Clips April 9, 2002

[Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>]

April 9, 2002

ARTICLES
Verizon Wireless Sues U.S. Over Licenses
Sen. Burns to Offer Wireless Spectrum Bill 
INS Tightens Rules for Visitors - Far-Reaching Changes Involve Length of Stay,
Student Visas 
ID Cards for `Trusted Travelers' Run Into Some Thorny Questions
Study highlights aircraft inspection problems Poor oversight, training,
analysis plague program 
Guard, U.K. make e-learning pact
BMG to Test Protected CDs on Industry Insiders
Consumer Interest Fuels Wireless Services Market - Study
Environmentalists take their battle to boardrooms
Satellite proliferation sparks U.S. worries
Interactive TV standards unveiled 
Treasury gets word out for messaging
The Security Sentinels
Why Rookie IT Managers Make Classic Blunders?
Computer games lure older players
Nigeria looks to webwise youth
Computer scribe hits the web
Computer surfing on the beach
Computer security an inexact science 
AOL tests hyperactive advertising
FBI's new Cyber Division quietly ramps up 



FYI Articles
********************
New York Times
Verizon Wireless Sues U.S. Over Licenses

WASHINGTON, April 8 (Bloomberg News)  Verizon Wireless Inc. has sued the
federal government in an effort to cancel an $8.7 billion agreement to buy
wireless licenses. 

The carrier, in a filing, asked the Court of Federal Claims to force the
government to return the remaining $261 million of a $1.7 billion down payment
for the licenses and compensate the company for lost interest while the Federal
Communications Commission held the money. Verizon Wireless has said it may be
owed more than $100 million in interest. 

The F.C.C. has been unable to distribute the licenses after a 2001 auction
because of an ownership dispute with NextWave Telecom Inc. The agency, whose
arguments will be heard by the Supreme Court, has not awarded them in a "timely
manner," causing hardship for Verizon Wireless, the company said. 

Verizon Wireless, a venture of Verizon Communications (news/quote) Inc. of New
York and the Vodafone Group (news/quote) of Britain, must be ready to pay for
the licenses within 10 days of an F.C.C. request unless the auction is
canceled. The liability has hurt the company, it said. Standard & Poor's
lowered its credit outlook for Verizon Communications last month.

Shares of Verizon Communications fell 60 cents, to $44.21. They are down 11
percent in the last year.

An F.C.C. spokesman, David Fiske, declined to comment. The F.C.C. has agreed to
return about $1.5 billion of the deposit Verizon Wireless made on the
frequencies, which were first awarded to NextWave in 1996. 
*****************
Reuters
Sen. Burns to Offer Wireless Spectrum Bill 
Mon Apr 8, 5:10 PM ET 
By Jeremy Pelofsky 

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - Sen. Conrad Burns, a Montana Republican, said on Monday
he plans to offer legislation to overhaul the way the government manages U.S.
airwaves, but predicted a two- or three-year battle over the contentious issue.


  
Commercial mobile telephone services like Verizon Wireless VZ.N have been
crying for more airwaves to expand and offer new products. But spectrum is a
scarce, finite resource with no readily available spots. 

A good chunk of airwaves are used by government agencies like the Federal
Aviation Administration (news - web sites) and the Defense Department. But
earlier plans to move those operations to other airwaves have little support in
the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. 

Another band of spectrum will eventually be vacated by television broadcasters
as they move to new, crisper digital signals. That could potentially happen as
early as 2006, although that is not seen as likely. 

"We're going to put together a spectrum reform bill; we don't think that we
should be piecemealing how we make spectrum (available)," Burns told an
audience of television broadcasters at the annual National Association of
Broadcasters convention. 

In the past, the Federal Communications Commission (news - web sites) has
auctioned off airwaves for commercial mobile telephone services. Government use
of airwaves is managed by a group within the U.S. Commerce Department (news -
web sites). 

Officials from both agencies in recent weeks have renewed efforts to better
coordinate spectrum policies, bringing parties from various constituencies to
the table to debate. 

Efforts to find more airwaves for the carriers have been complicated in part by
the bankruptcy of one company, NextWave Telecom Inc., and the government's
so-far unsuccessful attempts to wrestle away the spectrum and sell it to
established arriers. 

Burns predicted an intense battle over the legislation affecting multiple
constituencies. He added that he was also awaiting a report from the
investigative arm of Congress, the General Accounting Office (news - web
sites), which is reviewing a slew of spectrum issues and related government
practices. 

"This will be a broad look at how we manage our spectrum. Are auctions the
right way to go or are they not, or what is the role that broadcasters have?"
he said. 

He later told reporters the battle would likely last two or three years. An
aide to the lawmaker said legislation probably would be introduced late this
year. 

"If this is to be treated as a national resource, then how do we manage a
resource? We don't know where this will lead," Burns said. 

An aide to Sen. Ernest Hollings, the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee,
said the panel was also considering legislation to address spectrum policy
problems. 

Separately, he held out hope that the Senate would resolve as soon as this week
a spat between leaders over who would fill the second of two Democratic seats
on the Federal Communications Commission. 

The FCC (news - web sites), split 3-2 in favor of the political party that
holds the White House, is headed by Republican Michael Powell. 

Republican Leader Trent Lott said in March he opposed Jonathan Adelstein,
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's legislative assistant for
telecommunications issues, for the FCC slot because he was too young and did
not have enough experience. 

Lott's opposition came to light after the Senate Judiciary Committee (news -
web sites) defeated the nomination of his personal friend to a federal appeals
court position. Lott has thrown his support behind Andy Levin, an aide to Rep.
John Dingell, the ranking Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. 

However, Levin withdrew his name from the running for the FCC slot last
November because he said he did not have the support of Hollings, chairman of
the panel with jurisdiction over the FCC. 

"I would hope it could be resolved by this week," Burns said, adding that his
support was behind a public utility official in Montana, Democrat Bob Rowe. 
***************
Washington Post
INS Tightens Rules for Visitors 
Far-Reaching Changes Involve Length of Stay, Student Visas 

The Immigration and Naturalization Service yesterday announced far-reaching
changes to rules that govern foreign visitors and students, including one
proposal that could limit millions of foreign visitors to 30-day stays in the
United States.

Another new regulation, which takes effect immediately, requires foreign
nationals who want to study here to obtain student visas before beginning
classes, officials said. Currently, foreign students can enroll in U.S. schools
while holding tourist or business visas if they have applied for a change to
student status.

Taken together, the changes are some of the broadest reforms proposed by the
embattled INS since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks exposed the shortcomings of
the system that tracks foreign visitors as they enter and remain in the
country.

The agency, long chastised as one of the most dysfunctional in the federal
government, is the subject of proposals that would break it into smaller
components or abolish it altogether. It drew the ire of President Bush,
Attorney General John D. Ashcroft and lawmakers last month when it mailed out
approval notices for changes in the visa status of two of the dead terrorists
six months after the attacks.

"These new rules strike the appropriate balance between INS's mission to ensure
that our nation's immigration laws are followed . . . and our desire to welcome
legitimate visitors to the United States," INS Commissioner James W. Ziglar
said. "While we recognize that the overwhelming majority of people who come to
the United States as visitors are honest and law-abiding, the events of
September 11 remind us that there will always be those who seek to cause us
harm."

The most far-reaching change, which will take effect after a 30-day comment
period, will eliminate the current six-month minimum admission period for
foreigners who come to the United States as tourists and replace it with "a
period of time that is fair and reasonable for the completion of the purpose of
the visit," the agency said.

Tourist and business visitors will be required to explain to immigration
inspectors why they are coming to the United States so the INS can determine an
appropriate length of stay. If the INS cannot determine the time needed to
accomplish the purposes of the visit, it will grant a 30-day admission.

The proposed rule also will reduce from one year to six months the maximum
extension period granted to business and tourist visitors. Exceptions will be
made in some cases, such as retirees who own vacation homes and may want to
stay longer than six months.

"The . . . changes are part of a strategy to improve national security and
reduce the probability that an [illegal immigrant] will establish permanent
ties in the United States and remain in the country illegally," according to
the INS.

Theresa Brown, manager of labor and immigration policy for the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce, said she is concerned that the pending changes will deter legitimate
businesspeople and tourists from coming to this country.

"Any type of additional hurdle . . . and people just aren't going to come,"
Brown said. "It probably will have a significant impact on the tourism and
travel folks."

Ten million people received tourist visas in 2000, according to an INS
official. Seventy-five percent stayed less than a month. As for business trips,
2.5 million people traveled to the United States on business visas and stayed
an average of 13 days, the official said.

All 19 of the hijackers who participated in the Sept. 11 attacks were in the
United States legally, mostly on tourist visas. But at least two had overstayed
the limits of those visas.

In issuing the new regulations, the INS promised to process requests for
changes regarding student status within 30 days. Victor Johnson, associate
executive director for public policy of the Association for International
Educators, said the plan would succeed "if they follow through on their
commitment in 30 days. But the INS doesn't do anything in 30 days."

The decision to make it difficult to switch to a student visa after arriving on
a visitor visa comes only weeks after the INS was blasted for sending out final
status change notifications for terrorists Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi.
The documents were received on March 11 by the Florida flight school that
trained the pair, who are believed to have piloted separate jetliners into the
World Trade Center.

The debacle created a furor on Capitol Hill and prompted Bush to order an
investigation. Ashcroft requested an investigation by the Justice Department's
inspector general.

Another rule change will require a foreign visitor with a final order of
deportation to surrender to the INS within 30 days. Those who ignore the 30-day
rule will be barred from obtaining future immigration benefits, such as asylum
or permanent resident status.

Eighty-nine percent of non-detained immigrants with final orders of removal
have failed to surrender for deportation when ordered to do so, the INS said.

None of the proposed changes requires congressional approval. The change
prohibiting students from starting school without INS approval will take effect
immediately. The others will become effective after a 30-day public comment
period.

Angela Kelley, deputy director of the National Immigration Forum, an immigrant
rights group, called the proposals a "mixed bag."

"Some of these are common-sense measures, but others can have farther-reaching
consequences," Kelley said.

Ziglar is scheduled to testify today before the House Judiciary Committee on
various immigration issues, including why more than 300,000 illegal immigrants
ordered deported remain in the United States.
********************
New York Times
ID Cards for `Trusted Travelers' Run Into Some Thorny Questions

WASHINGTON, April 8  The idea seemed simple: figure out who the good guys are,
give them easy-to-recognize and hard-to-counterfeit ID cards and let them
breeze past airport security.

Everybody would win, advocates say. Holders of the "trusted traveler" cards
would save time. Screeners would have fewer bodies to inspect  there were 1.8
billion in 2000, according to the Transportation Department  and could
concentrate on identifying potential terrorists. And passengers would feel
safer.

There is only one problem: It is proving extraordinarily difficult to figure
out who would qualify for a card that would work as advertised.

"What makes a trusted traveler?" asked Richard P. Eastman, who writes software
for airlines and travel agencies. "The guy who travels all the time; who
travels on business; who has a reason to travel. Does that mean the terrorist
can't penetrate that group? Of course he can."

For weeks the new Transportation Security Administration has focused on more
pressing problems, like taking over the screening points, and officials have
equivocated on whether such a card is feasible. Now, though, with the summer
travel season approaching, lines will grow longer if the normal pattern holds
and millions of vacationers flood the airports. That will take frequent fliers'
frustration back up to the boiling point. Pressures on politicians to do
something are rising, and some experts say the only feasible solution will be
some sort of travel card.

Probably the biggest obstacle to creating the airport equivalent of an E-Z Pass
is doubt about its effectiveness. After all, terrorists can be adept at
blending into the society they plan to attack, so who can guarantee they won't
fool the gatekeepers? "The guys who did this exercise on Sept. 11 spent the
better part of four years becoming nondescript," Mr. Eastman pointed out.

The federal government seems to be of two minds. Tom Ridge, director of
homeland security, said the proposed cards would help reduce bottlenecks. And
Norman Y. Mineta, the secretary of transportation, said his department was open
to some type of trusted-traveler ID card system.

Yet John Magaw, the under secretary of transportation who is the head of the
new Transportation Security Administration, worries that the card might not be
smart enough to thwart hijackers."Terrorists are not in any hurry," he said.
"For them, the soup of revenge is best served cold."

Even if a risk-free card could be devised, civil libertarians would probably
fight it. The American Civil Liberties Union has ridiculed the trusted-traveler
concept as a "get out of security free" card. These critics argue that it would
be impossible to safeguard the confidential information travelers would have to
divulge about themselves. And they contend that a smart card would set a
dangerous precedent.

"Quickly enough, policy makers are going to say, `If this works, let's require
everyone to go through background checks before they get on a plane,' " said
Barry S. Steinhardt, director of the A.C.L.U.'s program on science and
technology.

The card would be sophisticated but not technically difficult to produce. At a
minimum, experts say, a card should be able to store a fingerprint or a retina
scan and verify to a computer that the holder's finger or eye matched. The
computer should be able to check that the card had not been revoked. So far,
the government has not even been able to devise a card for flight attendants,
pilots or Secret Service agents.

Frequent travelers, however, create a commercial imperative. Though they are
mostly unorganized, they are voting with their feet and abandoning air travel
in droves to avoid the long lines. In a recent survey, fully 60 percent said
they had cut back on their flying purely to avoid airport problems.

Take Steven M. Fetter of Rumson, N.J. He runs his own energy consulting firm,
Regulation UnFettered, and makes frequent flights out of Newark International
Airport to destinations all over the United States and Europe. Before starting
his business, Mr. Fetter, 50, held a variety of jobs with states and the
federal government, including a stint as a senior official in the Labor
Department.

He is an unlikely terrorist, but he gets the same scrutiny as everybody else at
security booths, and has the horror stories to show for it. To beat a
three-hour delay he heard about at the New Orleans airport in October, for
example, he got to the airport two and a half hours early, zipped through the
lines in 20 minutes and had to kill more than two hours.

Mr. Fetter says he would happily give all kinds of information about himself in
return for a traveler's card that could spare him such frustrations. "Rather
than search people like myself, they should focus on people who want to go
nowhere near this card idea," he said.

Mr. Fetter, who is a platinum-class traveler on Continental Airlines
(news/quote), is frightening for the airlines because he is typical. The
dissatisfaction of business travelers is creating alarm at airlines. The
industry is awash in red ink, with losses expected to approach $4 billion this
year. Yet just a few hundred thousand road warriors account for more than half
their revenues. Winning them back is the key to future profitability.

But the process of setting security rules has changed. When the Federal
Aviation Administration was in charge, the airlines had a sympathetic ear when
they raised commercial concerns. Now security is in the hands of a separate
division of the Transportation Department.

"This is the first test, really, for a new agency," said Senator Ron Wyden,
Democrat of Oregon, who is not known as a friend of the airlines. Congress set
up the Transportation Security Administration to be more independent of the
industries it regulates, he said.

After Sept. 11, relatively few politicians have been willing to second-guess
the agency. Representative John A. Culbertson, Republican of Texas, came out
strongly for a trusted-traveler card but could find only 13 colleagues to sign
a letter to Mr. Magaw in January calling for it.

Some consumer advocates are skeptical the card will work. "If they start
letting some people through security, it blows the whole security program,"
said Kathy Lynch, the project manager at the Aviation Consumer Action Project,
a group founded by Ralph Nader in 1971. "Terrorists can get ID's of any sort."

Ms. Lynch predicted lines would become shorter as new technology and workers
are put in place, and the Transportation Department is already committed to a
goal of waits of no longer than 10 minutes.

But proponents say there must be an easier way than screening people who the
government knows are making routine trips.

"If you start having a behavior pattern that is outside the norm for you, and
inconsistent with your job, then even as a trusted traveler you bear further
looking," said Mr. Eastman, the airline software author.

Something has to happen, the airlines say. "We can't and won't lose focus on
security," said Leo F. Mullin, chairman of Delta Air Lines (news/quote), in a
recent speech here. "But we must simultaneously reduce the hassle factor. It's
possible and necessary to do both."

*****************
USA Today
Study highlights aircraft inspection problems Poor oversight, training,
analysis plague program 

WASHINGTON -- The federal government's program to oversee airline safety is
plagued by poor training, inconsistent management and inadequate analysis of
the data it collects, a report obtained by USA TODAY says.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), criticized for failing to detect
problems leading to airline crashes, needs to speed improvements in the
inspection program, says the Department of Transportation's inspector general.

''The system is not reaching its full potential, and significant challenges to
full implementation still exist,'' says a summary of the report, which will be
released at a hearing before Congress on Thursday.

The report praises the goals of the safety program and says the agency has made
significant improvements in the past year. But the report is the latest of
several to say that the agency stumbled when it introduced its Air
Transportation Oversight System in 1998.

Instead of relying on a limited number of inspectors to check aircraft, the FAA
decided to push carriers to make managerial changes to emphasize safety and to
conduct extensive analysis to spot safety problems before they cause harm. The
changes were spurred by the 1996 ValuJet crash, which was blamed in part on
inadequate maintenance oversight. The investigation of the Alaska Airlines
crash in 2000 also is focusing on maintenance problems.

FAA officials acknowledge that introduction of the program was rocky. But they
say most of the early problems have been solved and with time the new program
will provide far better results. 

However, the inspector general found these problems:

* Data-collection systems still fall short. FAA inspectors at an unnamed
carrier found loose bolts on a jet that could have led to a fuel leak, but the
system's computers would not allow them to note the problem in agency
databases.

* Though the new system is based on concepts for imbedding safety protections
in airline management, 84% of FAA inspectors told the inspector general they
had not been trained in these concepts.

* Management of the system has been inconsistent. At some FAA offices, its
inspectors work jointly with airline auditors, while at others inspections are
done independently.

* The new system is used to oversee only the 10 largest airlines. FAA planned
to expand its program to the other carriers two years ago, but problems delayed
the expansion. The FAA has transferred concepts from the new program to its
oversight of smaller carriers.
********************
Computerworld
Outflanking The Cyberterrorist Threat 

The speed at which critical national functions are being moved online increases
the risk of vulnerability, say former CIA and NSA security experts in exclusive
interviews with Computerworld.

While cyberterrorism may not be an immediate threat, it would be foolish not to
recognize that the U.S. is facing a "thinking enemy" who will adapt to attack
our critical infrastructures and vulnerabilities, says Ruth David, former
director for science and technology at the CIA.

David is now president and CEO of Analytic Services Inc., an independent,
not-for-profit, public service research institution in Arlington, Va. She and
Bill Crowell, CEO of Santa Clara, Calif.-based security firm Cylink Corp. and a
former deputy director of the supersecret National Security Agency, each
participated in rare interviews with Computerworld's Dan Verton. They discussed
the threats posed by cyberterrorist attacks and the steps that the public and
private sectors should take to thwart them. 


There's been speculation, even before Sept. 11, about the U.S.'s vulnerability
to an "electronic Pearl Harbor" or cyberterrorist attack. How has this changed
since Sept. 11, and how vulnerable are the various economic sectors to
cyberterrorist attacks? 

David: While it is true that major terrorist attacks to date have targeted
human lives, I would not blindly extrapolate that behavior into the future.
After all, on Sept. 10, we would not have expected a hijacker to turn a
commercial airplane full of passengers into a guided missile, and even on Sept.
12, we did not envision exploding shoes as a threat to aviation. 

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, those adversaries almost certainly
observed the immediate effect of service interruptions as well as the prolonged
economic impact of infrastructure disruptions. While the weapon used was
explosive rather than cyber, it doesn't take much imagination to see that
similar effects could be achieved through cyberterrorism. 

Crowell: Clearly, the vulnerabilities of the nation to cyberattack are growing.
Critical national functions like banking, financial services, health, water and
communications are increasingly dependent on highly automated systems that
connect the many nodes of their operations. 

These changes in the degree to which business and the government are dependent
on public networks have been occurring for about a decade. The disturbing thing
is that all of the trends are in the wrong direction. Business is moving more
and more critical functions to networks. The speed and complexity of the
deployments make it difficult for them to employ good defenses rapidly.
Diversity is decreasing as we migrate more to common operating systems and
common network systems. 


To what extent is the war on terrorism, particularly the battle for improved
homeland security, a technology problem? What roles do you see the government,
corporate America and the IT vendor/developer community playing? 

David: Technology is only one component. Without supporting policy, effective
processes and well-trained people, technologies solve nothing. Deployment of
facial recognition technologies at border entry points will not ensure
apprehension of terrorists. 

Corporate America will play an increasingly important role in developing
security technologies to protect nongovernmental personnel and property that
may be targeted by terrorists attacking what we are as a nation rather than
what we do as a government. 

Crowell: The battle for improved homeland security involves both technology and
processes. Technology can be used to make the processes more efficient,
predictable and effective. 

The Transportation Security Agency, [Federal Aviation Administration] and
Department of Transportation are all looking for ways to improve [airport
security]. However, I am particularly concerned that many of the critical
processes are now using technologies that are more vulnerable, not less. An
example is the use of wireless LANs for the tracking of baggage. Without proper
encryption and authentication, the baggage handling system will not prevent
either insider or outside attack. 


Some have said that the government's push to create a separate and secure
intranet (GovNet) for sensitive government operations and possibly e-commerce
is tantamount to throwing in the towel on Internet security. Are there viable
alternatives to disconnecting from the Internet? 

David: To the extent that terrorists attack symbols of America, seek to shake
the confidence of the public in our government's ability to protect [citizens],
and/or seek to inflict economic damage, GovNet solves nothing, since many
valuable cybertargets would be left undefended. In fact, a separate network
might actually impede the homeland security mission since it could further
isolate government from industry and the American public at a time when
communication and collaboration are desperately needed. 

In particular, I believe the absence of a coherent governmentwide security
policy has significantly limited our ability to protect sensitive government
operations. 

Crowell: I think that the GovNet initiative has been misrepresented in the
press. Perhaps this is because the government did not carefully lay out the
principles in the beginning of the discussion. [The government has] advocated
that the core mission systems be on separate private networks that are highly
protected from denial-of-service attacks and from hacking and cyberattacks. 

The Internet would be used for e-government to enjoy the enormous reach it
provides to the public. These are not new concepts. In banking and financial
services, these policies have long been the basis for their risk management
practices. 


Howard Schmidt, the deputy chairman of the President's Critical Infrastructure
Protection Board, said recently that the next national plan for protecting the
country's critical systems and networks will be written with the help of the
private sector. What do you think the immediate priorities and focus should be
for such a public/ private plan? 

David: If I were to offer a top priority, it would be to establish trust
between government and industry and among the key industry sectors. This means
first and foremost to create a safe environment for the sharing and analysis of
information regarding cyberattacks and discovered vulnerabilities. 

My next priority would be to bolster our intrusion-detection capabilities. I
worry less about the overt attacks that disrupt service than the subtle attacks
designed to steal or corrupt data - attacks that may go undetected until
disaster occurs. 

Crowell: I think that there are two elements that should be part of the plan.
The first is that the government should be a leader in network security and
move quickly to employ the best practices for both GovNet and e-government. The
second is that the [Securities and Exchange Commission] should establish the
same risk disclosure rules for network security that it used to focus attention
on Y2k and on disaster recovery. 

Without such a mechanism, there is a strong likelihood that the vulnerabilities
and risks in network-based business won't get the attention that [they need]
until there is a disastrous event. I think that the disaster recovery systems
of the financial businesses in the World Trade Center saved many of them from
total collapse. 
*********************
Federal Computer Week
Guard, U.K. make e-learning pact

The National Guard Bureau and the Defense Department's Advanced Distributed
Learning (ADL) initiative last week announced the first-ever e-learning
partnership laboratory with an international partner.

Maureen Lischke, the Guard's chief information officer and program executive
officer for information systems, said a working agreement has been reached
between the United States and the United Kingdom to establish a co-laboratory
at the University of Wolverhampton in England. 

A co-lab is an open, collaborative test bed environment for sharing learning
technology research, development and assessments. 

U.S. officials first began discussing the co-lab agreement with their U.K.
counterparts in August 2001, said Lischke, who also heads the bureau's
Distributive Training and Technology Project. By the end of this month, she
said officials will sign the formal memorandum of understanding, which will
spell out the focus areas for the distance-learning research. 

She added that the partnership is no cost to the National Guard. Lischke and
Nancy Teich, ADL's program integrator, said one of the goals of the agreement
is to promote the development and acceptance of global e-learning standards.
With such standards, international groups will be able to share content,
courseware modules and lessons learned on technology implementation.

The foundation of that collaboration will be the Sharable Content Object
Reference Model (SCORM), a software specification that sets guidelines for
developing online course material and makes Web-based training materials
interoperable and easily shared. 

SCORM is the basis for ADL's vision of reliable, affordable,
Internet-accessible and reusable training courseware, Teich said, adding that
it is gaining acceptance in the U.K. as well as other NATO Partnership for
Peace nations.

The Office of the Secretary of Defense, which oversees the ADL program
(www.adlnet.org), and the National Guard jointly established varied e-learning
initiatives for the Wolverhampton lab to work on, including: 

* Establishing a "plug fest" in the U.K.  similar to those at domestic ADL
co-labs  that will enable vendors and European governments to test their
products in a SCORM environment.

* Extending distance-learning offerings to the warfighter through wireless
capabilities.

The National Guard has more than 450,000 personnel at 3,500 sites in 54 states
and territories, making global, enhanced e-learning capabilities a critical
addition to traditional training methods, Lischke said.

In 1999, the Office of the Secretary of Defense established the ADL
co-laboratory and encouraged government agencies, industry and academia to
collaborate in the research, development and testing of standards and
guidelines to support distributive learning. 

Later that year, the Wisconsin Technical College System and the University of
Wisconsin established an agreement with DOD to establish an academic ADL co-lab
in Madison, Wis., to tap the academic leadership and knowledge resources
available in the nation's universities and colleges. The ADL co-lab has more
than 250 partners, including Carnegie Mellon University, the University of
California-Berkeley, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, NASA,
Microsoft Corp. and Oracle Corp. 

In addition to the Wisconsin facility, the National Guard Bureau, along with
the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Office of Naval Research and the
Labor Department also support co-labs in Alexandria, Va., and Orlando, Fla., by
providing staffing, equipment and other resources, Lischke said.
*******************
USA Today
HDTV advocates join copy-protection fray 
Mon Apr 8, 5:55 AM ET 
Mike Snider USA TODAY 

The CD-burning, TV-recording public is about to get a stronger voice in the
intense debate over the future of entertainment and technology. 

Forming this week at the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las
Vegas: a high-definition-TV advocacy group spearheaded by HDTV Magazine
publisher Dale Cripps and editor in chief Howard Barton and communications
attorney Tedson Meyers.

The group reflects the concerns of HDTV owners, many of whom are upset about
the slow flow of high-definition broadcasts and the threat of new copy
protection measures that could erode the usefulness of the more than 2 million
expensive sets sold to date.

Early adopters ''feel a little bit knifed in the back, and I don't blame
them,'' Cripps says. The group, which expects to announce its name and plans
later this week, will lobby Congress and educate consumers about HDTV's
benefits.

Less than a month ago, another advocacy group, DigitalConsumer.org, was formed
by a Palo Alto, Calif.-based group of technology entrepreneurs and executives.
They hope to get Congress to pass a consumer ''bill of rights.''

''We are trying to change the nature of the debate, because Hollywood has
framed it as 'You are either in the camp of the pirates or in the camp of
Hollywood,' '' says co-founder Joe Kraus, who also founded the Web portal
Excite.com. ''There is a difference between copying and piracy. Making a copy
of a song from your CD to take to the gym or in your car is not piracy.''

The movie industry is pressing for strong anti-copy protection to prevent
piracy. Proponents say such protection would spur the digital TV transition.

Federal Communications Commission (news - web sites) chairman Michael Powell
last week proposed voluntary measures for broadcasters, cable and satellite
operators to speed the transition. And last month, Sen. Ernest Hollings,
D-S.C., introduced legislation to require broadcasters, studios and equipment
makers to develop anti-piracy standards within a year to be incorporated into
all home entertainment equipment and PCs.

Lack of such an agreement, Hollings says, has hampered the development of
receiving equipment and quality content. Hollywood is concerned that movies and
TV shows will get ''Napstered'' as more homes gain high-speed Net access.
''Broadband entices and allows piracy of films and TV programs on a massive,
unprecedented scale,'' Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture
Association of America, said at congressional hearings in February.

But consumer advocates argue that movie studios and the music industry are
looking for a way to reduce consumers' traditional abilities to record music
and video that they purchase or receive for portability or backup.

The HDTV group is concerned about a proposal to let studios downgrade
high-definition signals received by equipment that doesn't include new copy
protections -- that is, most equipment sold to date -- to deter piracy. Other
initiatives could prevent time-shifting and archiving of programs.

Unless consumers get involved, new laws and technological measures will
adversely affect how they watch TV and listen to music, Kraus says.
''Historically, this has been a debate between the electronics companies and
Hollywood. Consumers aren't in the room.''
******************
Reuters 
BMG to Test Protected CDs on Industry Insiders

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A new batch of compact discs designed to defeat Napster
(news - web sites)-style piracy is coming soon to record-industry insiders. 

  
BMG, one of the world's five major labels, said on Monday it would start
issuing promotional CDs -- the free discs distributed to critics, retailers and
other insiders weeks before the official release -- with technological
countermeasures to prevent copying. 

The major labels, which include Vivendi Universal , Sony Music, EMI Group , AOL
Time Warner's Warner Music and Bertelsmann AG (news - web sites)'s BMG, hope
that copy protection measures will prevent users from "ripping," or copying the
music into the easily traded MP3 format. 

"The first benefit of doing promos and advances is to get feedback on the
technology," said Kevin Clement, BMG's senior director of new media. "And we
would hope this technology will stop the records from leaking early to the
public." 

Popular records like Outkast's "Stankonia" and D'Angelo's "Voodoo" were freely
available to the public weeks before their release dates via Napster, the
currently shuttered music-trading service that spawned a online music swapping
revolution and is now partially owned by Bertelsmann. 

The label said most of its protected discs would contain two versions of the
album, one for use in consumer CD players and another encoded in Microsoft
Corp's encrypted WMA format, for playback on PCs and compatible portable music
players. 

None of the major labels have committed to a full-scale roll-out of protected
CDs, in part because of backlash in Europe after altered discs did not play on
some CD players. 

BMG's release of Natalie Imbruglia's "White Lilies" in the United Kingdom last
year, for example, prompted numerous returns of the disc to retailers. And
Sony's Celene Dion CD released in Europe last month, "A New Day Has Come,"
reportedly caused some computers to crash. 

BMG said in a statement it eventually hopes "to arrive at a copy management
solution that offers consumers the experience the artists create and deserve
reward for." 

The company declined to say which companies it was working with to provide the
promotional CDs' technological countermeasures, but Clement said the label
hoped the promotional discs would work with virtually all compact disc players
when they launch later this month. 

"One hundred percent, that's our goal and that's what we've charged the
technology companies to hit," he said. 

Asked if that goal was reachable, given the current state of the technology, he
said, "We'll soon find out." 
********************
Newsbytes
Consumer Interest Fuels Wireless Services Market  Study

The economic slowdown in the U.S. has not dampened consumer interest in
wireless communications services, according to a new study. 

The study, released today by the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA),
said total spending on wireless services will grow from $106.6 billion in 2001
to $116 billion this year, a leap of 8.5 percent. 

The consumer segment of the market is expected to be particularly strong. The
study forecasts 20 percent growth in this sector, from $73 billion last year to
$87.6 billion in 2002. The number of consumer subscribers likewise is rising,
from 177 million to 200 million, respectively. 

The TIA said spending on wireless communications will remain strong for at
least the next three years. Its forecast calls for a 15.6 percent compound
annual growth rate from 2001 to 2005. 

In 2005, the TIA predicts total spending on wireless services will reach $130
billion. 

Thanks to lower prices for handsets, total handset spending dropped 6.1 percent
from last year to $8.2 billion in 2001. However, the study said that figure
will rise 11.7 percent to $9.2 billion in 2002. 

Arthur Gruen, the principal author of the study, told Newsbytes there are four
categories in the wireless handsets market - cellular, PCS (personal
communications services), paging and SMR (specialized mobile radio). 

"The four categories are moving in different directions," said Gruen. "PCS and
SMR are on the rise, while we expect a decrease in cellular and paging." 

Gruen said the rollout of ESMR, or Enhanced SMR, which incorporates Java
applications, is coming later this year. 

"Nextel has some new handsets coming out. This will give the SMR handset market
a boost, and we see a big jump of 80 percent. That will help offset declines in
cellular and paging," he added. 

Looking to the future, Gruen said the cellular market will continue to decline
for the next two years before bouncing back up in 2004-2005 because of digital.
The market for paging handsets likewise will drop over the next two years
before getting a boost in 2004-2005 due to replacements. 

The study said total wireless handset spending will have low single digit
growth rates through 2005. The TIA believes sales in this period will be driven
more by replacement units than new subscribers. 

"This is not strictly saturation, but the wireless market is now big, and on a
percentage basis it is not growing like it was in the 1990s," said Gruen. "On
the other hand, with a big market, you have more demand for replacements." 

"By 2004-2005, you will see the beginning of the rollout of 3G (third
generation wireless technology), so you will see replacement handsets sold to
take advantage of the new technology," he said. 
******************
USA Today
Environmentalists take their battle to boardrooms

SAN FRANCISCO  Environmentalists are taking their case against computer-related
toxic waste to the industry's boardrooms.

Social investment firm Calvert Group filed shareholder resolutions last week
against Gateway and Hewlett-Packard, asking them to study the environmental
impact of used personal computers.

Computers and other electronics contain toxic chemicals that can leak into the
environment when they are thrown away.

Shareholder resolutions have helped activists challenge everything from
genetically modified food to apartheid. They've successfully persuaded
companies such as Home Depot, DuPont and Walt Disney to change their policies.

Calvert and other shareholder groups are trying to force changes at many PC
makers. While stockholders are not expected to approve any of the resolutions,
activists hope they'll gain enough votes to force management to deal with the
issue.

Gateway has been the most opposed to the study, says Ted Smith of the Silicon
Valley Toxics Coalition, an advocacy group helping Calvert.

Activists hoped to reach an informal agreement with the computer maker, Smith
says. But the company's unwillingness to talk forced the group to file the
formal resolution, he says. Gateway shareholders will vote on it during their
annual meeting in May.

Gateway spokesman Brad Williams says that Gateway is committed to the
environment. But it wasn't willing to spend money for a study. Also, Williams
says that Calvert did not do its homework when checking on Gateway's recycling
efforts.

Shareholders of Compaq Computer and Hewlett-Packard also will get to vote on
the issue. The companies are pursuing a $19.9 billion merger. H-P, for one, has
not yet publicly denounced the resolution.

Apple Computer has already agreed to perform the study Calvert requested.
Because Apple is cooperating, Calvert withdrew its resolution against the
company.

IBM has refused to do the study. But Calvert's resolution against it was forced
off the ballot on a technicality. Critics say that is IBM's way of ducking the
issue. The computer maker says it's still working with Calvert.

No resolution has been passed against Dell Computer, the No. 1 PC maker. It
holds its annual shareholder meeting later than many other computer makers and
is still negotiating with activists.

The activists say they're taking up the issue because electronic waste is a
growing problem.

About 1.8 million tons of electronic waste were created in the USA in 1999,
according to the latest Environmental Protection Agency data.

"There are tens of millions of computers piling up in landfills," says Conrad
MacKerron, director of shareholder action group As You Sow. "Computer companies
have not gotten their act together to take responsibility."
******************
USA Today
Satellite proliferation sparks U.S. worries

WASHINGTON (AP)  Pictures from sharp-eyed satellites, once the domain of the
United States and Russia, are becoming so easy to obtain that the military may
have to alter its strategies knowing adversaries with a minimum of know-how and
money can be watching.

Perhaps a half-dozen countries as well as some private companies have spy
satellites that, while not as good as those used by the United States, are able
to supply solid military intelligence.

"The unique spaceborne advantage that the U.S. has enjoyed over the past few
decades is eroding as more countries  including China and India  field
increasingly sophisticated reconnaissance satellites," CIA Director George
Tenet said in a recent Senate hearing.

Tenet said adversaries are quickly learning how to take advantage.

"Foreign military, intelligence and terrorist organizations are exploiting
this  along with commercially available navigation and communications services 
to enhance the planning and conduct of their operations," he said.

In the past, only Moscow had satellite capability approaching that of the
United States.

Now, with its own spy satellites, China would be able to learn of the location
and composition of a U.S. carrier battlegroup dispatched during a potential
dispute over Taiwan.

Eleven years ago, the United States threatened an amphibious assault on Iraq
from the Persian Gulf before hitting Iraq's army with a "left hook" from the
western flank. If Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had had access to the kind of
commercially available satellite imagery now for sale, it's conceivable he
could have moved his troops to meet the coalition's surprise land assault.

The latest advances in foreign countries are largely the result of their
research rather than technology purchases or espionage, experts said. The
United States pioneered much of the technology; now, other countries are
replicating it.

"We're losing our monopoly," said James Lewis, a former Commerce and State
Department space policy expert now with the Center for Strategic and
International Studies. "After the war in the Persian Gulf, other countries
figured out it was really good to have space capabilities."

U.S. military satellites remain the best  they can discern far more detail and
collect more images. Their numbers allow them to take pictures more frequently
of a given area. A new generation of spy satellites, part of a project called
"Future Imagery Architecture," is planned.

But now that other countries have access to high-resolution imagery, they can
count tanks, track fleets and acquire other information useful in predicting
U.S. Military moves.

That means the military will have to practice the same "denial and deception"
techniques adversaries have used to avoid detection by U.S. reconnaissance,
experts say. Tanks are camouflaged under trees. Secret projects are hidden in
buildings when a reconnaissance satellite is overhead.

During the first months of the Afghan war, the United States simply bought
exclusive access to the right parts of the orbit of the Ikonos satellite, then
the best commercial satellite in the skies. This prevented anyone else from
having a look at Afghanistan, and the U.S. company that runs Ikonos, Space
Imaging, was happy to sell.

It's unclear if the U.S. government will do that in future wars. While it can
exercise "shutter control" over U.S.-owned satellites, foreign-owned satellites
are under no such restriction. Foreign companies also may not want to sell
imagery solely to the Americans.

Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, who has studied these issues, suggested the
military develop ways to jam satellite transmissions and prevent ground
stations from receiving the pictures.

"The more information an adversary has, the more vulnerable we are," he said.
"We have to think about jamming and other capabilities at the appropriate
times."

Both the United States and the former Soviet Union worked on weapons that would
bring down spy satellites in the event of a major war. But interest in those
technologies has waned.

James also said he worries that the United States is losing its edge in
building the best satellites. New restrictions on exports of satellite
components, while slowing the transfer of sophisticated technology, have also
caused U.S. manufacturers to close, he said. These rules were enacted after an
investigation into the Clinton administration's decision to let two U.S.
aerospace companies export satellites to be launched atop Chinese rockets
******************
USA Today
Interactive TV standards unveiled 

LAS VEGAS (Reuters)  A group of interactive television content providers Monday
unveiled a new set of open technology standards for making interactive TV
programs they claim will play on any TV set-top box or Web-based system.

The production standards, developed by interactive TV company GoldPocket
Interactive, have the backing of about 90% of the companies in the nascent
industry, GoldPocket said.

Interactive TV is a system for two-way communications via television sets using
remote controls, and many cable TV and satellite TV operators are now beginning
to install the systems across the USA.

Currently, content offerings are limited to program guides and some
movies-on-demand, but down the road the systems promise things like e-mail and
online shopping via television.

The standards are based on a form of the Extensible Markup Language, or XML,
which is widely compatible with the major interactive set-top boxes on the
market today.

The company said it has created an advisory committee to shepherd the
development of the standards, including participants from America Online and
Turner Broadcasting, both units of AOL Time Warner, Dick Clark Productions and
Game Show Network, a cable TV channel backed by Sony's entertainment division.

A draft version of the standards is available now, with final versions of the
free standards to be available in May.

Separately, GoldPocket also said it has developed a version of its authoring
tools integrated with digital video editing technology from Avid Technology,
whose editing systems are among the most widely used in the entertainment
industry.


******************
Federal Computer Week
Treasury gets word out for messaging

The Treasury Department is looking for the latest technology for voice and
electronic messaging systems to handle a network with more than 90,000
mailboxes.

In two requests for information (RFI) posted April 3, the agency said it wants
to develop nationwide systems, services and support for its existing nationwide
voice messaging system as well as for a unified e-mail system.

"We are looking for what the new technologies are," said Robert Bannerman, a
contracting officer for Treasury.

Responses to the RFIs are due April 22, according to Bannerman. And while it is
too early to say just how much new systems could cost, Bannerman said the
department is looking for the best ideas industry has to offer.

"Treasury encourages approaches that speak to creativity in architecture,
suggested migration paths, and operational support," the RFI said.

Nevertheless, the RFI said Treasury is looking for available unified messaging
systems for large enterprises and using the current voice mail and e-mail
environment as a starting point for a unified system. It also wants:

* E-mail, voice and fax messaging services from a single mailbox as well as
video messaging.

* The ability to interact via cell phones, pagers, personal digital assistants,
networked personal computers and wireless telephones.

* A single user mailbox to handle all messaging functions.

* Tight security. The system must be segregated from public access.
******************
Computerworld
The Security Sentinels

Here are the tales of three trailblazers whose work in computer security and
forensics have helped shape modern practices.

As far back as the 1970s, three women began preparing the world for the havoc
about to be unleashed by networked computing. From their humble origins in law
enforcement and academia, their influence on computer security practices has
spread to government and private sector alike - despite the fact that two of
the women had virtually no IT or scientific backgrounds.

These security pioneers include Martha Stansell-Gamm, a former U.S. Air Force
judge advocate who started an arduous fight against breast cancer as she took
over leadership of the then 8-year-old Computer Crime and Intellectual Property
section of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). 

While developing the DOJ's forensics procedures for search and seizure of
electronic evidence, Stansell-Gamm crossed paths with Raemarie Schmidt, who
developed digital forensics procedures for Wisconsin's branch of the DOJ.
Schmidt's work helped set the standard for computer forensics now used by law
enforcement agencies around the nation. 

And there's Dorothy Denning, a distinguished computer science professor at
Georgetown University in Washington, whose writings have set the stage for
information security practitioners for the past 27 years. 

For eight years, Stansell-Gamm partnered with her department chief, Scott
Charney, to grow the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property section of the
DOJ. Logically, Stansell-Gamm was the best choice to fill Charney's shoes when
he left the department in 1999. But the same week she learned of her promotion,
she received news of a different sort: She was diagnosed with advanced breast
cancer. 

The department was already smarting from the loss of its founder, and
Stansell-Gamm worried about what would happen to her unit during this
leadership vacuum. 

"All I could do is put one foot in front of the other, count on the section to
do right by me and to do right by our mission," she says. "Everyone just
handled it. They jumped into unfinished, high-level projects they had no
experience with and took over what needed to be done." 

Now cancer-free, she's been back on the job for two years, leading the DOJ's
efforts in multijurisdictional computer crime investigations and coordinating
DOJ representation in developing international cyberlaws. The biggest and most
difficult part of her job, she says, is getting all the players - corporate
victims, law enforcement, state attorneys and intelligence agencies - to "kick
the ball" to one another. 

"We're like a bunch of 5-year-olds playing soccer, where we all huddle around
the ball," says Stansell-Gamm, who was a soccer mom when her three kids, now
teens, were younger. "At public speaking engagements, I tell audiences that we
need to position ourselves on the field and pass the ball." 

That type of statement is typical of Stansell-Gamm, says Charney, who became
Microsoft Corp.'s chief security officer April 1. "She sees the complexity of
each issue," he explains of her leadership from 1994 to 1996 in amending the
sentencing guidelines to the 1984 Computer Crime and Abuse Act. "For example,
she recognizes that enforcing new laws on the Internet could chill free speech,
so she has been careful not to turn evolving social mores on the Internet into
definitions of criminal activity," he says. 

Forensics Forerunner

Working law enforcement investigations in the mid-1990s was an exciting time
for Schmidt, a digital forensics pioneer and supervisor of curriculum
development for the computer crimes section at the National White Collar Crime
Center in Fairmont, W.Va. 

"We'd go in behind the raid team and use an early precursor to the Jazz and Zip
drives to make evidentiary backups from parallel port to parallel port. We had
to do this without shutting down the legitimate business completely," she says.
"And in home searches, you'd walk into a disaster zone - cables, equipment and
floppies everywhere." 

Before getting into computer investigations, Schmidt tested drugs for 20 years,
first for a pharmaceutical company and then for law enforcement, where she set
up the drug testing facility for the Wisconsin State Crime Lab in Milwaukee.
That's where she discovered her knack for technology, linking laboratory
testing instruments to early Unix systems in the late '80s by soldering on the
cable connectors herself. 

So when her boss returned from a seminar in 1992 and charged Schmidt with
developing a computer forensics department, she approached it scientifically
and technologically. She used her science skills to turn the ad hoc process of
computer investigations into a modern-day forensics practice. Then she used her
technological prowess to track down computer vulnerabilities and technologies
to aid investigators. 

Now, as supervisor of curriculum development, she's overhauling old courses and
adding new ones, along with hiring and screening contractors and investigators
and overseeing instructor development. And she's still researching the ways new
technologies will be used in crimes. 

"In the last year, we've really only seen the tip of the iceberg in digital
forensics," says Chris Stippich, co-founder of Digital Intelligence Inc. in
Waukesha, Wis., who worked with Schmidt at both the Wisconsin State Crime Lab
and the National White Collar Crime Center. "I think Raemarie's going to
continue to be at the forefront, pushing the envelope on the discipline of
digital forensics." 

The Security Mentor 
The relationship between computing subsystems and user access to resources
intrigued Denning in the 1970s. She wrote her doctoral thesis on secure
information flow in 1975, some 20 years before colleges were thinking about
information security courses. 

"The topic of my thesis was how to keep top-secret data from reaching an
uncleared user, which was a challenging problem for the Department of Defense,
who wanted all levels of users to share the same computer," she says. 

After publishing her thesis, Denning kept writing. Since then, her 120
articles, three books and television and radio appearances, along with
congressional testimonies, are the basis for much of today's thinking on IT
security. 

"She's become a mentor for those of us who are operational in the field, even
though she's an academic," says Howard Schmidt, co-chairman of the President's
Critical Infrastructure Protection Board in Washington. "Her writings give me a
balance, particularly those on information warfare, intrusion detection, and
even her unpopular belief on the Clipper chip and encryption-key escrow," he
says, referring to when Denning positioned herself on the side of the
government for these collection and recovery initiatives. When she did, the
outcry was deafening. 

"The attacks were very personal," she says. "I had new names, like 'Wicked
Witch of the East.' I would come home very stressed out." 

Denning coped by doing more research, even polling Howard Schmidt and others
about the impacts of encryption on evidence recovery. She also responded in
forums, including a July 1996 HotWired "Brain Tennis" match with John Gillmore,
co-founder of the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Eventually, as the government's proposals failed and Denning took a position in
favor of easing encryption export laws, the criticism died down. 

As Howard Schmidt says, Denning's position is all about balance. She talks of
the balance between computer security and operability, something that made her
quit her job in the early '80s at Menlo Park, Calif.-based SRI International
Inc., where her responsibilities included trying to secure databases. She left
for a position at Digital Equipment Corp. that focused on usability. Denning
continues to analyze trends in network attacks for signs of terrorist activity.


"People want to know if cyberterrorism is going to happen and when it will
happen," she says. "It's hard to know because it's speculative." 
******************
Computerworld
By KATHLEEN MELYMUKA 
(April 08, 2002) 

Why Rookie IT Managers Make Classic Blunders . . .

. . . and how you can help them succeed. A Harvard Business Review writer
offers some suggestions

New managers often fail for predictable reasons. In this month's Harvard
Business Review, Carol A. Walker tells how good supervisors can help rookie
managers avoid the obstacles that so often trip them up. Walker is president of
Prepared to Lead (www.preparedtolead.com), a management consulting firm in
Weston, Mass. She previously worked for 15 years as an executive in the
insurance and technology industries. Walker told Computerworld's Kathleen
Melymuka that these observations and lessons apply especially to IT, where the
work of individual contributors and managers is hugely different.

Q: Why do so many rookie IT managers fail? 

A: Managing is always different from doing, but in IT, the difference may be
even greater than in other fields. The reason they don't succeed is that the
difference is underappreciated. They don't truly understand their new role and
how they should be spending their time, which is fundamentally different. 

Q: What is the fundamental difference? 

A: It's the difference between guiding processes and communicating directions
vs. rolling up your sleeves and writing code: individualized work vs.
communication. 

Q: Why do new managers hesitate to ask for help? 

A: Rookies are already feeling vulnerable. If they're pretty high in
self-confidence, they're more likely to ask for help, but many don't. In our
society, asking for help tends to denote weakness, and IT is a field where
people are even more used to having the answers. 

Q: As the rookie's boss, how can I tell whether he needs help? 

A: Observe the manager's interactions with his staff. Find opportunities to
talk to staff independentlynot about the manager, but about what's going on in
the department and how clear the objectives are. If objectives are clear and
people seem focused, he's probably doing a good job. 

Q: If a rookie needs help, how can I show that it's OK to ask? 

A: There's no substitute for communication. Have regular meetings with rookie
managersmaybe more frequently in the beginning. Ask probing questions about
big-picture issues. 

Q: Why do new IT managers often find it hard to delegate? 

A: I suspect that in IT, the nature of work is so detail-oriented that it
attracts a certain type of personality that is more comfortable with high
degrees of detail. They tend not to like to give up control, and delegating is
a matter of trusting and giving up control. 

Q: As the boss, how can I help? 

A: Clarify expectations. Let them know the expectation is not that they're
doing everything, and help them understand that this is a huge transition, not
a little thing. Let them know it's normal to feel they may be not as productive
as they used to be. At some levels, it may be still part of their job that they
do some IT work, so it's important to talk about what proportion of time you
expect them to be doing this sort of thing vs. this other sort. 

Q: You say many rookie IT managers have image problems. What are some of those?


A: The issue is that rookies tend to not realize the influence they have on the
people looking up to them as supervisors. If they have a poor reaction under
pressure, if they're short with others, or roll their eyes at issues that are
tiresome or lose their temper, that demonstrates to the team that that's
acceptable behavior. They lack awareness that every behavior they demonstrate
is telling everyone else what is acceptable. 

Q: If I see a rookie manager doing this, what do I do as his supervisor? 

A: Often, they're not aware of the behavior. Take them aside and raise their
consciousness: "I'm pretty sure you have no idea you're doing this, but it's
likely to have this impact on your staff." Let them know that people expect a
sense of calmness and control from a leader. 

Q: You say I need to drag new IT managers out of the trenches. But aren't they
building rapport with the troops by diving in to fight the fires? 

A: Everything in moderation. Depending on the level of management, different
degrees of involvement are appropriate. In true emergencies, it may make sense
to roll up your sleeves, but it can become very comfortable to fight fires
because it feels very productive. It can become the norm, and then she's
ignoring the direction of the unit and strategy and thinking. If she's
continually putting out fires, she's also telling her staff they're not capable
of handling that; they need her to do that. 

Q: Some rookies say strategic thinking is a luxury they can't afford. How can I
teach a rookie who has always been tactical to begin thinking strategically? 

A: Use those regular communication sessions to pose the kinds of questions you
expect them to be able to answer. Like, "What's the competition doing in this
area?" If they can't answer, point out that this is the difference between a
boss and a programmer and that a certain amount of their time needs to be spent
on this. 

Show them what you expect them to be on top of, and tie it to promote ability.
Point out that the higher in management they go, the more they will need to
demonstrate this kind of thinking, and you want to give them the opportunity to
practice it. 

Q: What don't rookies get about feedback? 

A: When feedback is delivered in a supportive manner, it's the biggest gift
they could receive; it's the ability to see themselves as others see them. It
allows them to grow. And people don't get that. Sometimes feedback is not given
in a perfect way, and then people are not open to receiving it. 

Q: So they have to learn to give and receive feedback? 

A: Yes. And as in a dysfunctional family, when they receive feedback given in a
bad way, they either hesitate to give feedback themselves because it was so
negative for them or they copy the behaviors they see and give their own
feedback in public or in an uncaring way or without tying it to success
factors. Feedback is a touchy issue. Whether you give or receive it, it
requires an environment of trust. As the boss, you have to demonstrate how to
give good feedback. 

Q: How do I, as the rookie's boss, negotiate the fine line between coaching and
micromanaging? 

A: If you set up that regular meeting time to talk about things, you're not
going to be in their face. Focus on their asking and your answering questions. 

In the beginning, they may not be able to know the right questions, so you ask
the questions. And if you have to raise an issue, raise it in the form of a
question: "What do you think of this area?"not "We're not doing enough in this
area." 
******************
BBC
Computer games lure older players

A survey by the European Leisure Software Publishers Association has found that
the average age of the keenest players is gradually edging upwards. 

The results of the survey revealed that the largest game-playing group is
actually aged between 25 and 34. 

It also found that women are starting to be a significant proportion of
Europe's gamers and that many more titles aimed at them are being produced. 

A life onscreen 

The annual market survey by Elspa has revealed that the relatively high cost of
consoles, PCs and games means that it's only those with salaries and money to
spare that can keep up with the latest titles. 

Allied research carried out by the games magazine PC Zone found that these
ageing, avid players are typically in the top social groups, have an average
annual income of about £20,000 and 30% of them have children. 

In recognition of this growing group of ageing players, many games companies
are producing titles, such as Grand Theft Auto 3, aimed specifically at this
over 18 market. 

The Elspa report also found that Europe's gaming population is diversifying in
other ways. 

Many software publishers are releasing games that have less to do with the
guns, explosions and chases and are about softer subjects that appeal to a much
wider audience. 

The computer game The Sims, that lets people run the lives of simulated people,
recently became one of the best-selling games ever. Part of this success has
been put down to the fact that many of its keenest adherents are women. 

Since The Sims was launched in May 2000, it has sold over 2.6 million copies in
North America alone. 

Old age players 

Also growing in size is the number of small children and school age children
that play games featuring their favourite TV or film characters. Titles that
are tie-ins with popular family films or even pop stars are growing in
popularity. 

One title that is expected to appeal to this group is Britney's Dance Beat, a
PlayStation 2 game featuring popstar Britney Spears that asks players to
perform increasingly intricate routines to dance opponents off the screen. 

Finally, there is a growing range of programs for older people who want to
pursue other hobbies, such as gardening or genealogy, on their home computer. 

The report said that magazines such as Active Life, which is aimed at the
over-50s, now get as much response to stories and promotions involving
computers as they do for those about travel. 

The number of ways that people can get hold of games is also expanding. 

Gradually games played via mobile phones are catching on as are those available
to subscribers to some digital TV services.

*****************
BBC
Nigeria looks to webwise youth

Gbenga Sesan is a man with a mission - to preach the gospel of computers to
Nigeria's youth. 

As information technology youth ambassador, he faces an uphill struggle in a
country where there are few fixed phone lines and most people do not have a
computer. 

Ironically he does not have his own computer, but he argues that this is not a
problem. 

"Even if the resources are not readily available, it's one thing to prepare now
so that when an opportunity comes, you can take the best advantage of it," he
says. 

"We can prepare ourselves mentally so when the materials come, we can always
take advantage of them," he told the BBC programme Go Digital. 

Computer training 

Mr Sesan was appointed to his post five months ago after winning a national web
design competition organised by the information technology training college,
the Executive Cyberschuul, in Lagos. 

The aim of the contest was to identify young Nigerians who, in spite of the
country's poor infrastructure, possess the potential to develop computer
skills. 

During the two years he is spending as youth ambassador, Mr Sesan aims to
increase awareness about computers and offer coaching classes to Nigerian
youths across the country. 

He hopes to train 4,000 young Nigerians in information technology by 2003. 

He believes this is possible, despite the shortage of computers. 

"We have to work around our limitations," he says. 

"Even if you have three computers for 40 people, you could have all of them
trained and then they come from time to time to use the machines." 

Tech generation 

Courses in information technology and computing would open up new career
opportunities for Nigerians and help close the digital divide with the West. 

"Most companies in Nigeria now advertise for young people who know how to
design websites," says Mr Sesan. 

Potentially, the country could develop a computer-literate generation who could
offer their services to clients anywhere in the world. 

The 25-year old electronics and electrical graduate hopes to be able to give
Nigeria a bigger presence on the worldwide web. 

He is setting an example by creating his own personal website, due to launch in
July.
******************
BBC
Computer scribe hits the web

Online journalists could find their jobs under threat as a virtual reporter has
been created that trawls the web for all the best stories. 

The Newsblaster is a piece of software designed to edit, summarise and rewrite
the huge amount of news currently on offer in cyberspace. 

It is the brainchild of computer scientists at Columbia University in the US. 

The project has been funded by grants from the National Science Foundation and
the Defence Agency. 

Extracts sentences 

The software was originally intended to make it easier for intelligence
gatherers to find information on the web. 

But it could also be used to aggregate the thousands of news stories on the
internet.

The software program trawls news websites including the BBC, Reuters and CNN,
gathering articles that it sorts by topics such as world news, entertainment,
science and technology. 

It extracts nouns, verbs and phrases to measure similarities between articles
and condenses it into a five-sentence summary. 

The sentences can either be taken verbatim from the original article or
rewritten in a slightly different form. 

A programme allows it to put the sentences in order, relying in part on the
order of information in the original articles. 

This is an extract from its summary of the death of the Queen Mother. 

The Queen Mother's coffin, draped in her personal flag and crowned by a wreath
of pink camellias, had been driven the 25 miles from Windsor Castle in a hearse
flanked by police motorcycle outriders. Princes Charles paid a moving public
tribute to his late grandmother Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on Monday, praising
her "panache, style and unswerving dignity" as mourners across Britain left
teddy bears, candles and wreaths in public places in her honour. 

Not infallible 

Quite often the summaries have longer sentences than standard news articles and
some have an odd turn of phrase. 

"It might form longer sentences because it is trying to pack a lot of
information in," explained Vasileios Hatzivassiloglou, one of the professors
working on the project. 

He admits that the virtual journalist is not entirely foolproof. 

It cannot, for example, summarise different sides of the story. 

"It is an automated system and at this point we don't have the quality of a
human editor and inevitably it will make mistakes," he said. 

However 88% of those that have used the system have found it better than going
to different websites for their news, said Professor Hatzivassiloglou. 

Human jobs safe 

Dr Damian Carrington, editor of web-based science journal newscientist.com
believes that the software is no substitute for a human journalist. 

"I think the program will be a threat to news aggregator websites, such as
newsnow.co.uk, but not to real editors," he said. 

"It can quickly chop down stories into bite-size chunks, but it cannot exercise
the editorial judgement needed to sort complex material and to achieve balance.


"As for investigative or analytical pieces, it has no hope," he said.

******************
BBC
Computer surfing on the beach

The Norwegian telecoms company Telenor, which has moved to the idyllic seaside
surroundings at Fornebu, launched what it claimed to be Europe's largest
wireless workplace. 

The Wireless Zone, which was developed together with Cisco, Accenture and
Birdstep Technology, is impressive - if for no other reason than its extensive
reach. 

"It stretches all the way to the sea; our staff can work on the beach," Telenor
Business Solutions' wireless technology product manager, Stein Andre Larner,
told BBC News Online. 

Which is good news given that their personal office spaces are minute. 

Though they can work anywhere they like within the "clean desks" environment,
overnight Telenor's workers have to cram the tools of their job into 40x40
centimetre cupboards. 

The situation brings new meaning to the phrase 'size matters'. 

Savings 

Though, if all else fails, why not rely on a big, fat wallet? 

That is what companies who adopt Telenor's solution should be able to do, given
that the latest Telenor offering should enable them to squeeze more
productivity out of their workers. 


More efficient working practices should save 20 minutes of wasted time each day
for each employee, Mr Larner predicted, citing international research. 

This, he insisted, would be done by putting to better use workers'
non-productive "timeslots" - those moments before a meeting starts or while
waiting for the kettle to boil. 

For example, a recent meeting Mr Larner was due to attend was delayed. During
the wait he popped outside for a quick cigarette. 

And because he was still inside the Wireless Zone, he was able to shoot off a
couple of quick e-mails at the same time. 

Online, always 

This is the key to the wireless workplace, which Telenor is now trying to sell
to companies. 

Workers are online, all the time, wherever they are within the company. 

Their portable computers are never turned off, not even while people move
within their workplace. 

Consequently, there is no time lost logging on and off the network. 

The Wireless Zones are not even limited to one location. 

Zones in different parts of the country can be interconnected, even when the
zones belong to different companies, Mr Larner said. 

Even small cities could be made into Wireless Zones that enable people to stay
connected permanently. 

No escape? 

But this is not necessarily the way employees want to live. 

Indeed, even Mr Larner acknowledge that as with most communication technology
there are flip sides. 

"We are 100% contactable these days, so we have to set our own personal limits
for when we want to be available," he said. 

After all, he stressed, "I don't take the PC with me every time I pop outside
for a cigarette".
******************
San Francisco Chronicle
Computer security an inexact science 
Attacks on the rise despite barrage of antivirus programs

Despite the near-ubiquity of firewalls and antivirus software, hacker attacks
and viruses are causing more damage to computer networks every year, according
to a survey by San Francisco's Computer Security Institute and the FBI. 

"There's obviously more to this problem than technology," said Richard Power,
CSI's editorial director and author of the annual survey. "People are spending
a lot of money on technology, but if they are not committing themselves
organizationally to security, they're throwing their money away." 

Ninety percent of the 503 security professionals surveyed -- most of whom work
for large corporations and government agencies -- use firewalls at their
companies, and 60 percent use the software equivalent of burglar alarms to
detect digital intruders. 

Yet 90 percent still suffered in 2001 from security breaches including virus
infections, Web site vandalism, credit card fraud and theft of company secrets.
The most expensive breaches were cases of financial fraud, causing an average
loss of $4.6 million. 

Ironically, vendors of security products often quote the FBI and the
institute's data about the prevalence of Internet attacks to scare clients into
buying more firewalls and security gear. 

Power wrote in the report that if the vendors were required to include in their
sales presentations the data on which security technology programs were used by
the companies in question, "their penchant for using the CSI/FBI study results
might wane." 

Antivirus software vendors like Symantec and Network Associates might also be
chagrined: Ninety percent of respondents use antivirus products, yet 85 percent
were attacked by Internet viruses like Code Red or Nimda. The average financial
loss from a virus attack was $283,000. 

Despite fears that the Internet might be infected by terrorism and political
strife, there was not a steep increase in online attacks in 2001. The number of
attacks in most categories and the financial toll have been climbing steadily
or staying the same year over year since the survey began seven years ago.
******************

MSNBC
AOL tests hyperactive advertising

NEW YORK, April 8   AOL Time Warner has quietly begun testing ?rich-media?
content and advertising within its online unit. The move to include more video
and audio elements within marketing messages in its proprietary service could
have a big impact on AOL?s ad revenues.

       SEVERAL WEEKS AGO AOL rolled out a select amount of rich-media content
to about 5 million subscribers using AOL 7.0. 
       For example, in the Auto Racing area, the NASCAR.com logo and a spinning
tire race around the page. Within the next week or so, AOL will begin offering
multi-media in ad promotions in high-traffic areas such as Weather and women?s
content. 
       Rich-media  a catch-all phrase for technology that provides interactive
elements in content or advertising, such as video, audio, animation and 3D
effects  has been spreading rapidly across the Web for the last 18 months.
Often an element can seem to break free and move around the page or computer
screen, attracting more attention than static images.
     AOL?s move into the rich-media arena comes at a time when the online
division?s ad revenues are shrinking faster than expected and big consumer
brands are demanding more TV-quality commercials in their online campaigns.
Industry analysts speculate that AOL may have lost millions worth of ad dollars
because it has lagged rivals such as Yahoo! and Microsoft?s MSN in being able
to provide rich-media for its marketing partners. Rich-media advertisements are
more eye-catching and more effective in relating a company?s brand message,
many consumer marketers believe. (MSNBC is a Microsoft - NBC joint venture.)
       ?AOL needs to do something with their advertising to make it more
effective,? said Phil Leigh, an investment analyst who follows AOL Time Warner
for Raymond James & Associates. ?Rich-media makes a lot of sense.?
BEYOND BANNERS AND BUTTONS
       ?We?re always assessing ways to create a good experience for our members
and advertisers,? said AOL spokeswoman Wendy Goldberg. ?We are going to ramp up
for advertisers after we?re satisfied the content is as good as it can be.?
       AOL?s flashy new content is deployed through the Viewpoint media player
bundled in its 7.0 version. AOL has a minority investment in Viewpoint, a New
York technology licensing firm which produces a graphics operating system
similar to Java, a program widely used on Web sites.
       ?It?s important for AOL?s advertising business to move beyond standard
banners and buttons,? said Sree Kotay, Viewpoint?s senior vice president of
marketing. 
       Viewpoint?s rich-media player works with the online unit?s publishing
system called ?Rainman.? The Rainman system was developed 17 years ago, long
before HTML became the standard programming language on the Web. Rainman?s
creative limitations are a chief reason AOL relies so heavily on pop-up boxes
for promotional pitches within its ?walled-garden? service. 
       The technology has been spreading rapidly across the Web over the last
18 months, allowing sites and marketers to show Flash-animated ads and run
30-second TV commercials online. 
       Although most of the online unit?s revenues come from subscriptions,
advertising is becoming more crucial as its membership growth has slowed.
However the multi-year, multi-million dollar marketing partnerships AOL used to
count on have dried up amid a sharp downturn in online advertising.
       As a result, AOL?s online advertising has come under pressure. 
       On Monday, Morgan Stanley said it cut its stock price target on AOL Time
Warner to $30 from $36, and reduced its forecast of the media firm?s revenue
growth to 6 percent from 8 percent
       Last month, Lehman Brothers cuts its first-quarter estimates for AOL
Time Warner when its influential Internet analyst Holly Becker expressed
?concerns over AOL division advertising.?
       Becker slashed her estimate of the online unit?s first-quarter ad
revenue by 17 percent to $535 million from $643 million. 
       Whether rich-media can turn around AOL?s fortunes is uncertain. But it?s
clear that traditional advertisers want their online campaigns to more resemble
their TV advertising.
       ?AOL has now focused on the big pot of money interested in rich-media,?
said John Vincent, chief executive of Eyewonder, an Atlanta company that
develops rich-media advertising for ad agencies and clients such as Coca-Cola,
Cadillac and the New York Stock Exchange. ?Their customers are demanding it.?
******************
Government Executive
FBI's new Cyber Division quietly ramps up 
By Liza Porteus, National Journal's Technology Daily 


To the surprise of many people in government and in the technology industry,
the FBI has been quietly forming its new Cyber Division.

The first formal announcement of the division indirectly was made Tuesday, when
FBI Director Robert Mueller announced the appointment of Larry Mefford as
assistant director of the division. Mefford is associate special agent in
charge of the San Francisco FBI field office.

The goal of the Cyber Division is to coordinate the various online disciplines
within the FBI and to investigate federal violations where there are
exploitations of computer systems, the Internet or networks. The move is part
of the FBI's recent overhaul efforts.

An FBI spokeswoman described the new division as "a work in progress," and many
members of the high-technology industry said they were unaware that the
division was solidifying.

A Justice Department spokeswoman said that DOJ's Computer Crimes and
Intellectual Property section has talked with Mefford in the past, but that it
is unclear on how the divisions will interact. "They anticipate sitting down
and working together," she said. 

Some tech sources said they had been in discussions with Justice and FBI
officials on the idea of an FBI cyber division, particularly after Sept. 11,
although were not aware the new division was actually forming.

Mueller and Attorney General John Ashcroft "have been pretty pro-active ... in
getting out there and reaching out to the community at a higher level," said
Shannon Kellogg, vice president of information security practices at the
Information Technology Association of America. Kellogg said it was thought that
the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC) would evolve, or
merge with another FBI division.

"I think what this is trying to do is pull together a number of initiatives and
supervise these initiatives," Kellogg said.

An NIPC source said NIPC is waiting for more details on its role after the FBI
restructuring. The source said a formal announcement is likely to be made
within 30 days. Another industry source said the real story is how NIPC, the
Cyber Division and Richard Clarke, President Bush's cyber-security adviser,
will inter-relate.

But there could be problems if NIPC is rolled into the Cyber Division. The NIPC
source said industry already is hesitant to share information about
vulnerabilities with government, and splitting NIPC may be a further deterrent
in that area. 

An FBI study released Sunday that was conducted by the Computer Security
Institute and the FBI's San Francisco computer-crime squad found that most
large corporations and government agencies have been attacked by computer
hackers, and they often do not tell authorities of the breaches for fear of bad
publicity. 

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, last month wrote to Mueller discouraging the
dismantling of NIPC, a move Mueller had discussed with Grassley during a
February meeting. At that time, Mueller was considering placing part of NIPC in
the FBI's criminal division and another in its
counterterrorism/counterintelligence division.

Mueller mentioned a forthcoming "Cyber-Crime Division" while testifying before
the House Appropriations Subcommittee for Commerce, Justice and State in early
March. But he also said the FBI needs more funds for the NIPC. 

"This change will bring together various cyber initiatives and programs under
one umbrella ... to protect our nation's growing digital marketplace and
electronic infrastructure," Mueller said.
******************
FYI
Stories

IT Firms on Doing Business with the Federal Government 
Washington Post March 26, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21001-2002Mar26.html

Online Live Discussion on Basic Training for New IT Entrepreneurs
Washington Post April 10, 2002; 2 p.m. EDT
http://discuss.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/zforum/02/washtech_adams0410.htm

Guest: Rob Adams, author of "A Good Hard Kick In The Ass: Basic Training for
Entrepreneurs" and managing director of AV Labs, talks about dispelling the
common business myths of start-up companies and examines key lessons for high
tech entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.

Submit questions to
http://discuss.washingtonpost.com/zforum/02/submit_washtech_adams0410.htm


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