Clips 3/19/02

[Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>]

Clips March 19, 2002

ARTICLES
Bush Poised to Back New Border Agency 
Daschle 'vehemence' on Ridge irks White House
Groups Plan Lawsuit Against FCC Cable Modem Ruling
Wireless industry counting on US to free up spectrum
House To Vote On Telecommuting, IT Training Bills
Pa. Law: ISPs Must Block Child Porn
90 Are Arrested in Inquiry Into Internet Child-Sex Ring
CIA Web Site Cans Cookies After Report 
Many Interior employees still stuck offline
FTC Anti-Telemarketer List Would Face Heavy Demand
Losing high-tech rights at work
Hacker exposes financial information at Georgia Tech
B2B Transactions Lead E-Commerce
Gates to Create 70 Schools for Disadvantaged
Tech firms seek Pentagon review of ban on non-citizen contractors 
High-tech oversight agencies urged to develop more expertise
Intel Exec: Moore's Law Keeps Going and Going
Home PCs join together as virtual supercomputer
Revised e-gov bill achieved
New priorities in IT spending mix
Meet the music pirate
What if the net was as free as air?
Bug sets windows shaking
SPECIAL SECTION: TELECOM Cellular, DSL lower need for land lines
SPECIAL SECTION: TELECOM U.S. not getting wireless message
Transportation mulls smart cards for security
State and local governments: coping
FOSE visitor?s shopping list calls for middleware
Technology Briefs
*************
The Washington Post
Bush Poised to Back New Border Agency 
Plan Would Merge 3 Bureaucracies 

The Bush administration is poised to recommend a dramatic reorganization of the
federal agencies charged with protecting the nation's borders by merging the
Customs Service, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Border
Patrol, administration and congressional officials said yesterday.

The merger of the three agencies, each responsible for part of the nation's
border security, would be an effort to streamline government functions and
shore up the nation's porous border defenses as a response to the Sept. 11
terrorist attacks. The restructuring, which would require congressional
approval, is intended to improve coordination among the thousands of federal
workers who protect U.S. borders but work for different organizations.

Similar proposals have been rejected since the Nixon administration, but the
imminent agreement reflects the government's new sense of urgency in overcoming
bureaucratic hurdles.

Senior administration officials will meet today to finalize the merger proposal
and draft recommendations for President Bush, officials said. The consolidation
has been a priority for Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge, who has been
forced to negotiate bureaucratic turf battles within the administration.

Ridge had hoped such a proposal would be part of the president's State of the
Union address and budget message. He backed down at that time because of
ongoing wrangling, conceding that he may have been pushing for change too
quickly.

Although top Bush advisers have agreed to combine the INS and Border Patrol,
which are part of the Justice Department, with Customs, which is part of the
Treasury Department, they have yet to decide whether the new agency will be
part of Justice or a stand-alone organization, possibly under Ridge. Democrats
in Congress are seeking to create a new Cabinet department responsible for
homeland security -- something President Bush has opposed.

Ridge is scheduled to meet today with Attorney General John D. Ashcroft,
Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill and other members of the Homeland Security
Council to finalize the agreement. Administration officials said they
anticipate today's meeting will be the final one before a recommendation is
made.

Ridge spokesman Gordon Johndroe confirmed that the Homeland Security Council
will meet today but declined to discuss its agenda.

Congressional sources said the most likely recommendation is for the new entity
to be placed in the Justice Department, but administration officials cautioned
that such a conclusion was premature. Moving Customs under the umbrella of the
INS would likely be controversial in Congress, which has been highly critical
of that agency, particularly after the belated arrival last week of student
visa approval notices for two of the Sept. 11 hijackers.

Such a change might also draw opposition from business groups concerned that
routine Customs operations could be affected.

Any proposal would give Congress an opportunity to question administration
officials on the structure of the homeland security apparatus, and may provide
congressional critics of the INS a chance to overhaul that agency. Bush has
proposed reforming the INS without legislative action by breaking it into
service and enforcement units.

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), chairman of the Governmental Affairs
Committee, has introduced legislation that would create a Cabinet-level
Department of Homeland Security, combining the three entities in the Bush
proposal with others, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the
Coast Guard. They would be under the command of Ridge or a different secretary
of homeland security.

A Lieberman spokesman said the Bush plan "is moving in our direction." Rep.
William M. "Mac" Thornberry (R-Tex.) has also proposed a consolidation.

Congressional Democrats, supported by a small number of Republicans, have also
asked Ridge to testify on homeland security, a request the administration has
refused on the grounds that Ridge is a member of Bush's staff and is not
required to appear before congressional committees, as Cabinet officers are.

Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) said senators might consider
issuing a subpoena to Ridge, and senators have raised the possibility of
requiring testimony from some 80 officials of the various agencies included in
the homeland security effort.

In an interview last November, Ridge said "there is an appetite" to bring
Customs, INS, Border Patrol and possibly the Coast Guard under one agency. He
said it made little sense that "when you are coming across a border, you have
five or six different folks, wearing different uniforms, and you have to run a
gantlet.

"We would be a lot safer," Ridge said, "if we could not only fuse some of this
capability, but exchange some of the intelligence that these agencies now get."

Ridge's comments drew cheers from congressional sponsors of such legislation,
but he ran into opposition from officials in those agencies who were reluctant
or unwilling to relinquish power to a new, more centralized agency.
*********************
The Washington Times
Daschle 'vehemence' on Ridge irks White House

O'FALLON, Mo.  The White House yesterday expressed surprise at the "vehemence"
of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, who said Sunday he might subpoena
Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge to testify before Congress.
     "It's surprising that some in the legislature are pushing this issue with
such a vehemence," said White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer. "Why is
Congress pushing with such zeal?"
     Mr. Fleischer was responding to Mr. Daschle's assertion that a subpoena
"is an option" in forcing Mr. Ridge to testify before the Senate. The South
Dakota Democrat wants to grill Mr. Ridge about the administration's plans to
double spending on domestic security next year to $38 billion.
     "Coercion is not ever my first choice," Mr. Daschle said on CBS' "Face the
Nation." He said he hopes the subpoena does not become a "necessary" step.
     "There's been some rise in the elevated amount of rhetoric from the
legislature, given the fact that they have all the information they're
seeking," Mr. Fleischer said in response to questions from The Washington Times
aboard Air Force One.
     "Congress should not ask for testimony that goes above and beyond the
historical bipartisan traditions," he added. "This is an important line to draw
and the president has drawn it."
     Mr. Ridge has met privately on Capitol Hill to brief both parties on the
war against terrorism. But Mr. Daschle wants him to testify in a public forum.
     Traditionally, only the heads of Cabinets and federal agencies testify
before Congress. Advisers to the president typically meet privately with
lawmakers. These officials include the president's chief of staff, national
security adviser and White House counsel.
     On Wednesday, Mr. Bush flatly refused to allow Mr. Ridge to appear before
Congress.
     "He doesn't have to testify," the president said at a news conference.
"He's a part of my staff, and that's part of the prerogative of the executive
branch of government. And we hold that very dear."
     Mr. Bush added: "I'm not going to let Congress erode the power of the
executive branch. I have a duty to protect the executive branch from
legislative encroachment."
     Yesterday, Mr. Fleischer downplayed suggestions that Mr. Daschle's threat
of a subpoena is political.
     "No, no, not political," he said. "I don't think that's fair to say,
because there have been some Republicans who have raised similar issues."
     These include Rep. Ernest Istook of Oklahoma, chairman of the House
Appropriations subcommittee on the Treasury, Postal Service and general
government, and Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, ranking member of the Senate
Appropriations Committee.
     Mr. Stevens and the committee's chairman, Democratic Sen. Robert C. Byrd
of West Virginia, sent a letter Friday asking Mr. Ridge to appear before their
committee.
     Spokesmen for both senators said yesterday they were still waiting for a
response. No deadline was set for the White House to comply or respond to the
letter.
     "Senator Byrd still hopes that there can be a nonconfrontational
resolution to get Mr. Ridge up here to testify," Byrd spokesman Tom Gavin said.
     Mr. Fleischer made his remarks on his way to Missouri, where the president
visited a manufacturing plant and pushed for more small-business tax breaks.
Current law allows firms to write off as an immediate expense the first $25,000
in new investments of up to $200,000. Mr. Bush wants to raise that to the first
$40,000 of up to $325,000 in new investments.
     The president also renewed his push to permanently repeal the death tax.
He cited German immigrant, Rolf Albers, owner of the manufacturing plant, as
someone who wants to leave his business to his family without excessive
taxation.
     "If you're Rolf, and you build up your business, and build up your assets
through years of hard work, you ought to be able to make the decision of who
gets to own that business after you move on," Mr. Bush said, triggering
applause.
     Afterward, the president helped raise $1.5 million at a dinner for former
Rep. Jim Talent of Missouri, a Republican who is seeking the Senate seat
currently occupied by Democrat Jean Carnahan.
*******************
Newsbytes
Groups Plan Lawsuit Against FCC Cable Modem Ruling

Several consumers groups and Internet service providers might sue to prevent
the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from instituting a ruling made last
week that would exempt cable ISPs from being required to open their networks to
competitors. 
Media Access Project Deputy Director Cheryl Leanza said that it, the Center for
Digital Democracy, the Consumer Federation of America and some unidentified
ISPs, are considering the lawsuit along with other options to protest the FCC's
decision, which they say limits consumer choice. 

"It's highly likely that we'll do that; we're still evaluating the situation,"
Leanza said. 

She added that the case would be made before a federal appeals court. 

The FCC last week voted 3-1 in favor of classifying cable ISPs such as those
run by AT&T Corp. and AOL Time Warner as "information services" rather than
"telecommunications services." Telecom services are required under law to offer
access to their networks to unaffiliated companies to try to spark voice and
data competition. 

Cable ISPs have come under fire for either not offering, in many cases, access
to their networks, or to doing so only under government mandate. 

Leanza said that lawsuits against FCC again must be filed at the appeals court
level within two months of the decisions' publications in the Federal Register.
She added that there is no decision yet on which appeals circuit would hear the
case. 

Chairman Michael Powell, R, spoke in favor of the decision last week, noting
that the FCC needs to take a lead in spurring more broadband investment, but
support was not unanimous. 

Commissioner Michael Copps, D, who voted against the ruling, said that it
strays from Congress' original intent in classifying different kinds of
communications providers in different ways, and amounts to lawmaking. He also
said that the move most likely would benefit dominant providers, and creates
"dangerous uncertainty" in the broadband market. 

The two consumers' groups also spoke out against the decision. 

"Michael Powell's FCC has struck a deadly blow to the future health of the
Internet and has given a great victory to the cable industry lobby," said Jeff
Chester, executive director for the Center for Digital Democracy, in a written
statement. "Cable will now be able to become an even more powerful media
gatekeeper, controlling much of what will be digitally distributed into U.S.
homes." 

Officials from the CFA and the Center for Digital Democracy were not
immediately available for comment on the possible lawsuit. 

Meanwhile, the FCC in separate action is considering whether to classify DSL as
an information service rather than a telecommunications service, which would
allow companies such as the Baby Bells to offer DSL without many of the
regulatory fetters in telecommunications law. 

That FCC action has become more important to the Baby Bells because, although
the U.S. House of Representatives has passed legislation that would ease rules
on DSL, the Senate is expected to keep the bill from reaching the White House. 
*******************
The Boston Globe
Wireless industry counting on US to free up spectrum

By Peter J. Howe, Globe Staff, 3/19/2002

RLANDO, Fla. - President Bush's ''spectrum czar'' said yesterday the
administration is making progress in freeing up airwave channels the cellphone
industry says it needs for reliable voice calling and advanced wireless data
services. 


But Nancy Victory, head of the Commerce Department's National
Telecommunications & Information Administration, cautioned that it could take
years to free up the spectrum channels and that the industry may not get all
the airwave space it is hoping for.

At the kickoff of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association's
annual gathering here, Victory said her agency hopes to complete by June an
initial study on removing government users, principally military applications,
from 120 megahertz of spectrum that is seen as a perfect fit for consumer
wireless services.

Such a move would give the US wireless industry nearly 60 percent more
spectrum, or licensed microwave frequencies that could be used by cellphones,
wireless data cards for personal computers, and related transmitting gear.

In the long run, such a move would ensure more Americans can get consistent
wireless phone service and faster access to advanced wireless data services -
although some industry critics contend the wireless industry should do a better
job of developing technology to get more use out of existing airwave channels
before displacing existing users.

Association president Thomas E. Wheeler said getting more spectrum is crucial
for sustaining US wireless growth. Wheeler said US wireless companies have
access to a total of 189 megahertz within the airwaves, compared to 300 in
Japan and Germany and nearly 350 in the United Kingdom.

''Without spectrum, calls cannot go through,'' Wheeler said. ''We need to send
a message: Free the wireless spectrum now!''

The two spectrum bands the wireless industry most wants to get are partially
occupied by some commercial users, Defense Department systems, and some
satellite systems.

These same spectrum bands are already used extensively in Europe and other
parts of the world for wireless services. The Pentagon has raised concerns that
US military systems could be vulnerable to interference from commercial users
in some countries. 

The Bush administration has proposed creating a trust fund with the proceeds
from auctioning off spectrum licenses in those bands, with the proceeds
earmarked for the Pentagon and other users to shift their existing
communications systems in those frequencies to other frequency zones. The fund
could potentially attract billions of dollars.

Victory said when the ongoing feasibility study is done, it ''may be we're not
able to clear all 120 megahertz'' for commercial wireless use.

''The concern among government users,'' Victory said, ''is a little bit of
skepticism as to what ultimately will really be the rules, how much money
they're going to get access to.... The government is struggling to figure out
how to do more with the spectrum we have.''

Victory added, ''I'd like the [wireless] industry to thrive. I want to increase
innovation. I want to encourage creation of jobs and better services. We do see
wireless as a very, very competitive industry.''
*******************
Newsbytes
House To Vote On Telecommuting, IT Training Bills

The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote this week on legislation
that would establish a public-private high-tech worker exchange program, and
allow federal contractors and their employees to telecommute. 
The House on Tuesday will consider H.R. 3924, "The Freedom To Telecommute Act,"
a bill that would prohibit federal agencies from denying work to contractors
simply because the contractor allows its workers to telecommute. 

Under the bill, offered by Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., employees would be allowed to
work from home, provided that the telecommuting arrangement does not endanger
national security. 

The House will consider the bill under suspension of the rules, a procedure
used for relatively non-controversial bills that limits debate and bars
lawmakers from offering amendments. Suspension bills typically are agreed to by
a voice vote, but if a roll-call vote is demanded, two-thirds approval is need
for passage - unlike normal bills, which require a simple majority. 

The House on Wednesday will vote on the "Digital Tech Corps Act," a bill
co-sponsored by Davis and Government Reform Committee Chairman Dan Burton,
R-Ind. 

The Tech Corps Act would create a worker exchange program between federal
government agencies and the high-tech sector. The program would allow federal
information technology employees to train at private corporations for up to two
years, while encouraging private-sector IT workers to work for the government
for the same period of time. 

The Government Reform Committee approved both bills by voice vote last week,
after defeating an amendment offered the panel's ranking Democrat, Henry Waxman
of California, to limit the number of government IT workers permitted to
transfer to the private sector. 

The legislative package has the support of the House leadership and would
codify the Bush administration?s plans to increase the level of federal
outsourcing by a fixed percentage each year. 
******************
Associated Press
Pa. Law: ISPs Must Block Child Porn

HARRISBURG, Pa. - Starting next month, Internet service providers with
customers in Pennsylvania will be legally responsible for blocking access to
child pornography.
The law, with maximum penalties including prison time for repeat offenders, is
believed to be the first of its kind.

But by putting the onus on the state attorney general's office to notify ISPs
of what should be blocked, the law is expected to have limited success.

"This is a community that already knows it is on the edges of legality and as a
result, they don't do things to bring attention to themselves," said Chris
Hunter, a free-speech researcher at the University of Pennsylvania.

Under the law, signed last month, prosecutors would, after obtaining a court
order, give ISPs a list of Web sites and other items to block.

But child pornographers  many of whom operate from overseas  can quickly move
to other sites. Child porn sites are generally temporary fixtures that
disappear after a few hours anyway, said John Philip Jenkins, a Penn State
professor who has researched Internet pornography issues.

"There's probably more out there than anybody knows, but this probably won't be
an effective way of doing anything about it," Jenkins said.

The law carries penalties of $5,000 for the first offense and $20,000 for the
second. After that, violators are subject to fines of $30,000 and up to seven
years imprisonment.

The law has the blessing of the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties
Union (news - web sites). Larry Frankel, the chapter's executive director, said
someone whose material is cut off could seek a court hearing.

But ISPs consider the law impractical from a technical standpoint.

"Once you use my service to get on the Internet, I have no way of controlling
where you go and what you see," said Sue Ashdown, director of the American
Internet Service Provider Association, an organization of small ISPs.

ISPs serve as conduits and do not actually control content  the way the postal
service delivers letters without knowing what's inside the envelopes.

The law does not require ISPs to actively monitor their service  only to block
specific sites or services when notified. But more technically astute users can
often bypass blocks by using so-called proxy services.

And while some ISPs now market themselves as "family friendly," they often do
so by restricting access to legitimate sites as well.

Kevin Harley, a spokesman for the state attorney general's office, said the
agency plans to expand its child sexual exploitation unit and will monitor the
Internet for sites that traffic in child pornography.

Two years ago, a congressional commission called for law enforcement agencies
to develop a list of Web sites, newsgroups and other Internet destinations that
contain child pornography.

The commission's own lists indicated that about 100,000 Web sites show
simulated or real child pornography.

Three federal laws aimed at restricting pornography  involving minors or
otherwise  have all been challenged.

One was overturned, another is pending before the Supreme Court and a third is
scheduled for a trial in Philadelphia this month. None requires ISPs to do the
blocking.

Officials at America Online and the National Conference of State Legislatures
said they knew of no other state law like Pennsylvania's.

A South Dakota law merely requires employees of ISPs to report any child
pornography to law-enforcement officials, while South Carolina has a law
requiring the same of computer-repair technicians.
***************
The New York Times
90 Are Arrested in Inquiry Into Internet Child-Sex Ring

WASHINGTON, March 18  A nationwide Internet child-pornography ring has been
smashed with the arrest of about 90 people, including two Roman Catholic
priests, a school bus driver, a teacher's aide and a police officer, the
federal authorities said today.

"It is clear that a new marketplace for child pornography has emerged from the
dark corners of cyberspace," Attorney General John Ashcroft said at a news
briefing. "Innocent boys and girls have been targeted by offenders who view
them as sexual objects."

The suspects have been charged with various felonies, including possession,
production or distribution of child pornography, said Angela Bell, a
spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The most serious charges
carry sentences of several years in prison upon conviction, Ms. Bell said.

In addition, 27 of those arrested have admitted to having molested more than 40
children, the F.B.I. said. Ms. Bell said that she did not know much about the
children's backgrounds and that the authorities were "still trying to take them
out of harm's way."

Mr. Ashcroft said investigations into child pornography often led to evidence
of actual molestation, so that indulging in pornography could in no way be
viewed as a harmless diversion. The attorney general and the F.B.I. director,
Robert S. Mueller III, said all 56 F.B.I. field offices and numerous local law
enforcement units were taking part in the operation, which began in January
2001 in Houston after an undercover agent there identified groups involved in
child pornography. 

One Web site advertised itself as "for people who love kids," the authorities
said. The site invited people to "post any type of messages you like" and
offered a postscript: "If we all work together, we will have the best group on
the Net."

The Houston groups used "the Candyman" as a general cyberheading, prompting the
Justice Department to call its antipornography effort Operation Candyman. The
authorities said that the groups' Web sites had been shut down, and that many
more arrests were expected. The authorities counted about 7,000 computer
addresses in the Candyman groups, with about 2,400 of those outside the United
States.

Subpoenas were served upon Internet-service providers. More than 200 searches
of homes and computers were carried out, the F.B.I. said.

Ms. Bell said some arrests were made weeks or months ago and had already been
publicized. One priest was arrested in Baltimore and the other in St. Louis,
she said. The Baltimore arrest, of the Rev. Thomas Rydzewski, 35, on charges of
possessing pornography, occurred on Dec. 13 and was widely reported in that
city at the time. 

Seven people have been arrested in Houston and five in Miami, the authorities
said. Four people have been arrested in Albany, four in Philadelphia, three in
New York City and one in Newark.

The F.B.I. said one woman was among those arrested. In addition to the two
priests, several other clergymen are suspected, the F.B.I. said. 

Many other suspects had jobs that put them in close contact with children. They
include a school bus driver in Albany, a teacher's aide at a preschool and
day-care center in Las Vegas, a child photographer in Philadelphia and law
enforcement professionals in Pittsburgh and San Diego, the F.B.I. said. 

Little League baseball coaches and a registered foster-care parent are among
the suspects. Ms. Bell said she believed that some of the men were married and
had children of their own.

The F.B.I. did not name any of the suspects. One, a respiration therapist in
Little Rock, Ark., has committed suicide.

Mr. Ashcroft and F.B.I. officials said there would be more anti-pornography
campaigns.

"I mean, we're dealing with children here," said Bruce J. Gebhardt, F.B.I.
executive assistant director for criminal investigations and cybercrime. "I'd
like to see one sweep a day."
*****************
CIA Web Site Cans Cookies After Report 
Tuesday, March 19, 2002 
By Brian McWilliams,
Newsbytes.com Staff Writer 

A Web site operated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on Monday
discontinued marking visitors with a unique identification tag, or "cookie,"
after a non-profit group complained about the practice. 

The use of "persistent" cookies at the CIA's Electronic Reading Room (ERR)
site, which provides online access to previously released CIA documents,
violated federal privacy guidelines and the agency's own privacy policy,
according to Public Information Research (PIR), a Texas-based non-profit which
reported the practice to the agency Friday. 

Designed to remain on the visitor's computer until December 2010, the cookies
contained the user's Internet protocol (IP) address as well as a unique
identification number, Newsbytes confirmed Monday morning. 

According to a spokesperson, the CIA was not aware that the site, located at
http://www.foia.ucia.gov , was placing the tracking files on visitors'
computers. The representative said the technology was inadvertently added by a
contractor during a redesign of the site that was completed Jan. 29. 

Monday afternoon, ERR site administrators disabled the software that was
tagging visitors with a persistent cookie as well as with a temporary or
"session" cookie that expired when the user's browser closed. 

In a June 2000 memorandum to all government agencies, the director of the White
House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) advised operators of government
sites and their contractors that "the presumption should be that 'cookies' will
not be used at Federal Web sites." 

Before Monday, the privacy policy at the ERR stated that the site did not use
persistent cookies and instead only used session cookies. 

The CIA has updated the privacy statement to reflect its current practice of
setting no cookies on visitors' computers. 

The CIA's Web site, located at http://www.cia.gov , does not use cookies to
gather or store information about visitors, according to the main site's
privacy policy. 

A review of some federal sites on Monday by Newsbytes revealed that several are
placing session cookies on visitors' computers. Such sites include the
FirstGov.gov portal, the FBI's jobs site, as well as the main sites operated by
the Small Business Administration, the Department of Education and the
Selective Service. 

According to the OMB memo, the use of cookies by federal sites is justified
only when there is "a compelling need to gather the data on the site" as well
as "appropriate and publicly disclosed privacy safeguards for handling of
information derived from cookies." 

Most Web sites can log the Internet protocol (IP) address and activities of
visitors without the use of cookies. But the persistent cookie at the CIA's ERR
site enabled the agency to better track an individual visitor's search
requests, according to Daniel Brandt, PIR's founder. 

"The key words you put in for searching on FOIA (freedom of information act)
documents can reveal a lot about you. The CIA can use these cookies to
reconstruct who is interested in what. Even if you browse from several
different ISPs, they can use your cookie's unique ID to tie all your searches
together," said Brandt. 

To eliminate any possibility of "improperly retained data," CIA officials said
they intend to delete two sets of log files maintained for the ERR site since
Jan. 29. 

Before changes to the site Monday, the HTML source code of the ERR site said it
was designed by Olympus Group. Calls to the Virginia-based company's
switchboard resulted in a recorded message stating that, "Olympus Group has
closed its door and is no longer in operation." 

The site appears to be hosted on systems operated by Digex, a large Internet
service provider in Maryland. 
 ****************
Many Interior employees still stuck offline 

By Brian Friel 
bfriel@xxxxxxxxxxx 



More than 80 percent of the Interior Department?s computers are back online
after a three-month shutdown of Internet access. But workers at the
department?s headquarters and in three major agencies are still stuck with only
telephones, fax machines and the post office to communicate with the outside
world. 


About 86,000 of the department?s 109,000 servers, laptops, personal computers
and other computers are back online, according to an Interior Department
spokeswoman. The National Park Service, the U.S. Geological Survey and most
other Interior bureaus have been reconnected to the Internet, but the Fish and
Wildlife Service, the Minerals Management Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs
and Interior?s headquarters are still trying to gain the confidence of a
court-appointed special master that their computer systems are secure enough to
allow them back online.


Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia
ordered the shutdown on Dec. 5, after Special Master Alan Balaran issued a
report detailing the successful attempt of a hired hacker to break into the
Bureau of Indian Affairs? computer systems and make changes to individual
Indian trust account data. Because Interior?s systems are highly
interconnected, Interior officials pulled all of its computers off the
Internet.


The Interior Department manages the trust accounts of thousands of Indians,
each month issuing payments totaling millions of dollars for oil and gas
drilling, grazing, logging and other uses of Indian land. In an ongoing legal
battle, a group of Indians has charged the government with mismanaging those
trust accounts for decades. The plaintiffs in the case, Cobell v. Norton, filed
a complaint with the court regarding computer security after reading an
interview with then-Bureau of Indian Affairs Chief Information Officer Dom
Nessi in an April 2001 issue of Government Executive. Nessi described the
bureau?s poor computer security.


When Lamberth saw how easily Balaran?s hacker was able to get into the BIA
systems, he ordered the systems shut down. 


As a result of the subsequent months-long blackout, the National Park Service?s
online camping reservations system was out of service, agencies had to delay
hiring efforts and procurements were pushed back. Far more troubling, thousands
of Native Americans went for months without much-needed payments for the use of
their land, forcing tribal governments to provide temporary benefits so people
wouldn't have their cars repossessed. In addition, criminal investigations were
temporarily suspended because Interior Department law enforcement officers
couldn?t access key databases such as the FBI?s National Criminal Information
Center. 


Lamberth held a hearing Friday to find out why many Indians still haven?t
received checks from the department. ?I have frankly been dumbfounded that it
has taken the amount of time that it has taken to get the Interior checks
rolling again,? Lamberth said.


Attorneys for the government reported that the issuance of checks to pay for
leases other than oil and gas leases were restarted on Jan. 22. The agency has
sent out checks totaling $17.9 million since then, the attorneys said. Some of
those payments had been delayed because backlogs built up at the offices that
issue them. At one office, a key staff person had a death in the family,
causing the person to miss work and the backlog to remain, the attorneys said. 


The system that governs oil and gas payments, run by the Minerals Management
Service, is still offline. On Feb. 22, the department started sending out
estimated one-month payments totaling $1.8 million to more than 10,000 account
holders, the attorneys said. Lamberth noted that account holders have gone
without checks for three months. Lamberth asked the attorneys to submit a
progress report next Friday. In the meantime, officials at the offline agency
are working with Balaran, the special master, to get approval to go back
online. The agencies submit reports to Balaran explaining the state of security
on their systems, and then reviewers hired by Balaran verify the reports.


Already back up and running are the U.S. Geological Survey, the National
Interagency Fire Center, the Office of Surface Mining, the Bureau of Land
Management, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Reclamation, the Office of
Aircraft Services and some facilities of the National Business Center. 


Employees at the remaining offline agencies are conducting much of their
business without the use of their computers. ?It slows us down,? said Dian
Lawhon, a spokeswoman for the Minerals Management Service.
***************
The Washington Post
FTC Anti-Telemarketer List Would Face Heavy Demand 

When Missouri launched a registry in July for consumers who don't want to be
called by telemarketers, 570,000 people signed up within six months. Today,
920,000 phone lines are listed, accounting for about half the state's
population.

When Connecticut opened a similar registry, the response was so heavy that the
state's toll-free phone lines crashed twice. About 370,000 households --
roughly a third of the population -- are now listed.

The public reaction to state do-not-call lists explains why the Federal Trade
Commission recently proposed the creation of a national anti-telemarketing
registry. As J. Howard Beales III, director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer
Protection, said when he announced the proposal in January: "We know that
consumers are concerned about their privacy -- that includes unwanted
intrusions, unwanted phone calls at the dinner hour."

But state and consumer representatives warn that a flood of callers could
overwhelm the government's phone lines. They say the FTC can expect more than
64 million households, with one-third of the nation's residential phone lines,
to sign up.

"We expect a lot of people to take advantage of the list, so there are some
logistical challenges," said Jeff Kramer, senior legislative representative for
AARP, which is aggressively pushing for do-not-call lists in states and on a
national level. If not done correctly, "implementation could be a nightmare,"
Kramer added.

As daunting as the sign-up phase could be, state officials say enforcement will
be the bigger challenge. "The law doesn't do you any good if you don't have any
muscle behind it," said Jay Nixon, Missouri's attorney general, who oversees
the state do-not-call list. His office has received an average of 50 complaints
a day and Nixon has enlisted 38 of his 200 attorneys to investigate them. The
state has brought 62 legal actions against firms that called people on the
list.

"We have the ability to go to court very quickly -- within a day if we need to
-- to file a case against a telemarketer and prevent" other complaints, Nixon
said. "Can the federal government do that?"

FTC officials are confident they could do the job effectively and efficiently.
"We think it's feasible," said Eileen Harrington, the agency's associate
director for marketing practices. "That's not to suggest that we've made up our
minds -- the proposal is still open to public comment. But the staff wouldn't
have recommended that the commission propose it if we didn't think it was
feasible. We have studied the states' implementation and enforcement and we are
confident this can be done."

But it won't be done quickly. The commission cannot consider the matter until
after public hearings, scheduled for early June, and agency officials are not
expecting a final decision until late summer at the earliest. Then the FTC
would need to gear up to collect the names and be ready to enforce the rules,
so the earliest it could be up and running is early next year.

Beales has estimated the cost for the first year of operation to be between $4
million and $6 million.

"It's amazing how much we are benefiting from technology," Beales said. Ten
years ago, when the Federal Communications Commission studied the feasibility
of a similar rule, the cost was estimated to be at least $20 million. But
current telecommunications and computer technology should make the proposed
rule easier and cheaper to implement, Beales said.

To collect names, the agency is not planning to rely, as most states have, on
operators or the Internet. Consumers who want to sign up would have to call in
from the phone number they want listed on the do-not-call registry. The number
would be automatically "captured" in the database, and the consumer would have
to verify it by entering the number again. "That's all we need," Beales said.

The FTC proposal is opposed by the telemarketing industry and by some state
officials, including Nixon, who fear the national registry will preempt state
laws which may be tougher.

The industry contends the list would violate telemarketers' right of free
speech, and is unnecessary because there is already a voluntary industry
registry of 4.5 million Americans. That list must be honored by members of the
Direct Marketing Association, which includes banks, telecommunications firms,
insurance companies and nonprofit organizations. But those groups would be
exempt under the FTC rules because the agency does not have jurisdiction over
them.

"There are so many industries that would be exempted that one of our fears is
the national list will create a false hope" that it will eliminate all
unsolicited calls, said Jerry Ceresale, DMA's senior vice president for
government affairs.

Beales has said if the FTC adopts its new rules, he hopes other federal
agencies that have jurisdiction over those businesses will enact similar
guidelines.

Exemptions in state laws vary widely. In Indiana, insurance and real estate
agents, newspapers and charitable organizations may call residents on the
do-not-call list, while in Connecticut only nonprofit organizations, polling
firms and companies that have an existing business relationship with a resident
may call homes on the list.

It's unclear how the FTC rules will affect these state laws; the agency has not
made a decision on preemption, but has asked the states and industry for
guidance. The states want to be able to continue to administer their laws, but
the telemarketing industry has indicated it would prefer a single national law
-- if there has to be one -- rather than myriad different state rules.

But a single, national registry may not affect telemarketers who make calls
within the same state, said Missouri's Nixon, who said half his state's 62
cases have concerned intrastate telemarketing calls. So consumers may have to
sign up on two lists, he said.

Also unclear is who will pay for a federal registry. The FTC has asked the
public for advice on whether consumers who want to be on the list,
telemarketers or taxpayers should bear the cost. The agency would prefer not to
charge consumers, Beales said, noting that "the collection problems would be
more formidable."
****************
MSNBC
Losing high-tech rights at work

LONDON, March 18  Brace yourselves, corporate drones: one of the last bastions
of work place relief  sneaking in some online shopping or snickering over an
email joke  could be destined for universal banishment.

MAJOR CORPORATIONS ARE increasingly classifying employee email and Internet
privileges as potential security hazards, distractions or worse, costly legal
dangers in the making.
       As a result, companies are considering dramatically curtailing, or even
abolishing completely the freedoms, on which employees have grown increasingly
reliant over the past few years.
       To hear some of the more ardent computer security advocates tell it, the
days of sneaking in some online shopping on company time, mass-emailing your
pals a Flash-powered shoot-?em-up game or even downloading screensavers could
be a thing of the past.
       ?It is drastic and painful,? Raimund Genes, European president of
anti-virus software manufacturer Trend Micro, told Reuters. ?But I think it is
necessary for the future.?
       The objective is clear, security advisers say.
       A healthy dose of IT prevention can eradicate debilitating email-born
worms and limit the likeliness of employees using their speedy desktop Net
connection to download copyright-protected tunes, thus triggering a lawsuit.
       
WHEN FIREWALLS JUST WON?T DO
       ?The message is: ?I?m afraid you?ll have to do it after hours at home,
which is where you should be doing it in the first place,?? said Mikko
Hypponen, manager of anti-virus research for Finish-based F-Secure Corp.
       Hypponen added some Fortune 100 companies are looking to step up
security measures beyond firewalls, which bar access to sites with racy or
inflammatory content. They are looking to ban Internet usage for all but
select, authorized personnel.
The biggest developments are around email prevention, experts say. Elaborate
content filtering software, which can run upwards of $30,000 to install, can
block all but the tamest incoming emails, and most attachments, said Trend
Micro?s Genes.
       Corporations, particularly those that were stung hard by the wave of
virus and worm attacks during the past two years, are considering it a top
priority.
       ?We started full email and Web surfing prevention as a safety initiative
in 1999,? a chief security officer at one of Germany?s largest employers, an
energy firm, told Reuters.
       
ALPHABET SOUP OF RESTRICTIONS
       For many employees at the company, Web surfing is confined to specially
designated PCs, and the email server has been tailored to intercept incoming
emails which contain a range of file attachments, he said.
       Among the nearly 100 email attachments outlawed by the company are:
screen savers, digital greeting cards, and the ubiquitous ?.exe,? or executable
file, a standard format needed to run most computer applications and a common
target for virus authors.
The security officer said employees are gradually adjusting to the strict
policy. It has already scored points with management though, he said, as no
virus or worm has infiltrated the firm?s defenses during the past three years.
       But instituting these new security measures can be a costly and
labor-intensive investment, experts say, likely discouraging firms with meager
IT budgets from upgrading beyond the status quo.
It?s a question of resources,? said a spokeswoman at UK-based Sophos
Anti-Virus. ?If you have one or two guys implementing IT at your organization,
it?s not going to make much sense.?
       ?But it certainly makes sense for the large corporate,? she continued.
?We are likely to see a clampdown in the months and years to come, which is a
shame because the Net is a pretty fun place to be some days.?
*******************
Computerworld
Hacker exposes financial information at Georgia Tech

State and federal authorities are investigating a hack into a computer server
at the Atlanta-based Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) last week.

An undetermined number of employee financial records and university credit card
numbers could have been exposed when the server was hacked last week, institute
spokesman Bob Hardy said this afternoon. 


The university has created a special Web site for employees and other members
of the community explaining what to do to protect themselves, although Hardy
stressed that no student or alumni records were exposed in the attack. 


The server that was hacked into contained reimbursement records for employees,
some of which contained credit card information, and the records for university
credit accounts used to pay for "petty cash" type purchases by university
departments for transactions processed during the past 20 months. 


All banks and credit card companies have been told about the exposure; all
university credit cards have been cancelled and are being reissued, Hardy said.



Georgia Tech's webmaster discovered the break-in on March 11 when he noticed
that the logs for the server had been erased sometime early on March 10.
Research conducted by the institute's IT department showed that there had been
a large spike in activity on the server over the weekend. Hardy said IT
officials theorize that someone on the outside used the server to download and
then upload a large number of files. They think that the hacker probably parked
a movie or other large files on the server and then let his or her friends know
where they could download the information. Following this process, the
information was taken off the server and the logs erased. 


Hardy said he believes that Georgia Tech was a target because universities,
because of the nature of their business, are somewhat open and known to offer a
lot of Internet bandwidth. Since the attack, access to the server has been
strictly limited, he said. 
*******************
Associated Press
B2B Transactions Lead E-Commerce

WASHINGTON - Business-to-business transactions dominated electronic commerce in
2000, the Census Bureau (news - web sites) reported Monday.

  
Such sales make up for 94 percent of e-commerce transactions, the bureau said.

The manufacturing industry led all sectors surveyed, with total e-commerce
shipments of $777 billion.

Online trends are unlikely to reverse "as companies in all industries try to
use their technologies as effectively as possible," Kathleen Cooper, Commerce
Undersecretary for Economic Affairs, said Monday.

Manufacturers and wholesalers have long used a computerized network that
predates the Internet to do business, a main reason for the dominance of
transactions between businesses, the report said.

Results came from surveys covering a total of 125,000 businesses in the
manufacturing, wholesale, services and retail sectors.

The data was the latest available except for the retail sector. The bureau last
month estimated e-commerce retail sales at $33 billion in 2001, accounting for
1 percent of total retail sales.

The report released Monday showed Americans making online retail purchases in
2000 that totalled nearly $29 billion, including food and clothes, cars, and
computer software.

Eighteen percent of total manufacturing sales occurred online in 2000, compared
with 8 percent of wholesale transactions, and less than 1 percent of service
industries.
******************
The New York Times
Gates to Create 70 Schools for Disadvantaged

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is putting up more than $40 million to
help start 70 high schools that will try to keep disadvantaged students in
school by giving them college-level work in their junior and senior years and
enabling them to earn two-year associate degrees while they earn high school
diplomas.

Three other foundations  Ford, Carnegie and Kellogg  plan to participate in a
more limited way, probably contributing $1 million to $2 million each.

The project, which will be formally announced this morning at La Guardia
Community College in Queens, is based on the belief that the last two years of
high school are a waste for many students, who drop out because they lose
interest in school.

"High schools are the least effective part of the American education system,
and that is particularly true for disadvantaged students," said Thomas Vander
Ark, executive director of education for the Gates Foundation. The foundation
was started by Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, and his wife, Melinda.

Mr. Vander Ark said he expected strong interest because of the widespread
problem of high school dropouts and because many states, including Utah and
Washington, are seeking ways to combine high school and college.

Although the Gates schools are intended to be small  up to 400 students each 
the project could take in as many as 28,000 students, including blacks,
Hispanics, American Indians and poor students in Appalachia and New York City.
Most of the schools are expected to open in September 2003 or 2004.

A growing number of high school students already take advanced placement
courses designed by the College Board. But they are often the strongest
students who attend better high schools.

The new experimental high schools will be directed toward disadvantaged
students and others considered likely to drop out. The foundation will work
with seven intermediary groups to develop the schools.

National Council de La Raza, a Hispanic advocacy group, plans to use $7.2
million from Gates to create 14 early college high schools, mainly through the
charter school process.

Secme Inc. (originally known as the Southeastern Consortium for Minorities in
Engineering) will use $4.8 million to create eight new schools on or next to
the campuses of historically black colleges and universities or those with
large Hispanic populations.

The Middle College High School Consortium, a network of 28 high schools on or
near college campuses, will use $7.6 million to open five new high schools and
redesign 15 existing ones. 

Antioch University Seattle, which works with tribal communities in Washington,
will use $3 million to design eight schools, including two on reservations.

KnowledgeWorks Foundation will receive $2.7 million for five schools in
Appalachia.

Utah Partnership Foundation will receive $3.5 million for six high-tech magnet
charter schools.

The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation will receive $5.8 million to
work with colleges and universities in starting nine schools and redesigning
one. 

Jobs for the Future, a Boston nonprofit organization, will provide technical
support for the project and evaluate it.

Some of the seeds of the early college movement were sowed by Leon Botstein,
president of Bard College, whose Simon's Rock campus in Great Barrington,
Mass., takes students from 10th and 11th grades.

Although most of the Simon's Rock students are high performers who were bored
with high school, Dr. Botstein argued in "Jefferson's Children" (Doubleday,
1997), that the same model should be adopted in urban high schools. He said
sophisticated, bored high school students would also thrive on being treated
more like adults, working in smaller classes and having challenging teachers.

New York City invited Bard to create an early college high school in New York.
It opened last September with about 260 students. Although many were from poor
or immigrant families, they were a more select group than the Gates schools are
likely to enroll, chosen because of their writing ability, good school records
and strong motivation.

Dr. Botstein said yesterday that he was excited that the Gates project "will
show that this plan is not just for the elite." But he also expressed concern
that starting and running such schools would take more money than the
foundation was providing.

"This is not easy to do, and I'm worried that this is a rocket ship without
enough thrust," Dr. Botstein said, noting that the foundation had provided $1
million to help run the Bard Early College High School in Brooklyn. "It takes
much more fuel to make this kind of fundamental change happen."

Mr. Vander Ark said the Gates Foundation expected to finance start-up costs,
not to pay for running the schools.

"I know that Bard Early College High School is higher budget," he said, "but
that is often the case for prototype schools."

"It may be the case that all or most of these schools need some additional
funding to get off the ground," he added. "But it is our hope that after three
years, each of these schools would be self-sufficient," with money from school
systems and higher education financing.

He said he believed that the model would work for a less selective student body
because of the success that other alternative high schools  like those at La
Guardia Community College  had when they offered more challenging work to
disadvantaged students.

At La Guardia, which has one high school for potential dropouts and another for
recent immigrants, many students attend courses at the community college before
they graduate. But Cecilia L. Cunningham, principal of La Guardia's Middle
College High School and director of the Middle College High School Consortium,
said the revamped early college high school would provide two years of liberal
arts college classes for all of its students.

"If the students feel valued and successful, they will keep advancing," Dr.
Cunningham said. "It is not for everyone. But what's important is the variety,
that kids and parents have choices."
**************
Government Executive
Tech firms seek Pentagon review of ban on non-citizen contractors 

The Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) has sent a letter to
Defense Department Undersecretary for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics
Edward Aldridge, urging the department to conduct a full, public review and
discussion of its proposal to bar non-citizens from working on unclassified
information technology projects.

"America's defense readiness depends on having ready access to the best
available technology and technical skill sets," ITAA President Harris Miller
wrote. "Precipitous action here could make it much more difficult and expensive
for the military services to acquire the requisite IT services."

Miller also noted that President Bush has cautioned against xenophobic actions
results from the Sept. 11 attacks. 
******************
Government Executive
High-tech oversight agencies urged to develop more expertise

The debate on high-speed Internet services and telecommunications reform
usually centers around legislation and Federal Communications Commission
proceedings, but improving the technical capabilities at oversight agencies and
reforming campaign-finance law would go further to modernize the industry, said
one panelist at an AEI-Brookings Institution broadband forum Monday.

"The government doesn't know how to deal with these kinds of industries," said
Charles Ferguson, nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. The
Justice Department is lacking a chief technologist and the commissioners at the
FCC are "technologically unsophisticated," he said, noting that most
commissioners have political connections, rather than technical expertise.

The regulatory climate also is largely affected by the lobbying done by the
major players, which include the regional Bell companies, cable firms and long
distance carriers, panelists noted. 

"When the Bells and cable duke it out, legislation is unlikely unless there is
a crisis," said Robert Hahn, director of the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for
Regulatory Studies. 

And those firms, along with the local exchange carrier industry which generally
is comprised of small firms, are battling on Capitol Hill over a bill that
would deregulate the Bell's high-speed services. House Energy and Commerce
Committee Chairman W.J. (Billy) Tauzin, R-La., and ranking Democrat John
Dingell of Michigan introduced that legislation, H.R. 1542, which the House
passed last month. 

"The true core competency" of the regional Bell companies is lobbying, Ferguson
said. Those firms spend more on lobbying, including campaign contributions,
than they do for research and development, he said. 

Tom Hazlett, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, said
lobbying and discussion are necessary to solve the real problems of broadband
deployment. And the solution, as he sees it, would be for the Senate to pass
Tauzin-Dingell, or lawmakers in some way should deregulate the Bell companies.

"The regulatory structure is not consistent with getting modern communications
out," Hazlett said, adding that the regulations the Bells face are
"incompatible with the risk-taking" necessary to invest in high-speed services.

**********************
The Washington Post
Intel Exec: Moore's Law Keeps Going and Going

Intel Corp.'s chief technology officer today predicted the exponential growth
of chip transistor density will continue at least another decade. 

Pat Gelsinger, the first keynote speaker at the FOSE 2002 trade show in
Washington, said Moore's Law, the 1960s-era prediction by Intel chairman
emeritus Gordon Moore that transistor density would double every 18 to 24
months, has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Computers have been gaining 10
times the processing power every five years, he said, while the so-called
price-performance ratio has decreased almost as fast. 

Gelsinger said he has "absolute confidence" that the IT industry will continue
to exploit Moore's Law over the next 25 or 30 years. Recent research
developments, such as a 10-nanometer terahertz transistor with a dielectric
layer just three atoms thick, will lead to new IT products later this decade,
he said. 

By 2010, the typical desktop computer will have a 30-GHz processor that
performs 1 trillion instructions per second. Handheld computers will run at
clock speeds of 5 GHz, faster than today's high-end systems, Gelsinger said. 

The Pentium 4, Intel's current 32-bit processor, has enough design headroom to
reach 10-GHz clock speeds, Gelsinger said. Intel is now delivering its
second-generation 64-bit Itanium CPU, code-named McKinley, for products that
will come out later this year. McKinley's clock rate exceeds 1 GHz. The chip
has 3M of onboard cache. 

Gelsinger and a colleague demonstrated linking 32-bit Pentium III Xeon
rackmount servers through a 2.5-Gbps InfiniBand fabric to an 800-MHz, 64-bit
Itanium system and a McKinley server. 
**************
USA Today
Home PCs join together as virtual supercomputer

Looking for a way to fight cancer or Alzheimer's disease?

How about terrorism?

The same application that allows you to download music online can hook up your
computer to a vast network of researchers looking for idle computers to enlist
in their efforts to find treatments for a variety of deadly illnesses.

The initiative, led by chipmaker Intel and leading scientific researchers,
seeks to exploit what's known as P2P, or peer-to-peer, technology. This uses
the Internet to share computing resources such as hard drives and processing
power. The idea is to solve large medical research problems by breaking them
down and distributing the constituent pieces over the Internet to participating
household computers that then work through the small segments.

It's part of a movement on the Internet called "distributed computing," which
has been increasing in popularity because it permits PC owners to make a
genuine contribution to research.

So far more than 1 million PCs are participating in the Intel project.

"This collaborative initiative offers us the capability to save three to five
years in the design of anti-cancer drugs, meaning promising medicine will get
to the market much quicker," said Dr. Sujuan Ba of the National Foundation for
Cancer Research, which is among the participants.

Intel and other leading tech companies also are helping fund a project through
Oxford University designed to use distributed computing to improve treatments
for anthrax, a bacterial disease that was used as a weapon to kill several
Americans after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Perhaps the best known distributed computing project is SETI @Home, which uses
idle home PCs to sift through the massive amounts of radio signal data received
from space for any sign of intelligent transmissions.

These projects are so large and require so much computing power that they would
be impossible for any one computer or person to solve.

It is projected that the resulting "virtual supercomputer" in the Intel disease
project ultimately will be capable of more than 50 teraflops (trillions of
operations per second) and involve millions of participants.

To participate, PC owners first download a small computer program from the the
Intel project's Web site.
***************
Federal Computer Week
Revised e-gov bill achieved

Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) is pushing ahead with a revised e-government bill
that calls for spending $345 million over four years and would establish an
administrator to head an e-government office at the Office of Management and
Budget.

The amended E-Government Act of 2001 is the result of months of negotiations
with the administration and Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.), the ranking member on
the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, which is scheduled to consider the
bill March 21.

"This is not just money and an office. It's a comprehensive framework for
implementing e-gov throughout federal agencies," said Leslie Phillips, a
spokeswoman for Lieberman. "This is a major initiative that Sen. Lieberman
started two years ago by opening a Web site, and he's extremely pleased that
we've received this level of agreement."

Lieberman introduced the e-government bill last year, calling for spending $200
million a year over three years and the establishment of a federal chief
information officer.

But Lieberman's bill failed to get the support of the administration, which
opposed the spending levels as well as a governmentwide CIO. 

The amended legislation calls for authorizing money for e-government in steps:

* Fiscal 2003 -- $45 million.

* Fiscal 2004 -- $50 million.

* Fiscal 2005 -- $100 million.

* Fiscal 2006 - $150 million. 

The bill would establish an electronic government office within OMB that would
be headed by an administrator confirmed by the Senate.

It also would authorize a federal Internet portal and earmark $15 million for
fiscal 2003 to run it. The Bush administration has earmarked $9.5 million in
its fiscal 2003 budget request for FirstGov, the federal government's portal
site.

Congress appropriated $5 million for e-government initiatives in the fiscal
2002 budget, and the administration already is seeking $45 million in the
fiscal 2003 budget.
****************
Federal Computer Week
New priorities in IT spending mix

Despite budget shortfalls, increased Medicaid costs and unexpected homeland
security spending, information technology spending for states will hold steady,
according to a market research firm specializing in the public sector.
"Over the long term, this is a very attractive market," Jim Kane, president of
McLean, Va.-based Federal Sources Inc., said March 18 at FSI's eighth annual
State of the States Conference. The event is aimed at IT vendors seeking to
find out what opportunities are available in the state and local government
market.
State and local government IT spending for fiscal 2002 is estimated at $39.9
billion  a $1 billion increase from the last fiscal year, Kane said. For fiscal
2003, FSI estimates $40.4 billion in spending, and $41.5 billion the following
year. 
The company forecasts that in fiscal 2003, 30 percent of the total state and
local IT spending will be on services ($12.3 billion), followed closely by
personnel ($11.7 billion), then hardware ($8.2 billion), telecommunications
($5.3 billion) and software ($2.9 billion). 
Because of budget shortfalls  42 states are projecting a combined $40 billion
in lost revenue  state officials likely will use their relationships with
vendors to further develop existing programs and will be less likely to fund
larger projects, Kane said. 
But states also have new priorities with homeland security, including public
health, public safety and law enforcement. Kane said federal funding will flow
to state and local governments, but he wasn't certain which level would get
more funding. However, he said, "we think relatively more of that funding is
going down to the local level."
Local officials have voiced approval for direct federal funding for homeland
security initiatives.
Opportunities in public safety include communications networks and equipment,
integrated justice systems and surveillance. In regard to health and human
services, projects will include child welfare and support enforcement systems,
online vital records, and requirements mandated by the Health Insurance
Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, Kane said. Other areas  education,
economic development, and finance and administration  will remain stable, while
the environment and natural resources will decline as a priority.
Rock Regan, president of the National Association of State Chief Information
Officers and Connecticut's CIO, said NASCIO is focused on homeland security,
cybersecurity, privacy issues balanced with security issues, and enterprise
architecture. 
Costis Toregas, president of Public Technology Inc., a technology arm of
several national associations of counties and cities, also said homeland
security is a concern and an area of growth for vendors. He said that area
includes energy, environment, transportation and public safety matters.
Toregas also said PTI plans to announce a partnership with the federal Critical
Information Assurance Office to design and deploy an information sharing and
analysis center (ISAC) for local governments. And Regan said the states are
developing a state-level ISAC.Advertisement
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***************
BBC
Meet the music pirate

As far as pirates go, Steve does not cut much of a dash. 
He is just an average guy, in his late 30s, who loves music and does not see
why he should pay for it when he can get it for nothing. 

Amidst the suburban chic of Steve's living room in Essex, UK, I ask him if
there is any recording artist whose music he would not rip off. 

"Certainly not!" comes the swift reply. 

Good-looking fakes 

Steve the pirate - he would not give his surname - boasts a 400-strong CD
collection.
Around 100 of these are copies he has made using a standard PC. What impressed
and surprised me most was the look of his clones. 

He values the packaging, wants his collection to look good, and uses any number
of easy to find websites to download covers for his hand-made albums. 

All you need is a colour printer, a pair of scissors and some glue and you can
create a fake CD that is hard to tell from the one you buy in the shops. 

Add it all up and Steve has done the record industry out of approximately
£1,500. 

Multiply that by the hundreds of thousands of people worldwide that are doing
just the same as Steve and you can see why they are such a thorn in the record
industry's side. 

And Steve is not even involved in downloading music off the internet. He
complains that his 56K dial-up modem is too slow for that. 

Ringing the changes 

Steve is hardly a Mr Big of the criminal world and it might be a public
relations disaster if the record companies were to go after people like him. 

He does not think of his activities as harming anyone. 

And yet he seems concerned when I tell him that music counterfeiting is one of
the factors leading the record industry towards a radical re-think of the
products they will sell in future.
Last week a UK Government report, written by the University of Surrey, spelled
out some of the changes on the horizon. 

Called Monetising Anarchy, it demonstrated that the technology people are using
to listen to songs is making music an increasingly "virtual" commodity. 

Record companies are thinking less about their musical products as objects that
you take home from the record store and stroke lovingly in eager anticipation
of that first play. 

The industry is thinking instead about tracks you will want to buy digitally
with new media components such as music videos, games or competitions attached.


They are thinking about licensing music like software and that could mean the
death of the album, as we know it. 

How does Steve the pirate react to the concept of the death of the album? 

"No, I can't imagine that happening", he says. 

********************
BBC
What if the net was as free as air?

Forget monthly subscriptions. What if the net was as cheap as turning on a
radio? And what if it meant you got to know your neighbours? BBC News Online's
technology correspondent Mark Ward looks at a pioneering scheme that could make
that dream real. 
The net was supposed to be about community, about people with common interests
finding each other in the limitless tracts of cyberspace and connecting like
never before. 

Except that usually it isn't like that at all. 

Most web expeditions are lonely affairs in which users look at websites of
interest to them and them alone. Dialogue, community and friendship are almost
entirely absent. 

It has more to with pioneering than communication. 

But some keen net users are showing just how different it can be. 

Radio show 

A scheme in London, UK, called Consume, aims to show people how to share their
net connections, software and experiences using wireless networks. 

Explicitly community-based, Consume aims to use radio net technology, known as
Wi-fi, to set up nodes of connectivity that anyone with a wireless network card
can join. 

The ultimate idea is to free people from the need to pay high monthly bills for
net access by letting everyone share the air. 

London now has over 400 Consume nodes and far more users. 

Consume founder James Stevens said activity was particularly strong in the
Hackney and Hoxton areas of London. There he's helping to set up workshops on
antenna-building so more people can join in the fun. 

Mr Stevens tells tales of squatted properties linking up with both wires and
wireless to swap music, share information and generally commune. 

People are investigating using Consume nodes to do multi-player gaming, to
stream music and share useful software. 

"It becomes pretty self-determining," he said. 

Road trip 

The idea for Consume grew out of the efforts Mr Stevens made in 1995 to share
an expensive high-speed net link with other local businesses. 

Because it is illegal to string cables across the carriageway, Mr Stevens was
forced to use a point-to-point microwave link. 

From there it was a short step to using wireless and sharing the bandwidth much
more widely. 

"We found that there was indeed the potential for wide adoption and easy
utilisation of the 11 megabits per second wireless kit for freenetworking," he
said. "That's 'free' as in speech." 

Currently Mr Stevens is working to set up five Consume nodes in Deptford that
will be available to everyone. 

The nodes will link to the net via broadband links and share that access via
antennae sited on the roofs of several buildings. 

It will serve as a pilot project to work out how best to announce the network's
existence to the 5,000 people it could serve. It's likely to get some help from
the Deptford X arts festival and the publicity surrounding that. 

Turn on 

Currently Consume nodes serve small groups or communities and all the traffic
for that group flows through their links. 

A Consume node is typically made up of a basic PC, a wireless card and some
software that helps shuffle traffic efficiently. 

Eventually the nodes will form a larger network that will manage and shuffle
traffic on behalf of everyone. 

The success of Consume has prompted the creation of similar wireless networks
up and down the country. Now there are Consume-type networks in Brighton, Luton
and Edinburgh. 

The Welsh Development Agency is even investigating using wireless networks to
help rural communities get connected. 

There are also wireless community networks in the US, Spain, Germany and
Australia, all with the same aim: reclaim the net for the majority. 

It's an idea that harks back to the net's free-wheeling early days when
everything was done with an egalitarian, inclusive ethic in mind. It was very
different to the ad-funded marketplace much of the net has become. 

But with the help of Consume and a few friends you might be able to re-discover
that sense of belonging. 
*******************
BBC
Bug sets windows shaking

This is the Soundbug, a British-designed gadget aimed at young people that
turns any hard, smooth surface into a loudspeaker.

A little smaller than a computer mouse, it is based on technology research by
Newlands Scientific at Hull University, and is marketed by a company called
Olympia. 

"It's audio, not hi-fi. We're aiming at the eight to 16 market," Olympia's
president, Richard May, told BBC News Online. 

The device goes on sale in the UK for £30 this month and is showcasing at the
CeBIT 2002 computer fair in Hanover, Germany. The product will also be
demonstrated on the BBC's Tomorrow's World programme on Wednesday. 

Rare material 

At the heart of the Soundbug is a small piece of a material called Terfenol-D,
originally developed by the US military for sonar work. 

It's 60% iron with a couple of rare earth elements in it and it's grown like a
piece of silicon," explained Mr May. 

"When you put it in a magnetic field, it moves very slightly, perhaps a micron
or so, but with an enormous force of maybe 400 pounds," he said. 

"So it turns whatever it's attached to into a sounding board," he added. 

Skull effect 

The Soundbug attaches to audio sources via a 3.5 millimetre jack plug, so it is
easy to connect to a CD player or a minidisc. 

It even turns the human skull into a loudspeaker if it is pressed on the back
of the head. 

The effect is quite strange, as the sound feels as if it is coming from inside
the head, behind the ears. 

Olympia has other devices in development, including two in-car mobile-phone
hands-free kits that use the same technology to turn a car window into a
loudspeaker. 

One even had a Bluetooth interface to work with the latest mobile phones, Mr
May said. 
*************
San Francisco Chronicle
SPECIAL SECTION: TELECOM 
Cellular, DSL lower need for land lines

After years of steady growth, telephone companies are now installing fewer
phone lines. 

Pacific Bell put in 4.7 percent fewer residential lines during the fourth
quarter of 2001 than it did a year earlier. Verizon and BellSouth have also
seen declines during the past year. 

The reversal can be chalked up to the growth of wireless phones and broadband
access, said John Britton, spokesman for Pacific Bell. Because many cell plans
offer free long distance or generous off-peak minutes, some people choose to
rely solely on cell phones and skip the land line entirely. Meanwhile, faster
broadband Internet access has eliminated the need for a second phone line for
dial-up access. 

When Kari Hopperstead, 25, moved to a new apartment a year ago, she began using
her cellular phone as her only phone instead of having a new phone line
installed or sharing her roommates' existing line. 

"It just didn't make any sense to me to change my phone number and take on a
whole new set of bills when I already had a phone number I was paying for,"
said Hopperstead, a nonprofit worker who lives in San Francisco. 

People who forgo land lines for cell phones figure they save about $20 a month
by avoiding local calling charges and monthly service fees. Those with wireless
plans that include free long distance say they save even more. 

And there are other advantages, Hopperstead said. For one, she never has to
take messages for roommates, and she always knows who has called her through
her phone's caller ID, a feature common on cell phones but an add-on for land
lines. 

"I don't have a million places I have to check messages," she said. 

Some wireless-only users do sacrifice sound quality. Ryan Mitchell, 30, didn't
bother to install a land line in his Hill Street apartment when he moved in
last year. But cell phone reception inside his home is sometimes bad. 

"I usually have to stand near the door," said Mitchell, an art director at a
graphic design firm. But he says the money saved is worth the less-reliable
connection. 

Meanwhile, installation of additional lines has slowed even more than primary
lines; Pacific Bell put in 6.4 percent fewer additional lines during the fourth
quarter of 2001. 

From about 1996 until 2000, dial-up Internet access "was driving an incredible
flurry of additional lines," Pacific Bell's Britton said. 

But now, people like Bill Phillips of Albany are signing up for broadband
service instead of installing a second phone line. 

Phillips' teenage daughter wanted her own line so she could talk while
Phillips, a survey researcher for the University of California at Berkeley, was
online. 

But after calculating the cost of getting DSL versus the cost of Pacific Bell's
installation fee on a new line and monthly charges, he found that getting DSL
made more sense. 

"And now we have much better (online) computer access," Phillips said. 

However, the phone companies don't necessarily lose money on customers like
these. Pacific Bell offers DSL service to 1.3 million subscribers and owns 60
percent of Cingular, the second-largest wireless company. 
***************
San Francisco Chronicle
SPECIAL SECTION: TELECOM U.S. not getting wireless message
If you use your mobile phone to send and receive text messages, browse the Web
(or even a stripped-down derivative) or do just about anything else that
involves data -- not voice -- communications, you're a rare bird in North
America. 

That's not the case elsewhere. Phone users in Europe now send about 30 billion
text messages per month -- up from less than 1 billion just three years ago --
using a technology called SMS (Short Message Service), a rough equivalent to
instant messaging on computers. 

And in Japan, nearly a quarter of the population -- more than 30 million people
-- now subscribes to i-mode, a 3-year-old wireless data service provided by the
country's largest cellular carrier, NTT DoCoMo. 

But here in the United States, the nation that prides itself on leading the
digital revolution, data on phones is an idea whose time hasn't come. 

Although phone manufacturers and their carrier customers launched what they
called "Web-enabled" handsets here a couple of years ago with a flurry of hype,


people sized up the limitations of these devices and promptly decided to stick
with voice communications on the phone. They didn't like the tedious input and
navigation systems; unreliable connections and glacial data rates; dim,
postage-stamp-size screens; and high prices. 

No one seems to know how often U.S. phone users send messages or browse data,
but "the numbers hardly matter, they're so minuscule right now," said Andrew
Seybold, a noted industry analyst and editor in chief of a monthly newsletter
called Forbes/Andrew Seybold's Wireless Outlook. 

The industry isn't giving up, however. Handset manufacturers look to advanced
phones to compensate for slowing growth and declining margins on mainstream
models, while carriers are counting on revenue from data applications to help
cover the staggering cost of building out next-generation networks. 

And powerhouses in other digital domains -- Microsoft, Intel, Sun Microsystems,
America Online, Palm and Handspring, among others -- see advanced phones
incorporating their technologies as their way to move into new markets that
could dwarf their current businesses, in units if not in dollars. 

No one expects U.S. users to catch up overnight with our counterparts in Japan
and Europe, but some developments now unfolding could lead to substantial
changes during the next few years. 


MESSAGING RAMPING UP
First of all, U.S. carriers are finally waking up to the potential of text
messaging. In recent months, several have launched ad campaigns pitching
messaging as a hot hip trend, and there's some evidence they are having an
effect. In January, Cingular reported that its SMS traffic had soared 450
percent during the previous six months -- though the basis for the comparison
was undoubtedly tiny, and the company declined to give absolute numbers. 

In Europe, SMS really took off only when it became possible to exchange
messages across the continent, regardless of carrier. That kind of
interoperability is a tougher challenge here, where customers are divided not
only among competing carriers but also across incompatible technologies, but U.
S. carriers are finally beginning to work out the economic and technical issues
involved. 

They're also linking SMS to e-mail, so mobile users can communicate easily with
deskbound friends and colleagues. 

To Alan Reiter, head of a Chevy Chase, Md., consulting company called Wireless
Internet & Mobile Computing, the wonder is that the industry didn't resolve
these problems long ago. 

"It's amazing that carriers in the U.S. have to expend any brain cells at all
on interoperability -- it's so obviously good for business and good for
customers," he said. "But it's like water dripping on their skulls -- after 10
years it's finally penetrating." 

It remains to be seen, however, whether text messaging will ever be as popular
here as in other parts of the world. One difference is that here computers are
more readily available, e-mail and instant messaging more entrenched, and voice
calling less expensive than in Europe or Asia. 

In particular, analyst Seybold argues, carriers need to move quickly to
integrate SMS with instant messaging, which already has more than 100 million
users in this country. Again, though, the carriers seem to be catching on: All
the major carriers are reportedly in negotiations with leading instant
messaging providers such as AOL, MSN and Yahoo. 


NEW NETWORKS
While simple text messaging doesn't require much bandwidth, multimedia-
enriched messaging, Web browsing and other more-advanced data applications
demand faster connections than U.S. wireless carriers have previously been able
to supply. But new technologies being rolled out this year by all major U. S.
carriers will begin to alleviate that problem. 

These new networks, based on technologies known as GPRS (classified as 2. 5G)
and 1xRTT (technically, although barely, 3G), are not yet fully deployed, and
the carriers are still testing and tweaking their infrastructure. But by the
end of this year, analyst Reiter said, "You'll have a fighting chance of
getting nationwide data service at real-life speeds of 20 or 30 to 60 Kbps." 

Those speeds are well short of what most users are accustomed to on their
desktop computers and nowhere near fast enough to support applications like
videoconferencing and streaming movie clips, which past industry hype has led
many users to think were right around the corner. But the new networks are
three or four times faster than the best the carriers could offer before, and
they should be more reliable for data connections. 

One big question, though, is how much these services will cost. Initially,
prices are steep -- Verizon, for example, charges a $30 monthly access fee,
before standard per-minute or (as of last week) per-megabyte charges for its
new 1xRTT Express Network. Cingular recently lowered its rate for data to $6.
95 for the first megabyte per month, but still charges $30 for each subsequent
megabyte, according to Seybold. 

While these plans are intended for enthusiastic early adopters and corporate
executives, many analysts believe they are too high even for the intended
markets. 

Seybold, for example, said his group's survey shows that corporate IT
departments generally have a threshold of pain of about $50 per month for
wireless service, and the carriers' initial price plans for the new networks
will likely put most users well above that level. 

But Reiter and other industry watchers are now looking to Sprint, which is
scheduled to roll out 1xRTT service this summer, in hopes that it will adopt
more-aggressive pricing and force competitors to follow suit. 


NEW DEVICES
While many of today's phones can handle text messaging, more-advanced
applications require more memory and processing power, more-sophisticated
software, better displays and, some analysts argue, keyboards (physical or
virtual) instead of the conventional phone keypad. 

Some such phones, such as the the LG 3000W, the Kyocera QCP-6035 SmartPhone and
the color-screen Samsung I300, reached the market last year and won critical
acclaim but modest sales. 

This year, though, should bring an accelerating stream of new options. Some, 

like Research in Motion's new Blackberry 5810; the Jornada 928 announced by
Hewlett-Packard last month; and the Audiovox Thera, a new Pocket PC device to
be announced today, combine familiar personal digital assistant designs with
voice-call capabilities. 

Others, such as the recently released Handspring Treo, fall somewhere between
phone and PDA in terms of design. And all of the top phonemakers are developing
new "smartphones" -- devices that look basically like traditional phones and
are designed primarily for voice calling, but include data- application
software and slightly larger screens (many soon in color) than today's phones. 

Manufacturers face a variety of options for software as well as design, and
their choices are as much political as technical. Nokia and other phone
manufacturers continue to support Symbian, a mostly European consortium
developing its own smartphone software. Qualcomm has chimed in with its own
platform, known as BREW. 

And many companies, including RIM, Motorola and Sprint, are increasingly
focusing on Sun's Java -- specifically, a version known as J2ME, or Java 2
Micro Edition -- as their primary platform for the development of new
applications. 

Microsoft, however, is pushing hard to get into the market, both with its
Pocket PC PDA software and with a new, phone-specific software product formerly
known as Stinger and now officially branded Smartphone 2002. The latter in
particular has had little success so far, but Cingular will announce today that
it plans to bring to market a phone based on it (the color-screen Sendo Z100)
later this year. 

"The cellular industry doesn't want to be controlled by Microsoft -- they've
seen what happened in the PC world," said Reiter. Besides, he said, Microsoft's
software has generally required too much memory, processing power and battery
capacity for the mainstream market. 

"But you can't write Microsoft off," he said. "They're the Borg, and they keep
on coming." 

How all this will sort itself out is hard to figure. "We're at a place where
you really can't project," said Seybold. "We just have to get more services and
more devices out into the marketplace and see what the customer wants." 

He predicts that most voice-oriented phones will soon include limited data
capabilities -- mostly messaging -- and that these devices will continue to
dominate the mobile market in terms of unit sales. But, he said, "Where we
think the real action will be (in wireless data) over the next few years is in
PDA-type devices with built-in keyboards plus voice capabilities" -- devices
like the BlackBerry 5810 and the Treo. 

His reasoning: "People in the U.S. are not going to spend a lot of time
triple-tapping out messages (on a standard phone keypad) -- they just aren't." 

Others aren't so sure. Gartner Dataquest analysts Todd Cort and Bryan Prohm
foresee strong growth in the PDA market through 2003, but after that, Cort
said, "smartphones will start eating into their lunch." 

Along with advances in technology and new usage patterns, analysts expect major
changes in mobile-phone business models. Today, each manufacturer develops its
own design, including custom circuitry. 

But that's an expensive and time-consuming processes, and some companies --
most notably PC behemoths Microsoft and Intel -- are instead promoting standard
reference designs that would allow just about any manufacturer, including Asian
suppliers with limited capital and research and development capabilities, to
turn out up-to-date phones quickly and cheaply. 

If that model takes hold, it could ripple back to transform the way phones are
marketed to end users, because any company in any industry that wanted to sell
phones bearing its own brand could -- so the theory goes -- simply order them
from a low-cost offshore manufacturer. 

"Three or four years from now, if I'm right," Seybold said, "we won't buy a
Nokia or a Motorola phone -- you'll buy a Gap or Old Navy phone, or an MTV
phone, that comes with a subscription." 
***************
Government Computer News
Transportation mulls smart cards for security

The Transportation Security Administration is accepting proposals for a
smart-card system to authenticate transportation workers such as pilots and
flight attendants, an expert said today at FOSE 2002 in Washington. The cards
could ?get a much better handle on the workers, not only at airports but for
all modes of transportation,? said Richard Wright, prime technology consultant
to the John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center in Cambridge, Mass.
The smart cards would work in conjunction with biometric identifiers such as
fingerprints, iris scans or encoded photographs, Wright said. Each worker would
also have a personal identification number for extra security, he said. But the
system design ?has to be one that does not impede the flow of air traffic,?
Wright said. If TSA decides to go ahead, he said, transportation workers would
be required to carry the smart cards. Travelers could choose to participate
voluntarily. There is a possibility that such a system might also be used to
identify people who rent cars and trucks at airports, Wright said. TSA would
face many challenges in implementing such a system, he saidfor example,
integration with Justice and State Department systems and real-time updating.
People would want to feel confident of the system?s security, and it must also
be ?somewhat crashproof,? he said. If it stopped working, TSA would need
contingency plans for manual searches or airport closings.
***************
Government Computer News
State and local governments: coping

The states, though besieged by budget deficits, terrorist attacks and an
economic downturn, are surprisingly OK. That was the word from Federal Sources
Inc.?s 8th annual State of the States conference yesterday in Washington.
Federal Sources president Jim Kane characterized the state and local market at
last year?s conference as a ?buy.? This year, he called it a ?hold? but said
the market remains attractive. Keynoter Rock Regan, Connecticut?s CIO, said the
top issues facing state CIOs are ?e-gov, homeland security and oh, by the
way--both.? Cybersecurity gets ?scarier every day,? Regan said, to the point
that he meets with his security team daily. ?Cyberattacks are becoming worse,
more complex, more frequent,? he said. ?Every day we see new viruses. And the
biggest challenge is the end user.? Although Connecticut has tried to educate
users about viruses, he said, ?You?d be surprised how many people will still
open an e-mail attachment.? Costas Toregas, president of Public Technology
Inc., spoke about the ?state of the local.? Homeland security ?is like having
Y2K every day,? Toregas said. Other CIOs shared their experiences in trying to
make e-government workable. James Dillon, CIO of New York, said he once was a
Greyhound bus driver and kept getting lost. ?My motto then was, ?I?m lost, but
I?m making such good time I don?t want to stop.? That?s still my motto.? Ohio
CIO Gregory Jackson agreed with Dillon and Arun Behati, director of e-gov for
California, that communications between federal and state governments could
stand improvement. ?Although I?m pleased with the appointment of Mark Forman as
e-gov czar,? Jackson said, ?I don?t see the one-on-one dialogue between feds
and states that I think there should be.? Otto Doll, CIO of South Dakota, and
Suzanne Peck, chief technology officer of the District of Columbia, gave a
presentation on citizen protection. Alisoun Moore, CIO of Montgomery County,
Md., joined David Molchany, CIO of Fairfax County, Va., and Norman Jacknis, CIO
of Westchester County, N.Y., to discuss outsourcing. Ronald Miller, CIO of the
Federal Emergency Management Agency, said FEMA director Joseph Albaugh heard
that firemen at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 were sending runners with
handwritten reports because their communications radios were overwhelmed.
Albaugh thought the failure was one reason why so many firemen died, Miller
said.
***************
FOSE visitor?s shopping list calls for middleware

When Defense Department personnel managers want to know the number of officers
in a particular rank across the service branches, they have to hunt out the
counts from various personnel systems and add them up by hand. 

Nancy Johnson, executive director of the eBusiness Program Office at the
Defense Logistics Agency, said her mission at the FOSE trade show today is to
find intelligent middleware to make such information easily accessible in one
place. 

Between attending panel discussions and booth duty, Johnson said, she is
hunting for middleware that can pull data from various systems forward in real
time. Fusing data from disparate systems is one of DLA's biggest challenges,
she said. 

DLA's eBusiness office provides electronic commerce services, business process
improvement, content management and distribution, and architecture and
standards across DOD. 
***************
Technology Briefs

LA Times

Hoping to gain a foothold in one of the fastest-growing Internet markets,
online auctioneer EBay Inc. has bought a 33% stake in Chinese auction site
EachNet for $30 million.

ICANN Director Sues for Access to Records
The group that oversees the Internet's domain-name system was slapped with a
lawsuit by one of its directors, who says he has been denied access to the
organization's corporate records. Karl Auerbach, a director of the Internet
Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers, filed suit to gain access to travel
records, payroll figures and other day-to-day details of the organization that
oversees the system that guides e-mail and Web browsers.

______________________


Lillie Coney
Public Policy Coordinator
U.S. Association for Computing Machinery
Suite 507
1100 Seventeenth Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20036-4632
202-659-9711