Senate Approves Spam Bill; Taking On Government Secrecy; Aide Disciplined For Alleged Memo Theft in Senate; FBI Says It Is Not Spying on Critics

Senate Approves Spam Bill

ComputerWorld reports that the U.S. Senate yesterday approved a national spam bill that would allow fines of up to $6 million or five-year jail terms for some spammers, but the bill needs to go back to the House of Representatives for final approval.

Taking On Government SecrecyWashington Post. The Post reports that Aftergood asks foundations and donors for $150,000 a year to keep his online newsletter, Secrecy News (www.fas.org/sgp/index.html) going, and he often scoops the national media with anecdotes about government attempts to keep information secret.

Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy, is the David in an era of Goliath-strength government stealth who is out to slay what he sees as the arbitrariness of the U.S. system for classifying documents to keep them secret, according to a story in the

Aide Disciplined For Alleged Memo Theft in SenateThe Boston Globe reports that Orrin G. Hatch, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, said yesterday that he had put one of his staff members on administrative leave for allegedly obtaining data from the secure computer networks of two Democratic senators. The newspaper reports that the memos concerned political strategy on blocking the confirmation of several judicial nominations.FBI Says It Is Not Spying on CriticsChicago Sun-Times. The story reports that some members of Congress are calling for hearings into an FBI bulletin sent to more than 17,000 state and local police agencies that warned about anti-war protests being planned in Washington and San Francisco.

Senior FBI officials took the unusual step Tuesday of publicly declaring that agents are not using the war against terrorism as a cover to collect information on people who demonstrate against the government, according to a story in the