Center (EPIC), which was formally announced on April 29 at a press conference in Washington, D.C. We are excited about this development and believe it will work to the mutual advantage of CPSR and the EPIC project. More details on the EPIC announcement are contained in the letter on the facing page.

Another timely piece of CPSR news is the just-completed Directions and Implications of Advanced Computing conference, which was held in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on April 23 and 24. Focused on the theme of Developing an Equitable and Open Information Infrastructure, DIAC-94 was our most successful such conference to date, attracting almost 300 participants. The conference attracted attendees and speakers from a wide range of disciplines, which made for many interesting and valuable interactions. More details of the conference will appear in the Summer issue of the CPSR Newsletter, but I wanted to take the time to thank the conference chairs, Coralee Whitcomb and Hans Klein, and the program chair, Doug Schuler, for putting on a wonderful event.

The DIAC conference was the most recent event in a succession of CPSR activities focused on the National Information Infrastructure. Prior to this conference, CPSR's most visible contribution to the NII debate has been the report we released in October under the title Serving the Community: A Public Interest

Vision of the National Information Infrastructure, which appeared in the Fall-Winter issue of the Newsletter. The report has gotten extensive circulation in Washington, and the feedback we have received has been quite positive. We sent copies to the members of the Information Infrastructure Advisory Council and have received several letters in return, all of which contain very positive comments about out report.

Not everyone, however, is happy with the report. This issue of the newsletter contains a long letter from CPSR member Kent Pitman, in which he criticizes the CPSR Serving the Community report and our process in producing it. Because we believe that discussion and debate are essential to the success of CPSR, we have published Kent's letter in full in this issue.

Generating a documentÑ particularly one that seeks to integrate contributions from a membership that is widely scattered across both the geographic and the political mapÑ is a difficult task. Throughout the process, we tried to solicit as much opinion from the membership as we could. We circulated an initial draft on July 15 and spent the next two months collecting responses from the membership and several chapter-based working groups. We received approximately 75 comments in response, and we considered each of them carefully; most of those suggestions found their way into the final report. There were, as is often the case in distributed writing projects, some timing glitches in the process. For example, as the report moved through the various drafts, we would occasionally get detailed comments critiquing portions of a previous draft that had changed radically by the time those comments were received. There are aspects of the process that we now know how to improve, but much of it ran as well as one could expect.

Kent's letter does not describe fully what happened at the Seattle meeting. In the time that we had allocated for discussion of the NII report, there were a couple of membersÑof whom Kent was oneÑwho argued for substantive changes in the content of the NII report. What was fascinating was that the arguments from these members argued for completely incompatible changes in the report. As Kent's letter notes, he lobbied for CPSR to emphasize a more Libertarian perspective in the report. A member from Seattle, however, argued equally strongly that the report should be rewritten in a direction that most members would identify as Socialist. Both members wanted the report delayed until their position could be accommodated within it. On this point, the two agreed. There were few other points of agreement.

The most important omission in Kent's discussion of the history of the Seattle meeting is that Marc Rotenberg, who was chairing the session, asked the meeting participants whether they wanted to delay publication of the report to provide additional opportunity for input. In the discussion that followed, several people pointed out the enormous value of publishing the report in a timely fashion. The Telecommunications Policy Roundtable had scheduled a major press conference on the NII eight days after the CPSR Annual Meeting, and our report would gain would gain significant visibility if it could be released at that time. We took an informal vote on the motion to delay publication and discovered that the sense of the meeting overwhelmingly favoredÑby a majority of 90 percent or moreÑto publish the report so that it would be available for the TPR meeting

In publishing the Serving the Community report, our goal was not to find a consensus document that everyone in CPSR could endorse in its entirety. Instead we sought to develop an effective, well-written document that would meet two goals. First, it had to have an impact on policymakers in Washington. Second, it had to represent a position that a significant majority of the CPSR membership could endorse. We believe that we have achieved both and that CPSR's voice in the NII debate has been considerably strengthened as a result.

Dear CPSR members and friends:

At a press conference on April 29, 1994, the staff of the CPSR Washington officeÑMarc Rotenberg, David Sobel, and Dave BanisarÑannounced the formation of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a public-interest research center based in Washington, D.C. EPIC will focus on emerging threats to personal privacy in the electronic domain and direct public attention toward the critical privacy issues raised by the National Information Infrastructure, such as the Clipper Chip, the Digital Telephony Proposal, medical record privacy, and the sale of consumer data.

EPIC is a joint project of CPSR and the Fund for Constitutional Government (FCG), a nonprofit charitable organization established in 1974 to protect civil liberties and constitutional rights. After negotiating the design of the new arrangement for several months, we are convinced that the creation of EPIC will strengthen both organizations. In particular, the establishment of EPIC broadens the base of organizational support for privacy issues, increases the independence of a very capable Washington- based staff, offers expanded opportunities for fundraising, reduces administrative overhead, and improves efficiency to the point that we will be able to dedicate more of our energy to program work.

During the last few years, the CPSR Washington office has played a large part in strengthening CPSR's public-interest voice. The work of Marc, David, and David has been nothing short of terrific. They have done an impressive job..

CPSR does not intend to abandon its Washington policy activities. In particular, we will pursue our FOIA lawsuits and continue our membership in the Telecommunications Policy Roundtable, either by contracting for services with organizations such as EPIC or through our own staff and volunteers. In any case, CPSR will continue to serve as a powerful voice for responsible computing.

In the last few months, we have been unusually busy and productive. We published a comprehensive report on the NII entitled Serving the Community: A Public Interest Vision of the National Information Infrastructure. We have circulated an electronic petition opposing the Clipper program that has been signed by over 47,000 people. Last weekend in Boston, CPSR presented its fifth Directions and Implications of Advanced Computing symposium (DIAC-94), which focused on Developing an Equitable and Open Information Infrastructure. The conference was extremely successful and attracted almost 300 participants. We are going as hard and fast as we can!

A great deal of the credibility and respect for our work comes from the fact that our membersÑ computer scientists and others concerned about the impact of technology on societyÑuse their expertise and knowledge to talk realistically about the limitations and possibilities of computer technology. They testify before policymakers and influence major decisions, such as those concerning the NII. That work will continue to grow in importance as the use of computing technology expands. We look forward to the success of both CPSR and EPIC in the new configuration.

ÑEric Roberts CPSR Board President

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