From: Rob Carlson
Subject: Senator calls for encryption crackdown
Cc: apis@vees.net
Organization: The Data Vectoring Society
Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 22:31:37 -0400 (EDT)
To: mailroomuk@zdnet.com

ZDNet,

I'm very disappointed in Wendy McAuliffe regarding her article "Senator calls for encryption crackdown" in ZDNet on September 14, 2001.

The last paragraph reads:

The U.S. encryption proposals will be strongly opposed by cyberliberty advocates. Some privacy groups are meeting at the University of Maryland in Baltimore on Friday evening to discuss ways of promoting the civil liberty argument. "We have to urge our fellow citizens not to give up their basic civil rights, especially not the right to engage in private conversations over distance and share ideas in private that others might not agree with," said Rob Carlson at the Data Vectoring Society who is organizing the meeting.

This is a little misleading because:

• The meeting was held at the University of Maryland Baltimore County This is a completely seperate entity from UMB.
• I am not currently, nor have I ever been associated with an organization called the Data Vectoring Society. In fact, no such organization exists. A simple fact-check would have revealed this quickly. That is simply a ficticious line I put in the Organization: line of my casual e-mails when I'm not representing anyone but myself. Had I been asked about this, I could have told the reporter.
• This quote was taken from a post I made to an Internet mailing list that I frequently contribute to. I have always considered it considerably poor form to quote directly from a posted article with the implication that I said this directly to the reporter in an interview. While I'll admit that it is a quasi-public forum, nowhere is the context of the quote mentioned in the article. This allows the reporter to use any combination of my words on that forum (and I have a lot) to illustrate any point she pleases. This is not a practice you should advocate (I'll go as far as to say tolerate) as a professional news organization.

Frankly, this is most disturbing because I'm not a hard person to get a hold of. In that same post was a link to my personal web page, which contains all my contact number, e-mail address and my cellular telephone which I carry on me all the time.

While I'm thankful for the increased publicity for this issue, it's only valuable to a point. Please encourage Wendy McAuliffe to spend some more time on background research and fact-checking in the future. Thank you.

Rob

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