Clips June 13, 2002

[Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>]

Clips June 13, 2002

ARTICLES

High-Speed Internet Access Gets White House Spotlight
Outdated Systems Balk Terrorism Investigations
CIA vet heads new FBI intelligence office
Homeland cybersecurity plans hailed
Industry offers Homeland advice
DOD is on track to add biometrics to Common Access Card
Tech may plug cargo security
Senator Undecided On ICANN Reform
Labor Department Publishes Union Documents Online
Turkish Media Law Could Censor Net
Young, male, wired, music rippers
New Virus Can Infect Picture Files
Latest Spin on Online Music
Homeland connection a priority
General: Challenge is culture, not tech
Info urged to fill military gaps
DOT tests e-seals on shipments
DOT tests e-seals on shipments
Homeland formula for failure ID'd
Senators Say U.S. Should Keep Tabs on Internet Body
Cybersecurity plans will be part of Homeland Security Department
Rechargeable batteries are not keeping pace
TV signals may be used to handle cell phone calls
Most radar detectors can't beat police technology
Microsoft discloses Web software security flaw
Authorities crack $7M online software piracy ring
Habitat for Humanity adds PCs to homes
Online sales of nuke drugs skyrocket
U.S. spy imagery viewed by civilians
Senators decry spectrum policy, name defense as top priority
Defense bill would create tech center for 'first responders'
Scientists develop transistor the size of an atom
Govt department being investigated over spam
Dark side of the Net
Web design 'causes confusion'
The most wired nation on earth
Chief (in)security officer
ICANN comes under fire at Senate hearing
Web Standards Project aims to educate developers


*********************
Washington Post
High-Speed Internet Access Gets White House Spotlight
Bush to Discuss Plans to Promote Availability
By Mike Allen and Jonathan Krim

President Bush plans to tell technology executives today that his 
administration will work to make high-speed Internet access available in 
more areas, administration officials said. But the White House will not 
take sides on contentious regulatory questions that are among the most 
heavily lobbied issues in Washington.

Technology executives, many of them political centrists who are viewed as 
crucial potential donors and supporters by both parties, have been 
aggressively lobbying the White House for incentives encouraging high-speed 
Internet service, known as broadband.

Administration officials said conflicting proposals on Capitol Hill have 
led them to conclude that no major broadband program can be passed this 
year. And the officials said the industry is bitterly divided about the 
specifics of a national policy. The officials said Commerce Secretary 
Donald L. Evans plans to tell the executives today that the administration 
is committed to encouraging demand for high-speed access, and to helping 
state and local governments that are having trouble setting up systems.

Senate Democrats are working to make broadband access one of their 
signature issues. Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) and 
Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) each sent Bush a letter encouraging him 
to put broadband on the agenda for the White House session with the 
executives, which the administration is calling a "21st Century High Tech 
Forum."

Bruce P. Mehlman, assistant secretary of commerce for technology policy, 
said the administration is already taking steps to promote deployment. 
"Among other things, we plan to lead by example by better deploying 
high-speed systems within the government," Mehlman said.

Senior administration officials said outreach to the technology community 
is one of their priorities. "We have a common goal in promoting innovation, 
competitiveness and service," said Lezlee Westine, Bush's director of 
public liaison and former co-chief executive of TechNet, an industry 
political group.

Some of the industry's biggest names -- including Steve Case, chairman of 
AOL Time Warner Inc.; AT&T chief executive C. Michael Armstrong; and James 
L. Barksdale, former chief executive of Netscape Communications Corp. -- 
will appear on panels with Cabinet secretaries and other administration 
officials.

Major technology corporations such as Intel Corp., Dell Computer Corp. and 
Microsoft Corp. have been urging the administration to set specific goals 
for converting much of the nation to faster Internet access, which 
companies see as an important catalyst for the economy and particularly the 
struggling technology sector.

The regional telephone companies, or Baby Bells, argue that they have 
little incentive to invest in broadband rollout if they are required to 
share their lines with competitors providing Internet services. The Federal 
Communications Commission under Chairman Michael K. Powell has been heading 
down a deregulatory path that is likely to lift such requirements.

By contrast, long-distance companies and other Baby Bell competitors argue 
that they should have access to the regional telephone lines in order to 
sell broadband service.
*****************
Washington Post
Outdated Systems Balk Terrorism Investigations
FBI, for Example, Couldn't Track Flight School Data

When a Phoenix FBI agent became suspicious of Middle Eastern men training 
at an Arizona flight school last summer, he wrote a now well-known memo 
suggesting a canvass of all U.S. aviation schools. FBI headquarters staff 
rejected the idea; the bureau didn't have the personnel to do it.

But agent Kenneth Williams and his FBI colleagues might have been able to 
do some of the research on their own -- if their computers had been able to 
tap into FBI databases for references to flight schools. The FBI's 56 field 
offices don't have such technology.

"It would have been very nice if . . . you put into our computer system a 
request for anything relating to flight schools, for instance, and have 
every report in the last 10 years that . . . mentions flight schools or 
flight training and the like kicked out," FBI Director Robert S. Mueller 
III said.

"We do not have that capability now. We have to have that capability."

The FBI, notorious for its antiquated computer system, isn't the only 
federal agency facing that problem. Most federal law enforcement databases 
cannot communicate well with each other. Local and state databases can't 
share information in a comprehensive way with federal agencies. Police 
agencies across the nation have their individual computer systems, which, 
for the most part, aren't linked.

The process of sifting crucial information from countless databases is 
called "data mining," a practice used every day by some private-sector 
companies but woefully lacking among government agencies. Fixing that 
problem is a cornerstone of President Bush's proposal to create a new 
Department of Homeland Security that he said "will review intelligence and 
law enforcement information from all agencies of government and produce a 
single daily picture of threats against our homeland."

Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge said that getting the databases to 
communicate with one another and then analyzing the results is as crucial 
as reforming the FBI and beefing up border protection -- and perhaps as a 
big a task.

Getting the right details into the right hands is "at the heart of 
everything we do," Ridge said in an interview. "It's not a matter of 
getting more information. Right now we're not doing a good enough job of 
processing the information that we have."

Designing or obtaining the right technology likely will prove a much easier 
task than overcoming other barriers, such as cost, privacy concerns, legal 
restrictions, access questions and summarizing classified information in a 
way that protects secrets and sources, according to government officials 
and outside specialists.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has convened hearings on the issue, 
said the problem represents "as serious a threat as a biological or 
chemical agent."

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Thursday, Schumer and others 
lamented the inadequate technology that plagues the FBI in particular. 
"Before 9/11, the FBI's computers were less sophisticated than the one I 
bought for my son for $1,400," Schumer told Mueller.

Mueller has vowed to overhaul technology, but cautioned that it could be a 
multiyear effort. "We've got something like 35 separate investigative 
database applications that we use," Mueller said in an interview with 
Washington Post editors and reporters last week. "For us to be able to do 
the predictive, analytical work we need to do, we have to integrate the 
information in a way that we have not in the past."

The FBI director spoke recently with Lawrence J. Ellison, chief executive 
officer of Oracle Corp., about improving computer links within law enforcement.

Congressional investigators are attempting to determine whether better 
technology might have enabled FBI agents in Minneapolis who arrested 
Zacarias Moussaoui last August to have learned of the July memo written by 
Phoenix FBI agent Williams. Moussaoui, who aroused suspicion at a Minnesota 
flight school, has been charged as a conspirator in the Sept. 11 attacks, 
but agents investigating him before the terror assault were unaware of 
other clues, a point made repeatedly during Thursday's Senate hearing.

All told, the federal government has more than a dozen terrorist watch 
lists, run by the FBI, the CIA, the Immigration and Naturalization Service 
and other agencies. At least 55 databases contain watch-list information, 
some of it classified, officials said.

Two of the Sept. 11 hijackers were on a CIA watch list, but commercial 
airlines had no access to the government databases that would have alerted 
them to the two men. Now, however, the FBI and CIA provide airlines with 
"no-fly" lists of suspects.

Protecting the borders presents similar technological challenges involving 
numerous players. Separate databases are maintained by the INS, the Customs 
Service, the State Department and other government agencies. Ridge said 
that one benefit of creating a new homeland security department that 
includes those operations will be the chance to ensure that all government 
systems are compatible.

Civil liberties groups are closely watching developments, concerned that 
the government eventually will seek to routinely tap into private databases 
containing credit data, health information, travel records and other 
sensitive material, along with video from private security surveillance 
systems. Those concerns have been magnified by recent changes in FBI 
guidelines that loosen restrictions on using commercial databases to search 
for anti-terror leads.

"You have to know precisely what they're proposing to share, and how 
they're proposing to share it," said Barry S. Steinhardt, associate 
director of the American Civil Liberties Union, adding that the ACLU and 
other groups want to ensure that the government does not attempt to create 
dossiers on ordinary citizens.

"It creates a specter of Big Brother government," said Jerry Berman, 
executive director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a civil 
liberties group.

Numerous companies are promoting technological solutions to the problems 
and hoping to tap a potentially lucrative market. The White House is 
seeking $722 million in the 2003 budget for anti-terror technology, just 
the start of a long-term funding effort.

Matt Malden, vice president and general manager of homeland security 
programs at Siebel Systems Inc., a leader in the technology industry, said 
the best systems will enable the government to track, prevent and address 
terrorist activities.

Credit card companies and others in the financial industry have used 
integrated databases for years, becoming extremely proficient in 
data-mining techniques. Their software can assess credit risks, monitor 
spending habits and market products. Siebel Systems, for example, contends 
that its software could have helped authorities spot patterns in the 
movements of the Sept. 11 hijackers by tracking their residences, credit 
card purchases and communications.

A key difference for private industry, however, is that customers agree to 
give up some privacy to financial institutions when they sign up for credit 
cards.

The government would not have blanket access to such a volume of personal 
spending information. But the same kind of technology could be used to 
build and mine government databases, said Steven R. Perkins, a senior vice 
president of Oracle Corp., a major federal contractor and the world's 
largest database technology company.

"This is not [President John F.] Kennedy's challenge of putting a man on 
the moon, where the technology doesn't exist to solve the problem," Perkins 
said. "Is it complex? Absolutely. Is it expensive? Absolutely. But it can 
be done."

Federal officials agree that the technology exists to create new databases 
or tie existing ones together in ways that can be mindful of privacy and 
constitutional concerns. But they haven't yet decided exactly what 
information should be tagged for homeland security, or who would get access 
to it.

Steven I. Cooper, Ridge's technology expert, has spent the past two months 
identifying databases from dozens of federal departments and agencies to 
determinewhich have information pertaining to areas such as border control, 
bioterrorism prevention and emergency response, a starting point in a 
comprehensive look at revamping systems.

"You're culling across a jillion-piece jigsaw puzzle," said Gary W. Strong, 
a technology program director for the National Science Foundation, which is 
funding research on ways to retrieve and analyze information. "The 
knowledge [comes from] going piece by piece to see if it fits together."
****************
Government Executive
CIA vet heads new FBI intelligence office
By Shane Harris
sharris@xxxxxxxxxxx

The FBI has named Mark Miller, a 20-year CIA veteran and one of its top 
analysts, to lead the bureau's new Office of Intelligence, according to a 
CIA spokesman. Miller started working at the FBI May 27.


FBI Director Robert Mueller announced the creation of the office May 29, 
when he outlined changes he wants to make in the way the FBI investigates 
terrorist activities, as well as how it collects, shares and analyzes 
intelligence. The new Office of Intelligence will sift through information 
about terrorist activities in order to predict future attacks, Mueller said 
at the time. Bureau officials declined to elaborate on how that would be 
accomplished and how the new division would work with the CIA, given the 
cultural and regulatory boundaries that have kept the two agencies apart 
for decades.


"I think both agencies have a lot to learn from working together in ways 
that we have not worked in the past," Mueller said in May. "And 
consequently?the Office of Intelligence will be handled?by an individual 
who is an experienced CIA intelligence officer."


An FBI spokeswoman wouldn't elaborate on what Miller's specific duties 
would be as head of the new office. She said only that the division's 
design is "a work in progress." Miller declined to comment.

Miller has spent most of his career studying Soviet and Russian 
intelligence, the CIA spokesman said. Most recently, he led an interagency 
task force that focused on mujaheddin and Islamic terrorist activities in 
Bosnia. The task force was created in 1992 in response to growing political 
and ethnic turmoil in the former Yugoslavia and includes representatives of 
the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and 
the Joint Chiefs of Staff.


The CIA trained and financed mujaheddin fighters during Afghanistan's war 
with the Soviet Union in the 1980s. After the Soviet pullout in 1989, many 
mujaheddin disbanded and became mercenaries in the former Soviet republic 
of Chechnya and also in Somalia and the Philippines. The Bush 
administration has referred to some of them as terrorists.


Miller's work on the task force could serve as a primer for his new 
assignment with the Office of Intelligence, which Mueller has said will 
rely heavily on technology to analyze and distribute information on 
terrorists. In a speech at a technology symposium in Virginia in March 
1997, John Gannon, former deputy CIA director for intelligence, described 
the task force as "a model in driving collection of information and serving 
the range of key intelligence consumers" in the Balkans.


"On a typical day," Gannon said, "a [task force] analyst?might exchange 
information with military personnel in Bosnia across a classified network. 
The analysts would consult with analysts from other intelligence agencies 
and policy counterparts over our classified e-mail and videoconferencing 
systems?Their analytic papers and memoranda would be automatically routed, 
archived and indexed for future reference."


Mueller has said the FBI must update its antiquated technology systems in 
order to better share information within the bureau and among other 
agencies. The FBI began a multi-million dollar upgrade of its information 
systems more than a year ago, but the FBI inspector general has found that 
the agency's technology is still woefully inadequate.
****************
Federal Computer Week
Homeland cybersecurity plans hailed

Cybersecurity officials praised the Bush administration's plans for the 
Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Division in the proposed 
Homeland Security Department, but warned that the details of fitting many 
organizations together must be carefully considered.

Testifying before the House Government Reform Committee June 11, the 
leaders of the Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office (CIAO) and members 
of the FBI's Cyber Division said that bringing together the many 
organizations involved in protection and analysis will strengthen the 
cooperation that they had begun fostering during the past few years.

In fact, the Commerce Department, where the CIAO is located, was already 
working with the White House to co-locate with the Office of Homeland 
Security's cybersecurity organization, said John Tritak, director of the 
CIAO. The CIAO provides outreach and oversight, along with a tool designed 
to assess infrastructure vulnerabilities and prioritize protection plans.

The CIAO also would bring another important function to the new department, 
Tritak said. The president's fiscal 2003 homeland security budget request 
included $20 million to establish an Information Integration Program Office 
within the CIAO to develop and implement an information architecture to 
support information sharing and analysis across government.

Only a portion of the FBI's Cyber Division would be moving to the new 
department under the administration's plan, said Larry Mefford, assistant 
director of the division. The National Infrastructure Protection Center's 
(NIPC) multiagency analysis and warning function, which already works 
closely with the CIAO and other organizations, would be combined in the new 
division.

However, the NIPC works closely with other parts of the FBI's Cyber 
Division, and it will be important to figure out how the new department 
will continue that relationship, Mefford said.

The General Services Administration's Federal Computer Incident Response 
Center (FedCIRC) also is part of the new division in the White House plan, 
but so far the agency has received no details about how the center would 
contribute or how the transfer would take place, a GSA official who asked 
not to be named told Federal Computer Week.

Earlier this year, the White House considered bringing FedCIRC into the 
combined cybersecurity center with the CIAO, but the idea was rejected at 
the time because of infrastructure investments made by FedCIRC to its 
current offices. That issue must still be considered, the official said.
***************
Federal Computer Week
Homeland formula for failure ID'd

The ultimate success or failure of the Homeland Security Department will be 
determined by the intelligence and information technology plan that's 
proposed and the person selected to lead that effort, according to a 
congressional fellow who advises the Executive Office of the President on 
technology.

Speaking June 11 at the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics 
Association's TechNet International 2002 in Washington, D.C., Eileen 
Preisser, also director of the Defense Department's Homeland Defense 
Technology Center, said the key will be getting the new department to 
organize and share information horizontally, instead of vertically in the 
usual stovepipes.

"The kicker that will determine if it succeeds or fails is the intelligence 
and IT plan that's prepared," Preisser told Federal Computer Week. "There 
has to be a [chief information officer or chief operating officer]-type 
person to bring together all the disparate capabilities that exist and 
create a new and exciting virtual information environment that will set the 
pace for everything else in government.

"If you hire a 65-year-old to do it, it will fail. If you hire former 
military, it will fail."

Preisser said the government should look to someone with experience in a 
large industry enterprise effort who understands the mission and the roles 
that the various agencies should play in the "big picture."

"I would like for that to happen, but I don't see that happening," she said.

Preisser said she fears that the new department will just add more 
bureaucracy to a system already overloaded with red tape. She added that 
agencies were just beginning to move "horizontally over the last nine 
months, and forcing them to go back will be the hardest cultural shift."

An interagency organization can be successful as long as the various parts 
are united by their mission and outfitted with the "same standard suitcase 
and equipment, and put in the field together," she said, adding that the 
interagency operational security (OPSEC) group is a prime example of one 
that works.

However, the only way the proposed Homeland Security Department can break 
agency stovepipes will be to cut off the individual budgets and fund 
everything at the department level, Preisser said. And even with the right 
IT and funding plan, the basic implementation will take anywhere from 15 
years to 25 years, she said.

To get at least the basic foundation done faster than that, DOD officials 
should be given a mentoring role. Preisser said DOD officials have the 
necessary experience and should be "highly encouraged" to share what they know.

With that idea in mind, the Missile Defense Agency is developing an 
architecture for "mission-critical test beds" that will produce a common 
operational picture for itself and the other players involved in a 
potential accident or strike involving missiles, such as state and local 
first responders, utility companies and industry partners, Preisser said.

The test beds are designed to help DOD, aided by its partners, to identify 
text, voice, video or audio data patterns over time that should not be 
there. "That is the 'so what' of homeland security," she said, adding that 
terabytes of data are useless if the user can't pinpoint what they need 
quickly and act on it.

The architecture for this environment should be complete by July, when a 
decision is made whether to proceed in Texas or Florida. After that, 
partners will be selected based partly on geographical location, and by 
September, sites will be configured to use the architecture, Preisser said.
******************************
Federal Computer Week
Industry offers Homeland advice

The recently announced Homeland Security Department should look to the 
private sector for possible models on the massive enterprise integration 
initiative it faces, according to a panel of industry experts.

Speaking June 11 at the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics 
Association's TechNet International 2002 in Washington, D.C., Donald 
Zimmerman, chief executive officer of Synergy Inc., said that he had 
recently concluded a study of successful firms and identified some similar 
characteristics in their enterprise implementation strategies.

Based on that information, Zimmerman said the Homeland Security Department 
should:

* Be guided by a concept of operations.

* Be process-based.

* Have a standards-based architecture that is independent of any vendor.

* Maximize its use of commercial off-the-shelf products.

* Have a rapid acquisition cycle.

* Realize that competition is necessary. Don't have a single vendor, but 
don't have 10 either.

* Exercise rapid prototyping and development that establishes pilots and 
test beds in three months or less.

Alan Harbitter, chief technology officer at PEC Solutions Inc., said there 
were some staple technologies that could make such things happen, including 
enterprise application integration, biometric authentication and Web 
services  namely data standardization on Extensible Markup Language.

Ronald Richard, a member of the business advisory board and former chief 
operating officer at In-Q-Tel, the CIA's venture capital arm, said that 
there also was a need for better language machine translators, as well as 
data mining and data linkage tools. He added that those technologies and 
others already were helping personnel at FBI and CIA headquarters, but the 
key would be getting them into the hands of people in the field at those 
agencies and in the new Homeland Security Department.

To make that happen, information security and funding concerns must be 
addressed, Harbitter said.
******************************
Government Computer News
DOD is on track to add biometrics to Common Access Card

The Defense Department is pursuing an aggressive timetable for 
incorporating biometric identifiers in its Common Access smart card.

"We've got a road map, we're moving along it, and we're moving fast," Army 
CIO Lt. Gen. Peter M. Cuviello said today at the AFCEA TechNet 
International Conference in Washington. The Army is the lead service for 
DOD's Biometrics Management Office.

The Common Access Card is the government's largest public-key 
infrastructure deployment. Cards containing digital certificates are to be 
issued to all active duty civilian and military personnel by the end of 
next year. By January 2005 the department expects to be operating the 
government's first enterprisewide biometrics program. A physical 
identifier, such as a fingerprint, hand geometry or facial scan, will be 
linked to the card to authenticate identity.

The timetable calls for BMO to complete a functional requirements analysis 
and an approved products list by January, and to complete an architecture 
design and begin a technology demonstration by May. A draft policy 
framework on how to use biometrics will be ready by October, with initial 
operational capability expected by January 2004. Full operational 
capability will follow in a year.

The office already has conducted 12 biometric device field tests and 
evaluated 56 commercial products.
********************
Federal Computer Week
Tech may plug cargo security

A top Customs Service official told Congress June 11 that the government 
must push back the borders of the United States by using technology to 
check high-risk cargo containers before they leave a foreign port.

At a hearing on President Bush's plan to create a Homeland Security 
Department, Customs' Deputy Commissioner Douglas Browning said that 
technology and information are essential for a successful container 
security strategy  one of the biggest security holes facing the United States.

"To put it simply, the more technology and information we have, and the 
earlier in the supply chain we have them, the better," Browning told the 
House Government Reform Committee's National Security, Veterans' Affairs 
and International Relations Subcommittee. The panel listened to a day of 
testimony about the prospect of putting multiple agencies, including 
Customs, under one umbrella agency to fight terrorism.

Customs already has moved ahead in ratcheting up security checks for 
containers  one of the major shipping methods used worldwide. Last October, 
authorities found a suspected al Qaeda operative living inside a shipping 
container. He was heading for the Canadian port of Halifax, with airport 
maps, security badges and an airport mechanic's credentials.

Customs is now checking at least 15 percent of all cargoes, according to 
Browning. By January, every Customs inspector will have a pocket-size 
device that can detect radiation. Customs officials have also worked out 
deals with major shippers who will provide their own security systems and 
guarantee them in exchange for swift passage across the borders. And June 
5, Customs issued a request for information on embedding technology in 
containers to detect chemical or radioactive devices.

"Ultimately, oceangoing cargo containers are susceptible to the terrorist 
threat," Browning said. "We should not wait for such a scenario to occur. 
As the primary agency for cargo security, U.S. Customs should know 
everything there is to know about a container headed for this country 
before it leaves Rotterdam or Singapore for America's ports," he said.
***************
Washington Post
Senator Undecided On ICANN Reform
By Robert MacMillan

A key federal lawmaker today said he will refrain - for now - from 
introducing a bill to slash the power of the nonprofit group that controls 
the administration of the Internet.

At a subcommittee hearing, Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) told reporters that 
he needs more information before the Senate enters the fractious debate on 
the future of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

Critics charge that ICANN ignores the desires of the global Internet 
community and exceeds the authority it was given by the U.S. Commerce 
Department to tend to the technical side of running the Internet.

Burns' decision to hold off on introducing legislation comes as ICANN and 
the Commerce Department prepare to renew the original agreement that cedes 
the Internet's administration to ICANN. The deadline to extend the 
agreement is Sept. 30.

"ICANN was initially created to address technological concerns, but it's 
now a policymaking body without due process," Burns said. "Simply put, 
ICANN was never meant to be a super-national regulatory body."

Burns, who has taken the Senate lead on ICANN issues with colleagues Ron 
Wyden (D-Ore.) and George Allen (R-Va.), said the Commerce Department must 
issue new reports about its monitoring of ICANN.

Commerce Undersecretary Nancy Victory, who oversees the National 
Telecommunications and Information Administration, told the senators today 
that the department has supervised ICANN in an informal capacity, and said 
few of its discussions with the group's staff are documented in writing.

In a report issued today, the General Accounting Office criticized the 
department's lack of record-keeping. The report also said that ICANN has 
been slow to increase Internet stability and security, and slow to ensure 
that private Internet users are represented in domain name policymaking.

Karl Auerbach, an ICANN board member who is critical of the organization, 
cautioned senators and the Commerce Department not to grant ICANN 
additional powers or new business layers.

"ICANN resists the public accountability and disregards public input," he 
said. "Instead of being a body of limited powers, it's an ever-growing 
bureaucracy."

ICANN President Stuart Lynn acknowledged that the organization needs 
reform, but said that it has "made remarkable progress," including creating 
competition in the domain name sales business and forming a domain name 
dispute resolution policy.

Insisting that that ICANN "is open and transparent, Lynn nevertheless 
conceded that all is not perfect with the organization ... but is 
everything perfect? Of course not."

Lynn recently proposed changing ICANN's board structure to reflect voting 
input from the governments of various countries. While he defends the plan 
as a way to increase public participation, critics say it amounts to 
government interference without adequate representation for individual 
Internet users.

The plan is up for discussion when the 19-member board meets later this 
month in Bucharest, Romania.
****************
Washington Post
Labor Department Publishes Union Documents Online
By Kirstin Downey Grimsley

The Labor Department has begun posting on its Web site internal financial 
documents from hundreds of labor unions around the country, including 
information on their net assets, officials' salaries, and how much they 
spend on office expenses and professional fees.

Department spokeswoman Sue Hensley said the initiative to post 
labor-management records, also known as LMs, reflects the department's 
efforts to promote greater transparency and make more information available 
to the public. Until now, people who wanted to know more about union 
finances had to visit a Labor Department office to review the paperwork or 
seek records from the unions themselves.

"We feel it's positive for union members and union democracy for people to 
know how their funds are being spent," Hensley said.

But some labor unions aren't too happy about it, first because many would 
have preferred not to see the information disclosed but also because the 
department decided not to post the corresponding information from employers 
on the Web as well. Employers are required to inform the department about 
how much they pay labor organizations and management consultants that 
provide expertise on how to handle labor-organizing efforts.

Union activists argue that the employers spend large amounts each year in 
efforts to block workers' organizing efforts but that people who are 
interested in seeing those financial statements still must go in person to 
the Labor Department to retrieve them.

"It's very discriminatory," said Jon Hiatt, general counsel of the AFL-CIO. 
"They are putting union LMs online, but not employer or management 
consultant LMs online at the same time."

Even some groups that have pushed for greater union disclosure to the 
public, and who say that unions have sought to block Web access to avoid 
making disclosures, say it would have been more fair if the department had 
posted both sets of documents at the same time.

"They should put as much up there as there is interest for," said Ken 
Boehm, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, a nonprofit 
organization that disseminates information about union corruption. He said 
that current technology makes it easy to put even large documents on the Web.

Hensley said the department intends to place the management-related 
information online at some time "in the near future" but lacks the 
resources to do so at this time. She said it takes a while to get these 
programs implemented, noting that the department first received a specific 
appropriation for putting the records online in 1998.

"This train was down the track a long time ago," she said.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the largest single affiliate 
union to the AFL-CIO, said it had no objection to placing its information 
on the Web because the union considers it public information anyway.

"The Teamsters are a democratic organization," said Bret Caldwell, a 
spokesman for the Teamsters. "Our books are open. Our members are fully 
aware of our financial status and our fiscal planning, so this doesn't 
affect how we do business."

According to a Labor Department filing on the Teamsters, a 342-page 
document, the union had $101 million in assets at the end of 2000 and $80.5 
million in liabilities. It paid $2.7 million in taxes that year and spent 
$5.8 million on educational and publicity expenses, $17.4 million in office 
and administrative expenses, and $2.6 million on contributions, gifts and 
grants.

With its budget of over $200,000 a year, the Teamsters file what is known 
as an LM-2 form. Smaller unions file LM-3s and LM-4s.

The Newspaper Editors union in Random Lake, Wis., for example, which has 31 
members, reported that it had a $5,751 in assets in 2000, according to the 
Labor Department's Web site. The Licensed Practical Nurses Association of 
Illinois, in Springfield, charges its 525 members dues of $80 per year, 
according to its filing. Its seven officers received $155 in disbursements 
for their expenses in 2000.

The LM records have been required of unions and managements since 1959 by 
the Landrum-Griffin Act, which sought to find legislative remedies for a 
host of union-and-management-related problems. It sought to ensure union 
democracy and prevent self-dealing and to reveal the financial extent of 
management efforts to block unions from forming. The National Legal and 
Policy Center, which identifies itself as a conservative group, says the 
law needs to be toughened because some unions are not disclosing as much 
information as they should and alleges specifically that union money being 
used for political causes is being misrepresented as general operating 
expenses.

More than 90 percent of union political contributions go to Democratic 
candidates.
****************
Government Executive
Patent Office suspends telecommuting program

By Tanya N. Ballard
tballard@xxxxxxxxxxx




Officials at the Patent and Trademark Office have put a popular 
telecommuting program on hold while they negotiate the terms of a new 
program with an employee union.


"We had a pilot program that was in effect until June 1. It has expired and 
we have been in discussion with our union about establishing a new pilot 
program," said PTO spokesman Richard Maulsby.


Leaders of the Patent Office Professional Association (POPA), which 
represents about 3,600 PTO employees, say the agency's decision to halt the 
program during negotiations is a "heavy-handed way of forcing changes in 
the program."


Union officials say they oppose a request by PTO that the Patent Office 
work-at-home program be renewed annually, requiring negotiations. The 
agency also wants the ability to terminate the telecommuting program at any 
time. POPA also opposes another proposal requiring employees to count as 
personal time any work time lost due to glitches on PTO provided software.


PTO officials declined to comment on the specifics of the negotiations.


"Rather than allowing the program to continue while we negotiate new terms 
in good faith, the agency issued an ultimatum and slammed the doors on 
work-at-home when we didn't agree," said POPA President Ronald Stern. "Many 
employees bought computers, office furniture, and rearranged their homes to 
participate in this program. Even more importantly, many reorganized their 
home lives and family schedules, and then were figuratively stranded by the 
agency."


PTO has been a telecommuting leader among federal agencies since it 
established a two-year pilot project in 1997, allowing 18 examining 
attorneys to work from home. The measure began as a way to help retain 
employees and relieve office overcrowding at the agency.


Last year the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments awarded the 
agency its 2001 Commuter Connections Employer Recognition Telework Award. 
The award recognizes employers who initiate programs that encourage the use 
of commuting alternatives.


"It is our intention to continue with the telecommuting program and we 
simply need to come to an agreement with POPA," Maulsby said.


By law, federal agencies must establish policies allowing eligible 
employees to telecommute. The fiscal 2001 Transportation Appropriations 
bill set a goal of having 25 percent of the federal workforce participating 
in telecommuting programs at least part of the time by April 2001. Just 4.2 
percent of federal workers were telecommuting as of last November, 
according to the Office of Personnel Management.


The telecommuting move comes at a time when PTO officials have announced 
major changes in its patent review system, and has proposed to lay off up 
to135 trademark examining attorneys by Sept. 30.
******************
Reuters
Turkish Media Law Could Censor Net
By BEN HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer

ISTANBUL, Turkey (AP) - Turkey's highest court declined to overturn a 
controversial law that critics contend could lead to government media 
censorship on Turkish Web sites.


After fiery protests  including opposition from the European Union ( news - 
web sites)  the court on Wednesday suspended parts of the same broadcasting 
law that would have let individuals own larger chunks of Turkey's news 
media, a move critics feared would drive small newspapers and television 
and radio stations out of business.

When parliament passed it a second time last month  overriding a 
presidential veto  there were furious scenes, as opposition and government 
lawmakers nearly came to blows.

Many Turkish Web sites blacked out their home pages in protest.

President Ahmet Necdet Sezer referred the law to the Constitutional Court 
last month, hoping it would be overturned. He said it would curb freedom of 
expression and open the way to media monopolies.

Criticism from the European Union, which Turkey wants to join, put added 
pressure on the court.

The court voted to suspend implementation of some clauses of the law, while 
it decides whether to annul those and other parts of the law. It could take 
as long as a year to announce a final decision.

Among the articles the court suspended was a clause that would have 
permitted more consolidation by Turkey's biggest media conglomerates. Four 
media groups control 80 percent of the country's newspaper circulation and 
television and also own banks, construction companies and mobile telephone 
companies.

Opposition parties had charged that this measure, together with others 
allowing media owners to bid for state contracts, was an attempt by the 
government to buy the support of powerful media bosses.

Previously, there were some restrictions on media groups bidding for 
lucrative government contracts.

The court did not suspend sections of the law that could extend tight 
controls that are already applied to traditional media to Web sites.

Turkey's broadcasting watchdog regularly hands out fines or temporary 
closures for broadcasts that offend the military, question Turkey's 
treatment of its Kurdish minority or its strict secular policies, or offend 
traditional values.

Information technology groups have expressed fears that the law will allow 
broadcasting authorities to take similar action against Web sites  stunting 
the growth of the Internet in Turkey.
****************
MSNBC
Young, male, wired, music rippers

A digitized demographic that's turning the music industry on its head
By Jane Weaver

 June 12   Just who is downloading all those songs that are supposedly 
wrecking the music industry? Not surprisingly, it's young, American 
males  the core of the record buying population. More than 25 percent of 
American men over the age of 12 years old have downloaded a song from one 
of the Internet's popular file-swapping networks, according to a report 
released Wedneday. The file-sharing phenomenon is behind new moves in the 
music industry to adapt to the digital marketplace and protect its profits.

      MORE THAN 40 million Americans have downloaded music from one of the 
file-sharing services such as Kazaa or Morpheus, according to IPSOS-Reid, a 
Minneapolis research firm that tracks consumer behavior. At least 41 
percent of 12-through-17 year-olds claim to have downloaded music or an MP3 
file from the file-sharing services and nearly half, or 45 percent, of 
18-through-24 year-olds (considered the prime music buying demographic) 
indicate they have downloaded songs from one of the networks like Audio 
Galaxy or Grokster. Of Americans 35-to-54 years-old, 14 percent report 
having downloaded music or an MP3 file from the Internet.
       "The idea of file-sharing and peer-to-peer networks is becoming a 
more general population phenonmenon," said Matt Kleinschmidt, senior 
research manager at the research company.
       In addition, one-quarter of Americans over 12 years old own a CD 
burner, a device that allows people to "burn" or record music files from a 
computer onto a blank CD, according to IPSOS-Reid's research. Some industry 
experts estimate that the music revenues lost from people making their own 
CDs dwarfs illegal downloads.
       Young men are significantly more likely than women to swap files 
over the Internet, with 25 percent of men over 12 years old claiming to 
have downloaded music from a file-sharing network, compared to only 14 
percent of American women.
       These young males are the consumers who helped push sales of rap 
artist Eminem's new album into the stratosphere, with 1.3 million copies 
sold in the first week of its release last month.
       But these young, male and wired fans are also the reason that 
Eminem's record label Interscope Geffen, a division of Universal Music 
Group, released "The Eminem Show" nine days ahead of schedule.
       Pirated songs from the CD were being widely distributed online by 
mid-May and soon after bootlegged copies of the entire CD were being sold 
in the streets.
      The Ipsos-Reid research comes on the heels of news that digital 
piracy is costing the music industry billions of dollars in lost sales. In 
its annual report released this week the International Federation of the 
Phonographic Industry said that 40 percent of all CDs and cassettes sold 
globally in 2001 were pirated copies. Moreover, 99 percent of all online 
music files  including songs and MP3s at any of the P2P networks are 
illegal or unauthorized, according to the trade group.
       Clearly, that's frightening, although hardly unexpected news for 
the music industry which is in the midst of its first global sales decline 
in a decade. In April, the IFPI reported that total music unit sales fell 
by 6.5 percent in 2001 compared to the year before, while revenue from 
sales fell 5 percent to $33.7 billion. Sales in North America, the market 
where digital downloading is most popular, were hit hardest, declining by 
4.7 percent to $14.1 billion.
       In response, the major record labels finally launched two 
competing, for-pay Web services late last year. The subscription services, 
MusicNet and Pressplay, have been criticized for the limitations they 
placed on how people listen to downloaded songs and for their high monthly 
fees  as much as $19 a month.
       However, recent moves indicate the music industry is finally 
adjusting to the new digital marketplace.
       Later this summer Vivendi's Universal Music Group and Sony Music 
Entertainment plans to lower the prices for single downloads and allow 
users to "burn" or transfer the tunes onto blank CDsa significant change 
from the record industry's prior restrictions that people can only listen 
to downloaded songs on their computers.
        Sony Music Entertainment has been offering single downloads 
through its partnerships with RioPort, an distribution and delivery service 
for online retailers such as MTV and Best Buy, but will now drop its prices 
from $1.99 to $1.49.
       Universal intends to release tens of thousands of songs for 99 
cents each through a number of online retailers, including Amazon and Best 
Buy, industry sources confirm. Full albums could be downloaded for $9.99.
      Universal's pay-per-song deal would also be available at Pressplay, 
the online music venture backed by Universal and Sony Music, according to 
sources familiar with the company's plans.
       Other music labels are expected to pursue the pay-per-download 
model with CD-burning and reasonable pricing, industry analysts believe.
       "Pay-per-download is the way to go," said P.J. McNealy, digital 
music analyst with GartnerG2. "The record companies are heading slowly in 
the right direction."
       Universal's rival service MusicNet  the joint venture backed by 
Real Networks and AOLis planning a new version by the end of the year which 
likely will include some kind of portability and single downloads, 
according to company sources.
       By the end of the year RioPort will have over 100,000 songs 
possibly from all of the five major record companies  AOL Time Warner, BMG, 
EMI, Sony and Universalavailable for individual downloading, "all of them 
burnable," said Jim Long, RioPort's chief executive.
       Whether these gradual steps toward a digital music future can stem 
the sales decline is uncertain. A turnaround is contingent on improvements 
in the economy, "a stronger release schedule, controlling piracy, and the 
continued rollout and enhancement of digital music services," UBS Warburg 
analysts wrote in a report released Wednesday on the music industry.
       But compared to even a few months ago, "it's a whole new world for 
them," said RioPort's Long. "The record labels are finally making their 
content available in a way that is natural for consumers. It's a huge 
change for them."
****************
Washington Post
New Virus Can Infect Picture Files
By D. Ian Hopper
AP Technology Writer

WASHINGTON  A new computer virus is the first ever to infect picture files, 
an anti-virus firm reported Thursday, making sharing family photos on the 
Internet a potentially dangerous activity.

The virus, dubbed Perrun, is not currently infecting computers but worries 
anti-virus experts because it is the first to cross from program infection 
into data files, long considered safe from malicious data.

"Our concern is more for what might be coming," said Vincent Gullotto, head 
anti-virus researcher at McAfee Security. "Potentially, no file type could 
be safe."

Until now, viruses infected program files  files that can be run on their 
own. Data files, like movies, music, text and pictures, were safe from 
infection. While earlier viruses deleted or modified data files, Perrun is 
the first to infect them.

Perrun still needs some tweaking to become dangerous. The virus arrives via 
e-mail or a floppy disk as an executable file. Security experts always warn 
against opening programs sent as e-mail attachments.

Once run, the file drops an "extractor" component onto the victim's hard 
drive. When a computer user clicks on a picture file with the extension 
.JPG  a common picture file found on the Web  it is infected before it 
appears. Because the picture displays normally, Gullotto said, the victim 
may not know there's anything wrong.

In its current form, an infected JPG file sent to a friend or placed on a 
Web site isn't dangerous without the extractor file. But Gullotto said 
there's no reason a virus writer couldn't stuff the entire virus code into 
the JPG, making the picture file a virus itself.

That evolution should make computer users think twice about sending 
pictures  or any other media  over the Internet, Gullotto said.

"I think there's a possibility that this could change the playing field," 
he said. "Going forward, we may have to rethink about distributing JPGs."

McAfee researchers received the virus from its creator. Gullotto declined 
to identify the author, and McAfee anti-virus software can detect and 
remove Perrun.

Perrun is known as a proof-of-concept virus, and does not cause damage. 
Gullotto said he fears that virus writers may use Perrun as a template to 
create a more destructive version.
***************
Los Angeles Times
Latest Spin on Online Music
Internet: Plans by Universal and Sony to cut download prices draw praise 
from some artists, but fate of albums remains an issue.
By JON HEALEY, CHUCK PHILIPS and P.J. HUFFSTUTTER

With the decision to offer tens of thousands of songs online, the world's 
two largest record companies have steered onto an unlit road with no clear 
destination.

Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment revealed plans this week 
to make much of their catalogs available for download at a discount, going 
far beyond the major labels' previous--and as yet unsuccessful--experiments 
in online distribution.

Although the move drew praise from recording artists, retailers and 
Internet music advocates, it also raised questions about the fate of 
full-length albums and the companies' ability to succeed online in the face 
of rampant Internet piracy. Those questions are difficult to answer, even 
by industry executives involved in digital downloads for years.

The companies' plans came as the Department of Justice interviewed artists' 
representatives as part of an antitrust investigation into the major record 
companies' online ventures.

Sources said a team of federal officials looked for evidence of 
anti-competitive practices in the way the companies distribute music 
online--particularly through their own services.

The initiatives by Universal and Sony do not rely on the companies' jointly 
owned online distribution service, Pressplay. Instead, they use independent 
distributors Liquid Audio Inc. and RioPort Inc.

By making a large selection of songs available in a format that allows CD 
burning, the two companies are trying to offer consumers something close to 
what they've gotten free from such online file-sharing networks as Napster, 
Kazaa and Morpheus.

"So now the major labels' message to the consumer is: 'Download from us so 
that artists and songwriters get paid,' " said pop star Don Henley. "To me, 
the issue is how much do they intend to pay the artists. I suspect very 
little, if history is any gauge."

So far, artist representatives say, Universal labels are proposing fair 
royalty fees to acts with music sold through the new system.

Under the proposal, an artist signed to a contract with an 18% royalty 
would receive 18 cents on the dollar for every track downloaded--after 
reimbursing the label for recording costs, sources said.

That's significantly higher than what an artist receives under the CD 
model, which, after packaging and "free goods" deductions, would amount to 
about 9 cents per $1 single.

Universal plans to make as much of its library of songs available for 
downloading as possible, including new releases, starting later this summer.

The price is expected to be 99 cents per song and $9.99 per album, and 
buyers will be able to burn the songs they download onto CD--a major shift 
in the company's policy.

Sony said it will increase significantly the number of downloadable songs, 
cut the price 25% and enable burning. By letting consumers buy individual 
tracks, rather than bundling them all into albums, the companies could 
create new problems for themselves.

The industry has used singles--and lately, individual songs released only 
to radio stations--as a promotional tool to induce consumers to buy the 
full album. Labels rely on the higher price tag of an album to recoup the 
cost of promoting an artist and cover publishing fees, among other things.

Many consumers who use file-sharing networks say they have no other way to 
acquire the songs they want without paying for the ones they don't. But if 
the labels persuade those consumers to pay for downloadable tracks, they 
could undermine the bundling that's key to their business models.

"When you punt the bundle, that's when the trouble starts," said Jim 
Griffin, chief executive of Cherry Lane Digital, a Los Angeles media and 
technology consulting firm. "You cannot price a single low enough to 
attract fans to buy it, or high enough for the labels to cover the cost of 
developing an artist."

Several artists and artist managers said they were not worried about the 
effect downloaded singles might have on the album market. Survival in a 
single-heavy sales world might push artists and companies to produce better 
material, several managers said. It also could prove to be prudent for the 
industry, allowing labels to return to signing acts to modest single deals 
instead of costly long-term album agreements.

"I think it's a great exploratory step," said Scott Welch of Mosaic Media 
Group, which represents Alanis Morissette, OutKast and the Goo Goo Dolls. 
"It will force artists to create better songs and companies to sell better 
content. The fact is if we don't start making some concrete changes to give 
fans what they want, then all we're doing is rearranging the deck chairs on 
the Titantic."

Executives at several independent labels and online services that offer 
downloadable singles say there just isn't enough data to tell what effect 
the moves by Universal and Sony will have on CD sales.

Matador Records, an independent label that already has made much of its 
catalog available for downloading, said "it's really hard to quantify" the 
effect of downloads on CD sales, if any.

The only approach that seems to have worked is EMusic's subscription 
service, which lets users download an unlimited number of songs for a flat 
fee, said Patrick Amory, Matador's general manager.

If nothing else, the new system will resolve several ethical issues 
surrounding digital downloading, said artist manager Cliff Burnstein.

"One thing this will do is cut through the hypocrisy by giving people the 
option of whether they want to buy or steal music," said Burnstein, who 
along with Peter Mench runs Q-Prime, the agency that represents Metallica 
and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

"We won't have to listen to anymore of that b.s. like 'I was forced to 
download the single because the album had only one good track on it,' " he 
added. "Now that you can buy your favorite single for 99 cents, what's the 
argument going to be? We'll get down to the truth, which is: 'I want it 
free. I'm too cheap to pay 99 cents....Screw the artists.' "
*************************
Federal Computer Week
Homeland connection a priority

Exactly how the proposed Homeland Security Department would work with state 
and local first responders is yet to be determined, but creating the 
connection is a priority, experts told the House Government Reform 
Committee June 11.

Part of the Bush administration's plan for the new department would bring 
under one organization all agencies that provide grants, training and other 
assistance to first responders. That would enable the administration to 
exercise all its resources for communications, training and information 
sharing, said Bruce Baughman, director of the Office of National 
Preparedness at the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

FEMA, which would lead the emergency preparedness and response section of 
the new department, already is developing a streamlined process to get 
grant money to first responders and develop communications and training 
programs, Baughman said.

Because all homeland security incidents will happen in some locality, a 
priority for the department's funding should be placed on establishing the 
structure and technology at the state and local levels to share information 
and expertise, testified Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), ranking member on the 
Terrorism and Homeland Security Subcommittee of the House Permanent Select 
Committee on Intelligence.

A single structure will make it much easier to coordinate the exchange, 
whether it is investigative information coming into the new department or 
warning information being sent to first responders, said Rep. Mac 
Thornberry (R-Texas), co-sponsor of a House bill to create a Homeland 
Security Department.

"You have one phone number to call, rather than a phone book," he said.

Harman said that any action taken by Congress likely will have to include a 
mandate for information sharing between federal agencies and the state and 
local responders because the administration's proposal does not include 
realigning the major sources for information  the FBI and the CIA.
************************
Federal Computer Week
General: Challenge is culture, not tech

Changing data into wisdom and then taking action is the greatest challenge 
facing the nation's homeland security efforts and the Army's ongoing 
transformation, said Gen. Paul Kern, commander of Army Materiel Command.

"The one thing I don't worry about is the technology," Kern said during his 
June 11 opening address at the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics 
Association' TechNet International 2002 in Washington, D.C. "What I'm 
worried about is culture and changing the way we behave to use the 
information you're producing."

Kern said the armed forces must move along a rapid continuum to make the 
greatest use of information technology  one that goes from data collection 
to usable information to knowledge to wisdom and finally to taking action. 
He added that conversing in a language that enables that process to happen 
is "the root of that success."

"It's about creating an atmosphere where [people] want to exchange 
information and take action...and accomplish something," but that's not 
easy to do in Washington, D.C., where the people that hold the information 
also have the power, he said.

Ronald Richard, a member of the business advisory board and former chief 
operating officer at In-Q-Tel, the CIA's venture capital arm, agreed and 
said, "Technology is very valuable tool for us, but only a tool."

"No technology is going to get soldiers to take a hill when bullets are 
whizzing by their heads...and no technology is a substitute for the gut 
[feeling] of CIA agents," Richard said, adding that those things can only 
be accomplished through leadership and having the best and brightest people 
doing those jobs.

Kern told Federal Computer Week that the Army has learned some valuable 
lessons from last year's terrorist attacks that could help the recently 
announced Homeland Security Department achieve its goals. As an example, 
the commander at the Army's Rock Island, Ill., facility has his staff meet 
with local law enforcement and the attorney general's office to exchange 
information without violating any laws or individual privacy.

That same strategy can and should be used by the FBI and other agencies in 
"opening up new avenues of communication" and realizing President Bush's 
message in establishing the new department, Kern said.

"Without violating the rights of American citizens, [agencies] can still 
exchange information much more effectively," he said. "The Army will be 
able to help with lessons learned in the IT world, but also in the more 
mundane cultural process issues to get people to work with one another."
 ****************
Federal Computer Week
Info urged to fill military gaps

Exactly nine months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the chairman of 
the Joint Chiefs of Staff said that the U.S. military has done a good job 
of shortening the sensor-to-shooter cycle in Afghanistan, but can do better 
through enhanced information sharing.

Speaking June 11 at Armed Forces Communications and Electronics 
Association's TechNet International 2002 in Washington, D.C., Air Force 
Gen. Richard Myers said the military's observe, orient, decide and act 
(OODA) loop is good at the individual service level, but joint warfighting 
efforts need improvement.

The information that the four services have at the tactical command level 
is "wildly different for a variety of reasons, and that's unacceptable," he 
said.

Myers said that the United States and its coalition partners must be 
adaptable and flexible because the enemy in the war on terrorism is 
"relentless."

The United States is working with about 80 coalition partners in the 
ongoing war, and Myers said he is "dismayed" that working with even the 
closest U.S. allies is almost impossible because of America's technological 
advantages. He added that he is encouraging American allies, particularly 
in Europe, to invest in command, control, communications, computers, 
intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) to bridge the gap.

During a panel discussion on network-centric warfare, Air Force Maj. Gen. 
Charles Croom Jr., the service's director of communications infostructure 
and deputy chief of staff for warfighting integration, said that the United 
States does allow allies on its classified networks in different ways, but 
none have complete access because U.S. secrets are housed on those systems. 
He added that allied interoperability is the No. 1 priority of the Joint 
Warrior Interoperability Demonstration program.

Another panelist, Army Maj. Gen. Steven Boutelle, director of information 
operations, networks and space in the Army's Office of the Chief 
Information Officer, said that coalition partners are not the same as 
allies. With coalitions, the United States doesn't know who will be there 
or leave at any point in time, and in those cases, there's little 
technology can do. With allies, interoperability is easier to achieve but 
will still take a long time, he said.

Along those lines, the greatest challenge facing the recently announced 
Homeland Security Department will be integrating the different cultures, 
Myers said.

"It's very difficult to get those cultures to think in a different way and 
[without information technology] to back it all up, we're putting ourselves 
at risk and that's unacceptable," he said.
***************
Federal Computer Week
DOT tests e-seals on shipments

The Transportation Department has completed a test of new technology 
designed to assist in securing cargo containers at U.S. ports and border 
crossings, the department announced last week.

The test, conducted in the Pacific Northwest through DOT's Intelligent 
Transportation Systems (ITS) program, involved electronic seals, or 
e-seals. An e-seal is a radio frequency device that transmits shipment data 
as it passes a reader device and indicates whether the container it is 
attached to has been tampered with.

The e-seals are about the size of a deck of playing cards and weigh a 
little more than a pound each, said Chip Wood, DOT senior transportation 
specialist for the Secretary's Office of Intermodalism.

"They consist of a bolt that both locks the container when inserted into 
the seal body and serves as an antenna; a seal body that contains a 
computer chip for encoding information; and a battery for transmitting that 
information when queried by a reader," he said. "These disposable, passive 
'read-only' devices cost as little as $10 per unit, which makes them far 
less expensive than reusable seals that can cost well over $500 apiece."

The testing began in the summer of 2000. However, the prototype e-seal had 
to be re-engineered to meet the requirements of the operational test. A 
year later, the devices had to be refurbished again in order to ensure 
reliable communication between the seals and the communication network.

By the fall of 2001, containers destined for Canada were regularly affixed 
with e-seals at the ports of Tacoma, Wash., and Seattle. The Puget Sound 
Regional Planning Commission, the Washington Trucking Association and the 
ports of Tacoma and Seattle participated in the project. The Federal 
Highway Administration's Office of Freight Management and Operations, the 
Office of Intermodalism and the Washington State Transportation Department 
provided funding for the tests.

"Through testing, we are learning to apply e-seals as part of a 
multilayered approach to improve transportation security," Wood said. "We 
are also learning how to integrate e-seals into the operations of federal 
agencies and private industry."

Most of the testing has been a success, but e-seals have limited signal 
strength and must be read at line-of-sight distances that do not exceed 70 
feet. "This makes it difficult to read these particular seals in marine 
terminals or the holds of ships where the containers are stacked in close 
proximity where the signal may be blocked," Wood said.

DOT is likely to fund another round of e-seal tests that would build on the 
findings and technology platforms identified during the Pacific Northwest 
test, Wood said.

"We are still in the initial stages of testing e-seal components and how 
they interface with other elements of communication networks and 
transportation infrastructure," he said.
**************************
Federal Computer Week
Homeland formula for failure ID'd

The ultimate success or failure of the Homeland Security Department will be 
determined by the intelligence and information technology plan that's 
proposed and the person selected to lead that effort, according to a 
congressional fellow who advises the Executive Office of the President on 
technology.

Speaking June 11 at the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics 
Association's TechNet International 2002 in Washington, D.C., Eileen 
Preisser, also director of the Defense Department's Homeland Defense 
Technology Center, said the key will be getting the new department to 
organize and share information horizontally, instead of vertically in the 
usual stovepipes.

"The kicker that will determine if it succeeds or fails is the intelligence 
and IT plan that's prepared," Preisser told Federal Computer Week. "There 
has to be a [chief information officer or chief operating officer]-type 
person to bring together all the disparate capabilities that exist and 
create a new and exciting virtual information environment that will set the 
pace for everything else in government.

"If you hire a 65-year-old to do it, it will fail. If you hire former 
military, it will fail."

Preisser said the government should look to someone with experience in a 
large industry enterprise effort who understands the mission and the roles 
that the various agencies should play in the "big picture."

"I would like for that to happen, but I don't see that happening," she said.

Preisser said she fears that the new department will just add more 
bureaucracy to a system already overloaded with red tape. She added that 
agencies were just beginning to move "horizontally over the last nine 
months, and forcing them to go back will be the hardest cultural shift."

An interagency organization can be successful as long as the various parts 
are united by their mission and outfitted with the "same standard suitcase 
and equipment, and put in the field together," she said, adding that the 
interagency operational security (OPSEC) group is a prime example of one 
that works.

However, the only way the proposed Homeland Security Department can break 
agency stovepipes will be to cut off the individual budgets and fund 
everything at the department level, Preisser said. And even with the right 
IT and funding plan, the basic implementation will take anywhere from 15 
years to 25 years, she said.

To get at least the basic foundation done faster than that, DOD officials 
should be given a mentoring role. Preisser said DOD officials have the 
necessary experience and should be "highly encouraged" to share what they know.

With that idea in mind, the Missile Defense Agency is developing an 
architecture for "mission-critical test beds" that will produce a common 
operational picture for itself and the other players involved in a 
potential accident or strike involving missiles, such as state and local 
first responders, utility companies and industry partners, Preisser said.

The test beds are designed to help DOD, aided by its partners, to identify 
text, voice, video or audio data patterns over time that should not be 
there. "That is the 'so what' of homeland security," she said, adding that 
terabytes of data are useless if the user can't pinpoint what they need 
quickly and act on it.

The architecture for this environment should be complete by July, when a 
decision is made whether to proceed in Texas or Florida. After that, 
partners will be selected based partly on geographical location, and by 
September, sites will be configured to use the architecture, Preisser said.
 ****************
New York Times
Senators Say U.S. Should Keep Tabs on Internet Body
By REUTERS

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers said on Wednesday that they would 
step up oversight of the nonprofit group that oversees the Internet's 
domain-name system, but stopped short of saying the United States should 
run the controversial body.

Several senators and a Bush administration official said the Internet 
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, would have to change 
the way it operates if it wants to continue to oversee the system that 
allows Internet users to navigate using easy-to-remember domain names like 
''www.example.com.''

But Montana Republican Sen. Conrad Burns, who two days before called for 
the United States to exert more direct control if ICANN did not clean up 
its act, said the Department of Commerce should renew ICANN's contract when 
it expires in September.

``My feeling right now is the (contract) should be extended,'' the Montana 
Republican said. ``There are some things that we have to iron out.''

A Commerce Department official declined to say whether or not ICANN would 
win a contract extension, but said she stood behind ICANN's approach.

Though reforms are needed, ``the department continues to be supportive of 
the ICANN model,'' Assistant Secretary Nancy Victory told the Senate 
science, technology and space subcommittee.

ICANN has been a magnet for controversy since it was created in 1998 to 
assume control of the domain-name system from the U.S. government. 
Domain-name businesses complain that ICANN moves too slowly and imposes too 
many restrictions, while grass-roots ``cyber-citizens'' complain that their 
voices are not heard. Charges that the nonprofit organization operates in 
an opaque and arbitrary manner come from all quarters.

ICANN has not yet won full control of the domain-name system because it has 
not met a number of requirements laid out in the original contract, such as 
establishing formal agreements with volunteers who run much of the system.

A congressional investigator told the Senate that ICANN was unlikely to 
meet those requirements any time soon, and said the Commerce Department 
needed to assert a firmer hand.

Subcommittee Chairman Ron Wyden agreed with the assessment.

``If ICANN is going to reform itself, the Department of Commerce is going 
to have to push that organization harder than they have done in the past,'' 
the Oregon Democrat said.

Commerce will issue a detailed report when it decides on ICANN's fate in 
the fall, Victory told Reuters.

ICANN President M. Stuart Lynn touted the group's accomplishments, noting 
that it has encouraged competition among domain-name sellers, bringing down 
prices for a one-year registration from $50 to $10.

The group itself has recognized the need for reform, Lynn said, and will 
take up a comprehensive restructuring proposal when it next meets in 
Romania at the end of the month.

Critics told the committee that any reorganization should strictly limit 
ICANN's capabilities so that it does not try to regulate Internet content, 
or get into other areas such as consumer protection which it was not 
designed to handle.

ICANN's decision to abandon direct elections will also mean that consumer 
and users interests will not be represented, said Alan Davidson, an 
associate director at the Center for Democracy and Technology.

Commerce's Victory told Reuters that while ICANN should represent the views 
of its participants, board members chosen by nomination and not election 
could fulfill that role.

While ICANN has its share of problems, any other group that springs up to 
replace it would not necessarily fare any better, she said.

``Yes, it gets you a new bunch of people, yes it gets you a new company 
with a new name, but you still encounter the same problems,'' Victory said.
*********************
Government Computer News
Cybersecurity plans will be part of Homeland Security Department
By William Jackson

The administration plans to release its strategy for securing the nation's 
critical infrastructure in late summer, at the same time the proposed 
Homeland Security Department is expected to be organized.

"The strategy is more or less on track," said Paul Kurtz, senior director 
of the White House Office of Cyber Security. "We're very much pushing 
toward getting everything together by July, so we can release it in August 
or September."

President Bush hopes to have the new department established by Sept. 11.

The president's proposal last week to reorganize homeland security under a 
single wide-ranging department may have pushed back the release of the 
strategy, but "it's not a delay," Kurtz said. "It's a matter of what is the 
most appropriate time to bring it out. We want to have a coordinated 
approach."

Kurtz discussed plans for securing critical infrastructure at the AFCEA 
TechNet International Conference in Washington. The national strategy is a 
key objective of the administration, and it is being developed through 
input from the private sector, which owns and operates the majority of the 
nation's communications networks.

Kurtz said the new department would have only minor impact on the content 
of the strategy. Membership of oversight boards could change to reflect 
reorganization of some agencies, for instance. He called the department a 
"step in the right direction," but said its creation is not a magic bullet. 
"The reorganization is not the end. It's the beginning," he said.
**************************
Mercury News
Rechargeable batteries are not keeping pace
TRAVELERS WANT POWER LONGER FOR THEIR LAPTOPS, CELLS PHONES
By Jon Fortt

Traveling with technology can feel like a race against time.

Even if your laptop battery lasts the entire flight, you must hunt for a 
socket to recharge it once you get off the plane. The same goes for the 
cell phone. And if you forget to recharge the cell phone overnight, the 
next day can be hit-or-miss outside the hotel room.

Laptop sales are up, wireless computing is hot, and cell phones and 
handheld computers are becoming standard business travel equipment. As 
these technologies become more powerful, they often thirst for more battery 
power.

``Rechargeable batteries are not keeping up with the technology advancement 
in the devices themselves,'' said Sara Bradford, analyst with Frost & 
Sullivan, a market research firm in San Antonio.

The power problem is one that the PC industry has been slow to solve. It 
has been easier for Intel, Dell and others to sell most people on a faster 
processor than on longer battery life.

So what's a power-starved traveler to do?

Consider the N-Charge battery from Valence Technology. At two pounds and 
roughly the size of a thick clipboard, the N-Charge is an external battery 
that dispenses power when you're away from the plug.

Though expensive, it might be worth it for those who hate to worry about 
running out of juice.

I tested a beta version of the 65 watt-hour N-Charge, which Austin-based 
Valence sells on the Web for $350 (www.valence.com); the company also sells 
a 130 watt-hour version for $500. I hooked it up to a trusty 1.2-gigahertz 
IBM ThinkPad laptop, popped the movie ``Cast Away'' into the DVD drive, 
cranked the volume all the way up and watched the battery level.

Even under this strain, the N-Charge performed well.

All the power left

When the 143-minute movie ended, the battery indicator on the laptop still 
read 100 percent, and the N-Charge had a little less than 40 percent of its 
power left, I think. Valence promises at least five hours of power, and the 
N-Charge delivered closer to four; still, that's about three times what the 
laptop could get on one internal battery.

Power sources such as the N-Charge -- or ``slice batteries'' as they're 
often called -- are not new, but they are growing more sophisticated. 
Manufacturers sometimes sell slice batteries with business-class laptops, 
and companies including Electrovaya of Toronto have been selling them 
separately for years.

There are three things that make the N-Charge different from other slice 
batteries I've seen:

One, it can give and receive power at the same time. In other words, you 
can plug your laptop into the N-Charge, and the N-Charge into the wall 
socket, and charge both the laptop and the external battery at the same time.

Two, the N-Charge can charge two devices at once. You can plug a cell phone 
and a laptop into it, and keep both devices alive on the road.

Three, Valence bills the new type of lithium-ion battery as safer for the 
user and the environment. I wasn't aware of this, but evidently 
short-circuiting within batteries is fairly common, and in some cases it 
can cause batteries to heat up and catch fire. While such accidents are 
rare, setting lithium on fire is not the best idea. (In the battery 
industry, they call this ``having an event.'')

At what price?

Would I buy an N-Charge? Definitely, but not for $350. I would start 
considering it at $250, especially if my employer would reimburse me.

Joe Lamoreux, vice president of system engineering at Valence, said he 
expects the price will drop somewhat once Valence begins to sell versions 
of it through partners including Hewlett-Packard and Acer. I would expect 
to see prices drop early next year.

Meanwhile, there are other ways to get extra power. Many professional 
laptops have an option for a second battery. And extra cell phone 
batteries, while expensive, are available as well.

Then there's the distant possibility that power-saving laptops could go 
mainstream. You might recall that a 500-megahertz laptop running Windows 98 
was zippy for regular office tasks, and consumed less power. Do all of us 
really need battery-guzzling Pentium 4 laptops to write documents, check 
e-mail and surf the Web? Of course not.

Fujitsu this week announced the latest version of its P2000 LifeBook laptop 
will come with a 867-MHz Crusoe TM5800 processor and claims it will get 14 
hours of battery life with an optional extra battery, or 3.5 hours 
standard. I'm guessing it will get more like 2.5 hours under the DVD test.

We'll see if technology leaders listen to power-starved road warriors and 
start making computers that sip battery life rather than guzzle it. Until 
then, good luck shopping for batteries, or hunting for sockets.
***********************
Mercury News
TV signals may be used to handle cell phone calls
MISSISSIPPI COMPANY DEVELOPING TECHNOLOGY TO REDUCE RECEPTION DEAD SPOTS
By Roy Furchgott
New York Times

Who says television is useless? Someday it may help eliminate the phrase 
``Can you hear me now?'' from the cell phone lexicon.

A company in Ridgeland, Miss., is developing technology that would send and 
receive cell phone calls on a little-used part of a broadcast television 
signal. If used to augment current cell phone sites, it could mean fewer 
dead spots in reception at a comparatively low cost. It might also help 
usher countries without widespread cell networks into the wireless age.

The company, SIGFX, is testing a prototype phone system on an experimental 
one-kilowatt station.

``I actually made a call and I was impressed,'' said Dan Modisett, 
president and general manager of WLBT, the NBC affiliate in Jackson, Miss., 
who attended a demonstration. ``It was every bit comparable to a cell phone.''

Modisett and other broadcasters would like to see the technology succeed so 
that stations could sell service to cell phone companies.

There is still a long way to go, though. In the tests, SIGFX has had some 
problems handling more than one call at a time, and reception was not as 
good as the company had hoped. The company says it has identified the 
source of the difficulties and that they can be remedied.

To get even this far, the technology has had to overcome several major 
obstacles. The biggest is the ``big signal, little signal'' problem. 
Although a television station puts out a big signal, one that is easy for 
the phone to receive, it is so big that it could overload the phone, 
causing a call to fail. At the same time, a cell phone's signal is so weak 
that a TV-station-based receiver might not be sensitive enough to separate 
it from other signals.

The company's origins stretch back to 1996, when Jimmy Rogers, a former 
insurance salesman who had the idea of sending cell phone signals to and 
from TV towers, approached Dallas Nash, a communications consultant who 
attended the same church. Rogers naively assumed that Nash would know how 
to develop the idea because Nash had put together a multimedia presentation 
for the church.

As it turned out, Nash was actually the right man for the job. He had been 
a consultant to the Defense Department on signal processing projects.

Nash had his doubts about the viability of Rogers' concept but tested it 
anyway. Using equipment he already owned, Nash constructed a test system 
that included $250,000 worth of computers and signaling equipment in a van 
that would act as a sophisticated mobile phone.

``It was sort of the world's most expensive cell phone,'' Nash said. ``And 
it sort of worked. Not well, but I had to start eating some crow.''

There were problems to solve, the foremost being how to make an affordable 
hand-held phone that could do the same thing as $250,000 of equipment that 
filled a van.

Another problem, that of processing power, solved itself. As chips have 
become faster and more powerful, SIGFX has been able to get four processors 
into a unit the size of a brick. Those processors are needed to turn voice 
into signals that could be sent and received on UHF or VHF and duplicate 
any of several cell phone standards like TDMA, CDMA and GSM.

But those processors consume a lot of power. ``Mobile wasn't a problem 
because you have a battery in a car or truck that could handle what we 
need,'' Nash said. ``The problem was, with handheld, we didn't want a 
30-pound battery you had to carry around.''

The answer may be a polymer lithium-ion battery that can be molded in the 
shape of a handset case.
*************************
Mercury News
Most radar detectors can't beat police technology
By Doug Bedell
Dallas Morning News

When Craig Peterson lead-foots his way non-stop from Denver to Houston each 
year, his high-performance sports car carries the most sophisticated 
consumer radar detectors on the market.

His front grille and rear bumper are wired with elaborate sensors -- part 
of a $1,600, professionally installed ``remote'' unit, the most expensive 
available. Inside the cockpit, a special handheld scanner constantly 
searches for police radio transmissions. His eye constantly scans a 
blinking panel of lights designed to warn him if he's headed for a speeding 
ticket.

He says he's had only one since 1992, but every year he feels more vulnerable.

And if Peterson -- one of the nation's foremost experts in police speed 
detection technology -- feels that way, the average driver with a $100 
radar detector should feel positively defenseless.

``It's not widely known, but there are only a couple in the $100 price 
range that have the sensitivity to be a useful countermeasure,'' he says.

In recent years, the cat-and-mouse contest between ``Smokey'' and the 
scofflaws has been gradually tilting toward law enforcement. Meanwhile, the 
Consumer Electronics Association says between 10 million and 20 million 
drivers traveling American roads today are packing some form of radar 
detector, usually a low-priced unit that Peterson considers worthless.

The arms gap has widened as police nationwide have begun phasing out older 
radar guns that operate on two frequencies, X-band and K-band. In their 
place, lower-powered, digital Ka-band guns and even more stealthy 
laser-based speed detectors are increasingly deployed.

Peterson's most recent 3,000-mile round trip from Denver to Houston 
illustrates the problem faced by the modern-day road warrior. Of 11 
encounters with radar, he reports, one was X-band, three were K-band and 
seven were Ka-band units. That mirrors national trends, he says.

Of the estimated 100,000 radar guns now in service, only about 15,000 are 
X-band, the most easily spotted by consumer dash-mounted detector units. 
About half of the rest are K-band, and 35 percent operate with Ka-band, 
Peterson estimates.

As lightning-quick Ka-band radar guns and lasers rapidly replace clunkier 
technologies, Peterson and other experts say, the consumer technologies for 
detection have fallen behind.

Peterson, the author of ``Fast Driving (Without Tickets),'' has conducted 
more than 30 comparison tests on commercially available radar detectors, 
which he posts at RadarTest.com. His advice often appears in Automobile 
magazine, and he is often summoned as an expert witness in court cases 
involving consumer radar detector technology.

But his findings and those of other experts in the field are still the 
subject of heated debate among consumers and industry professionals. On 
Internet news groups such as rec.

autos.driving, consumers are constantly discussing testing procedures and 
sharing experiences with top brands.

Most users don't expect perfection. They know that radar units can track 
them up to two miles away, although technically, officers must witness a 
violation, visually estimate the target speed and, only then, activate 
radar to confirm that estimate, Peterson says.

At best, dash-mounted detectors help spot troopers mechanically before the 
driver can see them. Or the units bark warnings when nearby cars are being 
tracked, allowing time to decrease speed. In general, though, if your car 
is the first to be hit by a detecting device, the trooper can accurately 
clock you before you can react, experts say.

Legal issues are fairly clear-cut. In most of the United States, except for 
Washington, D.C., and Virginia, radar detectors are legal for everyone 
except big-rig truckers and buses carrying more than 15 people. Maj. Coy 
Clanton of the Texas Department of Public Safety says troopers are largely 
indifferent about their use in passenger cars.

These days, even with older X-band radar, troopers can silence their 
equipment until they are ready to fire at a suspected speeder.

``The operator can switch on the radar so instantaneously that there's no 
chance to slow down,'' says Clanton.

Manufacturers, sensitive to limitations of their technologies and criticism 
from police, have begun marketing their products as ``safety enhancement'' 
or ``highway information'' products that keep drivers alert to their 
surroundings.

Others monitor emergency vehicle voice transmissions to warn of possible 
accident activity. To differentiate between those warnings, many have added 
digital read-outs that can be used instead of distracting beeps and chirps.

Testing of most consumer radar detector units has shown ``dismal'' results 
in detecting Ka-band signals, says Peterson, a certified police radar 
instructor. In fact, several didn't sound an alarm until test units were 
parked right next to a Ka-band gun, he said.
***************************
USA Today
High-tech firms act to safeguard operations in India

By Jon Swartz, USA TODAY

SAN FRANCISCO  Software companies with operations in India are scrambling 
to protect the country's economic golden goose and to keep software flowing 
to the world's biggest companies.

Tensions between India and Pakistan might be lifting, but the threat of a 
clash or terrorist act has taken a toll on India's reputation as a safe 
haven for business. That could cool its $7.8 billion software-export 
business, which soared 700% the past five years.

Companies are beefing up plans to shift software engineers out of the 
country to safer locations. They're strengthening operations worldwide. And 
they are showing disaster plans to jittery customers.

It is crucial that India's software machine keeps humming. India has the 
second biggest software industry worldwide after the USA's. More than 200 
major U.S. corporations spent about $5 billion on India-made software in 
the 12 months ending March 31, says India's National Association of 
Software and Service Companies.

Hewlett-Packard, Oracle and Sun Microsystems have set up offices in India 
to tap its pool of English-speaking software engineers and take advantage 
of lower costs. Software accounts for one-sixth of India's exports. 
"Top-tier companies have no choice but to be well prepared," says Stephanie 
Moore, a Giga Information Group analyst.

What companies are doing:

Contingency plans. Infosys Technologies, India's largest publicly traded 
software company, has 2,400 employees in India with work visas who can 
transfer to the USA quickly. U.S.-based iGate needs just a day to shift 
workers among four sites in India.
Reassuring customers. Infosys is showing customers its disaster recovery 
plans. "We want them to know we have a ... plan if any facilities go down," 
says Phaneesh Murthy, head of worldwide sales.
Diversification. Companies have invested in operations outside of India, 
satellite links and redundant data lines to minimize the risk of business 
disruptions.
Most run communications links through hubs in North America and Europe. 
Tata Consultancy Services, India's largest software exporter, opened a 
development center in Uruguay this year. Megasoft, a U.S.-based 
software-services company with 400 employees in India, has data backup 
sites in the USA and has tightened security in several countries.

IGate employs one-third of its 4,000-person staff in India. It has a 
data-backup system in Singapore.

Many small- and midsized companies that can't afford logistical changes are 
sitting tight. "What can you do? Pack up everything, leave the country and 
start from scratch?" says Reggie Aggarwal, CEO of Cvent, a software company 
in Arlington, Va. It has a handful of employees in New Delhi, India.

Likewise, Oracle has no plans to evacuate workers in India, where it 
employs 2,000. Business travel is restricted to the country.

H-P, which has 2,600 employees in six Indian cities, remains "very 
committed to operations," but won't comment on whether it may shift work 
out of the country.
************************
USA Today
Microsoft discloses Web software security flaw

WASHINGTON (AP)  Microsoft acknowledged a serious flaw Wednesday in its 
Internet server software that could allow sophisticated hackers to seize 
control of Web sites, steal information and use vulnerable computers to 
attack others online.

The software, which runs about one-third of the world's Web sites, is used 
by millions of businesses and organizations but less commonly by home 
users. Microsoft made available a free patch for customers using versions 
of its Internet Information Server software with its Windows NT or Windows 
2000 operating systems.

The server software included within Microsoft's newer Windows XP operating 
system was not affected by the security flaw.

In a separate warning Wednesday, Microsoft said customers of its Windows 
NT, Windows 2000 and Windows XP operating systems were vulnerable to an 
unrelated problem affecting Microsoft's technology to connect to the 
Internet over phone lines. Hackers trying to attack these computers must 
already have permission to use them, limiting the risks.

A researcher with eEye Digital Security, Riley Hassell, found the Web 
server flaw in mid-April during testing of eEye's own hacker-defense 
software, but the discovery was kept closely guarded under an agreement 
with Microsoft until Wednesday.

Microsoft described the risk to Web servers as "moderate." The company and 
other top experts, including U.S. officials at the National Security 
Agency, have for months recommended turning off the vulnerable feature 
unless customers need it.

However, it was impossible to know how many customers followed that advice 
and shut off the feature, which is turned on automatically the first time 
the software is installed.

One consolation for Microsoft's customers was that the software flaw wasn't 
easy to exploit by most hackers. "It does take a more sophisticated level 
of skill," said David Gardner, a security program manager at Microsoft.

The latest vulnerability affects a function in the server software that 
allows Web administrators to change passwords for an Internet site. Despite 
the anticipated difficulty for hackers, the flaw was considered unusually 
threatening because it is closely related to a similar Internet server 
glitch disclosed by Microsoft on April 10.

Experts believe hackers already have been distributing customized attack 
tools to exploit the April 10 flaw, and they fear these underground tools 
could be updated readily to attack computers susceptible to the latest glitch.

A little-known Chinese hacking group has been distributing such tools on a 
Web site for weeks, although these are limited to attacking computers 
running Chinese-language versions of Microsoft's server software. Others 
claim to have developed more reliable attack tools using the April 10 glitch.

The FBI had warned that the previous, similar flaw was "a significant 
threat due to the magnitude and type of potential victim systems."

Marc Maiffret, the self-described "chief hacking officer" for eEye, said 
malicious hackers will devise automated tools to scan the Internet and 
attack vulnerable computers rather than targeting machines individually.

The same technique was used to spread the damaging "Code Red" and "Nimda" 
worms across the Internet last year, which infected nearly 1 million servers.

"It could readily be exploited with a worm," Maiffret said. "It's kind of a 
scary thing."
*****************************
USA Today
Authorities crack $7M online software piracy ring

LAS VEGAS (AP)  Twenty-one people in 14 states and Canada are facing 
federal charges in an Internet computer software, game and movie piracy 
ring, authorities in Las Vegas announced Wednesday.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Myhre, who outlined the so-called "Rogue 
Warriorz" operation, said an indictment was filed Tuesday in US District 
Court in Las Vegas.

Myhre said the 21 people have not been arrested, but would be summoned to 
appear in federal court on charges of conspiracy to commit criminal 
copyright infringement, a felony that could result in five years in prison 
and a $250,000 fine.

Myhre said the case will be prosecuted in Las Vegas.

The indictment said that in the six months before the operation ended Dec. 
11, the ring made available to undercover investigators 8,434 computer 
applications and utility software programs, 356 movies and 432 computer games.

It put the combined value of the programs at more than $7 million.
**************************
USA Today
Lycos launches subscription music service

WALTHAM, Mass. (AP)  Internet portal Lycos will launch a new paid 
subscription music service offering access to 10,000 albums with 150,000 songs.

Lycos, a subsidiary of Spanish communications conglomerate Terra Networks, 
is the largest Internet partner of Listen.com, the San Francisco-based 
company that has agreements with four of the five major record labels to 
provide "streamed" CD-quality sound.

The Lycos Rhapsody service will be offered free through this month. Then it 
will offer three tiers of service: free radio service on 20 channels of 
FM-quality sound; access to more than 50 commercial-free radio stations 
with CD-quality sound for $4.95 per month; and unlimited streams of 
individual songs plus access to the 50 stations for $9.95 per month.

Customers won't be able to save songs on their hard drives or record them 
on compact discs.

Listen.com's deals with BMG, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI Recorded Music 
and Warner Music Group would give Lycos users access to artists including 
Christina Aguilera, Jennifer Lopez, Jay-Z, Lauryn Hill, Bruce Springsteen 
and Simon and Garfunkel.

Industry-sponsored sites MusicNet and PressPlay limit how many songs can be 
downloaded.

Terra Lycos, which is trying to draw more users to subscription-based 
content, claims 115 million unique users per month. It has a presence in 43 
countries.
***************************
USA Today
Habitat for Humanity adds PCs to homes

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (AP)  The homes built by Habitat for Humanity do not 
include dishwashers or garbage disposals. Those are considered luxuries.

But computers are a different matter.

The organization that builds affordable homes for the poor has launched a 
$1 million pilot program with three technology companies to put free 
computers and Internet access into all its homes in the Winston-Salem area. 
It may eventually expand the effort nationwide.

"Habitat builds houses, but what we're really trying to do is change 
lives," said Kay Lord, executive director of the Habitat affiliate in 
Winston-Salem and surrounding Forsyth County. "A computer is a basic need, 
just like a refrigerator, particularly if you're a young person going to 
school."

HATCH, an early-childhood technology company based in Winston-Salem, 
suggested two years ago that Habitat provide computers for the new homes 
being built in Forsyth County. It has since provided 38 computers for the 
homes and promised to supply more through the end of the program.

Habitat announced Wednesday that, in addition to those homes, the 100 homes 
it built before 2000 also will receive computers and printers through 
another company, which it did not name. AOL Time Warner will provide free 
Internet access.

AOL Time Warner also will pay for a two-year study by Wake Forest 
University to examine the computers' effect on poor families. If the 
results are as positive as Habitat and the companies expect, the program 
will probably be expanded nationwide.

"At the end of the day, this probably will be the most comprehensive look 
at how to infuse the computer into low-income households," said B. Keith 
Fulton, vice president of the AOL Time Warner Foundation. "We are confident 
we will see tremendous educational and workforce gains."

The study will examine whether children's grades have improved and whether 
their love of learning has increased, too.

The anecdotal evidence from children in the 38 homes that already have 
computers is clear, said Sonja Murray, Habitat's director of development: 
The children feel better about themselves.

"Now they're no different from anybody else in class," she said. "They not 
only can turn in typed, not handwritten, papers, but they can include 
computer-generated graphs and charts."

The state requires students to pass a computer literacy test to graduate 
from high school.

"The education system expects students to have a computer," Murray said. 
"The house levels the playing field for the homeowner, but the computer 
levels the playing field for the children. They're not left out or left 
behind."

Habitat also is providing computer training for the families. If the 
program is expanded  Habitat builds 5,000 to 6,000 new U.S. homes a 
year  it will probably stay true to Habitat's mission of being "a hand up, 
not a handout" by arranging for families to pay something toward the 
computers. Habitat families pay for their homes with small payments and by 
putting several hundred hours of labor into building them.

Mary Brunson, who moved with her two teenage sons into a Habitat home in 
1998, was the first of the pre-2000 Habitat homeowners to get a computer 
Wednesday.

When she began Habitat's required computer classes, she did not even know 
how to turn on a computer. Now, she said, she can use the mouse, go to the 
pull-down menu and "click-click two times."

"Mom, that's double-click," Brunson's oldest son, Chris, 15, said with a 
hint of embarrassment

Brunson, 47, who has a factory job with Sara Lee Hosiery, hopes to use the 
computer to find a better job. Her sons look forward to not having to go to 
the library or their neighbor's house to do homework. They also want to 
create their own Web site, and Chris wants to talk to friends in chat rooms.
************************
MSNBC
Online sales of nuke drugs skyrocket
 Potassium iodide sales up 1000-fold after 'dirty bomb' scare
 By Jim Hu

 June 13  Some Web retailers are discovering that fear sells. A smattering 
of small businesses selling potassium iodide  an FDA-approved drug that 
mitigates potential effects from radiation exposure  have witnessed sales 
of the drug skyrocket over the past few days. News of the U.S. government 
thwarting a terrorist plot to detonate a "dirty bomb," an explosive that 
spreads radioactive material, has caused concerned individuals and 
government agencies to purchase mass quantities of potassium iodide pills 
off the Internet.

      "SINCE MONDAY WHEN this dirty bomb scare came about, (sales) 
increased almost 1000-fold," said Troy Jones, founder of NukePills.com, 
based in Mooresville, N.C. "Heaven forbid if there's ever a real radiation 
disaster in this country because one can only imagine a huge reaction to 
this product."
       With the spotlight on terrorism and the U.S. Department of 
Justice's recent detainment of a suspected Al Qaeda operative who allegedly 
planned to detonate a dirty bomb in a major city, a cottage industry has 
formed around the morbid idea of protection against a radioactive attack. 
Soon after the attacks of Sept. 11, questions over the security of the 
nation's nuclear power plants also caused a brief surge in drug sales and 
other equipment to protect against radiation attacks.
      Potassium iodide is administered in the form of a pill. The 
properties of the drug prevent the uptake of radioactive iodine, which 
causes many forms of cancer, into the thyroid gland. Should the unthinkable 
happen where a nuclear plant melts down or a nuclear device is detonated, 
radioactive iodine has a long enough lifespan to spread hundreds of miles 
in certain weather conditions.
       Still, even though the drug helps protect against one form of 
radiation, it by no means covers the wider spectrum of damage that arises 
from a nuclear blast. Potassium iodide will not protect people from the 
immediate dangers of gamma radiation, for instance.
       The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in January 2001 required 
states to consider issuing potassium iodide as a supplement to standard 
sheltering and evacuation procedures for people within a 10-mile radius of 
a nuclear power plant. To date, only 14 states out of the 34 states home to 
nuclear power plants have responded, California being the most recent one.
      Still, NukePills' Jones and other purveyors of the drug have seen 
online sales mushroom in conjunction with breaking news about potential 
terrorism attacks. Jones said that its online orders were coming in once 
every 20 seconds for 20 hours a day since the news of the dirty bomb 
surfaced Monday.
       Many other small businesses specializing in post-radiological 
attack products have seen their sales surge online as well.
       Last spring Shane Connor, who operates KI4U.com, rented 12 tractor 
trailers and hauled away 120,000 Geiger counters that had been shelved in a 
federal depot in Ft. Worth, Texas. Geiger counters measure the amount of 
radiation in the air.
       Conner hired a few former technicians from the Federal Emergency 
Management Agency to recalibrate and recertify the counters. Since Sept. 
11, the bet has been paying off; online sales of the counters, among other 
products on Conner's Web site, have taken off.
       "I'm thrilled we're selling as much we're selling, but I've got 
kids too," Conner said. "We hope it sits on their shelf gathering much dust 
over the years."
       Even fallout shelters, which seem like relics from the Cold War, 
are making a comeback. Two Tigers Radiological of Wilmington, N.C., which 
uses "Tools for Nuclear Emergencies" as its tagline, has seen sales of its 
$3,200 fallout shelters reach five to seven units a week, an exponential 
rise from pre-Sept. 11 levels.
       Steven Aukstakalnis, founder of the company, said recent fears of 
the dirty bomb attack caused a spike not only in sales, but also in traffic 
to the general information pages throughout his site. Aukstakalnis has 
turned the site into a full-fledged information hub to answer any questions 
surrounding a nuclear or radiological attack. The home page features the 
color-coded chart of the homeland Advisory Security System, domestic terror 
alerts, and an information database about radiation and nuclear attacks.
       The site even has a question and answer section about what to do 
during a nuclear attack or meltdown. Some questions include, "What are the 
Nuclear Blast and Thermal Pulse Effects?" and "So, how much blast or 
overpressure is too much to survive?" Answers are accompanied with diagrams.
       For entrepreneurs such as Aukstakalnis, current events are 
bittersweet. On the one hand, business has never been better; but on the 
other hand, the idea of selling products meant to protect against the 
unthinkable has been an odd paradox.
       "It's great on a personal level to have something successful, but 
on the other side I hope to hell no one has to use the products that 
they're buying," he said. "It's an odd state of mind to be in."
*************************
MSNBC
U.S. spy imagery viewed by civilians
British enthusiast downlinks spy plane images on satellite TV
NBC NEWS AND NEWS SERVICES

LONDON, June 13  Uncovering a potentially serious lapse in NATO security, a 
British satellite TV enthusiast has discovered that unencrypted U.S. spy 
plane transmissions used by the alliance can be downlinked on commercially 
available satellite television. Video available includes images from 
sensitive military locations such as the NATO mission in Kosovo.
      SATELLITE ENTHUSIAST John Locker said that anyone can tune in live 
to the U.S spy plane transmissions.
       "I wasn't tapping into anything. The pictures were freely available 
and anyone could see them," Locker told the BBC in an interview. "In fact 
it was easier to see these pictures than pay-per-view films or even 
Saturday sports," he said.
       Viewers tuning into the satellite this week were able to watch a 
security alert round the U.S. Army's headquarters at Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo.
       Contacted by NBC News, U.S. officials offered little response to 
the allegation on Thursday. The National Security Agency and CIA referred 
questions to the Pentagon, where one official asked: "How do you know it's 
real?"
       But a a U.S. official who watched the video told NBC that the 
material was real, and acknowledged that there are serious questions about 
why the United States would potentially jeopardize security by not 
encrypting the transmission. While not on a combat mission, the NATO forces 
in the Balkans are in an area of al-Qaida activity, the official said on 
condition of anonymity. There have been recent threats against the U.S. 
Embassy in Sarajevo, and Islamic radicals have been known to operate in the 
region.
       Another U.S. official, asked about the broadcasts, said there were 
plans now to encrypt the data.

INTERNET TRANSMISSION
       The pictures, from manned spy aircraft and drones, have been 
broadcast through a satellite over Brazil. The links, which are not 
encrypted, have been transmitted also over the Internet.
       "They were from a commercial satellite, sending pictures just as 
any commercial satellite would," Locker said.
       Locker said he had been trying for seven months to warn NATO and 
the Americans about the broadcasts showing NATO surveillance operations 
over the Balkans.
       "They eventually told me it was a hardware constraint, they were 
aware of it and they thanked me for my concern," he said.
       "Obviously I'm not a military analyst and I'm not an expert in this 
field but I am just amazed this type of material is going out free-to-air.
       "They put up data quite often which identified vehicles and the 
area to within two meters (yards). That to me is a risk."
       U.S. officials told NBC that sending the video without encryption 
would save both time and money. Military satellite channels have been 
overbooked, so the Pentagon routinely uses commercial satellites. But since 
1984 the Pentagon has required that satellite feeds be encrypted.

'PLANS TO ENCRYPT DATA'
       Last week, the spy plane provided airborne cover for a heavily 
protected patrol of the Macedonian-Kosovo border near Skopje.
       Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, 
told the BBC: "There are plans to encrypt this data."
       "We have discovered in the period since September 11 how important 
this sort of real-time intelligence is. Now we are making much better use 
of this kind of information and it will make sense to encrypt it in the 
future."
       Locker, also interviewed by The Guardian newspaper, said: "I 
thought that the U.S. had made a deadly error. My first thought was that 
they were sending their spy plane pictures through the wrong satellite by 
mistake and broadcasting secret information across Europe."
       One U.S. military intelligence source told the paper: "We seem to 
be transmitting this information potentially straight to our enemies...This 
could let people see where our forces are and what they are doing. That's 
putting our boys at risk."
       There was no immediate comment from NATO in Brussels.
****************
Government Executive
Senators decry spectrum policy, name defense as top priority
By Teri Rucker, National Journal's Technology Daily

Senators leveled criticism at the nation's spectrum-management process 
during a Tuesday hearing, calling the process everything from inefficient 
and piecemeal to a tool used to fatten the treasury, but they agreed that 
any changes must meet Defense Department needs.


"We do not have a spectrum policy," Senate Commerce Committee Chairman 
Ernest (Fritz) Hollings, D-S.C., said in calling for a review of the way 
the nation manages its airwaves. He noted that there is a need for 
wireless-based high-speed connections to the Internet "but most importantly 
a need for the Department of Defense."


Before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Defense estimated that its spectrum 
usage would grow by more than 90 percent by 2005, but that figure is 
probably low given the need for enhanced security now, said Steven Price, a 
deputy assistant secretary at the department.


"Defense must have top priority," Price said, reiterating that any attempts 
to reallocate airwaves currently occupied by the department to new spectrum 
to make room for commercial wireless services must be studied carefully to 
prevent any disruption in national defense.


After calling for the United States to harmonize its commercial uses of 
spectrum with policies in other nations and to ensure that companies can 
deploy innovative services, Sen. George Allen, R-Va., conceded, "I don't 
think any of this will ever occur if the Defense Department feels this is 
harming" their ability to defend the nation.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) plans 
to release a report later this month on the feasibility of freeing prime 
spectrum for advanced wireless uses, NTIA Director Nancy Victory said.

Tom Sugrue, chief of the Federal Communications Commission's Wireless 
Telecommunications Bureau, noted that moving toward more flexible uses of 
spectrum, including allowing carriers to change the types of services they 
offer or to lease spectrum to others, would improve efficiency.

But Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., questioned whether two agenciesthe FCC and 
NTIAshould oversee spectrum and whether the auction process is wise. "I 
fear the division leads to bureaucratic turf battles," Burns said, adding 
that the auctions "create a win-at-all-costs mentality that inflates the 
prices" and debt that cripples the winning bidders.

At the request of Burns, the General Accounting Office (GAO) released a 
study on spectrum management that found the shared oversight of the FCC and 
NTIA generally has worked well but is becoming more complex as technology 
evolves.


While both agencies have policies to determine spectrum efficiency, a lack 
of resources and staff have hindered the government's ability to assess its 
spectrum use, GAO concluded. For example, one major agency has more than 
1,000 frequency assignments that have not been reviewed in 10 years, said 
Peter Guerrero, GAO's director of physical infrastructure issues.


The agencies also "have not gotten the support they need in the budget 
process to purchase the equipment" that would make spectrum use more 
efficient, he said.
************************
Government Executive
Defense bill would create tech center for 'first responders'
By William New, National Journal's Technology Daily


A House-passed bill to reauthorize Defense Department programs contains 
various technology provisions, including a proposal to create a center for 
the transfer of military technology to emergency "first responders."


Pennsylvania Republican Curt Weldon, chairman of the House Armed Services 
Military Readiness Subcommittee, made the proposal. The House passed the 
authorization bill, H.R. 4546, by a 359-58 vote on May 9.


"What the federal government has done, it has created cutting-edge 
technology for the military that is important for handling all types of 
emergencies," Weldon said in an interview with National Journal's 
Technology Daily. The government has spent billions of dollars for military 
technology, but it is not available to domestic responders, he said.


For instance, soldiers in Afghanistan have Global Positioning System (GPS) 
transponders, but domestic first responders do not. If they had the GPS 
units, he said, emergency responders would know the exact locations of 
firefighters or others within a building, information that could lead to 
their rescue.

The military also has sensors to monitor heart rates and bodily systems 
from a distance to determine the health of soldiers, another technology 
that could be applied locally, Weldon said. "There are scores of examples."

Eighty-five percent of "domestic defenders," as Weldon calls them, are 
volunteers. About 100 per year die in action, more than the number of 
soldiers lost each year, he said.


The provision in the Defense authorization bill specifies that the center 
would be run by a nonprofit entity that has shown the ability to transfer 
defense technologies, he said, noting that he has been working with 
Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio. The center "would allow the 
fire and [emergency medical services] community to understand what is being 
developed and how to take advantage of it," Weldon said.


Weldon said Pete Aldridge, undersecretary of Defense for acquisition, 
technology and logistics, supports the idea. The authorization bill does 
not specify a dollar amount for the center, but Weldon said it is "not a 
big ticket item," probably in the millions.


Weldon has taken the lead on other security-related bills. Four years ago, 
for instance, he authored the law that created an anti-terrorism panel 
often referred to as the Gilmore Commission because former Virginia Gov. 
James Gilmore heads it.

Two years ago, a Weldon proposal established a grant program for first 
responders to purchase technology. Congress appropriated $100 million in 
the first year, but first responders submitted $3 billion in requests for 
aid. This year, funding was increased to $500 million. In fiscal 2003, 
President Bush has requested $3.5 billion.

Weldon also is focused on communication problems among first responders. 
Different agencies and emergency services are unable to communicate because 
their systems use different frequencies. Weldon said the concern could be 
addressed through an integrated network.
****************************
Sydney Morning Herald
Scientists develop transistor the size of an atom
London
June 13 2002





Transistors have been shrunk to their smallest possible limit - the size of 
a single atom, it was disclosed yesterday.

The breakthrough by US scientists could herald a new era of 
ultra-miniaturised electronic devices.

Transistors, traditionally made from silicon, are components that regulate 
the passage of electric current through them.

They form the basic building block of electronic circuits and can act as 
amplifiers, oscillators, photocells or switches.

A long sought goal has been to make transistors as small as possible.

Scientists at Cornell University in New York have now managed to build the 
ultimate in tiny transistors, in which electrons flow through a single atom.

The team implanted a "designer" molecule between two gold electrodes to 
create a circuit.

At its heart was a cobalt atom surrounded by carbon and hydrogen atoms and 
held in place by "handles" made of the benzene-like chemical pyridine.

When voltage was applied to the transistor, electrons passed from one side 
to the other by "hopping on and off" the cobalt atom.

The research, led by Paul McEuen, professor of physics at Cornell, was 
described yesterday in the journal Nature.

A former colleague of McEuen's at Harvard University, Massachusetts, 
reported a similar result in the same journal using two atoms.

Hongkun Park's team made a molecule containing two atoms of the metal 
vanadium which was placed between gold electrodes.

In both cases the scientists were able to start and stop the flow of 
current by adjusting the voltage near the bridging molecule.

In an accompanying article, Silvano de Franceschi and Leo Kouwenhoven, from 
Delft University of Technology in Holland, wrote: "Right now, these 
single-molecule or single-atom transistors are no competition for silicon 
transistors.

"But they will serve for studying electron motion through nanoscale 
objects, and for the development of integrated electronic devices built on 
single molecules."
***************

Sydney Morning Herald
Govt department being investigated over spam
Canberra

An Australian federal department is being investigated by the nation's 
privacy watchdog over spam emails sent from a youth-orientated website.

Deputy federal privacy commissioner Timothy Pilgrim said he had sought a 
please explain from the Family and Community Services Department over the 
spam.

It follows the sending of multiple spam emails from the department's youth 
website, The Source.

The emails advertised two competitions including one for free movie tickets.

But the department's own online privacy policy prevents email addresses 
being added to mailing lists such as the competition spam.

Mr Pilgrim said he was determining if the department had breached its 
privacy laws.

"I strongly urge federal government agencies that collect, store and use 
personal information via websites ... ensure they protect the privacy of 
their users," he said in a statement.

The department has 30 days in which to respond to the privacy commission's 
request for information.

Opposition information technology spokeswoman Kate Lundy said the 
government was failing to control the use of spam email by its own 
departments.

Senator Lundy said instead of taking its own action, the government was 
instead leaving the issue to be solved by the Privacy Commission.

She said watertight laws which ensured departments respected the privacy of 
their users were vital.

"This incident shows that the coalition has no real commitment and no idea 
about tackling junk email," she said in a statement.

"We know that the community wants to see a government committed to fighting 
spam.

"The coalition has shown it is incapable of leading by example, it has no 
credibility on this issue."
****************************
Sydney Morning Herald
Dark side of the Net
June 12 2002
Livewire




A multitude of companies may be spying on your computer - and you, writes 
Nathan Taylor.


You may not know it, but you could be lending spare computer power to a new 
software company in the United States. A viral program, Altnet (formerly 
known as Brilliant Digital), is covertly installed with recent versions of 
popular file sharing software KaZaA, along with several other file sharing 
programs. Altnet uses the spare processing power of the host computer for 
the company's own ends. That is, it can hijack a user's spare processing 
power for use by the company, with the user being none the wiser.

It's not the first time that KaZaA has secretly installed unwanted 
software. Late last year, the Australian-owned software company was 
embroiled in a scandal in the Net community. As part of the install process 
for KaZaA's eponymous file sharing software, an extra application called 
ClickTillUWin was surreptitiously forced on to the user's computer.

Ostensibly, ClickTillUWin delivers advertising to a computer. KaZaA, which 
gives away its software for free, uses revenue from the advertising (which 
appears in a bar at the top of the application) to make ends meet.

But ClickTillUWin does not just deliver ads to users. It contains a virus 
that reports back to its developers, Cydoor, which websites computer users 
visit. This information is then used to deliver "targeted" advertising. So 
if the program found you visited a lot of sports sites in a day, for 
instance, it might deliver more ads for sporting goods to your system.

Then there's vx2, which came with another file-sharing tool, Audio Galaxy. 
It monitors when a computer user fills in an online form. It takes the 
information and sends it back to the developer. Even credit card 
information may be sent back.

You might be excused for thinking that these are malicious programs 
inserted by hackers. They're not. These are legitimate programs bundled 
with commercial and free software, sometimes from major companies -- but 
the companies are less than forthright about letting users know what is 
being installed on their computer along with the software.

A number of software development/marketing houses in the United States and 
elsewhere develop spyware. Most of them you would have never have heard of: 
Cydoor, Brilliant Digital, Conducent and Radiate are some of the biggest. 
These companies started on the premise of delivering ads with software that 
can be downloaded for free (paying a chunk of the revenue to the developer 
of the free software), but have morphed into something far more sinister.

"Businesses demanded information about behaviour that can be used to sell," 
said Nigel Waters of Pacific Privacy Consulting. With Net advertising 
revenue so thin on the ground, struggling software providers sought a 
competitive advantage. Many adware applications turned into spyware 
applications. Adware programs are applications that foist advertisements 
and links on the unsuspecting party. TopText, which comes with a number of 
applications, is an example of this kind of stealth advertisement. It 
parses Web pages that the user visits and inserts hypertext links on 
keywords, linking to sponsor pages. These links look no different to the 
links that would originally appear on the Web page. Other programs might 
simply replace banner advertisements on Web pages visited with banner ads 
provided by the software manufacturer, effectively stealing ad revenue.

While TopText is merely invasive, most others are much worse. Most 
adware/spyware applications include additional tracking software, which 
secretly reports a user's Internet movements back to the software 
developer. In short, all those free programs that you installed could be 
reporting your every move back to an unknown marketing or development 
company. Ostensibly, this information is gathered for marketing purposes, 
but in most cases the companies involved do not reveal what they are doing 
with the information they gather.

According to Waters, the privacy implications of these programs are 
"potentially devastating". "They threaten to breach fundamental principles 
of fair collection and result in a range of organisations knowing more 
about the users than the user wants," he says. What's more, there is not 
nearly enough awareness of the phenomenon in Australia, but Waters says 
"knowledge and resistance are growing fast".

As for the Spyware purveyors themselves, early indications are that the 
strategy has been only marginally successful. Earlier this year, online ad 
provider DoubleClick abandoned targeted advertising schemes, since the cost 
of gathering and maintaining the information outweighed the premiums they 
could charge for having it.

The biggest culprit when it comes to spyware is free software. Because 
bundling spyware is an easy way to get revenue, huge numbers of free 
applications now come bundled with at least one spyware package. If you're 
a user of free software, particularly file-sharing, Napster-like tools such 
as KaZaA, LimeWire, BearShare or Grokster, there's a pretty good chance 
that you're running some spyware on your computer right now. They're not 
the only culprits; the spyware Aureate (see the sidebar) alone comes with 
no less than 490 different applications, including games, Net tools and 
productivity software.

The host software vendors, of course, argue that the presence of 
adware/spyware is the "price" for using their software: if you don't like 
it, don't use their software. Fair enough, too, says Pacific Privacy's 
Nigel Waters. "They're not inherently unethical," he says. "There can be 
legitimate uses, but only if users are fully informed and have as much 
choice as possible."

Electronic Frontiers Australia's executive director Irene Graham, holds a 
similar position. For Graham, the issue is not the presence of the 
software, but the fact that the spyware is so carefully hidden, and that so 
few users know about its presence. ``We don't object, in principal, to the 
software,'' she says. ``It's a fair position that you do not have to use 
the software as long as the provider of the software gives clear and 
explicit information about what is happening. As long as the user has 
informed consent, it's OK. There needs to be, clear in advance, advice to 
users of these programs that their movements are being tracked. Right now, 
that's not happening.''

Purveyors of adware/spyware hit back at such criticisms by saying that they 
do, in fact, warn users about the spyware as part of the license agreement 
during the install process. For privacy groups, however, that's not nearly 
enough. "The `click-wrap' model of user licenses is clearly not good 
enough, because people don't read it," says Graham. "It doesn't usually 
work because there is so much legal mumbo-jumbo that people skip though. To 
put things about privacy in there just doesn't cut it. It needs to be 
somewhere obvious. It needs to be somewhere that you can't just click past 
it without making an informed decision. And there's also the other problem 
that the only person who sees it is the person who installs the software."

Under the terms of the current Privacy Act, most of the spyware 
applications would fall into an untested legal grey zone, according to the 
EFA's Irene Graham. The law is only breached if the data collected is 
associated with a specific individual, rather than used as bulk statistical 
data. Most spyware applications do not record the name of the user, 
although they may record the Internet address of the infected computer. 
Whether on not the IP Address (a computer's unique address on the Internet) 
constitutes individual identification has yet to be tested in court, says 
Graham.

In any case, the law can only be applied to Australian companies or 
companies within Australia. Unfortunately, most of the software infected 
with spyware is downloaded from foreign companies over the Internet, 
untouchable by Australian law.

Very few of the spyware applications are easy to remove. In nearly all 
cases, the host software has to be uninstalled first, and then removing the 
spyware may involve some serious computer voodoo, involving hacking the 
Windows registry (a challenge well beyond most computer users) and the 
tracking and deletion of specific files.

For those particularly worried about the invasion of their privacy, two 
applications in particular are designed to detect and remove spyware, 
although they frequently require the removal of the host program as well 
(so users can't have it both ways). Lavasoft's Ad-aware and Gibson 
Research's OptOut automate the detection and removal of most known spyware 
products.

With their revenue sources being cut off, however, the free software 
vendors are not at all happy with these applications. In true viral fashion 
one of the spyware vendors, RadLight, has hit back, with RadLight's free 
media player coming with a routine that actually turns the tables on 
Ad-aware and removes it from the system. A small clause in the RadLight 
license agreement states: "You are not allowed to use any third party 
program (e.g. Ad-Aware) to uninstall applications bundled with RadLight."

Wherever this battle ends up, for the meantime it's worth reading the 
license agreements of the software you install -- painful as that may be.
***************
BBC
Web design 'causes confusion'

A gap between how web designers and ordinary surfers think is causing 
frustration on the net.
In a study at Kansas State University in the United States, surfers were 
asked to look through a website and then draw a diagram of how the site was 
organised.

Most of the resulting drawings were inaccurate, grouping together similar 
bits of information rather than reflecting the real layout of the site.

Web design is of key importance, particularly to commercial sites trying to 
persuade shoppers to spend time and money buying products over the net.

Different vision

"We had people drawing web pages on their diagrams that didn't even exist," 
said psychologist Keith Jones who led the team of researchers.

"People don't remember individual pages as much as they remember 
categories. People don't remember websites the way web designers think 
about it," he said.

Mr Jones believes designers should organise information on websites in 
categories that are obvious to users.

"We argue that designers need to focus on how users mentally organise the 
information that is displayed," he said.

"People have a certain idea of how certain pieces of information are 
organised.

"You have to present the information in a way that is consistent with how 
people think about how those things are grouped together," he said.

Keeping it simple

Other experts have questioned web design in the past.

Net guru Jakob Nielsen has repeatedly criticised sites for being too pretty 
and clever for their own good.

He has championing the idea of web usability, making sites work for the 
user by keeping them simple.

He believes designers can often take their work too seriously, with the 
result that websites are less easy to use and ultimately less satisfying.
**************************
Taipei Times
The most wired nation on earth
GROWING IT: Sweden is among the world's leading IT nations in terms of per 
capita computers, PCs, mobile (cellular) telephones, fixed phone lines and 
Internet access

SWEDISH TRADE COUNCIL


Swedish industry, as well as the economy as a whole, has undergone a rapid 
restructuring during the past decade. One aspect of the rapid structural 
changes in industry is the fast growing information technology (IT) sector 
and the impressive investments in IT, computers, use of the internet, said 
Henrik Bystrom, representative of the Esportradet Taipei Swedish Trade 
Council.

Few countries can also match the international success that Sweden and 
Swedish companies have attained in the global economy. There are several 
world-renowned Swedish companies that have expanded from a Swedish base to 
become global players that signifies industrial tradition, know-how and an 
infrastructure that has been adapted to the needs of international business 
operations.

Having already boasted the highest per capita density of fixed telephone 
lines and workplace computers during the 1980s, today Sweden is among the 
world's leading IT nations in terms of per capita computers, PCs, mobile 
(cellular) telephones, fixed phone lines and Internet access.

Sweden is today the most wired nation on earth. Almost 70 percent of 
Swedish households have an advanced PC and more than 50 percent of all 
Swedes aged 12 to 79 use the Internet. Moreover, at least every second 
Swede now has a mobile phone.

R&D

Sweden is among the countries that spend the most on R&D. R&D investments 
in industry increased by nearly 10 percent annually during the 1990s. About 
half of industrial R&D spending occurs in 10 to 15 companies. The increase 
in knowledge intensity is also reflected in Sweden's role as a leading IT 
country, especially in terms of practical IT applications in households and 
companies. Statistics indicated that Sweden's per capita information and 
communications technology (ICT) investments (measured as expenditures) are 
the highest in the world, equivalent to nearly 10 percent of GDP.

Biotech development

The Swedish science base is strong in many biotechnology fields and of good 
quality, due to large investments in biotechnology research over the past 
30 years. This has been especially important in ensuring the supply of 
highly qualified personnel to biotechnology companies.

In proportion to population, the volume of Swedish biotechnology 
publications was the largest in the world in neuroscience and immunology 
during the period 1984-1998. Swedish publication volume was second to 
Switzerland in molecular biology and genetics, microbiology, biochemistry 
and biophysics and cell and developmental biology, and third after 
Switzerland and Denmark in biotechnology and applied microbiology.

The Swedish pharmaceutical industry has grown rapidly during the past two 
decades, thereby establishing itself as one of Sweden's two most important 
growth industries.

During 2001, the industry employed over 18,000 people. More than 90 percent 
of its sales were exported, for a total of nearly SEK 34 billion or 4.5 
percent of Sweden's overall exports. This gave Sweden a positive trade 
balance in pharmaceuticals amounting to SEK 24 billion.

Market opportunities

Sweden offers a wealth of market opportunities for foreign companies. It is 
part of three distinct market areas: Scandinavia, The Baltic Sea Region and 
the EU, with some 25,100 and 370 million consumers respectively, including 
the emerging economies of eastern Europe, the total European market 
comprises almost 700 million potential consumers. Establishing in Sweden 
provides access to EU's Single Market.

Executives in Sweden particularly appreciate the low corporate taxation, 
the strong industrial tradition, the competence of the workforce as well as 
Sweden's advanced infrastructure, not least in the areas of information and 
communications technology.

Bystrom remarked, "There is a good match in both the industries of Sweden 
and Taiwan as they complement each other and can enter into joint 
cooperation especially in areas like telecommunications and manufacturing. 
Swedish companies can use Taiwan and connect to China and other Asian 
markets while Taiwan can use Sweden as an ideal base location to penetrate 
the northern European market." There are currently approximately 15 
Taiwanese high-tech companies who have investments in the country. Swedish 
companies established in Taiwan number about 40.

Foreign companies in Sweden can enjoy a sophisticated and extensive 
logistics infrastructure, covering all modes of transport as well as 
information and flow-of-funds. Long-term investments in roads, railways, 
harbors and airports have created rapid and reliable links to all important 
parts of the region. And further developments are underway.

Swedes are very fast to adopt latest products and trends from around the 
globe. International corporations in a broad range of industries have 
realized the advantages of using Sweden to try out new products, services, 
strategies and techniques before launching them on a global scale.

Service sector

The Swedish service sector has expanded very rapidly in recent decades. 
Having accounted for just over 40 percent of jobs in the late 1940s, today 
its share has climbed to above 70 percent. Altogether, more than 3.1 
million people work in services, including 1.3 million public sector 
employees and nearly 1.8 million in private companies. Adding in all those 
who provide services as part of the manufacturing and construction sectors, 
service employees account for some 85 percent of total employment in 
Sweden, or 3.6 million people.

Sweden's service sector is very heterogenous. It encompasses all types of 
activities from self-employed hot dog vendors to major banks and hospitals. 
One way of categorizing the various activities in the service sector is to 
distinguish between those in "ordinary markets subject to competition - 
that is, the private sector -- and those pursued and or financed by 
government bodies -- the public sector (mainly health care, education and 
social services).

Infrastructure

After a long slump that lasted almost throughout the 1990s, the Swedish 
construction industry has recovered. Construction remains a key economic 
sector, today employing about 230,000 people, including other sectors 
dependent on the construction industry -- portions of the transportation, 
building materials, and consulting sectors, for example -- it directly or 
indirectly supports nearly 500,000 jobs, or roughly 10 percent of Sweden's 
labor force.

Today, Swedish construction is well developed and, in international terms, 
highly industrialized. To a large extend, the industry uses prefabricated 
construction elements. Project management skills are advanced. The 
construction work force, both blue- and white-collar, is generally well 
educated and highly trained. Environmental aspects are increasingly 
factored into the planning and construction process.

In recent decades, the major construction companies have been involved in 
all types of projects: commercial and residential buildings, industrial 
facilities, roads, rail systems, bridges, harbors, power-generators 
facilities and so on.

Travel

For travelers, Sweden's magnificent countryside is always there for people 
looking for excitement or relaxation. Summer and winter, spring and autumn. 
Whatever the season, you can always enjoy its rich variety. Explore 
Sweden's natural heritage -- the endless forests, the mountains of the 
north and the island worlds of the archipelagos.

The Swedish Trade Council issued over 11,000 visas in 2001. The figure is 
expected to increase as more tourists and businessmen from Taiwan travel to 
Sweden.
****************
Computerworld
Chief (in)security officer
By DEBORAH RADCLIFF
JUN 10, 2002

The exodus began in December. Bruce Moulton, vice president of 
infrastructure risk management at Fidelity Investments in Boston, was let 
go. That same month, Steve Katz, chief security and privacy officer at 
Merrill Lynch & Co. in New York, accepted a buyout. And in April, shortly 
after his face appeared on the cover of CIO magazine, Michael Young, chief 
information security officer and principal privacy officer at State Street 
Global Advisors in Boston, lost his job in a company reshuffle.
The departure of these and other information security veterans from Fortune 
500 companies reflects the beginning of turbulent times for chief security 
officers (CSO). Since Sept. 11, CSOs have faced new pressures to prove the 
value and effectiveness of their security measures, even as they struggle 
politically for legitimacy within their corporations and for support from 
the technology and business units they're trying to protect, say analysts.

"We're in a transition period, and the smart [CSOs] are getting out of the 
way," says David Foote, president and chief research officer at Foote 
Partners LLC, a management consultancy and IT job research firm in New 
Canaan, Conn. "They see the risks in trying to build in the next phase of 
security - moving from fragmented delivery of security technology to a 
coordinated, aggressive, well-conceived security program.

"They understand how long it takes to build attention and change the 
culture to make this next step, but they're not getting the support they 
need to brand and build this next level of security," says Foote, who is 
also a Computerworld columnist.

Uphill Battle

Corporate politics is the single biggest problem facing CSOs, according to 
some who hold such positions and industry analysts. Even though CSOs have 
attained a chief-level title, they report that they still generally lack 
enough power to be truly effective. And there's growing friction between 
the CSO, who usually has only a handful of people on staff, and the CIO, 
who has hundreds or, in some cases, thousands of people on staff, says John 
Pescatore, a security research analyst at Gartner Inc. in Stamford, Conn.

Because of these conflicts and the expanding role of information protection 
to encompass privacy, regulatory compliance and disaster recovery, firms 
genuinely don't know where to put the function of information security - if 
they have a formal management function at all, says Tracy Lenzner, CEO of 
executive security search firm Lenzner Group in Las Vegas. In fact, only 
54% of 72 chief executives working for companies with at least $1 billion 
in annual revenues said they have a CSO in place, according to a survey 
released in January by technology and strategy consulting firm Booz Allen & 
Hamilton Inc. in McLean, Va.

"Unfortunately, for many organizations I think that the executive-level 
positioning of CSOs will be heightened only when we're hit with a 
catastrophic event," Lenzner adds.

That's also the consensus among the unemployed and employed CSOs who were 
interviewed for this story, all of whom say information protection has 
always been an uphill battle because it's difficult to prove its value 
unless a catastrophe occurs. As such, CSOs lack the power to do more than 
set policies and put out fires, says a CSO from a Fortune 100 technology 
equipment manufacturer who asked to remain anonymous.

"The greatest threat we face is the belief of senior management that there 
is no threat. So we don't get funds, money or resources, and without those 
things, you can never address security threats and risks," says another 
security officer at a global financial firm who's planning his exit 
strategy and starting a consulting practice.

Young says he believes some of these problems can be lessened if CSOs get 
on board with business initiatives and competitive strategies more 
consistently. "As a whole, CSOs still express security in technical terms 
instead of business terms," he says.

Katz, Young and Moulton, however, all speak the language of business and 
have driven information risk management throughout their former 
organizations. (As for his business savvy, Moulton thinks he might have 
worked himself out of a job by integrating security ownership into the 
business units themselves.) Similarly, Katz looks at security from the 
standpoint of business enablement, adding that risk management 
methodologies are no different from other processes of building business 
risk models for nontechnical offerings.

Another view of this upheaval in security leadership is that Katz, Young 
and Moulton have completed their work of championing security. They have 
laid the critical groundwork by building consensus; establishing best 
practices and awareness; and preparing business and technology units for 
compliance, liability, security audits and procedural forensics 
investigations. Now Katz and Young are offering these start-up services to 
smaller companies and home offices through consulting businesses, a path 
Moulton says he might also take.

The next phase of information protection involves becoming more technical 
in focus, say analysts.

"In the past, we measured our success by telling about the programs we put 
in place and the policies we wrote. As we move forward, it's more about how 
well those policies are being implemented, how secure the systems are and 
what impact they're having," says Michael Ressler, director of security 
services at New York-based IT consulting firm Predictive Systems Inc. "And 
that means more technical background is needed for security management."

Booz Allen's survey cites three areas that chief executives are more 
focused on since Sept. 11:

? 75% of respondents said they're more concerned with infrastructure 
protection.

? 71% said they're more concerned with risk assessment.

? 69% said they're concerned about employee morale. At one Fortune 100 
technology manufacturer, low morale is already translating into abuses by 
employees, according to its CSO, who says pornography Web surfing at the 
company is up 40%.

If Katz's replacement is any indication, some firms are already catching on 
to this more technical focus. Merrill Lynch's new chief of security and 
privacy, David Bauer, has a highly technical background, as he was in 
charge of network management and engineering, including security 
engineering, at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. and then at Deutsche Bank.

But even with the best technology project management and business skills, 
these new technobusiness/ security hybrids will run into all the same 
empowerment problems as their forerunners, says Thornton May, a senior 
member of executive advisory firm Toffler Associates Inc. in Manchester, 
Mass., and a Computerworld columnist. To survive this upheaval, security 
executives must be strong in business and technology, he adds.

"Security professionals will need to understand the lingua franca of 
business, which is accounting," he says. "They also have to be able to 
understand how the network works, how the application works and how the 
hardware works if they're to mobilize the security organization. Then they 
need to align their security strategy to where the business is going and 
tone their architecture and deployment to fit the financial plan of the 
company."
*************************
Computerworld
ICANN comes under fire at Senate hearing

WASHINGTON -- A Bush administration official said today that reform efforts 
by the organization charged with managing the Web's Domain Name System, the 
Internet Corporation for Assigned Name and Numbers (ICANN), has shown 
"great promise," but she warned that the private group's future is far from 
assured.
The "next couple of months will be crucial" for ICANN, said Nancy J. 
Victory, an assistant secretary for communications and information at the 
U.S. Department of Commerce. Victory testified today before the U.S. Senate 
Subcommittee on Science, Technology and Space.

ICANN was created by the U.S. to oversee the Domain Name System and 
operates under an agreement with the Commerce Department. That agreement is 
set to expire Sept. 30. The Bush administration hasn't decided whether to 
extend the agreement, modify it or let it expire, said Victory, who 
outlined a series of steps that Marina Del Rey, Calif.-based ICANN must 
take to improve its operation.

Victory delivered her assessment before a panel that was largely critical 
of the organization, which was created to introduce competition to the 
Domain Name System as well as ensure its stability and security.

"Serious structural reform must be entertained," said Sen. Conrad Burns, 
(R-Mont.), who said ICANN had morphed from a group charged with deciding 
purely technical issues "into a policy-making body, however, with none of 
the due process requirements placed on agencies given policy-making power."

The committee chairman, Sen. Ron Wyden, (D-Ore.), told ICANN officials, "I 
just want to convey the depth of frustration out there in the Internet 
community. E People don't feel they are being listened to."

Adding more ammunition to the criticism, the U.S. General Accounting 
Office, in a report released today, said ICANN has made progress in 
increasing competition in the domain name space, but not in improving 
security.

The congressional watchdog agency faulted ICANN for being behind in 
developing operational and security requirements for all the entities that 
run the Domain Name System.

"Is everything perfect? Of course not," said Stuart Lynn, ICANN's 
president. But Lynn defended his group's effort at reforming itself and 
said venturing into policy areas wasn't something easily avoided. For 
instance, in creating top-level domains, ICANN must consider what name and 
under what conditions they are created, he said.

ICANN, for instance, faced intense criticism over its process for picking 
seven new top-level domains two years ago, a process that resulted in the 
rejection of many top-level domains proposed by companies and organizations 
and that immediately created an army of critics. Its election process for 
selecting board members has also been a sticking point.

"Bias and favoritism are woven deeply into ICANN's form," said ICANN board 
member Karl Auerbach at the hearing. "ICANN resists public accountability." 
He urged the Commerce Department to exercise "real oversight."

Among the steps the Bush administration wants ICANN to take, said Victory, 
are reforms ensuring accountability, giving all Internet stakeholders a 
fair hearing, developing an effective advisory role for governments and 
ensuring that it has the money and staff to carry out its mission.
****************************
Computerworld
Web Standards Project aims to educate developers

Having declared a victory in the battle to make Web browsers more 
inclusive, the Web Standards Project (WaSP) relaunched itself this week 
with the new goal of educating Web developers about the benefits of 
building sites that incorporate standards, saying that many developers 
still use "old-school methods" that block millions of potential visitors to 
their sites.
The project, founded in 1998 by a grassroots coalition of Web designers and 
developers fighting for Web standards, said that Web developers' failure to 
employ standards has led to lost revenue, ill will and potential litigation 
from groups demanding accessibility.

Along with unveiling the new initiative, the group also announced a 
relaunch of its Web site, which had been off-line since Jan. 1.

The relaunch comes after the group successfully lobbied to get browser 
makers to employ standards that allow them to access most Web sites. WaSP 
first began by waging what it called a "browser upgrade campaign," 
mobilizing users to pressure major browser makers to employ Web standards 
enabling them to access more sites.

According to WaSP group leader Jeffrey Zeldman, makers of major browsers 
such as Internet Explorer, Opera and Netscape responded to the pressure by 
including more standards in their 6.0 versions.

"These results were at least partially brought about by public pressure 
from our campaign," said Zeldman.

With the browser feather in its cap, the project has set its sights on 
endorsing standards compliance and accessibility in professional design 
tools. According to the group, accessibility is crucial if site owners want 
to avoid losing customers, and by extension, revenue.

The group is endorsing structural language standards such as Extensible 
Hypertext Markup Language 1.0 and XML 1.0 and presentation languages such 
as Cascading Style Sheets 1, 2 and 3, Zeldman said.

Although Web standards seem prevalent, many developers who were trained in 
the 1990s do not use them because at the time they were difficult to 
employ, according to Zeldman.

WaSP has begun a learning section on its site that it hopes will help 
developers come up to speed on Web standards. The group is also working 
with companies such as San Francisco-based Macromedia Inc., which makes the 
Dreamweaver Web authoring tool, to get Web design product makers to push 
standards as well.

"Using standards is definitely in the best interest of the developers, the 
clients and the people who use the sites," Zeldman said.
***************************

Lillie Coney
Public Policy Coordinator
U.S. Association for Computing Machinery
Suite 510
2120 L Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20037
202-478-6124
lillie.coney@xxxxxxx