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Information presented on this site is considered public information and may be distributed or copied unless otherwise specified. Use of appropriate byline/photo/image credits is requested.

For site management, information is collected for statistical purposes. This government computer system uses software programs to create summary statistics, which are used for such purposes as assessing what information is of most and least interest, determining technical design specifications, and identifying system performance or problem areas.

For site security purposes and to ensure that this service remains available to all users, this government computer system employs software programs to monitor network traffic to identify unauthorized attempts to upload or change information, or otherwise cause damage.

Except for authorized law enforcement investigations, no other attempts are made to identify individual users or their usage habits. Raw data logs are used for no other purposes and are scheduled for regular destruction in accordance with National Archives and Records Administration guidelines.

Unauthorized attempts to upload information or change information on this service are strictly prohibited and may be punishable under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 and the National Information Infrastructure Protection Act.

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xxx.yyy.com (or 123.123.23.12) This is the host name (or IP address) associated with the requester (you as the visitor). In this case, (....com) the requester is coming from a commercial address. Depending on the requestor's method of network connection, the host name (or IP address) may or may not identify a specific computer. Connections via many Internet Service Providers assign different IP addresses for each session, so the host name identifies only the ISP. The host name (or IP address) will identify a specific computer if that computer has a fixed IP address.

[28/Jan/1997:00:00:01 -0500] This is the date and time of the request "GET /sitename/news/nr012797.html HTTP/1.0" -- this is the location of the requested file.

200 This is the status code - 200 is OK - the request was filled.

16704 This is the size of the requested file in bytes.

Mozilla 3.0 This identifies the type of browser software used to access the page, which indicates what design parameters to use in constructing the pages.

www.altavista.digital.com This indicates the last site the person visited, which indicates how people find this site.

Requests for other types of documents use similar information. No other user-identifying information is collected.