From: David HM Spector <spector@zeitgeist.com>
Date: Sun, 21 Sep 1997 02:01:43 +0800
To: fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu
Subject: Politcal Action Toolkit now available
Message-ID: <199709201753.NAA20166@wintermute.ny.zeitgeist.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain




...not having much in the way of sleep since reading Louis Freeh's
testimony and his plans to assault the US Constitution I decided to do
something about it, and try to develop something that would help
others get involved too...

I would like to announce the availability of a Personal Political
Action Kit (PersPAK).  It contains full databases of members of the
House and the Senate and may be used for mail merging, faxing (senate
only at the moment, house members hopefully this week with the next
release), email campaigns, as well as plain old phone calls.  The data
were culled from the House and Senate directories that are on the Web,
and are current as of September 3, 1997.

The datasets are provided in two formats, tab-delimited and as an
Excel spreadsheet.  Two sample letters are included that show how to
use the mail-merge features of Office95/97, along with a README file
that will step users through the basics of using this kit and offers
some hints on what to say -- and sometimes more importantly NOT to say
-- in a letter to their congress-folk.

The kit can be accessed at:  http://www.zeitgeist.com/crypto

I plan on updating this toolkit with more features soon with some more
tools, and the ability to send mail/faxes to entire committees (as
opposed to picking congress persons/senators by individually), some Java
Applets to auto-generate letters, etc.

I'm making it available under the GNU Public License, so feel free to use this 
kit as a base for other tools.

Constructive criticism/ideas may be sent to perspak@zeitgeist.com

regards,
  _DHMS

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David HM Spector                                         spector@zeitgeist.com
Network Design & Infrastructure Security
-.-. --- -. -. . -.-. -  .-- .. - ....  .- -- .- - . ..- .-.  .-. .- -.. .. ---
"New and stirring things are belittled because if they are not belittled, 
the humiliating question arises, 'Why then are you not taking part in them?'"
                                                        --H. G. Wells