Clips 3/28/02

[Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>]

Clips March 28, 2002

ARTICLES

FCC to Refund Spectrum Payments 
Court Considers Mass E-Mailings Case
DVD Wants Calif. Supreme Court To Reverse DeCSS Ruling
With the Latest Technology, Students Find That Creating Fake ID's Is Easy
Who?s Watching WinWhatWhere?
Truce called in Spyware wars
GAO ruling could cripple A-76 competitions, military services say 
Security agency?s CIO outlines transformation plans 
Military needs to improve info sharing with allies, Navy official says 
Survey of Web Finds Gains on Privacy Issues
Senior Activist Jailed For Web Rant
Google Turns Away Robots From Its Front Door 
Wear and stare computers 
New technologies challenge criminal justice system
IT virtual job fair scheduled
Terror's Confounding Online Trail
As the Web Matures, Fun Is Hard to Find
Don't Point, Just Think: The Brain Wave as Joystick
A Tracking System That Calls Balls and Strikes
Hi-tech kit tracks rowers
Robo-reporter goes to war
TV link to violence
Virtual lab to link Arab scientists
Church grapples with hi-tech dilemma
NASA looks for a new desktop outsourcing metric 
PKI Steering Committee chooses signature app 
NIST CIO Mehuron will retire
Grocery surfing
PC price hike possible
FBI to reveal more Carnivore details
**************
Washington Post
FCC to Refund Spectrum Payments 
22 Firms to Get Back $2.8 Billion Paid After Disputed 2001 Auction 

The Federal Communications Commission agreed yesterday to return most of the
$3.2 billion in down payments made by telecommunications companies that
participated in an airwaves auction now mired in litigation.

The FCC said it would give back $2.8 billion to 22 companies that bid in the
2001 auction. The companies bid almost $16 billion for the wireless licenses
but have been unable to use them because of a controversy over ownership of the
airwaves.

The FCC declined to return all the deposits, pending the outcome of a five-year
battle over ownership of the spectrum. At the heart of the controversy is a
claim by NextWave Telecom Inc. that the FCC improperly seized its wireless
licenses and resold them in January 2001. The FCC claims it had the right to
resell the airwaves because NextWave failed to make good on its $4.7 billion
bid for the spectrum. NextWave filed for bankruptcy protection in 1998. The
Supreme Court has agreed to review the case, but a decision is not expected for
at least another year. Further challenges to other elements of the complicated
case could delay a resolution for two or more years.

There is more than money at stake. The wireless licenses cover markets,
including Washington, New York and Los Angeles, in which mobile
telecommunications companies say they are running out of spectrum.

Verizon Wireless, which sued in U.S. District Court in Washington seeking the
return of its down payment, reacted cautiously to the FCC's announcement
yesterday. "A return of 85 percent of our deposit is a step in the right
direction," said Verizon spokesman Jeffrey Nelson.

The FCC will return $1.5 billion of Verizon's $1.7 billion down payment.
Verizon says it is owed an additional $115 million in lost interest, since the
federal government does not pay interest on the deposits.

Also eligible to get down payments back are Salmon PCS, which is backed by
Cingular Wireless, and Alaska Native Wireless, which is backed by AT&T
Wireless.

Verizon has asked the FCC to throw out the results of last year's auction,
claiming it is unfair to hold companies to the results of an auction that took
place more than a year ago.

Verizon Wireless bid $8.7 billion in that auction, but since then the market
for airwaves has dropped significantly. If the auction is eventually voided,
Verizon may be able to get comparable spectrum for much less money.

"Legally they are still on the hook for the full amount until such time as the
Supreme Court decides to affirm the case, which I think they will," said Rudy
Baca, an analyst with the Precursor Group, a Washington-based research firm.
The possible $8.7 billion payment hinders Verizon's ability to seek mergers or
acquisitions with other companies, Baca said.

In yesterday's decision, the FCC repeated its intent to collect the $16 billion
in winning bids from last year's auction. "Should the commission prevail in its
ongoing litigation with NextWave, winning bidders in the auction will be
required to pay their full bid amounts or be subject to default payments," the
FCC wrote.

Late last year Verizon negotiated a settlement that included the bidders in
last year's auction, the FCC and NextWave. Under the terms of that deal, the
federal government and NextWave would have split the proceeds of the $16
billion auction, with NextWave getting $6 billion after taxes and the
government getting about $10 billion. But Congress refused to ratify the deal,
leading to its collapse.

The FCC said it would take about 30 days to return the money to the companies
once a request for the partial refund is completed.

**************
Associated Press
Court Considers Mass E-Mailings Case 

SAN FRANCISCO - The California Supreme Court agreed Wednesday to review an
appeals court decision which said a fired Intel Corp. worker was guilty of
trespassing when he inundated the company with critical e-mails.

Five of the high court's seven justices agreed to set aside the lower court's
December ruling in a case testing whether free speech protections extend to
business e-mail systems. The court didn't indicate when it would hear the case,
which has attracted widespread interest among free speech advocates,
intellectual property scholars and the technology community.

The move comes a month after the justices agreed to hear a different cyberspace
case. That case weighs whether it is an illegal restraint on speech to prohibit
someone from posting on the Internet an encryption-breaking code enabling the
recording of digital versatile discs, or DVDs.

The case the justices agreed to review on Wednesday concerns former Intel
engineer Kourosh Kenneth Hamidi, who was fired from the Santa Clara-based
company after a work-injury dispute. Hamidi, in 1999, made headlines when he
drove a horse and buggy to the chipmaker's headquarters and dropped off 40,000
anti-Intel messages.

After his 1995 dismissal from Intel, he inundated the company's computer server
by sending several different e-mails complaining of unfair work practices. The
e-mails went to as many as 30,000 of the company's workers.

The chipmaker sued and sought an injunction barring Hamidi from sending the
e-mail. Intel, which had asked Hamidi to stop mailing the electronic messages
before seeking a court order, claimed that he was trespassing on private
property by sending the electronic mail.

A state appeals court agreed and issued an injunction. The 3rd District Court
of Appeals ruled that Intel had the same right to police its e-mail system as
it would its factories and office hallways. The court said the e-mails were a
literal intrusion into the workplace.

While courts and legislatures have limited junk e-mail advertisements  known as
spam, the Hamidi case concerns the power of the courts to turn off an
individual's vehicle to exercise an opinion.

Hamidi, of Citrus Heights, said the court's action Wednesday was a "good sign."

Intel's lawyer, Michael Jacobs, urged the justices to let the injunction
against Hamidi stand.

"His theory ... is that an employer's internal computer network, once connected
to the outside world through the Internet, becomes a free-for-all-zone in which
the invocation of free speech trumps private property rights and common sense,"
Jacobs said.

Cindy Cohn, legal director of the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier
Foundation, a civil liberties group, applauded the court's move.

She said that, if Hamidi's injunction were to stand, the case could set bad
precedent. She said that a man could be guilty of trespassing by sending his
lover an e-mail after she told him not to communicate with her by e-mail.

The American Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites), the Thomas Jefferson
Center for the Protection of Free Expression, three dozen law professors from
throughout the country and others urged the court to revisit the case.

The case is Intel Corp. v. Hamidi, S103781.

**************
DVD Wants Calif. Supreme Court To Reverse DeCSS Ruling

The DVD Copy Control Association Tuesday asked the California Supreme Court to
reverse a lower court's decision that blocked the publication of the source
code for DeCSS technology, which circumvents digital copy protection systems. 

DeCSS is a computer program designed to defeat an encryption-based copy
protection system known as the Content Scramble System, or CSS, which is
employed to encrypt and protect the copyrighted motion pictures contained on
DVDs.

The California Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in this case early this
fall, and a decision is expected by early 2003. 

Bob Sugarman, one of the attorneys for the DVD CCA in this matter, said a
November 2001 ruling in New York supports his client's assertions. 

"We are optimistic that the California Supreme Court will reverse the decision
... especially in view of the decision late last year by the 2nd Circuit
upholding an even more restrictive injunction against DeCSS under the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act," Sugarman said in a written statement. 

The 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in New York upheld a New York District
Court's decision to prohibit hacker magazine 2600 from posting DeCSS. The panel
also upheld the ruling that 2600 could not link to other Web sites that have
DeCSS available for download. 

"The First Amendment was never intended to block courts from preventing the
illegal distribution of a program that improperly uses DVD CCA's trade secrets
and whose primary purpose is to permit those who use it to violate the
copyright laws," he added. "The issues raised by this appeal are extremely
important not just for the DVD industry, but for all industries that rely on
trade secret laws to protect their businesses." 

The brief is the latest legal maneuver in a drama that has played out for
months in courtrooms in California and New York. 

In January 2000, a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge imposed a
preliminary injunction that ordered defendant Andrew Bunner and numerous other
defendants to cease Internet publication of the source code for DeCSS. 

On Nov. 1, 2000, the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals reversed the lower
court's injunction. The court said the temporary injunction was a violation of
Bunner's freedom of speech. 

In the decision, the appeals court said the DVD CCA's right to protect its
economically valuable trade secret, "is not an interest that is 'more
fundamental' than the First Amendment right to freedom of speech, or even on
equal footing with the national security interests or other vital governmental
interests that have previously been found insufficient to justify a prior
restraint." 

In addition, the court found that DeCSS is "pure speech" for the purposes of
First Amendment protection. 

On Nov. 30, 2001, the DVD CCA filed a petition for review with the California
Supreme Court. On Feb. 20, the court agreed to hear the organization's
arguments. 

In the brief, the DVD CCA argued that, "neither DeCSS nor Bunner's posting of
it on the Internet is pure speech." Instead, the group said, courts have
treated computer code as "nonspeech" or "mixed speech and content." 

"Historically, the dissemination of stolen trade secrets has not been protected
by the First Amendment," the DVD CCA wrote in its brief. It said the
injunction, "was not aimed at restricting speech, but was intended solely to
protect against the evisceration of trade secrets that are the motion picture
industry's critical means of defense against widespread digital pirating of its
valuable copyrighted works." 

The DVD CCA asserted the appeals court "fundamentally erred" in its finding
that DeCSS was pure speech, and insisted that if the ruling were allowed to
stand, "the value of trade secrets in California will be virtually destroyed." 

"No stolen trade secret can survive if the courts are powerless to enjoin its
widespread disclosure," the brief said. 

**************
Chronicle of Higher Education
With the Latest Technology, Students Find That Creating Fake ID's Is Easy

While some college students are out drinking and hitting the clubs, others are
hard at work mastering computerized graphic design -- so they can make fake
ID's for drinking and hitting the clubs.

Although college students have been using fake ID's to purchase alcohol for
decades, police officials lately have found that students are using computers
to create authentic-looking driver's licenses and other forms of
identification. Just since February, police officers have caught students on at
least three campuses making fake ID's on their residence-hall computers.

At Iowa State University, a student was selling fake Illinois driver's licenses
until other students tipped off authorities, police officials say. At the
University of Texas at Austin, two students were arrested for allegedly selling
fake ID's all over the country. And two students at Indiana University were
arrested and charged with making and selling hundreds of fake driver's
licenses.

Lt. Jerry L. Minger, technical-services coordinator for Indiana University's
police department, says students are using desktop computers and everyday
software to make ID's that are almost identical to the real things.

"For all practical purposes, the ID's that they are making look very
authentic," Lieutenant Minger says. "The equipment that we confiscated isn't
that much different than the computers you commonly see in dorm rooms."

In the past, students made fake ID's by splitting open the lamination on their
driver's licenses and changing the date of birth. Now students can use
Photoshop and other software that comes standard with a new computer. The only
other piece of equipment that a student needs is a high-quality desktop
laminating machine, which is available online for less than $200.

Capt. Gene Deisinger, special-operations officer for the Iowa State University
police department, says no official statistics are available, but he has heard
that the number of students forging driver's licenses has been increasing now
that sophisticated graphics software is available.

"Certainly the technology makes it frighteningly easy," Captain Deisinger says.

States have been adding special features -- such as holograms and magnetic
strips -- to make it difficult for anyone to forge official ID's. But computer
software and printers available to most students make it easy to craft fake
ID's that bartenders have trouble spotting as homemade.

Holograms can be ordered over the Internet and delivered by mail. And although
many fake ID's don't have legitimate magnetic strips, some bartenders never
find that out: Equipment used to read magnetic strips costs thousands of
dollars, a price many bar owners can't afford. Police officials, however, say
they are able to tell the difference between real and phony driver's licenses
by checking for special characteristics that officers aren't willing to
describe publicly.

Although police officers understand that many students won't wait until they
turn 21 before drinking alcohol, Captain Deisinger says, authorities see the
distribution of false identification as a serious problem. Drinking alcohol,
especially by youngsters, usually contributes to other crimes, like theft and
criminal mischief, he says.

Also, with the continuing threat of terrorism, police officials say the same
technology that lets someone make a fake ID for bar hopping can also be used to
make ID's that could endanger people's lives. "We look at ID's much more
closely now," Captain Deisinger says.

When the arrests on the University of Texas campus occurred, the police
believed at first that some of the fake ID's had been sold to people over the
age of 21, fueling concerns that those people might try to commit fraud or
terrorism. But police officials later said they had no evidence that anyone
over 21 had received a fake ID.

James W. Vick, vice president for student affairs at the university, says
underage drinking has always been a concern of campus officials, but the issue
of fake ID's is not really on the university's radar screen. Police officials
are better equipped to handle that, he says.

"There's a higher level of concern about it now, not so much by university
authorities as much as civil authorities," Mr. Vick says. "There's a greater
concern that people will try to do more than get a beer before they're 21."

Some states have been cracking down on producers and users of fake ID's by
enacting tougher laws. But the penalties for selling phony driver's licenses
still vary widely from state to state.

Imran Ali Karim, an economics sophomore who was arrested on the University of
Texas campus, has been charged with tampering with a government document, which
in Texas is a second-degree felony punishable by a maximum of 20 years in
prison and a $10,000 fine. Jeff Bravine, an Indiana University student who was
arrested, faces a charge of manufacturing false identifications, a misdemeanor
that carries a maximum jail sentence of 180 days.

The Iowa State student accused of creating phony ID's has not been charged yet.
The student is not being held at this time and is cooperating with police
officials in identifying other students who purchased the fake ID's.

**************
MSNBC
Who?s Watching WinWhatWhere?

Spyware, anti-spyware programmers in virtual battle

March 25  It sounds like a James Bond subplot (OK, a geeky James Bond subplot)
but this is real life. The folks who write spy software, sometimes called
snoopware, are fed up with countermeasure anti-spy software like ?Who?s
Watching Me? that blows their cover. So the latest versions of spy software
WinWhatWhere and Spectorsoft, released in the past several weeks, intentionally
disable their anti-spy counterparts. And now the programmers at Who?s Watching
Me are throwing down the virtual developer?s glove, calling for a duel. (OK, a
geeky duel.)

  WHO?S WATCHING WINWHATWHERE? Trapware, that?s who. And the folks at
WinWhatWhere don?t like it one bit. 

       ?If someone?s trying to make money trying to ruin my software, I have to
take appropriate action,? said Richard Eaton, president of WinWhatWhere.

       Snooper programs have been around for years, but they?ve received
heightened attention since Sept. 11. The software can be secretly installed on
any machine  even from afar  and quietly watch every keystroke and mouse
motion. Information gleaned by the spy software can then be remotely e-mailed
to the real spy.

       While companies that make the software say they sell to law enforcement
agencies and corporations who use it as a management tool, many suspect that
much of their revenue comes from suspicious spouses. (Advantage: Spyware.)

       That?s where Wes Austin comes in. Last year he started selling Who?s
Watching Me on Trapware.com. Call it counterintelligence: The program notices
if spy software is on any machine, and alerts the user.

He offers free trials, and nearly 45,000 users have downloaded Who?s Watching
Me. He?s gotten plenty of e-mails (most from angry spouses) with thanks for the
warning about the spy software that had been secretly installed. (Advantage:
Anti-spyware)

       But Austin recently ran tests on the newest version of WinWhatWhere,
released last month. And he noticed something funny: It broke his program.

       ?I discovered that their process was opening up one of our files,? he
said. And he provided evidence to MSNBC. Essentially, WinWhatWhere inserts some
stray characters into a file that?s critical to Who?s Watching Me, disabling
the anti-spy program. (Advantage: Spyware)

       Eaton didn?t confirm that exact methodology, but he did admit his
software does what it has to in order to remain a secret. In fact, WinWhatWhere
disables five other anti-spy programs, too.

?Every time I find out about any of these programs, I will change our program
to do whatever is necessary,? he said. ?My reasoning behind it is I?m selling a
security product that shouldn?t be detected.?

       Steven Haight, sales manager for SpectorSoft, was a bit more subtle in
his description of the situation.

       ?Yes, we can crash anti-spy software,? he said. New advanced security
features in Spector Professional 3.0, released two months ago, do the trick.
But it?s not intentional, he said.

       ?We?re not out there buying anti-spy software and figuring out how to
make them crash. It?s nothing personal against them,? Haight said. ?It?s just
the way the security of our software works. It won?t allow (anti-spy) software
to run.?

       Foul, cries Austin, who thinks his software is a privacy advocate?s best
friend. SpectorSoft says its software is for monitoring, not spying, and tells
purchasers to always advise computer users they are being monitored.

?All we?re doing now is telling people there is a monitoring program,? Austin
says. ?So why break Who?s Watching Me unless you are using the product
illegally, trying to hide something. ... They know what people are using it
for.?

       Haight said he wasn?t familiar enough with Who?s Watching Me to answer
specific questions about the program.

       But Austin is hard at work familiarizing himself with his competitors?
code, and he is studying counter-countermeasure tactics.

  ?We?re trying to decide how to handle it. We could get into code war where we
change our stuff then they change theirs,? he said. He then offered a bit of a
programming swipe at his competitors. ?It would have been best if they had just
taken engineering challenge and designed something that couldn?t be detected.
but instead they just decided to break our program. That?s kind of lame.?
**************
MSNBC
Truce called in Spyware wars
WinWhatWhere no longer breaks anti-spyware product

Martch 27  In the latest chapter of Spyware vs. Anti-spyware, the maker of
snooping program WinWhatWhere backed away from evasive programming tactics
Wednesday. Richard Eaton, president of WinWhatWhere Corp., said his software
would no longer insert stray code into Anti-spyware program Who?s Watching Me
to break the program. The announcement comes after MSNBC.com revealed
WinWhatWhere and competitor SpectorSoft Corp. both intentionally break the
anti-Spyware program.

SO-CALLED SPYWARE programs have been controversial for years. Programs like
Spector and WinWhatWhere can be secretly installed on any machine  even from
afar  and quietly watch every keystroke and mouse motion. Information gleaned
by the spy software can then be remotely e-mailed to the real spy.

       As a counter-measure, some programmers have developed ?anti-spy?
programs like Trapware.com?s Who?s Watching Me. But developer Wes Austin
revealed to MSNBC.com on Monday that spyware developers had recently started
writing code to break his software, so Who?s Watching Me didn?t blow their
cover.

       WinWhatWhere did so by inserting stray text into a file critical for
Who?s Watching Me?s operations; Spector simply crashes the anti-spy program.

       But Wednesday, Eaton said he had a change of heart.

        ?I got to thinking writing to their file wasn?t a very nice thing to
do,? Eaton said. ?The thought of writing into another program?s files, well, I
guess that?s not playing fair. You don?t want anyone to think your program is
doing something malicious.?

       So as of Wednesday, WinWhatWhere no longer inserts the stray text into
Who?s Watching Me files.

       Asked if he would try to circumvent Who?s Watching Me another way, Eaton
said only: ?I can?t say.?

       SpectorSoft has not announced any changes to its program.
**************
Government Executive
GAO ruling could cripple A-76 competitions, military services say 

Hundreds of military installations could be forced to restart their
public-private job competitions unless a controversial General Accounting
Office ruling is overturned, according to officials at the Navy, Army, and
Defense Logistics Agency.


The services allege that the vast majority of ongoing job competitions in the
Navy and Army could be scuttled as a result of new conflict-of-interest
guidelines contained in a Dec. 5 GAO bid protest decision. In that ruling, GAO
urged the Navy to hold a new job competition at the Naval Air Station in
Lemoore, Calif., after finding that a Navy employee and private sector
consultant set performance targets for the competition and then helped develop
the in-house proposal to meet those targets. That created a conflict of
interest that tainted the competition.


GAO is reconsidering its ruling after an appeal by the Navy, which charged the
decision is a departure from GAO precedent and creates a new requirement that
jeopardizes the majority of the Navy?s ongoing job competitions. The Army and
the Defense Logistics Agency joined the Navy in its protest, contending the GAO
decision fails to clarify how agencies can avoid falling prey to
conflict-of-interest charges. 


?This action places agencies in a virtually impossible situation,? said Army
Deputy General Counsel Levator Norsworthy in a Feb. 14 letter to the Navy.
?They are faced with expending time and money to rewrite the performance work
statement and [in-house bid] with no real standards to judge the acceptability
of any subsequent document.? 


GAO?s ruling could disrupt the vast majority of Army job competitions, he
added. ?Over 83 percent of Army A-76 actions currently in progress would have
to be essentially started over under the GAO?s new standards.?


At issue is the question of how agencies divide up the work involved in
public-private job competitions. First, agencies must develop a performance
work statement setting out specific requirements that both the private firm and
government team involved in the competition must meet. Then, agency teams
develop the government or in-house proposal to fulfill these requirements. In
the Lemoore competition, a Navy employee helped craft both the performance work
statement and the in-house proposal--a routine practice, according to the Navy.



?It has been a common practice in the Navy for employees to serve on both the
PWS and [in-house] teams, given the limited pool of available personnel ?with
the requisite knowledge or skills,? and we believe this is common practice at
other agencies,? the Navy said in its Dec. 17 appeal to GAO.

But in its Dec. 5 ruling, GAO held that using the same personnel to work on
both teams creates a conflict of interest under the Federal Acquisition
Regulation, since an employee could potentially skew the performance
requirements to favor the in-house team.


William Roberts, an attorney for the protester in the Lemoore competition, a
joint venture of the CH2M Hill and J.A. Jones companies, said the GAO decision
merely holds job competitions to the same conflict-of-interest standards as
other federal procurements. 


?If you have a group that?s doing one function, isolate them and put up a wall
so they aren?t talking to other people in an organization,? he said. ?Those
things have been done for some time by other agencies. It took GAO to point
that out to the Navy.?


GAO also criticized the Navy for allowing a private sector consultant to work
on both the performance work statement and the in-house team, a judgment that
is affecting job competitions outside the military. As civilian agencies enlist
private consultants to help them comply with President Bush?s competitive
sourcing initiative, some are awarding contracts to multiple consultants to
avoid the appearance of conflicts of interests. 


?It?s impacted my industry severely from the standpoint that the clients are
very concerned about the appearance issue,? said Dale Warden, president of
Warden Associates Inc., a Springfield, Va.-based A-76 consulting firm. 


At the Interior Department, which is still negotiating with consultants to
assist its A-76 program, officials are requiring prospective consultants to
build a ?firewall? between employees working on the PWS and those assisting the
in-house team. 


?It has introduced an appropriate kind of caution as to how the performance
work statement, management plan, and source selection process are structured
and undertaken,?said Michael Del-Colle, director of Interior?s competitive
sourcing office. ?Common sense says maybe the same person can?t play on these
things.?


OMB Director Mitch Daniels shared his thoughts on the job competition ritual in
a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday. 


?It's a hideously complicated and obstructive process that makes these things
sometimes more trouble than they?re worth,? he said. ?We need to rewrite it or
modify it substantially.?

**************
Government Executive
Security agency?s CIO outlines transformation plans 

The National Security Agency is working to transform its information technology
business practices as the war on terrorism progresses, a senior agency official
told technology vendors Wednesday. 


NSA CIO Richard Turner outlined the agency?s transformation goals at a
breakfast meeting sponsored by FSI, a McLean, Va.-based IT market research and
consulting firm. Turner has been NSA?s CIO for eight months. Previously, he was
CIO at the Federal Trade Commission and NASA.


The war on terrorism has complicated one of the agency?s missions: to protect
all classified and sensitive information stored in or sent through federal
government systems, Turner said. NSA is reevaluating the way it does business
in light of the Bush administration?s focus on information sharing, he said.
The agency is now working with agencies whose IT systems are not secure enough
to handle NSA?s classified information.


?Information sharing is a work in progress,? Turner said. 


Since Sept. 11, NSA offices around the world have been working 24 hours a day,
seven days a week. While the around-the-clock schedule has strained NSA?s IT
workforce, the staff is so dedicated, Turner sometimes can?t get workers to go
home, he told the group. 


?I became a wartime CIO very quickly,? he said.


Even though NSA?s mission is very different from that of other federal
agencies, its IT challenges are surprisingly similar, Turner said. In his short
tenure as CIO, Turner has focused on bringing strong IT management practices to
NSA and on building a capital planning and IT investment review process at the
agency. Once projects have been vetted under this process they will be
monitored under new performance measures, he said. 


NSA has also committed to outsourcing its IT infrastructure. The agency awarded
Project Groundbreakeran IT outsourcing contract worth between $2 billion and $5
billionto a contracting team led by Computer Sciences Corp. in July 2001.
Turner said NSA is also spending more than before on IT and plans to increase
its dependence on commercial, off-the-shelf hardware and softwarea major shift
for an agency that usually builds its own IT systems.


Turner has also created a new program office within his organization to focus
on contingency planning, business continuity and disaster recovery. He hired a
senior executive away from NASA who ?lives and breathes? business continuity to
head the office.


For security reasons, NSA doesn?t advertise its contracts in the federal
government?s normal procurement circles. Turner encouraged small businesses in
particular to take advantage of procurement orientation sessions held every two
weeks at NSA headquarters in Ft. Meade, Md. ?There are a lot of good ideas out
there we need to know about,? he said
**************
Government Executive
Military needs to improve info sharing with allies, Navy official says 

The U.S. military must improve its ability to share information with allied
forces in order to win the global war on terrorism, a top Navy information
officer told defense officials and industry representatives Wednesday. 

"We really have to figure out a way that's not too cumbersome, not too
expensive, that we can interoperate with our coalition partners," said Vice
Adm. Richard Mayo, director of Space, Information Warfare, and Command and
Control, during a Navy League conference on sea, air and space capabilities.
"The way we do it today reminds of me how you would look after playing a game
of Twister. It's that hard." 

About 30 of the Navy's 316 massive ships currently are stationed near
Afghanistan in the Sea of Oman. Those 30 ships are fighting Taliban and al
Qaeda forces in conjunction with roughly 70 military ships from various allied
countries. 

The Navy obtains much of its real-time information through the Defense
Department's Secure Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet), but a national
policy prohibits coalition partners from accessing that classified system. But
Mayo said the Navy has been experimenting with "various equipment and servers"
to share crucial war fighting information with allies. 

"The global war on terrorism has really reinforced to us that we really need to
get serious about coalition interoperability," Mayo said.

Another serious priority for the Navy--and the Defense Department--is
protecting the high-tech assets that have enabled the U.S. military to wage a
highly effective "network centric warfare" campaign in Afghanistan. "Networks
are absolutely key to the prosecution of our war today," Mayo said. "We have an
information advantage that we can never relinquish." 

Navy vessels rely on satellite transmissions, for example, for wireless
communications, global positioning capabilities, and intelligence gathering.
"We are winning the global war on terrorism by virtue of what we get from
space," Mayo said. "We in the Navy, and we in the Department of Defense, need
to start thinking about space control as a very important issue. We need to
protect what we have, and deny it to the adversaries."

Mayo said the Navy also must remain vigilant in protecting its critical
information systems from "all kinds of intrusions" aimed at crippling the U.S.
military's network centric warfare capabilities.

"I can't emphasize enough how important information assurance and the
protection of our networks is," Mayo said. "It's growing in importance every
day."

**************
Washington Post
Survey of Web Finds Gains on Privacy Issues 

Computer users roaming the Internet increasingly have more chances to choose
how their personal information is used by online companies, and they're tracked
less often as they move from site to site on the World Wide Web, according to a
report released yesterday.

The study, by the Progress & Freedom Foundation with help from the Federal
Trade Commission, is the first major examination of privacy practices online
since the FTC conducted a similar review two years ago.

It appears to show that companies have made significant headway in addressing
the privacy issue, which business officials feared could hinder online commerce
and lead to heavier federal regulation of the Internet.

"The changes we have identified are evolutionary, not revolutionary," said
Progress & Freedom Foundation President Jeffrey A. Eisenach, a co-author of the
report. "But from a consumer perspective, they are all in the right direction."

Groups that favor self-regulation praised the findings, saying they show why
Congress ought to allow businesses to sort out the privacy issue for
themselves.

"A new phase in the privacy debate should focus on learning what consumers want
and how to deliver it," said Jim Harper, editor of Privacilla.org, a
free-market, pro-technology group in the District. "This will not happen in
Washington, D.C."

Some consumer advocates suggested that the study is being used as cover by
businesses and policymakers to avoid addressing deeper privacy issues, such as
the sweeping use of individuals' personal information by the Microsoft Passport
system, a digital identification system for online commerce.

Paula Bruening, staff counsel of the Center for Democracy & Technology,
welcomed the study but said it also shows that privacy protections on the
Internet remain so inconsistent that some sort of "baseline legislation" is
merited.

For example, the study noted but did not highlight the fact that fewer than
half of the randomly selected sites in the survey offer computer users some
notice and choice about how information is used. "Consumers need to be able to
go online and . . . have a consistent expectation that the privacy of their
information will be respected," she said.

FTC Chairman Timothy J. Muris, who attended the announcement, said the study
showed "substantial improvement" in privacy protection by online businesses.
Several FTC employees helped design the study so that it would mirror the
agency's earlier work. Muris said more factual data and less rhetoric are
needed to fuel a positive debate.

The study was conducted by Ernst & Young on the behalf of the Progress &
Freedom Foundation, a free-market, pro-technology group in the District. It
looked at 85 of the most popular Web sites and 302 other sites picked at
random. 

The study found a much broader use of privacy policies that are more
prominently displayed and better detail how companies collect and use consumer
names, addresses and other personal information. A larger proportion of
policies also give individuals a chance to decide ahead of time whether to
share their personal details.

At the same time, though, the study showed that Web sites displaying privacy
seals from independent watchdog group, verifying that they employ strong
policies, don't always follow through.

Only about 55 percent of the randomly selected sites displaying a privacy seal,
for instance, have policies that include notice, choice and security
provisions. "These numbers should be much closer to 100 percent," said Mary
Culnan, a business professor at Bentley College in Waltham, Mass., and a
privacy specialist.

Culnan said the survey was carefully done. But she said the results show that
self-regulation may not spur businesses to provide as much privacy protection
as some consumers and policymakers want.

**************
Washington Post
Senior Activist Jailed For Web Rant 

A man who posted on the Web details of what he asserts is an investigative
report into alleged improprieties at a Seattle residence for senior citizens
has been in jail for a month - with no end to his incarceration in sight, his
attorney said Wednesday. 

Paul Trummel, 69, was for approximately two years a resident of Council House,
a residence in the Capitol Hill section of Seattle whose construction was
funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). 

Trummel, a former professor of journalism at the University of Washington, had
frequent run-ins with the administrators who managed the facility. 

He detailed his complaints in a newsletter, which he published and distributed
to residents of Council House. 

According to Robert Siegel, Trummel's attorney, Trummel first appeared in court
in April 2001, when he asked Superior Court Judge James Doerty to issue an
injunction against the administrators of Council House, who were trying to halt
the distribution of his newsletter. 

"Judge Doerty took an immediate dislike to Paul," said Siegel. "Not only did he
turn down his request for an injunction, he told the other side that if they
asked him, he would issue an injunction against Paul." 

Two weeks later, on April 19, 2001, Council House obtained a restraining order
against Trummel. Siegel said the order not only told Trummel not to "harass"
the administrators, it said he could not even go into the building - making it
a de facto eviction. 

"The judge said he can't have any contact with anyone at Council House. That
means not just the people he had a problem with, but also the residents, many
of whom were his friends and acquaintances." 

Since April 2001, there have been four or five contempt orders based on the
original anti-harassment order, said Siegel. 

Some time last year, Trummel created a Web site he called ContraCabal.net. On
this site, Trummel continued to bash the administrators of Council House, as
well as Doerty. Council House's attorneys brought the site to Doerty's
attention, asserting that it violated the judge's order that Trummel cease his
"harassment." 

"Most of what Paul was putting on the site was public information that is
available at the Secretary of State's office," said Siegel. 

Eventually, Trummel complied with the judge's order and edited many items from
his site. However, Siegel said Trummel put up what he called a "shadow" Web
site at ContraCabal.org that contained all of the non-complying information.
Trummel asserted that since the second site was based in Holland, Doerty had no
jurisdiction over it, said Siegel. 

"On Feb. 27, Doerty ordered Paul placed in jail for contempt," Siegel said. "He
ordered him held until he is in compliance with an Oct. 26, 2001, order to
remove content from the Web site." 

The problem is, Trummel has no Internet access in jail, and the judge's
indefinite sentence rankles Siegel. 

"I don't know how he is to comply from jail. That is the dilemma," he said.
"The judge has not set a date for an arraignment, a hearing or anything. It is
civil contempt, so he is not guaranteed the right to a speedy trial. Had he
been arrested for murder, he would have had to be arraigned." 

James Chadwick, an attorney not involved in this case who is an expert on free
speech law, believes Trummel has a solid First Amendment defense. 

"The judge's order to take down statements is classic prior restraint,"
Chadwick told Newsbytes. 

Chadwick said he looked at Trummel's Web site and it seemed to him that some of
Trummel's statements had been removed. 

"Trummel makes several accusations on his site against the administrators of
the building, but if those accusations are false, they are defamatory," he
said. "You cannot enjoin speech because it is defamatory, at least until you
have a conclusive judicial determination that it is defamatory - such as a
trial or a summary judgment." 

Chadwick said the judge in this case has enjoined speech "that appears to enjoy
First Amendment protection." 

"Speech can be enjoined, but only in very limited circumstances," he explained.
"Examples would include a pattern of threats of physical violence, incitements
to violence or child pornography." 

"But even in categories of speech not protected, such as speech that is
defamatory or obscene, you cannot enjoin the speech," he added. 

Siegel said Trummel's legal troubles are exacerbated by his health issues. He
said Trummel suffers from four types of arthritis and prostate problems, and is
forbidden under jail rules to take the supplements he normally takes to treat
those conditions. 

This week, Trummel tested positive for tuberculosis, Siegel added. 

Trummel's plight is attracting international attention. Because he is a British
subject and permanent resident alien, the British government has written to the
judge. In addition, organizations such as the Society of Professional
Journalists (SPJ) are trying to rally support. 

"Paul has been an investigative reporter all his life, and he is a member of
several journalism groups. SPJ said they were going to file an Amicus Curiae
brief on his behalf." 

Siegel said it is possible that Trummel could ask him to take down the Web site
on Trummel's behalf, but "Paul wants to stand by his guns on principle." 

"He says every thing he wrote is satire or the facts," said Siegel. "If Council
House thinks they have damages, they can sue for defamation and try to prove
it. They don't need the extraordinary protection of an anti-harassment order." 

**************
Washington Post
Google Turns Away Robots From Its Front Door 

Citing the need to protect its server resources, Google has prevented competing
search engines from indexing much of its own Web site, the company confirmed
Wednesday. 

While Google has amassed an index of over 2 billion Web pages by automatically
"spidering" or "crawling" sites all over the Web, the popular search portal has
effectively walled off numerous sections of its own site from other search
"bots." 

By placing a special "robots.txt" file on its server, Google has prohibited
other crawlers from indexing 19 areas of its site, including one that offers
searches of the company's archive of Usenet newsgroup discussions, as well as
an area for exploring its index of graphic images on the Web. Also blocked are
a special index of mail-order catalogs, and a section that allows searches of
news articles at other sites. 

As a result, a search of the phrase "LL Bean" performed through a link to
Google set up at AltaVista.com produces no results. Doing the same search going
directly though Google.com produces 20 pages that include the LL Bean name. 

According to Google spokesman Nate Tyler, the company is merely trying to
prevent other search crawlers from hurting the performance of its site. 

"We have blocked other spiders from fully crawling our site because it would
require too many server resources on our end to support that," said Tyler, who
noted that Google takes great care when indexing other sites so as not to
overload them. 

According to a database maintained by The Web Robots Pages, there are 284
robots that actively crawl the Web under names including Googlebot, Inktomi
Slurp, and AltaVista Scooter. 

Most crawlers honor the Robots Exclusion Protocol, which specifies that robots
should check a site for a file named robots.txt for a list of "disallowed"
directories and adhere to it when indexing the site. 

A comparison today by Newsbytes of robots files at other major Web destinations
revealed sharp contrasts in the sites' attitude toward Web crawlers. 

Some leading portals, such as those operated by Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft, Amazon
and Lycos, have no robots file at all and apparently give search spiders free
reign to index all of their pages. 

Others, including AltaVista, only disallow bots from crawling in directories
that contain program files. 

Some big sites, however, attempt to block search crawlers completely. The
robots file for the New York Times site, for example, appears to disallow
search bots from accessing any of its archived content. 

Ebay, which successfully sued a specialized search site that was trawling its
online auction listings, uses a prohibitive robots file that begins with a
simple comment: "Go away." 

Similarly, CNN.com's file shoos away search spiders with a comment that states,
"Robots, scram." 

According to Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineWatch.com, Google may be
attempting to prevent other search sites from "harvesting" its proprietary
newsgroup archives and other content. 

"Having a robots file doesn't just protect your resources. It can also protect
your intellectual property," said Sullivan, who added that a site's failure to
restrict access to proprietary content through a robots file could limit its
legal position in copyright infringement cases. 

Sullivan noted, however, that respecting a site's robots file is entirely
voluntary, and that "rogue" search bots are likely to ignore it altogether. For
that reason, some sites may eschew robots files and instead block certain
Internet protocol addresses that are associated with "impolite" spiders, he
said. 

In fact, some experts have argued that robots files provide snoops with clear
instructions on how to find the most sensitive areas of a Web site. 

Bertrand Meyer, a software expert who developed a computer language called
Eiffel, observed in a 1998 message to the RISKS mailing list that itemizing
disallowed directories in a robots file is akin to telling someone, "Here is
what I am not telling you." 

"I think there are some basic flaws in this mechanism. If I'm a bad guy, the
robots file is the first place I'm going to start looking," Meyer said in an
interview Wednesday. 

A link to Meyer's posting is tucked into the beginning of the robots file at
Sun Microsystem's site. The comments section of the file at Sun.com explains in
considerable detail the company's justification for disallowing bots in seven
directories. 

According to Sun's file, which begins with the words, "A note to those who'd
bother to look at this file," the company is not trying to hide proprietary
content. Instead, the purpose of its robots file is to prevent users from
downloading the pages without first registering with Sun, the file stated. 

**************
Chicago Sun Times
Wear and stare computers 

What's the stylish nerd wearing this season?

Computers of course.

The new $1,500 Poma, the first wearable computer aimed at consumers, has the
fashion-conscious geeks from Silicon Valley and Silicon Alley abuzz.

"Consumers have never before had access to a wearable computer with a
head-mounted display,'' said Mike Binko, spokesman for Fairfax, Va.-based
Xybernaut, the Poma's manufacturer. Binko was decked out in one of the devices
and looking a bit like he was part of the Borg on Star Trek. "Wearable
computing has progressed toward the mainstream."

The Poma, displayed at this year's Comdex Chicago trade show at McCormick
Place, has a three-ounce, head-mounted, 1-by-1-inch display that snaps down to
cover one eye. It offers up a desktop full of icons for such programs as Word
for writing documents, Windows Media Player to listen to music or watch videos,
and Explorer to take the wearer/user up to the Internet.

The sleek silver Xybernaut unit is powered by a 10.9-ounce, 128 megahertz
central processing unit. The CPU clips on the belt. 

A mouse with an eerie blue light is used to open and close programs and to
manipulate a software keyboard displayed on the screen, but a keyboard,
standard or wearable, can be connected.

Binko said the wearable computer will appeal to tech heads as well as business
people who want to make the most of their time on planes and trains. The
display affords privacy so business people can work on sensitive documents and
business plans in public places, he said.

Wearable computers have been used by the military, factories and field services
for utilities since the early 1990s. These industrial-strength computers
accompanied workers into manholes, up telephone poles and onto assembly lines
to put computers in places they had never gone before.

Workers might wear vests from which they flipped down computers and checked in
with the home office to see the last time a telephone circuit was serviced.
They might type messages in on keyboards they strapped to their arms and use
small flat-panel touch screens as monitors.

Stephen Hauer, a partner in Highland Park with Nasiff Associates, which offers
medical diagnostics tools in an electronic Swiss knife, said Xybernaut
dominates the wearable market.

"The market is just starting to embrace this technology," he said. "The concept
is finally here now for people to integrate into their thought process."

Hauer envisions medics in battle as well as nurses and doctors in hospitals
using wearable computers to download vital signs, such as heart and respiration
rates, blood pressure and temperature, from patients and uploading the data
into an electronic record.

"Each soldier in a battle could wear a sensor. That way a medic can do a quick
triage to see who is alive or dead," he added.

The Poma aims to be a consumer-friendly product that is linked to the Internet.

Hitachi has licensed the hardware to create the "WIA"--the Wearable Internet
Appliance--for the Japanese market.

"People are packed tightly on trains in Japan," said Binko. "They can't open a
newspaper--let alone a laptop. But with WIA, they can surf the Web, check their
e-mail and check transaction while standing on a train."

The first consumer models, unlike some of the devices for industry, do not have
voice communications via phone or walkie-talkie. But Binko said this is coming
as is voice-recognition applications.

Not only are commuters chatting away on cell phones on Metra trains, but the
day is nigh when they'll be telling their computers to open files and dictating
memos. 

Why not just implant a computer chip and use the retina as a display?

"People are working on implants," Binko said. "But that's a long way off."


**************
USA Today
New technologies challenge criminal justice system

For the criminal justice community, new technology is never a simple solution.

In some cases, it's a case of learning how to take full advantage of an
emerging field, such as Extensible Markup Language or biometrics. In other
cases, it's a matter of waiting for the technology to mature, such as voice
recognition software.

At the very least, new technology requires government agencies to think about
the ways they do business, said law enforcement officials and technology
vendors attending the 2002 SEARCH Integrated Justice Information Systems
Symposium in Washington, D.C.

"Technology in [and] of itself is not a solution to your problems," said
Matthew D'Alessandro, a product manager at Motorola's Integrated Solutions
Division. "You need to be able to blend technology with business process
engineering."

Gordon Wasserman, an independent consultant specializing in management of
police agencies, said that police chiefs are also taking responsibility for
reducing crime and are willing to be judged on how they do that. They are also
much more knowledgeable about how technology can be used as a tool to combat
crime.

"It used to be something they had to put up with," he said.

Some technology clearly could have a dramatic impact, though not necessarily at
the pace that might be expected or hoped.

XML is a case in point. Jeff Langford, a technology specialist with Microsoft's
state and local government division, said he believed that XML, which allows
agencies to tag information so it's easier to exchange between systems, would
be an important technology for information sharing, but that any large-scale
change will take five or more years. In the meantime, Langford said, agencies
can rely on middleware, which is software designed to manage exchanges between
applications.

Other technology is difficult to grasp because it is changing so fast.

Handheld technology for mobile applications, said Michael Stein with Gartner
Consulting, is changing at the same "bewildering pace as PCs did at one point."
He said Gartner is predicting that more than 50% of mobile applications
deployed at the start of 2002 will be obsolete at the end of 2002.

Use of biometrics, which uses unique physiological, biological and behavioral
characteristics to identify individuals, is just beginning, several experts
said. While the technology is promising  electronic fingerprinting is already
used widely  it may not live up to the hype that surrounds it.

Biometrics is being "positioned as a panacea," which can cause greater harm,
said Samir Nanavati, a founding partner with International Biometric Group, a
consulting and integration firm. The different biometrics available may be
appropriate for some uses and not for others and products must be looked at for
their quality and effectiveness, he said.

After Sept. 11, many airports and government agencies have employed or are
considering facial recognition technology or iris or retinal scanning, among
other technologies, as a verification tool.

"We view it has nothing more than another tool in a tool bag to solve
investigations," said Lt. Jim Main with the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office in
Florida, where a facial recognition system is being developed.
**************
Federal Computer Week
IT virtual job fair scheduled

The federal CIO Council has chosen April 22-26 for its nationwide "virtual"
information technology job fair, the first of its kind.

"This Virtual IT Job Fair is intended to save agencies time and money in
recruitment while widening the doors of federal employment to top IT talent,"
Ira Hobbs, acting chief information officer for the Agriculture Department and
co-chairman of the council's workforce and human capital for IT committee, said
in a notice posted recently on the council's Web site.

Richard Whitford, acting associate director of the Office of Personnel
Management's employment service, co-authored the notice.

The job fair aims to hire GS-2210 IT specialists in varying specialty areas at
grade levels GS-7 through GS-13. "The applicant evaluation method will use a
blend of competency-based testing, technical skills self-certification and USA
Staffing to expeditiously assess candidates," the notice said.

Job seekers will go to OPM's USAJobs Web site (www.usajobs.opm.gov), where a
specially designed logo will link them to agencies that are hiring in the
GS-2210 IT category. The logo  an eagle and a flag developed with the aid of
the Industry Advisory Council, a private-sector group  urges job seekers to
"join our IT team and shape tomorrow today."

Once job seekers find an opening that interests them, they will complete a
screening questionnaire, a technology aptitude test and a skills inventory  all
online. OPM, which is managing the job fair jointly with the council, will
compile and rank the results. 

By managing the fair together, OPM and the council will "save individual
agencies thousands of dollars in recruitment advertising, as well as the costs
associated with creating certificates of qualified candidates," the council's
notice said.

On April 2, OPM will hold a training session for human resources and IT
personnel from each agency participating in the job fair.
**************
New York Times
Terror's Confounding Online Trail

FOR all the sophisticated electronic tools the United States government has at
its investigative disposal, tracking the activities of suspected terrorist
groups online has proved to be not unlike the search for Osama bin Laden and
his operatives on the ground.

In essence, even against a superior arsenal of technology, there are still
plenty of ways for terrorists to avoid detection.

Although digital forensics has undoubtedly been useful in piecing together
events since Sept. 11  leading, for example, to the arrests of three of the
suspects in the abduction and murder of an American reporter in Pakistan 
information technology has significant limits in monitoring a widely dispersed
terrorist network.

Moreover, terrorist groups are taking advantage of their own knowledge of
technology to evade surveillance through simple tactics, like moving from one
Internet cafe to the next, and more sophisticated ones, like encryption.

"The Internet presents two main challenges," said David Lang, director of the
computer forensics department at the Veridian Corporation, a company based in
Arlington, Va., that provides systems for the Pentagon and United States
intelligence. "One is it's ubiquitous  you can access it from just about
anywhere in the world. The other thing is you can be easily hidden."

Despite growing concerns about invasions of Internet users' privacy, it is
still relatively simple to communicate anonymously online. Many services enable
users to send e-mail or browse the Web without leaving a digital trail 
generally by disguising the unique number, known as an I.P. address, that links
a specific computer to e-mail messages sent or Web sites visited.

Some of those services have taken measures to prevent their technology from
being put to ill use. Anonymizer.com, for instance, rejects subscribers from
countries known for harboring terrorists, including Afghanistan and Pakistan.
But individuals linked to terrorist groups appear to be relying on more
low-tech methods to avoid detection.

"The interesting thing is there's no evidence that any of these people have
ever used Anonymizer or any other privacy service," said Lance Cottrell, the
company's president. "What you see them doing is using Internet cafes and Yahoo
(news/quote) and Hotmail and moving from cafe to cafe."

In one of the few known cases in which suspected terrorists have been traced
through e-mail, the kidnapping and slaying of Daniel Pearl, a Wall Street
Journal reporter working in Pakistan, the abductors used Hotmail, Microsoft
(news/quote)'s Web-based e-mail service, to announce their deed to news
organizations. Although the sender seemingly remains anonymous, Hotmail
attaches the I.P. address of the sending computer to messages transmitted
through its service, which left investigators with at least the beginning of a
trail.

With the use of public look-up services on the Web, the I.P. address from a
message received from the kidnappers on Jan. 30 could be traced to Cyber
Internet Services, an Internet service provider in Pakistan. The I.P. address
from an earlier message reached a dead end farther upstream at New Skies, a
Netherlands-based company that provides Internet access by satellite to many
countries, including Pakistan.

From there, investigators are likely to have relied on cooperation from those
companies to trace the computer that was assigned that I.P. address when the
message was sent. (A spokeswoman for New Skies confirmed that investigators had
been in contact with the company. Although she declined to discuss details, the
company's Web site indicates that Cyber Internet Services is a client.) 

One challenge for investigators is that many people in developing countries
like Pakistan get Internet access through public places like cybercafes, which
do not necessarily ask customers for identification or keep the logs of
Internet activity that service providers in the United States typically do.
With help from the F.B.I., Pakistani officials ultimately recovered copies of
the e-mail on a computer belonging to a suspect arrested with two others in the
case. It is not clear whether the messages were sent through a dial-up account
or from an Internet cafe.

Getting cooperation from Internet service providers in other countries can also
be a hurdle, although operating outside the reach of American laws regulating
how Internet communications may be monitored presents some advantages. "If it
comes down to it, we would do a black-bag job on an I.S.P.  literally, kick in
the door in the middle of the night," said Mark Rasch, an expert on cyberlaw in
Reston, Va., who formerly headed the Justice Department's computer crime unit
and is now a vice president at Predictive Systems (news/quote), a security
firm. 

Mr. Rasch noted that within the United States, wiretaps for intelligence
purposes face a lower threshold for approval, the assent of a secret
three-judge panel. Wiretaps in criminal investigations, on the other hand, are
approved in the regular courts and require a showing of "probable cause." 

But even with relaxed laws, gathering intelligence, particularly without a
suspect or lead, involves collecting and analyzing mountains of data. And
government monitoring systems may not be quite as developed as some have
speculated.

One of those tools, DCS-1000, generally referred to as Carnivore, can be
installed at Internet service providers to monitor e-mail traffic  the digital
version, essentially, of a wiretap. On a worldwide level, the National Security
Agency operates a satellite network called Echelon (news/quote) in cooperation
with Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand that monitors voice and data
communications. Privacy groups have raised concerns about its use, but there is
debate about whether in practice Echelon is very effective.

"Echelon as described doesn't exist," Mr. Rasch said. "The idea that the N.S.A.
has a program that captures every international phone call and analyzes every
word and phrase isn't true. One of the biggest problems is there's just so much
noise and so much traffic."

Such monitoring systems can in principle be programmed to look for certain
keywords, like bomb or target, within messages they capture. But given recent
international events, such language is probably not uncommon, leaving
investigators to determine which communications may represent serious threats.

"Is it that everybody in the country hates the U.S., or is it directed
terrorist activity?" said Mark Seiden, a computer security consultant based in
Silicon Valley. "I don't know if we have the resources to make that
distinction."

There is some indication that plotters are aware of such keyword sniffers: Mr.
Seiden, who reviewed the e-mail from Mr. Pearl's kidnappers, is among those who
suggest that the suspects in that case deliberately misspelled words to avoid
detection  for example, using "Amreeka," "terrarism" and "Pakstan."

Those messages were written in English, but foreign languages present another
challenge. Mr. Lang of Veridian acknowledged that digital forensics teams
accustomed to tracking down criminal suspects in the United States had
undergone a "crash course" in foreign language analysis since Sept. 11, with
help from companies that have re-engineered forensics tools to work with Arabic
and other languages not based on the Roman alphabet.

As an example, Mr. Lang described data-mining software that relies on
link-analysis techniques to determine relationships between messages. "Say you
want to see everything in these e-mails that has `Washington D.C.' and
`terrorist' or `bomb' within 10 spaces of each other," Mr. Lang said. "It will
show you all the e-mail content that has that relationship and where it came
from and where it went to."

Of course, deciphering coded messages is another matter. Although some reports
have suggested that members of Al Qaeda may be using steganography  hiding
communications within seemingly harmless information like an image or audio
file  security experts said they knew of no evidence of its use, pointing out
that there are much easier ways to disguise communications.

It is clear that the terrorist network is using encryption: The Wall Street
Journal has said that two computers purchased by one of its reporters in Kabul,
Afghanistan, were apparently looted from a former Al Qaeda office and contained
files protected by encryption. One document provided instructions for
encrypting files, The Journal reported, while others contained evidence that
seemed to link Al Qaeda to Richard C. Reid, the man accused of trying to ignite
a shoe bomb on a flight from Paris to Miami in December.

The Journal was able to decipher the files because they relied on an older
version of encryption. Stronger encryption is much more difficult to crack.

Both the e-mail in the Pearl case and the computers containing Al Qaeda
documents came to investigators' attention by way of news organizations. Far
less is known about other evidence collected by military and intelligence
personnel. In recent weeks government officials have acknowledged intercepting
e-mail communications among Al Qaeda members that apparently originated in
Pakistan and have cited at least three Web sites they were monitoring, but few
details have been made public.

One of the three Web sites cited, www.newjihad.com, is registered to an address
in Lahore, Pakistan, but is no longer online. Another, www.azzam.com, is
registered to an address in London but uses a New York company's host
computers. The third, alemarh.com, is registered to an address in Pakistan and
has a Nevada company as host. 

Locating Web sites that terrorists may be using to communicate is in some ways
more difficult than monitoring e-mail traffic, which can be intercepted.
Although software tools can be programmed to search the Web for pages with
certain characteristics, they are by no means foolproof. And even if a
particular site raises a red flag, finding out who runs it is not always
simple. The contact information provided when a person registers a Web address
can easily be faked, and the host of the site may not even know who is
publishing the pages. 

Often a host company will take a site offline after being contacted by
investigators. Such a response highlights the delicate balance that
intelligence agencies face in trying to root out terrorists who may be
communicating by the Web.

"If we shut down sites we don't agree with, we're really subverting the values
that we're fighting for," said Mr. Cottrell of Anonymizer.com. He and many
other security experts say they doubt that even the most sophisticated
surveillance system can catch everyone trying to slip through the cracks.

"That's kind of the irony in this," he said. "For the honest good citizen,
privacy is extremely endangered and tracking is ubiquitous. But I don't see a
sign that we've ever been able to build a system that criminals with serious
intent haven't been able to circumvent."

**************
New York Times
As the Web Matures, Fun Is Hard to Find

GLENN DAVIS, the founder of the once-popular online destination Cool Site of
the Day, used to be so addicted to the Web that he called it his "recreational
drug." 

He started Cool Site in 1994, after discovering the thrill of happening upon an
especially interesting Web site and telling his friends what he had found.
Within a year, more than 20,000 people a day were visiting the site, and Mr.
Davis became a Web celebrity, giving interviews to online magazines and fending
off gifts from Webmasters who were desperately seeking his recommendation of
their sites. 

Today, Mr. Davis has not only kicked his Web habit but also almost completely
given up the medium. The Cool Site of the Day still exists, but it is no longer
run by Mr. Davis, who has also lost his enthusiasm for trolling for new pages. 

"We lost our sense of wonder," he said. "The Web is old hat." 

Just 11 years after it was born and about 6 years after it became popular, the
Web has lost its luster. Many who once raved about surfing from address to
address on the Web now lump site-seeing with other online chores, like checking
the In box. 

What attracted many people to the Web in the mid-1990's were the bizarre and
idiosyncratic sites that began as private obsessions and swiftly grew into
popular attractions: the Coffee Cam, a live image of a coffee maker at the
University of Cambridge; the Fish Tank Cam from an engineer at Netscape; The
Spot, the first online soap opera; the Jennicam, the first popular Internet
peephole; the Telegarden, which allowed viewers to have remote control of a
robot gardener; and the World Wide Ouija, where viewers could question the
Fates with the computer mouse. The Web was like a chest of toys, and each day
brought a new treasure. 

"I remember sitting there for hours thinking it was so neat," said Jason Gallo,
an office manager in Washington who discovered the Web in 1994. He said he
would often get lists of favorite sites from his friends, which he called
"quirky islands of fun." 

"I don't see that anymore," he said.

Lisa Maira, a computer network administrator at the University of Buffalo,
designed the Mr. Potato Head site with colleagues in 1994 (the name was later
changed to Mr. Edible Starchy Tuber Head to avoid trademark infringement). It
allowed viewers to dress up an online version of the toy. The site attracted
thousands of visitors and a dozen "best of the Web" awards.

"It was just amazing," Ms. Maira said. Now, not only has the site fallen into
disrepair, with broken links and missing game pieces, but many of the sites
that gave it accolades are also out of business. 

That kind of Web activity "doesn't impress people anymore," Ms. Maira said,
adding that she counted herself among the disenchanted.

The problem facing the Web is not that some of these particular sites have come
and gone  there are, after all, only so many times anyone can look at a
coffeepot, even online  but that no new sites have come along to captivate the
casual surfer. 

Bob Rankin, the co-editor of Tourbus, an electronic newsletter, frequently sent
his readers to innovative pages. Now the newsletter is more likely to provide
information about online charities and antivirus software. "I have a harder
time finding the oddball sites that I like to highlight," Mr. Rankin said. 

The lack of compelling content may be contributing to a decline in the amount
of time that people spend online. In March 2000, according to a survey by the
Pew Internet & American Life Project in Washington, people averaged 90 minutes
per online session. A year later, when the same people were polled, that number
had dropped to 83 minutes. According to the report, those polled said that they
were using the Web more to conduct business than to explore new areas, aiming
to get offline as quickly as possible. The toy box has turned into a toolbox. 

Web sites also face stiff competition from other online services. Music
programs like Morpheus, a Napster alternative, allow people to download files
using a piece of online software instead of clicking from one site to the next.
Instant messaging has grown exponentially, and many users say they would rather
chat with their friends than spend their time surfing the Web. 

Even without new technologies crowding the spotlight, the Web today seems to be
less than inspiring. About half of Internet users in 2000, for example, said
the Internet helped "a lot" in enabling them to learn new things. A year later,
when the same group was polled, only 39 percent made that claim. 

"For fun Internet activities, users report little or no growth in having gone
online for hobbies, game playing or just to seek out fun diversions," the Pew
report said. 

Even for newcomers  those who might be most likely to surf around for kicks 
growth is tepid, the report added. 

There are other signs that all is not well in Webville. For the first time, the
number of expiring domain names outnumbers those being registered or renewed,
according to SnapNames, an industry research company in Portland, Ore. Although
the SnapNames report theorizes that many of the expired domains were simply
unused placeholders for existing companies, like those who wanted a .org
version of their .com site, there is no counterbalancing rush to build new
sites. 

In addition, researchers at several online measurement companies have found
that the rate of growth in new sites and unique visitors has slumped in recent
months. And about 20 percent of public Web sites that existed nine months ago
no longer exist, according to a sample studied last week by the Online Library
Computer Center, a nonprofit library group in Dublin, Ohio. Separate research
shows that of the sites that are still operating, a large number have been
taken over by pornography. 

How did the Web arrive at this juncture? Some people say that the rush to make
money, in which profits mattered more than passion, was a significant driver.
Mr. Davis, for instance, said he did not design Cool Site of the Day with
profit in mind. The site, which was housed on servers at Infinet, the Internet
service provider for whom Mr. Davis worked, was taken over by the company when
he left in November 1995. In 1998, Infinet sold the site to Mike Corso, a
businessman in Chappaqua, N.Y., who charges $97 to those who submit a site for
"priority express" consideration, plus $19 a month if the submission is
selected and added to the archives. 

The Web's commercialism dismays many longtime surfers. "Everywhere you go
someone is jumping on you to buy something," said John Walkenbach, an author in
San Diego, who has written books about software. "It's like walking down the
streets of Tijuana." 

Other users say they are less inclined to hunt for innovative sites because
many of them require plug-ins or browser updates that force users into
bothersome downloading. Entertainment sites, for example, usually require a
program like QuickTime, and even if Web surfers take the time to download a
copy, they are likely to be cajoled later into downloading an updated version. 

There are still islands of innovation and creativity on the Web. For example,
iFilm .com shows eclectic video clips posted by Web users. Among longtime Web
surfers, personal online diaries, known as Weblogs or blogs, are often cited as
the last bastion of interesting material. 

Lee deBoer, former chief executive of Automatic Media, believes that the
downturn in the Web is temporary. In the summer of 2000, his company bought
Feed and Suck, two popular online magazines, and started Plastic.com, a Web
site that allows users to filter interesting Web content for one another. After
just a year, Mr. deBoer's company was forced to close its doors, killing both
magazines and relinquishing Plastic.com to a group of investors. (The site
still exists, run almost entirely by volunteers.) 

Even after the bruising taken by his company, Mr. deBoer is not prepared to
declare the Web dead. "We've taken a pause," he said, citing a tough
advertising climate, a lagging economy and a seriousness that has infused
society since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "But I don't think it's much more
than a pause." 

Mr. Davis said he believes that the Web's malaise is more permanent. He is
building an online gaming company that uses the Internet but bypasses the Web. 

"I'm a frontiersperson, and the Web is not a frontier anymore," he said. "It is
simply a place."
**************
New York Times
Don't Point, Just Think: The Brain Wave as Joystick

THIS is a case of monkey think, monkey do.

A rhesus macaque monkey at a Brown University laboratory can move a cursor on a
computer screen just by thinking about it  playing a pinball game in which
every time a red target dot pops up, the monkey moves a cursor to meet the
target quickly and accurately.

The monkey doesn't do this trick with a mouse or a joystick. It plays the game
mentally, controlling where it wants the cursor to go by thinking. (The simple
pinball video game the monkey played can be viewed at
donoghue.neuro.brown.edu/multimedia.php.)

But this is not the story of a psychic monkey, or of a research project
designed to teach monkeys how to play mental pinball. The project is the latest
in a series of serious research efforts in brain-machine interfaces, a field in
which researchers eavesdrop on the brain as it plans motion and then write
programs that can translate those thoughts into specific movements.

Researchers hope that such programs will one day help some paralyzed people use
their thoughts to control the functions of robotic limbs, or to command cursors
on a screen to write e-mail or navigate the Internet.

The experiment, which was reported this month in the journal Nature, was led by
Dr. John P. Donoghue, a professor of neuroscience who leads the brain science
program at Brown.

"Researchers have long known that people think about where they want to put
their hands before they move them," Dr. Donoghue said. "We've tapped into that
part of the brain."

In the experiment, performed on three monkeys, the team implanted a tiny set of
100 miniature electrodes in the motor cortex, the part of the brain just under
the skull that commands how the arms will move. Then they threaded the wires
from the electrodes through a hole in the skull and connected them to a
computer.

When the monkeys played the pinball game, their brains made characteristic
signals that were recorded as the neurons fired near the electrodes. The team
wrote a program that paired the spiky patterns the neurons made as they fired
with the related trajectories of the monkeys' arms as they moved the cursor.

Then they were able to substitute a signal that translated brain-wave data into
joystick output, so that when the monkey thought about a move, the cursor
actually made that move.

Dr. Donoghue said that the electrodes tapped up to 30 neurons, and that only
three or so minutes of data were needed to create a model that could interpret
the brain signals as specific movements. 

In the experiment, the pinball game was switched intermittently by the
researchers from hand to brain control. It took slightly longer for the monkey
to succeed in hitting the red dot with brain control, but the difference was
negligible, he said.

Related experiments by other researchers, Dr. Donoghue said, have required
extensive training for the monkeys to bring a cursor under their mental
control. "In our work, we had immediate substitution of the program for hand
control," he said.

The experiment demonstrates the plasticity of the brain in adapting itself to
new jobs, said Dr. William Heetderks, director of the neural prosthesis program
at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, one of the
agencies financing the work at Brown.

Dr. Heetderks said he expected the animals to learn to control the cursor
mentally. "But the speed and quality with which the monkey learned to control
the movement of the cursor was a surprise," he said. "It was minutes, not
weeks."

He added: "The brain seems to be very flexible at making that transition 
moving an artificial arm or cursor instead of moving an actual arm. It is very
encouraging for future use, especially with paralyzed people."

Dr. Heetderks believes that the path to long-lasting implants in people would
involve the recording of data from many electrodes. "To get a rich signal that
allows you to move a limb in three-dimensional space or move a cursor around on
a screen will require the ability to record from at least 30 neurons," he said.

Dr. Donoghue and colleagues have founded a company, Cyberkinetics, and they
hope to test their prosthesis on a human within the year. Such testing requires
the approval of the Food and Drug Administration.

Only one of the pioneers of neural prostheses has tested his interface on
people in the hope of adding to the range of their movements: Dr. Philip
Kennedy, head of Neural Signals, a research and development company based in
Atlanta. Dr. Kennedy said he was now training a nearly immobile person to use
the cursor on a computer screen. He has modified his two-electrode system and
plans to report the results soon, he said. "The key thing is to have a robust
signal that endures for the life of the patient and records sufficient signals
to control the prosthetic," he said.

Much of the research on brain-machine interfaces is going into systems that a
human being could use for decades, said Dr. Richard A. Andersen, who leads a
research team in neural prosthetics at the California Institute of Technology. 

Dr. Andersen said that the longevity of such interfaces could be extended by
planting chips directly in the brain that can do the necessary processing and
transmit the results wirelessly so that people are no longer tethered to
machines.

Dr. Mohammad M. Mojarradi of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.,
is one of the researchers working on miniaturizing the hardware that may find
its way into implantable chips. Current electrode arrays, he said, can be
jarred out of place and lose the signal. They can also gradually wear away the
tissue on which they sit. He wants to eliminate the electrodes and their wires,
replacing them with implanted wireless chips.

Dr. Heetderks said that such devices would ultimately be essential for
long-term use of neural prostheses. "But the key thing to remember here is the
potential of the brain itself to re-allot tasks," he said. "The advances we are
seeing are inherent in the way the brain is organized."
**************
New York Times
A Tracking System That Calls Balls and Strikes

BASEBALL fans who watched major league games on Fox's cable stations last
season may remember seeing a kind of instant replay, generated entirely by a
computer, showing the path of selected pitches. 

Three years ago, while watching a televised game in Boston, Paul Baim saw an
early version of that computer-generated replay. At the time, Mr. Baim was the
director of software engineering at the Atlantic Aerospace Electronics
Corporation, which builds systems that help the military track troop movements
and missiles. He saw that the replay system, like many a rookie player, had
some problems but also lots of potential. 

"I said, that's the kind of thing we have the technology to do, and do pretty
well," he recalled. "It looked like a lot more fun than what I was doing." 

Mr. Baim contacted QuesTec Inc. (news/quote), a small company based in Deer
Park, N.Y., that had been trying to get wider attention for its pitch-tracking
system. A partnership was born, and Atlantic Aerospace helped QuesTec overhaul
its technology, bringing a bit of military intelligence to the ball field. 

The PitchTrax system was installed at Shea Stadium last July, and it will go
back into operation there and at 18 other ballparks nationwide when the season
opens on Sunday night. Its replays will also appear on regional broadcasts. 

The system's eyes are two cameras perched high on the rim of the stadium, one
on either side of the diamond. The cameras send video feeds to a standard Dell
PC at the QuesTec command post in a windowless room near the Mets clubhouse.
The PC is equipped with special software that analyzes frames of the incoming
video looking for a baseball-like moving object while ignoring pigeons and
flying hot-dog wrappers. 

Using the video data and some quick trigonometry, the system fixes the ball's
position in three dimensions. The principle is similar to that of depth
perception in the eyes and brain, said Mr. Baim. 

"What we do is we use two cameras instead of eyeballs, and we place them a few
hundred feet apart, so it's like you have a head that is a few hundred feet
wide," he said. 

PitchTrax gets 12 to 16 fixes on the ball from successive video frames, from 10
feet in front of the pitcher's mound to about 3 feet from home plate. The
ball's position when it crosses the plate is extrapolated from the earlier
data, Mr. Baim said. The data is available almost instantly, allowing the
computer to create a broadcast-ready, 3-D reconstruction of the ball's path
before a human has time to set up the video replay. 

The graphics have advantages over video. They can show clearly the meanderings
of a quirky curveball from several angles, or highlight a pitcher's strategy by
overlaying a series of pitches on the same screen. Data can be stored for use
in video games and transmitted over the Internet or to wireless devices. 

QuesTec's expertise helped the company win a five-year contract with Major
League Baseball to provide the Umpire Information System. Baseball officials
pushed last season to stick more closely to the rule book when calling strikes,
saying that the strike zone had changed over the years. They saw QuesTec's
system as a way to let umpires evaluate their own performance. It is now
installed in 10 stadiums. 

The umpire system, which is separate from PitchTrax and more accurate, creates
a detailed record of each called pitch, with graphs of the ball's path, a
snapshot of the player's swing with the strike zone indicated and a video clip.
A grid shows the umpire's call and the computer's verdict for each pitch. The
game data is burned onto a CD-ROM with copies going to QuesTec, the umpire and
Major League Baseball.

QuesTec officials say that many umpires, especially the younger ones, are
excited about the new feedback. But the system appears to be a sensitive issue
with the umpires' union. Joel Smith, a lawyer for the union in Baltimore, said
the union viewed the system as little more than an experiment so far. 

"This is a wholly new technology, introduced to a group of people who have been
doing a certain job a certain way for many, many years," Mr. Smith said. 

Ed Plumacher, founder and chief executive of QuesTec, said he doubted that
something like his company's system would ever be used to resolve disputes over
umpires' calls because human quirks are part of the game. 

"You've got an entire history there," Mr. Plumacher said. "If you change the
process, do you put an asterisk next to all the stats that come after? But if
you can help create better umpires that make better calls, that helps the
game."


**************
BBC
Hi-tech kit tracks rowers

Global positioning technology will be used for the first time in Saturday's
Oxford and Cambridge boat race. 

Hi-tech satellite navigation equipment has been fitted on both crews' boats to
pinpoint their position and determine their speed. 

The kit will also check the length of the course, something that has not been
measured accurately for 150 years. 

The technology is similar to that installed on Harrier jumpjets to allow them
to land automatically on a moving aircraft carrier. 

It has been developed by QinetiQ, a commercial spin-off of Dera, the UK
Government's defence research and development organisation. 

Trial and error 

Dr Peter Aves of the Hampshire-based company joked that there was no danger of
the crews getting lost on the River Thames. 

He told BBC News Online: "In the past, a lot of these traditional races have
been timed with men with flags and stop watches. 

"In some instances, the people watching the timing lines can't even see the
lines because they're obscured by, for example, parts of the bridges - so
there's a guess there. 

"Everybody knows it's a compromise and what we're trying to do is add some
technology to improve the accuracy and take away that element of trial and
error." 

Global positioning equipment uses radio signals from a global network of
military satellites to give an accurate location of where somebody is on a map.
In this case, it will be used to track the exact position of the moving boats. 

It will also determine velocity, timing and each crew's stroke rate. The
information will be broadcast to the riverbank and will be used in the
commentary of the event. 

The 148th university boat race starts at 1410 GMT on Saturday, 30 March.

**************
BBC
Robo-reporter goes to war

A robotic war correspondent that can get to places even veteran correspondent
John Simpson cannot reach is being developed in the US. 
The Afghan Explorer looks like a cross between a lawnmower and a robotic dog
and has been designed to travel to war zones to provide images, sound and
interviews from hostile environments off-limits to human reporters. 

Since the early 1990's the US has barred field journalists from war zones. 

Fed up with the grainy war coverage shots sent back from the conflict in
Afghanistan, director of the Computing Culture Group at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology Chris Csikszentmihalyi came up with the idea of Afghan
Explorer. 

His inspiration came after watching Rambo III. 

"After 11 September my interest in Afghanistan grew. I rented Rambo III from
the video store which shows the other side of the story," he told BBC News
Online. 

"The US pumped $3.7m into weapons for Afghanistan and I didn't trust the media
accounts of what was happening." 

Four-wheeled reporter 

The robo-journalist he hopes will give a truer picture of what is happening in
the wars the United States engages in. 

"It is a personal media device for independent news agencies that can't afford
hundreds of editors and reporters," he explained. 

Afghan Explorer has been modelled on Nasa's Mars Explorer. It travels on four
wheels, derives its energy from the sun and finds its way about using a GPS
navigation unit. 

Its brain is a laptop computer that connects remotely by mobile phone to the
internet to allow journalists to operate it. Its movements can be controlled
and a live interview can be conducted via satellite phone. 

It has a video console mounted on a neck with two web cameras for ears to give
it a human face. 

No hard feelings 

Mr Csikszentmihalyi's first mission for his robot-journo will be to send it out
into the field, possibly in Afghanistan, stopping to explore areas of interest,
photograph events and conduct interviews with people along the way. 

Robo-journo has one big advantage over its human counterparts. There will be
no-one back home worrying about its safety. 

"They can imprison it, shoot it. I don't care. It is just a robot, its feelings
can't get hurt," said Mr Csikszentmihalyi. 

Human reporters need not worry about their jobs just yet though. There are some
things that robo-journo just will not be able to achieve. 

"The job of a human journalist can never be replaced. They can offer empathy
and sensitivity which the robot cannot," he said. 

BBC correspondent Gavin Hewitt agrees. 

"Machines can't replace humans. It is very rare to have black and white facts.
The crucial thing is how you interpret facts and pictures. Central to reporting
is the sense of being there," he said. 

Freedom fighter 

Whatever its role in the field, Afghan Explorer is striking a blow for press
freedom says its creator. 

"There has been a startling reduction on journalists' movements in the field.
In Afghanistan there was no battlefield footage," said Mr Csikszentmihalyi. 

"The huge disparity between the US services account and the people being
killing forced me to develop the technology to see what was really happening." 

The Afghan Explorer may find that the reaction from the US military is even
more hostile than from the local population. 

"It's hard to say who is going to shoot it first," said Mr Csikszentmihalyi.
**************
BBC
TV link to violence

Children who watch more than an hour of television a day during their early
teens are more likely to be violent in later life, according to new research. 
The findings show the extent of the violence, including fights and robberies,
increases further if daily TV watching exceeds three hours. 

Researchers studied more than 700 people from two upstate New York counties
over the course of 17 years to discover if there is a link between television
and aggression. 

"Our findings suggest that, at least during early adolescence, responsible
parents should avoid permitting their children to watch more than one hour of
television a day," said Jeffrey G Johnson of Columbia University and the New
York State Psychiatric Institute. 

"The evidence has gotten to the point where it's overwhelming." 

Sexes 

Mr Johnson believes this is the first research into the link between the amount
of TV watched and the effect on children's behaviour. 

"I was surprised to see a five-fold increase in aggressive behaviour from less
than one hour to three or more hours," said Johnson, ahead of his study being
released in the journal Science. 

The findings show that of children who watch less an hour of television a day
at the age of 14, only 5.7% turned to violence between the ages of 16 to 22. 

For those who watch between one and three hours, this number jumped to 22.8%. 

The rate went up again to 28.8% for those who watched more than three hours a
day. 

Unsurprisingly, the effect was more evident in boys than in girls. 

For girls who watched more than three hours TV a day the number who became
aggressive after the age of 16 was 12.7%, compared to boys at 45.2%. 

Avid viewer 

Mr Johnson said the increase in aggressive behaviour associated with higher
television viewing held true both for people who had previous violent incidents
and for those who had not had shown earlier aggression. 

That means the findings are not merely the result of people already prone to
violence being more avid viewers. 

Mark I Singer of the Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, in
1988 researched behaviour in youths who watched more than six hours of TV a
day. 

He has welcomed the new report, calling it an important study which covered a
significant period of time and took into account outside influences. 

He said one of the most important findings was the relationship between the
sexes and their television habits and the likelihood of them turning to
violence. 

In a commentary accompanying the report, Craig A Anderson and Brad J Bushman of
Iowa State University said the findings were "important evidence showing that
extensive TV viewing among adolescents and young adults is associated with
subsequent aggressive acts". 

The effects are "not trivial" and suggest it may be worthwhile to restrict the
viewing time of adolescents, they add.
**************
BBC
Virtual lab to link Arab scientists

Arab researchers are aiming to help revive science in the Middle East by
setting up a computer network linking universities, governments and businesses.

They plan to use technology to create a virtual lab, where scientists from
across the region can meet, work together and share ideas. 

It is hoped the network will not only increase co-operation and the sharing of
ideas within the Arab world but beyond. 

"It will link the Arab scientific community to a global one and allow
scientists to share with other scientists in the West, India, China and across
the world," said Dr Ali Assam, managing director of KnowledgeView, the UK-based
company behind the idea. 

"It will provide organised dialogue with the West which is important for better
understanding between nations," he told the BBC programme, Go Digital. 

Catching up with the West 

A thousand years ago Arab science was leading the world. Middle Eastern
scientists were busy making advances in algebra and astronomy while Europe was
floundering in the Dark Ages. 

Now Arab nations spend just 0.15% of their gross domestic product on research
and development compared to a world average of 1.4%. 

"The Arab world is starting from a lower level in terms of spend on science and
research," admitted Dr Assam. 

"The aim of this network is to encourage science and innovation and allow
scientists to exchange ideas," he said. 

As part of the project, there will be a virtual lab. In this 3D environment,
scientists and students will be able to wander around and discuss ideas. 

Scientists can even impose their own faces on the digital characters
representing them in the lab. 

Economic pressure 

The rich Arab nations realise that money from oil will not last forever. 

So one of the driving forces behind the knowledge network is economic
necessity. 

This is pushing hitherto insular Arab nations to open up to the internet, said
Dr Assam. 

"Pressure for economic integration across the world and the importance of the
internet in this has forced many governments to open up their societies to the
internet," he said. 

Despite this, some Middle East countries retain a tight rein over access to the
web. 

Research into solar power and water management are two important on-going
projects in the Middle East and Dr Assam hopes the network will improve links
between scientists and businesses. 

"Local and global businesses can take advantage of it. It will provide
information about innovations that can be applied in both Arab society and
externally," he said. 

Educational role 

Another key role of the network is to enable Arab science students to learn
without having to leave their countries. 

Currently many Arab students spend at least some of their time studying in the
West. 

But some believe that it may be more difficult for scientists from Muslim
countries to find university places in Europe and the US following the 11
September attacks. 

"The network will cross geographical boundaries," said Dr Assam.
**************
BBC
Church grapples with hi-tech dilemma

The Archbishop of the Italian city of Salerno, Gerrardo Pierro, is asking his
congregation to abstain from text messaging on Good Friday and concentrate on
meditation instead. 

It could be no easy task as text messaging becomes ever more popular. 

In February in the UK alone, 1.2 million text messages were sent according to
figures from the Mobile Data Association. 

Youngsters are particularly keen, with 91% admitting in a recent survey
conducted by mobile phone operator Orange to texting someone in another part of
the house rather than speak to them in person. 

In the UK city of Manchester, a 24-hour church has recognised the importance of
texting to young people and is calling for them to contact the church via text
messages if, for example, they are in a club with a friend who has taken too
many drugs. 

'Opportunities for evangelisation' 

As technology becomes ever more prevalent among the young, churches of all
denominations are being forced to look at new ways of maintaining and growing
its flock. 

The Pope himself has recognised the power of the internet and will pontificate
on the value of the web in a speech to be made in May. 

He sees the net as a new forum for proclaiming the gospel. 

"The internet can offer magnificent opportunities for evangelisation if used
with competence and a clear awareness of its strengths and weaknesses," the
speech reads. 

"It is important that the Christian community think of very practical ways of
helping those who first make contact through the internet to move from the
virtual world of cyberspace to the real world of Christian community," it goes
on. 

However he also notes that the ephemeral and factual nature of much of the
content on the net could also be attacking spirituality in the new millennium. 

"The internet offers extensive knowledge, but it does not teach values; and
when values are disregarded, our very humanity is demeaned," he said. 

Church online 

The Church of England has some sympathy with members of the clergy who want to
keep holy days technology-free. 

"The issue is to do with celebrating the day of rest as a time to set apart for
the worship of God and as a day of recuperation for mankind," said a Church of
England spokesman. 

Like the Catholic Church, it has a pragmatic approach to technology,
recognising it can work for good as well as for bad. 

"The Church of England has a website and it gets about a quarter of a million
hits each week. That shows that people within the church are happy to use
technology and find it useful," said the spokesman. 

In Spain, one priest has become so fed up with mobile phones ringing during
mass that he has installed a jammer in his church in Moraira.
**************
Government Computer News
NASA looks for a new desktop outsourcing metric 

Four and a half years into desktop outsourcing, NASA has become adept at
keeping tabs on contractor performance. Now the agency wants to find a way to
measure how well its Outsourcing Desktop Initiative for NASA supports the
agency?s mission, CIO Lee Holcomb said. 

?The bigger question is, how are we doing with the business of the agency??
Holcomb told a breakfast meeting today of the Armed Forces Communications and
Electronics Association Bethesda, Md., chapter. He said that if a new
mission-related metric can be identified, NASA would consider modifying the
contract to emphasize it. 

NASA?s 11 regional centers have outsourced their desktop computing resources to
three ODIN contractorsACS Corp. of Rockville, Md., Lockheed Martin?s OAO Corp.
and Science Applications International Inc. of San Diego. Users can have Apple
Macintosh, Microsoft Windows or Linux machines. 

Currently, Holcomb said, the contractors are measured monthly against metrics
for cost, availability of service, customer satisfaction and delivery of what
he termed a ?bag of services.? The bag includes how fast downed seats are
restored, whether tech refreshes and software pushes meet schedules and how
quickly new or relocated seats are installed. 

Holcomb said that on average, the vendors meet their bag-of-service metrics 98
percent of the time. But in a given month, they miss one or more metrics at
three of the 11 centers.
******************
Government Computer News
PKI Steering Committee chooses signature app 

The General Services Administration?s Federal Public-key Infrastructure
Steering Committee, in a significant move toward adopting a governmentwide PKI,
is finalizing plans to purchase 150 licenses of an electronic-signature
application. 

Six months ago, GSA was skeptical about using ApproveIt Desktop from Silanis
Technology Inc. of St. Laurent, Quebec. Officials weren?t sure if the signing
tool, which works via a browser, would work with the Defense Department?s PKI. 

But after a November analysis of ApproveIt, the Defense Department?s Joint
Interoperability Test Command said the software was interoperable with its
proprietary system. 

The test showed that any agency using the software could accept DOD
certificates, and verify the status of the certificate maintained in DOD
databasesincluding certificate path-building and processingand certificate
revocation lists of invalid DOD certificates. It would also work in DOD?s
Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, the analysis found. 

GSA expects a rollout next month of ApproveIt and will use its own Access
Certificates for Electronic Signatures digital certificates and become its own
certificate authority. 

Barry West, deputy director in GSA's Office of Electronic Government, said he
can see the benefit of the software but warned of potential interoperability
problems. 

"I stress the importance of coordination among program leads, CIOs, network
architects and others in bringing these types of solutions together if a full
PKI is planned or already in place," West said.
****************
Government Computer News
NIST CIO Mehuron will retire 

William O. Mehuron, CIO of the National Institute of Standards and Technology
and director of its IT Laboratory, will retire April 3. ITL deputy director
Susan Zevin will serve as acting director of the Commerce Department laboratory
until a successor is appointed, a NIST official said. 

The laboratory develops computer security standards and guidelines for the
federal government and conducts research to make systems more usable, scalable,
and easier to measure and interoperate. 

Mehuron had worked as director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration?s Systems Acquisition Office from 1995 to 1997, and then as
acting deputy undersecretary of NOAA until 1998. 

Earlier, Mehuron worked as director of research and engineering at the National
Security Agency. He held senior management positions in private-sector IT
organizations before entering the government.
*****************
San Jose Mercury News
Grocery surfing
SAFEWAY, ALBERTSON'S PRESENT MIXED BAG OF SHOPPING EASE, TECHNICAL SHORTCOMINGS

Safeway and Albertson's both launched online grocery shopping services in the
Bay Area earlier this month that are easy to use and reasonably affordable,
although shoppers must push through a number of small obstacles.

I'll be cautiously optimistic, however, and assume the two big supermarket
chains will quickly fix the shortcomings to create home delivery operations
that will endure -- unlike the late and much-lamented Webvan and Peapod.

After testing online shopping three times from Safeway (www.safeway.com) and
twice from Albertson's (www.albertsons.com), I've got a house overflowing with
food and an inclination to use the services regularly in the future.

Here's how it works:

You start by going to either Web site and setting up an account, which requires
giving little more than your name, street address, e-mail address and having a
major credit card on hand to pay for purchases.

Then you fill a virtual shopping cart by navigating through on-screen menus to
find the specific items you need.

When you've run through your entire shopping list, you select a delivery time
for the next day -- if available -- or any later time. Safeway offers two-hour
delivery windows, while Albertson's delivery window is 90 minutes.

At the designated time, a delivery van pulls up to your door and the driver
carries your order to the doorstep in plastic crates.

You pay the same prices as the two supermarket chains charge in their stores,
plus a flat $9.95 delivery fee. Albertson's also lets you pick up orders at
selected stores for a flat fee of $4.95.

Here's how it worked for me:

I started with Safeway, which launched delivery to most Bay Area homes on March
11.

The Web site, at first, was hard to understand. You have to click a
``Departments'' button on the left side of the screen to go through various
categories and sub-categories with confusing names.

I happen to like It's-It ice-cream sandwiches and found them in ``Adult
Novelties,'' which sounds like a category where you'd find something much
racier than vanilla ice cream surrounded by chocolate-covered oatmeal cookies.

Safeway also presents an awkward two-step process for putting items into your
virtual shopping cart. You first have to enter the quantity of a specific item,
then click an ``Add to Basket'' button. I kept forgetting to click Add to
Basket as I moved from one page to the next, then having to backtrack.

The process got much easier, however, the second time I placed an order. I've
been a regular Safeway shopper for years, and always use my Safeway Club card.
On my second visit, I discovered Safeway had created a ``My Favorites'' list
showing everything I've ever purchased at the store, some 213 items.

Now, some people might find this creepy. Safeway knows or could infer a lot
about me -- the kind of salad dressing I like, the fact that I own a dog and am
the father of a toddler. But My Favorites was a big help for online shopping. I
now had a single long page where I could check off the items I needed, and only
had to click Add to Basket once. There were only one or two items on my second
and third order that weren't already listed among My Favorites.

The delivery side of the experience was a mixed bag. The delivery times I
wanted were always available, and each time the truck arrived within the
promised two-hour window.

But each of my three orders was incomplete. On the first order, the bananas I
requested were missing -- even though bananas were listed on the register
receipt given to me by the driver. I called Safeway's customer service center
and was told the computer system was down, making it impossible to process my
refund request. The person took my phone number and promised to call back, but
never did. I had to call again the next day to ask for a credit of $1.91. The
service center then had to call the store in Sunnyvale which had assembled my
order, and have a clerk write out a refund receipt that was mailed to me.

I later asked a Safeway spokesman about the refund hassle, and he told me the
company is working on a streamlined process, where refunds will be handled
directly by the service center and will be immediately credited to customer
accounts.

When the second order arrived, I asked the driver to wait while I checked to
make sure I'd gotten everything. This time, four items were missing -- two
bottles of club soda, a package of Ivory soap bars and a tub of cream cheese.
All the missing items were on the truck, however, and the driver was able to
promptly fetch them.

The third order was brought to my door by two deliverymen. Two items were out
of stock, which they told me up front. But they declined to stay while I
checked the order for other missing items, telling me to call the service
center if there were any problems. I did a quick check after they left and
found everything I'd ordered.

Albertson's, which started home delivery to most of the Bay Area on March 20,
has a much easier Web site to navigate.

There are drop-down menus for finding items by either category or name, a much
quicker solution than waiting for successive pages to load on the Safeway site.
Also, Albertson's let you check available delivery times before starting to put
together an order, while Safeway doesn't let you view delivery times until
check-out -- an oversight Safeway is working to fix, according to a spokesman.

Most items on the Albertson's site are also accompanied by a small picture,
making it easier to make sure you're getting the correct product. Safeway has
no pictures.

Not that Albertson's was perfect. The search function didn't always work
properly -- when I entered ``Cool Whip,'' I got several frozen dessert toppings
that weren't the Cool Whip brand. I subsequently found Cool Whip by navigating
to the ``Frozen Whipped Toppings'' category.

Also, ordering produce and meats was confusing on both sites. It wasn't always
clear whether I was ordering items such as apples or chicken breasts by
quantity or weight.

I picked up my first Albertson's online order at a store near my home. When I
arrived, a clerk promptly pushed up a shopping cart filled with the order and
told me two items were out of stock. Otherwise, the order was complete. There
was one problem, however: The clerk couldn't find the complete receipt, so I
didn't know the exact total cost for the order.

I placed my second order with Albertson's on a Sunday night and was stunned to
discover all available delivery slots for the following Monday and Tuesday were
taken. An Albertson's spokeswoman told me online delivery has drawn a bigger
response in the Bay Area than anticipated and said Albertson's is rapidly
adding delivery capacity.

The second order arrived on schedule the following Wednesday morning, and was
complete. But, once again, the receipt was missing, making me wonder if
Albertson's has some behind-the-scenes issues to work out.

After going through all this, I came to some obvious conclusions: Safeway needs
to revamp its online presentation, borrowing ideas generously from the superior
Albertson's site. And both companies should instruct their employees to invest
the small amount of time required to check orders for completeness at the point
of delivery.

Otherwise, I found both online shopping services to be genuine time savers. If
you don't mind spending the extra $10, you avoid the hassle of driving to the
store, parking, trudging up and down aisles and having to haul your groceries
home.
**********************
San Jose Mercury News
PC price hike possible
ASIAN FIRMS ROLL OUT PRODUCT INCREASES

When Apple Computer hiked prices by $100 on its new iMacs last week, some folks
wondered if other computer makers would follow suit.

That could happen in coming weeks and months as PC makers across the industry
are dealing with a sudden spike in prices for memory and liquid crystal
displays, which are used in notebook screens and the flat-panel monitors that
are growing in popularity.

News out of Asia this week put NEC Computers, Fujitsu and IBM Japan on the list
of companies that are either rolling out price hikes or planning them as early
as next week.

Dell Computer, chief instigator in the recent PC price wars, is not simply
raising prices across the board. Instead, Dell is cutting the perks to entice
people to buy PCs.

Just a few months ago, Dell, Apple and other PC companies were doubling
customers' DRAM memory for free. Some also offered to upgrade regular CD-ROM
drives to CD-burners for free. Such deals are now harder to come by, as PC
makers try to pinch more pennies to protect profit margins.

Roger Kay, director of client computing with high-tech research group IDC,
noted that price hikes surrounding memory would likely have short-term effects
and wouldn't create a big problem for PC makers, who can easily halt the free
memory upgrade promotions.

``They can pull 256 MB and make that the standard,'' he said. ``They can offer
the extra 256 as an option that you pay for.''

But the LCD price hike could have longer-lasting effects, he said.

All of this makes for tough decisions for the executives at Gateway, who
recently promised to sacrifice profits for market share. The company has no
immediate plans to follow others in price hikes and remains committed to
offering high-end machines are bargain prices, including a PC with a Pentium 4
chip and a flat-panel monitor for $999, a company spokeswoman said.

Kay says Gateway really can't afford to raise prices, given the business
strategy.

``This is a strategy that Gateway will have to stick with,'' he said. ``If they
change strategies again that would be a bad thing. People won't know what
business they're in. I don't know how they'll do it.''
*******************
MSNBC
FBI to reveal more Carnivore details

March 28  Privacy advocates have won another round in their fight to gain
access to more information about the FBI?s Carnivore e-mail surveillance
system. A federal judge this week ordered the FBI to expand its search for
records about Carnivore, also known as DCS1000, technology that is installed at
Internet service providers to monitor e-mail from criminal suspects. The court
denied a motion for summary judgment and ordered the FBI to produce within 60
days ?a further search? of its records pertaining to Carnivore as well as a
device called EtherPeek, which manages network traffic.

THE FBI HAS defended Carnivore by assuring the public that it only captures
e-mail and other online information authorized for seizure in a court order,
but the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has voiced concerns over
potential abuse. EPIC sued the FBI, the investigative arm of the Justice
Department, in July 2000 under the Freedom of Information Act so it could
examine Carnivore-related documents.

       EPIC ?has raised a ?positive indication? that the FBI may have
overlooked documents in other FBI divisions, most notably the offices of the
General Counsel and Congressional and Public Affairs,? U.S. District Judge
James Robertson wrote in his order.

       The court order marks the latest chapter in EPIC?s ongoing legal battle
with the Justice Department. The lawsuit could have significant implications
for the government?s tactics of monitoring Internet use in federal
investigations. 

       According to the order, the FBI had completed its processing of EPIC?s
FOIA request, producing a search of 1,957 pages of material but releasing only
1,665 pages to EPIC. The privacy group claimed those records were inadequate,
saying they only addressed technical aspects of Carnivore, not legal and policy
implications. 

       EPIC General Counsel David Sobel said the FBI and Justice Department
have been ?very grudging? about the Carnivore information they are willing to
release. 

       ?A new court-supervised search is likely to result in the release of a
lot of significant new information, particularly because the information that
we?re likely to get now is material dealing with the Justice Department and the
FBI?s assessment of the legal issues raised by the use of Carnivore,? Sobel
said. ?I think nowespecially after Sept. 11 when these kinds of techniques are
likely to increase in useit?s even more important that information be made
public and how the techniques are being used and how the Justice Department
sees the legal issues.?

      In September 2000, the Justice Department commissioned IIT Research
Institute, an arm of the Illinois Institute of Technology, to undergo a review
of Carnivore. Two months later, the institute released its findings, saying the
technology ?protects privacy and enables lawful surveillance better than
alternatives.? The report said Carnivore provides investigators with no more
information than is permitted by a given court order and that it poses no risk
to Internet service providers. 

       The Justice Department and FBI could not be immediately reached for
comment.
*****************

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