I think writing to your state and local reps is a very good thing, but I have some serious reservations about the FTV website.
First off, there's been virtually NO transparency: we have no idea who's behind it, or why it was registered anonymously through a Canadian registrar. The supposed webmaster popped up on Phil's Facebook earlier (using a FB account that is devoid of any other information), gave a half-hearted apology for the porn that was posted on FTV comments page and then disappeared. A few of us asked questions regarding the security of the website and never got a response. As someone who used to design and manage websites for a living, it's pretty clear to me that whoever's running the FTV site has no clue what they're doing. They didn't implement basic security protocols, and allowing executable HTML code in the comments boxes was absolutely ridiculous. It very well may have been a genuine error on their part, but it makes me question ever single other aspect of that website; if they didn't even take basic security precautions, I have to wonder whether anything else is working properly (like their supposed "auto-fax" system.) Further, there's absolutely nothing that leads me to believe the site is using any sort of encryption...and even if they finally implement it, there's nothing to say that someone didn't already get into their site and harvest everyone's info. To be fair, there's nothing to say that did happen either, but given the whole porn thing it's certainly within the realm of possibility.
Second, as of right now (12am MST, Sunday morning) there's still no Terms Of Service or Privacy Policy posted, which is required by law in many jurisdictions for any website that collects personal information. I've heard that this specific issue was brought to the attention of the person in charge of the FTV website, but they still haven't bothered to put one up and it's been two days now. The people directly involved with the site aren't saying anything, aren't addressing legitimate concerns, and that's disconcerting.
Finally, I'm not entirely sure how effective this will be. Many offices now use a fax-to-email system: when you send a fax to their number, it's automatically converted to an email and sent to their inbox. If they have this sort of system in their office and start receiving hundreds of faxes/email all at once, they may very well just mark them all as spam and trash them (and block the incoming number.) To be honest, if I was a politician who already received thousands of faxes and emails a day, that's exactly what I would do (then again, I'm proudly NOT a politician, so...) Of course all of this assumes the FTV's auto-forwarding feature is actually functional, which I have my doubts about given the absolutely amateur way the rest of the website has been implemented thus far.
Look, I think most (if not all) of the people involved clearly had our best interests at heart. I don't question the intents of RipTrippers, Phil, Twisted or anyone else, and like I started off with, I think writing your reps is a great idea. I've done it and will do it again. But the implementation in this case has been highly questionable and it bothers me. Instead of relying on a sketchy website, I think everyone would be much better off to just cut out the middleman, print out that same info in a letter and mail it to your reps' offices YOURSELF. This way you know exactly where it's going. We all know how easy it is to ignore emails, especially when we get a bunch from the same sender (in this case the FTV website); ignoring physical letters is much more difficult, especially when they're not all coming from the same return address. Most grocery stores sell stamps: when you go grocery shopping this week, just pick up some stamps when you check out. Or go to the USPS's website and print out postage at home. You don't even have to go to the post office to mail it, you can put outgoing mail in your mailbox (that's what that flag is for) or the "Outgoing Mail" box at apartment/condo complexes. It's not a whole lot of extra work, but at least you have a higher chance of successfully getting the attention of someone important.
