Clips November 4, 2002

[Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>]

Clips November 4, 2002

ARTICLES

County tries to prevent more ballot problems
Shipping Lines, Union Meet on Technology
Election Day To Be Test of Voting Process
States' Listings of Sex Offenders Raise a Tangle of Legal Issues
SBC to Test Internet Security
IM compatibility closer to reality
Online Music Sales Dive From 2001
Open source courses through DOD
Personal data travels far [Federal]
State CIOs see accord with feds
James Flyzik will retire next month
Agencies fail to comply with technology-transfer law
No. 2 bank may outsource IT
FBI: DNS server attacks came from U.S., Korea
California Coast Gets Intrepid Internet Watchdog
New computers likely to take some control away from users
Political sites help get the message out before Election Day
Firms squelching pop-up ads
Online companies find ads can be counter-productive
Protect And Serve [Cyber Security]
China Launches Net Cafe ID System
Math discovery rattles Net security
EC awards Netproject with Linux contract
Keeping track of the trucks [GPS]

*****************************
Dallas Morning News
County tries to prevent more ballot problems
Working to reduce the margin for early-voting error
Controversy over touch-screen machines still a partisan wedge
By ED HOUSEWRIGHT Staff Writer
Published October 24, 2002

Dallas County elections officials implemented safeguards Wednesday to 
address complaints that some ballots cast in early voting this week weren't 
being counted accurately.

The changes occurred amid escalating bickering between county Democratic 
and Republican leaders. The two sides met for more than four hours 
Wednesday - along with officials from the elections department and the 
voting machine company - and traded accusations of partisan strong-arming.

Bruce Sherbet, county elections administrator, said he didn't think any 
votes had been lost or miscounted.

Eighteen of more than 400 electronic voting machines were pulled out of 
service after early voting began Monday. Some voters complained that they 
selected one candidate but that the touch-screen machine marked a different 
candidate.

Mr. Sherbet said signs were placed in all 24 early-voting locations 
Wednesday urging voters to double-check the electronic ballots to make sure 
they accurately reflected their choices.

In addition, election judges will test each of the more than 400 voting 
machines before the polls open each day, and more checks are being done 
throughout each day, Mr. Sherbet said.

Finally, extra election workers have been hired to assist voters who might 
worry that their votes aren't being properly counted.

"The complaints dropped off pretty dramatically today," Susan Hays, 
chairwoman of the Dallas County Democratic Party, said Wednesday. "That 
tells me some of the procedures Sherbet put into place are really working."

Republican leaders accused Democrats of exaggerating the problems with the 
machines to discourage early voting and help their candidates. Early voting 
continues through Nov. 1. Early-voting totals won't be released until after 
the Nov. 5 election.

Democrats said that more than 60 voters complained this week that they 
tried to select a Democratic candidate, but that their vote registered a 
Republican candidate. Some Republicans also have complained that the 
machines incorrectly cast their votes beside a Democratic candidate, 
Democratic leaders said.

Republican leaders, however, said they were skeptical of the Democrats' 
assertions. Only one voter has complained to Republican headquarters that a 
vote wasn't registered as intended, said Nate Crain, chairman of the Dallas 
County Republican Party.

"We have full confidence in the early-voting system," he said.

Democratic Party leaders said more changes are necessary, though. They said 
they may ask a judge Thursday for permission to test the accuracy of the 
ballot machines.

On Tuesday, Democrats asked a state district judge to halt early voting. 
But they withdrew the request and said they would meet Wednesday with 
Republicans, elections officials and officials from Election Systems & 
Software, the Nebraska company that makes the touch screen ballots.

Mr. Sherbet said problems were reported in seven to 10 polling places, 
although Democrats said the number could be as high as 16. He said 
technicians were able to "recalibrate 15 of the 18 machines taken out of 
service and return them to use. The other three were replaced, he said.

"Every election, we have machines that have to be recalibrated," Mr. 
Sherbet said. "Touch-screens have pluses and minuses.

"We want to be sure no votes are missed."

He emphasized that a voter's choice isn't immediately logged into a 
machine's memory when he or she selects a candidate in a particular race. 
The votes aren't counted until the voter reaches the end of the ballot and 
pushes a red button to indicate that he or she is finished.

There is time for a voter to change a selection if the machine makes a mark 
beside the wrong candidate, Mr. Sherbet said.

Officials with Electronic Systems & Software, the world's largest 
manufacturer of voting machines, defended their product Wednesday and said 
the problems being reported are minor.

"There are safeguards to let us detect this," said Ken Carbullido, senior 
vice president of software development. "We'd like to assure Dallas County 
that this is a solid process, and they can trust in the election."

The touch-screen machines have been used in more than 90 Dallas County 
elections in the past four years.

Isolated problems have occurred similar to the ones that occurred this 
week, Mr. Sherbet said.

The problem can occur after the machines are moved and locked up each 
night, he said. Pixels on the machines' screens get misaligned during 
jostling and do not properly read voters' selections. However, technicians 
can realign them within minutes, Mr. Sherbet said.

He said he's not inclined to scrap the electronic ballots.

"All large counties are going to electronic voting," Mr. Sherbet said.

The touch-screen system is not used on election days in Dallas County. 
Voters use a pen to fill in circles by candidates' names on paper ballots.

On Wednesday, the meeting among Democrats, Republicans, elections officials 
and company representatives broke up at one point amid partisan bickering.

Mike Atwood, executive director of the county Democratic Party, emerged 
from the closed-door meeting and told a large gathering of reporters that 
he wanted to demonstrate the problems with a voting machine. But before he 
could, Dallas County Commissioner Jim Jackson, a longtime Republican, 
stepped up to reporters and said, "Let me tell you what the truth is."

He said the problems being alleged are isolated and no more than occur in 
every election. Voters are reporting the problems as they occur and being 
directed to machines that are working properly, Mr. Jackson said.

"I think you will find that any person with any intelligence can vote 
accurately in Dallas County," he said.

Later, Mr. Sherbet showed reporters a defective voting machine and 
demonstrated how it incorrectly registered a vote. When he selected a box 
beside a candidate's name on the screen, a check mark appeared next to the 
name of the candidate above that one.

Staff writer Tim Wyatt contributed to this report.
*****************************
Los Angeles Times
Shipping Lines, Union Meet on Technology
From Times Staff and Wire Reports
November 3 2002

The longshore union and shipping industry reached a tentative agreement on 
technology -- the stickiest issue in their prolonged labor dispute -- early 
Friday, after all-night talks with three federal mediators and a top 
AFL-CIO official.

No details were released on the deal, which many saw as a breakthrough in 
the stalemate that has disrupted commercial trade along the West Coast for 
more than a month.

Wages and pension benefits still must be hammered out, according to both 
the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which represents 10,500 
dockworkers, and the Pacific Maritime Assn., which represents nearly 80 
shipping lines and terminal operators.
****************************
Washington Post
Election Day To Be Test of Voting Process
Few States' Procedures Have Undergone Much Change Since 2000
By Edward Walsh
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 4, 2002; Page A01


LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. -- The American system of voting goes on trial again 
Tuesday, two years after a deadlocked presidential election and a chaotic 
recount of ballots in Florida revealed deep flaws in the way elections are 
conducted across the country.

After everything that went wrong in Florida during the 2000 presidential 
election, Tuesday's voting here and around the country is likely to be one 
of the most closely watched elections in U.S. history. And for once, the 
voting process itself will be of almost as much interest as the outcome of 
key races.

No state wants to be the Florida of 2002, but no state can be certain of 
how Tuesday's events will unfold. In most states, the voting equipment and 
procedures are little changed from two years ago. In the few states such as 
Georgia where there have been major changes, the new systems are facing 
their first real tests, adding a new element of uncertainty to Election Day.

What state and local election officials can be sure of is that they will be 
under scrutiny like never before. Both Democrats and Republicans are 
dispatching teams of lawyers and others to monitor the election process in 
areas where they suspect there may be irregularities. Several advocacy 
groups are doing the same. Legal challenges in some close races are almost 
certain to be filed.

Even without a presidential election this year, the political stakes are 
high as the two major parties battle for control of Congress. Just a few 
close races -- the Georgia Senate contest between GOP Rep. C. Saxby 
Chambliss and incumbent Democrat Max Cleland is one -- could tip the 
balance either way. With the closeness of several key races, possible 
automatic recounts and the often slow process of counting absentee ballots, 
the answer to the ultimate question of who controls Congress may not be 
known until Wednesday at the earliest.

Most of the states reacted cautiously to the Florida 2000 election debacle. 
Some states enacted changes in their election laws, but others waited to 
see how the federal government would respond. Last month, Congress did 
respond, enacting legislation that mandates changes in voter registration 
and balloting procedures and authorizes $3.86 billion to help the states 
overhaul their election systems.

As a result, "this year's modest changes will pale in comparison to the 
likely deluge of state and local election reforms in 2003 and beyond, 
prompted by the availability of federal funds and the requirements of 
federal standards," the Election Reform Information Project, an information 
clearinghouse that has been tracking developments in voting practices 
around the country, said in a recent report.

Maryland is among the handful of states that enacted far-reaching 
legislation mandating a uniform voting system and other changes. Four 
Maryland counties -- Montgomery, Prince George's, Allegany and Dorchester 
-- have been phasing in the new system using touch-screen voting machines.

But no state went further in revising its election system than Georgia, 
which on Tuesday will make history by becoming the first to conduct an 
election with a uniform, statewide system of computerized voting equipment. 
Georgia officials also anticipated many of the requirements of the federal 
legislation.

The touch-screen machines that will be used here provide for "second 
chance" voting, allowing voters to review their ballots and correct 
mistakes before the ballot is cast. Voters whose names do not appear on 
official registration lists will be given "provisional ballots," which will 
be counted if the voter's registration is later verified. The voting 
machines are designed to be accessible to the disabled, and at least one at 
every polling place will have audio equipment, allowing blind voters to 
cast their ballots in private, without assistance.

All of this makes what happens here Tuesday of keen interest to state and 
local election officials around the country. They know that implementing 
massive changes in such a complex system is fraught with peril.

That lesson was driven home in September by another voting fiasco in South 
Florida. Like Georgia, Florida has also revamped its election system since 
2000, although it did not mandate uniform equipment throughout the state. 
In the Sept. 10 Florida primary in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, there 
were numerous voting machine breakdowns, polls opened late or closed early 
and both poll workers and voters operated in an atmosphere of confusion. 
For several days, the outcome of the close Democratic gubernatorial primary 
hung in the balance, threatening a nightmarish replay of the 2000 
presidential election recount.

After that experience, which also involved touch-screen voting machines, 
"Georgia leads the league in sweaty palms" going into Tuesday's general 
election, said Doug Chapin, director of the Election Reform Information 
Project.

But Georgia Secretary of State Cathy Cox (D), the driving force behind the 
new Georgia system, professes no such worries. After the 2000 election, Cox 
put together an analysis showing that there was a higher percentage of 
nonvotes and spoiled votes for president in Georgia than there had been in 
neighboring Florida. "Had Georgia been hanging in the balance, people would 
have been laughing at us," she said.

Armed with that information, Cox persuaded Gov. Roy Barnes (D) and the 
Democratic-controlled state legislature to approve a $54 million bond issue 
to purchase new voting equipment and overhaul the system. The state also 
appropriated $4 million for poll worker training and voter education, which 
Cox and others argue is the key to making the system work. Most of the 
September voting problems in South Florida were due to "a severe lack of 
poll worker training," she said.

Steve Beauchamp, 30, is one of the keys to fulfilling Cox's hope for a 
smooth Election Day here. Since September, he and other technicians working 
for Diebold Inc., the manufacturer of the touch-screen voting machines, 
have been training hundreds of poll workers across Georgia on the 
intricacies of the new computerized, touch-screen voting machines that for 
the first time will be used in each of the state's 3,000 voting precincts 
on Tuesday.

One recent day, Beauchamp conducted one of the scheduled 14 classes for 
poll workers here in Gwinnett County, a burgeoning outer suburban enclave 
about 35 miles northeast of Atlanta.

There were 10 voting machines, which look like oversized laptop computers 
set on waist-high platforms, that the two dozen poll workers eagerly 
trained on as Beauchamp explained how the machines work, the process each 
voter will follow in casting a ballot, and how to tally all those votes at 
the end of a long day. Lynn Ledford, Gwinnett County elections supervisor, 
hovered nearby to answer questions

The poll workers said they were impressed. "I think this thing is 
fantastic," said Gary Hays, 59, who has been a poll worker for seven years. 
"I don't see how anyone can miss it."

Beauchamp is also enthusiastic about the new equipment, but he had a 
warning about unintended consequences on Election Day. "This machine is 
going to be the bottleneck," he said. "People are going to play with it, 
and voting time is going to be increased. It's a new toy."

Ledford said voter turnout for a midterm election in Gwinnett County is 
normally 20 to 30 percent, but she predicted up to a 10 percent boost this 
year because of voter curiosity about the new equipment, which has been the 
subject of an intensive voter education campaign.

For Georgia, the move to a uniform, touch-screen system is a radical 
departure. As recently as two years ago, Georgians voted with a hodgepodge 
of equipment, including two types of optical scanners, punch cards and 
lever machines. Paper ballots were still in use in two counties.

Diebold has promised to have close to 500 technicians in the state on 
Election Day to handle any equipment malfunctions. "I am very confident," 
Cox said. "My name is on the ballot. It has to work."

But she also admits to "obsessing over so many details." Recently, Cox sent 
to every precinct in the state a zip-lock plastic bag containing two backup 
batteries for the voting machines, a screwdriver to open the machines and 
two nightlights which, if they go out on Election Day, will alert poll 
workers to a loss of electric power at their polling place.

"We won't have the types of problems they had in Florida," said Ledford, 
who has 15 years of experience running elections. "But we're going to have 
problems because with new equipment, something comes up out of the blue."
***************************
New York Times
November 4, 2002
States' Listings of Sex Offenders Raise a Tangle of Legal Issues
By LINDA GREENHOUSE

WASHINGTON, Nov. 3  After a paroled sex offender whose neighbors knew 
nothing of his violent past raped and murdered a 7-year-old girl who lived 
across the street in New Jersey, the State Legislature came up with what 
looked like a straightforward way to protect communities from similar 
danger: Require sex offenders to make their whereabouts known, and find a 
way to get that information to the public.

That was the first Megan's Law, named for the victim, Megan Kanka, and 
eight years later there are Megan's Laws in all 50 states. But little about 
this development has been straightforward or simple as it spread throughout 
the country, spurred by a federal law that threatened to withhold 
crime-fighting grants from states that did not pass Megan's Laws.

The laws have been magnets for constitutional challenges, attacked by civil 
liberties groups and former offenders for imposing new punishment for old 
crimes and for violating principles of due process, double jeopardy and the 
right to privacy. As long as the states were winning the early court cases, 
the Supreme Court paid little attention, declining to hear challenges to 
New Jersey's law and to one in New York. But when states started losing in 
the lower courts, they found the Supreme Court's doors open.

Two Megan's Law appeals will be argued before the court on Nov. 13, one 
brought by Alaska and the other by Connecticut. They raise distinct 
constitutional issues, and together could go far toward defining what 
limits apply and what justifications are needed when the government carves 
a single category of criminal offenders out of all others for especially 
burdensome treatment.

Are Megan's Laws the equivalent of "a modern-day scarlet letter indelibly 
inscribed" on the foreheads of former sex offenders, regardless of the 
facts of a particular case, as lawyers for John Doe I and John Doe II, the 
former offenders who challenged the Alaska law, argue in their brief? Or 
are the laws a "common sense response to a serious national problem," 
namely the "unique public threat" posed by those who "prey on the most 
vulnerable members of society," as the Bush administration argues in 
defense of the Connecticut statute?

In the aftermath of mass terrorism, anthrax-laced mail and the serial 
murders of randomly chosen strangers, the uniquely threatening status of 
sexual predators may be debatable. But it is indisputable that violent sex 
crimes, particularly those with children as victims, have occupied a 
prominent place in the consciousness of the public, politicians and law 
enforcement officials.

According to the Justice Department, the number of people imprisoned for 
sex crimes from 1980 to 1994 grew at a faster rate than for any other 
category of violent crime. To cite one example of the intensity of public 
interest, the Web site on which Connecticut posted the whereabouts of 
convicted sex offenders  before the site was shut down by the court 
decision the state is now appealing  was visited more than 3 million times 
in its first five months in a state with a population of only 3.4 million 
people.

For several years, the Supreme Court's docket has reflected the special 
attention that legislatures have been paying to sex offenders. Last term, 
in McKune v. Lile, the court split 5 to 4 in upholding the Kansas prison 
system's sex offender treatment program, which requires inmates to reveal 
previously undisclosed crimes and face potential prosecution for them. The 
court has also upheld, within certain limits, state programs to keep 
violent sex offenders in extended civil confinement after the expiration of 
their criminal sentences.

Such programs, as well as the Megan's Laws themselves, reflect the belief 
that sex offenders are much more likely than other criminals to repeat 
their crimes. In the current cases, the states and the federal government 
emphasize the recidivism threat, while a brief filed by the New Jersey 
public defender and the American Civil Liberties Union argues that properly 
interpreted data do not support that claim.

In fact, Megan's Laws can make it more likely that sex offenders will 
commit new crimes, the brief argues, by depriving them of "stability and 
community support" and increasing the stress of their daily lives. "Life 
under Megan's Law is a sentence to purgatory," the brief says.

Ruling last year in the Alaska case, Smith v. Doe, No. 01-729, the United 
States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, 
characterized the state's law as "extremely burdensome" in requiring 
registration as often as four times a year. The court said that by posting 
the registry on the Internet, the state subjected offenders to "world-wide 
obloquy and ostracism."

The Alaska Sex Offender Registration Act was challenged by two men who had 
completed their criminal sentences before the law's 1994 passage.

They argued, and the Ninth Circuit agreed, that when applied to previous 
offenses, the law's requirements amount to a new punishment that violates 
the Constitution's prohibition against ex post facto legislation.

At issue before the Supreme Court is the validity of the Ninth Circuit's 
premise that the law was punitive; if it does not impose punishment, it 
cannot violate the ex post facto clause of Article I, Section 9. The statue 
does not impose punishment but is "a regulatory law intended to help 
protect the public from future harm by collecting truthful information and 
making it available to those who choose to access it," Alaska argues in its 
brief.

The Supreme Court's ruling on the punishment question could also determine 
the outcome of other cases arguing that Megan's Laws impose double 
jeopardy. A renewed challenge to New Jersey's law on grounds of privacy as 
well as double jeopardy is now before the federal appeals court in 
Philadelphia. The double jeopardy argument fails if the law is seen as 
regulatory rather than punitive.

The issue in the Connecticut case, Connecticut Department of Public Safety 
v. Doe, No. 01-1231, is whether it violates due process for the state to 
post former offenders' names and addresses on the Internet without first 
determining that each individual is still dangerous. The United States 
Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ordered the public registry shut 
down until the state offers individual hearings on their current dangerousness.

Connecticut is one of 25 states that publicize the whereabouts of all those 
who have committed particular sex offenses. By contrast, other states make 
individual assessments of the potential dangerousness of each offender.

Connecticut's attorney general, Richard Blumenthal, defends the state's Sex 
Offender Registration Law in his brief by arguing that "the information 
conveyed is accurate and true" while individual predictions of 
dangerousness are inherently speculative and unreliable.

The state has an ally in the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, 
a journalists' group, which argues as a "friend of the court" that to 
declare unconstitutional the publicizing of accurate criminal records 
"could result in over-broad restrictions on the dissemination of truthful 
information."
*************************
Associated Press
SBC to Test Internet Security
Sun Nov 3, 3:14 PM ET
By DAVID KOENIG, AP Business Writer

DALLAS (AP) - SBC Communications Inc., one of the nation's largest Internet 
service providers, plans to create a laboratory to tests methods of 
defeating viruses and attacks on Web sites.

The decision to create the research center, to be announced Monday, was 
endorsed by a top official of a government Internet security board. But the 
reaction among some in the Internet security industry was more cautious. 
They note that ISPs have opposed government requirements to improve 
security, the investment in the laboratory will be modest  less than $10 
million, according to SBC  and it won't be designed to warn customers of 
ongoing attacks.


The SBC lab, to be based in Austin, will mimic servers, firewalls and other 
structures of an ISP. Fred Chang, chief executive of the unit that will run 
the lab, said the center could produce some early anti-hacker technologies 
within 18 months and "quite significant innovations" in three to five years.


Howard Schmidt, vice chairman of the Bush administration's Critical 
Infrastructure Protection Board, said SBC's move indicates that industry is 
moving toward making the Internet safer, and that government regulation 
isn't needed.


"The government should let industry drive the solutions," Schmidt said. 
"The governments shouldn't be telling companies how to innovate."


Internet security officials, who haven't seen the specifics of SBC's lab, 
said Internet service providers should be testing anti-hacker technology as 
a routine part of their business.


Russ Cooper, a security official with TruSecure Corp., based in Herndon, 
Va., questioned whether SBC would learn much about attacks because hackers 
would avoid the center. "The real hackers don't attack these things because 
they don't give away their secrets for free."


Cooper said it would be more helpful if SBC and other Internet service 
providers took stronger measures to block traffic or levy fees on hosts 
whose computers are used to spread a virus or attack.


William P. Crowell, president and chief executive of Cylink Corp. in Santa 
Clara, Calif., said security measures such as firewalls and encrypting 
financial transactions should be built into networks like SBC's, not left 
to individual companies and computer users.


"My mother is 88 years old. She uses the Internet, but she doesn't know how 
to install a firewall, nor should she," Crowell said. "That should be 
embedded in the infrastructure."

Crowell favors requiring ISPs to report attacks and disclose what they are 
doing about the threats. That, he said, would encourage them to build safer 
networks and make people more comfortable about conducting business and 
financial transactions online  a boon to e-commerce.

"Many of us fear we won't act until after we've had some type of disaster," 
he said.
****************************
CNET News.com
IM compatibility closer to reality
By Robert Lemos
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
November 1, 2002, 4:37 PM PT


The Internet's governing technical body quietly gave its stamp of approval 
Thursday to a group intent on creating an open standard for instant messaging.

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the group that sets the 
technical standards for the Internet, gave the go-ahead to the creators of 
open-source instant-messaging application Jabber to create a working group 
based on that technology. These such groups plan the specific 
implementations of the technologies that make up the Internet.

A representative of the new working group wasn't immediately available for 
comment.


Called the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP), the group's 
instant messaging standard gives Internet users hope of one day being able 
to send messages to anyone on the Net, no matter what software they are using.

The group is also charged with adding security--including authentication, 
privacy and access control--to instant messaging, according to the group's 
charter.

Currently, AOL Time Warner, Yahoo and Microsoft divide nearly all instant 
messenger users among them. Yahoo and Microsoft, as well as smaller IM 
clients, have in the past called on America Online to open its instant 
messaging system to rivals.

Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL Time Warner did not immediately comment Friday.

AOL Time Warner's online subsidiary has been under increased scrutiny by 
the federal government for its dominance in the instant messenger arena. As 
a condition of its merger with Time Warner, AOL has been required by the 
Federal Communications Commission to offer interoperability with outside 
services should it launch any "advanced IM" product, such as a version that 
includes video.

Calls for interoperability have quieted among consumers, but business users 
have become more earnest in their exhortations for a single standard. In 
October, seven brokerage firms formally announced the Financial Services 
Instant Messaging Association to promote standards in the instant messenger 
industry.

The new working group could have some competition from IBM and Microsoft, 
which have promoted a separate standard known as SIMPLE (SIP for Instant 
Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions) based on SIP or the Session 
Initiation Protocol. SIP is a way of signaling applications on the Internet 
to enable conferencing, telephony, presence, events notification and 
instant messaging. The IETF approved SIMPLE as a proposed standard in 
September. That technology is being developed by the Session Initiation 
Protocol Working Group.

Earlier this week, AOL Time Warner announced that users of its AOL Instant 
Messenger and an older messaging system, ICQ, will be able to send messages 
to one another starting with AIM 5.1, which is currently being tested.

The XMPP Working Group's charter calls for the group to complete a revised 
specification by December.
***************************
Los Angeles Times
Online Music Sales Dive From 2001
Figures appear to support record labels' contention that free swapping 
networks such as Kazaa and Morpheus are undercutting sellers.
By Jeff Leeds
November 4 2002

Online sales of recorded music have plummeted 25% through the third quarter 
compared with the same period last year, dropping even faster than the 
overall U.S. music market, according to a survey to be released today.

The survey appears to support the contention by record labels that free, 
online music-swapping networks such as Kazaa and Morpheus are undercutting 
music sales.

In the first half of the year, online sales of music fell to $424 million, 
a drop of 20% from the same period last year, according to data collected 
by ComScore Networks, which electronically monitors consumer habits.

Total U.S. shipments of music dropped 7%, to $5.53 billion, during the 
first half of the year, according to the Recording Industry Assn. of America.

The decline of music sales online, however, has accelerated all year.

"While a host of factors inevitably impact any consumer behavior, it is 
likely that file sharing and CD burning are having a more noticeable impact 
on online sales," ComScore said in its report.

The survey, which ComScore said is based on its monitoring of 1.5 million 
Internet users, does not include purchases of some streaming online music 
or sales from auction Web sites.

But analysts say the sharp sales decline -- coupled with a steady rise in 
users of Kazaa and similar networks -- also clouds the prospects for the 
major record labels to launch their own fee-based online music services.

And the survey appears to support the position of the RIAA, which is 
engaged in an elaborate campaign to dismantle free file-swapping services 
and frustrate music pirates.

"All legitimate businesses online have an incentive to fight piracy," said 
RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy. "Obviously, as this study shows, it affects 
everyone."
*****************************
Federal Computer Week
Open source courses through DOD
BY Dan Caterinicchia
Nov. 1, 2002

What would happen if open source software were banned in the Defense 
Department?

A recent study conducted by Mitre Corp. for DOD posed that hypothetical 
question and found this answer: The department's cybersecurity capabilities 
would be crippled and other areas would be severely impacted.

Mitre Corp. was asked to develop a listing of open-source software 
applications at DOD and to collect representative examples of how those 
applications are being used. Over a two-week period, an e-mailed survey 
identified 115 applications and 251 examples of use, and Mitre's report 
acknowledged that actual use could be "tens of thousands of times larger 
than the number of examples identified."

To help analyze the data, the hypothetical question was posed: What would 
happen if open-source software were banned at DOD?

Version 1.2 of the report, "Use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in 
the U.S. Department of Defense," was released Sept. 20 to the Defense 
Information Systems Agency (DISA), and found that open-source software 
applications are most important in infrastructure support, software 
development, security and research.

"The main conclusion of the analysis was that FOSS software plays a more 
critical role in the DOD than has generally been recognized," according to 
the report.

In open-source software, such as Linux, the source code is publicly 
available and gives users the right to use, copy, distribute and change it 
without having to ask for permission from any external group or person.

After receiving a working draft of the report in May, DISA solicited 
insights from DOD and the private sector, said Rob Walker, DISA's 
Net-Centric Enterprise Services program manager, in a presentation at an 
open-source conference in Washington, D.C., this week.

The examination raised three concerns about the use of open-source software:

* Exposing system vulnerabilities.

* Introducing Trojan software, which is hostile software covertly placed in 
ordinary applications.

* Developing new software that incorporates "general public license" (GPL) 
source code. This means the entire new product must be given a GPL, which 
would impact DOD software development and research areas.

Walker's presentation dismissed the first two concerns, finding that the 
pre-emptive identification of security holes by friendly analysts outweighs 
the danger of hostile attacks, and that the introduction of Trojan software 
in open-source environments is no greater than in proprietary ones.

DOD officials' main open-source concern involves the licensing, but "with 
reasonable care, GPL software can be used without disrupting other 
licenses," Walker said. He added that the introduction of unusually 
restrictive licenses, like some used by Microsoft Corp., "presents a more 
significant issue."

Mitre's report recommended three policy-level actions to help promote 
optimum use of open-source within DOD:

1. Create a "generally recognized as safe" open-source software list to 
provide official recognition of applications that are commercially 
supported, widely used, and have proven track records of security and 
reliability.

2. Develop generic policies to promote broader and more effective use of 
open-source, and encourage the use of commercial products that work well 
with the software. A second layer of customized policies then should be 
created to deal with the four major use areas -- infrastructure, 
development, security and research.

3. Encourage the use of open-source to promote diversity in systems 
architecture, which would reduce the cost and security risks of being fully 
dependent on a single software product.
**********************************
Federal Computer Week
Personal data travels far
BY William Matthews
Nov. 1, 2002

Technology is making it much easier for government agencies to share 
information, so they are -- including details about your bank accounts, 
medical complaints and family lives.

Personal information from an electronic application for a student loan, for 
example, may be transmitted to 10 other government agencies and private 
entities such as consumer reporting agencies, schools and lawyers.

Financial details from a farm loan application sent to the Agriculture 
Department may be sent on to 13 other recipients.

And medical records of a government worker seeking compensation for a 
work-related injury or illness may end up in 18 other locations.

Not surprisingly, "the American public is increasingly concerned about 
protecting its privacy," said Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.).

A privacy study Lieberman ordered shows that government agencies are 
generally conscientious about following privacy laws, but it also reveals 
the extended range personal electronic information can travel once it is 
submitted to a federal agency.

Name and address data may be checked against criminal databases at the 
Justice Department. Incomes and bank accounts may be compared to tax 
returns at the Internal Revenue Service. Personal information may be sent 
to courts, law enforcement agencies, even the U.S. Postal Service, 
according to a study by the General Accounting Office.

Personal data may also be sent to commercial collection agencies, financial 
consultants, health care providers, labor unions and parties involved in 
litigation.

The practice of sharing information so widely increases the risk that 
information will be misused and an individual's privacy will be violated, 
Lieberman said Oct. 30 when he released the GAO report. A provision in 
Lieberman's E-Government Act of 2002 would require federal agencies to 
consider the impact new technology would have on privacy before they can 
buy it.

"As the federal government updates its technology so that information may 
be compiled and accessed more readily, we must reassure the public that its 
privacy will be respected and protected," Lieberman said.
***************************
Federal Computer Week
State CIOs see accord with feds
BY Dibya Sarkar
Nov. 1, 2002

The keynote speeches of two senior White House officials signaled a 
"rhetorical alignment" between the federal and state governments on 
homeland security, e-government and other issues, several state chief 
information officers acknowledged. But they said that officials must now 
move beyond that.

Governments need to produce "actionable plans" on these issues, said Gerry 
Wethington, Missouri's CIO and new president of the National Association of 
State Chief Information Officers, during a roundtable discussion at 
NASCIO's annual conference in St. Louis this week.

NASCIO hosted Steve Cooper, senior director of information integration and 
chief information officer for the White House Office of Homeland Security, 
and Mark Forman, the Office of Management and Budget's associate director 
for information technology and e-government.

Both federal officials asked their hosts for greater input, participation 
and collaboration on homeland security and e-government projects with the 
federal government. Some e-government projects sponsored by the federal 
government are already under way, while Cooper proposed funding several 
joint pilot projects for homeland security.

State officials greeted the speeches warmly, but they remained skeptical 
about feedback, concrete plans and funding from the federal government.

Richard Varn, Iowa's CIO, said the federal and state governments are in 
"rhetorical alignment," but questioned how that rhetoric is being addressed 
formally within the administration, federal agencies and Congress.

Although the presence of Cooper and Forman was welcomed, they don't 
represent all federal agencies, several state CIOs said. The two men are 
stepping forward to provide leadership, said Pennsylvania CIO Charles 
Gerhards, "but we haven't seen the hearts and minds of the rank and file at 
the federal level being that inclusive."

He also said states shouldn't have to wait for federal direction, but can 
enact reasonable measures or actions even if they're not perfect. "Let's 
get our shovels out, get a spade of dirt out of the ground, and get 
moving," Gerhards said.

Indiana CIO Laura Larimer said states, which have viewed the White House 
and Congress as intrusive by handing down unfunded mandates, must also 
change their attitudes when dealing with their federal counterparts. Since 
Sept. 11, 2001, NASCIO officials have made several lobbying trips to 
Washington, D.C., reaching out to Bush administration and legislative 
officials.

"It's not a one-shot deal. I think it's going to take a long time," said 
Kentucky CIO Aldona Valicenti, referring to the federal/state relationship.

But officials also said that state governments must speak with one voice 
when pushing their agendas.

That'll be important for homeland security, but also as states grapple with 
the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), a federal 
law signed in 1996 to protect the privacy of people's health information 
and improve the efficiency of health care delivery by standardizing 
electronic data interchange.

Valicenti said there's a lack of understanding among federal officials of 
what it will take to implement HIPAA. Louis Kompare, deputy CIO for 
Tennessee, said the federal government is leaving it up to the 50 states to 
come up with 50 different answers, and that's not the best use of federal 
funding, adding that the federal government should provide better direction 
on this issue.
*************************
Government Executive
Homeland security IT official to resign
By Shane Harris
sharris@xxxxxxxxxxx

HERSHEY, Pa.Jim Flyzik, a senior advisor to Homeland Security Director Tom 
Ridge, announced Monday that he will retire from government Dec. 17. Flyzik 
has been on temporary assignment to the White House after leaving his post 
as chief information officer of the Treasury Department in April.


Flyzik is in the middle of a second 120-day detail to the Office of 
Homeland Security, where he has been working with Ridge and CIO Steve 
Cooper on various technology projects, including the integration of more 
than 50 terrorist suspect "watch lists."


Flyzik made his announcement at a press conference here during the Industry 
Advisory Council's annual Executive Leadership Conference. The council is 
made up of hundreds of executives from IT companies that do business with 
the government.


Flyzik says he has made no career plans beyond mid-December, but he noted 
that while serving at Treasury he had contemplated leaving public service 
and taking a job in the private sector. He is a 28-year veteran of the 
federal government, having served as the vice chair of the Federal CIO 
Council and as a member of the President's Critical Infrastructure 
Protection Board. Flyzik said his career has brought him "positive 
experiences I know I'll never match no matter where I go or what I do."


Flyzik came to the White House primarily to assist Cooper, who had no 
previous federal experience. Over the past several months, Cooper has 
learned the major issues and names in the federal IT arena, Flyzik said, 
and he added that he was happy to have played a role in helping him.


Flyzik has long been one of the most visible CIOs in government. But Cooper 
has for months been the most likely candidate to take the position of CIO 
in the proposed Homeland Security Department. Flyzik's name rarely surfaced 
as a major contender for the position.


A new vice chair of the Federal CIO Council will be announced Nov. 20, 
Flyzik said. He said he's already spoken with potential candidates, but 
didn't reveal who they were.


Flyzik said the task of integrating the terrorist watch lists would be 
completed by the end of the year.
***************************
Government Executive
November 1, 2002
Agencies, companies urged to set guidelines for fighting cyberterrorism

By Molly M. Peterson, National Journal's Technology Daily


The war on cyberterrorism requires law enforcement agencies and the private 
sector to develop guidelines and protocols for sharing information about 
network vulnerabilities and cyber attacks, government and industry leaders 
said Thursday.

"Face-to-face relationships are great, but we need to go beyond that," 
Chris Painter, deputy chief of the Justice Department's Computer Crime and 
Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS), said during a cyber-security forum 
at Computer Sciences Corp. headquarters in Falls Church, Va.

Painter led one of several workshops in which law enforcement and 
private-sector officials discussed obstacles to information sharing. 
Conference organizers said they closed those workshops to the media in 
order to encourage participants to discuss problems and ideas with as much 
candor as possible.

During a public portion of the conference, workshop facilitators later said 
many companies that are the victims of cyber attacks are afraid that 
reporting those crimes to law enforcement will result in public-relations 
nightmares, disrupt their operations and harm investor relations. But they 
said the workshops revealed that companies would be less reluctant to share 
that type of information if they had some idea of what law enforcement 
officials would do with it.

"If industry understood how law enforcement acted, when they would act, and 
when things would become public ... that would go a long way toward getting 
the right kind of reporting," Painter said. "Expectations need to be laid 
out for each side. What kind of information are they looking for, and what 
can they expect down the road?"

Scott Charney, Microsoft's chief security strategist, said information 
sharing would improve if law enforcement and industry worked together to 
establish "recognized procedures" about how cybersecurity information would 
be handled.

"If there were some sort of guidelines or protocols in place that both 
sides were educated on, then the process would move a lot more quickly, 
particularly in those cases where relationships of trust hadn't already 
been built," Charney said. "For example, if a case is going to go public 
... does the company get input on a press release? Do they get input on the 
timing? How can they manage the information flow better?"

Jack Hanly, an assistant U.S. attorney in Virginia, said those types of 
protocols would be especially helpful for small businesses that fear the 
economic repercussions of notifying the government of cyber attacks. "They 
don't really have any idea what goes on in law enforcement," Hanly said.

The Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), which co-hosted 
the forum, plans to assemble a working group to develop protocols and 
guidelines based on the ideas that emerged from the workshops, according to 
ITAA President Harris Miller. Miller said the working group also will look 
for ways to remove the "scary factor" from industry's perception of law 
enforcement agencies.

"Most people think that if we call law enforcement, all the cops will show 
up with all their blue jackets with the alphabet soup on the back," Miller 
said. "If we're going to get beyond that, it's going to take some real 
dialogue."
****************************
Government Executive
November 1, 2002
Agencies fail to comply with technology-transfer law
From National Journal's Technology Daily

Several federal agencies are not complying with a two-year-old law that 
aims to improve the transfer of technologies developed with federal funding 
to the commercial sector, according to a new General Accounting Office report.

The 2000 statute requires agencies to submit, with their annual budget 
requests, reports to the Commerce Department and the Office of Management 
and Budget detailing their technology-transfer activities.

GAO investigated nine agencies with internal research budgets of at least 
$500 million and found that most had failed to file their reports to 
Commerce and OMB with their fiscal 2003 budget requests.


Many of the reports filed late were incomplete or inaccurate, according to 
the report (GAO-03-47 found at http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d0347.pdf).


GAO recommended that the Commerce Department clarify its guidelines for 
what should be included in the reports and that OMB develop procedures 
considering the information in those reports during the budget process.
************************
Computerworld
No. 2 bank may outsource IT
By THOMAS HOFFMAN
NOVEMBER 04, 2002

Sources last week said J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. is weighing a decision to 
outsource the bulk of its IT operations, a deal that one insider noted 
could rank second in size and scope to the $40 billion contract signed in 
1996 by General Motors Co. and Electronic Data Systems Corp.
Six sources, including two IT managers at New York-based J.P. Morgan Chase, 
said outsourcing discussions are in progress at the nation's No. 2 bank. 
Multiple sources identified IBM and Plano, Texas-based EDS as the top two 
contenders for the contract.

One data center manager at the bank, which has $742 billion in assets, said 
senior executives have "gone back and forth" on the possibility of 
outsourcing IT over the past few months. "One month we're about to move 
forward with it, and the next month it's put on hold again," the manager 
said. Like the other sources, he asked not to be identified.

A database administrator at J.P. Morgan Chase said there was talk within 
the bank that a final decision could be made as early as this week. But a 
consultant who works closely with the company said a high-ranking IT 
official told him that a deal wouldn't happen so soon. Another source told 
Computerworld that any agreement probably wouldn't be made until year's end.

A spokesman for J.P. Morgan Chase declined to comment on the situation, as 
did officials from IBM and EDS.

The J.P. Morgan Chase spokesman also wouldn't disclose the company's annual 
IT budget or the size of its IT staff. Octavio Marenzi, managing director 
at Celent Communications LLC, a Cambridge, Mass.-based financial services 
and IT consulting firm, estimated that the bank's 2002 IT budget is about 
$4.7 billion.

Outsourcing isn't entirely new to J.P. Morgan Chase, which was formed in 
December 2000 through the merger of Chase Manhattan Corp. and J.P. Morgan & 
Co. In 1996, J.P. Morgan outsourced one-third of its global information 
systems and telecommunications operations to a group of four vendors in a 
seven-year, $2 billion agreement.

One of those vendors was Computer Sciences Corp. An IT consultant last week 
said El Segundo, Calif.-based CSC might play a tangential role in 
supporting either IBM or EDS if J.P. Morgan Chase does award one of them a 
contract.

The outsourcing deliberations come at a time when J.P. Morgan Chase's 
executives are under pressure because of recent financial results. The bank 
last month said its third-quarter earnings dropped from $1.1 billion last 
year to $325 million, excluding special items. The biggest problems 
occurred within its investment banking unit, which posted an operating loss 
of $256 million.

Marenzi said a large number of investment banks are considering outsourcing 
because of cost pressures. But banks often "don't know the costs of running 
their [IT] operations," which makes it harder to decide whether outsourcing 
would save money, he said.

In addition to their potential for lowering costs, outsourcing megadeals 
can provide "a short-term revenue bump" for customers who sell their IT 
equipment and facilities to the outsourcing vendor, said Larry Tabb, an 
analyst at TowerGroup in Needham, Mass.
***************************
Computerworld
FBI: DNS server attacks came from U.S., Korea
By Paul Roberts, IDG News Service
NOVEMBER 01, 2002

The distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks against 13 of the 
Internet's core servers has been traced to computers in the U.S. and Korea, 
according to statements by FBI Director Robert Mueller.
Mueller, who made the statements at a conference in Falls Church, Va., 
would not elaborate on what information his agency has obtained, saying the 
investigation is ongoing.

"I can't give you a brief on where the investigation has led us," Mueller 
said, according to a transcript of his comments provided by the FBI.

The attack, which began on Oct. 21 (see story), flooded all 13 of the root 
servers of the Internet Domain Name System (DNS), a network of computer 
servers that communicate by matching up Internet domains used by people, 
such as www.computerworld.com, with numeric equivalents used by computers.

The root servers were flooded with Internet traffic using Internet Control 
Message Protocol at more than 10 times the normal rate of traffic, said 
Brian O'Shaughnessy, a spokesman at VeriSign Inc., after the DDOS attack 
happened. VeriSign manages the "A" and "J" root servers.

Roughly two-thirds of those servers were temporarily disabled by the attack 
or severely hampered in serving legitimate user requests, according to 
O'Shaughnessy and others. However, four or five of the 13 servers remained 
online and the majority of Internet users did not experience any 
interruption in service.

South Korea, along with the U.S., is a frequent source of cyberattacks 
because of the large number of computer users in that country and the 
widespread availability of broadband Internet access such as a Digital 
Subscriber Lines or cable modems.

Unlike machines that connect to the Internet using dial-up modems, machines 
with broadband connections maintain a constant, high-capacity connection to 
the Internet when they are turned on. As a result, attackers, viruses and 
e-mail worms can compromise these computers often without the knowledge of 
the computer's owner. Those machines then act as "zombies" in a DDOS 
attack, controlled remotely by the attacker and used to send a steady 
stream of information packets to the targeted Web site or server.

Allan Paller at the nonprofit SANS Institute Inc. said today that 
investigators may be able to use billing logs from the Internet service 
providers involved to trace the attacks back to their source.

However, Paller noted that lists of machines that are known to have been 
compromised by hackers or worms such as Code Red and Nimda are frequently 
traded on the Internet. Investigations into the source of the Oct. 21 
attack will likely lead back to those compromised machines in the U.S., 
Korea and elsewhere.

From there, the job of identifying the actual perpetrators gets more 
difficult.

The fact that computers in Korea took part in the attack does not mean that 
the attackers were Korean, Paller said. Attackers frequently compromise and 
control such machines from afar using one or more intermediate machines to 
cover their tracks.

Mueller did not say whether any progress had been made in locating the 
actual perpetrators behind the attack and an FBI spokesman would not 
comment on whether the agency is close to identifying the individuals 
responsible for the DNS attacks.
**************************
Washington Post
California Coast Gets Intrepid Internet Watchdog
Detailed Aerial Photos by Husband-Wife Team Called Boon for Environmental 
Activism
By Jim Wasserman
Associated Press
Monday, November 4, 2002; Page A02


SACRAMENTO, Nov. 3 -- California's 1,100-mile coast has a new watchdog: a 
retired tech mogul with a helicopter and a digital camera who is posting 
detailed photos on the Internet of every inch of the oceanfront, from the 
redwood-studded cliffs of the north to the rows of mansions crowding the south.

Ken Adelman's two-week-old Internet site, the California Coastal Records 
Project, attracts thousands of viewers daily and is being called a big 
technological advance for environmental activism.

"You can click and see bulldozers on the beach," said Sierra Club coastal 
director Mark Massara. "You can see funky homemade seawalls and coastal 
resource degradation."

Property rights defenders worry the images will encourage vigilantes and 
spur desktop "bounty hunting" for land-use violations.

Since March, Adelman and his wife, Gabrielle, a helicopter pilot, have 
flown nearly all of the state's shoreline, shooting high-resolution digital 
pictures every three seconds -- more than 10,000 -- each capturing 500 feet 
of oceanfront.

The Web database eventually will total about 13,000 images, an 
unprecedented record of the coast as it exists in 2002.

Adelman, 39, planned to photograph a final stretch this week between Eureka 
and Bodega Bay. He said he would re-shoot the busier stretches of coast 
over time to reveal the changes.

"It's more than taking pictures," said Adelman, who founded TGV Software 
and Network Alchemy and sold them to Cisco Systems and Nokia during the 
tech boom of the 1990s. "It's making them available to the public.

"The development interests control the development by controlling the 
information. It's hard to argue with a picture. We're taking the truth to 
the public."

Environmental groups have taken notice of the project's detail.

Massara has been on the phone daily with California Coastal Commission 
enforcement officers pointing out property owners' violations of state law. 
Commission spokeswoman Sarah Christie said staffers are using the Web site, 
californiacoastline.org, and Coastal Commissioner Shirley S. Dettloff 
called it a "wonderful tool" for decision-makers.

"Many times we get a project well described in staff reports and then get 
grainy photos," Dettloff said. "Now we can go online with our computers and 
take a look at the project, not only in itself, but in relationship to 
surrounding areas."

Attorney Harold Johnson, representing the Sacramento-based Pacific Legal 
Foundation, a legal arm for private property rights, fears Adelman's photo 
database may lead the commission into "a new era of detail-obsessed 
dictation to property owners."

"They've had a sort of tendency of wanting to be micromanagers over the 
years. If this project sets off another round of that kind of activity, I 
think there's going to be a lot of distress over that," he said.

Massara waves off the threat, saying if coastal property owners "aren't in 
violation of the law, they have nothing to worry about."

Paul Hawken, a California-based tech entrepreneur and author of business 
and ecology books, called Adelman's project a breakthrough that would 
remake government planning and land ownership regulations.

"In 10 years you will be able to go to the Web as an individual and click 
on a region, a place, a beach, an island, a forest, a delta, a river, a 
trailhead, whatever, a city. Then you'll be able to hit a button where you 
can go to animated form and see the change over time," he said.
****************************
USA Today
New computers likely to take some control away from users
November 4, 2002

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP)  To thwart hackers and foster online commerce, the 
next generation of computers will almost certainly cede some control to 
software firms, Hollywood and other outsiders.

That could break a long-standing tenet of computing: that PC owners 
ultimately control data on their own machines.

Microsoft calls its technology "Palladium." Intel dubs it "LaGrande." An 
industry group that includes these companies, IBM, Hewlett-Packard and 170 
others terms it "trusted computing."

Though the initiatives have technical differences, they share the goal of 
hardwiring security into silicon and related software  a leap beyond 
today's less-secure mechanisms, which are coded into programs to protect data.

"This is a fundamentally new approach as opposed to taking a software-only, 
Band-Aid approach," said Narendar Sahgal, a software planning manager at 
Intel.

The efforts would help protect movies and other digital content from piracy 
and even personal copying, and critics see few benefits for consumers.

"I don't think the kind of trustworthiness they seek to deliver is at all 
desirable," said Ross Anderson, a security researcher at Cambridge 
University. "It's not security for me. It's security for them."

The companies and content providers behind the initiative claim that by 
protecting data from external attacks and unlawful trading they'll be able 
to unlock the potential of computing itself.

The key is creating a realm in computing where each bit of 
communication  an e-mail, an online purchase, a check of a database, the 
reading of a document  can be achieved only by interacting with secured, 
uniquely identified hardware through "trusted agents."

Each agent would enforce policies set by senders, recipients, copyright 
holders or a combination that would decide how the content can be used.

In this realm, Hollywood could safely release its works. The health care 
and financial industries could communicate with clients without fear of 
leaks. And ordinary users could rest assured that critical information 
won't be stolen or wrecked by the virus du jour or hackers.

"There are certain transactions and certain businesses where you need to 
understand and trust the device you're talking to," said Scott Dinsdale, 
executive vice president of digital strategy for the Motion Picture 
Association of America.

Developers of the new technology say they're just building trusted 
platforms, not setting any policies for using them.

All emphasize that specific tasks  such as managing digital rights  can be 
built on top of their technologies but are not part of the initiatives.

Peter Biddle, Microsoft's product manager for Palladium, said it would not 
empower copyright holders to reach into consumers' computers and make 
"untrusted" documents  such as music files  disappear.

In fact, he said, users could use Palladium to protect content from scans 
and hacks by copyright holders, who have lately employed intrusive methods 
in a bid to curb piracy.

Computers with the new capabilities are not expected for several years, but 
critics say the details released so far do not bode well for open computing.

Trustworthiness would be achieved by giving users two choices: trusted and 
untrusted. On a computer running in untrusted mode, information would be 
shared just as it has been for the past 20 years. It's also still 
vulnerable to attack.

The trusted realm, however, would be immune from such attack. Data and 
memory would be contained in a virtual vault. Keys would be held by a chip 
that lets in only trusted software.

Content creators could write and enforce rules that determine whether a 
file could, for instance, be distributed or printed. They could prohibit 
untrusted machines from accessing a trusted document.

Palladium, LaGrande and others are being designed to enforce existing rules 
and ones devised in the future.

Scott Charney, Microsoft's chief security strategist, said users and 
providers will set the rules  just as they do today. The difference, he 
said, is that the new technologies will create a secure environment for 
enforcing those rules.

Critics fear, however, that it will be the end user who might end up being 
trusted the least in the brave new world of trusted computing.

Creators of trusted programs could resort to draconian tactics to ensure 
their policies are enforced, Anderson said.

Programs found to be illegally copied could be rendered useless remotely. 
Sensitive e-mail, which might be useful in investigations, could vanish. 
And e-books could be subjected to virtual book burnings.

Industry pioneer David P. Reed, formerly the chief scientist at Lotus 
Development, called the initiatives "booby traps."

"I'm personally angry and disgusted that ... companies that grew up because 
of the personal computer revolution, which empowered users, are now acting 
to harm the users," Reed said.

Supporters, however, argue that the new architecture will create more 
opportunities than it limits, as more and more consumers and content 
providers try things they now avoid because of insecurity.

Biddle said laws and regulations that now protect sensitive documents from 
shredding also should bar the destruction of e-mail or other 
computer-generated material.

Moreover, users will continue to have control, because they can always 
choose not to run the security features, Charney and other 
trusted-computing supporters say.

But those who refuse risk limiting choices, just as people who refuse to 
buy the Windows operating system are closed out of a computing world 
dominated by Microsoft, Anderson said.

Seth Schoen, staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said 
incompatibility is the biggest threat posted by the trusted-computing 
initiatives.

"I don't think anyone can absolutely compel you to do anything in 
particular," he said. "What they can do is create an incompatibility or 
refuse to deal with you unless you meet a particular condition."

Charney promised that Microsoft will not misuse the technology.

"Listen to what we say and watch what we do. Actions speak louder than 
words," Charney said. "And then if we're saying 'X' but doing 'Y,' not only 
will we lose trust but our brand is hurt and we lose market share."
****************************
USA Today
Political sites help get the message out before Election Day
By Russell Shaw, Gannett News Service
November 4, 2002

Web sites about politics expect to be jammed with traffic Election Day 
morning as voters scramble to learn about the candidates, issues and what's 
at stake.


"It's like cramming for an exam," said Jackie Mildner, director of 
EDemocracy for the League of Women Voters' DemocracyNet site (www.dnet.org).

But that's only a small part of the mission of political sites in this 
election, according to insiders who follow them.

They say national and local candidates increasingly use Web sites not only 
to help voters decide, but to motivate their most loyal supporters to 
volunteer for their campaigns  and to raise money.

"Candidates are using the Web to reach out to their online supporters, to 
then create offline action," said Steven M. Schneider, co-founder of 
politicalweb.info (www.politicalweb.info), a site that tracks the use of 
the Internet by political candidates.

Schneider said sites this year include fliers and position statements that 
can be printed easily for distribution at offline rallies and forums, for 
example.

Kirsten Foot, politicalweb.info's other founder, said sites also have added 
e-cards with political messages that visitors can forward to friends and 
colleagues. Sen. Jean Carnahan, D-Mo., (www.jeancarnahan.com), is one 
candidate who has adopted such strategies.

E-commerce is also coming to candidate sites. Politicalweb.info shows that 
55% of candidate sites now have online payment systems for making political 
contributions, and 44% let visitors sign up for e-mail updates. The group 
did not track either activity in 2000, but Schneider said he believes the 
percentage of sites that offer these features is substantially higher this 
election than in previous ones.

Schneider also noted an increased role for multimedia technology in getting 
the word out. The 2000 campaign season saw the introduction of multimedia, 
such as video of campaign ads and short clips from speeches. Schneider 
estimates that while only 2% of presidential, congressional and 
gubernatorial campaign sites used multimedia in 2000, the number has 
quadrupled this year.

Lee Rainie, executive director of the Pew Internet & American Life project, 
said that while he believes political Web sites change few minds, they can 
energize partisans to be more active in political campaigns.

"Republicans go to Republican sites. Democrats go to Democratic sites. 
(Partisans) may (then) use information from the Web site to try to convince 
their neighbors to vote for their candidate, and in that sense, the Web 
site might help the 'choir' get larger," he said.

While Web sites might be striking a cord with politically active folks, 
they're not universally popular.

Nielsen/NetRatings, which measures Web traffic, had no specific numbers as 
of press time, but the company said traditionally political sites record 
the most visitors in the last few days before an election, but even then, 
traffic is modest.

While candidate sites may only draw modest traffic, Pew project research 
indicates that political news sites and third-party election information 
sites might fare better.

An Oct. 8 Pew survey reported that 42% of U.S. Internet users have used the 
Web at one point or another to get political information and news.

"That's an increase of 16% from when we asked about that during the 2000 
campaign cycle," Rainie said.
*****************************
San Francisco Chronicle
Firms squelching pop-up ads
Online companies find ads can be counter-productive

Pop-up ads may be slowly popping off.

Consumer backlash against these often irritating online ads has recently 
prompted companies such as America Online, IVillage and Ask Jeeves to 
eliminate some of them from their Web sites.

This saves users from "pop-up hunting" -- clicking away the ads as soon as 
they appear -- while surfing cyberspace. But analysts say other forms of 
intrusive advertising will probably take their place.

In this depressed market, Internet companies have to find ways to lure 
advertisers while ensuring users aren't turned off by intrusive sales tactics.

Most of the Web sites that claim to have eliminated pop-ups haven't gotten 
rid of them entirely. Such companies have left the door open to run ads 
from previous marketing contracts and from sister firms, as well as to run 
their own in-house surveys and announcements.

Pop-up ads, which became widespread in 2001, are marketing pitches that 
suddenly appear in new browser windows on the computer screen. To the 
chagrin of many users, they often interfere with viewing a Web page.

Nick Nyhan, president of Dynamic Logic, an Internet-advertising research 
firm in New York, said that some companies were so desperate for money 
during the dot-com implosion that they were willing to do anything to 
please advertisers, no matter how users reacted. "It got a little ragged 
for a little while," he said. "I think the controls will come into place now."

Dynamic Logic research shows that pop-ups are between two and five times 
more visible to consumers than traditional banner ads.

One notorious pop-up campaign is for X10 digital cameras. The ads have 
appeared on dozens of Web sites for more than a year, sometimes promoting 
the gadgets as a way to spy on others.

Another frequent pop-up advertiser is Orbitz, which runs ads for bargain 
air travel across Web sites such as ESPN.com and LATimes. Cassava 
Enterprises also spends a lot of money on pop-ups as part of its effort to 
promote Casino- on-Net, an online gambling destination.

Internet users were exposed to 11.3 billion pop-up ads in the first six 
months of this year, according to NetRatings, an Internet research firm. 
That was actually only 2 percent of all online advertising, according to 
NetRatings.

"The ire that pop-ups cause in many people has been much larger than the 
reality of how much pop-ups impact the Web," said Charles Buchwalter, an 
analyst for NetRatings. "I can't help but believe that these moves (by some 
Web sites) are nothing but PR."

Skip Battle, chief executive of Ask Jeeves, the Internet search engine in 
Emeryville, said his company stopped running pop-up ads in October. He said 
the decision was made because other kinds of ads were more effective, and 
the company wanted to be more consumer-friendly.

Battle said his company began accepting pop-ups last year "purely to get to 
be profitable." Removing them, he said, took nearly nine months of debate 
over whether the company could do without the revenue.

IVillage, a women-oriented Web site in New York, said in July that it was 
abandoning pop-ups, with several exceptions. Indeed, during a visit to the 
site recently, two pop-ups appeared.

The exceptions allow for IVillage to run pop-ups for in-house surveys and 
magazine subscriptions. The company also said it will continue to run pop- 
under ads, which appear under what users are viewing rather than being 
superimposed on it.

IVillage said the new marketing policy came in response to a user survey 
showing that 92.5 percent of its female users found pop-ups the most 
frustrating feature of the Web.

"Sometimes, pop-ups are disruptive to the point of turning people against 
the advertiser," said Vanessa Benfield, a senior vice president for sales 
at IVillage.

The biggest blow to pop-ups was America Online's decision to reduce pop-ups 
within its new 8.0 Internet service. AOL said last month that it would no 
longer sell pop-ups to third parties, while leaving the door open to their 
use in certain other cases.

EarthLink, a rival Internet service provider based in Atlanta, is pouncing 
on AOL's shift in policy, which was matched by Microsoft's new service, 
MSN8. In newspaper ads set to run across the country today, EarthLink says 
"It took AOL 8.0 tries to figure out people don't like pop up ads," and 
then adds, "Earthlink knew all along."

EarthLink has never sold pop-up ads on its bare-bones service. It took a 
step further in August by offering free software to its subscribers that 
automatically blocks pop-ups from appearing on all Web sites.

"We are for advertising in a right way," said Karen Gough, its executive 
vice president for marketing. "When you have pop-ups hitting you in the 
face, that's clearly a bad thing."

Nicholas Graham, a spokesman for America Online, in Dulles, Va., said in 
response to EarthLink's newspaper ads: "We understand how frustrating it 
may be for our competitors in the online industry to have lost this wedge 
issue with online users."

One new Web portal is marketing itself in response to the consumer backlash 
against online advertising. MyWay.com essentially mimics Yahoo's layout 
without most of the marketing pitches.

Bill Daugherty and Jonas Steinman, co-founders of IWon.com, a portal based 
in New York, launched the portal last week. Ironically, IWon itself, which 
offers cash prizes, is among the most advertising-intensive Web sites around.

Still, many companies, such as Yahoo, are committed to pop-up or pop-under 
advertising. The Sunnyvale Web portal sells pop-unders to advertisers, but 
limits the number that users see per day.

Buchwalter, the analyst, said the use of pop-ups has probably peaked, to be 
replaced by the so-called rich media, including online video and cartoons 
that float across Web pages. These can be intrusive in their own right, 
blocking what users are reading for up to 20 seconds.
*******************************
Information Week
Protect And Serve [Cyber Security]
Nov. 4, 2002
It's important to protect your company's intellectual property. But are 
some businesses going too far?
By Tony Kontzer and John Soat

A six-person firm called Shortpath Inc. that develops and licenses a portal 
for managing office buildings recently applied for two patents -- the first 
involving a way to manage a building's infrastructure needs, the second a 
way to collaborate with the companies that service the building -- based on 
its unique method of combining a database with a Web application. CIO and 
executive VP Jeffrey Friedman holds no illusions about the social 
importance of Shortpath's pending patents, but he's steadfast in his belief 
that there's significant business value in the intellectual property behind 
his 2-year-old company's products. "Shortpath is no cure for cancer, but it 
can sure make life in a building better," he says.
[Story http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20021101S0005]
*****************************
Reuters Internet Report
Can the Web Be Believed? Not Always, Study Finds
1 hour, 7 minutes ago
By Bernhard Warner, European Internet Correspondent

LONDON (Reuters) - Does the World Wide Web have a credibility problem?



Such a question may sound like the opening line of a joke. But a new study 
released on Monday goes to painstaking lengths to show that consumers 
should not believe everything they read on Web sites, even from sites 
claiming to be authoritative sources.


Consumers International, a federation of consumer organizations across 115 
countries, investigated 460 Web sites dealing with health, financial 
services and so-called "deal-finder" sites to test their credibility quotient.


The results ran the gamut of good, bad and ugly.


For example, at least 50 percent of sites giving advice on medical and 
financial matters failed to disclose full information about the authority 
and credentials of the people behind that advice, the study said.


And, 57 percent of general advice sites provide a source for that advice. 
Sixty percent of sites provided no information that would indicate whether 
or not their content was influenced by an advertiser or sponsor, it said.


CONSUMERS "AT RISK"


"Consumers are being put at risk by misleading, inaccurate and incomplete 
information, for example, where they need to seek health or financial 
help," Anna Fielder, director for Consumers International's Office for 
Developed and Transition Economies, said in a statement.


In a separate study, commissioned by advocacy group Consumer WebWatch, 
experts in the health and financial fields were asked to comment on which 
Web sites they consider to be authoritative.


Not surprisingly, health professionals assign more credibility to sites 
that provide information from authoritative sources. Financial 
professionals consider sites with unbiased financial perspective to be the 
most credible, the study said.

The organizations, which posted their findings at 
www.consumersinternational.org and www.consumerwatch.org, also named 
offenders, including Copenhagen-based Bestpriceeu.com.

According to Consumers International, the company, which searches a 
selection of e-commerce sites looking for the best deals on a variety of 
products, fails to disclose how a top-five product ranking is generated.

Philip Schwark, founder of Bestpriceeu.com, called it a fair criticism, 
explaining it is compiled through user searches.

"I only have a certain amount of space so I have to cut down (on some 
wording)," he said, adding that the complaint never arose from users.

Its main rival, Kelkoo, was also taken to task for not disclosing whether 
business partners, which include retailers and manufacturers, "influenced 
content or listings" in product searches.

Dorothea Arndt, marketing director at Kelkoo, said the policy, outlined in 
the "Frequently Asked Questions" area of the site, states that a number of 
companies pay to get products placed on the site. She added where these 
products are recommended, a "sponsored by" tag appears alongside.

Arndt acknowledged that the company is always striving to make the site 
more straightforward. "Our business depends on our reputation. That's what 
gets customers to return," Arndt said.

She added she was not aware of any complaints from consumers about this 
matter.
******************************
Reuters
China Launches Net Cafe ID System
17 minutes ago
By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN, Associated Press Writer

BEIJING (AP) - A Chinese province has required Internet cafe users to buy 
access cards that identify them to police, further tightening official 
monitoring of who uses the Internet and what they do online, a police 
spokesman said Monday.



The system was installed in all 3,200 Internet cafes in the central 
province of Jiangxi last month, said the spokesman, who works with the 
police computer crime division in the provincial capital of Nanchang.


"This system gives us more power to prevent crimes and identify criminals 
on the Internet," said the spokesman, who wouldn't give his name.


Although China has 45 million regular Internet users, the communist 
authorities are intent on preventing the Net becoming a forum for free 
speech, as well as blocking access to gambling, pornography and extremist 
Web sites.


Sites run by foreign media, religious and human rights groups are also 
blocked. Webmasters are warned to cut off subversive talk in Internet chat 
rooms, and a special police force filters e-mail and searches the Web for 
forbidden content.


Internet cafes have spread from the cities to small towns across China, 
although most Chinese access the Internet at home or at work. Embraced for 
their commercial potential, they are also viewed as possible havens for 
gambling, pornography and online gaming.


Internet cafes were closed in Beijing and many parts of the country after a 
deadly fire at one in the capital's university district earlier this year. 
Authorities have used the disaster to tighten supervision and say they will 
reopen the cafes only under stricter scrutiny  including barring all minors.


Jiangxi's system requires customers to register their names, ages and 
addresses, information which is then loaded into a police database, the 
police spokesman said.


They get an access card, which is swiped on an identifying machine when 
they go online. That sends a signal to police who continuously monitor the 
Web for people attempting to reach barred sites. Police can also block 
access to selected cardholders.


More than 200,000 users have obtained such cards so far, the official said.
****************************
MSNBC
Math discovery rattles Net security
By Lee Gomes
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Nov. 4  Will Manindra Agrawal bring about the end of the Internet as we 
know it? The question is not as ridiculous as it was just two months ago. 
Prof. Agrawal is a 36-year old theoretical computer scientist at the Indian 
Institute of Technology in Kanpur, India. In August, he solved a problem 
that had eluded millennia of mathematicians: developing a method to 
determine with complete certainty if a number is prime.

     PRIME NUMBERS ARE those divisible only by themselves and 1. While 
small primes like 5 or 17 are easy to spot, for very large numbers, those 
hundreds of digits long, there never had been a formula of "primality 
testing" that didn't have a slight chance of error.
       Besides being a show-stopping bit of mathematics, the work was big 
news for the Internet. Very large prime numbers are the bedrock of Internet 
encryption, the sort your browser uses when you are shopping online.
       That encryption system takes two big, and secret, prime numbers and 
multiplies them. For a bad guy to decrypt your message, he'd need to take 
the product of that multiplication and figure out the two prime numbers 
used to generate it. It's called the "factoring problem," and fortunately 
it's something no one on Earth knows how to do quickly. A speedy method of 
factoring would make existing Internet security useless, not a pleasant 
thought in this Internet age.
      Prof. Agrawal's work involved only testing whether a number is 
prime, not the factoring problem. Still, there are enough connections and 
similarities between the two that mathematicians and computer scientists 
from all over the East Coast flew in to hear Prof. Agrawal on a whirlwind 
tour last week through the likes of M.I.T., Harvard and Princeton.
       At Princeton, Prof. Agrawal's lecture was the sort of deep math 
that only the most beautiful minds could understand. In a subsequent, and 
more lay-friendly, interview he said he started his work three years ago. 
He was dealing with a different problem, called identity testing, when he 
noticed the solution hinted at a potential fresh assault on prime-number 
testing.
       It was a long three years. While no slouch in math, Prof. Agrawal 
said he sometimes had to use Google to find information on the more 
recondite aspects of number theory. His Eureka! moment came in July. As he 
was driving his daughter to school on his motor scooter, a particularly 
complicated mathematical set suddenly fell into place.
       The computer scientists who heard Prof. Agrawal speak said, with 
considerable pride, that he was obviously one of them, because of the way 
he proceeded purposely  "algorithmically" is the word they used  toward his 
goal. (As computer scientists tell it, mathematicians tend to be too showy 
and discursive about things.)
       Prof. Agrawal is the first to admit that his work, for all its 
elegant math, has no immediate practical application. He says the current 
tests for prime numbers, even with their slight chance of error, are good 
enough for most people, as well as extremely fast.
       Still, will he now move on to the factoring challenge? Yes, in due 
time.
       The best current method of factoring, he explains, is the Number 
Field Sieve. "Best" is a relative term, since all the computers in the 
world would still need untold trillions of years to use the system to 
factor just one big number.
       Prof. Agrawal writes the Number Field Sieve equation on a piece of 
paper, looks at it and winces. "Factoring is a natural problem. And natural 
problems should have a natural complexity to them. But this," he says, 
pointing to the equation, "this is not natural complexity. This looks very 
strange. There must be something more natural than this out there."
       What he doesn't yet know, however, is whether a more "natural" 
approach to factoring also would be appreciably faster than current 
methods. And that, of course, is the $64 billion question.
       Most mathematicians say they don't lose any sleep about waking up 
and finding the factoring problem solved. It's just too hard, they say. 
(This difficulty was the very reason the method was chosen for Internet 
security in the first place.)
       But others, like Princeton math professor Peter Sarnak who hosted 
Prof. Agrawal on campus last week, aren't so convinced of the factoring 
problem's eternal intractability. The fact that one venerable mathematics 
problem has just been solved, said Prof. Sarnak, might inspire new assaults 
on factoring, possibly even using some of Prof. Agrawal's techniques.
       Prof. Agrawal said factoring will have to wait a few years; he 
wants to warm up with something easier, like "derandomizing polynomial time 
algorithms," for instance.
       The professor worked on primality testing with two of his graduate 
students: Neeraj Kayal and Nitin Saxena. They had planned to join him on 
his U.S. victory tour. But the American Embassy in New Delhi, the times 
being what they are, refused them visas. The two young geniuses had to stay 
home.
*********************************
Euromedia.net
EC awards Netproject with Linux contract
01/11/2002  Editor: Mark Obstfeld

The European Commission has awarded a contract worth E250,000 to UK 
consultancy Netproject, to look at the use of Linux and open-source 
software in e-government.

The work itself will be carried out over five months in the former East 
German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and will examine how to make a 
smooth transition from existing systems to Linux.

Looking at scales relevant to both small and large organisations, the 
investigation will examine the use of Linux on both servers and desktops, 
at local and central government levels.

Work will take place on security measures, including user authentication 
and access restriction, as well as the possibility of smart-card access.

Following on from the investigation it is likely that the Commission will 
build systems based upon its recommendations.
*****************************
New Zealand Herald
Keeping track of the trucks
05.11.2002
By RICHARD WOOD

High-tech exporter Navman has started a wireless fleet management service 
in New Zealand, using Vodafone's GPRS mobile data network.

The Navman Wireless vehicle location service started in Britain in May and 
is also being considered for the US market.

Navman's Halo devices attach to the top of each vehicle in a fleet and send 
global positioning (GPS) satellite information to a base. A mapping system 
using a browser-style interface shows where vehicles are.

The system has been piloted in Auckland by field crews of infrastructure 
maintenance firm Excell Corporation, which is using it primarily in its 
services to Manukau City Council's Manukau Water business unit.

Tim Gibson, business manager for water, drainage and associated services at 
Excell, said the Halo devices would enable the control centre to keep track 
of field crews and dispatch them more efficiently.

Excell has the Navman device on 10 vehicles. It is a circular 
roof-mountable unit combining antenna, GPS and GPRS modem.

Mobile network provider Vodafone supplies a data feed back to the base 
using its GPRS wireless data service.

Navman's mapping software uses maps supplied by Auckland's Air Logistics.

The positioning data can be sent at set time intervals or when a vehicle 
moves a set distance. Excell has data sent every 10 minutes and every 5km 
travelled.

Gibson said the monitoring nature of the system had not turned out to be an 
issue for staff.

Excell had taken an open approach on Navman's implementation, and the 
visibility of the solution was a key factor in choosing the system.

Navman has an optional two-way text messaging communicator, which is used 
in about 30 per cent of installations in Europe. It connects by cable to 
the Halo.

Gibson said Excell was using a more sophisticated alternative but he would 
not give further details, citing issues of competitive advantage.

Vodafone will also be able to market, bill and support the total solution.

Navman's product does not use Telecom's competing CDMA network at this stage.

Jamie Macdonald, executive vice-president of the land navigation division 
of Navman, said typical cost for the GPS fleet service over three years 
would be $120 a vehicle a month plus $20 a month for each two-way 
communicator.

Navman started selling land products only 15 months ago.

They are contributing to a doubling in revenue for this year to around $60 
million to $70 million.

In other countries the firm also has consumer products for personal 
navigation and car in-vehicle navigation.
***************************
Red Herring
Vote 4 me 2day
SMS political ads could show up in the polling booth--and land in hot water.
By Casey Mills
November 4, 2002

Some voters are seeing a new weapon in the politician's campaign arsenal 
this November: short messaging service campaign ads on their wireless devices.
[Story http://www.redherring.com/insider/2002/11/sms_voting110402.html]
****************************

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


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Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber:

Welcome to the November 20, 2002 edition of ACM TechNews,
providing timely information for IT professionals three times a
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ACM TechNews
Volume 4, Number 425
Date: November 20, 2002

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Top Stories for Wednesday, November 20, 2002:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html

"Comdex: Panel Says to Accept the Net is Vulnerable"
"Study Details Technology's Role in Boosting Productivity"
"Copy Control Complaint Desk Opens"
"H-1B Program Gets More Heat"
"Secret U.S. Court OKs Electronic Spying"
"Nearly 1 Million IT Jobs Moving Offshore"
"Faster Than Speed of Byte"
"For W3C, It's a Question of Semantics"
"Say 'Cheese' for the Robot Photographer"
"A Vote for Less Tech at the Polls"
"Internet, Grid to Forge Brave New Computing World"
"Webs Within Web Boost Searches"
"Intel's 'Hyperthreading' Not Enough to Sew Up PC Sales"
"MEMS Really Is the Word at Munich Electronics Trade Show"
"New Way to Dramatically Increase Data Storage Capacity"
"Loosening Up the Airwaves"
"Think the 'Digital Divide' Is Closing? Think Again"
"Digital Entertainment Post-Napster: Music"
"A Many-Handed God"

******************* News Stories ***********************

"Comdex: Panel Says to Accept the Net is Vulnerable"
A panel of security experts at the Comdex trade show said that
the Internet's vulnerability to exploitation is a fact of life,
and everyone--businesses as well as home users--must pitch in to
make it more secure.  Counterpane Internet Security CTO and ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item1

"Study Details Technology's Role in Boosting Productivity"
U.S. businesses increased productivity by about 2 percent each
year from 1995 to 2000, and one-third of that increase was
attributable to technology, according to consulting firm McKinsey
& Co.  The new report helps clarify what made technology more ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item2

"Copy Control Complaint Desk Opens"
Critics of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and
its provisions will be able to submit their opinions to the
Copyright Office either by mail or online until Dec. 18.  The
last time the department accepted DMCA-related comments in ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item3

"H-1B Program Gets More Heat"
The H-1B visa program that American employers use to bring in
foreign labor to fill mostly IT-related jobs has attracted
criticism from both domestic and foreign employees.  Norman
Matloff of the University of California, Davis, argues that ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item4

"Secret U.S. Court OKs Electronic Spying"
An earlier ruling from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Court declaring that domestic police agencies and spy agencies
must be separated in order to protect Americans' privacy was
overturned by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item5

"Nearly 1 Million IT Jobs Moving Offshore"
Almost 1 million IT jobs will be farmed out overseas over the
next 15 years, predicts a new report from Forrester Research,
which warns that such a development could threaten the positions
of base- to mid-level American programmers unless they acquire ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item6

"Faster Than Speed of Byte"
The NEC Earth Simulator in Japan is currently the world's fastest
computer, but IBM aims to recapture that title with a $267
million contract to build a pair of supercomputers for nuclear
weapons modeling and other research at Lawrence Livermore ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item7

"For W3C, It's a Question of Semantics"
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) last week revised several
documents detailing the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and
the Web Ontology Language (OWL), which relate to the Semantic
Web, a future version of the Internet envisioned to better ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item8

"Say 'Cheese' for the Robot Photographer"
Computer science professor Bill Smart of Washington University in
St. Louis has created a robot that is programmed to move
throughout environments, taking candid photographs of people as a
way to integrate and demonstrate the applicability of ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item9

"A Vote for Less Tech at the Polls"
Critics of computerized touch-screen voting machines, which saw
use in the recent congressional election, maintain that a paper
record is especially necessary to ensure that the votes cast are
accurate.  Bryn Mawr College computer science professor and ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item10

"Internet, Grid to Forge Brave New Computing World"
A recent report from PricewaterhouseCoopers forecasts that the
Internet will evolve into a "global networked computing utility"
stemming from the intersection of grid computing, ubiquitous
computing, IP dial tone, and computing as a utility; these trends ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item11

"Webs Within Web Boost Searches"
Web researcher Filippo Menczer of the University of Iowa is
working to build a mathematical model that will provide more
comprehensive search engine results based on text similarity and
links between Web pages.  While current search engine techniques ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item12

"Intel's 'Hyperthreading' Not Enough to Sew Up PC Sales"
Hyperthreading technology from Intel promises--and appears to
deliver--greater performance for processors.  The company picked
up the reins from the defunct Digital Equipment and developed the
ability to build CPUs with two sets of "registers" that would ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item13

"MEMS Really Is the Word at Munich Electronics Trade Show"
MEMS developers and manufacturers spoke excitedly about the
prospects of their sector at the recent Electronica 2002 trade
show in Munich.  MEMS sensors for automobiles have started
hitting mass production, comprising one-eighth of the market for ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item14

"New Way to Dramatically Increase Data Storage Capacity"
Researchers led by chemistry professor John Fourkas of Boston
College's Merkert Chemistry Center report in the December issue
of Nature Materials that they have discovered stable and cheap
fluorescent materials capable of storing 3D data at high ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item15

"Loosening Up the Airwaves"
The federal government is working to create new opportunities for
the wireless industry in America, hoping to spur investment and
make the market more competitive on the global scene.  The FCC
and the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item16

"Think the 'Digital Divide' Is Closing? Think Again"
Educators, politicians, parents, community activists, and
businesses must take a creative approach to bridging the "digital
divide" as the Bush administration seeks to cut key technology
programs and put more money toward anti-terrorism efforts, writes ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item17

"Digital Entertainment Post-Napster: Music"
The music industry's triumph over Napster, which record labels
shut down in an effort to protect their content from piracy and
boost flagging CD sales, was short-lived, since more open
peer-to-peer networks have proven to be harder to dislodge.  In ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item18

"A Many-Handed God"
Nanotechnology can be applied to many industries, but it is the
electronics industry that is attracting the most interest.
Although nanotech is already being used in disk drive heads and
magnetic media, for instance, research is proceeding apace into ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item19


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