Coalition Criticizes President Clinton Over Support of Company That Invades Children's Privacy in Schools

[Gary Ruskin]

Commercial Alert						February 8, 2000

	A coalition that opposes the presence of the ZapMe! Corp. in the public
schools sent President Bill Clinton a letter today to protest the
appointment of ZapMe! Corp. CEO Rick Inatome to the Board of Directors
of the National Campaign Against Youth Violence.  

	The appointment of Mr. Inatome undercuts President Clinton's strong
defense of privacy rights in his January 27 State of The Union Address. 
The President said that "First and foremost, we have to safeguard our
citizens' privacy."

	The letter follows.
								
	Dear President Clinton:

	The ZapMe! Corp. issued a news release on February 7, announcing that
you have appointed ZapMe! CEO Rick Inatome to the Board of Directors of
the National Campaign Against Youth Violence. 

	ZapMe! is a corporation that seeks to turn the public schools into
little shopping malls and market research factories.  It puts computers
in the schools and then snoops on how schoolchildren use the web in
order to gather market research data so that they can more effectively
sell products to these children via the company's Internet "ZapMall." 
So doing, the company represents an egregious violation both of the
privacy of unsuspecting schoolchildren, and of the purpose of schools in
our society.

	Schools are for learning, Mr. President, not shopping or snooping. 
They should not be used to corral captive audiences of impressionable
schoolchildren to force them to watch advertising or to extract market
research from them.  Yet that is what ZapMe does, and you have given
this venture the imprimatur of your office with this appointment.  You
are helping this company use the problem of violence in the schools in
order to give legitimacy to its highly questionable business plan.

 	According to the ZapMe! news release, Jeff Bleich, Executive Director
of the National Campaign stated that "Both the President [Clinton] and I
are deeply grateful to have Rick [Inatome] as a member of the Campaign's
Board. Rick Inatome brings with him not only the ability to reach out to
middle schools and high schools around the country with ZapMe!'s
Internet media network resources but also his intelligent leadership to
this effort to prevent youth violence."

	We regret that you have made this appointment, and urge you to retract
it immediately.

Sincerely,

Joan Almon, U.S. Coordinator, Alliance for Childhood
Jason Catlett, President, Junkbusters Corp.
Jane M. Healy, Ph.D., author, Failure to Connect
Michael F. Jacobson, co-author, Marketing Madness
Jean Kilbourne, author, Deadly Persuasion
James Love, Director, Consumer Project on Technology
Jim Metrock, President, Obligation, Inc.
Mark Crispin Miller, Professor of Media Ecology, New York University
Gary Ruskin, Director, Commercial Alert
Phyllis Schlafly, President, Eagle Forum
Donald E. Wildmon, President, American Family Association

<----------letter ends here--------->
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
The Wall Street Journal's article on ZapMe! ("Is ZapMe collecting data
on school kids?,"1/19/00) is available at
<http://www.zdnet.com/filters/printerfriendly/0,6061,2423767-2,00.html>.  

The New York Times web article on ZapMe! ("Criticism for Company
Offering Free Computers to Schools," 2/2/00) is at
<http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/02/cyber/education/02education.html>.

ZapMe's news release is at
<http://www.corporate-ir.net/ireye/ir_site.zhtml?ticker=IZAP&script=410&layout=-6&item_id=73375>.

Commercial Alert's web page on ZapMe! is at
<http://www.essential.org/alert/zapme/index.html>.  Commercial Alert's
main web page is <http://www.essential.org/alert/>.

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PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY
-- 
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Gary Ruskin | Commercial Alert 
1611 Connecticut Ave. NW Suite #3A | Washington, DC 20009
Phone: (202) 296-2787 | Fax (202) 833-2406
http://www.essential.org/alert/ | mailto:gary@essential.org
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