[Asrg] 0. General - News Article - [IP] President Bush using challenge-response for his email

This is interesting on several levels.... one of them being that as a test I 
just sent an E-mail to president@whitehouse.gov and didn't receive a reply 
suggesting that I had to visit the purported Web site in order for the E-mail to 
be delivered.  (The actual automatically generated E-mail I *did* get back 
follows).  Do you suppose they abandoned their new C/R system, already, due to 
the widespread objections it apparently received?

Another observation is that clearly the White House is plagued by spam, too...

And yet another is their apparent desire to automatically send the "right" 
formletter response, without needing to actually read incoming e-mails, not even 
by low-level clerical grunts.

<---- Begin Forwarded Message ---->
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2003 04:51:54 -0400
Subject: [IP] President Bush using challenge-response for his email
From: Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>
To: ip <ip@v2.listbox.com>
Reply-To: dave@farber.net

------ Forwarded Message
From: Mike Masnick <mike@techdirt.com>
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2003 01:15:33 -0700
To: declan@well.com, dave@farber.net
Subject: President Bush using challenge-response for his email

Declan, Dave,

Just read this article:

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/6330165.htm

about how the Whitehouse has now made it more difficult to email the
President.  Since the two of you are interested in both tech and political
issues, I thought you'd be interested in the story just from the angle of
"now the Whitehouse is making it even more difficult to be heard".

However, I think, the more interesting point is one I discuss here:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20030718/018227_F.shtml

President Bush has really started using "challenge-response" technology to
get rid of spam (and to better sort emails).  It works exactly like the
basic challenge response systems: (a) you email the President (b) instead
of getting the email, you receive a reply telling you to go to a webpage
(c) at that webpage, you need to perform certain tasks to prove you are
human (though, the ones on the Whitehouse page are a bit more cumbersome
than most C-R systems).

So, now, the bigger question is whether or not Mailblocks, the company that
claims to own patents on "challenge-response" will sue the Whitehouse?

Mike
Techdirt.com

------ End of Forwarded Message

-------------------------------------
Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/

<----  End Forwarded Message  ---->

Here is the autoreply I got back:

<---- Begin Forwarded Message ---->
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2003 09:54:43 -0500 (EST)
From: Autoresponder@WhiteHouse.GOV
Subject: Re: SOTU speech
To: gep2@terabites.com

Thank you for e-mailing President Bush.  Your ideas and comments are very
important to him.

Because of the large volume of e-mail received, the President cannot personally
respond to each message.  However, the White House staff considers and reports
citizen ideas and concerns.

In addition to President@WhiteHouse.gov, we have developed White House Web
Mail, an automated e-mail response system.  Please access
http://www.whitehouse.gov/webmail to submit comments on a specific issue.

Additionally, we welcome you to visit our website for the most up-to-date
information on current event and topics of interest to you.

Received: from c000.snv.cp.net ([209.228.32.71])
 by WHITEHOUSE.GOV (PMDF V5.2-33 #30735)
 with SMTP id <01KYEEQOTDJ890YYFV@WHITEHOUSE.GOV> for president@Whitehouse.GOV;
 Fri, 18 Jul 2003 09:54:13 EST
Received: (cpmta 4805 invoked from network); Fri, 18 Jul 2003 06:54:12 -0700
Received: from 12.239.18.238 (HELO WinProxy.anywhere)
 by smtp.terabites.com (209.228.32.71) with SMTP; Fri,
 18 Jul 2003 06:54:12 -0700
Received: from 192.168.0.30 by 192.168.0.1 (WinProxy); Fri,
 18 Jul 2003 08:53:42 -0600
Received: from 192.168.0.240 (unverified [192.168.0.240])
 by nts1.terabites.com (EMWAC SMTPRS 0.83)
 with SMTP id <B0000024759@nts1.terabites.com>; Fri, 18 Jul 2003 09:23:28 -0500
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2003 09:23:28 -0500
From: gep2@terabites.com
Subject: SOTU speech
To: president@Whitehouse.GOV
Message-id: <B0000024759@nts1.terabites.com>
MIME-version: 1.0
X-Mailer: SPRY Mail Version: 04.00.06.17
Content-type: text/plain; CHARSET=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
X-Sent: 18 Jul 2003 13:54:12 GMT
Comments: Text of the original message not included

<----  End Forwarded Message  ---->

Gordon Peterson                  http://personal.terabites.com/
1977-2002  Twenty-fifth anniversary year of Local Area Networking!
Support the Anti-SPAM Amendment!  Join at http://www.cauce.org/
12/19/98: Partisan Republicans scornfully ignore the voters they "represent".
12/09/00: the date the Republican Party took down democracy in America.

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