Mass mailings spur rules change

Forestry Service adds human filter.

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- The government wants to hear from you. Just don't send a lot of e-mail. In the latest demonstration of computer technology surpassing Washington's ability to cope with it, the U.S. Forest Service scrambled to adopt new rules about how taxpayers can send electronic messages to all its employees. The government says it moved to prevent what could become a deluge of unwanted constituente-mail, which can be sent with a single mouse- click to thousands of bureaucrats more easily and more quickly these days than a single letter can be hand-delivered by the Postal Service. But the modern convenience of e-mail for citizens is proving inconvenient for the government as it struggles to balance its obligations to listen to the nation's populace against its desire to get work done. The Forest Service changed its rules earlier this year after Andy Stahl, of the activist Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, discovered a method to send e-mail messages to 27,000 agency employees, a sort of high-tech leafleting. Then, about 40 groups and individuals, sympathetic to forest industries, caught wind of the stunt by Stahl, a former agency employee. They asked for e-mail addresses for all 34,000 employees so they, too, could send messages -- an estimated 1.3 million e- mails in total. "Would you please send me the e-mail list for Montana Forest Service employees?" asked a writer in Montana. "I understand the U.S. Forest Service e-mail system is available," another wrote from Colorado. Fearing the agency's computers might crash under the strain, Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck decided to become a human filter for all the digital discourse. "It could potentially grind it to a halt," said spokesman George Lennon. Under the agency's new policy, anyone who wants to get a message to all Forest Service employees will send it to Dombeck. If he decides the message is appropriate -- and he promises to be extremely lenient -- he will post it on the agency's internal Web site. The Forest Service's dilemma isn't unique. Congress, too, is looking at ways to restrict the flow of constituent e-mail. The home page for the House of Representatives offers a "write your representative" tool, but citizens can write only to a single congressman, not all at once. During the impeachment debate, e-mails flooded Capitol Hill and strained computer systems. And in 1996, the Federal Communications Commission received 200,000 messages in less than a week when consumers mistakenly believed the agency might propose an Internet tax. That barrage shut down the agency's e-mail system and public affairs computers. The FCC has since reinforced the system to prevent it from happening again. Some experts said the Forest Service handled its dilemma wisely. "We're paying our taxes and funding these agencies to get work done," said Ray Everett-Church of the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail. "If they're listening to these diatribes, they're not going to be doing the people's business."

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