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Clips April 11 and 12, 2002
- To: "Ruchika Agrawal":;
- Subject: Clips April 11 and 12, 2002
- From: Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2002 10:54:31 -0400
Clips April 11 and 12, 2002
ARTICLES
Digital-Copyright Bill Inspires Flurry of Criticism
FDA Says Nicotine Lollipops Sold on Web Illegal
'GeekPAC' Takes On Microsoft, Hollywood, Tauzin-Dingell
Political Chat Becomes Barroom Brawl on the Web
Microsoft Releases Security Fix
RIAA Asks Congress For More Piracy Protection
Software Writers Patently Enraged
Seeking Profits, Internet Companies Alter Privacy Policy
Microsoft, I.B.M. and VeriSign to Cooperate on Web Security
3 databases will flag suspected terrorists
Europe elbows Internet content 'blocking'
'Fed CIO' urges state participation
RIAA Blasts Gateway's Digital Music Campaign
Microsoft Has Shelved Its Internet 'Persona' Service
Tibetan culture gets a tech boost
Study: More Chinese Hope to Learn, Work on Home PCs
Movies By the Mail
E-Mails Open Window on Wall St.
Too Many Unresolved Questions On ID Cards, Study Panel Says
Police Propose Rules for Video Surveillance In the District
Databases to flag suspected terrorists
Radio close to increased digital transmissions
NMCI forces Corps contingencies
Senators push Homeland for Cabinet
Official: More tech needed vs. terror
House passes Tech Corps bill
Army poised for Mannheim project
Virginia puts people behind portal
Can Technology Foil Hijackers?
The Bell Is Tolling for the Beeper
Groove to release new version of P2P software
Computer lifeline for refugees
Voice mail systems have few safeguards
Police Web site briefly redirects traffic to porn page
Kid-friendly domain clears hurdle
Study finds huge cost of online scams
Agencies need to coordinate homeland security research, senators say
**************
Reuters
Digital-Copyright Bill Inspires Flurry of Criticism
Tue Apr 9, 6:56 PM ET
By Andy Sullivan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A digital-copyright bill introduced last month has
inspired howls of protest from consumers and high-tech firms who say it could
slow technological advances and dictate how consumers listen to music or watch
videos at home.
Well-connected lobbyists and everyday users alike have flooded Congress with
faxes and e-mails over the last several weeks to lodge complaints against a
bill that would prevent new computers, CD players and other
consumer-electronics devices from playing unauthorized movies, music and other
digital media files.
Sen. Ernest Hollings' bill is backed by media firms such as The Walt Disney Co.
, who fear fast Internet connections and an array of digital devices such as
MP3 players and CD burners will encourage consumers to seek free copies of hit
singles and new movies.
The South Carolina Democrat has said he introduced the bill to encourage media
and technology firms to work together to stop digital piracy.
Instead, it has inspired a flurry of criticism.
A grass-roots group called DigitalConsumer.org, which did not exist a month
ago, claims to have signed up 24,000 members, who have sent off 80,000 faxes to
their elected representatives.
The Senate Judiciary Committee (news - web sites), which has also held hearings
on the issue, has received more than 3,500 comments criticizing the bill, a
spokeswoman said.
"We haven't received one e-mail in support of the Hollings bill," said
Judiciary Committee spokeswoman Mimi Devlin. "It seems like there's a
groundswell of support from regular users."
High-tech lobbying groups have weighed in as well, arguing that mandatory
copyright-protection technologies would hurt their ability to innovate, and
would encourage consumers to hold on to their older computers rather than buy
new models that restricted their activities.
TECH FIRMS WON'T BUDGE, HOLLYWOOD SAYS
In testimony before Hollings' Commerce and Science Committee last month, Disney
Chairman and CEO Michael Eisner accused technology firms like Intel Corp. of
profiting from digital piracy, and said they were not interested in working out
a way to stop the problem.
Technology firms did not want to testify in the hearing, did not offer input
while the bill was being drafted, and have offered plenty of criticism but
little helpful suggestions since, a Hollings aide said.
"They seem satisfied to try to attack it in the press rather than trying to
make it work," said Hollings spokesman Andy Davis.
Joe Krauss, head of the grassroots group DigitalConsumer.org, said his members
have offered plenty of constructive suggestions.
For example, the group has called for Congress to pass a law that would
specifically spell out consumers' "fair use" rights, such as the right to
record TV shows for later viewing, or transfer a CD to a portable MP3 player.
"Until you have a positive assertion of what consumers' rights are, that debate
is left in the hands of media companies' lawyers," said Krauss, who founded
Excite, the now-defunct online portal.
Media firms could also take a page from the anti-piracy playbook of software
companies, who concentrate on shutting down large, commercial piracy operations
rather than trying to control individual users, he said.
The Hollings bill also faces opposition from Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick
Leahy, whose Judiciary Committee handles copyright issues.
While the Commerce Committee has primary control over the bill, it will be
difficult to pass without the cooperation of Leahy and other Judiciary
Committee members, staffers from both committees said.
*****************
Reuters
FDA Says Nicotine Lollipops Sold on Web Illegal
Wed Apr 10, 7:03 PM ET
By Lisa Richwine
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Nicotine lollipops and lip balms sold by three Internet
pharmacies as aids (news - web sites) to quit smoking are illegal, U.S.
regulators said on Wednesday as they warned the firms to stop selling the
products.
The Food and Drug Administration (news - web sites) ruled the lollipops and lip
balms are unapproved drugs because they contain a type of nicotine that has not
passed safety and effectiveness tests for smoking cessation.
Two pharmacies said they halted sales immediately after receiving the FDA's
written warning Wednesday morning.
Pharmacists had asserted the right to sell the products at stores and over the
Internet under federal rules that permit them to make medicines easier to take,
a practice known as compounding.
The FDA determined that the lollipops and lip balms violated those rules
because some were being sold without a doctor's prescription. Also, the type of
nicotine typically used, nicotine salicylate, is not permitted in compounding.
It is different from the nicotine used in approved gums and patches that help
smokers quit.
Regulators also said the lollipops and lip balms did not have proper directions
for use and failed to carry adequate warnings against use by children, the FDA
said.
"Because they are candy products, there's certainly a risk of accidental use by
children. These products are of unknown safety and effectiveness and could be
potentially dangerous to small children," said David Horowitz, acting director
of the FDA drug division's compliance office.
'IMPORTANT PRECEDENT'
Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat who last week urged the FDA to stop
sales of nicotine lollipops, welcomed the FDA's action. "This is an important
precedent for further action involving nicotine and other unapproved products,"
Waxman said.
The FDA sent warning letters to Bird's Hill Pharmacy based in Needham,
Massachusetts; Ashland Drug of Ashland, Mississippi; and The Compounding
Pharmacy of Aurora, Illinois.
The FDA asked the firms to respond within 15 days. Failure to stop selling the
products could lead to further regulatory action, such as seizure or an
injunction.
Larry Frieders, owner of The Compounding Pharmacy, said he stopped selling the
lollipops and lip balms as soon as he received the FDA's warning on Wednesday
morning.
"I'm disappointed because I think the product we were making was helping
people," he said in an interview.
The lollipops, sold in flavors including watermelon and eggnog, are promoted as
a tasty way to give up cigarettes, or a means for smokers to get a nicotine fix
in places where they cannot light up a cigarette. Brand names include NicoPop
and Likatine.
Larry Melton, owner of Ashland Drug, said he had been filling up to 50 orders a
day since last week when the lollipops were publicized in news reports. He said
he stopped sales Wednesday.
Officials at Bird's Hill Pharmacy could not immediately be reached for comment.
******************
Newsbytes
'GeekPAC' Takes On Microsoft, Hollywood, Tauzin-Dingell
Two longtime Linux enthusiasts are calling on geeks everywhere to join an
ambitious new political action committee designed to blunt the lobbying might
of Hollywood, Microsoft and the Baby Bells.
Jeff Gerhardt, host of "The Linux Show," and Doc Searls, senior editor of Linux
Journal, are soliciting donations and volunteers to jump-start an advocacy
group called the American Open Technology Consortium, and a new political
action committee affectionately dubbed "GeekPAC."
Gerhardt and Searls hope to send a "dream team" of technologists representing
the grass-roots Internet and open-source communities to Capitol Hill to fight
legislation they say threatens to place the ownership of a cooperative effort -
the Internet - into in the hands of a very few companies.
"If you look at the regulations being offered, all of this stuff is turning the
Internet and technology as a whole into a content delivery mechanism for a
handful of companies," Gerhardt said. "We came to the conclusion that
everything we've done up to this point - the letter-writing and telephone
campaigns - none of that stuff compares to the kind of cash telecom companies
and Microsoft are capable of depositing in lawmakers' pockets."
The groups will attempt to educate lawmakers from the developer's viewpoint,
taking aim at such legislation as the Tauzin-Dingell broadband deregulation
bill, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and legislation offered by Senate
Commerce Committee Chairman Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, D-S.C., that would mandate
the inclusion of copy prevention technologies in all digital media devices.
Searls said the defining moment that drove his participation in the project was
the creation of the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel, a body appointed by
the U.S. Copyright Office that has proposed a royalty payment plan for
Webcasters.
"The entertainment industry is attempting to impose costs on Internet
broadcasting that presupposes there's already a business there, when there
hasn't even been an opportunity for businesses to emerge," Searls said. "That's
why we need as many people to organize themselves as possible around the issue
of protecting what we built, because geeks built the Net, not Microsoft, not
Disney."
Leaders of the PAC
The two are keeping mum about the makeup of the group's board of directors
until they can clear the legal hurdles of meshing a political action committee
with a non-profit organization.
But according to Gerhardt, the consortium will be led by "a list of very
recognizable people who have either fathered or fostered major sectors of
technology growth over the past 25 years."
"Once people see these names, there will be legitimacy behind our organization,
and we think the normal channels used within the tech community will
immediately come into play," he said.
Shortly after the board is announced, the consortium will conduct a
"whistle-stop bus tour" - a road show to shop their ideas to like-minded
advocates across the country - culminating in a "geek march" on Capitol Hill to
bring their cause to lawmakers face-to-face.
"BYOB"
In the meantime, the consortium's founders are plotting ways to raise cash. The
two founders say they need to raise $100,000 to pull off their first PR stunt,
and at least $250,000 to begin hiring staff for their lobbying effort in
Washington, D.C.
Gerhardt said he was initially concerned about the prospect of coaxing
donations from the open-source community, a group dedicated to the "free
exchange of ideas" with "free" being the operative term.
Yet, ever since news of the venture was leaked to Slashdot.org on Tuesday, the
two have been overwhelmed with offers of assistance and more than $10,000 in
funding.
The outpouring of support has altered the group's mission virtually overnight.
Gerhardt had previously estimated that GeekPAC would be a year or two away from
being able to make its voice heard through campaign contributions.
But at this rate, GeekPAC should have the funds to donate to key U.S. lawmakers
in this year's election cycle "in surprisingly high numbers," Gerhardt said.
"We're already a tenth of the way toward our official goal before we've even
started," Gerhardt said. "It turns out you can get people who are used to free
beer to buy their own beer, but you have to be righteous about what you?re
asking for."
******************
Reuters
Political Chat Becomes Barroom Brawl on the Web
Wed Apr 10,11:42 AM ET
By Daniel Sorid
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Finding an intelligent political discussion on the Web is
still a challenge. Despite the maturing of the Internet, juvenile vulgarity and
extremism are often the norm on many mainstream chat boards.
The Web's accessibility -- and the relative anonymity of the user behind the
computer keyboard -- makes the Internet a convenient place to vent hatred and
prejudice with impunity.
"The openness of these newsgroups has been their downfall," said Robert Wood, a
professor at Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey, who teaches a course on
sociology and the Internet.
"Many people, myself included, have deserted these parts of the Internet," he
said.
On the message boards of the popular Web site Yahoo.com (http://www.yahoo.com)
major world religions are routinely defiled, world leaders cursed and entire
peoples denounced in unpublishable ways. Ethnic stereotyping, and even calls
for mass slaughter, drown out the more thoughtful comments on Yahoo's message
board on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which can attract hundreds of
messages every hour.
The debate is perhaps a little more refined on some Usenet message boards, a
part of the Internet that was popular long before the Web. The boards are
easily browsable at Google (news - external web site) groups
(http://groups.google.com)
On one board about Israel, crude comments loaded with exclamation points and
strings of capital letters are sprinkled around some otherwise calmer postings.
But even these gentler comments tend to be no more than a few sentences.
AVOIDING THE BRAWL
Hope is not lost, however, for the eager online commentator. With a discerning
eye and a step away from mainstream message boards, thoughtful, if heated,
debates can be found.
Charlie Murtaugh, a 29-year-old biology researcher at Harvard University, keeps
clear of many big message boards when scanning the Web for conversation.
Instead, he turns to so-called Web logs, individually run Web sites that serve
as the personal publishing vehicle of the owner. Avoiding the mass audience of
the corporate-backed Web sites, Web logs (or blogs, as they are known) tend to
generate a more selective audience.
Murtaugh, for instance, may read some commentary on popular blogs run by
personalities such as free-lance writer Andrew Sullivan
(http://www.andrewsullivan.com), Reason magazine editor-at-large Virginia
Postrel (http://www.dynamist.com/scene.html), or law professor Glenn Reynolds
(http://www.instapundit.com).
He might then send them an e-mail response, or take the discussion further by
putting it on his own blog (http://charlesmurtaugh.blogspot.com).
The debate continues along these lines, as ideas cycle from one blog to others.
More about blogs can be found at blogger.com (http://www.blogger.com)
"The people who read the blogs tend to be relatively sophisticated," Murtaugh
said. "They're not stupid."
Ideally, the cycle is something of a meritocracy, where new blogs with
interesting ideas attract attention and are mentioned by more popular blogs.
Perhaps most importantly, blogs require accountability of opinions, with each
pundit putting his or her name behind every comment.
Sometimes the least likely Web sites end up hosting worthwhile political
discussions.
Nick Rivera, a technology supervisor at the applied physics department of
Columbia University in New York, turns to a British sports Web site,
redcafe.net (http://www.redcafe.net) for good political conversation.
"I find the level of conversation better in terms of politics even though it's
a sports board," Rivera said.
ACCOUNTABILITY THE KEY
Among Web sites that seek out public commentary, accountability stands as an
important goal. The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com), for instance, has a
set of hurdles for those wanting to discuss Middle East politics on its online
message boards.
Would-be participants of that message board must pre-register with a group
moderator. Even then, messages cannot be sent from free e-mail accounts, such
as Yahoo! or Hotmail, presumably because these accounts can be very hard to
link to an individual.
On Slashdot (http://www.slashdot.org), a technology news site that draws its
popularity from its active message boards, posters who fail to give a name or
nickname are identified as "Anonymous Coward."
On Plastic (http://www.plastic.com), a discussion site made up of some 26,000
contributors, writers are kept honest by a message rating system that makes
interesting comments easier to find.
Wood, the Rutgers professor, said some of the best debate comes via e-mail.
By signing up for an e-mail discussion group, known as a listserv, one can join
a moderated debate on virtually any topic. One place to sign up for listservs,
which have existed for more than two decades, is Topica (http://www.topica.com).
Yahoo also offers a similar service with its Yahoo Groups service
(http://groups.yahoo.com).
"In a sense, the saving grace of the Internet is that it is vast enough to
house a lot of bad along with the good," Wood said. "It is sad in some ways
that intelligent users have had to leave certain 'places' on the Internet, but
there are ample other exciting virtual places to be."
****************
Associated Press
Microsoft Releases Security Fix
Wed Apr 10, 1:00 PM ET
By ALLISON LINN, AP Business Writer
SEATTLE - Microsoft Corp. released a patch Wednesday to fix 10 newly discovered
security flaws in its Web server software, the most serious of which could let
a hacker take over someone else's server.
The flaws affect the last three versions of Microsoft's Internet Information
Server and Internet Information Services software, which are run on millions of
computers worldwide. Weaknesses in the same Microsoft software allowed the Code
Red and Nimda worms to spread across the Internet last year.
The most recent flaws, discovered by Microsoft and several security experts,
will not generally affect home computers.
The latest vulnerabilities were discovered as Microsoft undergoes an intensive
companywide campaign to stamp out security problems, an effort ordered by
chairman and chief software architect, Bill Gates (news - web sites).
Gates' plan, called "Trustworthy Computing," followed a series of embarrassing
security flaws, including a critical problem that surfaced soon after the
company released its latest version of Windows, called Windows XP (news - web
sites). Microsoft's critics had contended that the software giant had been
ignoring security weaknesses for far too long.
Since Gates announced his plan in January, Microsoft has asked nearly all of
its employees to undergo added security training. Developers have pored over
countless lines of code in search of flaws.
Lynn Terwoerds, a security program manager at Microsoft Security Response
Center, said the latest flaws would likely have been discovered with or without
the Trustworthy Computing initiative.
But she said the company has worked hard to improve the way it deals with
security problems in the past year.
"Security is an industrywide issue," she said. "I understand that there is a
lot of focus on us, but when you take a look at the past year there's also been
an evolution in terms of what we do."
****************
Newsbytes
RIAA Asks Congress For More Piracy Protection
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) this week urged a powerful
House panel to focus more intently on combating digital music piracy.
"Digital music piracy is the most serious problem affecting digital music and
the music industry; and it has implications with regard to most of the other
issues and proposals being considered," RIAA President Hillary Rosen wrote in a
letter to the House Judiciary Committee.
In the letter, Rosen contends that Internet-based music piracy is causing
"serious damage to those who make and market music." Rosen goes on to link
escalating music piracy to a 10 percent drop in domestic record sales in 2001.
Although Rosen does not call for direct federal intervention in the letter, she
does call on technology companies to work with copyright holders to develop
"cooperative technological solutions" for combating piracy.
"The recording industry does not favor government intervention in a marketplace
that is working, and we do not favor the unwarranted regulation of technology,"
Rosen wrote. "The private sector should be given every reasonable opportunity
to adopt appropriate technological solutions."
Legislation currently pending before the Senate Commerce Committee would
require computer makers and other technology companies to build anti-piracy
features into their products.
Text of Rosen's letter is at http://www.riaa.com .
****************
Wired News
Software Writers Patently Enraged
Infuriated by a patent they claim is indicative of a "festering problem" in the
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, software developers are calling for an
overhaul of the entire patent approval process, at least as it pertains to
software.
Patent 6,185,681, which sparked the protest, covers methods of encrypting and
decrypting documents.
The patent was filed in 1998 and granted in February 2001, but came to
developers' attention late last month when lawyers for Maz Technologies, the
patent holder, contacted software firms PC Dynamics and Envoy Data and
requested licensing fees for what Maz believes is unauthorized usage of its
encryption technology.
More than a dozen security software developers came forward this week,
insisting the technology referred to in Maz's patent was known and widely used
before the patent was filed, and said they will fight to have the patent
overturned.
Some also said that if companies feel compelled to patent software, the patent
proposal should be reviewed by an independent board of programmers and industry
experts, instead of the Patent and Trademark Office's (PTO) examiners.
"It's too easy to put together a fancy application and confuse examiners who
are not expert programmers," Peter Avritch, president of PC Dynamics, said.
"How can they really know what is novel and what is not?"
But Maz president Chris Mahne said his company's patent covers unique,
company-developed technology.
"I doubt that those who are upset about the patent have even read the patent's
text," Mahne said. "It refers to very specific ways of encrypting and
decrypting documents, which we developed in answer to our clients' requests."
Patent-protestors said they had read the full text of the patent and still
don't understand how it could have been approved.
PTO spokeswoman Brigid Quinn said patent law dictates that an applicant must be
granted a patent unless the PTO finds the invention is not new, is "obvious,"
isn't useful or isn't fully explained in the patent application's
documentation.
Quinn said before patents are approved, an examiner who is skilled both in the
technology being reviewed and in patent law searches for "prior art," previous
references to ideas outlined in the proposed patent.
Examiners search in PTO databases containing information on the 6.4 million
U.S. patents that have been issued since 1790 and about an equal number of
foreign patents, mostly Japanese and European -- roughly 85-90 percent of all
of the world's patents. They also have access to over 1,000 commercial
databases, Quinn said.
"It's hard to imagine how (Maz's) patent got approved," Matt Blaze, a
cryptography research scientist at AT&T Labs, said. "Transparent, automatic
file encryption has been widely known and published, even taught to students,
for at least a decade. In fact, I described many of the techniques claimed in
this patent in a published paper on the CFS encrypting file system back in 1993
-- five years ahead of the Maz patent application."
Phil Zimmermann, creator of PGP encryption software, added, "This patent
illustrates a festering problem at the PTO with how patents are issued."
Sources familiar with the PTO said the patent approval system does not always
work as well as it should.
Intellectual property attorney Michael Jacobs said there are many problems with
PTO processes, including the strict standards examiners must apply when
rejecting patent claims.
"Basically, they have to prove that a claimed invention is obvious and cannot
rely on their knowledge and experience, and certainly not their intuition,"
Jacobs said.
Bruce Sunstein, an attorney who specializes in patent law, said Congress has
"developed a nasty habit of diverting revenue raised by PTO fees and using (it)
for other purposes than PTO funding," making it difficult to pay competitive
salaries to examiners.
"By and large, the PTO does rather well considering the circumstances,"
Sunstein said. "But there are numerous challenges that have to be met to assure
that a patent is well examined, and sometimes those challenges are not met."
PC Dynamics' Avritch said he hopes to convince Maz to drop the licensing fee
request.
"But I would also like the PTO to see how important it is to find a solution to
this problem," Avritch said. "I know first hand, twice over, that people seem
to have no problem getting bad patents."
In 1994, PC Dynamics was hit with a patent suit from a company that claimed
rights to nearly all advertising or corporate logos used in software products.
The PTO later invalidated that patent, but Avritch said his legal costs were
considerable.
Quinn said if substantial questions are raised about a patent's validity, the
agency will consider re-examining the patent.
Since the re-examination procedure was instituted in 1981, the PTO has received
6,166 requests for re-examination and has granted 5,403 of the requests. In 64
percent of the re-examination cases, problems were found with the patent.
Maz's Mahne is convinced his company's patent will stand up to review.
Maz also plans to contact other companies with requests for licensing fees and
will pursue claims in court if companies do not agree to pay, Mahne said.
"We have worked hard to develop our intellectual property. Our patent is the
only thing that protects this hard work," Mahne said. "The patent system was
developed to protect innovation and invention."
*******************
New York Times
Seeking Profits, Internet Companies Alter Privacy Policy
Pressed for profits, Internet companies are increasingly selling access to
their users' postal mail addresses and telephone numbers, in addition to
flooding their e-mail boxes with junk mail.
Yahoo (news/quote), the vast Internet portal, just changed its privacy policy
to make it clear that it has the right to send mail and make sales calls to
tens of millions of its registered users. And it has given itself permission to
send users e-mail marketing messages on behalf of its own growing family of
services, even if those users had previously asked not to receive any marketing
from Yahoo. Users have 60 days to go to a page on Yahoo's Web site where they
can record a choice not to receive telephone, postal or e-mail messages in
various categories.
Similarly, when Excite, another big Internet portal, was sold in bankruptcy
court late last year, the new owner asked Excite users to accept a privacy
policy that explicitly allows it to rent their names and phone numbers to
marketing companies. (Those users, too, could check a box on the site to opt
out of such programs, if they had not already done so on the old Excite.)
The sites say that direct marketing to their users, both by e-mail and by older
means, is an important source of revenue that can help make up for the rapid
decline in sales of online advertising.
"It has been our orientation from the beginning to be straightforward with the
user," said Bill Daugherty, the co-chief executive of the Excite Network. "They
are getting free content and utility that is unparalleled, and in return we
will be marketing products to them."
But even many marketing experts say that the risk to the reputations of these
companies may outweigh any revenue they may receive.
"What Yahoo has done is unconscionable," said Seth Godin, Yahoo's former vice
president for direct marketing. "It's a bad thing, and it's bad for business.
They would be better off sending offers to a million people who said they want
to receive a coupon each day than to send them to 10 million people and worry
about whether you have offended them by finally going too far." While at Yahoo,
Mr. Godin published "Permission Marketing" (Simon & Schuster, 1999), which
argued that marketing messages should be sent only to people who ask to see
them.
Both Yahoo and Excite say they are not loosening their privacy policies, just
making them more explicit. In the past, both companies simply asked users to
check a box authorizing the Web sites to "contact" them with marketing
messages. The sites assert that such wording did not rule out mail and
telephone contacts in addition to e-mail messages.
Privacy experts say such a legalistic interpretation of the privacy policy is
at best misleading because, in practice, almost all contact from the sites has
been by e-mail. "It's unfair," said Mark Rotenberg, executive director of the
Electronic Privacy Information Center. "People thought they were going to get
e-mail solicitations. They didn't expect that their dealings with Yahoo would
cause them to receive phone calls."
Both Yahoo and Excite say they have not actually used users' phone numbers for
any marketing programs so far and have made relatively few mailings to members.
Other sites have been much more liberal in renting customer names. America
Online, the biggest Internet service, has long rented customer addresses, and
it also calls users to promote its services and those of its business partners.
Lycos, the big Internet portal, and CNET's ZDNet, a technology site, also rent
users' names through mailing-list brokers.
For example, Direct Media, a mailing list broker in Greenwich, Conn., offers
access to 2.9 million Lycos users at a cost of $125 per thousand names for a
single mailing. (An extra $15 per thousand lets marketers select users showing
an interest in a topic like cats or gambling.) Advertisers typically pay for
the right to send a single mailing or make a single phone call to a name on a
list they rent; they do not own the information outright.
Stephen J. Killeen, the United States president of Terra Lycos (news/quote),
the parent of the Lycos portal, said mailing list rentals were a small but
growing part of its marketing revenue. It does not yet rent phone numbers, a
service that has a smaller market. "We look at ourselves as a way to match the
right consumer with the right product, whatever the medium," Mr. Killeen said.
"A lot of advertisers are looking at the Internet as part of integrated
marketing campaigns."
The privacy policy of Microsoft (news/quote)'s MSN portal lets it send mail and
make phone calls to customers on behalf of advertisers, but it has yet to do
so. Microsoft lets users specify whether they do not want marketing via e-mail,
postal mail or phone.
"We value our customers' privacy," said Brian Gluth, a senior product manager
at MSN, "and we have never changed a customer's preference of opt-in or
opt-out, like some of our competitors have done."
In many ways the Internet is simply joining the mainstream of American
business, where the names of people who subscribe to magazines and who buy from
catalogs are freely traded.
Steven Sheck, the president of Infinite Media, a mailing list broker in White
Plains, said he was seeing an increase in the number of Web sites renting
access to users' names.
"Given the state of the economy," he said, "Internet companies are looking at
their customer lists as an asset with which they can generate revenue."
Yahoo says its move to send mail and make calls to users on behalf of
advertisers is far more limited than simply renting its customer file to
companies with no relationship to Yahoo. It compares itself with American
Express (news/quote), which has long sent offers to cardholders for its own
services, like insurance, and for those of other companies, like airlines and
department stores.
"To the extent we have been successful," said Lisa Nash, Yahoo's director of
consumer and direct marketing, "it's because we have been extremely respectful
of our users' time. We fully plan to continue that." She said the company had
no immediate plans to start telemarketing programs, but she added, "We intend
to have maximum flexibility."
Ms. Nash said, however, that Yahoo's biggest objective in its new policy was to
give it more freedom to sell its own services rather than those of its
advertisers. Yahoo has been trying to recover from the slowdown in online
advertising by introducing a raft of new fee-based offerings, like online games
and expanded e-mail services.
Unlike other sites, Yahoo has never asked users specifically if they want to
receive information about its own services. Rather, it has asked a single
question authorizing it to send both messages for Yahoo services and messages
for advertisers (which include Columbia House and the Discover Card, offered by
a unit of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter (news/quote)).
Now Yahoo has sent tens of millions of users e-mail messages saying that it has
given itself permission to send messages on behalf of its own services. Users
have 60 days to go to a section of the site (subscribe .yahoo.com/showaccount)
and reject such messages in 13 categories one by one. The categories range
from games to job hunting.
The distinction between messages from Yahoo and those from advertisers is not
always clear because many companies do business under the Yahoo umbrella.
Yahoo's travel channel, for example, is largely a Yahoo-brand version of the
Travelocity (news/quote) online travel agent. Similarly, a message about
back-to-school specials on Yahoo's shopping channel, for example, could well be
paid advertising from some of the more than 10,000 stores in Yahoo's online
mall.
"We believe in the products and services we offer," said Srinjia Srinivasan,
vice president and editor in chief at Yahoo. "Our network has grown so much we
want to tell users about them."
Truste, a nonprofit group financed by Internet companies that creates standards
for privacy policies, agreed to endorse Yahoo's move after an extended
discussion with the company. "I would not call what Yahoo did `best practices,'
" said Fran Maier, the group's executive director. "To the extent possible, you
would like companies to honor the preferences that were previously set by the
users. But on the other hand, we don't want to tell companies they can't do
something when their business strategy changes. We have to balance those
things."
***************
New York Times
Microsoft, I.B.M. and VeriSign to Cooperate on Web Security
Microsoft (news/quote), I.B.M. (news/quote) and VeriSign (news/quote) plan to
announce a new technical approach today that they hope will ensure greater
security and thus stimulate commercial development of an emerging Internet
technology called Web services.
Web services is the term used to describe clever software that in theory could
bring a new level of automation and greater productivity to all kinds of online
transactions among companies, suppliers and consumers. Yet the new, unproven
technology which uses the Web to find and share data in electronic databases
of companies or individuals has stirred concerns about data security and
personal privacy.
The security initiative from the three companies, who are rivals in some
markets, comes in response to the worries of corporate customers. "We hear from
tons of customers saying, `I'm not going to let anything outside my firewall
until you guys fix security,' " said Adam Sohn, a Microsoft product manager.
The companies explained their proposed standard as an effort to bring security
and trust to the Web services stage of Internet commerce. In the mid-1990's,
they noted, a software protocol developed by Netscape Communications, called
SSL, for secure sockets layer, was the technology that enabled people to put
their credit card numbers into Web sites securely, alleviating the common fear
at the time that credit card numbers could be easily stolen online.
"We're kind of at a similar point with Web services," said Phillip
Hallam-Baker, principal scientist at VeriSign, a supplier of online security
and payment services. "Without trust and security, Web services are going to be
dead on arrival."
The new specification, known as WS-Security, defines a standard set of
extensions to the basic Web services communications technology, called simple
object access protocol, or SOAP. These extensions can be used to build security
features into Web services applications. A Web services application might, for
example, link a company's inventory data with a supplier's data and, obeying
programmed instructions, reorder parts automatically when they run low.
The Web services standard is intended to work with existing security software
technologies that are widely in use like Kerberos and public key encryption.
"We're not saying that companies have to throw away their security
infrastructure," said Robert Sutor, a director of Web services standards for
I.B.M. "This is an evolutionary approach."
The companies said they planned to publish their proposed specification, gather
criticism and suggestions from customers and other technology companies, and
eventually hand their work off to a standards organization like the World Wide
Web Consortium or the Internet Engineering Task Force.
The security specification is the second joint Web services initiative
involving Microsoft and I.B.M. In February, the two companies and BEA Systems
(news/quote) announced the creation of a consortium, the Web Services
Interoperability Organization, intended to forge agreement on standards so that
Web services applications developed by different companies could communicate.
*****************
USA Today
3 databases will flag suspected terrorists
By Toni Locy
USA TODAY
WASHINGTON -- Federal authorities plan to share with state and local police
information on tens of thousands of suspected terrorists to try to improve
homeland defense, Justice Department officials say.
Justice officials, who after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were criticized by
some local authorities for not sharing enough information about potential
threats, say more than 100,000 suspects' names will be entered into three
computer databases. Because of the varying quality of the information, it is
unlikely that all of the suspects will wind up in each database.
The databases are: the State Department system that is used to screen visa
applicants; the Customs Service system that is used along the borders, and the
FBI's National Crime Information Center (NCIC), which is used by 650,000
federal, state and local agencies in daily law enforcement activities such as
traffic stops and background checks.
''Information is the best friend of prevention,'' Attorney General John
Ashcroft said Thursday as he announced the database plan.
Before the Olympics in Salt Lake City, the FBI entered information in the NCIC
from a list of suspected terrorists it compiled. Thursday's directive will
result in additional names being placed in the database.
The Justice officials said the information-sharing program will be a boon for
local authorities, who have said they need more specifics from the U.S.
government on potential terrorism suspects.
Ashcroft's directive changes the nature of the NCIC system. Previously, the
system listed only those who had warrants against them. The names being added
will include people -- conceivably naturalized U.S. citizens -- who have not
been indicted or convicted of a crime but who are suspected of terrorist
activity.
A Justice official says authorities weighed concerns about civil liberties. But
he says the department believes it is more important for authorities to know
whether a suspected terrorist has made it into the USA, and where that suspect
was last seen. If a local police officer enters a name in the database and gets
''a hit,'' he will be instructed what to do: make an arrest, follow the suspect
or notify the FBI.
*********************
The Register
UK Publication
Europe elbows Internet content 'blocking'
By Tim Richardson
Posted: 11/04/2002 at 13:50 GMT
The European Parliament has voted overwhelmingly to oppose the use of
"blocking" as a way of regulating content on the Internet.
The vote (460 in favour, 0 against and 3 abstentions) this morning means that
ISPs will not be forced to restrict access to Web sites.
Instead, they have been given the green light to continue with self-regulation.
Today's decision has been welcomed by Louisa Gosling, President of the European
Internet Services Providers Association (EuroISPA), as a "forward looking and
informed decision".
Said Ms Gosling: "We are also very pleased that the Parliament has come out
strongly against blocking, which is not only a technically disastrous solution,
but also raises significant free speech and democratic concerns."
She added that blocking is "technically difficult, democratically questionable
and undoubtedly inefficient" and believes that there are far better ways to
deal with content issues, such as using special hotlines and ratings systems.
*******************
Federal Computer Week
'Fed CIO' urges state participation
Mark Forman, who essentially is the chief information officer of the federal
government, urged his state counterparts on April 8 to participate in several
federal initiatives to help foster citizen-centric government.
Forman, associate director of information technology and e-government at the
Office of Management and Budget, outlined a number of government-to-government
initiatives, such as electronic grants, the e-Vital project for accurate death
reporting, disaster assistance and crisis response, the geospatial one-stop
program, and GovBenefits, among others that will begin testing within the next
six months.
"At the end of the day, this is about transforming government to give results
to the citizen," Forman said at the National Association of State Chief
Information Officers' midyear conference in Denver.
In his remarks, Forman extended his hand to state officials for their help and
participation in many of these programs, which are among the 24 e-government
initiatives the federal government has designated become customer-friendly.
"We have spent too long giving you burdens and not listening to you," he said.
For example, in the e-grants program, he said the federal government would
pilot a simple, unified way for states to find federal grants via the Web
beginning in July. He said the government would establish a unique identifier
by September 2003 so federal grantees can see all the grants they have received
from the government.
Another example is GovBenefits
(www.govbenefits.gov/GovBenefits/servlet/govBenefits), which directs citizens to
benefit programs across the federal government. The pilot began April 8 and an
online screening tool for 100 benefits programs would be established by Sept.
30, Forman said.
Another initiative is a business compliance one-stop program that will offer
information and tools to help citizens understand compliance with laws and
regulations, he said. Illinois and Washington are involved in the licensing and
permitting application, and Forman asked for more state participants.
******************
News Factor
RIAA Blasts Gateway's Digital Music Campaign
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has charged that a Gateway
advertising campaign that declares support for digital music downloads uses
"misleading scare tactics" to frighten consumers into buying more of the
company's products.
For the whole story see http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/printer/17220/
********************
Reuters
FTC Asks Video Game Business for Compliance Data
Thu Apr 11, 4:12 PM ET
By Ben Berkowitz
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has asked the video
game industry for information on sales of mature-themed games to minors and
advertising targeted at them, ahead of an expected June report by the
commission on media violence, an industry group said on Thursday.
Interactive Digital Software Association head Doug Lowenstein told Reuters the
request was "just more of the same" after two previous reports from the
commission, which generally praised the video game business for its ratings
system.
Lowenstein said the new FTC report, coming only six months after the last one,
was prompted by congressional requests for an update on enforcement
recommendations for the music, movie, and games businesses made in the December
report.
"So the FTC is responding to that and essentially I sort of regard it as
routine," Lowenstein said.
A call for comment to an FTC spokeswoman was not immediately returned.
In December, the commission made four primary suggestions for the movie, music,
and games businesses: industry standards on advertising in places where a
significant portion of the audience is under 17; better labeling of ratings
within ads; improved self-regulation on retailer compliance; and industry
sanctions for non-compliance with sales and advertising standards.
In 1994, the video game industry established the Entertainment Software Rating
Board, which rates video games released in the U.S. with a suitability system
ranging from "E" for "Everyone" to "M" for "Mature" and "AO" for "Adults Only."
The board has rated over 7,000 games since then, with close to 500 garnering an
"M" rating, meaning that they are not intended for children under 17.
The FTC request comes as the IDSA finishes up a two-day event held on Capitol
Hill to showcase games and hardware from major publishers and console makers to
an audience that has traditionally been less familiar with the games business
than with other media.
Lowenstein said about 1,000 people attended events held on Monday and Tuesday
night, including staffers, family members, friends and at least 10 members of
Congress.
"There're not a lot of events members can come to with their children," he
said, adding he was having the kinds of conversations with Capitol Hill
staffers now that would not have happened even five years ago because of
increasing awareness among that group about the industry.
(With additional reporting by Andy Sullivan in Washington)
******************
New York Times
Microsoft Has Shelved Its Internet 'Persona' Service
SAN FRANCISCO, April 10 Microsoft (news/quote) has quietly shelved a consumer
information service that was once planned as the centerpiece of the company's
foray into the market for tightly linked Web services.
The service, originally code-named Hailstorm and later renamed My Services, was
to be the clearest example of the company's ambitious .Net strategy. It was
intended to permit an individual to keep an online persona independent of his
or her desktop computer, supposedly safely stored as part of a vast data
repository where there could be easy access to it from any point on the
Internet.
At the time of the introduction of My Services, Microsoft also proclaimed that
it would have a set of prominent partners in areas like finance and travel for
the My Services system. However, according to both industry consultants and
Microsoft partners, after nine months of intense effort the company was unable
to find any partner willing to commit itself to the program.
Industry executives said the caution displayed by consumer giants like American
Express (news/quote) and Citigroup (news/quote) illuminated a bitter tug of war
being fought over consumer information by some of the largest financial and
information companies.
"They ran into the reality that many companies don't want any company between
them and their customers," said David Smith, vice president for Internet
services at the Gartner Group (news/quote), a computer industry consulting and
research firm.
The lack of interest also indicates that in a variety of industries outside the
desktop computer business there remain significant concerns about Microsoft's
potential to use its personal computer monopoly and its .Net software to
leverage its brand into a broad range of service businesses.
An early signal that the My Services idea was in trouble came last fall at
Microsoft's annual developer's conference, attended by more than 6,000
programmers. The sessions on My Services were poorly attended, an attendee
said.
"There was incredible customer resistance," said a Microsoft .Net consultant,
who spoke on the condition that he not be identified. Microsoft was unable to
persuade either consumer companies or software developers that it had solved
all of the privacy and security issues raised by the prospect of keeping
personal information in a centralized repository, he said.
Microsoft executives acknowledged the shift in strategy and said the company
was still contemplating how it would bring out a revised version of the My
Services technology. The decision resulted in a relocation of several dozen
programmers in December from a consumer products development group run by
Robert Muglia to the company's operating systems division.
"We're sort of in the Hegelian synthesis of figuring out where the products go
once they've encountered the reality of the marketplace," said Charles
Fitzgerald, Microsoft's general manager for platform strategy.
He said part of the decision to back away from a consumer version of My
Services was based on industry concerns about who was going to manage customer
data. The issue, he asserted, was more of a sticking point within the industry,
rather than among consumers.
"We heard a lot of concern about that point from competitors in the industry
but very little from our users," he said.
Microsoft is now considering selling My Services to corporations in a
traditional package form, rather than as a service. The companies would
maintain the data for their own users.
"Frankly selling this stuff to people who build large data centers with our
software is not a bad model," Mr. Fitzgerald said.
Microsoft first introduced the Hailstorm services idea at a news conference at
its headquarters in Redmond, Wash., in March 2001. At the time, the technology
received endorsements from a handful of corporations including American
Express, Expedia (news/quote), eBay (news/quote), Click Commerce (news/quote)
and Groove Networks.
At the time of the announcement, Microsoft described Hailstorm as a way for a
consumer to have a consistent set of services, like e-mail, contacts, a
calendar and an electronic "wallet" whether sitting at a desk or traveling and
using a wireless personal digital assistant.
"Microsoft's `Hailstorm' technologies open exciting new opportunities for us to
use the Web in ways never thought of before, helping us to continue to deliver
service that is truly unmatched in the industry," Glen Salow, the chief
information officer of American Express, said at the time in a statement.
More recently, however, American Express officials have told computer industry
executives that they remain concerned about being displaced by Microsoft's
brand in such a partnership.
A company spokesman said in a telephone interview today that American Express
had intended to endorse the broader notion of integrated Internet services last
March, not My Services specifically. He said he did not know if the company had
discussions with Microsoft about becoming a My Services repository.
Several industry consultants who work with Microsoft said that the company was
now planning to deploy My Services as a software product for corporate computer
users some time next year, after the company introduces its .Net operating
system.
"Enterprise customers were telling Microsoft, `We like this idea but we don't
want to be part of this huge public database,' " said Matt Rosoff, an analyst
who follows the company at Directions on Microsoft, a market research firm in
Kirkland, Wash.
When it was introduced, the Hailstorm plan quickly became a lightning rod for
privacy advocates who saw dangers in concentrating vast amounts of personal
information in a single repository.
Last fall a coalition of privacy groups complained in a letter to the Federal
Trade Commission about the potential risks inherent in Microsoft's collecting
personal information from and about several hundred million personal computer
users.
My Services also created thorny privacy issues for Microsoft in Europe, because
of restrictions on transborder data transfers there. Microsoft has not resolved
how personal information stored in one country can be easily transmitted
internationally.
*******************
MSNBC
Tibetan culture gets a tech boost
SCATTERED across Northern India, Nepal and Bhutan are 32 settlement
camps, home to more than 122,000 Tibetan exiles displaced from their native
land by Chinese troops, who invaded the country 50 years ago. Just last month,
action was begun in earnest to install a computer in each of these settlements,
and to wire each for Internet access. Part of the bill for this project is
being paid by a Web-based customer relations management company, half a world
away.
The Tibetan Settlement Networking Project is far from complete, for some
of the communities are so remote that phone access currently is spotty, if it
exists at all. But the recent training of representatives from some of the
camps, and the delivery of computers to them, is a major first step. The notion
is that to preserve Tibetan culture, Tibetans must be able to communicate with
one another. And in this digital age, communication equals computer even in
places where messages are often delivered by yak.
?Mail is slow, and the settlements are so far from each other. Most of
the time people get telephone lines for two hours a day,? explained Richen
Dharlo, president of the Tibet Fund, a nonprofit group based in New York which
supports projects to help Tibetan exiles. Dharlo himself was 11 when he was
forced to flee Tibet with his family after the Chinese invasion; his mother,
grandmother, brother and other relatives died of malnutrition while they lived
on a mountainside, not sure where to go next. (Eventually the survivors made
their way to a settlement camp.)
Dharlo is acutely aware of the importance of connecting his people, and
preserving his native customs.
?We want each of the settlements to share the information and to learn
from each other,? he said. And, to be able to spread the word about Tibet
around the world, as Dharlo himself has personally done in his work. Dharlo
once worked for the Dalai Lama in Nepal and New York, and has written about
Tibetan history.
Tibetan exiles are scattered not just across India, but in 40 countries,
Dharlo said, and, the population of Tibetans who remember the land which
conflict took from them is slowly dying out, making the need for oral history
projects and cultural preservation more urgent than ever.
The idea for the computer project was first discussed three years ago,
Dharlo said. A formal proposal was written by members of the exiled Tibetan
government, based in Dharamsala, India, who saw e-mail networking as an
important connective tissue for the settlements. They sent the proposal to
Dharlo and the Tibet Fund, who in turn managed to raise the necessary $75,000
for the hardware, wiring, training and associated travel expenses.
About half that money came from a foundation supported by
Salesforce.com, a Silicon Valley based company whose founder, Mark Benioff, is
committed to donating both time and money to philanthropic causes. Of
particular personal interest to him is Tibet. His Salesforce Foundation has
given $100,000 to buy computers for some of the settlement schools in a past
grant, and now, $35,000 for this project.
Mention of these efforts was but a footnote at the extravagant Russian
Tea Room gala this winter, which was the precursor to a star-studded benefit
concert next door at Carnegie Hall for the Tibet Fund.
Ngodub Dorjee, who is involved with the project in Dharamsala, explained
in an e-mail exchange about the difficulty in arranging training, largely
because of the geography. ?Since settlements are spread across the length and
breadth of India and also Nepal, we planned to conduct the training in three
groups,? he wrote. ?We have now completed the training for South India group.?
The computers have been installed there, Dorjee said, but progress has been
slow: ?All of them are now trying to get Internet and e-mail connection, but so
far only two settlements have been able to do so.? Planned improvements in the
India telephone infrastructure will help.
Dorjee and others in Dharamsala are excited about the potential of the
computers because they have seen their power at headquarters since a network
there was established in 1997. ?It has greatly improved the way we work in our
office,? said Dorjee. ?E-mail has been extremely useful for reaching out to a
wider world. We have efficiently used it for fund raising and we are pleased
with the result.?
The Tibetan Computer Resource Center, which is run out of Dharamsala,
maintains the local network as well as Tibet.net, a Web site which explains the
plight of the Tibetans and the structure of their government-in-exile. It also
offers a Tibetan language font.
Next steps for the Settlement Networking Project could include sending
video cameras to the settlements so residents can tape interviews with Tibetan
elders in an oral history project, said Suzanne DiBianca, who runs the
Salesforce Foundation. But in the meantime, anyone who remembers how exciting
it is to get a first computer can appreciate the thrill and the potential being
experienced in these remote areas, where the Tibetan people work and live and
pray for a day when they might one day reunite on their native soil. The notion
that technology may assist them, and that the largesse of a technology company
can make that possible, is a positive story in a sea of negative news.
*****************
Reuters
Study: More Chinese Hope to Learn, Work on Home PCs
Thu Apr 11, 8:27 AM ET
BEIJING (Reuters) - More Chinese are showing interest in using computers at
home for education or work, but online shopping or e-commerce is proving slow
to catch on, according to a recent survey by market research group AC Nielsen.
In the past, getting onto the Internet to use e-mail, download music and play
games were the top services driving Chinese to buy PCs, according to the study,
which questioned 8,000 Internet users in Asia Pacific countries including
China.
But among those Chinese consumers who planned to buy a PC within the next six
months, a growing number were showing interest in other services.
"What's more telling is the shift in anticipated functions," said Barry Tse, an
AC Nielsen research director based in Beijing.
One third of Chinese planning to buy a PC said they hoped to use it for
education, compared to 23 percent of those who already owned a PC, the report
said.
Similarly, 36 percent of those polled in China said they planned to use a PC to
work from home, while only 31 percent of PC owners said they already used it
for that, it said.
"This is telling people that PC products should focus on these areas now," Tze
told reporters at a news conference.
Online shopping was less important to the Chinese interviewed, of whom only 22
percent of people polled saying they hoped to use a PC to buy things -- well
below the 40 percent average in the Asia Pacific region, the report said.
Firms hoping to sell products to China's Internet users -- now numbering more
than 33.7 million according to official statistics -- have long faced hurdles
such as low average income and insufficient online payment systems, analysts
say.
While PC's cost from $600 to more than $1,200, the average monthly income of
urban Chinese households is about $420.
"We're talking about two to three months of salary just to buy a PC, but people
are stepping up to do it anyway," Tze said.
*********************
Washington Post
Movies By the Mail
By Leslie Walker
Thursday, April 11, 2002; Page E01
Netflix reminds me why I loved many of the dear, departed dot-coms. Thank
goodness the Internet movie rental service has turned out to be a rare survivor
of the dot-com crash. It shows how the Internet continues to be a test bed for
ideas that might make our lives a little easier.
While Hollywood spars with device makers and communications companies over how
to achieve video on demand, this tiny dot-com is championing an old-fashioned
way to deliver movies to the home -- through the mail. So far, more than half a
million people have signed up to rent digital video disks from Netflix.
The idea is simple: Pay $20 a month and keep a running list of movies you'd
like to see at www.netflix.com. For that price, Netflix lets you rent up to
three DVDs at once (videocassettes are not on the menu) and mails a fresh title
from your list every time you ship one back. The company supplies prepaid
mailing envelopes, picking up the 34-cent postage each way.
Sound like a viable business model? Perhaps, though Netflix outlined the risks
in papers filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to support its
planned $115 million public stock offering. Netflix acknowledged it is hostage
to, among other factors, the whims of movie studio pricing, U.S. postal rates,
and consumers' acceptance of DVD players.
Then there's Blockbuster Inc., the video-rental giant with nearly 8,000 stores,
20 million renters a month and 40 percent of the U.S. market for home video
rentals. Blockbuster regards mail-order as a money-loser, partly because it's
hard to control inventory if a company doesn't take steps to limit how long a
customer might keep a title. And Blockbuster says surveys show most people rent
movies on impulse and aren't inclined to plan their movie-watching in advance.
"We are not saying this is never going to work," said Blockbuster Senior Vice
President Karen Raskopf. "If we saw that it was going to be commercially
viable, we could enter the business very easily."
Netflix lost $38 million on $76 million in revenue last year, so it isn't
exactly scaring Blockbuster, which raked in $5.1 billion last year. Blockbuster
did report a net loss of $240 million for the year, but the Dallas-based
company has been narrowing its losses, partly because it earns higher gross
margins on DVDs than VHS rentals. The chain recently moved to make room for
more DVDs on its shelves after disk rentals jumped to 18 percent of its rental
revenue for 2001, up from 7 percent the year before. The chain expects DVD
rentals to account for 40 to 50 percent of its revenue by year end.
In its SEC filing, Netflix conceded its competition is not limited to movie
rental companies. People can buy movies from Wal-Mart, subscribe to movie
channels like HBO, or take advantage of pay-per-view services on cable or
satellite TV. The studios also are working on their own plans to allow people
to download flicks from the Internet.
Yet none of those options is currently as simple, easy or ready for prime time
as movies-by-mail. To subscribe to Netflix (or tiny competitors such as DVD
Avenue in Southern Maryland) consumers need only a DVD player.
An $89 player recently debuted at my house, and I was surprised at how much
better the picture quality was compared with that of VHS tapes. No home-movie
fanatic, I typically rent one or two movies a month from Blockbuster and don't
subscribe to premium cable channels. But I've recently begun watching more
movies since the hassle of renting has been reduced.
Netflix eliminates driving to the video store. It also saves strolling up and
down the aisles trying to find a movie I like. For me, Blockbuster visits can
be terribly redundant; I rarely remember what I saw on my last visit, so I
repeat my random search each time. With Netflix, when you see a title you like,
you click "rent" and it stays on your personal list until the DVD arrives in
your mailbox. Moreover, Netflix charges no late fees, which typically account
for 15 percent of Blockbuster's revenue.
There are minuses, the biggest being the slow delivery. Since Netflix's main
distribution center is in California, it can take a week for a DVD to reach my
home in Maryland. But Netflix recently opened a regional distribution center in
Braintree, Mass., and plans several more, including one in Maryland. That
should speed mailings to the Washington-Baltimore region.
As for price, 90 percent of Netflix subscribers go for the $20-a-month option,
allowing them to keep three titles at once. Netflix spokesman Rick Sneed said
the typical subscriber receives five to seven titles a month, which would make
the per-movie price comparable or slightly favorable to renting from
Blockbuster. While rates vary at stores around the country, Blockbuster's
national average for new-release rentals is $3.80.
Someone like me, though, could get by with Netflix's lower-priced option -- two
titles at a time for $14 a month. Netflix also lets people keep eight titles at
once for $39.95.
Some folks might get annoyed by the uncertainty over which movie they'll get.
Netflix tries to send each person the top selection on their list, but doesn't
always have enough copies of the most popular movies to go around. In that
case, your name goes on a waiting list.
Realizing it would need more copies of new releases to satisfy growing demand,
Netflix last year negotiated revenue-sharing deals with the studios. The deals
are similar to the ones Blockbuster and Hollywood Video have for VHS rentals --
only much more favorable to the studios. Instead of buying tapes or DVDs
outright, these agreements allow rental companies to save on upfront costs in
return for paying the studios a portion of their rental revenue.
Netflix, because it's small, has far less bargaining power than Blockbuster. In
some cases, Netflix has had to give close to 40 percent of its rental revenue
to the studios, nearly twice what the chains typically share on VHS movies.
Moreover, Netflix gave roughly 6 percent of its equity to the studios.
The equity deal reflects Hollywood's symbiotic relationship with the movie
rental industry, which totaled more than $8 billion last year and accounted for
more than a third of Hollywood's income.
Considering how much it depends on the likes of Blockbuster today, it's hard to
believe Hollywood once tried to kill the whole idea of video rentals by waging
a nasty court battle in the 1970s. Hollywood lost, of course, and Blockbuster
was born.
Now the same kind of entrepreneurial spirit that gave us the corner video store
is pushing mail-order movies. I, for one, hope it catches on.
**************
Washington Post
E-Mails Open Window on Wall St.
Friday, April 12, 2002
By Robert O'Harrow Jr.,
Washington Post Staff Writer
NEW YORK, April 11 In January last year, an American Express Co. executive
asked star Merrill Lynch & Co. analyst Henry Blodget why the investment bank
had suddenly started rating the stock of an obscure Internet company called
GoTo.com.
"What's so interesting about GOTO except banking fees????" the investor wrote
in an e-mail.
Blodget's response: "nothin."
That blunt exchange goes to the heart of an escalating state investigation into
allegations that Wall Street stock analysts promote companies they don't
believe in while their banks earn fees selling the firms' stock and offering
advice.
Investors and securities watchdogs have long complained about inappropriate
ties between analysts and investment bankers. But they've rarely had access to
the e-mail and other gritty, behind-the-scenes details about dealmaking cited
in this case.
"It has never been as specific, as real-time as this," Dana Hermanson, director
of research at the Corporate Governance Center at Kennesaw State University in
Georgia, said about the details in the case. "It definitely shakes the system."
State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has subpoenaed thousands of documents and
e-mails from Merrill Lynch that, he says in court documents, demonstrate that
Blodget and other analysts routinely offered glowing reports about companies
they privately dismissed as "junk" or "crap."
Spitzer's office has subpoenaed at least four other investment banks. And he
has said he intends to have Merrill Lynch analysts and officials publicly
testify about their practices.
Merrill Lynch officials today said Blodget's e-mail reflects banter between
sophisticated investors, not a disavowal of GoTo. While defending the integrity
of the bank's research reports, spokesman James Wiggins acknowledged "there was
inappropriate communications in some cases going back and forth between bankers
and analysts that violated our policies."
Wiggins added: "There is language that is ill chosen, inappropriate and frankly
embarrassing. But that does not add up to bias in the research reports."
Spitzer contends that there is no mystery to why Blodget and his colleagues
began researching GoTo, an Internet search engine: They wanted to woo the firm,
now known as Overture Services Inc., for the fees it would pay for help on
stock offerings.
Wall Street firms say they have erected a "Chinese Wall" to separate analysts,
who are supposed to be independent, from investment bankers, who market stocks
and provide advice for fees.
"GoTo was a paradigm of what was wrong at Merrill Lynch," Spitzer spokesman
Darren Dopp said. "Not only did they use ratings to solicit investment banking
business, they used negative ratings to punish those who took their business
elsewhere."
Kasey Byrne, a spokeswoman for Overture, said company officials have been
cooperating with Spitzer's probe. She said they were "surprised and
disappointed" to see how Merrill Lynch handled them.
An affidavit that Spitzer's office filed with a judge Monday devotes nine pages
to what it called the "troubling" example of the Wall Street firm's
relationship with the newly rated company:
GoTo's chief financial officer told investigators that Merrill Lynch investment
banker Thomas Mazzucco promised him that Blodget would initiate research
coverage if GoTo agreed to give Merrill Lynch fees on a private stock placement
planned for a European subsidiary. That deal was never completed.
A Merrill Lynch analyst, Kirsten Campbell, was given the assignment to write a
research report on GoTo in September 2000.
Within weeks, Campbell was e-mailing the company details and a draft report
containing Merrill Lynch's proposed rating, which investors look to as
bottom-line advice on the stock's merits. Sharing a company's rating with that
company beforehand is a violation of Merrill Lynch's rules, according to the
affidavit. Wiggins declined to comment on specifics of Campbell's actions.
With urging from her colleagues on the investment banking side, Campbell sent
another draft of her report to GoTo in November, allowing company officials to
type in changes or supply full text. Though her research indicated GoTo
wouldn't be profitable for years, Campbell moved the date up after the company
complained.
That same month, she complained to Blodget in an e-mail that she didn't "want
to be a whore for [expletive] management" by starting at a higher rating. "We
are losing people money and I don't like it. John and Mary smith are losing
their retirement because we don't want todd [GoTo's chief financial officer] to
be mad at us."
In that note Campbell also described her conversation with Mazzucco. "I said to
him the whole idea that we are independent from banking is a big lie . . . and
he said, 'you guys are independent you can do what you want i'm fine with that
. . . ' "
Attorney Steven Fuller, speaking for Campbell, who left Merrill Lynch last
April, said "she disagrees with the readings of the communications. . . . She
did nothing to compromise the independence of her coverage."
When Blodget gave sworn testimony to the state, he conceded, the affidavit
said, that investment bankers had veto power over his starting coverage of GoTo
with a 3, or neutral, rating.
The initial Merrill Lynch research report on GoTo was issued Jan. 11, the same
day a GoTo competitor was downgraded to the same rating.
Merrill Lynch upgraded GoTo in April, and in May Blodget and Merrill investment
bankers sponsored a "road show" for GoTo executives to meet big-money
investors. After that, the affidavit said, its stock rose 20 percent.
The tone of Merrill Lynch's relationship with GoTo changed overtly when the
Internet company said it wanted to sell more stock but planned to work with
Merrill Lynch competitor Credit Suisse First Boston and give them the fees.
Merrill Lynch banker Mazzucco drafted an e-mail to GoTo directors expressing
his dismay, "particularly given the tremendous effort we have put forth on the
company's behalf." He cited Blodget's upgrade and meetings he had set up with
potential investors, "which dramatically moved the stock price. . . . "
Almost simultaneously, the affidavit said, an analyst e-mailed Blodget a draft
downgrade of GoTo. Blodget's response this time: "beautiful fuk em."
Within an hour of GoTo's June 6 announcement that it had decided to use Credit
Suisse, Merrill Lynch announced that it was downgrading the stock, citing its
sharp increase in price.
In a statement, Merrill Lynch said the GoTo downgrade "not only was the right
call, it was exactly the opposite of what the investment bankers would have
preferred." It added that every witness has testified that the analyst "had no
advance knowledge of any pending investment banking mandate, and investors who
heeded the downgrade would have benefited."
Staff researcher Richard Drezen contributed to this report.
********************
Washington Post
Too Many Unresolved Questions On ID Cards, Study Panel Says
Friday, April 12, 2002
By Renae Merle,
Washington Post Staff Writer
Serious concerns about a national identification system, including how privacy
would be protected and how misuse would be prevented, should be addressed
before such a system is created, a National Academy of Sciences committee said.
Calls for a national ID system emerged after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon, but the debate lacks a clear definition of the
goals and use of such a system, the committee said in its report. Moreover, it
is not clear what information would be collected or how the government would
deal with failure or misuse of the system, the report said.
"People have been throwing these terms around," said committee member Deidre
Mulligan of the University of California at Berkeley School of Law. "Any move
towards any sort of national ID raises tremendous technical and social issues
that must be considered."
The committee also questioned whether a national identity system would be
constitutional. "The constitutional limitations of an agent's ability to
require presentation of IDs, along with the limitations on the ability of
Congress to enact a nationwide identity system, should be explored before any
such enactment," the report said.
A national ID system would require not only cards, but card readers and a
corresponding database as well, the report said, and procedures for checking
the authenticity of the cards would have to be established. All of that could
be expensive.
"The technical challenges, the expense, and the strong potential for
infringement on the civil liberties of ordinary citizens demand that any
proposed identity system undergo strict public scrutiny and a thorough
engineering review," said Stephen Kent, committee chairman.
The report will be delivered to the Office of Homeland Security and to
Congress. A final report is expected near year-end.
At least 11 of the hijackers in September used false identification or obtained
driver's licenses fraudulently, but, the report said, "no one really knows if a
nationwide identity system could deter or detect terrorism, although several
arguments have been advanced."
The White House has said it is not considering a national ID card. Congress has
studied several proposals, including requiring foreigners to use ID cards to
enter the United States, and centralized national databases for noncitizens.
Other suggestions include linking together state motor-vehicle departments and
establishing a "trusted traveler" program for airports.
Civil-liberties and consumer groups are particularly critical of a plan by
state motor-vehicle officials to link the driver databases of individual
states. The American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators also wants
cards that verify identification through fingerprints or another unique factor.
The Academy of Sciences report characterizes that proposal as a "nationwide
identity system," but the administrators said it would simply strengthen the
security of the driver histories that states already maintain.
The opponents have also raised concerns about draft legislation by Sen. Richard
J. Durbin (D-Ill.) that would, among other things, create uniform standards for
licensing drivers. "The questions that the report brings up are relevant to the
debate," said David Field, Durbin's press secretary.
Some of those issues, he said, will be addressed in a Senate committee meeting
next week.
By setting a nationwide licensing standard, the proposed legislation would
create a de facto national ID, said Chris Hoofnagle, legislative counsel of the
Electronic Privacy Information Center. "It is not simply a strengthening," he
said. "It would standardize information collection, so information sharing
would be easier."
*******************
Washington Post
Police Propose Rules for Video Surveillance In the District
Wednesday, April 10, 2002
By Spencer S. Hsu,
Washington Post Staff Writer
District police yesterday released a draft of proposed internal regulations on
video surveillance, but a key lawmaker said that the guidelines are too vague
and that legislation is needed to govern law enforcement use of the expanding
technology.
In a four-page document circulated to D.C. Council members, police officials
propose limits for a computerized video monitoring system that is emerging as
one of the nation's most extensive.
The closed-circuit television network is capable of linking up eventually to
1,000 government cameras that monitor streets, subway stations, schools and
federal facilities in the nation's capital. D.C. police have cameras of their
own at 12 sites and can access those of other government agencies with their
permission.
The system, first activated during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, also was
used during a terrorist alert issued by the federal government in February. The
cameras will be used again during antiwar demonstrations scheduled for April 20
in downtown Washington, police officials said.
The regulations proposed by police would allow them to activate the system for
traffic control, "critical incidents," heightened states of alert or special
events that pose a potential threat to public safety.
The guidelines say police may record over any material they videotape after 72
hours, though they do not require that step. They also bar camera operators
from monitoring individuals arbitrarily or based on race, gender, ethnicity,
sexual orientation, disability or other classifications protected by law.
And the regulations prohibit camera operators from focusing on handbills or
fliers being carried, to prevent violations of the First Amendment.
But D.C. Council member Kathy Patterson (D-Ward 3), who chairs the panel's
Judiciary Committee, said clearer rules are needed on activation of the system,
retention of video records and sanctions for violators.
"We are in fact going to write legislation. . . . Regulations are only the
first step," Patterson said. "They probably aren't specific enough in a few
areas."
A spokesman for Rep. Constance A. Morella (R-Md.), chairman of the House
Government Reform subcommittee on the District, who also had expressed
misgivings about the reach of the camera network, agreed that the proposed
police regulations are too spare.
For instance, the police plan is silent about who may access the video records,
whom the chief can designate to oversee surveillance operations and what
disciplinary penalties will befall violators, said Morella spokesman Rob White.
"It definitely needs to be clarified," he said.
Executive Assistant Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer said in an interview that
videotaping could be authorized by Chief Charles H. Ramsey or his designee,
such as a police commander or an assistant chief.
Gainer acknowledged that police must specify that recording will not be allowed
in places out of public view, where there is "reasonable expectation of
privacy." He said police are still thinking through issues of public access.
Johnny Barnes, executive director of the American Civil Liberties
Union-National Capital Area, said he has forwarded a copy of the draft
regulations to the NAACP's Metropolitan Police and Criminal Justice Review task
force.
"The position of the ACLU remains against cameras altogether," Barnes said. But
he withheld further comment pending review by the task force, which monitors
District prisons, courts and prosecutors. The group did not return a telephone
call for comment.
Gainer said he respected the political process but hoped that police tactics
and enforcement would not be legislated.
"I will not lose any sleep if we are forbidden from using cameras, but I do
think we'll be less protected," he said. "Sometimes there are mixed messages we
send to the police: 'I want higher police visibility. I want you to prevent
crime. . . . I don't want people to run red lights but I also don't want you
to use technology.' "
******************
USA Today
Databases to flag suspected terrorists
By Toni Locy, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON Federal authorities plan to share with state and local police
information on tens of thousands of suspected terrorists to try to improve
homeland defense, Justice Department officials say.
Justice officials, who after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were criticized by
some local authorities for not sharing enough information about potential
threats, say more than 100,000 suspects' names will be entered into three
computer databases. Because of the varying quality of the information, it is
unlikely that all of the suspects will wind up in each database.
The databases are: the State Department system that is used to screen visa
applicants; the Customs Service system that is used along the borders, and the
FBI's National Crime Information Center (NCIC), which is used by 650,000
federal, state and local agencies in daily law enforcement activities such as
traffic stops and background checks.
"Information is the best friend of prevention," Attorney General John Ashcroft
said Thursday as he announced the database plan.
Before the Olympics in Salt Lake City, the FBI entered information in the NCIC
from a list of suspected terrorists it compiled. Thursday's directive will
result in additional names being placed in the database.
The Justice officials said the information-sharing program will be a boon for
local authorities, who have said they need more specifics from the U.S.
government on potential terrorism suspects.
Ashcroft's directive changes the nature of the NCIC system. Previously, the
system listed only those who had warrants against them. The names being added
will include people conceivably naturalized U.S. citizens who have not been
indicted or convicted of a crime but who are suspected of terrorist activity.
A Justice official says authorities weighed concerns about civil liberties. But
he says the department believes it is more important for authorities to know
whether a suspected terrorist has made it into the USA, and where that suspect
was last seen. If a local police officer enters a name in the database and gets
"a hit," he will be instructed what to do: make an arrest, follow the suspect
or notify the FBI.
*****************
USA Today
Radio close to increased digital transmissions
By David Lieberman, USA TODAY
LAS VEGAS AM and FM radio are finally ready for the digital revolution,
according to broadcasters who've been waiting a decade to jump in.
Toward the end of this year, big-city stations reaching about half of all
listeners are expected to supplement their current analog signals with digital
transmissions.
For consumers who buy digital radios, available early next year, AM programming
should sound as sharp as FM and FM will approach CD clarity.
"Static, hiss and pops all go away," says iBiquity Digital CEO Bob Struble,
whose company just unveiled its technology to lead the radio industry's digital
charge.
"You're talking about a diametrical upgrade in audio quality."
IBiquity's digital radio was the most talked about new offering shown at the
National Association of Broadcasters convention here this week.
"This could revitalize AM radio," says Radio World news editor Leslie Stimson.
"A lot of AM stations have been forced into adopting talk formats" because of
audio quality inferior to FM.
Broadcasters are intrigued with iBiquity's promise to help station owners go
digital in less than a year using the airwaves they already control.
"It will be an orderly transition," says NAB chief Edward Fritts. "We know the
world is going digital. For radio to sit back and not have an avenue to step
forward would be a tragedy."
The plan won a key, but qualified, endorsement this week from the National
Radio Systems Committee, the broadcast and consumer electronics industries'
standards group. It blessed iBiquity's technology for FM stations to use
beginning in November.
It said AM stations should use it only during daytime until more tests
determine whether it would create night interference.
IBiquity has spent $100 million on the business, Struble says, and expects
clear reception among station owners.
Financial backers include top station owners Viacom, Radio One and Clear
Channel, as well as Lucent and Gannett (publisher of USA TODAY). "The radio
industry set us up," he says.
New signal equipment will cost a station from $27,000 to $215,000, depending on
its size and signal strength, plus a license fee for iBiquity's software. The
company will begin by going after stations in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles,
San Francisco, Seattle and Miami.
Consumers who want to receive the clearer signals will initially pay about $300
for a high-end radio that receives existing analog and digital signals. Other,
less costly, digital-only radios are expected to run about $100 more than
comparable analog units.
And some will include new features. For example, motorists will be able to push
a button on the radio to instantly retrieve the latest information about
traffic conditions, weather, sports and stocks. When music's playing, the radio
will display the song title and artist.
Kenwood, Alpine, Harman/Kardon and JVC have said that they'll make the radios.
Retailers such as Crutchfield, Good Guys, Tweeter and Ultimate Electronics have
said they'd sell them.
****************
Federal Computer Week
NMCI forces Corps contingencies
A delay in rolling out the Navy Marine Corps Intranet to the Marine Corps is
causing the service to institute contingency plans to enhance some parts of its
aging network, the service's chief information officer said.
The Marines had been scheduled to begin rolling out NMCI seats during this
fiscal year, but because of unexpected issues, such as the number of Navy
legacy applications and questions over NMCI testing, the Marine Corps will not
begin its NMCI implementation until fiscal 2003. The Marines represent about
68,000 seats on the network.
Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Robert Shea, director of command, control,
communications and computers and the CIO, said the delay will not cause an
enormous problem for the service. But it does mean that the Marine Corps will
have to do some work to its legacy infrastructure, he said.
The delay, Shea said, is "only affecting us to the point where some of our
legacy systems...are starting to degrade." Therefore, the Marines are
developing plans to improve some of that legacy infrastructure to carry the
service through until NMCI takes over, he said.
The Enterprise Sustainment Initiative, as the plan is officially called, will
be detailed in a Marine Administrative Message that should be distributed to
the fleet soon, a Marine spokesman confirmed.
The contingency plan will cost the Marines no additional money, Shea said,
because the service will use funds that would have otherwise have been spent on
NMCI seats.
Furthermore, Shea said the Marines are "well-positioned" to begin the
transition to NMCI. "When it comes in, we're ready to move," he said.
Unlike the Navy, which has had to deal with thousands of legacy applications
and has hundreds of legacy networks, the Marine Corps went through that
streamlining process several years ago. That work will likely make the NMCI
transition much easier.
*****************
Federal Computer Week
Senators push Homeland for Cabinet
Members of Congress are supporting a proposal to make the Office of Homeland
Security a Cabinet-level agency, but the White House is lukewarm about the idea
of creating yet another bureaucracy.
At a hearing April 11, Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), chairman of the Senate
Governmental Affairs Committee and co-sponsor of the legislation, said homeland
security is an issue that will not go away for generations.
"The bottom line is if statutory and budget authority are not conferred upon
the director of homeland security, the homeland defense of this nation will
always be less than it should be," Lieberman said.
Lieberman and other supporters say elevating the office to Cabinet level would
eliminate waste and stop turf battles that exist among agencies that have
direct authority over components of homeland security. For example, the
Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Customs Service handle border
duties, the State Department issues visas, the Federal Emergency Management
Agency deals with domestic crisis, and first responders, such as police and
firefighters, are on the front lines in emergencies.
The legislation, co-sponsored by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) would combine the
Coast Guard, the Border Patrol, Customs and FEMA and coordinate state and local
governments as well as give the Office of Homeland Security the lead authority
in calling the shots in the event of a terrorist attack.
But Mitchell Daniels Jr., director of the Office of Management and Budget, said
that the homeland office, headed by former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, is able
to do its job without adding another bureaucratic layer to government.
"The administration is committed to securing the homeland and keeping Congress
appropriately informed on homeland security matters," Daniels said.
The Lieberman-Specter bill is only one of a number of proposals that Congress
is considering to fill the gaps on homeland security.
Other bills call for reorganizing INS and dividing it into two bureaus one
that would handle enforcement duties and one that would be in charge of citizen
and immigration services.
"This is a long-term effort which will span years and administrations...and
involve billions and billions of dollars," David Walker, comptroller general of
the United States, testified at the hearing.
**********************
Federal Computer Week
Official: More tech needed vs. terror
The Army could use more unmanned aerial vehicles and other technology tools,
such as automated translators, to support the war on terrorism, according to
the service's senior intelligence officer.
"We just don't have enough UAVs" in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Robert Noonan Jr.,
the Army's deputy chief of staff for intelligence, said during an April 9 press
briefing that was part of an asymmetric warfare symposium sponsored by the
Association of the U.S. Army.
Noonan said that the allied forces involved in joint military operations in
Afghanistan and other countries could benefit from more UAVs now and advanced
models in the future. He added that having more UAVs to deploy during last
month's Operation Anaconda in eastern Afghanistan could have saved U.S. lives.
Noonan said UAVs including the Air Force's Predator, a vehicle used for
surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting that is armed with a TV camera, an
infrared camera and radar have been extremely useful in battlefields by
identifying and following enemy targets. That enables the Army to get into the
enemy's decision-making processes.
In the future, Noonan said he'd like to see UAVs that are armed, can travel
greater distances and work in different environments, such as the jungle. He
also said that the Army has to rely on the Air Force to supply Predators but
should have similar technology available later this year.
Among the technologies that will benefit soldiers in the future are automated
translators. Noonan said versions are available now, but they are not as robust
as the service would like. The technology also could alleviate the burden on
linguists: The United States spends millions of dollars on linguists and is
operating with a shortage.
Soldiers are now equipped with low-tech translation tools, such as a few common
phrases on paper and some basic names and descriptions of the most-wanted
enemies, but that should change by the end of the decade. "We talk about
embedding [an automated translator] on every soldierÖ[and] that's not out of
the realm of possibility" within about eight years, Noonan said.
One technological area where the Army is already reaping benefits in
Afghanistan is document exploitation. The service is digitizing tens of
thousands of documents recovered in Afghan caves and other areas, and then
shipping them back to the United States electronically, usually late at night
when the bandwidth is available, Noonan said.
In addition to paper documents, the Army also is recovering laptop computers,
which add a "whole new dimension" to the service's intelligence-gathering
efforts, he said.
Maj. Gen. Steven Boutelle, the Army's program executive officer for command,
control and communications systems, said allied forces are facing an enemy
technological environment that includes satellite communications and notebook
computers running commercial off-the-shelf software for encryption, none of
which is in English.
All of that aids the enemy, as does the fact that they do not have to go
through a lengthy acquisition or operational testing process, Boutelle said.
"They can just buy it and use it."
*****************
Federal Computer Week
House passes Tech Corps bill
After several fits and starts, the House of Representatives passed a bill April
10 to create a public/private exchange program for information technology and
acquisition managers in government and industry.
The Digital Tech Corps Act of 2002, H.R. 3925, would break ground by allowing
mid-level IT managers in federal agencies and private companies to swap jobs
for at least six months and as long as two years. The bill passed on a 219-204
vote.
The bill aims to ease the federal government's shortage of trained IT workers,
said its sponsor, Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.), chairman of the House Government
Reform Committee's Technology and Procurement Policy Subcommittee.
"It will improve the skills of federal IT managers by exposing them to
cutting-edge management trends in the private sector; help federal agencies
recruit and retain talented IT managers by offering them a valuable career
development tool; and allow private-sector IT managers to apply their skills to
challenging IT problems at federal agencies," Davis said in a statement.
Major industry organizations that had lobbied hard for the bill hailed its
passage.
"We are delighted," said Olga Grkavac, an executive vice president with the
Information Technology Association of America. The ITAA sent a letter April 9
to Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), the House Government Reform Committee chairman,
pledging support for the bill from ITAA's more than 500 corporate members.
The bill stalled in the House after Davis introduced it in August 2001, and the
committee revitalized it by revising it and reporting it out in mid-March. Sen.
George Voinovich (R-Ohio) introduced a companion bill, S. 1913, in the Senate
Feb. 6 that is now in the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. Grkavac said
that the passage of Davis' bill in the House "bodes well for action [on the
Senate bill] by the end of the session."
The House bill passed with two amendments. One requires that 20 percent of the
federal workers detailed to the private sector under the program be placed with
small businesses. The other amendment requires the Office of Personnel
Management to report to Congress on the adequacy of existing IT training
programs available to federal employees and how those programs can be improved.
The second amendment also prohibits companies from charging costs associated
with the Tech Corps program to contracts that they hold with the federal
government.
House members defeated an amendment proposed by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.)
that would have prohibited private-sector employees detailed to federal
government programs from having access to proprietary information submitted to
those programs by other companies.
To counteract fears that the Tech Corps program would endanger trade secrets,
Davis added to the bill provisions that place on participants a lifetime ban on
talking about proprietary information. If they do talk, participants would be
subject to criminal penalties of up to five years in jail and up to $50,000 in
fines.
*****************
Federal Computer Week
Army poised for Mannheim project
The U.S. Army Signal Command and many defense agency partners soon will begin
participating in the Mannheim project, an effort designed to help the Army
develop an integrated computer network defense as part of its overall
information technology transformation and consolidation.
The project will begin next week as phased exercises that will incorporate the
institutional and tactical Army, said Maj. Gen. James Hylton, commander of the
Army Signal Command, speaking at an April 10 asymmetric warfare symposium
sponsored by the Association of the U.S. Army.
Hylton added that the Defense Department's information environment is a prime
target for asymmetric warfare, which encompasses anything personnel, tactics,
weapons that helps negate one side's advantage in a battle.
In addition to the Signal Command, numerous other joint military partners are
involved, including the Defense Information Systems Agency and the Space and
Missile Defense Command. All are treating the Mannheim project as a priority,
Hylton said.
"It will help us examine and develop organization, tactics, techniques and
procedures to facilitate an integrated Army computer network defense," Hylton
told Federal Computer Week.
Hylton also detailed changes going on within the Signal Command as it shifts
into its new role as Network Enterprise Technology Command (Netcom), which is
charged with providing management for all of the Army's IT and networks.
Beginning May 1, Netcom will provide situational awareness of all the service's
computer networks to the Army chief information officer's office, he said. The
Signal Command's current mission is to support the Forces Command.
Hylton added that Netcom's job initially will require manual and electronic
reporting to provide a valid assessment of the Army's enterprise network, with
the goal of having centralized operations and management across the
infostructure sometime in the future.
Netcom, which will formally launch Oct. 1 along with a number of other Army
headquarters changes, is made up of personnel from the Signal Command and other
organizations. It is establishing regional CIO offices to coordinate with
centralized installation management to oversee command, control, communications
and computers for each region, Hylton said.
*****************
Federal Computer Week
Virginia puts people behind portal
Since Virginia began offering real-time, live assistance through its portal
last August, it has been handling between 500 to 550 chats a month, answering
questions that range from obtaining birth certificate copies to filing taxes.
"This is a new direction that is going to become more and more prevalent on
state government Web sites because governments are trying to be more
customer-oriented," said Tracy Smith, director of eGovernment Solutions for the
Virginia Information Providers Network, which manages the My Virginia portal
(www.myvirginia.org).
An exit survey found that more than 96 percent of users thought the service was
helpful, Smith said. Of those polled, 67 percent were Virginia residents, she
said, adding that users from outside the state ask questions about tourism and
research, among other things.
The state was receiving hundreds of Webmaster e-mails and telephone calls last
year, she said, and that prompted officials to seek an alternative method for
responding to constituents in a timely manner. "You can only answer one e-mail
at a time. You can only talk to one person on the phone at a time," she said,
adding that the live chat service is cheaper than making a long-distance
telephone call.
The state settled on software developed by LivePerson, which has offices in New
York City and Israel.
When portal users click on the "Live Help" button on the home page, a new
screen pops up asking users to wait for a site operator to respond. On the
other end, the operator actually hears something akin to a telephone ringing.
Almost automatically, a customer service representative types: "Welcome to the
Commonwealth of Virginia Online Help. How may I assist you today?" The
discussion proceeds much like an instant messaging conversation.
"What we have noticed is our Webmaster e-mails have decreased significantly,"
Smith said. "People see the Live Help long before the Web master feedback
link."
Three customer service representatives staff the operation, which is available
Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. The representatives have other
duties in addition to the chat service. Each can carry on three chats
simultaneously and can also help one another, but it's unlikely there would
ever be nine simultaneous conversations being carried out, Smith said. But in
case usage increases, they will re-evaluate the service and possibly add staff,
she added.
On average, a chat lasts about six minutes. For repetitive questions,
representative prepare "canned" responses, including the greetings and
closings.
"The great thing with that stored answer is it can have a URL...a telephone
number and a particular contact," Smith said. "The same answer is going out
consistently and you don't have to worry about human error."
While the chats are stored for review, user identification is not noted. For
statistical purposes, the state tracks questions asked and length of use.
Smith said the state is investigating technology whereby a customer service
representative can view the same form as a user and help the user to complete
it.
*****************
New York Times
Can Technology Foil Hijackers?
WASHINGTON -- THE computers in the cockpits of modern jets help airline pilots
with more and more tasks: plotting routes, calculating fuel use and takeoff
speeds, relieving the tedium of 14-hour flights and finding the way through the
clouds. But what about dealing with the Sept. 11 problem, hijackers who want to
turn planes into weapons?
Many of the electronic building blocks are in place for a system onboard
airplanes that would thwart air pirates, according to aviation experts. In
fact, systems that could prevent terrorists from crashing a plane into a
building, or even crashing the plane at all, would require no fundamental
breakthroughs. But people in the aviation industry doubt they will be used any
time soon. "It's not something that could happen in the near term at all," said
Diane Spitaliere, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration.
The reason is part of a dilemma of aviation since Sept. 11: steps that increase
security once a plane is in the air may create their own safety risks. The most
visible example is the use of F-16 combat planes over major American cities,
their pilots ready to force down or even shoot down an off-course airliner.
Less dramatic, computer-controlled solutions are available. The problem is that
while pilots love computers, they do not trust them as much as themselves.
In the weeks after the September hijackings, various experts (and, according to
the Federal Aviation Administration, lots of people who merely thought they
were experts) came up with hundreds of ideas.
Among the ideas that are getting close scrutiny are onboard flight-control
systems that could be programmed to prevent planes from heading into restricted
areas; remote control from the ground that could not be overridden from the
cockpit; and a panic button, also impossible to override, that has the plane
direct itself to land at the nearest suitable field.
The computer-enforced "no flight" idea has been articulated by, among others,
Edward A. Lee, an engineering professor at the University of California at
Berkeley, who calls it "soft walls." Mountains, he says, are "hard walls,"
where planes cannot fly; why not add artificial three-dimensional blocks of
space where planes could not enter?
In fact, Professor Lee's approach would solve a problem that predates Sept. 11
and has killed thousands of people namely, what the airlines call "controlled
flight into terrain," when a crew takes a plane in perfect working order and
slams it into a mountain. Since the crash of an American Airlines Boeing 757 in
Colombia in 1995, and that of a Korean Air 747 short of a runway in Guam in
1997, thousands of planes have been equipped with a device called an enhanced
ground-proximity warning system, which incorporates a major chunk of the "soft
wall" idea.
"Enhanced groundprox," as pilots call it, uses the Global Positioning System or
other navigation information available to the plane like inertial guidance,
which keeps track of location by measuring each turn and how long the plane
flew at each speed in each direction, or ground-based radio beacons to plot
the plane's longitude and latitude. It also keeps track of the plane's heading,
speed, altitude and rate of climb or descent. Then it projects the plane's
position in the next few minutes and compares the projection to a computer
database of terrain.
If the system calculates that the crew is heading for a mountain, it highlights
that mountain on a screen. As the plane gets closer, the mountain gets
brighter. Eventually, the machine starts talking. "Pull up," it says, in
increasingly insistent tones.
All the system does, however, is warn. Professor Lee would have it prohibit the
pilot from flying toward the obstacle. All other movements would be allowed.
Eventually, he said, the plane would be "gently diverted" and would bank or
climb as appropriate to avoid the forbidden area. The mandatory system would
mediate every instruction from the cockpit. For example, if the forbidden zone
included a block covering Manhattan to an altitude of 4,000 feet, it would
prevent someone in the cockpit from skimming in at that altitude and cutting
off the engines.
There are, however, several problems.
First is that for software to interpose itself between the human in the cockpit
and the flight control surfaces, the airplane has to have such a computer to
begin with. Those are planes that are known as "fly by wire," because a pilot's
actions in the cockpit, like a command to bank or climb, are given to a
computer, which then sends a signal in an electric wire to a mechanical device
at the control, like the elevator in the tail or the aileron on the wing.
Only a few planes, like a Boeing 777 or an Airbus A320, have such "fly by wire"
systems, also called F.B.W. In older planes, to move a flight-control surface
on a wing or the tail, the pilot moves a mechanical control that pulls a cable
running under the plane's floor. Generally, the cable or an electronic signal
from the computer connects to a hydraulic system that actually does the work.
In November, the F.A.A. counted about 2,300 fly-by-wire planes among Boeing and
Airbus models, the two most popular among big jets; another 8,700 planes in
those fleets had conventional mechanical systems.
Herman A. Rediess, director of the Office of Aviation Research at the F.A.A.,
said in a paper representing his own views: "For the near future, no airline
will have the financial resources to even modify the F.B.W. aircraft. It's not
clear that they would even have sufficient funds to retrofit the non-F.B.W.
aircraft."
Adding fly-by-wire ability to older planes would be wildly expensive. George K.
Muellner, an Air Force veteran and president of Boeing's research and
development arm, called the Phantom Works, recalled that the Air Force had
taken some of its oldest F-4's and converted them into pilotless drones, for
use as target practice. The conversion, he said, cost more than the plane did
new.
Even for newer planes, pilots do not like the idea.
A Boeing 737 pilot for a major airline recalled approaching Reagan National
Airport from the south a few years ago and facing a microburst, a rainstorm
that includes sudden changes in wind direction. Such a condition can lead to a
crash if a plane is at low altitude and low air speed, as it is on approach.
He broke off the approach and turned east. "It was the only way to go," he
said. However, if he had been a little deeper into the approach, he said, "I'd
be flying right toward the protected area," the forbidden zone that includes
the White House. A system that prevented him from turning that way would be
unsafe, said the pilot, whose airline, like most, has been reluctant to discuss
security changes.
Another pilot, Stephen A. Luckey, the chairman of the Air Line Pilots
Association's security committee, said computers were still too prone to
failure to allow them to override human pilots without recourse. Captain
Luckey, who flew a Boeing 747-400 until he retired recently, said that in the
last three years, he had seen three instances of computer failure on planes he
was flying. In two of those, he said, as he looked at a navigation screen, the
ground appeared to rotate 120 degrees.
"If something goes wrong, it will go wrong at the worst possible time," he
said. "Murphy is always your co-pilot in this business." He said he preferred
"fortress doors," air marshals and armed pilots.
"There are far better, more economical, proven and reliable systems than these
gee-whiz things," said Captain Luckey, who heads a panel on ways to fortify
planes against hijacking, formed by an F.A.A. advisory committee on airline
security.
Another concern is the reliability of the Global Positioning System. The system
is certainly precise enough to be used to steer planes away from objects as
large as mountains or major clusters of buildings. But it, too, is subject to
sabotage from the ground that could blank out a signal or possibly even send
out false information. At that point, other navigation information, like
inertial navigation or land-based radio beacons, would still be available,
though.
Professor Lee, in a telephone interview, said the problem was not technical,
but cultural. The idea of a captain with ultimate authority goes back 1,000
years, he said, and is hard to overcome. But he said his plan left maximum
possible control with the cockpit crew, by allowing any movement that did not
take the plane into the target. "We need to convince the pilots that this is
their best option," he said.
Another idea examined since Sept. 11 is the remote control of hijacked
airplanes. Such control has advanced sharply in recent years for military
planes and has proved its worth in Afghanistan. The newest systems are designed
to let a single operator run four drones at once, because the drones are given
a preprogrammed mission and endowed with some artificial intelligence that lets
them make some decisions on their own.
The operator on the ground does not have so much as a joystick to work with.
Instead, a keyboard is used to issue instructions, the way a pilot onboard
might instruct an autopilot: climb to a certain altitude at a certain rate,
level out, roll the plane to a new heading, proceed to a certain point and make
a turn in a different direction; land on a particular runway at a certain
airfield.
A related idea is a "panic button." Once it was pushed, the plane would land at
the nearest suitable airfield, with no one onboard able to stop it. G.P.S.
navigation is rapidly approaching the point where it will be accurate enough
for such landings, if it is working properly.
The drawbacks of these high-tech solutions, however, have led civilian experts
to conclude that lower-technology solutions are more likely to be helpful.
As with the "soft walls" systems, remote controls would work only on
fly-by-wire planes. Reliability is a problem, too. Michael Heinz, vice
president of Boeing's Unmanned Systems program, said that while the pilotless
combat aircraft had a level of reliability that approached that of private
planes, the risks were still much higher than typical for airliners.
There are other complications, too, even for the fly-by-wire planes. For remote
control, the biggest is probably unauthorized attempts to take control. "Any
hacker with some radio-frequency equipment might try that," said Mr. Muellner
of Boeing.
Installing a system that cannot be overridden from the cockpit is a risk if it
can be used by malefactors. As Mr. Muellner put it, "A terrorist who is not
even on the airplane is the worst of all possible worlds."
*****************
New York Times
The Bell Is Tolling for the Beeper
Y now Jill Bloom is used to the stares she gets when she pulls the small black
device out of her pocket. After all, who still carries a beeper?
But even in an age of nearly ubiquitous wireless voice communications, Ms.
Bloom remains a diehard fan of her numeric pager.
"I throw it in my pocket or bag and never worry about it," said Ms. Bloom, the
director of marketing and corporate communications for LifeBridge Health, which
owns several hospitals in Baltimore. "I can use it as much as I want without
fearing a large bill at the end of the month."
The one-way pager, which first became popular among doctors and drug dealers in
the early 1990's, is an endangered species these days. The number in use in the
United States has declined about 20 percent since peaking in 1998, and few new
customers are signing up for service. Among those who still have a pager,
one-quarter use them very little if at all. And Motorola (news/quote), the
dominant beeper manufacturer, announced last December that it would no longer
make one-way pagers.
The reason for the decline is as plain as the cellphone in your pocket. "Pagers
are a dying technology," said Adam Guy, a senior analyst at Strategis Group, a
telecommunications research firm in Washington. "No one wants to send a page
when you can just call someone on their cellphone."
But if one-way pagers are a dying breed, some people plan to hold on to theirs
to the bitter end. As a pager owner wrote on a bulletin board at Geek.com after
Motorola's announcement in December, he will keep his pager "until they pry it
from my cold dead body."
Although the number of pager users is down from nearly 45 million in 1998,
Strategis says, some 37 million people were still carrying the tiny devices in
2000, the most recent year for which figures are available. (Another 850,000
people had two-way pagers, a small but growing part of the wireless industry.)
Analysts say that the number of one-way pagers undoubtedly declined further
last year.
Users say that in comparison with cellphones, beepers are inconspicuous and
allow people to talk with callers at their convenience rather than feel
compelled to answer a ringing phone.
What's more, they say, pagers are more reliable and less expensive than
wireless phones. The average monthly paging bill is about $12, according to
Strategis, compared with $61 for a cellphone. Free pagers are often included
with service plans, and the devices can last several weeks on a single set of
batteries. "My pager battery seems to last forever, and that's good since I
always forget to charge my cellphone battery," said Sam Evans, a computer
technician in Boston.
Hospitals remain one of the biggest users of pagers. Sinai Hospital, one of the
hospitals where Ms. Bloom works, for instance, has 1,300 pagers in service.
Because pagers operate on a much lower radio frequency than cellphones,
particularly digital phones, they penetrate buildings more easily, and they do
not interfere with certain medical equipment as mobile phones do.
The lower frequency also means that pagers have fewer gaps in coverage, since
paging signals travel farther than those from cellular towers. In fact, pager
users who also carry a mobile phone say they sometimes get beeped only to
discover that their cellphone is in a dead zone when they go to return the
call.
"It seems stupid, but here I am carrying both a cellphone and a pager, and I'm
searching for a pay phone to return a page," Mr. Evans said.
For those who have parted ways with their beepers, the breakup is often tough.
Many former users said they finally wearied of carrying both a pager and a
cellphone and were enticed by wireless phone plans that offered thousands of
free minutes a month. That meant they no longer had to worry about eating up
expensive air time with unimportant calls.
Beepers became "virtually obsolete" when cellphone carriers introduced
pagerlike features like voice mail and caller ID, said Michele Dynan, who has
sold pagers in Alexandria, Va., since 1990. Ms. Dynan has lost more than
three-quarters of her 7,000 customers in the last three years and is in the
process of shutting down her business. Today she sells fewer than 20 pagers a
month, compared with nearly 700 a month in the early 1990's.
"What I'm basically doing now is fixing and replacing pagers," she said.
Not only has the number of pagers fallen, but their use has as well. The
majority of beeper owners are paged fewer than six times a day, Strategis says,
and more than one-fourth of users are paged once or twice a day or not at all.
Those who are paged more than six times a day tend to have had a beeper for
years and to use it almost exclusively for business.
The decline in beeper use has led several paging companies to consolidate their
operations in the last several years or to file for bankruptcy. The biggest
blow came when Motorola, whose beepers account for more than 80 percent of the
market, said that it would stop making one-way and some two-way pagers this
summer and concentrate on messaging devices for wireless telephone networks
instead.
About one-quarter of pager subscribers today also own a cellphone, down from
nearly 40 percent in 1997, as many dual users have opted to drop the pager.
Others are buying two-way pagers like the BlackBerry, which allow them to
answer a message without searching for a phone.
Heather Schechner, a former daytime television producer in Los Angeles, finally
gave up her pager late last year after carrying the device plus a phone for
five years.
"It didn't make much financial sense to have both," she said, especially since
her new wireless provider, Sprint PCS, offers paging service. But Ms. Schechner
said she sometimes misses the tiny device. "I get nervous that my family can't
reach me," she said. "I don't trust my cellphone as much as the pager."
Still, new uses for beepers continue to emerge. One growing market for pagers
is telematics, or machine-to-machine communication. Already large computer
networks can be set to call a pager automatically when a server crashes. In the
near future, a soda machine may call a pager to alert a distributor that it is
about to sell out of a certain soft drink.
Pagers also remain popular among drug dealers and others engaged in illegal
activities because the numbers can't be traced. Some paging companies offer
short-term rentals so that people can keep in touch with family members who are
ill or so that an expectant mother can reach her spouse or labor coach when the
time comes.
Two-way paging is also expanding. The roughly 850,000 two-way pagers in use
today represent nearly a sixfold increase in three years, according to the
Strategis survey. Still, the research group said it was unlikely that the
standalone two-way devices would ever become as big as the one-way pager market
was in the late 1990's now that cellphone makers are improving their keypads
and two-way capabilities.
After using his pager for more than a decade, Mike Smith, a salesman for Gutter
Helmet Systems in Baltimore, which makes and installs protectors for home
gutters, reluctantly retired it last year when the company bought cellphones
for its sales force. With the beeper, Mr. Smith said, he could call back
customers at his convenience, "but now my clients know I have a cellphone and
they expect it to be on."
Ms. Bloom, the Baltimore hospital executive, also finds that her beeper affords
more privacy than a cellphone. "It's less intrusive," she said. "When you're in
public you can look at the number on a pager quickly and excuse yourself to
make a call. With a cellphone, it always seems like you're answering it
someplace where it's not appropriate."
*******************
Computerworld
Groove to release new version of P2P software
In response to customer demands, Groove Networks Inc. will release on Monday
the second version of its peer-to-peer collaboration software, with added
features such as centralized control and integration with other applications.
A little more than a year after the first release, the new version of Groove
provides customers of the Beverly, Mass.-based company with more in-house
control of the software. That control mainly comes from a server companies can
now buy and install in their network, instead of having the application hosted
by Groove.
"I think Groove heard them," said analyst Dana Gardner at Aberdeen Group Inc.
in Boston. He said internal control was exactly the sort of thing customers
were asking for last year.
Internal control was also included in a beta version of this release last
October.
Other tools added to this version include integration with Microsoft Corp.'s
Office applications, particularly the Outlook e-mail client. A Groove link
appears automatically in the Outlook user interface, so users can create a
shared workspace in Groove and automatically populate that with selected e-mail
addresses from Outlook.
Groove 2.0 also links to Microsoft Project software, and integration with Notes
e-mail software from IBM subsidiary Lotus Software Group in Cambridge, Mass.,
is under consideration, according to Groove spokesman Andrew Mahon. Groove
founder and CEO Ray Ozzie also created Notes, and much of his staff at Groove
came from Lotus.
Groove isn't trying to push out e-mail applications, but the company has big
ambitions as a collaboration software vendor, Mahon said.
Gardner agreed that once it is deployed, the Groove software will become a
popular tool at many companies -- even if it is brought in to address a single
problem.
"They sort of have a beach head with a particular issue, but once [that is]
solved, it will begin to take over more collaboration and communications
activity," Gardner said.
******************
BBC
Computer lifeline for refugees
The scheme at a federal reception centre for refugees in Kapellen, just outside
Antwerp, is run by volunteers and relies on donated computers.
The aim is teach the migrants how to use computers and the internet while they
wait to hear for the results of their application for refugee status.
"Experience with computers can open new opportunities for the person, whether
it is to continue with language learning or with computer skills, or simply to
be able to access the internet for news," said the centre's Rudi De Bleser.
"We offer the opportunity to acquire skills that may be useful to them in
Belgium as well as in any other country, since only 20% gets a positive result
to their asylum request."
Donated computers
The centre is home to 450 migrants, mainly from the former Soviet republic, as
well as from Iran and Afghanistan.
The project started in 1999 with a set of computers donated by Oxfam. Several
more came from the Ministry of Social Affairs, which had been planning to sell
the machines as scrap metal.
"New and faster computers are put on the market every month, but the older ones
are still fine and may be used effectively in non-commercial projects like this
one," said Mr Bleser.
The centre now has 27 computers and the training is being provided by computer
experts who have given their time freely.
The internet cafe has proved particularly popular as the refugees are able to
use the web to find out the latest news from their native country.
"The residents are very enthusiastic about the news. As one surfs often three
or four sit behind him or her in order to read and discuss what is happening
back home," said Mr Bleser.
"It allows access to dissenting views that may not be easily available in their
own country."
Women only
The centre has also set aside special times and days of the week for women to
use the computers.
This was for cultural reasons, as many of the female refugees could not go when
there were men present at the internet cafe.
"At first we had to really force the men to stay out and respect a bit of time
for the ladies," said Diane Cavallero, who runs the computer classes at the
centre.
"But it has progressed to men dropping off their wives at the library and
picking them up at the end of the session, both parties feeling good about a
nice, safe evening out."
The centre is now hoping to increase the number of computers available and
improve the quality of the machines.
"Our cafe always has a full house and it is so popular that we almost have to
beg people to stop and let us close for the evening," said Mr Bleser.
***************
San Francisco Chronicle
Voice mail systems have few safeguards
Hewlett-Packard isn't saying much about how voice mail between its top
executives came to be splashed across newspaper front pages, but virtually
every company is vulnerable to similar leaks, security experts warn.
Voice mail theft is "more common than you'd think," said Jon Callas, a software
engineer and security expert at Searchsecurity.com, a Web site focusing on
vulnerabilities in information systems.
Systems are designed to make it easy for the intended recipient to retrieve
messages from any phone anywhere, but that means anyone else who knows or can
guess the user's password can gain access with equal ease.
The leak, made public yesterday, involved a message HP Chief Executive Officer
Carly Fiorina sent on March 17 to one of her top lieutenants, Chief Financial
Officer Bob Wayman.
Spokeswoman Rebeca Robboy declined to say how HP's voice mail system works or
how company officials believe the message was leaked.
"HP does not by practice disclose details of our internal communications
processes," she said. "The incident regarding unauthorized disclosure of a
company voice mail is a very serious matter, and we are taking the necessary
steps."
Modern voice mail systems are basically just specialized server computers that
store messages in digital form on a hard drive. A system administrator with
physical access to the server could retrieve a message -- even one deleted by
the recipient -- in essentially the same way that inadvertently erased word
processing files can often be recovered.
Conceivably, other tech-savvy company employees or an outside hacker who
managed to penetrate HP's internal data network could do the same thing.
It's also possible that someone on Wayman's team who secretly opposes the
merger plan delivered it to the news media in hopes of bolstering Hewlett's
case, which is scheduled to go to trial on April 23, or that it was
accidentally forwarded to a merger opponent.
But the most likely explanation, experts polled yesterday guess, is that a
snoop inside or out of the company simply dialed up HP's voice mail system and
entered Wayman's extension and password before he deleted the message.
"A lot of people don't take their voice mail password seriously," said Mandy
Andress, president of ArcSec, a San Mateo security company. Systems are often
set up with an easily guessed default password -- the user's extension or a
simple sequence such as 1-2-3-4. Many users simply leave those passwords in
place, she said, or switch to something else an intruder would have a good
chance of guessing, such as a birthday or home address.
"It's a well-known problem that we don't have good voice mail passwords,"
Callas said. "After all, we want something we can remember."
Few companies have done much to impose strict security on their voice mail
systems, despite increasing awareness of computer security risks. "Companies
are being more proactive about securing things that are relatively easy to get
to, like Web servers, but they're ignoring other systems," Andress said.
Part of the problem, according to Rick Shaw, president of CorpNet Security in
Lincoln, Neb., is that most company executives and security administrators
"haven't thought about how critical the information on voice mail can be."
"Obviously, this episode serves as a wake-up call," he said.
It's not the first time, however, that a major company has been embarrassed by
a voice mail leak. In 1998, the Cincinnati Enquirer published an 18-page expose
of Chiquita Banana's labor practices on its Central American farms.
A month later, the paper renounced its stories, fired its lead reporter, issued
an apology and paid Chiquita more than $10 million, after it was revealed that
the stories were derived in part from stolen voice mail. Both the reporter and
a former Chiquita lawyer who helped him gain access to the company's voice mail
were eventually convicted in the case.
*****************
Government Computer News
Police Web site briefly redirects traffic to porn page
By Patricia Daukantas
A municipal police department in central Massachusetts yesterday halted the
automatic redirection of its Web site visitors to a pornography site.
The forwarding from the online home of the Gardner, Mass., police department,
www.gardnerpolice.org, to ?Tina?s Free Live Cam? started April 5 and ended when
Rock A. Barrieau, Gardner deputy police chief, asked the domain name?s current
owner to stop the redirection.
Gardner police lost their rights to the domain name when they were not asked to
pay a renewal fee.
Rights to the domain went to Domain Strategies Inc. of Quebec, which registered
it with OnlineNIC.com of San Francisco, Barrieau said.
Barrieau credited a Massachusetts law enforcement group called the Regional
Electronic and Computer Crime Taskforce with tracing the new owner of the
domain.
Yesterday, Barrieau said he phoned Domain Strategies? owner and ?appealed to
his sense of decency.? The company stopped the redirection, and visitors to
www.gardnerpolice.org now get a placeholder page.
Gardner police had received many complaints about the webcam site, Barrieau
said.
A Florida man was negotiating to acquire the rights to the gardnerpolice.org
domain and planned to donate them to the city, Barrieau said. The department?s
webmaster has a backup copy of the original site and expects to have the police
content restored within a week.
*****************
MSNBC
Kid-friendly domain clears hurdle
WEB SITES BEARING a ?.kids.us? address would have to certify that they did not
contain sexually explicit material, hate speech, violence or other material not
suitable for minors
The House Energy and Commerce Committee approved the bill by a voice vote
and sent it to the House floor for approval.
Unlike previous congressional attempts to screen out online smut, the
bill would regulate content only on a corner of the Internet that falls
directly under U.S. government control.
?It would be a place that parents know they can send their kids to be
safe, much like a children?s section of the library,? said Michigan Republican
Rep. Fred Upton, a bill sponsor.
Under changes incorporated into the bill on Wednesday, Web sites using
the .kids.us handle could not set up chat rooms, instant messaging or other
interactive services unless they could certify that they did not expose
children to pedophiles or pose other risks.
Links to other Web sites outside the .kids.us subdomain would also be
prohibited.
The bill represents the latest attempt to keep children away from the
sexually explicit material easily available to anyone with a computer and an
Internet connection.
An early attempt, the 1996 Communications Decency Act, was thrown out by
the Supreme Court as an infringement on free speech. A second, the 1998 Child
Online Protection Act, remains sidelined by a court injunction.
More recently, lawmakers had hoped the global body that manages the Internet?s
domain-name system would set up a .kids domain alongside established domains
like .com and .net.
After the Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
passed on the idea in November 2000, Massachusetts Democrat Ed Markey and
Illinois Republican John Shimkus introduced a bill that would force ICANN to
set up a .kids domain.
But they backed off from that plan last fall after witnesses told them
it would be difficult to overrule ICANN, which is not under direct U.S.
government control.
The revised bill places the .kids domain under the control of NeuStar
Inc., which won the contract to manage the ?.us? country-code domain last fall.
NeuStar would be expected to police the subdomain to ensure that it
remained free of inappropriate content, and would answer to the Commerce
Department?s National Telecommunications and Information Administration.
If privately held NeuStar were to lose money on the venture, it could
give control back to the Commerce Department, which would seek another
operator.
NeuStar officials were not immediately available for comment.
***************
MSNBC
Study finds huge cost of online scams
10,000 people report they lost $18 million to Internet
A SCAM KNOWN AS Nigerian letter fraud netted more than $5,000 per
victim, the center said. The con involves an e-mail purportedly sent from the
Nigerian government requesting use of the recipient?s bank account to receive
millions of dollars in funds, generally described as over-invoiced contracts.
The e-mails then ask for upfront cash to pay for licenses, taxes or other
nonexistent fees.
Victims of Internet cons ranged in age from 10 to 100. Those over 60
were most at risk for losing large amounts of money, the report said.
Created in 2000 and based in Fairmont, the complaint center is a joint
venture of the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center.
Richard Johnston, who directs the center, expected complaints to rise
from 1,000 a week to 1,000 a day next year as the center becomes better known.
But prosecuting Internet con artists will be difficult since
perpetrators often live thousands of miles from their victims and
jurisdictional issues often require the cooperation of multiple agencies, said
Thomas Richardson, deputy assistant director of the FBI?s criminal
investigative division.
********************
Government Executive
Agencies need to coordinate homeland security research, senators say
A great deal of money for homeland security and research for new technologies
to combat terrorism is tucked in agency budgets across the government. The
trick is to coordinate efforts throughout government to ensure that efforts are
not duplicated and that the research results will be effective, senators said
during a Wednesday hearing.
"One of our great strengths is our ability to deliver new technology to the
market and to the battlefield," said Louisiana Democrat Mary Landrieu,
chairwoman of the Senate Armed Services Emerging Threats and Capabilities
Subcommittee.
Transforming defense planning to a "capabilities-based" model that anticipates
how a foe might fight and identifying ways to deter attacks will require
investments in science and technology, said Ronald Sega, director of research
and engineering at the Defense Department. The goal is to identify technology
that can be used in the short term and make investments that will have
long-term benefits, he said.
But displaying a chart resembling a jigsaw puzzle, Landrieu noted that it
represented agencies charged with homeland security. Technology can play a
major role in strengthening the defense systems, but decision makers "must
search for ways to increase investment and make the investment work for the
American people," she said.
Landrieu added that "it is encouraging but daunting" to see White House efforts
to coordinate homeland defense initiatives among the different agencies.
"The challenge of coordination is great but not impossible," said John
Marburger, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
OSTP's role is to coordinate federal research and development efforts among
agencies, and it does so primarily through the National Science and Technology
Council, he said.
The fiscal 2003 budget request would allocate $37.7 billion for homeland
security and $112 billion for research and development. Of the R&D funds, $3
billion would be allocated for combating terrorism, with $2.4 billion slated
for protection against biological weapons.
OSTP's efforts also "reach beyond the federal government," Marburger said,
extending to the science community, the private sector and higher education.
Dale Klein, assistant defense secretary of nuclear, chemical and biological
defense programs, noted that his group's mission is clear, but "what is less
clear is how does [the Defense Department] interface with the Office of
Homeland Security."
Klein noted that his team has a lot of expertise that could be used among state
and local law enforcement, but he said Defense should determine how to share
that information.
One area where information sharing is lacking is in combating the trafficking
of nuclear materials, said Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan.
A soon-to-be-released General Accounting Office report found that U.S.
technology has been installed abroad--in Russia, for example--to detect nuclear
materials, but U.S. borders are without such devices. "That is not right,"
Roberts said.
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Lillie Coney
Public Policy Coordinator
U.S. Association for Computing Machinery
Suite 507
1100 Seventeenth Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20036-4632
202-659-9711