Clips April 3, 2002

[Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>]

Clips  April 3, 2002

ARTICLES

Consumers Union Chief Emphasizes Web Site 
Tourism, Research, Health Issues Drive E-Government Surge 
Judge Says U.S. Has Jurisdiction in Internet Case 
Movie studios form digital venture
In Free Music Software, a Hidden Fee-Based Service
Investigative Report: Terrorist Web Site Hosted by U.S. Firm
Broadband slowed by high prices
Privacy Concerns Raised Over Digital Music Proposal
U.S. Defends Small-Airport Plan 
Court: Computer ban 'unfair' to criminal
Illinois College Board Backs Legislation to Crack Down on Users of Phony
Degrees
Storage firms see opportunity 
Man pleads guilty to baseball bat fraud on eBay
Conviction of worker who spread virus overturned
Wayback Machine preserves our Web heritage
GSA puts moratorium on IT leasing
Alaska OKs electronic ballot for blind
Munns spells out NMCI priorities
Privacy group sues Homeland office
CyberWolf prowls for cyber alerts
Sun Micro Seen Launching High-End Server Next Week
Dell Turns to Computer Services, Servers, Storage
EchoStar Challenges Program Rules
FTC, Canada and some states join fight against Internet, e-mail fraud
Disaster recovery planning still lags
Why software should be free
Take a bus to the future
New online ads float, flash and can't be clicked off
OMB will soon release requests for e-gov initiatives 
First round of NMCI tests will conclude next month 
Why is Easy-to-Use so Hard to Do?
Online fraud squad touts success
Technology for perfect-pitch karaoke
Bug of the Day: Windows Buffer Overrun
Army official warns that hackers could infiltrate battlefield
Legislation driving Bush administration e-gov efforts
Can consumer data profile terrorists?

****************
Washington Post
Consumers Union Chief Emphasizes Web Site 

Jim Guest grimaces as he ponders whether his organization, Consumers Union, has
grown somewhat stodgy. "It's mature, somewhat staid," he acknowledges in a soft
voice. But then Guest, the president of the nonprofit research organization
that publishes Consumer Reports magazine, quickly corrects himself.
Straightening up, and in a slightly louder voice, he says, "We're perceived as
mature, somewhat staid." 

And that's an image that Guest is determined to change. As he wrote in a memo
to CU employees in December  nine months after he took the reins of the
66-year-old organization  he wants to transform CU "from being stately and
risk-averse to being more scrappy and entrepreneurial." 

Guest, 61, has already started to make changes, investing aggressively in CU's
Web site,ConsumerReports.org, looking to start targeted electronic newsletters
and beefing up the group's lobbying arm. At the same time, he's dealing with
budget problems that last month caused the first layoffs at the Yonkers, N.Y.,
group in 20 years. 

Last year, CU lost $7.5 million, its biggest loss ever. With magazine
subscriptions and investment income falling while postal rates and other
expenses continue to rise, Guest launched a major cost-cutting campaign. He
first offered buyouts and ordered a hiring freeze before announcing 17 layoffs 
about 3 percent of the workforce. 

The recent financial squeeze has also prompted CU to alter one of its
long-standing rules for maintaining its impartiality. It has long limited
contributions to $10,000 over a donor's lifetime. Now it will accept larger
donations, though a special committee will review any large gift to make sure
there is no conflict of interest. 

Guest is undeterred by the financial picture, which is still being adversely
affected by the stock market. "We will lose a little bit this year but finish
in black next year," he predicted. The key to profitability  and growth  will
come from consumers, not investments, he said. 

"In the past we were slow to respond to opportunities, reluctant to launch new
products, try new approaches unless we were sure it was going to work," Guest
said in a recent interview. "That's changing. We need to be faster-acting." 

That's particularly true for the Web site, which is now testing and rating
products almost as soon as they are released, not in roundups published at
intervals of a year or longer. The magazine has about 4 million subscribers,
and the new emphasis on the Web site, launched in late 1997, has brought in
another 800,000 subscribers, who separately pay $24 a year, or $3.95 a month.
That makes CU's the largest publication-based subscription site on the Web,
including that of the Wall Street Journal, which has about 626,000 subscribers.


"I would say ConsumerReports.org is at the top of the heap when it comes to a
paid subscriber base online," said Lisa Allen, principal analyst for the
technology research firm Forrester Research Inc. "Very few publishers or
programmers are able to command any payment for content online." 

Now, Guest said, CU is looking to start up specialized e-newsletters that can
be geared to targeted audiences, such as new parents, first-time homeowners or
aging baby boomers. The group is also experimenting with providing its ratings
over personal digital assistants, so consumers can take the data with them when
they shop. 

"In the past, we used to be somewhat monolithic  one size fit all," he noted.
"Now we can tailor to individual needs. The Web makes it all possible." 

And he views the new lobbying efforts as a way of seeking a national voice on
health care, financial and telecommunications services and product safety
issues. 

The offices in Austin and San Francisco are being encouraged to take their
legislative successes  such as the California office's recent victory in
getting public quality ratings for health-care procedures  to other states. 

In Washington, the organization took the unusual step last summer of publicly
opposing the presidential nomination of Mary Sheila Gall to the chairmanship of
the Consumer Product Safety Commission. 

"The goal is to have an impact on the marketplace . . . if not through
information, then through advocacy," Guest said. 

His ultimate goal, he said, is to turn CU into "the consumer champion"  to
provide people with information to help them make effective buying choices.
Informed consumers, in turn, will press manufacturers to make better and safer
products and provide more equitable and cost-effective services, he said. 

Guest is not widely known in the business world, but the low-key executive is
no stranger to CU. For the past 21 years, he has been the chairman of its board
and was a member of the committee assigned to find a replacement for former
president Rhoda H. Karpatkin when she retired. After a number of interviews
with other candidates, some other members of the search committee asked Guest
if he was interested in the full-time position. 

Before joining CU full time at a salary of $304,000 a year, Guest ran the
three-year-old American Pain Foundation, which he founded to be a consumer
information and advocacy group for pain management and prevention. He worked
earlier in senior positions at other high-profile advocacy organizations,
including Handgun Control Inc. and Planned Parenthood of Maryland. 

Demographically and economically, the growing emphasis on CU's Web site makes
sense. The median age of the magazine reader is 56 and about two-thirds of the
readers are male. Median household income is about 75 percent higher than U.S.
residential households in general. 

In contrast, the median age of CU's Web subscriber is 43 and the typical
household income is more than twice that of all U.S. households. 

The Web site has an added advantage: It doesn't have the ongoing printing,
paper and postage costs of the magazine. 

But Guest said CU doesn't plan to deemphasize, much less scrap, the magazine.
"For CU, the future is both" the magazine and the Web site, he said. 

****************
Washington Post
Tourism, Research, Health Issues Drive E-Government Surge 

More than a quarter of Americans use government Web sites to gather
information, mostly on popular tourist sites, school projects, and health or
safety information, according to a study released today by the Pew Internet &
American Life Project. 

The study - based upon the responses of nearly 2,400 Internet users who visited
government Web sites in the past six months - found that roughly 77 percent
used the online resources to gather information about popular tourist
attractions. 

Almost as many - 70 percent - said they used government Web sites to gather
information for school projects, while nearly half of those who visited
e-government Web sites did so to glean health or safety information, the survey
found. 

"Internet users are finding that government sites - like government itself
address a diversity of interests," said Elena Larsen, the key author of the
report. "Some people think of government as a tax collector or law enforcer,
but it turns out that 53 million people are using dot-gov sites to plan their
vacations." 

According to the study, only 16 percent of Americans use the Internet to file
their taxes, whereas 21 percent said they recently went online to find more
information about a federal, state, or local lottery. 

While most e-government activity appears to center around what governments can
do for the Web-wise, the survey found that that nearly two-thirds of those
polled sought information on public policy issues via government Web sites, and
more than a third took the extra step of contacting an official through a Web
site. Another 20 percent said they used the Web as part of a concerted lobbying
campaign. 

Among the most frequently cited service that government Web site users would
like to have is to be able to access their Social Security account balance via
the Internet. While the Social Security Administration currently allows
individuals to request copies of their statements via the Internet, the
information is sent to them through the mail. 

The survey indicates that nearly 80 percent of e-government minded citizens are
finding what they were seeking at government Web sites. Roughly half of those
polled agreed that the Internet has improved the way they interact with the
federal government, the Pew study says. 

Approximately 44 percent indicated they were satisfied with their state
e-government experience, compared to just 30 percent who said they were happy
with their local e-government offerings, according to the study. 

The Pew Internet & American Life Project is at: http://www.pewinternet.org/ 

Reported by Newsbytes.com, http://www.newsbytes.com 

****************
Reuters
Judge Says U.S. Has Jurisdiction in Internet Case 

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A federal judge has denied a motion to dismiss a
lawsuit filed against a Russian company accused of violating a controversial
U.S. copyright law, saying that even though the activity transpired over the
Internet the United States still has jurisdiction. 

  
Attorney Joseph Burton of law firm Duane Morris in San Francisco acknowledged
on Tuesday the novelty of the argument he made on behalf of his client,
Moscow-based ElcomSoft Co. Ltd., in one of the most closely watched cases
challenging the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (news - web sites)
(DMCA). 

ElcomSoft is accused of violating the DMCA by selling online a program that
allowed people to circumvent copyright protections in electronic books. Burton
had argued that because the conduct occurred over the Internet, the U.S. court
didn't have jurisdiction. 

"I'm disappointed but not surprised," he told Reuters. "It's a motion that's a
little bit ahead of its time. I think it will take a while for courts to
understand the real nature of the Internet and how it works and how we interact
with it before a motion like this has a better reception." 

Burton argued that regardless of where the company's Web site was located, the
activity itself was transacted over multiple borders in the digital realm, and
therefore not within the jurisdiction of U.S. courts. 

But in a ruling dated last Wednesday and received by defense and prosecuting
attorneys this week, U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Whyte in San Jose,
California, said there was sufficient conduct occurring within the United
States for his court to rule. 

SERVER, SALES, PAYMENTS ALL IN U.S. 

"The conduct which underlies the indictment includes ElcomSoft's offering its
AEBPR program for sale over the Internet, from a computer server physically
located in the United States," the judge wrote. "Purchasers obtained copies of
the program in the United States... Payments were directed to, and received by,
an entity in the United States." 

The judge previously denied a defense motion to dismiss conspiracy charges
against ElcomSoft, but Burton said the judge said he could refile that motion
after getting more information. 

A hearing is set for April 15 at which a trial date may be set, lawyers said.
They said they did not know when the judge would rule on the two remaining
motions to dismiss. 

On Monday, lawyers for both sides presented their arguments before the judge on
two other, more significant motions to dismiss filed by the defense. Defense
lawyers contend that the DMCA is overly vague and violates ElcomSoft's
constitutional rights to free speech. 

Prosecutors counter that the law clearly targets digital pirates and tools that
allow people to make unauthorized copies of digital copyrighted material. 

ElcomSoft's program, sold briefly on the Internet last year, allowed people
using Adobe Systems Inc.'s eBook Reader to copy and print digital books, as
well as transfer them to other computers and have the computer read them aloud.


KEY TEST OF LAW 

The ElcomSoft case is widely viewed as a crucial test of the DMCA, which civil
rights advocates and software programmers contend gives copyright owners
broader protection than they have over non-digital material, at the expense of
individuals' rights to legitimate use. 

Movie studios and record labels argue that the law is necessary to keep people
from indiscriminate and unauthorized copying of films and music over the
Internet, where digital material is so easily digested and transferred. 

ElcomSoft faces $2.25 million in fines. The employee who wrote the program at
the heart of the case was released with the promise that charges would be
dropped against him in exchange for his testimony. 

Dmitry Sklyarov, 27, returned home in December and said he will return to
testify in support of his employer. He was arrested in July after presenting
his program at the DefCon hacker conference in Las Vegas. 

****************
MSNBC
Movie studios form digital venture 
 
Hollywood group will set open technology standards

LOS ANGELES, April 2  In what could prove to be a milestone for digital
moviemaking, Hollywood?s seven major film studios Tuesday said they will form a
venture to set open technology standards for Digital Cinema. The venture?s name
and management will be announced in coming weeks, but a spokeswoman said the
effort will be funded with equal contributions by each of the studios: Disney,
20th Century Fox, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures
Entertainment, Universal Studios and Warner Bros.

       DIGITAL CINEMA EXPERTS outside the studios called the effort a positive
move in the still undeveloped arena for Digital Cinema, which can offer
consumers better quality movies and reduce operating costs for studios and
theaters.
       ?We must have a global standard for digital filmmaking that is as useful
as 35mm film,? said Charles S. Swartz, executive director and chief executive
of the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) at the University of Southern
California.
       ?The only way to do that is to jumpstart the marketplace and have the
industry agree on open standards,? Swartz said. The ETC was established to
analyze the impact of digital technology on the entertainment industry.
       Executives from large companies like Eastman Kodak Co. and Texas
Instruments Inc. to small digital production houses like Los Angeles-based The
Orphanage said the move should allay the fears of movie makers and theater
owners worried that they might spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy
digital equipment only to find it obsolete in just a few months.
       ?It?s definitely a large step forward for digital systems,? said Bob
Mayson, general manager at Kodak Digital Cinema.
       Early last month, Kodak showed its first entry into the Digital Cinema
marketplace at the theater exhibition industry?s ShoWest convention in Las
Vegas.
       But many large companies including Boeing Co., Texas Instruments,
Qualcomm Inc. have been pushing competing digital distribution systems,
projection technologies and business models for as long as five years, in some
cases. 
       COMMON STANDARDS NEEDED
       Independent filmmakers working on shoe-string budgets, too, have been
moving forward making movies with inexpensive digital cameras and other
equipment. Yet, when it comes to distributing the films to movie theaters, the
indies must use expensive processes to convert their digital movies to film.
      ?The sooner we get standards the studios accept, the sooner it?s going to
make it a reality to help us make digital pictures or help people who make the
pictures,? said Scott Stewart, co-founder of The Orphanage.
       For the most part, all their efforts have been hampered because
companies that make anything from expensive movie cameras to color mastering
equipment have been making products that, in some cases, use incompatible
technologies.
       The same problem existed with the adoption of digital sound technology,
and movie theater owners had to install two or three different systems to
handle digital sound. One Digital Cinema system can cost a theater $150,000 per
screen.
       Standards wars, too, are bogging down the adoption of new
high-definition (digital) television in the United States.
       By banding together, the studios hope to steer product manufacturers
toward an open set of standards, thereby making it less expensive for industry
players to adopt Digital Cinema. After early wrangling, the studios came
together on competing DVD standards, and DVD has proven to be a huge
moneymaker.
       ?The good news is that all the major seven have joined, which means you
wouldn?t have a couple of other studios releasing on a competing standard,?
said Brooke Williams, manager of marketing and field demonstrations for Texas
Instrument?s DLP Cinema.
       Disney is a unit of The Walt Disney Co., Fox is a unit of News Corp.
Ltd. Paramount is part of Viacom Inc., Sony Pictures is a unit of Sony Corp.,
Universal is part of Vivendi Universal, Warner Bros. is owned by AOL Time
Warner Inc., and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is its own entity.
****************
New York Times
In Free Music Software, a Hidden Fee-Based Service

Twenty million users of Kazaa, a popular Internet network that lets people
freely exchange music files online, have unknowingly received software that
could make them participants in a second network  one that plans to charge them
fees for access to songs, movies and other media.

The pay software's creator, Brilliant Digital Entertainment (news/quote), said
that it intended to send an update to the users' computers to activate the pay
network, called Altnet, within the next six weeks. 

Kevin G. Bermeister, chief executive of Brilliant Digital, which is based in
Los Angeles, said that users of Kazaa would be given the option of activating
Altnet.

Any user who decided to do that would then have two simultaneous networks
running: the one the person initially chose, which allows the free exchange of
songs, and another that would charge for songs.

Mr. Bermeister said Altnet would provide a platform through which record labels
and other media companies could charge for their copyrighted material.

The online music experience will "be back in the content owners' control," he
said.

Although that might be thought to please record companies, a spokesman for the
Record Industry Association of America, Matthew J. Oppenheim, said the industry
was still trying to understand the deal. 

The industry has sued Kazaa, saying its service abets rampant music piracy,
which costs the record companies tens of millions of dollars.

There was also no clear explanation of why consumers would want to pay for
songs on Altnet that they could already get at no charge through Kazaa.

Mr. Bermeister said users might be persuaded to purchase songs because they
would find the quality of those songs  which would be monitored for quality 
higher than the quality of the music copies they downloaded from strangers.

The Kazaa network is operated by Sharman Networks, based in Sydney, Australia,
and Brilliant Digital is a Sharman partner. 

To a typical consumer who downloaded Kazaa from the Web, Brilliant Digital was
largely invisible. It was the provider of software used to display advertising
to users of Kazaa, which was supposed to be supported by advertising.

The inclusion of software to create a second network  embedded within the
Brilliant Digital software  was first disclosed yesterday on CNet's News.com.

The Brilliant Digital plan also envisioned compensating some users who would
permit their computers to be used as special hubs for the distribution of
content like advertising and music files. That disclosure quickly brought
hundreds of online comments, many of them critical, from Kazaa users who
objected to what some described as "sneakware."

Mr. Bermeister said the inclusion of the Altnet component had been done with
the full knowledge of Sharman Networks and its chief executive, Nikki Hemming.

Mr. Bermeister said that he and Ms. Hemming were close friends and that he had
encouraged her to make Sharman's investment in the Kazaa technology. A
spokesman for Sharman Networks declined to comment on the issue.

Brilliant Digital filed a statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission
to explain its intention to deploy Altnet. It said the company was doing so
with cooperation from Sharman Networks.

But the move raises the question of whether the Altnet network could supersede
Kazaa; Mr. Bermeister was apparently retained to build an advertising base for
Kazaa. Mr. Bermeister said it was possible that "to some extent" Altnet would
make Kazaa irrelevant.

****************
MSNBC
Colleges train ?cybercorps? recruits

MONTEREY, Calif., April 2   Long before Sept. 11 and last year?s virus-like
attacks over the Internet, the U.S. government announced plans to train an
elite corps of computer security experts. Officials warned it wouldn?t be long
before terrorists learned to exploit vulnerabilities, from air traffic and
banking to spacecraft navigation and defense. Three years later, the first
students have scholarships to study computer security in return for working at
least two years at a federal agency. But is it too little, too late?

  ?IN TERMS of solving our cybersecurity problems, it doesn?t have a chance,?
said Michael Erbschloe, vice president of research at the consulting firm
Computer Economics and author of books on cyberwarfare.
       Only about 180 students over four years will get scholarships from the
first round of federal grants awarded last May to six universities. More
schools will be added this year, increasing the corps by 120 students.
       Though President Bush has asked for an additional $19.3 million for the
cybercorps this fiscal year as part of a larger supplemental appropriations
package, he has proposed only about $11 million for fiscal 2003  the same
amount Congress granted the past two years.
       ?Eleven million dollars just doesn?t buy you a lot,? Erbschloe said.
100 IS ?BETTER THAN ZERO?
       Organizers acknowledge the numbers are small, but they believe even a
few well-trained experts can make a difference and demonstrate the wisdom of
more spending in security education.
Graduates are expected to become more well-rounded than most network
specialists, who receive training merely on specific systems, or even computer
science graduates whose academic programs often ignore security altogether.
       The aim is to create experts who know enough about security to make
decisions on buying equipment and software for government and to anticipate
vulnerabilities.
       ?It might be nice to have 39,000 people, but the fact that we can have
100 is a lot better than having zero,? said Andy Bernat, program director of
Federal Cyber Service at the National Science Foundation, which is overseeing
the program along with five other federal agencies.
       At the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, about a dozen civilians
are participating in the cybercorps and taking the same computer security
classes as military students.
       After two years, the students will have a master?s degree in computer
science with an emphasis in information security  along with practical
experience.
       In one exercise, each student will try to secure a system that will be
targeted by hackers from the National Security Agency, Air Force and Army.
       Other classes focus on hackers? techniques and security theories.
       ?We cannot ahead of time predict all the things someone might do to a
system,? said George Dinolt, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School.
?That?s part of the problem with the approach people are taking to try to solve
the security problem.?

SECURITY GAP IN FACULTY
       The cybercorps schools? emphasis on security differs from most college
computer science programs, which tend to focus on programming and other basics
rather than making systems all but impenetrable.
       That is likely to change, given not only recent reports of serious
vulnerabilities but also the realization that terrorists can and will exploit
weak points  whether in airline security or computer networks.
       ?Historically, people played nicely with each other  enough so that we
could get away with saying we don?t need to think about security,? said Steve
Chapin, a professor at Syracuse University.
       But many schools face a shortage of professors trained specifically in
security.
       When Iowa State University recently advertised a computer-security
faculty opening, only two applied. Other computer-related fields usually
attract dozens of candidates.
       
GUIDELINES CREATED
       The National Security Agency, which established guidelines for computer
science security programs, has certified only 23 schools nationwide, including
Iowa State and the five others in the cybercorps program.
       As part of the cybercorps program, separate grants of up to $100,000 per
year are being awarded to schools to develop or improve security programs.
       As academia slowly gears up, security experience is increasingly
becoming a hot commodity. Many companies, including Microsoft Corp. and Cisco
Systems Inc., have announced plans to make security a top priority.
       With little competition from traditional computer science programs,
cybercorps students will have no problem finding high-paying private sector
jobs after the two years of service at government salary are over.
       Organizers hope many will stay on. Some students are taking a
wait-and-see attitude, while others say serving the government is important.
       ?I?m more driven by other factors than money,? said Paul Schoberg, a
student at the Naval Postgraduate School. ?If pay is decent enough, I?m happy.?
       
BUYING A BANDAGE
       Still, private-sector firms will always be interested in employees with
the right mindset, something difficult to pick up in on-the-job seminars or
hacking schools where tech employees learn the latest exploits.
       Security training needs to be more like law school  a way of thinking 
and less like trade school aimed at teaching specific knowledge, said Scott
Blake, security strategy director at BindView Corp.
       Even if the cybercorps isn?t a panacea, it could begin to solve the
problem, said J.D. Fulp, a Naval Postgraduate School instructor.
       ?Nobody thinks we?re going to stop the bleeding,? he said. ?But it
doesn?t mean you don?t buy a bandage and try to reduce it.?

****************
News Factor Network
Investigative Report: Terrorist Web Site Hosted by U.S. Firm

A web site glorifying recent suicide attacks in the Middle East that is hosted
by a U.S. company is sparking legal and ethical questions about whether
Internet service providers and hosting companies should be held accountable for
content on their networks and Web pages. 

The site represents the group Hamas, which is a terrorist organization,
according to federal officials and official U.S. classification. 

Department of Justice spokesperson Jill Stillman told NewsFactor that groups
are reviewed by the Secretary of State every two years for classification as
terrorist organizations. The next review is scheduled for 2003. 

She said the legality of a hosting agreement and a Web site hinges on whether
the site is involved in soliciting funds, which this particular one is not. 

However, Stillman said, the U.S. government is aware of this site and others
like it. She predicted increased discussion and debate about how responsible
U.S. Web hosting companies and other firms should be for what appears on the
Internet. 

"We won't comment on a particular site, but basically it's illegal when there's
a solicitation of funds on behalf of a terrorist organization," Stillman said.
"It's something obviously the government is aware of, and down the road, I
wouldn't be surprised if there's more debate on it." 


****************
MSNBC
Broadband slowed by high prices

?Tiers? of high-speed services will drive mainstream adoption

April 2  Cable modems will continue to dominate the high-speed Internet access
market for the next few years, beating out telephone companies in delivering
broadband services to residential customers, according to new research. But
unless cable operators narrow the price gap between dial-up Internet and
high-speed access, broadband will have a tough time cracking the mainstream
market.

       IN AN UPCOMING report on the residential broadband market, the Yankee
Group is projecting that high-speed Internet access will grow from 10.3 million
subscribers in 2001, or about 15 percent of the current total online
population, to 41.4 million subscribers in 2007. By the end of 2002, only about
15 million to 16 million U.S. households will be using a broadband connection 
out of roughly 66 million homes with Internet access. 
       Broadband refers to high-speed Internet access via a cable modem or a
digital subscriber line (DSL) through a telecommunications company like Qwest
Communications or Verizon. 
       Broadband is ?always on,? which means you don?t have to wait a long,
boring minute or so for a modem to dial-up. Surfing the Web is enormously
faster through a cable modem or a digital subscriber line (DSL) than through a
telephone dial-up. So why aren?t more people switching? 
       ?The key factor keeping consumers from migrating to broadband is
pricing,? said Imran Khan, senior analyst of the Yankee Group. ?The narrower
the gap between dial-up and broadband, the broader the adoption.?
      In the report, ?Residential Broadband: Cable modem remains King,? the
Boston-based technology research firm forecasts that ?cable modem providers 
primarily the multiple system operators  will remain the undisputed leaders in
residential broadband access over the next five years and beyond.? 
       At the end of 2002, approximately 10.1 million homes, or two-thirds of
the residential broadband market, will be using cable modems. 
       Because the Federal Communications Commission requires
telecommunications companies to open their phone lines to rival services, the
phone companies have resisted upgrading their phone customers to high-speed
services. 
       Cable companies that offer high-speed Internet access aren?t required to
share their Internet lines with competitors, federal regulators ruled in March.

       In the last five years, cable operators such as AT&T, Comcast and Cox,
have invested more than $50 billion upgrading their networks so they can
provide high-speed Internet access as well as hundreds of cable TV channels.
      It?s just been within the last year that the cable industry has gotten
serious about pushing high-speed Internet to its customers. At the same time
Comcast and other cable companies have actually increased the monthly fee for
broadband, driving the cost up to $50 or more a month. 
       DSL rates from the telcos have gone up as well. In certain markets, DSL
prices have jumped from $39 to $49 a month over the last 18 months. 
       Yet even as cable modems take over the home market, the switchover to
broadband services by average Web surfers has been slower than originally
forecast. 
       Not so long ago, industry researchers were predicting there would be 30
million U.S. households with high-speed Internet connections by 2004.
       An economic recession and the average $50 monthly fee put an end to
those early, bullish forecasts. 
       ?The industry over-anticipated the impact and desire of broadband from
the consumer level,? said Jim Stroud, analyst with The Carmel Group, a telecom
research firm.
       From the cable operators? perspective, a cable modem customer is more
expensive because of the high volume of customer service calls (i.e. ?The
printer?s not working?) and more frequent visits to the home by a technician. 
       To grow beyond the early adopters who don?t flinch at paying high-prices
for high-speed, Khan believes cable companies will begin to offer different
levels of broadband service, similar to the ?tiers? of channels they offer
their cable TV customers. 
       At a lower price, subscribers could have the ?always on? feature of
broadband, but Web surfing or video streaming would be at a slower speed. 
       On average cable modems download information at speeds anywhere from 500
kilobits per second to 1 megabyte, or about four times faster than consumer
DSL. Top speed for dial-up Internet access maxes out at 56 kilobits per second.

       In a survey of households without high-speed access, 63 percent said
they were interested in getting one of the broadband services. But only 15
percent are interested at $50 a month.
      ?Unless service providers narrow the gap between $24 dial-up and
broadband, it will be a difficult task to expand into the mainstream,? said
Khan. ?Whether cable modems or DSL, prices are going to have to come down.? 
       Gartner Group analyst John Girard says dial-up customers don?t
understand all the benefits of broadband. ?People don?t understand what they?re
paying for. If [cable companies] make it cheap to get started, maybe people
will try it.? 
       Some cable operators, including Cox and Charter Communications, are
beginning to experiment with different levels of broadband service.
       Steve Gorman, director of marketing for Internet services at Cox, says
tiering wouldn?t just imply offering slower speeds, but could include packages
of different services such as home networking. 
       Other analysts argue that consumer demand for broadband is strong enough
that cable and teleco companies will be able to stick to their rates. 
       ?Pricing will stay where it is, although services may improve,? said
Gary Schultz, principal analyst with Multimedia Research Group. ?But don?t hold
your breath waiting for prices to go down.?
****************
Newsbytes
Privacy Concerns Raised Over Digital Music Proposal

Proposed federal regulations that would standardize the way in which Internet
broadcasters pay royalties for the songs they play could jeopardize the
anonymity of online music listeners, according to some privacy advocates. 

The U.S. Copyright Office in February proposed regulations that would establish
a per-song royalty rate that Webcasters would have to pay for the tunes that
they stream to their online listeners. 

Comments on the proposal are due Friday. 

In addition to setting royalty rates, the proposed regulations also aim to
establish standards for how Webcasters keep track of their listeners. Those
elements of the proposal could raise substantial privacy concerns, Electronic
Privacy Information Center (EPIC) Legislative Counsel Chris Hoofnagle said
today. 

"The reason why the (Recording Industry Association of America) and the content
industry wants personally identifiable information is not to do copyright
enforcement. It's to do (customer) profiling," Hoofnagle said. 

"Profiling" in this case refers to the controversial practice of building
dossiers of consumers' spending habits and preferences based on their Internet
use. 

Hoofnagle was responding to an RIAA proposal included in the Copyright Office's
notice of proposed rulemaking. In that proposal, the RIAA calls for Webcasters
in certain instances to maintain - and make available to content owners -
"Listeners' Logs" for their users. 

According to the Copyright Office, each Listener's Log would include
information about which users were accessing which songs online. The logs would
also include information about when users were listening and from where. 

While the Copyright Office wrote in its proposal that the RIAA request for such
documentation as a way to gauge statutory compliance seemed "reasonable ... on
its face," the agency asked other interested parties to raise any potential
concerns they may have with the proposed record-keeping rules. 

"Such parties should identify any problems they perceive with the proposed
regulations and explain with specificity the reasons why the regulations are
unworkable or unduly burdensome, or exceed the needs of the copyright owners,"
the Copyright Office wrote. 

Copyright Office Senior Attorney Tanya Sandros today declined to comment on the
record-keeping proposal, but she did say that none of the proposals contained
in the rulemaking document are set in stone. 

"We see this as an open-ended proposal at this stage," Sandros said. 

Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) Policy Fellow Mike Godwin said that
record-keeping rules should be carefully crafted. 

"The last thing you want to do is set up a system that erases whatever
advantage there is to Internet broadcasting by taking away privacy," Godwin
said. "You want the right to listen anonymously." 

The RIAA was not immediately available for comment on this story. 

****************
Washington Post
U.S. Defends Small-Airport Plan 

The Transportation Department yesterday defended its decision to use different
methods to inspect luggage for explosives at small airports and large hubs,
saying its plan for smaller airports is not a "second-class system."

Last week, Michael P. Jackson, deputy secretary of the agency, said that not
all luggage will be screened by the same kind of technology at every airport.
Small airports will not get the bulky bomb-sniffing machines that use
sophisticated X-ray technology to check luggage for explosives, he said. 

Instead, screeners at small airports will swab the luggage with cotton gauze
and then check the gauze for residue of explosives using a different kind of
machine, known as a trace-detection device. Larger airports will get either the
bulky X-ray technology or a combination of the X-ray and trace-detection
machines.

By the end of the year, all airline-passenger luggage must be screened for
explosives by a machine, as directed by a law passed after the Sept. 11
terrorist attacks. The legislation, approved by Congress in November, created
the Transportation Security Administration, a unit of the Transportation
Department, to carry out the directives.

Some members of Congress and security experts criticized the trace-detection
approach as being insufficient because it merely inspects the outside of bags.

But yesterday, a Transportation Department spokesman said the security agency's
personnel will swab the inside of bags. "With better training, we are
confident" about this technology, said the spokesman, Chet Lunner. "It is not a
second-class system."

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, the ranking Republican on the Senate
Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee's aviation subcommittee,
proposed that bags that passed through small airports could be rescreened at
larger airports on connecting flights with the more sophisticated technology,
produced by two companies, InVision Technologies Inc. and L-3 Communications
Holdings Inc.

Lunner, however, said luggage will be scanned once. "Our position is, once it's
done with an open bag, it doesn't need a detector a second time," he said.

Separately, InVision Technologies announced yesterday that it has received a
$148.6 million order from the Transportation Security Administration for 300
bomb-scanning machines to be built from parts the agency ordered in March, as
well as for parts for 100 more machines.

In March, the TSA placed a $169.8 million order for 100 machines, which are
scheduled for delivery in June. The 300 machines are scheduled for delivery in
September.

****************
ZNET
Court: Computer ban 'unfair' to criminal
URL: http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-874046.html 

A federal appeals court panel has ruled that banning a man convicted of child
porn charges from using computers is an unfair restriction on his liberties. 

In this case, George Sofsky pleaded guilty to receiving child porn over the
Internet. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison and was banned from using a
computer and surfing the Internet without permission during the probationary
period following his jail term. 

However, a panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the ban
"inflicts a greater deprivation on Sofsky's liberty than is reasonably
necessary." 

The court likened banning computer use to prohibiting people who conduct crimes
via phone or mail from using those communication methods. "A total ban on
Internet access prevents use of e-mail, an increasingly widely used form of
communication," the court wrote in an opinion issued last week. 

The court said that instead the government should consider using sting
operations and unannounced inspections of Sofsky's computers to ensure he isn't
viewing child porn. 

As the world becomes more wired, restricting Internet use among those convicted
of computer crimes has become a highly contentious issue. So far, courts have
issued mixed rulings on the matter. A few years ago, when computers were less
common in everyday life, prosecutors and judges came under fire for prohibiting
hackers including Kevin Mitnick from using computers as part of their
sentences. Supporters of efforts to rehabilitate hackers said computer-related
jobs would provide the opportunity for them to walk the straight and narrow and
earn a decent paycheck while doing it. 

But this latest opinion may indicate that judges are acknowledging the
increasingly pervasive use of computers in heretofore unexpected places. 

For example, an ever-expanding array of jobs--from grocery store checkout clerk
to department store salesperson--involve daily contact with computers. What's
more, performing simple tasks such as paying at the gas pump requires
interacting with network-connected machines.

****************
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Illinois College Board Backs Legislation to Crack Down on Users of Phony
Degrees

The Illinois Board of Higher Education on Tuesday voted unanimously to back a
bill to crack down on online trafficking in phony college degrees. 

The proposed legislation would make it a Class A misdemeanor to use a fake
diploma, transcript, or other document from a legitimate Illinois college to
secure a job or promotion. Offenders could face a year in prison and a $2,500
fine. 

The bill is expected to come before the Illinois legislature for a vote by May,
says Don Sevener, a spokesman for the Board of Higher Education. To become law,
the bill would need the approval of the legislature and the signature of the
governor. 

The legislation, which was drafted by the staff of the Board of Higher
Education, aims to discourage people from buying bogus academic credentials
over the Internet. The staff members said in a report that they had found 20
Web sites trafficking in fake degrees. One site, fakedegrees.com, offers to
sell bogus degrees from 14 Illinois colleges, the report says. 

"This has the potential to undermine the integrity of Illinois institutions,"
says Mr. Sevener. 

The report says the Web sites provide purchasers a template they can use to
create realistic-looking diplomas. A few sites also offer phony letterheads and
other paraphernalia to assist people in forging documents to show that they
have graduated from college. 

One site, replacementdiplomas.com, says that for $125 it will sell look-alike
college documents to graduates who have misplaced their original diplomas and
whose alma maters are defunct. "Our diplomas are suitable for framing, and you
can show them off to everyone," the service's Web site reads.
****************
Chicago Sun Times
Storage firms see opportunity 

BOSTON--With little to celebrate lately, businesses in the $25 billion
data-storage industry are looking for some gains from the confusion over the
planned merger between Compaq Computer Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co.

Compaq and HP have pointed to data storage as a key area for providing
''one-stop shopping,'' blending HP's high-end storage products with Compaq's
mid-range and so-called Storage Area Networks.

But rival EMC Corp., hit hard by the business-spending slump, insists it will
be the real beneficiary.

At a recent industry conference, EMC Executive Chairman Mike Ruettgers
predicted the merger would tie the two companies in knots for months, if not
years. He said frustrated customers who had been looking for cheaper deals
would return to the EMC fold.

For smaller companies, there are worries that a merged HP and Compaq could
further crowd them out in the long run.

But in the short term, the merger, coupled with thousands of recent layoffs at
EMC, could cripple the big companies' customer service, making room for the
smaller businesses.

''There's always room for somebody who gives the right kind of hug to the
customer,'' said John McArthur, a vice president at research company IDC, based
in Framingham, Mass.

****************
USA Today
Man pleads guilty to baseball bat fraud on eBay

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP)  A man who impersonated major league shortstops Derek
Jeter and Nomar Garciaparra to obtain baseball bats, and then sold them on eBay
claiming they had been used by the stars, pleaded guilty Tuesday to six counts
of mail and wire fraud.

Herbert John Derungs, 31, of San Francisco faces up to five years in prison, a
fine of $250,000 and restitution for each of the counts when he is sentenced
July 1.

Derungs admitted claiming to be Jeter and Garciaparra in e-mails sent to the
Original Maple Bat Co. Jeter plays for the New York Yankees and Garciaparra
plays for the Boston Red Sox.

The company sent him 60 bats worth $3,319 to addresses in Lakewood, Wash., and
Brisbane, Calif. Original Maple never received any money for the merchandise.

Derungs, who was indicted in December, was ordered detained after entering his
plea in U.S. District Court in San Jose. Prosecutors said there was no plea
agreement.

****************
USA Today
Conviction of worker who spread virus overturned

MIAMI (AP)  One of the first convictions obtained under a federal law intended
to crack down on computer hacking has been erased by a federal judge based on a
financial assessment of the damage.

Computer technician Herbert Pierre-Louis was convicted of knowingly
transmitting a computer virus to his employer. But his jury decided the loss,
not including lost profits, was less than $5,000, the minimum required for a
conviction.

"The law is the law, and the government didn't have sufficient evidence to meet
all the elements of the crime," defense attorney Manuel Casabielle said
Tuesday.

Prosecutors have told Casabielle they intend to appeal.

Federal prosecutors wanted U.S. District Judge Alan Gold to factor in lost
profits caused by a two-day shutdown when the virus infected computers at
Purity Wholesale Grocers work sites in Buffalo, N.Y., and Hopkins, Minn., in
June 1998.

The defense argued that the only loss allowed under the law was repair costs,
which didn't meet the $5,000 threshold.

Calls to the Boca Raton-based company for comment were not immediately
returned. Purity has $1.5 billion in annual sales through 12 affiliated
companies.

Congress amended the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act last year to expand the
concept of loss to cover lost revenue, repair costs and related damage from
interrupted service.

In examining the old and new laws, Gold said the latest version is more than a
simple clarification or technical change.

With the amendment, Pierre-Louis may be the only defendant who can take
advantage of the narrower definition of the cost of hacking.

If an appeals court sides with prosecutors and allows lost profits to be
considered, Gold said Pierre-Louis would still be acquitted because prosecutors
didn't work hard enough to prove the $5,000 loss.

The conviction was greeted in the computer industry as a sign of things to come
for hackers.

Pierre-Louis' trial was only the second nationally under the anti-hacking law.
The other case ended in the conviction of a California dot-com systems
administrator who infected his old company's computers after quitting.


****************
USA Today
Wayback Machine preserves our Web heritage

Nostalgic for the Web of yesteryear  those golden oldie sites that have been
severed from their vital hyperlinks or erased from servers?

Then surf over to the Wayback Machine, a project aimed at preserving the
rapidly changing Web.

"The average life of a Web page is about 100 days," said Brewster Kahle,
director of the San Francisco-based Internet Archive, which is administering
the Wayback project. "Within that time, most Web pages are either changed,
pulled or they're forgotten about and they fade away."

Alas, they're prey to the ravages of what's known as linkrot.

But what makes the Web so valuable  its immediacy, vastness and lack of any
central controlling authority  also makes it difficult to preserve.

"The Web makes up a substantial part of our digital culture and a lot of it has
been lost," Kahle said.

But a lot has also been saved.

The Wayback archive contains 10 billion preserved pages (a whopping 100
terabytes, or trillions of bytes, of data), and it's now growing by about 1
billion pages a month.

Consider that the Library of Congress  the world's largest collection of books 
contains 26 million volumes by comparison.

The Wayback archive contains not only Web sites, but also many of the old
USENET message boards where so many geeks spent countless hours before the Web
was created. For those too young to remember, USENET is a worldwide bulletin
board system that contains thousands of newsgroups on virtually every
conceivable subject.

While the Wayback archive can be great fun  taking you back to Yahoo's homepage
in 1996 or tech news site ZDNet's 1997 homepage  it's also proving to be an
invaluable tool for researchers.

"Look at our fascination now with TV and its effects," said Lee Rainie,
director of the Washington, D.C.-based Pew Internet and American Life Project.
"But we don't have much data on the early years of TV. With the Wayback machine
we're retaining some of the early development of the Web so we can ask
questions such as 'Was the Internet a socially isolating phenomenon or was it a
connecting agent?' "

Using the Wayback Machine is as easy as using a search engine.

Just go to the site and click the "Take Me Back!" button.
****************
Federal Computer Week
GSA puts moratorium on IT leasing

Starting April 5, agencies temporarily will be unable to lease information
technology products from contractors under the General Services Administration
Federal Supply Service's (FSS) schedule.

A 60-day moratorium GSA issued March 29 affects millions of dollars worth of
agency contracts, said Larry Allen, executive director of the Coalition for
Government Procurement, a Washington, D.C., industry group. 

Agencies leased more than $50 million in IT products in the first half of
fiscal 2002 alone, he said.

The notice sent to FSS contractors states that the moratorium blocks new
leasing orders, but contractors can continue to maintain equipment already
installed at agencies. 

It also requires that any new orders on existing lease blanket purchase
agreements (BPAs) must first be submitted to a GSA contracting officer for
review and approval. BPAs are standing contracts that allow agency officials to
order from a pre-defined set of products or services.

However, the moratorium does not affect the many other governmentwide IT
contracts that offer leasing, such as the National Institutes of Health's
CIO-SP2i contract.

"This is a highly unusual move," Allen said of GSA's moratorium. "Leasing has
been growing in popularity."

Leasing has been named by members of Congress as one of several areas of
concern over possible harmful effects of procurement reform. But there are many
examples of where leasing has helped agencies get technology for immediate
needs, such as homeland security, when outright purchase could not be justified
within tight budgets, Allen said. 

"Agencies rely on these contracts," he said. "Pulling the leasing rug out from
under them is going to harm the federal government's ability to do its job."

GSA officials could not be reached for comment.
****************
Federal Computer Week
Alaska OKs electronic ballot for blind

A new Alaska law allowing for electronic ballots eventually may help blind and
visually impaired voters in the state to cast their ballots without assistance,
enabling them to keep their votes secret.

Last month, Alaska Gov. Tony Knowles signed H.B. 320, permitting the state
Division of Elections to provide technology for blind and visually impaired
voters so they can cast "private, independent and verifiable ballots,"
according to the legislation.

The estimated 12,500 blind voters in the state have had to rely on other people
to cast their ballots for them in the booth.

"We believe we have the highest per capita number of folks who are blind in
Alaska," said Janet Kowalski, director of Division of Elections. That doesn't
include the members of the voting population who are visually impaired. "Our
goal here has always been to treat voters the same," she said. "What the
legislation says is that anytime the Division of Election buys electronic
balloting equipment, it must be disabled-accessible." The law was passed
quickly and had bipartisan support, she added. 

Kowalski said the state planned to test some machines during the general
election in November, but deploying the technology statewide may take some
time. Some new technologies include devices that enable voters to navigate
their choices with an electronic button while listening on a headset. Kowalski
said the state had considered Internet voting, but security was an issue.

The state legislature is considering a capital improvement fund to help pay for
electronic voting machines, but it is too early in the process, she said.

"The Alaska Division of Elections has not been open to some of these
technologies in the past because they were extremely time-intensive and
expensive," she said. "With the revolution in technology, it's just far easier
for election administrators to put these machines in place."

There are 452 polling places statewide, and about 97 percent of them use
optical scanning machines. At the other 3 percent, ballots are hand-counted.

Although the balloting controversies in Florida during the 2000 presidential
election helped spur passage of the bill, advocates have been pushing for
secret balloting for blind and visually impaired voters for a decade. The
Alaska bill is also known as the Frank Haas Act, commemorating a longtime
advocate for visually impaired people in Alaska.
****************
Federal Computer Week
Munns spells out NMCI priorities

Navy officials expect the Navy Marine Corps Intranet to pass its first
milestone as early as next month, the new director of the NMCI Program Office
said.

That comes as the Navy has retooled the management of its massive effort to
create an enterprisewide network for its shore-based sites.

Rear Adm. Charles Munns, in his first meeting with reporters since being named
to the post in February, compared the scope of the efforts to roll out more
than 400,000 NMCI seats with the Navy's efforts to fix the Year 2000 computer
problem.

During the April 2 briefing, Munns said that his top priority for NMCI is the
testing process, which will provide data for Pentagon officials to determine
whether NMCI can move forward.

The original law authorizing NMCI stipulated that the Navy would roll out a
certain number of seats to prove the feasibility of the concept. Under a
September 2001 agreement, John Stenbit, Defense Department chief information
officer, and Michael Wynne, deputy undersecretary for Defense for acquisition
and technology, must give their approval to allow the Navy to order another
100,000 seats.

The contractor tests and evaluations (CT&Es) are a critical piece of
information for that decision, officials have said.

Munns confirmed that CT&E has been going well at the initial three sites.

Munns said his second priority is getting more of a handle on the Navy's legacy
applications. The Navy has identified nearly 100,000 applications and is
working to refine the process to determine whether those applications will be
moved to the new NMCI network.

Finally, Munns said he will be working on a plan for what happens after Stenbit
and Wynne make their determination. "We need a specific plan by dates so
commands out there know when they are going to join the NMCI network," he said.

Munns said that the Navy has reassessed its decision to place the global
network operations center at the Marine base at Quantico, Va.

The Navy Department and contractor EDS were looking to house the fourth NMCI
network operations center at Quantico, but Munns said that decision is up in
the air because no building at Quantico could be used for such a purpose.

The network operations centers provide mission-critical services for the Navy's
new EDS-owned network, such as network management and monitoring, help-desk
support, user administration and information assurance.

The original plan was for NMCI to have six network operations centers. Last
year, however, EDS decided NMCI would need only four centers and two
"enterprise management facilities," which Navy officials said are essentially
mini-network operations centers.

EDS has opened centers at the Naval Station Norfolk, Va., and at the Naval Air
Station North Island on Coronado Island in San Diego County, Calif. The third
center is under construction at Ford Island in Oahu, Hawaii.

Munns said the Navy Department is looking for a site for the fourth center, and
it is likely that one of the four centers will serve at the global one.
****************
Federal Computer Week
Privacy group sues Homeland office

Alarmed that the Office of Homeland Security may be secretly developing
elements of a national identification system, a privacy watchdog organization
filed suit in federal court April 1, demanding access to the agency's working
documents.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center sued after the Office of Homeland
Security and its director, Tom Ridge, failed to respond to a March 20 Freedom
of Information Act request for copies of agency records.

EPIC Executive Director Marc Rotenberg said his organization wants records that
detail the agency's efforts to get states to issue standardized driver's
licenses, to create a "trusted flier" program and to use biometric technology
to identify U.S. citizens and foreign visitors.

EPIC fears such activities could lead to the creation of intrusive national
identification systems that would have "enormous implications for privacy and
civil liberties in America," Rotenberg said.

But perhaps more important, he stressed, is establishing that the Office of
Homeland Security must operate in public view. 

"This will be a critical test of open government," Rotenberg said during a
telephone press conference after filing the suit. The suit comes as openness
emerges as an increasingly contentious issue for the Office of Homeland
Security. For several weeks, Ridge has refused to testify before Congress about
Bush administration plans for spending $38 billion on homeland security.

In a letter to House and Senate leaders, Rotenberg sided with members of
Congress who say Ridge is obliged to answer questions when summoned by
congressional committees. He said that "significant new powers" have been
allocated to the Office of Homeland Security that "require meaningful public
oversight."

During the press conference, Rotenberg said, "It is our belief that the Office
of Homeland Security is playing a critical role" in developing policies and
systems that could lead to a national identification card.

EPIC views national ID cards as a major step toward the infrastructure for a
national surveillance system. National ID cards could enable the government to
track personal activities and transactions, EPIC contends.

Supporters of national IDs say they would enhance national security by making
it harder for foreign visitors to evade detection.

EPIC is seeking information on model legislation that the Office of Homeland
Security says it is drafting to require states to link the expiration dates of
driver's licenses issued to foreigners to the expiration dates of their visas. 

The privacy organization also wants records related to efforts to standardize
driver's licenses across the country. Standard driver's licenses and
interconnected state databases on drivers could form the basis for a national
identification system, EPIC officials contend.

EPIC lawyer David Sobel said he has similar concerns about a "trusted flier"
program that interests Ridge's office. That program could mean the creation of
a federally issued ID card that uses biometric technology as a means of
identification, he said.
****************
Federal Computer Week
CyberWolf prowls for cyber alerts

A wolf is a feared and stealthy hunter in nature and now cyber intruders should
also fear the "wolf" prowling around numerous Defense Department and other
federal agencies.

CyberWolf 1.8 from CyberWolf Technologies Inc. helps federal information
technology security analysts prioritize the alerts produced by
intrusion-detection systems, firewalls and other security measures, said Tom
McDonough, chief executive officer of the company, a provider of enterprise
security management software and services.

Few incidents ultimately require human response, and CyberWolf is designed to
identify those by recognizing patterns in seemingly random alerts, signaling
that an invasion or attack is under way. 

McDonough said many agencies within DOD and the intelligence community are
using CyberWolf but could not be identified due to security concerns. He added
that the Falls Church, Va.-based company, originally called Mountain Wave Inc.,
should have at least three new government customers before the end of May,
which also is about the time that Version 2.0 will be released.

Jack Beavers, chief architect at CyberWolf Technologies, said that Version 1.8
is a refinement released last month, but 2.0 will have bigger changes. Version
1.8 has new cross-correlation and user capabilities that enable an organization
to more quickly recognize and respond to attacks, he said.

CyberWolf is designed to capture and prioritize alerts from firewalls,
antivirus software, authentication technology and intrusion-detection systems.
It tracks incidents to identify and "memorize" attack warnings, which can be
precursors to organized attacks.

"Contemporary intrusion-detection systems have alerts scrolling by all the
time, from high alerts to cryptic [announcements], so it's tough to know what's
really going on," Beavers said. "CyberWolf puts together a short list of
incidence/trouble tickets, organized by severity and helps managers respond
quickly. You can stop the bad guy before he hurts you...[and security
personnel] can go and do something instead of sifting through reports and
cross-correlating from multiple devices."

McDonough echoed those sentiments and offered an example: Before deploying
CyberWolf, one agency had nine analysts working three shifts in front of more
than 10 monitors. Within weeks of using CyberWolf, it only took two analysts
watching one monitor to do the same job. 

"They could re-deploy seven security employees for other duties and get the
most efficiency and effectiveness out of the people they've got," McDonough
said. 

Version 2.0 will respond to feedback from government users who requested
improved real-time reporting, and it will have an enhanced graphical user
interface, Beaver said. He added that all customers would automatically get an
upgrade once a new version is released or as new firewalls and other security
platforms are added.

CyberWolf can be deployed in a few days, although some "tweaking" is usually
necessary over the first few weeks to work out the false positives and focus on
the most serious security threats, the company officials said.

The average price is $150,000 to $200,000, and the company uses the perpetual
license model, which costs 20 percent of list price per year and includes all
upgrades and support, McDonough said.
****************
New York Times
Executive Fearful of Microsoft in Interactive TV Software

ASHINGTON, April 2  The chief executive of a company that makes software for
interactive television said today that Microsoft (news/quote) could, and
probably would, stifle new software that posed a threat to its computer
operating system monopoly unless stiffer restrictions were imposed on its
business practices.

The executive, Mitchell Kertzman of Liberate Technologies (news/quote), was the
10th witness to testify on behalf of nine states and the District of Columbia,
which are seeking broader curbs on Microsoft than the Justice Department
proposed after an appeals court ruled that Microsoft had repeatedly broken
antitrust laws.

Mr. Kertzman expressed concern that the settlement proposed by the Justice
Department and nine other states that originally sued Microsoft would allow the
company to enter into exclusive contracts with cable companies to distribute
its own set-top box software and that it would retaliate against those that
support a competing product like Liberate's.

The dissenting states argue that interactive television software  which allows
people to shop, send e-mail and have access to the Internet using a television
instead of a computer  is a leading future challenger to the Windows monopoly.

"There are far more television owners in the world today than there are owners
of personal computers," Mr. Kertzman said.

Without stricter rules, Microsoft could buy parts of cable companies and
require them to distribute its software, Mr. Kertzman said. He noted that
Microsoft came close to cementing such an arrangement after it invested $3
billion in the British cable operator Telewest Communications (news/quote), in
1999. Though the deal was canceled after an inquiry by European Union antitrust
authorities, "the potential for additional exclusives still exists," he said.

Microsoft argues that interactive TV has nothing to do with the four-year-old
case, which centered on a variety of tactics the company used to crush the
Netscape Web browser that Microsoft thought could have eventually undermined
Windows.

Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of Federal District Court heremust decide whether
to approve the settlement with the Justice Department or adopt the broader
remedies.

A lawyer for Microsoft, Dan Webb, sought to discredit Mr. Kertzman by
portraying him as a rival who would support any position on a remedy depending
on what was best for his business at a given time. Mr. Webb said Mr. Kertzman
made public statements two years ago advocating that Microsoft be broken up.

But last March, when Mr. Kertzman tried to persuade Microsoft to let Liberate
buy its interactive television business, he told a Microsoft executive in an
e-mail message that he had changed his mind. "If your folks have any
journalists to whom they want me to offer my changed opinion on the breakup,"
Mr. Kertzman wrote to Richard Emerson, "I'd be happy to offer my opinion."

When the deal failed to materialize, Mr. Webb suggested, Mr. Kertzman changed
his mind again. "It was after Microsoft declined to do this major business
transaction with your company," Mr. Webb said, "that you decided to support the
conduct remedy in this case, which is even more harsh than the breakup,
correct?"

Mr. Kertzman said he initially thought a Microsoft breakup was the best way to
encourage competition in the technology industry but later came to think that
limiting Microsoft's conduct would be a more effective remedy  independent of
any of his business dealings with Microsoft. To believe that he was using his
public stance about the antitrust remedy as a bargaining chip in his dealings
with Microsoft, Mr. Kertzman said, "would overstate the power of my opinion to
change what was happening in the Microsoft case."



New Judge Is Sought

SAN FRANCISCO, April 2 (Bloomberg News)  Microsoft is seeking to have Sun
Microsystems (news/quote)'s antitrust case taken out of the hands of a federal
judge who gave Sun several victories in an earlier contract dispute. Microsoft
asked a panel of federal judges to transfer the case before District Judge
Ronald Whyte in San Jose, Calif., to a Maryland court that will oversee more
than 100 antitrust cases against Microsoft.

*****************
New York Times
Sun Micro Seen Launching High-End Server Next Week

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Network computer maker Sun Microsystems Inc.
(news/quote)(SUNW.O) is set to announce a new server next week that will tap
the market just below its highest-end multimillion dollar machines, sources
close to the company said on Tuesday.

Code-named ``Starkitty'', the new machine is based on the ''Starcat'' Sun Fire
15K, Sun's top of the line server which holds up to 106 processors. It is
expected to debut on April 9.

Sun spokeswoman Kasey Holman declined as a matter of policy to comment on
unannounced products.

Sun and archrival International Business Machines Corp. (news/quote)(IBM.N)
have been fighting with technology and prices to capture share in the moribund
market for servers running the Unix operating system, which is used in
sophisticated corporate networks and to run the Internet.

The sources said that the Starkitty would fill the niche between the 15K, which
costs $1.8 million in a 24-processor configuration, and the midrange Sun Fire
6800, a machine that holds up to 24 processors and costs about $550,000 and up
for a 12-processor configuration, according to Sun's Web site.

Competition has heated up between Sun, IBM and the third major Unix vendor,
Hewlett-Packard Co. (news/quote)(HWP.N) as recession-wary corporations have
frozen technology budgets, and analysts have given mixed signals about Sun's
recent performance.

Merrill Lynch (news/quote) analyst Steven Milunovich said on Monday that Sun's
revenue for its third quarter ended March 31 would be flat to slightly up over
the prior quarter, in line with the company's predictions, leading the stock to
rally.

But Goldman Sachs (news/quote) analyst Laura Conigliaro sent Sun shares down on
Tuesday, when she cut trimmed her third quarter revenue forecast and forecast a
10 cent per share loss, a penny wider than her previous estimate.

Sun shares closed on the Nasdaq off 58 cents, or 6 percent, at $8.94. They had
gained 70 cents the previous day.
*****************
New York Times
Dell Turns to Computer Services, Servers, Storage
By REUTERS

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Michael Dell, who used a low-cost, high volume strategy to
drive Dell Computer Corp. (news/quote)(DELL.O) into the No. 1 personal computer
spot, is turning his attention this week to large corporate computers, data
storage machines and technology services, analysts said.

The founder and chief executive of Round Rock, Texas-based Dell computer will
meet with analysts in New York on Thursday. Other Dell executives, including
Chief Operating Officer Kevin Rollins, will arrive earlier to brief journalists
Wednesday morning on Dell's strategy for corporate products.

Dell rose to the top of the personal computer industry in 2001 by using its
direct-to-customers sales model to lower prices and take market share from
competitors including Compaq Computer Corp. (news/quote)(CPQ.N),
Hewlett-Packard Co. (news/quote)(HWP.N) and Gateway Inc. (news/quote)``They won
a lot of enterprise accounts just by low-cost PC pricing and now they have the
opportunity to upsell servers, services and storage,'' said Robertson Stephens
analyst Eric Rothdeutsch.

Dell's gains came amid weak demand from both corporations and consumers for
PCs. While consumer spending has recovered a bit, analysts say they expect Dell
to give an outlook for a delayed recovery in corporate spending.

The meeting, an annual New York City trek for Dell and will include
presentations from Michael Dell, Rollins and Chief Financial Officer James
Schneider, comes at a time when competition in the computer hardware industry
is increasing.

Printer and computer maker Hewlett-Packard is set to buy No. 2 personal
computer maker Compaq in the largest technology deal ever. The companies are
waiting for a final vote count to be certain that HP shareholders backed the
controversial plan.

If the merger goes through, the new company will have revenues of about $80
billion, second only to No. 1 computer company International Business Machines
Corp. (news/quote)(IBM.N) That's far more than Dell's fiscal 2002 revenues of
$32 billion.

Rothdeutsch said that in part because of that deal, he expects Dell to pursue a
pact with a printer company like the one it has with data storage maker EMC
Corp. (news/quote)(EMC.N) Dell sells EMC data storage machines and may begin
making some of EMC's low-cost data storage products.

Rothdeutsch says he believes Dell is working on a link-up with printer company
Lexmark International Inc. (news/quote)(LXK.N) But he said it may be too early
on for Dell to discuss any printer agreements during the Thursday analyst
meeting.

Dell, however, is likely to discuss potential acquisitions and strategies for
its services business, UBS Warburg analyst Don Young said in a research note.

Michael Dell told Reuters last month while attending a conference in Florida
that he was considering such alliances.

``If you look at the new areas of Dell's business, whether it's in data
networking or storage or services, we're looking at alliances and partnerships
and certainly acquisitions would be a potential,'' Dell said.

HAVE FAITH IN THE GUIDANCE

Analysts also expect Dell to back its earnings guidance for the current
quarter. In February, Dell said it expected shipments and revenues to fall 3
percent to 5 percent from the previous quarter and said it saw earnings of 16
cents per share.

Analysts expect the company to book earnings of 16 cents per share on revenue
of $7.7 billion, according to research firm Thomson Financial/First Call.

Warburg's Young said that he expects the company to give a conservative view
for a pickup in corporate spending, saying it will occur in the fall instead of
the spring and summer.

Another influential Wall Street analyst, Goldman Sachs (news/quote)' Laura
Conigliaro, said on Tuesday she expected the anticipated recovery in corporate
technology spending to be more muted than anticipated. She does not cover Dell.

Indeed, Dell has already begun backing away from the notion of a second-half
recovery in corporate technology spending.

During a February conference call, executives declined to confirm previous
projections for a recovery in the PC market sometime in mid-2002, saying that
it only wanted to forecast the current quarter, not the entire year.

Dell shares have declined 2 percent so far this year while Compaq shares have
gained 4 percent and IBM shares have fallen 16 percent. The American Stock
Exchange Computer Hardware Index has fallen 3 percent during that time.


*****************
New York Times
EchoStar Challenges Program Rules

DENVER (AP) -- EchoStar Communications Corp. (news/quote) is asking the U.S.
Supreme Court to consider the constitutionality of a federal law that keeps it
from beaming local channels from one city into another.

The Littleton-based satellite TV company can offer ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX
programming only from affiliates in each customer's viewing area. For instance,
a Denver customer can only receive Denver stations.

EchoStar can offer local channels from other cities only if that city's
designated local stations aren't available.

The company contends viewers should have the right to choose which channels
they can receive.

``For the same reason that you can get newspapers from other cities, you should
also be able to watch TV news from other cities,'' company spokesman Marc
Lumpkin said Tuesday.

EchoStar contends that barring viewers from receiving distant networks is a
violation of free-speech rights. The appeal was submitted last week.

EchoStar also is challenging must-carry laws that require it to carry all local
channels in cities where it offers any local programs. EchoStar said it doesn't
have the satellite capacity to offer all local channels in all local markets,
so dozens of areas get no local programming at all.

Despite its must-carry challenge in Supreme Court, Lumpkin said, EchoStar is
committed to a promise to offer local programming across the country once its
merger with DirecTV is approved.

In a letter to broadcasters Monday, EchoStar CEO Charlie Ergen wrote: ``If must
carry is upheld, we will continue to comply with the law, without question. If
must carry is overturned, the merged EchoStar still intends to carry all local
channels with meaningful local content on all 210 U.S. television markets.''

He also offered to sign agreements with local stations to carry their signals
after the merger goes through, even though the deal isn't expected to be
complete until the summer.

In trading Tuesday, shares of EchoStar were down $1.51, or more than 5 percent,
to close at $26.81 on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
****************
Computerworld
FTC, Canada and some states join fight against Internet, e-mail fraud

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is cracking down on spam and fraud on the
Web. The FTC, along with the FBI and several state and Canadian agencies today
said 63 cases have been brought during the past six months against Internet
scams involving matters such as phony cancer cures and e-mail investment
schemes.

The FTC said it was also issuing warnings against hundreds of spammers for
Internet and e-mail fraud. 

"The FTC and its law enforcement partners are sending a signal to scammers:
We're out there surfing the Net, reading our spam and working together to stop
Internet scams," said J. Howard Beales III, director of the FTC's Bureau of
Consumer Protection, in a statement. 

Called International Netforce, the initiative is intended to stop the
activities, freeze assets and possibly press criminal charges against people
and companies that commit fraud over the Internet. 

Although today's announcement centered around individual consumers, FTC
Northwest Regional Director Charles A. Harwood said his agency also
investigates corporate fraud, including cases where corporate domains are
spoofed in the "from" field of a spam blast. Domains are often overloaded with
responses or blocked by spam-filtering sites such as the Mail Abuse Prevention
System's Realtime Blackhole List. 

Harwood added that some investigations got started after complaints by
companies. 

One of the civil cases highlighted involved David Walker, who sold over the
Internet what he claimed to be a cure for cancer. One of the victims, Peter
Fulton, a high school math teacher in Olympia, Wash., tearfully recounted how
he and his wife grasped at the possibility of a cure for her inoperable
pancreatic cancer. 

When she was diagnosed, doctors told her she had essentially no chance of
surviving the cancer. Desperate for some hope, they found Walker's Web site,
which promoted a combination of herbal and electrical products to cure cancer.
According to the civil lawsuit, Walker promised, "To date, only 15 have not
survived, out of over 745 [cancer patients]." 

Aware of the odds that the treatment wouldn't work, Fulton said he had to try.
"Up till that point, there wasn't any [hope]," he said. "Here, there's hope, so
we followed up on it. How can I say no to my wife? You don't know until you're
there, what you'll do for your spouse." 

Fulton said he and his wife paid Walkerabout $1,500 for his products and
counseling. His wife later died. 

The FTC has won an injunction against Walker, and his site has been taken down.


No criminal charges have been brought in this case so far, however, Harwood
said. That's because it's difficult to prosecute potential criminal violations
in many fraud cases because the suspects often believe, at least in part, the
validity of the products they are hawking. 

The FTC also has begun to take action against spammers who fail to provide
proper header information and use dummy "remove" addresses in their e-mails.
The FTC has also sent out more than 500 letters warning spammers to stop
sending illegal e-mail promotions, such as pyramid or stock-investment schemes.


Partners in the International Netforce include the FTC, the Alaska attorney
general, the Division of Alaska State Troopers, the Alberta Government
Services, the British Columbia Securities Commission, the British Columbia
solicitor general, Canada's Competition Bureau, the Idaho attorney general, the
Montana Department of Administration, the Oregon Department of Justice, the
Washington attorney general, the Washington State Department of Financial
Institutions and the Wyoming attorney general. 

The FTC has amassed a database of more than 10 million spam e-mails since Jan.
1, 1998, including 1 million in March alone. 

"Those who took advantage of our consumers in the aftermath of [Sept. 11
terrorist attacks] are at the top of our list," said Washington Attorney
General Christine Gregoire. 

Gregoire and the others stressed that the only way to investigate and prosecute
these cases is with help from many state, federal and international agencies. 
******************
Computerworld
Disaster recovery planning still lags

Two months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the lack of corporate disaster
recovery and business continuity planning was still widespread, according to a
newly released survey.

Conducted in November by accounting and consulting firm Ernst & Young
International, the survey polled 459 CIOs and IT directors from companies of
various sizes worldwide. The survey results, released in late March, found that
only 53% of those companies had business continuity plans to keep operations
going in the event of a major disaster and that less than half had IT security
awareness and training programs for employees. 

Nathaniel Meyer, a spokesman for New York-based Ernst & Young, said the survey
targeted midsize to large companies in all economic sectors throughout 17
regions of the world, including the U.S. and Europe. None of the companies
surveyed were small businesses, Meyer said. 

The Larger Picture 

Some CIOs and security experts contacted by Computerworld last week said they
weren't sure of the significance of the results without having a breakdown of
the sizes of the companies surveyed. Some also questioned any expectation that
companies would necessarily have disaster recovery plans in place just two
months after the attacks if no such plans had already existed. Others, however,
said two months was plenty of time, given the nature of the wake-up call. 

Nancy Bryant, CIO at 1st City Savings Federal Credit Union in Los Angeles, said
there's no reason that companies shouldn't be able to put a basic business
continuity plan in place within two months. "It doesn't need to have the fancy
writing, but a bare-bones plan could be in place within two months," said
Bryant. "We're not talking a great outlay of money, either." 

Bryant said she has outfitted all of her employees at six branch offices with
remote capabilities, and the company is prepared to move to a co-location
facility if the main office is affected by a disaster. 

"A company can put in the structure, policies and procedures of a continuity
plan and can convene a steering committee of all the parties that would need to
be involved in such a plan," said Alan Paris, a partner at Capco, a financial
services consulting firm located near ground zero in Manhattan. "They can also
do an assessment of readiness. Within two months, you can certainly do that
much." 

Sean Scott, CIO at law firm Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice PLC in
Winston-Salem, N.C., said six months is a more realistic expectation, given the
number of people and positions in a midsize or large enterprise that must be
involved in a recovery plan. 

But Keith Morgan, chief of information security at Terradon Communications
Group LLC, a Nitro, W.Va.-based content management firm, said the survey
results pertaining to disaster recovery plans "should terrify executives." 

Rick Fleming, vice president of operations at Digital Defense Inc., a security
firm in San Antonio that conducts audits for the financial industry, said of
the survey finding that "things really are that bad, maybe worse." 

"These numbers are generous and probably reflect awareness of the typical
Fortune 500-type company that [Ernst & Young] works with," said Fleming. "It
only gets worse as the company size gets smaller." 

"Until now, disaster recovery planning was mostly seen as an IT thing," said
Paris. "So it's particularly surprising that so many CIOs would not have a plan
in place." 
*****************
BBC
Why software should be free

Richard Stallman: Free software means that you the user are free to study what
the program does, change it to suit your needs, distribute copies to other
people and publish improved versions. And if you are not a programmer, you can
engage someone else to do it for you. 

Alfred Hermida: We're not talking here of software that is free of commercial
value, you can sell this software? 

RS: Those are two different questions. Free software today has tremendous value
to commerce and as a separate matter you can sell it. That's part of the
freedom. You can make copies and sell it. Everyone has the freedom to do that. 

AH: How does this empower the user? 

RS: It means that you can see what the program does. So if you are concerned it
might have a back door, you can check what it really does. And you can study it
to learn how you do those jobs. You can study it to see precisely what it does.


If you are a business user, anytime you want the program changed, you can
change it to suit your needs. It means the whole community does this and
together we make the software better. That's why today free software has a
general reputation to be powerful and reliable. Systems will stay up for months
without crashing. 

AH: So you can customise it to meet your needs? 

RS: They get the benefits of your improvements and you get the benefits of
theirs. Fundamentally it means that you are free when your friend says 'hey,
that looks nice, can I have a copy?', you can openly and lawfully make a copy
for your friend. You are not reduced to doing that as an underground activity
in fear. 

Drain on resources

AH: What implications does this have for developing countries, countries that
are starting to build up a computer industry, places like in India? 

RS: Free software is defined by freedom. One consequence of this is that if
people don't have a lot of money, they can redistribute copies to each other 

They can get copies and use them lawfully, without having money that they can't
afford being squeezed out of them with threat campaigns. For a country that
doesn't have a lot of money, using free software is tremendously important. 

India can't afford to remain stuck in the trap of using Windows because that
will mean a continuing and increasing drain on their money to various American
companies. They can't afford that, so they should make it a national priority
to bring an end to their use of non-free software. 

AH: It strikes me that there's also an educational aspect in that if we have
indian programmers working with free software, they can look into it, find out
how it works and build on that. 

RS: Everyone around the world who wants to learn about programming has this
benefit because to learn to write software well, you have to read a lot of
software and write a lot of software. 

The only way you can learn what makes a program clear is by reading programs
and seeing what makes them unclear and then you know you shouldn't do that. 

As a beginner you can't write such programs on your own. With the free software
that we have today you can read existing programs that people really use.
What's more, you can improve them because you are not at the stage that you
could write a whole program, but you could write an improvement that adds a
certain feature. 

By doing that you can learn, you can develop the skills to write such programs
and maintain them. That's how I learnt. 

Locking in users 

AH: If free software is so appealing how come a lot of people use proprietary
systems? 

RS: Inertia. Our first free operating system become available in 1992 at which
point Microsoft already had a quasi-monopoly and when society has inertia, it
tends to have a lot of resistance to switching. 

In addition some of these proprietary software companies are very clever at
locking the users in, deliberately making it difficult for them to switch. But
in fact people are switching in our direction. 

AH: If we look to the future, proprietary software is the predominant force in
the computer industry. What's the role for free software in this environment? 

RS: We're going to replace them. To have freedom to live as part of a
community, to have the freedom to treat other people decently, you must replace
your propriety software with free software, software that lets you have those
freedoms. 

Proprietary software is software that takes away those freedoms, divides people
and keeps them helpless. Proprietary software is an anti-social system and I
hope to see that system come to an end. 

AH: Do you see if as a David versus Goliath battle? 

RS: A little bit. But I am not so much interested in focusing on whether it is
heroic, as on winning the battle. We're fighting for people's freedoms. 

We need you to help. it's not just a few of us, there are tens of thousands of
people contributing to free software and there are many people helping us to
spread the word.
****************
BBC
Take a bus to the future

Senior citizens in the UK left behind by the booming popularity of computers
and the net could soon be getting help to catch up from Age Concern and
Barclays Bank. 
The organisations are collaborating on a two-pronged plan to take technology to
the sections of society that typically eschew it. 

Specially equipped buses and mobile teaching teams will be taking computers to
pensioners in day care centres, residential homes and sheltered housing to give
them a taste of the technology. 

As senior citizens are shown around a PC and the web, Age Concern and Barclays
will gather information about the best way to teach older people about
technology and help them feel less isolated. 

Isolated community 

Although many people in their 50s are keen net users, pensioners are often left
behind or bewildered by computer technology, e-mail and the web. 

Now Age Concern and Barclays Bank have embarked on a £600,000 three-year
partnership that will attempt to help some older people learn how to use
technology and combat social exclusion. 

Age Concern believes e-mail and web technologies could improve the lives of the
estimated 3.5 million pensioners who live alone with no friends or family
nearby. 

The project will use four buses fitted with PCs and high-speed net connections
that will drive up and down the country holding classes for senior citizens who
want to learn how to use computers to communicate. 

The buses are also fitted with ramps to allow those with wheelchairs to attend
classes. 

All the machines on board are fitted with special keyboards and large-ball mice
to let the physically impaired use them too. 

First chance

The Royal National Institute for the Deaf has also provided equipment to ensure
teachers and pupils can communicate effectively. 

Mobile technology teaching teams are also being formed that will travel to day
care centres, care homes and sheltered housing to help pensioners and their
carers become more familiar with technology. 

"These opportunities will give older people a greater chance to communicate
with their friends and family and give many their first opportunity to be
'included' in the IT revolution," said Gordon Lishman, Director General of Age
Concern England. 

As the three-year project unfolds those doing the teaching will gather
information about the best way to bring senior citizens up to date with
computer technology and how to teach them to use it.
***************
BBC
Struggle to get broadband

Richard Samphire lives in Cople, a small village outside Bedford. As a software
engineer he would like a high-speed internet connection in his home. 

So he set out to find if he could be included in the high-speed revolution. 

The answer, after a series of frustrating phone calls, seems to be a resounding
no. 

Mr Samphire is not impressed and would like to know what the UK Government is
spending its rural broadband fund on. 

Mr Samphire called BT, hoping to get answers to when, or if, his local exchange
would be upgraded to ADSL. 

ADSL is the most prevalent form of broadband and runs via a telephone line. In
order to receive it, customers have to live within a five-mile radius of a
telephone exchange that has been upgraded to ADSL. 

Who you going to call? 

Two hours and 10 phone calls later, Mr Samphire finally got some answers to his
questions. 

"It took a long time but I was determined to get to the bottom of it. BT is a
huge company and the left hand didn't seem to know what the right hand was
doing," he said. 

BT's broadband provider, BTopenworld, told Mr Samphire it did not deal with
rollout queries. 

He was passed on to BTopenworld technical who told him it was BT Ignite that he
needed. 

Unable to provide a phone number, Mr Samphire had to make two more attempts to
get the correct number for BT Ignite. 

Through to the wrong department, Mr Samphire was bounced on to BT Business who,
in turn, put him back to the helpdesk. 

Nearly there 

"The helpdesk chap was very helpful and gave me the direct dial number for the
guy who deals with the management of ADSL roll out in the UK," Mr Samphire told
BBC News Online. 

Elated to be talking to the right person, in this case Jim Morris from BT
retail, Mr Samphire was about to be disappointed by his answers.

"I was told that roll out had stopped last year. 1,200 exchanges had been
ADSL-enabled and that would impact the majority of the population. Any more
would only be done on a business case basis," said Mr Samphire. 

So if he wants to get ADSL, he has to find another 200 villagers that would
definitely want the technology in order for it to be cost-effective for BT to
enable his local exchange. 

Alternatively he could try to get a EU grant. Neither option is realistic in
Cople says Mr Samphire. 

'Not ideal' 

BT has apologised for the difficulty Mr Samphire had in getting through to the
right person. 

Strict regulatory rules mean BT must keep its distance from its ISP
BTopenworld, so broadband inquiries can no longer be dealt with via BT's
customer service number. 

"We are trying to streamline the contact processes and admit that from the
customer's standpoint it hasn't been ideal," said a spokesman for BT Retail. 

Despite running up his phone bill, Mr Samphire does not blame BT for the lack
of broadband in rural areas. 

"I was told BT proposed to the government to broadband-enable every street in
the country. It needed government funding and the government said no." 

No solution 

The government has admitted that, despite making £30m available to bring
broadband to remote areas over a year ago, no technical solution has yet been
found to getting broadband to the countryside. 

Cable operators, burdened with debt, are highly unlikely to start digging up
the roads in villages like Cople. 

Mr Samphire has also ruled out satellite technology. 

"It is expensive and there are delays with it as it has to be bounced back from
space," he pointed out. 

Anyone wishing to find out whether they can get ADSL in their homes should go
to www.bt.com/broadband/ where they can enter their postcodes to find out
availability.
****************
San Francisco Chronicle
BEYOND THE BANNER 
New online ads float, flash and can't be clicked off

Web surfers have learned to ignore banner ads and click past pop-up ads. But
they can't ignore the animated lizard that skitters across the Lycos.com home
page with a Saturn sport utility vehicle in pursuit. The cartoon blocks the Web
page from full view for 20 seconds. 

That Saturn pitch, which has also run on ComedyCentral.com, ESPN.com,
Weather.com and EOnline.com, exemplifies the latest generation in the
increasingly intrusive evolution of online advertising. Visitors have no
choice: They have to watch the advertisement until it disappears. 

These new advertisements take three forms, all of which obscure the page the
reader wants to view: floating ads like the Saturn lizard spot, which feature
cartoon-style animation; so-called in-line interstitials that are essentially
flashing full-page billboards; and full-page commercials. 

Advertisers are willing to shell out as much as four times more for the
floaters and commercials than they do for banners. They say the new ads give
greater opportunity for creativity. And their virtual inescapability is a major
plus. But while surfers may not like the more aggressive salesmanship, they'd
better get used to it, analysts said. 

"People are learning by watching all these online services go out of business
that, well, somebody has got to pay for this stuff," said Jonathan Gaw, an
analyst for IDC, a market research firm. "The more intrusive the ad the better,
from the advertiser's perspective." 

So it would seem, judging by the dozens of examples now on the Web. At
Playboy.com, viewers have to watch a 25-second Jack Daniel's whiskey ad before
entering the site. Enlarged images of microscopic cells partially veil the
online encyclopedia Britannica.com in an ad for Norton antivirus software. And
on SportingNews.com, two basketball players and a runner holding a flag sprint
across the home page for 12 seconds in a pitch for Planters peanuts. 


ANNOYING FOR WEB USERS
Not surprisingly, consumers are starting to complain. 

"These ads are an in-your-face annoyance that you can't miss," said Gary
Ruskin, executive director for Commercial Alert, a group co-founded by Ralph
Nadar that opposes the proliferation of all kinds of advertising. "One wonders
whether Internet users are going to be bombarded with so many ads that they use
the Internet less." 

These new ads, which began showing up within the past year, make up less than 5
percent of all online advertising, analysts said. But they agreed that the new
sales pitches are picking up steam. 

"They're obviously starting to become a force," said Tamara Gaffney, an analyst
for Nielsen/NetRatings, an online audience measurement firm. 

Making consumers sit through advertising is nothing new in the media world.
Television and radio shows are regularly interrupted by commercials, yet keep
their audiences. 

Online advertising has tended to have been subtler, however. Banner ads, which
run across the top of a screen, and tower ads, which run down the side, have
gotten bigger lately, but they don't usually interfere with viewing. 

Pop-up ads, which spring up on computer screens in separate browser windows and
sometimes block the site's pages, ushered in an era of intrusion around two
years ago. However, pop-ups can usually be dispatched within a few seconds. 


WAYS TO AVOID ADS
The new ads are harder to get rid of. Some of them carry delete buttons, but
they're small and hard to find. In many cases, the ads lack a delete button
altogether, leaving no alternative for consumers but to wait for them to play
out and then vanish. 

One way to get rid of these ads is to install ad-blocking software. But even
that is no guarantee that every floating ad will be eliminated. 

For example, AdSubtract, blocking software manufactured by Intermute, was
initially useless against the pitch for Jack Daniel's whiskey on Playboy.com.
However, the company adjusted the software after a reporter's telephone call,
and the ad no longer appeared. 

"We started seeing these new kinds of ads about nine months ago and immediately
got to work adjusting our software," said Ed English, chief executive for
Intermute. "We always have to work to keep up with the latest technology they
use." 

Gerry Eramo, assistant general manager for interactive media services for
Panasonic, said the electronics manufacturer is pleased with the floating ads
it has run on Rivals.com, a sports Web site. One of the advertisements featured
a cartoon athlete catching a football thrown to him and then crashing into a
high definition television. 

"It really does break through the clutter as long as you're careful in who you
are showing the ad to," Eramo said. 

Many analysts and advertisers believe traditional Internet banners, by far the
most common style of marketing message on the Internet, are ineffective. They
say they are too small -- about the size of a fortune cookie message -- to
convey much information and leave little room for creativity beyond flashing
colors. The new class of online marketing has a greater impact, Eramo said. 

The new ads are partly a consequence of new software, including DHMTL, that
made them easier to create. Hundreds of online destinations, including Salon.
com, CNN and MTV.com, are now willing to accept them, especially in a depressed
ad market. 


BALANCING USER'S NEEDS
John Swartz, a regional vice president of sales for Yahoo, a Web portal based
in Sunnyvale that has featured several floating marketing campaigns, said the
demand for the new style of advertising is high. The new ads, he said, 

allow companies to show off their products better and save consumers the
trouble of clicking through to another Web site for more detailed information. 

But at the same time, Swartz said Yahoo is mindful of consumer friendliness.
For example, he said the new ads generally last less than 10 seconds and are
programmed to appear no more than three times per day per Yahoo user. 

"We take the balancing of the user experience very seriously," Swartz said.
"Users give us feedback, and most has been positive." 

Christine Mohan, a spokeswoman for the online arm of the New York Times, said
her company is always looking for new kinds of advertising to offer clients. In
many cases, products are marketed with the new generation of ads and
traditional banners on the same page, or through an entire section of the
online newspaper "to immerse users with the message wherever they go," she
said. 

"We're a free site, and we believe in the media model and online advertising,"
Mohan said. 


BUCKING THE TREND
On the other hand, some Internet companies have resisted leaping into more
intrusive advertising. Google, a search engine based in Mountain View, is
committed to selling text-only ads that do not interfere with consumers seeing
its search results page, said Cindy McCaffrey, a company spokeswoman. 

"The faster we can get you to where you're going the more successful we are, "
McCaffrey said. "If we keep you on the site for 10 seconds while the ad is
downloading, then you're not getting a good user experience." 

For dial-up users, commercials and billboards can take several seconds to
download, dragging out the ad even longer. Floating ads generally don't prolong
the download. 

Eramo, from Panasonic, said what advertisers are really waiting for is the day
when most Internet users have speedy online connections. Internet advertising
will then be like interactive television commercials, he said, not just
cartoons on a computer screen. 
***************
Government Computer News
OMB will soon release requests for e-gov initiatives 

Requests for proposals for the Office of Management and Budget?s 24
e-government initiatives likely will be issued in the coming months, according
to a senior administration official. 

Norman Lorentz, chief technology officer for OMB, said the outcomes of almost
all of the projects are understood, so the next step would be to release RFPs
in the ?near term.? 

Lorentz yesterday was the keynote speaker at the Council for Excellence in
Government?s e-government seminar in Washington. 

?By the end of the quarter, we will be rolling on the ones that are ready,? he
said. ?Our intention is to have the private sector do much of the heavy
construction. The government should be in the IT management and process
business.? 

Lorentz said the RFPs likely will go through the normal bid process, rather
than OMB going to the General Services Administration?s Federal Supply Service
schedule or another governmentwide contract. With the 18- to 24-month time
frame OMB has set for the projects, Lorentz said the RFP process likely will be
done more quickly than usual. 

OMB also will consider using a storefront or private labeling approach, in
which agency project leaders customize private-sector technology.
***************
Government Computer News
First round of NMCI tests will conclude next month 

The Navy is shooting to complete testing of the Navy-Marine Corps Intranet next
month and receive permission from the Defense Department to add 100,000 more
seats to the environment. 

Electronic Data Systems Corp., the lead contractor on the $7 billion
outsourcing program, has assumed responsibility for 48,000 seats, said Rear
Adm. Charles L. Munns, the program director, at an NMCI press briefing today. 

Contractor testing and evaluation has been completed at the Naval Air Facility,
Washington. Testing is still under way at the Naval Air Station, Lemoore,
Calif., and the Naval Air Command at Patuxent River, Md., and is expected to be
finished by the end of this month, Munns said. 

At all three sites the Navy has collected 9,000 applications and is working
with EDS to determine which apps to use with NMCI and which to discard. 

Contractor testing includes checking to see if the portal is secure, reliable
and compatible with other Defense systems, and whether service-level agreements
are being met. After contractor testing is done, DOD will review the findings.
If NMCI passes, the Navy will be allowed to add seats. 

Munns recently was appointed NMCI?s director, fulfilling a congressional
mandate to name a single program manager to oversee the project. 

NMCI will consolidate 200 networks into an intranet linking more than 360,000
desktop PCs.
*******************

MSNBC
Why is Easy-to-Use so Hard to Do?

April 2   There is a classic technology topic that has been assayed at one time
or another by just about everyone, from New York literary bigwigs to local
gardening columnists in Kansas: why can?t I get my (fill-in-the-blank) to work
the way it?s supposed to? It can be played as amused, indignant,
self-deprecating, or merely bemused. Everyone does it, most recently
domesticated rocker Ozzy Osbourne, who on the debut episode of his new MTV
series was obscenely befuddled by the remote control for his home entertainment
system.

THIS COLUMN WON?T retread that groundalthough, it must be said, that having
just endured the trauma of upgrading a laptop operating system, I have a story
or two I could tell. Instead, it made me wonder: why do designers of digital
hard- and software have so much trouble with the simple notion that easy-to-use
means easy to use. In other words, if you have to tell me why something is easy
to use, after I?ve failed to make it work, it?s already too lateit?s like
explaining a joke. You can do it, but what?s the point?

        I?ve long had a theory about this state of affairs, which I call the
guru effect. Gurus, of course, are those technology-adept individuals in your
company, your work group, your family, whom you call in when all else fails. If
the printer won?t print no matter what you try, call the guru. And God bless
guruswe wouldn?t have gotten where we are today without them. In certain
environments, in fact, I?m sometimes considered a guruwhich I hope gives me
license for commentary that might be perceived as a tad critical.
        My first inkling of the guru effect on ease-of-use came years ago, when
I was writing a Newsweek story about computers in small business. I was
interviewing a boss whose assistant was typing into a personal computer nearby.
Midway through the interview she looked up and announced that her computer had
crashed, and she needed to call ?Lee? to reboot it. It was an Apple IIthis was
a long time agoand I said, well, that?s not hard to reboot, let me do it for
you. No, she said, only Lee can get this machine to start.
        OK, I said, and watched as Lee came into the room, sat down in front of
the Apple II, lifted the lid and reached in to fiddle with something inside. He
closed the lid, rebooted the computer successfully, then reached inside again
to make another mysterious adjustment. About then he saw me watching, and it
was clear I knew something about computersincluding the fact that you didn?t
have to reach into the circuit boards of an Apple II to reboot it. ?Oh, well,?
Lee said defensively, ?that?s just a little tweak I put in to improve the
performance.?
        No: that was a little tweak that Lee put in to make Lee indispensable.
And that?s the danger in letting our gurus decide what constitutes easy-to-use:
if they do too good a job of it, they may put themselves out of business. Ease
of use needs to be judged by the person most likely to be befuddlednot by the
experts.
        The reason this is so important now is that the whole heritage of
digital complexity is rapidly creeping into all consumer electronicsjust ask
Ozzy Osbourne. It?s reminiscent of what happened when Steve Jobs, back in 1984,
introduced the Macintosh by saying that we were going to make the personal
computer as easy to use as the telephone. What we?ve done instead over the past
fifteen years is make the telephone harder to usehow many people do you know
who can successfully transfer a call on their latest digital office telephone?
        Sure, there are some signs of progress in the personal computer world.
The new Macintosh software for handling digital audio, video and photos is
impressively simplethough you?re out of luck unless you have the very latest
Apple operating system and hardware. And the XP version of the notoriously
intractable Windows has, along with its warm and friendly graphics, some real
ease-of-use advances.
        But Windows was introduced in 1985! If this is how long it takes to
build easy-to-use technology, we have some major problems ahead. The
long-promised digital convergence of computers, telephones and televisions is
now well underway, and what has become clear is that it?s not going to result
in one single kind of hybrid mega-device. It?s more like one of those
disequilibrium points in evolution, when you suddenly have countless mutations,
variations and Darwinian experiments running around, most of them evolutionary
dead-ends. That?s what the digital landscape is going to look like for the next
decadephones that act like tiny computers, computers that act like videophones,
televisions that browse the Web, and every conceivable permutation in between. 
        If history repeats itself, nobody is going to able to figure out how to
make those devices work either. And that, I guess, is good news for the next
generation of gurusas well as kind of a guaranteed-employment act for
technology journalists. We?re going to be able to write ?Why can?t I get my
(fill-in-the-blank) to work?? columns for years to come. Perhaps that?s even
reassuring: no matter how quickly technology moves, some things just don?t
change.
******************
MSNBC
Online fraud squad touts success

SEATTLE, April 2  As a high school math teacher, Peter Fulton knows the odds
are against people who play the lottery, but admits he was foolish enough to
gamble on an Internet scheme that promised to cure his wife of terminal
pancreatic cancer.

   FULTON?S CASE WAS highlighted on Tuesday by the Federal Trade Commission and
northwestern law enforcement agencies, who said a coalition to fight online
fraud had notched up some successes but still relied on consumers to do more to
protect themselves.
       ?There was a diet, treatments, a strange machine that blinked and buzzed
and kept up the immune system,? a teary Fulton said of the ?cure? offered on a
Web site run out of Olympia, Washington.
       ?That kind of hope was encouraging to my wife but of course there was no
hope whatsoever,? said Fulton, whose wife died in 1999 after the couple spent
$1,500 on the treatments.
       ?One needs to be a better consumer,? Fulton said.
      The Internet Enforcement Task Force, also called Netforce, was formed two
years ago by the FTC and several states including Washington, Alaska and Oregon
to fight online fraud and deceptive e-mail, or ?spam.?
       Netforce used its Tuesday news conference to say the FTC was taking
legal action in four new cases of alleged consumer fraud, and to issue a
progress report that said it had handled 63 cases of Web-based scams and had
sent more than 500 warnings letters to senders of deceptive e-mails.
       ?Cyberspace is a wonderful opportunity, but we quickly learned it is
also a dangerous place for the unwary,? Washington State Attorney General
Christine Gregoire told reporters.
      One of the four actions related to Fulton?s case sought a court order to
permanently shut down the cancer treatment Web site. Gregoire said the site had
already been closed under a temporary injunction.
       Other cases targeted an e-mail chain letter, and a Web site selling CDs
that sometimes failed to ship products or provide prompt refunds. A fourth case
was under seal and could not be publicized.
?We will not allow the Internet to be used to promote some of the oldest scams
in the book,? Gregoire said, adding that closer cooperation with all other
states would be essential to successfully fighting such schemes.
       Charles Harwood, director of the FTC?s Seattle office, said the agency
was trying to educate Internet users about the pitfalls of e-mails and Web
sites offering results that sound too good to be true.
       He said Internet users had forwarded more than 10 million ?spam?
e-mails, many that were fraudulent or deceptive, to the FTC over the past two
years. Some 1 million of those had come in the past month following moves to
publicize the problem.
       ?Obviously with that much spam we are relying on the public to engage is
some self-protection,? Harwood said.
****************
MSNBC
Technology for perfect-pitch karaoke

TOKYO, April 2  Some might call it Japan?s biggest victory against noise
pollution since pop duo Pink Lady split up two decades ago. Karaoke sound
systems provider Taito Corp. said on Tuesday it had teamed up with a U.S.
professor and chipmaker Analog Devices Inc on technology that could give even
the most tone-deaf crooner perfect pitch.

       USING THE ?CSOUND? computer music language pioneered years ago by
Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Barry Vercoe, Taito will market
a system this summer that adjusts sing-along music automatically to the pitch
and tempo best-suited to an individual singer.
       ?This is sound synthesis on software that until now was only used in
experiments and research,? said Hidehito Kitamura, who headed up Taito?s
development of the new system.
     Eventually, he said, Taito may use the technology to reconfigure a
singer?s errant tones to the proper pitch, without otherwise altering the
sound.
       ?We?ll be moving from one new feature to the next.?
       That could be good news for the millions of regular patrons at Japan?s
karaoke bars  both those who dread the inevitable pressure to sing even if they
can?t carry a tune, and those who have to listen to them.
       ?Karaoke is said to be an original Japanese cultural contribution, but
this could take it to new levels,? Keio University professor Toru Iwatake told
a news conference unveiling the technology.
       Tuesday?s demonstration was limited to automatic tempo adjustment,
particularly suited for ballads, Kitamura said.
       
SALES PITCH

      The system will also let a singer calibrate the key automatically before
a song begins, he added.
       Machines now require manual pitch and tempo adjustments, which can be
hard for amateur songsters to gauge and can create distortions that are
difficult to sing along with.
       For those confident of their vocal prowess, moreover, the new system
will be able to objectively assess pitch, rhythm and skill at such voice
techniques as vibrato and crescendo  an indispensable item for the occasional
karaoke competition.
       Karaoke rating systems already exist, but they can only determine how
closely the singer?s voice matches the recorded original, not singing ability.
       ?This assesses singing skill mathematically,? Kitamura said.
       MIT?s Vercoe, who lauded Taito for finding a way to bring the sound
synthesis technology to market, said pitch correction with Csound had been
demonstrated long ago. It could even convert a spoken voice into melody, in
real time.
       ?It?s in the technology. You just have to switch it on,? he said.
Taito?s Kitamura added that the advent of high-speed communications had also
been essential for the new system.
       Ten years ago, Taito pioneered Japan?s popular ?telecom karaoke?
services, which pipe karaoke music and lyrics to pubs and night clubs via
wireline networks at far less cost than maintaining an on-site disc collection.
       Noting the new system would require about a hundred times or more much
bandwidth than current systems, Kitamura added: ?We can do this thanks to ADSL
(asymmetric digital subscriber lines) and fiber-to-the-home.?

*****************
MSNBC
Bug of the Day
Windows Buffer Overrun

April 2   There is a buffer overrun in the SNMP Service in Windows 95, Windows
98, Windows 98 SE, Windows NT 4.0, and Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server Edition.
However, this may not pose much of a threat to most users, since the SNMP
Service is not installed by default on any of these versions of Windows, and
thus may not be running. There is no fix yet for these versions of Windows. If
the service is being run, as a workaround: 1) consider turning it off if it is
non-essential; 2) Use a firewall to block UDP ports 161 and 162, which this
service uses.

MSNBC Bug of the Day Archives: http://www.msnbc.com/news/BUGOFTHEDAY_Front.asp
********************
Government Executive
Army official warns that hackers could infiltrate battlefield 

NEWPORT, R.I. -- Noting that a cyberterrorist attack could have grave
consequences on the battlefield, the Army's top information security officer
said Tuesday that the military must take a more proactive approach to defending
its critical information systems.

"It is conceivable, in theory, for a hacker sitting in his easy chair to get
inside a tank," Col. Thaddeus Dmuchowski, director of the Army's Information
Operations Assurance Office, said during a conference sponsored by the National
High Performance Computing & Communications Council. 

"We can't wait for the next attack to happen," Dmuchowski said. "We have to be
proactive. And in order to be proactive, we have to have as much imagination as
those who would do us harm." 

Dmuchowski's imagination prompted him to stop all simulation exercises about
two weeks ago, when he learned that the Army was accessing its simulation
software--which replicates potential battlefield situations--through an
unclassified network. 

If imaginative, tech-savvy adversaries had hacked into that network, Dmuchowski
said, they could have gleaned crucial data about the Army's combat strategies,
and figured out how to cripple critical communications systems. "What good is
your test and evaluation, if the day you deploy for real, you come to a
grinding halt?" he said.

Dmuchowski said cyber attacks against the Army's critical systems are rising
dramatically each year. In fiscal 2001, there were 14,641 incidents--or
attempted break-ins--and 98 actual intrusions, or successful attacks. By
contrast, in fiscal 2000, there were 5,516 incidents and 64 intrusions.

But he noted that the vast majority of those intrusions were preventable.
"Ninety-eight percent of all intrusions are against known vulnerabilities that
should have been fixed," Dmuchowski said.

In an effort to eliminate those vulnerabilities, the Army is modernizing its
entire communications security infrastructure. "We're trying to build a more
robust system," Dmuchowski said. "But we need more people, and the hardware's
got to be updated. And there are some big costs to that." 

The Army also is taking steps to strengthen its information technology
workforce through college internships, advanced degree scholarship programs for
service members, and other training and education programs. "Academia is where
we get the proactiveness we need to stay ahead of the bad guys," Dmuchowski
said. "So we're spending a lot of time doing that."

The Army also is spending a lot of time patching existing weak spots in its
critical networks, only to see new ones show up almost immediately.

"Fortunately, we're finally getting there," Dmuchowski said. "But we're still
playing catch-up."
******************
Government Executive
Legislation driving Bush administration e-gov efforts 

Federal legislation has helped spur agencies to integrate technology into
government services and has laid the groundwork for many of the Bush
administration's e-government and homeland security initiatives, officials said
Tuesday. 

The 1998 Government Paperwork Elimination Act (GPEA) mandates that agencies
must give citizens the option to submit information and conduct transactions
electronically and gives legal weight to the use of electronic signatures.
Agencies have until Oct. 21, 2003 to comply. The 2000 Government Information
Security Reform Act (GISRA) mandated that all agencies conduct regular reviews
of their security and information practices.

These two measures "have helped us quite a bit ... It's defined security in our
daily lives," Mayi Canales, deputy chief information officer for the Treasury
Department, said during a Council for Excellence in Government conference on
e-government. 

Federal lawmakers, agencies and industry groups have stressed the need to
encourage information sharing among governments and industry and to work
collaboratively to protect the nation's critical assets in the wake of the
Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Kevin Landy, counsel for the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, said such
laws can pave the way for other federal e-government initiatives such as
electronic signatures and information-security practices. He said the committee
believes GISRA has been effective, although many agencies need to do more to
protect their information systems. The committee also is probing how agencies
are complying with GPEA.

"I think right now, the jury's still out on that," Landy said. 

Landy said more congressional oversight of e-government initiatives may be
needed, particularly when it comes to protecting information.

"There is no issue with anywhere near the priority level" in Congress than
information security, Landy said. Congress "wants to support the
administration's efforts as much as they can and work with them" on these
issues. 

Meanwhile, agency officials said they are hard at work implementing their
respective parts of the administration's 24 e-government initiatives outlined
in the President's Management Agenda.

The Small Business Administration (SBA) is responsible for the "business
compliance one-stop" portal, which is designed to help businesses find,
understand and comply with federal regulations. SBA has been working with state
groups such as the National Governors Association and National Association of
State Chief Information Officers.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is responsible for the disaster
management e-government initiative, which will include a one-stop Web portal
for disaster management services at all government levels.

Norman Lorentz, the federal government's chief technology officer, said, "To
think we're going to be able to do e-government without a little pain" is not
an accurate portrayal of the road ahead. "The problems that we have are
profoundly not technological," but involve accountability and management
issues, he said. 

Lorentz said he has met numerous times with federal lawmakers who have asked
him what he needs to execute the administration's technology initiatives. Extra
legislation is not needed, he has told them, as long as Congress appropriates
money and responsibilities cross-functionally to agencies to encourage
cooperation.

"We don't need to reinvent these things," Lorentz said.

******************
CNN
Can consumer data profile terrorists?
'Create profiles about what a bad guy might look like'
  
WASHINGTON (AP) --Top financial companies are working to figure out how to use
public and private consumer databases to catch possible terrorists -- and
whether the information banks are up to the task.

The group, holding its first organizational meeting Wednesday, is to explore
how to use credit reports, marketing databases and other information for
domestic security.

"We have to think about how to use information to create profiles about what a
bad guy might look like," says Marty Abrams of the Center for Information
Policy Leadership at the Atlanta law firm Hunton & Williams.

Representatives of the credit card companies American Express and Visa,
investment firms JP Morgan and Fidelity Investments and lender CapitalOne are
expected to participate.

Abrams says the consortium was started to combat identity theft but became
interested in using the vast amounts of consumer data held by financial
companies to benefit the nation's domestic security.

Information in such consumer databases includes whether an American is a
homeowner, has a job, owns a car and subscribes to certain magazines.

'That's how business works'
The group will not push for particular laws, Abrams says, and focuses instead
on helping companies agree how best to use data. He doesn't rule out the idea
that companies might lobby on their own.

"This is business folks coming together to talk about how we think about these
issues," Abrams said. "If companies go off and do advocacy based on what they
learn here, that's how business works."

Abrams says the group will try to figure out how the companies' information can
be used in a way that's both reliable and respectful of privacy, then take
their findings to government officials in about six months.

'Anything but sending you a catalog'
Privacy advocates question whether consumer databases would be useful.

"The history is that large data aggregation and integration is not done well,"
says Larry Ponemon of the Privacy Council, a company that counsels corporations
on protecting privacy.

"If it's used for anything but sending you a catalog, we may not be able to do
the things we want to do," he says. Ponemon's firm is part of the
Authentication Program group.

Abrams' consortium has confirmed 17 companies attending this week's meeting.
Two of those listed, however -- computer maker IBM and Internet service
provider Earthlink -- say they're still debating whether to join.
****************



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