Advocacy Groups Protest ‘Logic Puzzle’
Roll Call Staff
When more than 100 advocacy and lobbying groups decided this week to sound off on a new tool being used by House offices to block unwanted mass electronic communications, they decided that e-mailing their complaint to Members probably wasn’t the best way to get their message heard.
Instead they fell back on a slightly older technology and faxed every House office to decry the use of “logic puzzles,” which the Chief Administrative Officer recently introduced as an optional enhancement to the “Write Your Representative” service already offered for House Web pages.
“Given the roadblocks that logic puzzles posed to us it was difficult to determine just how we should send these letters but it was determined that we would fax them to all individual House Member offices,” said Pete Sapp, spokesman for the National Taxpayers Union.
The letter sent on behalf of 105 advocacy groups — ranging from MoveOn.org to RightMarch.com — asks House Members to say “no” to the logic puzzles.
The new Web feature, which was first made available in late May, is designed to reduce unwanted mass e-mails by requiring a user to complete a simple puzzle before being allowed to send a message to a Member. (Some logic puzzle questions include “What is five minus one?” and “What is the sum of two plus one?”) The idea is that only an actual person would be able to complete the puzzle and that automated mass e-mail programs would be thwarted from blasting offices with repeated form messages.
But the advocacy groups say the new tool “would block millions of constituent messages from people who expect you — and elected you — to listen to them. We believe the use of such technology, to limit communications between the public and elected officials, is wrong and a real threat to democratic principles.”
The letter also notes that advocacy and nonprofit organizations that represent public opinion increasingly have used the Internet to help their members communicate with Congress.
“These emails are not spam,” the letter states. “They are generated by the individuals themselves using Web-based technologies. Congressional attempts to differentiate among constituent communications — accepting only unorganized communications but blocking communications where individuals are working together to deliver a strong message — raise dangerous questions about the infringement of constituents’ First Amendment Rights.”
The advocacy groups are asking Members who currently use the logic puzzle technology to disable the feature. The groups also say they want to work with Congressional IT staff to improve the way Congress receives constituent messages.
According to House Administration spokesman Jon Brandt, as of this week about 60 House offices have chosen to add the logic puzzle feature to their Web pages, and only one of those offices has dropped the technology since picking it up.
Brandt acknowledged that the committee, which oversees the CAO, had seen the letter from the advocacy groups earlier this week, adding, “the committee is open to meeting with these groups to listen to their concerns, but to the best of my knowledge they have not requested a meeting with us.”
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