner" <gvanner@cctimes.com>
Organization: Contra Costa Newspapers, Inc.
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en]C-CCK-MCD (WinNT; U)
To: [Internet Frontier]
Subject: Email Filtering

In regards to your email sent to executives at Contra Costa Newspapers, I have been asked to respond. There are reasons why email is filtered. I'll suggest to you that a few reasons are to avoid email SPAM, filtering when a virus' origin is known, and to protect security breaches. There are also unavoidable issues that may appear to the outside as filtering but are not. Such an issue arises easily when the developer of corporate firewall software (such as Network Associates) has technical problems with a software developer (such as Microsoft) and thus a corporation with a firewall becomes unable to either send or receive messages through their firewall to or from a specific post office. Since computer software is constantly changing, these technical issues are real. It is my understanding that on 3/2/00 a server problem with mx1.mail.yahoo.com and mx2.mail.yahoo.com caused Knight Ridder email destined for delivery to yahoo.com users to not be delivered in a timely manner if at all.

I hope I have provided you with useful information regarding your inquiry.

---------------------------------------------------

Then our response to their response.

From [Internet Frontier] Tue Mar 7 01:56:57 2000
Received: from [208.196.56.86] by
web1304.mail.yahoo.com; Tue, 07 Mar 2000 01:56:57 PST
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 01:56:57 -0800 (PST)
From: [Internet Frontier]
Subject: Re: Email Filtering
To: George Vanner <gvanner@cctimes.com>, griggs@cctimes.com, jarmstrong@cctimes.com

First, thank you for your response.

Second, it is disappointing that the editor and the publisher haven't answered for themselves on a matter of freedom of communication and the policy of the newspaper.

Third, your answer sounds like a standard 'party line' response, with no prior awareness that your newspaper blocked email, and no attempt really made to find out how or why. If your firewall is causing you to miss some email, then you had best have a long chat with your technical staff, and very soon. And your technical staff shouldn't be making policy decisions for your newspaper. Even now, do you understand what is being done, and how?

Fourth, you completely avoided answering the real question--how does a newspaper in the United States justify filtering any messages at all? If I may paraphrase the quote that appears in every issue of the CCT, "Our liberty depends on freedom of communication and that cannot be limited without being lost".

So I'm asking again, how does your newspaper justify filtering any messages at all? And why do you not tell your readers, and the subscribers to your Internet service, that you do so? They need to know why they are innocent victims of a policy they knew nothing about.

[signature]
for Internet Frontier
Walnut Creek
3/7/00

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Then, their response to our response. Oh, we forgot. They haven't responded.

In 1967, William F. Buckley invited Robert Kennedy to appear on his (Buckley's) TV show, Firing Line. Kennedy refused. When Buckley was asked why he thought Kennedy had refused, his reply was, "Why does baloney reject the grinder?". Draw you own conclusions.