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Clips July 19, 2002

Clips July 19, 2002

ARTICLES

GSA sets up performance office
EarthLink wins spam lawsuit
JPEG Patent Claim Sparks Concern
KPIG snuffs Web's 1st online radio simulcast
Gates e-mail touts 'trustworthy' progress
ACLU Sues Arizona Corrections Dept. Over Online Postings
Institute draws on entertainment industry know-how in military training
Why e-voting is a bad idea
Info sharing at heart of strategy
Floppy TV unfolding

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Federal Computer Week
GSA sets up performance office

The General Services Administration announced July 17 the creation of an office that will oversee agencywide efforts to improve performance and incorporate the President's Management Agenda into GSA's practices.

GSA Administrator Stephen Perry named Boyd Rutherford as the associate administrator of the new Office of Performance Improvement.

The office will lead the implementation of the initiatives developed during the past year as GSA evaluated its management processes, such as a study performed by Accenture to determine the impact of overlap between the agency's two contracting services.

Following the evaluation, GSA set six agencywide strategic goals for performance improvement. Those goals closely mirror the goals of the President's Management Agenda, focusing on enhancing service for federal customers and industry partners, and improving financial and workforce management.

As head of the office, Rutherford will be responsible for:

* Leading efforts to create a process to identify, develop and implement changes to improve performance across the agency.

* Overseeing implementation of the action plans, process and organizational changes, and other initiatives developed to meet the six agencywide goals.

* Incorporating the President's Management Agenda into GSA processes.

Rutherford, who will report to Perry, will lead a team of senior management executives from across the agency. Rutherford is also head of GSA's Office of Enterprise Development.

One of Rutherford's primary initiatives is to follow through on the Accenture study recommendations. He will serve on an advisory group to oversee the work performed by three teams that are focused on combining and realigning the similar functions performed by the Federal Technology Service and the Federal Supply Service:

* Market research, marketing and sales.

* Contract maintenance and development.

* Service delivery.
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Atlanta Journal-Constitution
EarthLink wins spam lawsuit
Kathy Brister - Staff
Wednesday, July 17, 2002

EarthLink has been awarded $24.8 million in a federal lawsuit against a Tennessee spammer, but the Atlanta-based Internet service provider never may see the money.

Defendant Khan C. Smith didn't show up in court and wasn't represented by a lawyer.

"Anytime we can have an impact on stopping spam, that's a victory," spokeswoman Carla Shaw said.

EarthLink alleges Smith stole credit card numbers and used them to set up fraudulent EarthLink accounts to send spam, according to court records.
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Wired News
JPEG Patent Claim Sparks Concern
By Joanna Glasner

Since 1986, Patent No. 4,698,672 has done little more than languish in the archives of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Government examiners first issued the patent, which covers a "coding system for reducing redundancy" to a San Jose, California, company called Compression Labs. The approval came more than a decade before the digital imaging technology known as JPEG reached mass-market popularity.

Sixteen years later, however, the Austin, Texas, software developer that now owns the patents is seeing fresh value in an old document. The company, Forgent Networks, says the patent directly applies to a compression technique used in the creation of JPEG images.

Now, Forgent says it is seeking licensing revenue from companies that implement JPEG in "all fields of use," with the sole exception of the satellite broadcast business.

In a statement published last week, Forgent said the patent could apply to a broad range of companies that make "devices used to compress, store, manipulate, print or transmit digital images." Potential licensees include makers of digital cameras, digital camcorders with still image functions and PDAs.

"Licensing is a legitimate process in business," said Hedy Baker, a Forgent spokeswoman, who said the company came across the patent while reviewing its archives of intellectual property.

Baker said Forgent is in discussions with several companies about licensing its technology, but did not name any names. In June, Forgent announced it had sealed a licensing deal with Sony for an undisclosed sum. The company also inked a $15-million licensing deal with an unidentified electronics firm.

Wayne L. Tang, a patent attorney at Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw, says it's not unheard of for a company to hold a patent for many years before going after licensing revenue. In many cases, patents are granted for technologies that are ahead of their time.

"Things that might not have been initially valuable when the patent came out maybe five or ten years later have caught on commercially," Tang said.

The licensing plan has sparked some concerns among many users of digital imaging technologies. A posting on geek discussion site Slashdot.org, sparked a flood of responses from techies fearful of the potential ramifications of Forgent's move.

"It's sort of an ambushing kind of thing," said Michael Long, a computer consultant who calls digital photography a hobby.

Long said he was perturbed by the fact that Forgent waited until JPEG became an industry standard before asserting its patent rights.

On the flip side, however, Tang points out that Forgent doesn't have much time left to pursue its plan. The patent it is currently trying to license expires in four years.
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Mercury News
KPIG snuffs Web's 1st online radio simulcast

The first commercial radio station to stream its programming over the Internet has suspended its Web-based simulcasts, saying it cannot afford to pay music royalty fees.

Promising to ``see you in that pigsty in the sky,'' KPIG morning disc jockey Dallas Dobro ended seven years of continuous Webcasts Thursday with a cowboy tribute befitting the station's quirky character: ``Happy Trails,'' by Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.

KPIG will continue to stream a mix of live recordings made at its Watsonville studio and at station-sponsored concerts -- music that is not subject to royalty fees. Meanwhile, it will attempt to negotiate a lower royalty payment with the recording industry so it can resume its Internet service.

The Librarian of Congress last month set the royalty rate Webcasters must pay for the right to stream music over the Internet. Operators of small Internet radio stations said then that the rate is three times what they can afford -- and predicted that hundreds of independent broadcasters would collapse.

``The bill comes out to around $3,000 a month for KPIG, which isn't a whole lot, but KPIG is basically a small-market radio station. And right now, it's not making any money from that stream,'' said Bill Goldsmith, who operates KPIG's online station. ``That's $3,000 a month that they just can't afford.''

Earlier this week, a group of radio stations appealed the ruling in federal court in Philadelphia.

KPIG's sign-off jarred the station's far-flung online listeners, who wrote from Indiana, Florida and Minnesota to mourn the loss of its genre-busting music format that spans classic rock to blues to bluegrass to alternative.

``The varied musical selections and programming exposed me to artists who never get commercial airplay,'' said Akio Patrick, a listener from Woodside. ``The record industry appears to have won this battle out of its ignorance and fear of the potential of independent Web radio.''

Other displaced Silicon Valley residents, including Sue A. Godby, who moved from Monterey to Cincinnati, described KPIG as a ``lifeline'' to the Bay Area.

``I'd become personally acquainted with a couple of the DJs -- they're actual friends, and not just nebulous voices on the radio -- and listening to them every day was connecting with a little bit of my `other home,' '' Godby said.
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USA Today
Gates e-mail touts 'trustworthy' progress
By Kevin Maney, USA TODAY

In an e-mail sent to major customers Thursday night, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates reports that the company's "trustworthy computing" initiative is altering Microsoft's corporate culture and has cost more than $100 million.


The effort also resulted in new developments, including privacy technology called P3P and a smart card system for better Internet security.

The letter is Gates' first pronouncement on the initiative since he unveiled it six months ago. Gates had ordered Microsoft to turn toward what he called trustworthy computing building software and services that would be as reliable as electricity and as secure as banks. Gates said the initiative is as big as Microsoft's 1995 drive to embrace the Internet.

The letter is meant to assure customers that Microsoft has made progress. Highlights:

Microsoft had planned to shut down much of product development for the month of February to analyze Windows software for bugs and train 8,500 engineers in trustworthy computing. "It took nearly twice that long, and cost Microsoft $100 million," Gates says in the letter.
The training was a first step in changing Microsoft's culture. "We have changed the way we design and develop software," Gates writes. Engineers had always focused on adding new features, often at the expense of quality. The new process flips that around quality, reliability and security come first, and new features can't be added that compromise that.

Previously announced P3P, which stands for Platform for Privacy Preferences, has been built into Explorer for Windows XP. P3P allows users "to set privacy levels to his or her needs," Gates writes.

Inside Microsoft, engineers are testing a system that combines passwords with smart cards plugged into a user's personal computer. It might become a model for authentication in future software and for Web sites.

Gates emphasizes that trustworthy computing will be Microsoft's priority "for the next decade."
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Chronicle of Higher Education
Survey Finds That Students Use the Web but Recognize Its Limitations
By SCOTT CARLSON

A nonprofit library organization has released a report of a survey that says that most college students start their research on commercial search engines, but they're not satisfied with the information they find there.

OCLC Online Computer Library Center surveyed 1,050 college students ages 18 to 24 -- more than half of whom were seniors and juniors -- and from every part of the country.

The report, titled "OCLC White Paper on the Information Habits of College Students," says that almost 80 percent of the surveyed students use Internet search engines for "every" assignment or "most" assignments. That's far more than those who glean information from their library Web portals or their class Web sites, each of which comprised about 50 percent of the respondents.

Nearly two-thirds of the respondents said they "strongly feel they know best what information to accept from the Web." Half of the respondents said that the information on the Web was not sufficient for their assignments, and less than two-thirds of the respondents said that the Internet doesn't offer a sufficiently wide range of resources for their class work.

"It's clear that students are beginning their course research on the Web, and often that means that they are starting somewhere outside of the library portals," says Chip Nilges, director of new-product planning for OCLC. "The lesson I took from it was, they're driven by convenience, and they're trained in brands -- and Google is a brand, Yahoo is a brand. They know the library has a lot of the information they need. They just want to marry the value they find in the library with the value they find in these information sites."

Mr. Nilges says his center conducted the study, which has a sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, as part of a plan to look for ways to help libraries raise their visibility on the Web. One part of this plan has been OCLC's link to online used-book catalogs. (See an article from The Chronicle, May 31.)

He adds that OCLC and member libraries are looking for opportunities to "raise their visibility on parts of the Web where students are looking for information and offer their services there."

Mark Y. Herring, a librarian at Winthrop University who has written about the Internet and library research, says that although the study concludes that students aren't satisfied with the information they find on the Web, his experience has been different. Students are much more willing to use a Web-based resource than a paper resource, even if the paper resource is more complete, he says.

"The Internet in many ways is the triumph of narcissism," Mr. Herring says. "Anybody can put anything up, so you have a real danger of students doing a search on the Internet and getting the Unabomber's rantings about technology and using that in a paper as if they are the same as Neil Postman's [scholarly writings]. That's the problem -- students don't see the difference in that."

On that note, the OCLC study also pointed to some disturbing perceptions about the interaction between advertising and information on the Web. Although most of the respondents were bothered at least a little by Web advertising, almost 60 percent of students said there is no difference in the quality of information from commercial Web sites and ad-free Web sites. Only one in five students thought that ad-free Web sites have more reliable information.

"That means they don't see the difference between proprietary databases and free information on the Internet," Mr. Herring says. Information on ad-free, proprietary databases often comes from authoritative, vetted sources, he says, while free information on the Internet is less reliable.

Mr. Herring says that the study points to an area of potential improvement for libraries and librarians. The study says that when students need help finding information on the Web, more than 60 percent of them will first go to a friend. More than a third will go to professors or teaching assistants. Only a fifth of them will go to a librarian.

"Librarians are much to blame for this," Mr. Herring says. "Unfortunately, many of us have met the stereotypically dour librarian who can't get up or can't be bothered. Consequently, students are turned off by that. I'm hoping that this paper will spark a greater interest and energy on the part of librarians to do their jobs better and use the Internet better."

The "OCLC White Paper on the Information Habits of College Students" is available online at the organization's Web site. It can be viewed using Adobe Acrobat Reader, available free.
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Washington Post
ACLU Sues Arizona Corrections Dept. Over Online Postings


washingtonpost.com
Thursday, July 18, 2002; 4:41 PM


The American Civil Liberties Union today filed a lawsuit against the Arizona Department of Corrections, challenging a state law that bans information on its prisoners from being posted on the Internet. Filed in a federal court on behalf of anti-death penalty advocacy groups, the lawsuit defends the groups' rights to publish information on Arizona death row inmates online. The ACLU added that the law basically bars prisoners from sending out information to be posted on the Internet. Corrections officials recently threatened criminal prosecution against prisoners who submitted information for publication on the Web sites Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty, Stop Prison Rape and Citizens United for Alternatives.
-- Robert MacMillan (07/18/02)
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USA Today
Ask Jeeves, Google team up

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) Hoping to end its history of losses, Ask Jeeves said its online search engines will start listing advertising-driven results provided by its more popular rival, Google, in a deal expected to generate sales of at least $100 million during the next three years. The partnership represents Google's latest victory in an intensifying battle with Overture Services, which pioneered a concept that auctions off a section of most Internet search engines to the highest bidder.


Pasadena-based Overture has been distributing ad-driven results to Emeryville-based Ask Jeeves since June 2001.

By switching to Google's service Sept. 3, Ask Jeeves expects its revenue from paid listings to double between the third and fourth quarters of this year, said Skip Battle, the Emeryville-based company's chief executive.

Ask Jeeves anticipates earnings of $1 million on $21 million in revenue during the fourth quarter, Battle said. Although it has developed one of the Web's best-known brands, Ask Jeeves has lost $694 million since its inception, including a second-quarter loss of $8.5 million announced Thursday.

The estimated $100 million value of the contract is based on traffic trends at Ask Jeeves' main search sites, ask.com and teoma.com. Neither Ask Jeeves nor Google executives would provide specifics on how the revenue will be divided except to say most of the money will go to Ask Jeeves.

Overture downplayed the loss of the Ask Jeeves contract, the latest in a series of blows delivered by Mountain View-based Google.

"We are still winning more deals than we are losing and I think we are winning all the right ones," said Overture CEO Ted Meisel.

Overture plans to raise its profit estimate for the remainder of this year when it reports its second-quarter results next week, Meisel said. The company is expected to earn $1.07 per share this year, including a second-quarter profit of 25 cents, based on the consensus estimate of analysts polled by Thomson Financial/First Call.

Widely regarded as the kingpin of searches conducted with objective formulas, Google has aggressively been pursuing a bigger piece of the advertising pie. Earlier this year, Google supplanted Overture in high-profile contracts with AOL and EarthLink

"We would like to have everyone as a customer," said Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
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USA Today
Abortion activist sued for cybersquatting

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) Some of the most-high profile consumer and media companies in the nation are suing a South St. Paul man to stop him from using their trademarks to direct people on the Internet to anti-abortion Web sites. The joint lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis on Thursday set up a fight over the rights of companies to protect valuable trademarks vs. the right to free speech.The Washington Post, Coca-Cola, McDonald's and PepsiCo joined in the lawsuit against William S. Purdy Sr., a former railroad engineer and longtime abortion opponent.


The suit accuses Purdy of cybersquatting a practice in which someone exploits a name or trademark by registering and using Internet domain names that are identical or confusingly similar to the famous ones.

Purdy registered a series of domain names, such as MyCoca-Cola.com, MyMcDonalds.com, MyPepsi.org and washington postsays.com. When a person enters those names in his computer Web browser, the domain redirects the person's computer to anti-abortion Web sites with graphic pictures of aborted fetuses.

Several news organizations, including the Star Tribune of Minneapolis, the Chicago Tribune and USA TODAY, have sent Purdy cease-and-desist letters asking that he stop using Internet domain names that could be thought to belong to them.

He said his primary "target" was the Washington Post "because of their rabidly pro-choice editorial agenda. My Number 2 target is the Star Tribune, for the same reason."

He chose the food companies because they are large, well-known institutions that he believes should take a stance on abortion.

But "in my mind, this is not an issue of abortion," Purdy said. "This is an issue of free speech. If it was about banning guns or gay rights, would there be a problem? The question is do I have the right to make a statement through a domain name, or a combination of a domain name and Web site?"

The companies suing Purdy contend that the 52-year-old grandfather and unnamed others "have been systematically hijacking the famous trademarks of renowned food and beverage products companies and prominent news organizations to gain publicity and divert traffic to anti-abortion Web sites."

The five companies in the lawsuit joined forces after they discovered they were all hit about the same time early this month, said Kari Bjorhus, a Coca Cola representative.

"It's rare that you see someone abusing so many trademarks," she said.

Purdy said he registered the domain names as a religious and political statement to draw attention to abortion. He said he has no ties to the anti-abortion Web sites.

Purdy denied he was infringing on the famous trademarks. "I'm not in competition with them, and I'm not trying to trade off their names. I'm simply saying 'MyMcDonalds Bill Purdy's McDonalds knows abortion is murder,'" he said.

Purdy has tangled with companies over Internet issues before. Five years ago, he started a Web site criticizing his former employer, Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway.

A federal judge ruled in 2000 that he had to relinquish two domain names with similar names to the railroad's domain.
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USA Today
Glimmers of life after Napster

By Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY

Ask Sean Ryan about paid online music subscriptions, and he'll tell you that viable Napster alternatives didn't really begin until last week. "Before then, we had an incomplete service," says Ryan, CEO of Listen.com.

His Rhapsody service, which offers music fans the chance to listen to thousands of songs at will for a flat monthly fee, got a jump last week on online competitors Pressplay and RealOne MusicPass both backed by major record companies. Rhapsody became the first service to sign deals with all five major labels, adding such artists as Eminem, Sting and Sheryl Crow from Universal Music to its mix.

"By the end of the month, we'll have 200,000 songs available," says Ryan, compared with about 100,000 each on Pressplay, backed by Sony and Universal, and MusicPass, run by EMI, BMG and Warner.

Independent Listen leads, for now, in the race to become the great celestial jukebox that could someday make the universe of music available anywhere, anytime, at the click of a mouse.

Listen's Universal deal capped a big two-week period for online music. The major labels, which formerly appeared to be lethargic in the wake of falling CD sales (down 4% in 2001) and skyrocketing file-sharing popularity (Kazaa's registered users number 100 million), finally seem to be accepting the inevitability of Web-based services.

Unlike such pirate services as Kazaa and Morpheus, Listen is legal and pays artists for their work. And customers willing to pay the $9.95 a month for unlimited listening (though no downloading or CD burning) also get information on songs and artists, album art and referral recommendations.

"The trend line from the labels now is more music, at a lower cost, with fewer restrictions," says Ryan.

In other news: Universal last week said that the eMusic download subscription service would offer 1,000 albums from Universal's back catalog for MP3 download, tracks that can then be transferred to portable devices and burned to CD. While there are no current hits in the mix, the deal is significant because Universal and other labels generally have refused to allow their music online in anything but a protected file format, which prevents transferring to CD or digital portables.

And Warner Music said subscribers to another subscription service, Full Audio's MusicNow, would be able to pay a per-song charge on top of the monthly $9.95 to $14.95 fee to burn songs to CD beginning in the fall. The price hasn't been announced, but Full Audio has deals with four of the five labels.

The announcements are "an implicit acknowledgment that in the face of declining CD sales, they have to start doing business in a different way," says Raymond James analyst Phil Leigh.

In giving in to the ubiquity of the MP3 Net music format, Universal chose older catalog titles, such as Stevie Wonder's Fullfilingness' First Finale and Eric Clapton's There's One in Every Crowd, to offer on eMusic. "They aren't as easy to find in the average record store," says Larry Kenswil of Universal, which, like eMusic, is a division of the Vivendi Universal empire. "We wanted to see how these would do online."

While millions of Internet users are installing Kazaa and other file-sharing programs on their PCs every day, few are signing up for the music services. Analysts say that since they premiered at the end of last year, MusicPass and Pressplay combined have collected only about 100,000 subscribers.

Universal's deal with Rhapsody is big for the moment, but "at this point the average consumer doesn't care who has what label, because they don't know who records for what label," says analyst P.J. McNealy with GartnerG2 research firm. "And they won't care until there's portability" that is, until songs can be easily recorded to CD and moved to portable devices.

Despite the ever-growing popularity of file-sharing services, Universal's Kenswil believes they can be beaten. "They are illegal, and, eventually, they will be put out of business," he says, and "people will realize the alternative methods are easier to use."
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USA Today
Institute draws on entertainment industry know-how in military training
Coming to an Army Near You
In Marina del Rey, the low-profile Institute for Creative Technology asks Hollywood types to concoct battle scenes to help the military train.
By DANA CALVO
TIMES STAFF WRITER

July 19 2002

Three big-name Hollywood talents huddle around a conference table and let the ideas fly.

"Apocalypse Now" co-writer John Milius sketches a soldier of the future with a Transformer-like weapon that doubles as a vehicle part.

David Ayer, who wrote "Training Day," suggests building sensors that link every weapon system in the country. Ron Cobb, the creature designer for "Star Wars," describes a personnel carrier with four independent steering wheels that could "whip around and is buffered with lots of shields."

This Hollywood brainstorming session will never produce something for the neighborhood megaplex. That's because it took place not on a studio lot but inside a nondescript Army think tank on a quiet street in Marina del Rey.

The Institute for Creative Technology is the country's only organization that draws on entertainment industry know-how to sharpen military training through futuristic games and simulation. The institute's Hollywood consultants also write story lines for virtual-reality military training videos--plots with swirling suspense and drama that aim to make a soldier's training more compelling.

Since it was founded in 1999, the institute has popped in and out of public view, vacillating between the military's need-to-know tradition of secrecy and Hollywood's need-to-dish culture. Most recently, it drew national notice when it asked screenwriters, producers and directors to generate terrorist scenarios in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Their ideas have been kept under wraps; one Army spokeswoman cited national security in declining to release them.

From the outside, the office building looks as forgettable as a 1970s bank. Inside is another story. The interiors were created by Paramount's Herman Zimmerman, who was in charge of production design for several "Star Trek" movies and TV series. The blond wood walls pitch toward the ceiling, a la the Starship Enterprise, and automatic pocket doors pull apart down the middle and close back up again with that unmistakable shush.

While the institute has Hollywood and military consultants on retainer, there are 45 full-time scientists, researchers and administrators who work in offices equipped with bunk beds.

"They bring in people with diverse backgrounds: artificial intelligence, video game people, social research people," Ayer said. "It's like the most amazing dinner party."

This "party" costs the Army $45 million in a five-year contract, and millions more come from other military branches. Hollywood consultants are paid anywhere from $500 to $1,000 a day, although most work only a few days a month.

"It's decent pay," Ayer said, "but it's not Hollywood scriptwriting pay."

In all, Ayer and his fellow out-of-the-box thinkers pull about $1 million a year from ICT's budget. But the money moves both ways between the Pentagon and Hollywood. Paramount pledged $600,000 for a virtual-reality theater called ALTSim (Advanced Leadership Training Simulation); the studio can repackage elements of the technology into commercial games. And the institute already has received most of the $3.3 million promised for a game project by game developer Pandemic Studios and Sony Pictures Imageworks, one of the leading digital labs in the country.

Ties to USC

and Hollywood

The institute is affiliated with USC, which has provided up to $2 million in graphics technology and dozens of student interns during the summer. The Army's other futuristic university-affiliated research center is the Institute for Advanced Technology, founded at the University of Texas at Austin in 1994 with a five-year contract to study lethality and weaponry. While the Texas institution relies on medical, science and arms experts, much of ICT's expertise comes straight from Hollywood.

"It says a lot about our military that they don't feel sufficiently comfortable thinking out of the box and they have to go outside of themselves for that advice," said Christopher Hellman, senior analyst at the Center for Defense Initiatives, a nonprofit, independent think tank in Washington, D.C. "They need someone without that baggage to think almost whimsically about their structure."

The premise for this type of collaboration is not new; the military and Hollywood have long helped each other, most recently with extensive technical support from the Pentagon on military-themed movies like "Black Hawk Down," "Behind Enemy Lines" and "The Sum of All Fears." And just last week, the head of research and development at Walt Disney Co. announced he was leaving to head all research at the Pentagon's National Security Agency.

The Army keeps tabs on ICT through daily e-mails with its executive staff and extensive monthly reports. Many of its Hollywood consultants say the institute provides welcome distance from the entertainment industry's relentless emphasis on generating commercial hits.

"I don't find the film entertainment world that liberating. It's pretty formulaic," said onetime Hollywood producer and writer Jim Korris, who serves as ICT's creative director. "Entertainment companies don't reward innovation."

Some view the institute with suspicion, envisioning something out of the 1997 movie comedy "Wag the Dog," in which the White House recruited Hollywood's best spin doctors and a few technical wizards to stage a phony war to squelch news of the president's mistress.

"There is a power elite, and it's Hollywood-Washington-Pentagon," said James Der Derian, author of "Virtuous War: Mapping the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment Network" (2001). "They created this ICT to create scenarios for the future of war, but what Hollywood gets out of it, of course, is whiz-bang technologies."

A. Michael Andrews II, the Army's chief scientist and the institute's founder, said one of its finest hours came after last fall's terrorist attacks.

"Since we had such a very unusual action against the United States, I thought it might be worthwhile to look outside our normal way of thinking about the problem," Andrews said. He asked ICT to corral entertainment industry volunteers who could dream up terrorist plot lines in hopes they might expose a weakness in the real-life anti-terrorism network.

This panel of about 30 Hollywood volunteers, some of whom were already institute consultants, met during two evenings in October, creating terrorist "characters" and then following the story lines through. They wanted to know what tools were available to the soldiers who would be exploring unlit caves. They also wanted to know what was being done to deter the hypothetical terrorist characters.

"It was ad hoc; a number of people asked to participate for a limited period of time," said David Engelbach, a former writer for the "MacGyver" TV series. Engelbach, like several other writers contacted for this story, declined to discuss his contributions, saying he had been asked by the Pentagon to keep his ideas confidential.

Cobb, the conceptual set designer for sci-fi movies such as "Star Wars" and "Aliens," said the sessions proved Hollywood's dreamers could collaborate with the Pentagon's heavyweights. "I think we impressed the military, who probably thought we were all flakes."

Military Training

as Entertainment

ICT began, as most Hollywood projects do, with a "meeting on the lot." It was 1999, and the lot was Paramount.

Andrews, who has a doctorate in electrical engineering, arrived with a picture of a bridge arching between the Pentagon and the Hollywood sign. To Korris, accustomed to high-tech gadgets and slick presentations, it looked both clumsy and endearing.

Andrews held up his paper-and-glue visual aid and explained that he wanted to immerse soldiers in training that would be as convincing as silver-screen entertainment. He wanted the soldier to feel, smell and react in real time to the scenario.

"The military had very accurate, big training exercises, but it wasn't entertaining," Korris said. "That's a problem for the young recruits. Andrews wanted to come up with training technologies that might be more interesting."

At its opening ceremony at the Marina del Rey offices on Sept. 26, 2000, the audience was packed with top military brass as well as Hollywood's chief lobbyist, Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Assn. of America. Within a few months, ICT had attracted an array of consultants who don't fit neatly into Hollywood's left-leaning image.

Ayer spent two years in the Navy as a sonar man aboard a nuclear submarine. Cobb fought in the Vietnam War. And Milius is a proud hawk.

"They haven't sent me to Afghanistan," Milius said, "but I'm waiting."

Other Hollywood consultants at ICT include Paul De Meo, co-writer of "The Rocketeer," and veteran director Randal Kleiser, whose credits stretch back to "Grease" and "The Blue Lagoon."

They are overseen by Executive Director Richard Lindheim, the former executive vice president of Paramount Television Group. Korris, the creative director, is a former producer at Ron Howard's production company, Imagine, and a longtime writer for episodic television shows such as "Murder, She Wrote," "Simon & Simon" and "Miami Vice."

But David Williams, vice president of policy for the watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste, is not impressed with the Tinseltown resumes.

Williams wonders how the Pentagon could justify spending a million dollars a year on Hollywood consultants.

"Aren't there a few out-of-work writers who could do it for cheaper? A million dollars in the scheme of the federal budget isn't much, but a million dollars is still a million dollars," he said. "A few years ago, the Pentagon was working on caffeinated gum, and I put this in the same category."
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BBC
Why e-voting is a bad idea
Robin Cook, Leader of the House of Commons and the man charged with dragging Britain's democratic process into the 21st Century, has been thinking a lot about the internet lately.
The result is a Green Paper - an official government consultation document - grandly entitled In The Service Of Democracy. It outlines ways in which the net could be used to improve political life in this country.

The paper is full of interesting and worthwhile ideas and proposals, from new ways to ensure that MPs are responsive to local interests and accountable to their electorate, through commitments to put official information online.

The goal is not to find ways to replace our representative democracy with something that lets us all vote online for the laws we want or to alter the existing constitutional settlement in any way.

Instead, the government is looking for ways in which new technologies, specifically the net but including mobile phones and digital television, can make democracy "more real and relevant in everyday life".

Air of unreality

For the government, the two strands that make up e-democracy are ways to enhance participation (e-participation) and electronic voting (e-voting).

Few people could possibly object to proposals which will improve policy-making by using the internet to promote genuine consultation and ensuring that those who wish to state their views are listened to and have a chance to make a difference.

There is little merit in the current system where key decisions are made in secret and foisted on us by an over-powerful executive, and provided that the online forums are truly open and responsive, this seems to have a lot to offer.


Despite this, there is an air of unreality about the paper as a whole, a sense that it has been written by well-meaning people who do not actually know very much about the real world or people's daily lives.

There is an underlying assumption, never clearly stated, that people are keen to take part in consultation and to engage with the democratic system and that it is only the barriers placed in their way that stop them.

This optimism may be misplaced. The reason people engage in single-issue campaigns is not just that they only care about the environment or about genetically modified crops, but because local and national government has lost legitimacy.

The people want an alternative, not just new ways to engage with an old and discredited system.

It is not at all clear how putting draft bills online or forcing councils to conduct internet referenda will really change this.

The underlying structures remain the same, and people are losing faith in them.

Frightening and indefensible

Whatever my reservations about e-participation, they are nothing compared to my annoyance that plans to introduce e-voting are still being seriously discussed.

Over 20 pages, the document describes how remote online voting can be a tool for revitalising democracy by encouraging greater voter turnout, but nowhere does it seriously address the joint issues of security and trust.

The introduction promises that e-voting will not be adopted until it is "as least as secure as existing electoral practice, and when people trust it".

But the main part of the document then goes on to describe the investment and changes to the network that must be made to support it, and outlines a timetable that could give us online voting for the first general election after 2006.

This is both frightening and indefensible. Even if we have some sort of trusted computing architecture and network in place by then, the gains to be made by any organisation that could fix the results of a UK general election are so great that almost any amount of effort could be justified.

If we all use trusted processors then why not set up a production line to manufacture your own hacked chips? It would only cost a few tens of millions of euros.

If all code has to be signed by some digital authority, why not spend a few million bribing the senior staff?

I do not think it is possible to design an e-voting system that can be guaranteed secure against a concerted and well-funded attack.

I am concerned that this will happen, or worse, that it will be suspected and that the results of an election will be cast into doubt.

Stand up and be counted

This is just my view, and although I am willing to stand up and shout about it, others may feel differently.

Perhaps the benefit of having a 99% turnout in a general election outweighs the risk that the whole process will be subverted by the Russian Mafia or the CIA.

Fortunately there is a chance to influence the government's thinking on this issue. The paper positively begs for people to pass comment on it.

Almost every page has a selection of consultation issues, and two pages of the introduction are given up to telling us how to get in touch.

There is even an online discussion, hosted by the UK Online Citizen Space and managed by the Hansard Society.

This is a great opportunity for anyone who thinks seriously about the net and the issues it raises for our democracy to share their views.

I'll be posting some of my comments over the next couple of days, as a concerned citizen, and I hope many other people will do too.
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Federal Computer Week
Info sharing at heart of strategy The single information technology business plan outlined in the long-awaited national strategy for homeland security is a critical step toward making technology really work toward the national mission, according to administration officials.

The national strategy released by President Bush in a Rose Garden ceremony July 16 outlines many technology initiatives to support the structure of the administration's proposed Homeland Security Department.

But it also sets out a single business plan for technology that's focused on information sharing and is vitally important to moving past the boundaries in place at the federal, state and local levels, said Steve Cooper, senior director of information integration and chief information officer at the Homeland Security Office.

"Unless there is an overall charter or business strategy...then the resulting information technology enablement of whatever the strategy is doesn't look beyond the organizational boundaries," he said.

The national strategy creates six "critical mission areas" to be addressed by the four divisions of the proposed department. The six areas are:

* Intelligence and warning.

* Border and transportation security.

* Domestic counterterrorism.

* Protecting critical infrastructures.

* Defending against catastrophic terrorism.

* Emergency preparedness and response.

Each area has five to 12 specific initiatives building on and organizing work already under way at the federal, state and local levels. Many initiatives focus on how technology can support homeland security efforts, Cooper said, and they build on the concept championed by the Office of Management and Budget in its e-government initiatives -- collect information once and use it many times at many different agencies.

The key to this effort is identifying and maintaining databases of record, which will collect and provide access to information for multiple agencies. This is an area of the business plan that will likely cause a lot of "interesting" discussion, Cooper said.

Another wide-ranging initiative is the directive to "secure cyberspace." The national strategy to specifically address cybersecurity will be released in September, said Howard Schmidt, vice chairman of the federal Critical Infrastructure Protection Board. Federal officials have been working for more than a year on this strategy, an effort renewed last October under the Bush executive order creating the board.

White House officials will be asking for additional ideas and input from the government and the private sector on the strategy to be released in September, particularly regarding products and solutions to problems raised in the strategy, Schmidt said. Following that input, another version of the strategy will be released in January 2003.

In addition, the homeland security national strategy has two "foundations," crosscutting issues that impact every area of the strategy: coordinating science and technology research and developing information sharing systems. Two major initiatives in the latter area include creating central databases to supply trusted information and developing a dynamic homeland security information architecture.

Partnering with the private sector is a key feature of the strategy, which will mean calling on industry and academia for products, best practices and research, Cooper said.

The strategy also outlines many initiatives for the legislative branch, identifying areas where federal and state laws could be enhanced or created to better enable the government to fight terrorism.

Right now, ideas for legislative changes -- such as proposed exemptions to the Freedom of Information Act to promote information sharing with the private sector -- are in the evaluation phase, as officials try to determine whether the changes are needed and what the potential implications of the changes could be, Cooper said.
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Government Executive
House homeland bill adds tech position, blocks cybersecurity transfer

By William New, National Journal's Technology Daily


The version of a bill to establish a Homeland Security Department generated Thursday by the House committee overseeing the legislation's development includes several key provisions sought by the House Science Committee.

As amended by the House Select Homeland Security Committee, the draft bill, would add the position of undersecretary for science and technology and block the proposed transfer of the computer-security division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Sources noted that the early draft erroneously contained language on the NIST division's transfer.

The undersecretary would oversee federally funded research and development on homeland security. The new draft also would establish a cyber-security program under the department.

These provisions reflect changes made by the Science Committee. "We're very pleased," said David Goldston, chief of staff for that panel. "We feel at first blush that we got most of the things most important to us."

But the bill, proposed by Homeland Security Committee Chairman Dick Armey, R-Texas, does not match the Science Committee's preferred approach on cybersecurity provisions. Armey's measure fails to include language on standards for federal computer security that originated with Rep. Constance Morella, R-Md.

Another key provision would create a "clearinghouse" for homeland security technologies but does not provide details about it. The bill also contains a conditional exemption from liability for technology products provided for anti-terrorist activities.

The version of the bill circulated Thursday morning was considered a draft, with technical changes expected before the committee vote on Friday, according to an Armey spokesman.

The measure would establish an information-system security team to assist agencies with securing critical information systems. Also, an intelligence analysis center would be established within the department and be headed by an undersecretary. The center would coordinate with intelligence agencies to evaluate information and produce terrorism warnings and assessments.

Armey's bill would provide some limited business exemptions to the Freedom of Information Act. It also would establish a privacy officer in the department and require the secretary to establish procedures on information sharing that guarantee security, confidentiality and reliability of the information. The chairman's draft rejects a proposal for nationalizing driver's licenses and other identity cards.

The bill reflects the Bush administration's plan in giving the undersecretary for management responsibility for securing information technology and communications systems, and in creating the job of chief information officer to report directly to the secretary.
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MSNBC
Con artists use 'suckers list' database

Former fraud victims targeted by new scams

By Bob Sullivan
MSNBC

July 18 Telemarketing predators apparently have a great new source of leads: a database of victims who have recently been scammed. MSNBC.com has learned that Canadian-based criminals are calling recent scam victims around the United States, promising to get their money back for a fee. The telemarketers claim to be working on behalf of official agencies, such as the New York State Attorney General's Office or the Better Business Bureau. Already frustrated by the first victimization, some senior citizens are falling for the scam, officials say.
THEY WON'T STOP calling Mattie Patrick. She now gets two or three suspicious pitches a day.
The 72-year-old woman from Atlanta, Ga., lost $287 earlier this year to a fast-talking telemarketing company that tricked her into revealing her bank account information over the phone.
One theft like that is bad enough. But apparently falling for a trick like that has gotten Patrick and perhaps thousands of others on a so-called "sucker's list." The list is apparently being shared or sold among various underground telemarketing con artists. Now, Patrick is getting two or three calls a day from criminals trying to defraud her.
In fact, one continually offers to recover the $287 that was stolen for a price.
"I'm so sick of these folks I don't know what to do," she said.
This particularly cruel kind of con was uncovered by investigators at the New York State Consumer Protection Board, which operates a "Do Not Call" telemarketing registry. New York Gov. George Pataki signed a law in 2000 that put the agency in charge of the registry, which helps consumers avoid telemarketing calls. The agency also investigates potential fraud, and has discovered that consumer victims around the country have received calls with similar offers.
"It's true and very sad," said May Chao, chairperson and executive director of the board. "You'd think that they'd get hit once, and then be left alone."
Chao said the current flurry of scam calls is coming from a Canadian-based group that uses multiple names: among them are Teleguard, Telenetworx, and Smart America Services. But the callers always use the same phone number, 866-273-7227. For an address, they use a post office mailbox in upstate New York, near the Canadian border. The U.S. address helps deflect suspicion, but mail sent there is merely forwarded to an office in Montreal, according to Chao.
When MSNBC.com called Teleguard, an operator there defended the company's services
"We take them off the buyers list," he said, but wouldn't explain what that meant. "If and only if they have been frauded we get the money back." He couldn't explain how stolen funds were recovered, saying only "that's a different department." The operator refused to talk more, insisting that his supervisor would call back.
Later, Alexander London Tobin called to say he was director of operations for a company named Telenetworx. Tobin said Telenetworx has run several anti-telemarketing campaigns, using the names Teleguard and Smart American Services. He admitted a rogue employee made calls at one point posing as a government official, but said the employee was fired. He also conceded there have been customer complaints, but argued they were small compared to the number of customers the company serves.
"These situations than have occurred but are minimal compared to amount of members who are satisfied," Tobin said.
Telenetworx, he said, is actually based in Vermont, but uses a New York State address, and outsources customer service to operators in Montreal. Tobin, himself a Canadian, was in Montreal when he called.
He defended the company's claims it could recover stolen funds, suggesting Telenetworx employees regular help customers get fraudulent charges removed from their credit cards.
The Better Business Bureau of New York indicates on its Web site that in April it received two complaints about the firm. Tobin said the firm had cleared up those matters, but the Better Business Bureau indicates on its Web site that Teleguard did not respond to the complaints.

'ICON AMERICA'
The post office mailbox in New York has been used in other frauds, Chao said. In a bit of verbal irony, in another fraud complaint the company attached to that address is "Icon America."
Later, Alexander London Tobin called to say he was director of operations for a company named Telenetworx. Tobin said Telenetworx has run several anti-telemarketing campaigns, using the names Teleguard and Smart American Services. He admitted a rogue employee made calls at one point posing as a government official, but said the employee was fired. He also conceded there have been customer complaints, but argued they were small compared to the number of customers the company serves.
"These situations than have occurred but are minimal compared to amount of members who are satisfied," Tobin said.
Telenetworx, he said, is actually based in Vermont, but uses a New York State address, and outsources customer service to operators in Montreal. Tobin, himself a Canadian, was in Montreal when he called.
He defended the company's claims it could recover stolen funds, suggesting Telenetworx employees regular help customers get fraudulent charges removed from their credit cards.
The Better Business Bureau of New York indicates on its Web site that in April it received two complaints about the firm. Tobin said the firm had cleared up those matters, but the Better Business Bureau indicates on its Web site that Teleguard did not respond to the complaints.

'ICON AMERICA'
The post office mailbox in New York has been used in other frauds, Chao said. In a bit of verbal irony, in another fraud complaint the company attached to that address is "Icon America."
ELABORATE PITCH
When the group called Robert Kenesky, an 81-year-old from Sanborn, N.Y., the pitch was elaborate. Kenesky had recently lost money on a telemarketing scam involving an alleged travel discount package that never materialized.
"They called me and were telling me that the attorney general has money they collected that belongs to me," he said. "They want me to sign up for Teleguard, and I would get a check from the attorney general for what they had collected."
Kenesky, once bitten and now twice shy, hung up. But the group called back again, two weeks later. This time, they were ready for his skepticism. Knowing Kenesky's disbelief that the attorney general was involved, the operator put Kenesky on hold for one minute and staged a call transfer supposedly to an official inside the state office, who assured Kenesky that Teleguard was legitimate.
"This guy rattled on for a while, and then I said, 'Now wait a minute. If this is the attorney general's office, I know it takes longer than 1 minute to get through to you people," Kenesky said. He hung up again.
William Bamber, 41, of Mountain Home, Idaho got a similar call recently, in this case from Smart America Services. Bamber had lost about $600 in debit card fraud about six months ago. Again, the group said it represented the New York State Attorney General's Office. If he signed up for their services for a $379 fee, Bamber would immediately receive $500 from a emergency victim's fund, and he would eventually recover his lost $600. The complicated, fast-talking pitch also includes inclusion in a "do not call" list, which supposedly would prevent the victim from receiving telemarketing pitches. And the group was persistent.
"I just hung up on her," Bamber said. "But that's when a man called right back and said, 'I don't think you understood what she was trying to tell you.' "
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Sydney Morning Herald
Security experts join list of most-wanted migrants
July 16 2002
Next




Nathan Cochrane and Adam Turner look at who's hot and who's not among IT professionals.


In a post-September 11 world, security expertise is in short supply, as witnessed by the Federal Government's attempts to fast-track migration of computer security professionals.

In the annual 2002 migration occupations in-demand list (MODL), published by the departments of Immigration and Employment and Workplace Relations, a third of the computer professional jobs listed are in security fields. And for the first time, the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) certification is listed, alongside firewall and Internet security, Java security, and e-commerce security specialties.

The CISSP examination consists of 250 multiple-choice questions, covering topics such as access control systems, cryptography and security management practices.

It is is administered by the International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium (ISC2) and has been available for more than a decade.

Despite its reputation as a "high-calibre" qualification, there is currently little demand for CISSP certification in Australia, says security company eSign's chief technology officer Iain Waters.

"No one really knows about it - it's pretty insular to North America but it is a pretty high-calibre type of qualification to have," Waters says.

"Now it's on the list, I think you'll start to see that serious players in the market will start asking for it. It's got a rather extensive career-pathing capability."

The list of jobs on the MODL has shrunk to a dozen, from a high of 26 last year, mostly centred on big-ticket e-business implementations and operating systems expertise, and is expected to fall to just a handful in the next few weeks.

Since 1999, when only five specialties were listed, C++ programming, SAP and Java have proved most in demand, making it on to the list each year.

Peoplesoft, Java and SQL Server have been stalwarts each of the past three years. However, Visual Basic, Lotus Notes (often used in government), advanced Web design and Linux have fallen out of favour.

Cuts to the MODL come amid broader criticism of the Federal Government's skills-in-demand visa system.

Class 457 Business Long Stay temporary visas have the "potential to adversely affect work opportunities for Australian resident computer professionals", according to a report by Australian labour expert Bob Kinnaird.

Applications for class 457 visas do not face the same scrutiny as visa applications. Efforts were not made to establish if Australia's unemployed computer professionals could have filled the jobs taken by the 4500 to 6600 ICT workers on class 457 visas, says Kinnaird.
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News.com
Federal bill targets electronic waste


By Jonathan Skillings
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
July 19, 2002, 7:30 AM PT


Hoping to wake the country from its "e-waste nightmare," a U.S. congressman has introduced a bill intended to address the increasing volumes of obsolete computers.
The Computer Hazardous-Waste Infrastructure Program (CHIP) Act would require the Environmental Protection Agency to administer a grant program that would help set up computer recycling across the United States. The program would be funded by a fee of up to $10 on all retail sales of desktop and laptop PCs and computer monitors.

The bill, introduced Thursday by Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., is the first such legislation to appear at the federal level. A number of states, most notably California, have similar bills under consideration as their budgets tighten and the costs of collecting and handling discarded electronics grow.



Manufacturers, meanwhile, have been taking steps to stave off governmental action. The Electronic Industries Alliance, for instance, has been campaigning against the California bill, arguing that retail fees would scare away consumers and unfairly target certain companies. The trade group also has set up a grant program to study the disposal of household electronics.

And in recent months, PC makers including Dell Computer, Hewlett-Packard and IBM have unveiled their own recycling initiatives, as have retailers such as Best Buy and Staples. These efforts also include fees, but only at the end of a computer's useful life and only if its owner chooses to dispose of the device that way.

In proposing the legislation, Thompson cited the volume of computers entering the U.S. waste stream--41 million PCs this year, with 500 million that will need to be addressed by 2007. He also pointed to the potential for environmental harm from some of the materials that go into a computer, asserting that 70 percent of heavy metals such as lead and mercury in U.S. landfills comes from electronic waste.

"We can't afford to continue endangering our health and environment and filling our landfills by ignoring the problems created by computer waste," Thompson said in a statement. "Since our recycling programs cannot handle the vast amounts of waste, up to 80 percent of the e-waste is actually exported to Asia, where it ends up in riverbeds or is illegally and improperly disposed."

The bill would also require the EPA to study the quantities of computer waste being generated and to include statistics on export of the waste from the United States. The bill is expected to go to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
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Reuters
Floppy TV unfolding

First they went wider, then flatter, and now televisions are set to go floppy.
Roll-up, flexible televisions, akin to the melting watches of Salvador Dali's surreal landscapes, have become possible because of a glowing plastic compound perfected in the laboratories of Britain's Cambridge Display Technology (CDT).

`"You're effectively printing televisions," CDT Chief Executive David Fyfe said. "They can be printed onto thin plastic almost like paper."


Roll-up televisions will allow viewers of the future to flip their sets out of sight like projector screens and will come with a similar price tag to bulkier boxes.

The technology stems from the discovery in 1989 of the compound p-phenylenevinylene, which glows greeny-yellow when given an electric charge.

A little tweaking over the following decade produced compounds to emit blue and red light: The roll-up TV was born.

The market for light-emitting screens is expected to grow from $20 million to $25 million in 2000 to more than $3 billion by 2005, and CDT's light-emitting polymer screens are expected to grab a majority chunk of that.

"I think (commercial production) is very close now," said Fyfe, adding that the last bottleneck--finding a flexi-screen that protects the sensitive compounds from corrosion by oxygen and water vapor--had almost been overcome.

"Realistically, you will see roll-up displays around 2004 or 2005," he added.

"Just four weeks ago Philips demonstrated an all-plastic display--an incredible thing--a device only a fifty millionth of an inch thick,'' Fyfe said. "If you can get thin enough plastic, then you would indeed have a roll-up television."

The Japanese giants of television manufacturing, Sony, Hitachi and Toshiba, are leading the race to put the technology to use, but not far behind is the military, which envisions roll-up maps of the battlefield fed by overhead satellites.

"They're interested in every ounce that can be saved from a soldier's pack,'' Fyfe said. With the flick of a switch, the display could convert to infrared for covert night operations.

On the home front, TV watches, giant animated billboards and a new wave of roll-up battery rechargers are just some of the applications in the pipeline.

"I think we'll see a lot of innovation,'' Fyfe said. "People are talking about weaving displays into clothing. Will there ever be a mass market for that? I doubt it. But it will probably be seized on by someone."
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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