Clips November 27, 2002

[Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>]

Clips November 27, 2002

ARTICLES

China accused of jailing net users
U.S., ACLU Agree on Surveillance Papers
Students Learning to Evade Moves to Protect Media Files
Web Site Lists Professors Who 'Indoctrinate' Students
Public access to FTC hurt by spam lists
Slaying suspect's Web manifesto
No Charges in Police E-Mails
FEMA debuts DisasterHelp.gov
AKO offers secure portal lessons
Future cell phones to see the light
Identity theft raises questions about security
NSF helps fund grid computing project
Anti-Piracy Group Orders Net Downloaders to Pay Up
Tech Firms Draft Guidelines for Web Tracking Tool

***********************************
BBC Online
China accused of jailing net users

The human rights group Amnesty International has demanded China release all 
those it has jailed for expressing views or sharing information online.

It says at least 33 people have been detained for internet subversion and 
two prisoners had subsequently died after apparent torture or ill-treatment.

In a report addressing "State control of the internet in China", the 
advocacy group said Beijing was creating a new category of "prisoner of 
conscience" by its actions.

A government spokesman said he was not aware of the new report, but said 
Amnesty had published critical claims before "with no basis whatsoever".

China now has more internet users than any country in the world apart from 
the US.

The China Internet Network Information Centre said the number of web users 
soared by 12 million people in the first six months of this year to reach 
45.8 million users.

The study from London-based Amnesty International said even merely curious 
users of the internet could get ensnared in China's regulations.

Amnesty said: "Internet users are increasingly caught up in a tight web of 
rules restricting their fundamental human rights.

"Anyone surfing the internet could potentially be at risk of arbitrary 
detention and imprisonment."

Policeman imprisoned

Among the 33 people detained or jailed for offences related to their 
internet use were political activists and writers as well as members of 
unofficial organisations such as the Falun Gong spiritual movement.

The two people who died in custody, the group alleged, were members of 
Falun Gong, which has been banned by Beijing as an "evil cult".

Amnesty said a former police officer, Li Dawei, was the subject of one of 
the longest sentences.

He was jailed for 11 years after being convicted of downloading articles 
from democracy sites abroad.

Amnesty said: "Everyone detained purely for peacefully publishing their 
views or other information on the internet or for accessing certain 
websites are prisoners of conscience.

"They should be released immediately and unconditionally."

Various attempts by Chinese officials to control the internet have been 
reported - such as the temporary banning of the Google search engine in 
September.

The Amnesty report said other action taken to control online information 
included:


Blocking foreign websites
Creation of internet police
Closure of sites with articles on corruption or critical of the government
Amnesty urged the Chinese Government to review its regulations restricting 
freedom of expression to comply with international standards.

International 'responsibility'

It also raised concerns that overseas producers were selling monitoring 
software to China which had been used for censorship.

"As China's role as an economic and trading partner grows, multinational 
companies have a particular responsibility to ensure that their technology 
is not used to violate fundamental human rights," the group said.

But government spokesman Kong Quan rejected the tone of the report, which 
he had not seen.

"The Amnesty International organisation in the past has often issued 
statements with no basis whatsoever," he said.

"China is a country ruled by law - all people must abide by the laws and 
regulations."
*******************************
Associated Press
U.S., ACLU Agree on Surveillance Papers
By JONATHAN D. SALANT, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - The government agreed to tell the American Civil 
Liberties Union (news - web sites) by Jan. 15 which documents it would 
release about increased surveillance in the United States under a law 
passed in response to the terrorist attacks.



In response to a suit brought by the ACLU and other groups, the Justice 
Department (news - web sites) also said it would supply a list of documents 
that it would keep confidential, citing national security concerns. The 
ACLU could challenge the decision to withhold any documents.


The agreement was reached Tuesday before U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal 
Huvelle, who is hearing the case growing out of an Aug. 21 request filed 
under the Freedom of Information Act.


The civil liberties group wants to know how the government is carrying out 
the USA Patriot Act, passed in response to Sept. 11. The new law gives the 
government new powers to obtain personal information about U.S. citizens in 
an attempt to stop future terrorist attacks.


ACLU lawyer Jameel Jaffer asked for a specific date for the Justice 
Department to provide the information, saying that another federal judge 
set a deadline for the Energy Department to release documents and e-mails 
concerning Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites)'s energy task 
force. "It's reasonable to ask for a fixed date," he said.


Justice Department lawyer Anthony J. Coppolino said the government needed 
until mid-January because the ACLU request was being reviewed by several 
agencies. He said the government had produced 163 pages of information, but 
needed to check with the various agencies, including the Immigration and 
Naturalization Service, intelligence and the criminal division to see if 
the information could be released.


Huvelle said the government was working toward meeting the ACLU's request.


"This is a matter of great public interest," Huvelle said. "I am not 
unimpressed by the efforts of the government to comply. The government is 
moving heaven and earth to get what you want."


The ACLU asked the Justice Department for the number of times it has asked 
libraries or bookstores for lists of purchases or for the identities of 
those who have bought certain books; how many times law enforcement 
officials have entered people's homes without letting them know until 
later; how many times they have approved phone traces of people not accused 
of any crimes; and how many times they have investigated Americans for 
writing letters to newspapers, attending rallies or other First 
Amendment-protected activities.
********************************
New York Times
November 27, 2002
Students Learning to Evade Moves to Protect Media Files
By AMY HARMON

As colleges across the country seek to stem the torrent of unauthorized 
digital media files flowing across their campus computer networks, students 
are devising increasingly sophisticated countermeasures to protect their 
free supply of copyrighted entertainment.

Most colleges have no plans to emulate the Naval Academy, which last week 
confiscated computers from about 100 students who are suspected of having 
downloaded unauthorized copies of music and movie files. But many are 
imposing a combination of new technologies and new policies in an effort to 
rein in the rampant copying.

"For our institutions this is a teachable moment," said Sheldon Steinbach, 
general counsel of the American Council on Education. "This is the time for 
them to step forward and demonstrate the value of intellectual property."

Some students may well emerge from educational sessions on copyright laws 
and electronic etiquette with a higher regard for intellectual property 
rights. But many of them are honing other skills as well, like how to 
burrow through network firewalls and spread their downloading activities 
across multiple computers to avoid detection.

"If you don't know how to do it, other people will just tell you," said 
Lelahni Potgieter, 23, who learned her file-trading techniques from an art 
student at her community college in Des Moines. "There's not much they can 
do to stop you."

Nevertheless, university administrators are trying, spurred on in part by a 
barrage of letters from entertainment companies notifying them of student 
abuses. Many entertainment concerns have hired companies to search popular 
file-trading networks for unauthorized files and track them to their source.

More pragmatic motivations, like the expense of large amounts of 
university's network bandwidth being absorbed by students' proclivity for 
online entertainment, are also driving the renewed university efforts.

Schools have closed off the portals used by file-trading services, 
installed software to limit how much bandwidth each student can use, and 
disciplined students who share media files. But nothing, so far, has proved 
entirely effective.

"It's an ongoing battle," said Ron Robinson, a network architect at Bradley 
University in Peoria, Ill. "It's an administrative nightmare trying to keep 
up."

In a typical game of digital cat-and-mouse, Mr. Robinson said one of his 
first moves was to block the points of entry, or ports, into the network 
used by popular file-trading software like KaZaA.

But the newest version of the KaZaA software automatically searches for 
open ports and even insinuates itself through the port most commonly used 
for normal Web traffic, which must be kept open to allow some e-mail 
reading and other widely used applications to take place uninterrupted.

Even without KaZaA's help, students say they can easily use so-called 
port-hopping software to find a way past the university's blockades. So Mr. 
Robinson has rationed the amount of bandwidth that each student can use for 
file-trading activities.

Software with names like PacketHound, from Palisade Systems, or Packet 
Shaper, from Packeteer, enable network administrators to distinguish data 
that comes from the file-trading services and sequester it from the rest of 
the Internet traffic.

But there are ways around that, too.

To limit the amount of data each student can download, administrators 
typically link a student ID to the computer in a dormitory room. To exceed 
those limits, some students find computers registered to others and use 
them to conduct their activities.

That practice has surfaced recently at Cornell University, where the number 
of complaints from copyright holders about unauthorized downloading in 
recent months has stayed at the same level as last year, but the number of 
students who were found to have been unwittingly downloading for others has 
risen, according to university officials.

About 50 students at Cornell were disciplined last year for unauthorized 
downloading, said Mary Beth Grant, the university's judicial administrator. 
All of those cases resulted from letters from copyright holders, because 
the university does not monitor what students do with their Internet access.

Nor does Cornell consider the trading of copyrighted music files to be 
among the more serious infractions. Students are typically required to 
perform a few hours of community service.

"It's theft and you're not supposed to steal, but this is different from 
someone engaging in credit card scams or breaking into a building to steal 
a computer," Ms. Grant said. "We're not in the business of trying to punish 
a student; we want them to learn from their mistake."

Indeed, the push from copyright holders for universities to police their 
networks has raised questions in the academic world about how to instill 
students with a sense of morality  and a knowledge of the law  about 
copyrights without intruding on their privacy and free speech rights.

"The biggest problem that universities are having is they have not openly 
decided whether their primary responsibility in this regard is law 
enforcement or education," said Virginia Rezmierski, who teaches in the 
University of Michigan's School of Information and recently surveyed 
universities on their monitoring practices. "Right now they're doing more 
monitoring than education."
**********************************
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Web Site Lists Professors Who 'Indoctrinate' Students
By THOMAS BARTLETT

A new Web site allows students nationwide to anonymously accuse their 
professors -- who are named -- of political bias. Some of those professors 
are calling the site "silly" and "cowardly."

The site, NoIndoctrination.org, which was announced last week, was started 
by Luann Wright two years after her son took a writing course at the 
University of California at San Diego that she found objectionable. "All 
the essays they had to read were race-related and I thought that was a 
little odd for a writing course," said Ms. Wright, a former high-school 
science teacher who now designs science curriculums. She also disliked a 
reference to men as "phallocrats" in one of the essays.

Linda Brodkey, a professor of literature at the university, designed the 
course in question, though she did not teach the class that Ms. Wright's 
son took. "We tried very hard to make a course that would introduce 
students to the range of issues they are expected to form opinions about," 
Ms. Brodkey said. The course did not endorse one particular opinion over 
another on any issue, she said.

Ms. Brodkey was involved in a similar controversy more than a decade ago at 
the University of Texas at Austin. A writing course she helped revise was 
deemed to have a liberal bias by some critics, including the National 
Association of Scholars. (See an article from The Chronicle, November 21, 
1990.)

Ms. Wright's Web site allows students to rate the perceived level of bias 
in a professor's lecture, reading list, and class discussions as 
"noticeable," "objectionable," or "extreme." It also permits students to 
post accusations anonymously, a practice Ms. Wright defends because 
identifying students would invite retaliation from professors, she says.

Professors can write rebuttals to students' accusations, though so far only 
one has been posted. That statement was from Geoffrey Schneider, a 
professor of economics at Bucknell University. In his rebuttal, he called 
the student's accusation of bias "a typical comment by a hyper-sensitive 
conservative without a fundamental grasp of the material."

Another professor listed on the site, Theodore J. Lowi, a professor of 
government at Cornell University, said he had no plans to post a rebuttal. 
"I won't dignify it with a response if they don't identify themselves," he 
said. The posting accuses Mr. Lowi of "subtle liberal evangelism."

Robert D. Crutchfield, a professor of sociology at the University of 
Washington, is accused by an anonymous student of "thoroughly 
indoctrinating" students in his "Introduction to the Sociology of Deviance" 
course. According to the student, the professor believes that criminals 
must be rehabilitated rather than punished -- a mischaracterization, 
according to Mr. Crutchfield. "What embarrasses me is that this student so 
completely misunderstood what I was teaching on these topics," he said. He 
said he does not plan to respond on the site.

Nearly all of the postings complain about a pro-liberal bias among 
professors. But Ms. Wright, who calls herself "as middle-of-the-road as you 
can get" politically, said she is against bias of any kind. "I would be 
just as appalled if a professor were describing abortion as baby killing," 
she said.

Ms. Wright added that unlike the Web site Campus Watch, which lists 
professors that it believes have an anti-Israel bias, her site is not 
concerned with a professor's research. "I'm worried about what goes on in 
the classroom," she said. "I feel we're doing our students a grave 
disservice when we have this sort of education where students take a 
writing course that is really more of a social-programming course."

Ms. Wright said her site is not affiliated with any other organization and 
is supported by donations.

One posting accuses Cecilia Rao, who is listed as a professor at Barnard 
College, of putting too much emphasis on "the plight of the low-income 
family" in a course called "Poverty and Income Distribution." But according 
to a college spokeswoman, no one by that name teaches at Barnard and the 
course does not exist.
******************************
CNET
Public access to FTC hurt by spam lists
By Declan McCullagh
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
November 26, 2002, 5:22 PM PT

When Josh Tinnin tried to send e-mail to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission 
this month, he received an unwelcome surprise: He couldn't.

Tinnin's message to the FTC bounced back because the agency subscribes to a 
blacklisting service designed to limit the amount of spam making its way 
into the agency's in-boxes. SBC Pacific Bell, Tinnin's Internet service 
provider, appeared on the blacklist as a haven for senders of junk e-mail.

"I didn't know that the government was using blacklists," said Tinnin, who 
lives in Fremont, Calif. "That was surprising."


Businesses and individual Internet users have turned to blacklists to try 
to stanch the steadily increasing flow of bulk e-mail. But the FTC appears 
to be the first federal agency to adopt the often-buggy lists, and some 
legal experts say the practice raises novel issues and may violate 
Americans' First Amendment right to "petition the government."

FTC spokeswoman Claudia Farrell said the commission began filtering its 
incoming mail in August "as an ongoing effort to protect agency computing 
resources and productivity of agency staff." The FTC's chief information 
officer and general counsel oversee the use of the blacklist "to ensure 
that legitimate communications from the general public can be received," 
Farrell said.

Blacklists started as a method to identify known sources of spam and permit 
system administrators to block messages from those sources. But as the tide 
of spam continued to surge, many blacklist operators began adding not only 
the Internet addresses of actual spammers but also entire Internet service 
providers and hosting services suspected of harboring spammers.

This guilt-by-association approach means that an increasing number of 
legitimate e-mail messages are being returned as undeliverable or even 
deleted without being read. In September, Yahoo's storefronts site was 
added to a list of suspected spammers, and in July, U.K. telecommunications 
giant BT's main e-mail hub appeared on SpamCop's blacklist. Blacklist 
operators defend the approach, saying that some "collateral damage" is to 
be expected in the war on spam.

The FTC, which is the federal agency primarily responsible for prosecuting 
those who send illegal spam, relies on e-mail as an important way to 
maintain communication with the public. For example, those wishing to 
comment on a formal rulemaking on barriers to electronic commerce can send 
a message to ecompetition@xxxxxxxx And requests for documents under the 
Freedom of Information Act can be sent to foia@xxxxxxxx

Legally sound?
Sonia Arrison, a technology policy analyst at the free-market Pacific 
Research Institute, found her e-mail to Howard Beales, director of the 
FTC's bureau of consumer protection, returned as undeliverable. Beales 
spoke at a PRI privacy event in January, and Arrison was trying to send him 
a proposal on, ironically, how to limit spam.

"It was surprising to see that a government agency was bouncing my mail. 
Shouldn't they all be open to the public?" Arrison said. "I tried multiple 
times, and it was blocked every time. It was pretty unsettling."

Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, 
says there may be constitutional problems with the FTC's use of third-party 
blacklists.

"Why wouldn't this violate the First Amendment right to petition the 
government?" Tien said. "There are some strong analogies to the First 
Amendment arguments against censorware. Obviously some people can't 
communicate with the FTC. Worse yet, the decision isn't even based on 
anything bad that they've done. Still worse yet, the commercial blacklist 
appears to 'own' the decision about who can send e-mail to the FTC."

The First Amendment says no agency or law may limit the right of Americans 
to petition the government.

The FTC's Farrell defended the blacklist approach, saying it has helped in 
filtering pornography and viruses sent through e-mail.

"If an e-mail is blocked because the sender's ISP does not employ prudent 
controls to ensure that they are not a source of spam, we have established 
alternate mechanisms to receive the affected e-mail," Farrell said.

Farrell declined, however, to describe those mechanisms. She would not 
reveal what blacklists were in use, saying, "we have developed and deployed 
our own filtering approach using in-house resources." In addition, the FTC 
did not respond to a list of follow-up questions sent last week.

The FTC appears to be relying on at least three blacklists: Monkeys.com, 
Njabl.org, and Relays.osirusoft.com.

Other approaches
In August, Neil Schwartzman tried to send mail to uce@xxxxxxx, an address 
the FTC created to allow members of the public to submit examples of spam. 
The FTC has the authority to investigate and prosecute people who send 
fraudulent or deceptive messages, and has legally assailed spammers who 
fall into that category.

Schwartzman--who lives in Montreal and publishes the SpamNews 
newsletter--discovered the FTC was relying on the Monkeys.com blacklist, 
one of the more zealous ones. That meant customers at Bell Canada's 
Sympatico.ca Internet provider were barred from contacting the FTC via e-mail.

"How responsible is it to block the largest ISP in Canada based on the 
dodgy collateral information that a relatively unknown blacklist has to 
offer?" Schwartzman said. "Honestly, if the FTC wants spam protection--and 
I don't know anyone who doesn't want spam protection these days--let them 
go out and spend some real money and get a real supplier, instead of using 
the freebie lists that have collateral damage. There certainly is no lack 
of companies that can supply government-level quality. Why are they using a 
do-it-yourself kit? I'm sorry, but that's irresponsible."

Schwartzman said that Monkeys.com, which appears to have discontinued its 
blacklist service in the last few months, was charging $200 to be removed 
from its blacklist.

Ray Everett-Church, counsel to the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial 
E-mail, says he knows of no other government agency that has followed the 
FTC's lead--and recommends that the agency rethink its approach.

"If they are encouraging people to use electronic media to communicate with 
the government, it would make sense to leave those channels open," said 
Everett-Church, who works as a privacy consultant. "They could certainly 
limit them in terms of time period and specific purpose. But to broadly 
filter on all contact addresses raises some difficult issues in terms of 
our ability to communicate with our government."

One other approach the FTC could adopt would be to filter mail sent to 
individual employees, but not that sent to public addresses used for 
comments on official proceedings, Everett-Church said. Another alternative 
would be using Web forms instead of e-mail addresses for public comment.

Ari Schwartz, an analyst at the Center for Democracy and Technology, said 
he wasn't too concerned about the FTC's use of blacklists.

"Individuals who sent the mail should be alerted to why the message was 
blocked and given an alternate means to communicate with the FTC," Schwartz 
said. "You're not guaranteed to communicate with every government agency 
through every communications mechanism. We don't list the pager numbers for 
everyone who has pagers inside the federal government, for instance. But 
you do have to be able to communicate with them."
******************************
San Francisco Chronicle
Slaying suspect's Web manifesto
Man arrested in killing of Red Bluff cop after post

An ex-soldier turned drifter who bragged on the Internet of killing a Red 
Bluff cop to protest "police-state tactics" was arrested Tuesday in a New 
Hampshire hotel, authorities said.

Andrew Hampton McCrae, 23, who spent three years in the Army, surrendered 
peacefully at a Holiday Inn in Concord, N.H., after the FBI tracked him 
down from a confession posted in his name Monday evening on an alternative 
news media Web site in San Francisco.

"Hello everyone, my name's Andy. I killed a police officer in Red Bluff, 
California in a motion to bring attention to, and halt, the police-state 
tactics that have come to be used throughout the country," said the online 
posting at sf.indymedia.org.

McCrae, who also goes by the name Andrew Hampton Mickel, was arraigned on 
charges of felony flight from prosecution for the Nov. 19 slaying of Red 
Bluff Police Officer David Mobilio.

"From what I understand, this killing was a planned ambush -- an execution 
of a police officer to effectuate his political agenda," said Concord City 
Prosecutor Scott Murray.

New Hampshire authorities are holding McCrae without bail pending his 
extradition to California.

Authorities in California and New Hampshire believe that McCrae posted the 
rambling statements against law enforcement and fired the gun that killed 
Mobilio, the first officer ever to die in the line of duty in Red Bluff. 
About 5,000 people attended Mobilio's funeral Tuesday.

FBI agents in California and New England would not say exactly how they 
tracked down McCrae after seeing the postings in his name.

In the posting, McCrae blamed all the major problems in America and the 
world on corporate irresponsibility and said he had set up his own 
corporation under the name "Proud and Insolent Youth Incorporated" so that 
he could "use the destructive immunity of corporations and turn it on 
something that actually should be destroyed."

McCrae's incorporation papers, filed in Concord on Nov. 7, list addresses 
in Loudon, N.H., and Olympia, Wash. The Loudon address was for the local 
agent of a company that filed the papers.

McCrae said the name of his corporation is a reference to Capt. Hook 
calling Peter Pan "proud and insolent youth" just before their final duel.

"Now Peter Pan hates pirates, and I hate pirates, and corporations are 
nothing but a bunch of pirates," McCrae wrote. "It's time to send them to a 
watery grave, and rip them completely out of our lives."

McCrae's posting drew sharp criticism but some support in comments posted 
on the site, which includes a section on police brutality. The site has 
featured stories on a successful federal lawsuit by two Earth First 
activists against Oakland police and FBI agents and stories about the 
corruption trial of Oakland officers known as "the Riders."

Little is known about McCrae's background. He lived in Ohio as a teenager 
and spent three years in the Army, mostly stationed at Fort Campbell, Ky., 
until he was discharged Aug. 11, 2001, his family said. The Army declined 
to comment on his service.

"We love our son but absolutely denounce his recent actions," said his 
father, Stan Mickel, from his home in Ohio. "Our hearts are breaking for 
the family and friends of Officer Mobilio. This is very hard for us, and we 
don't feel we can say anything else right now. It's terrible."

McCrae, who identifies himself in the posting as an Army veteran and 
graduate of the U.S. Army Ranger School, Airborne School and Jungle 
Operations Training School, also complains heartily about the military.

"The American government is violent all over the world to protect its ill- 
gotten money and goods," he wrote. "But the American People don't have the 
right to profit off foreign deaths and silently enjoy our position, then 
scream bloody murder when those foreigners react to our violence with 
violence. "

Since his discharge, McCrae has spent time in Olympia, Wash., and in New 
Hampshire, according to authorities. His father did not know of any 
connection McCrae had to Red Bluff or Northern California.

Police are trying to locate a maroon 1992 Ford Mustang hatchback, 
registered to McCrae, with Washington license plate 595 NAB. Police believe 
he may have used it as a getaway car and driven to New Hampshire.

Authorities, who had been negotiating with McCrae for three hours, lured 
him from his hotel room about 10 a.m. Tuesday after allowing him to speak 
by telephone with a reporter for the Concord Monitor, who was standing 
nearby with police negotiators.

McCrae immediately told reporter Sarah Vos that he killed Mobilio to draw 
attention to "police brutality," Vos said. On the advice of FBI and police, 
she drew him out by encouraging him to give her a copy of his manifesto, 
"Declaration of Renewed Independence."

"He asks, 'How do I give it to you?' I say, 'You have to come out,' " Vos 
recounted.

Mobilio, 31, was shot once in the head between 1:30 and 2 a.m. Nov. 19 as 
he stopped for gas at an unstaffed filling station on North Main Street 
used by Red Bluff police and Tehama County sheriff's deputies.

The killing stunned the 23-member police force in the city of 13,500 about 
185 miles northeast of San Francisco. A native of Saratoga, Mobilio leaves 
behind his wife of six years, Linda, an elementary school teacher, and 
their 19-month-old son, Lucas.

Among the approximately 5,000 people who attended a three-hour memorial 
service at the Tehama County fairgrounds were Gov. Gray Davis and about 
2,500 uniformed law enforcement officers from more than 100 agencies 
ranging from San Diego to Oregon and Nevada.

During the emotional service, Mobilio's father, Richard, drew a standing 
ovation after recalling his son's journey from learning disabilities that 
made school difficult to finding his mission in police work.

"This town really turned out for a fallen hero," said Officer Todd Lopez of 
Chico. "For those of us in law enforcement, he's our brother."

Chronicle staff writer Ray Delgado and Chronicle news services contributed 
to this report. / E-mail the writers at jzamora@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx and 
ehallissy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
******************************
Washington Post
No Charges in Police E-Mails
By Martin Weil and Clarence Williams
Wednesday, November 27, 2002; Page B02

The U.S. attorney's office has declined to file criminal charges in the 
investigation of thousands of electronic messages sent over D.C. police 
squad-car computers.

"We investigated all the referrals that were sent to our office and we did 
not find any violations of criminal law," said Mary Lou Leary, principal 
assistant U.S. attorney for the District.

Leary said about 60 e-mails were sent to the prosecutor's office to 
determine whether they warranted prosecution. The 18-month probe "concluded 
recently," Leary said. She said the e-mails have been referred back to the 
police for whatever action they finds appropriate.

By August, 24 officers had been ordered suspended by the police department, 
and lesser penalties had been imposed on 20 others, as a result of the 
department's internal investigation.

D.C. police began an investigation in February 2001 of hundreds of 
thousands of messages sent over 12 months. By October of last year, police 
had winnowed out 5,300 messages they classified as questionable or 
offensive and sorted them into three categories.

The first grouping, threats against citizens, involved about 4 percent of 
the messages. The second, hostile or threatening remarks about co-workers, 
made up about 46 percent. The third category -- e-mails deemed 
inappropriate or unrelated to the job -- made up about half.

The prosecutors' action was first reported last night by WTTG-TV (Channel 
5). Top police officials could not be reached immediately for comment. D.C. 
Council member Kathy Patterson (D-Ward 3), whose Judiciary Committee 
oversees the police, said, "There needs to be a public accounting" of the 
matter. She said council hearings would consider the matter by February.
****************************
Federal Computer Week
FEMA debuts DisasterHelp.gov
BY Megan Lisagor
Nov. 26, 2002

The Federal Emergency Management Agency on Nov. 25 launched a pilot version 
of DisasterHelp.gov, a one-stop portal for emergency preparedness and 
response information.

The disaster management effort is one of 24 cross-agency e-government 
initiatives highlighted by the Bush administration. FEMA is in charge of 
the project but is working with 26 partners.

The portal will support more than 4 million members of the first responder 
community -- firefighters, police officers and emergency medical 
technicians -- pulling together several systems, simplifying services and 
eliminating duplication in the process.

"The feedback first responders will provide through this pilot launch will 
be invaluable as this innovative project moves forward," FEMA Director Joe 
Allbaugh said in a news release.

An initial release of DisasterHelp.gov had been slated for Aug. 31, and a 
statement of objectives  calling for $50 million to $100 million in 
services that include developing the architecture and design concept  was 
expected to follow, Ronald Miller, FEMA's former chief information officer, 
said in June before getting detailed to help the Office of Homeland Security.

The agency now plans to announce further developments in the spring of 2003.
*****************************
Federal Computer Week
AKO offers secure portal lessons
BY Dan Caterinicchia
Nov. 26, 2002

In developing its own secure portal, the Air Force might be able to take 
some lessons learned from the Army Knowledge Online portal, which has more 
than 1 million accounts, including about 6,000 with SIPRNET access, said 
Robert Coxe, the Army's former chief technology officer who managed AKO.

The Air Force is in the initial phases of developing a secure portal that 
will provide air operations centers with access to the data they need to 
make critical warfighting decisions. Such information currently is 
maintained in disparate systems.

The system will provide the air operations centers with point-and-click 
access to an integrated set of secure information and will run on the 
Defense Department's Secret Internet Protocol Router Network.

Lt. Gen. Leslie Kenne, deputy chief of staff for warfighting integration at 
Air Force headquarters, said the Air Force SIPRNET Portal is being tested 
as a way to eliminate the "disconnect between the force and the unit level" 
and will enable users to simply access the information they want and need 
to conduct air operations.

Coxe said the Air Force is on the right track and using all the right 
buzzwords as it develops the portal, but "the trouble will be connecting 
the dots between the words later on."

"My suggestion would be to have them look at a common e-mail addressing 
schema," Coxe said. "That was one lesson from [Sept. 11, 2001]. We wanted 
to get a hold of the generals to exchange e-mail on the SIPRNET," but 
people were only familiar with e-mail accounts on their local exchange 
global address list. "There was no universal address to forward the e-mail 
using a common place to look up the address."

Coxe, who is now deputy chief information officer for e-government at the 
Federal Emergency Management Agency, said the Air Force may already have 
addressed the problem, much the same way the Army did on Sept. 12, 2001, 
when the service set up a directory to make the translation from the local 
exchange address to an AKO SIPRNET address.
****************************
Federal Computer Week
DOD extends net reach
BY Dan Caterinicchia
Nov. 25, 2002

The U.S. Pacific Command (Pacom) and U.S. Central Command (Centcom) each 
use their own secure wide-area networks to communicate with coalition 
partners in their areas of the world, and now the two systems have been 
linked to create even greater global information-sharing possibilities.

Navy Capt. James Fordice, the U.S. Pacific Fleet's director for command, 
control, communications, computers and intelligence, said Pacom's Combined 
Operations, or Coalition, WAN (COWAN) has a number of secure enclaves with 
various Asian-Pacific partners, including COWAN-K with Korea, COWAN-J with 
Japan, and COWAN-A, which supports Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the 
United Kingdom and the United States.

Canada, Australia and the U.K. all have permanent COWAN links, in addition 
to their participation in the COWAN-A enclave, and all of those networks 
feature:

* E-mail with attachments

* Chat capabilities

* Replicated Web sites

* Collaborative tools

The enclaves with Japan and Korea are currently e-mail only COWANs, but 
Japan is interested in adding chats, Fordice said.

But COWAN-C, which links Pacom's system with Centcom's Combined Enterprise 
Regional Information Exchange (CENTRIX) system, was created "within the 
last 60 days," and is the star of the show, Fordice told Federal Computer 
Week following a Nov. 21 panel at the Armed Forces Communications and 
Electronics Association International's TechNet Asia-Pacific conference in 
Honolulu.

Fordice added that linking COWAN with CENTRIX was not difficult, because 
both systems are TCP/IP-based and basically provided the same 
information-sharing features.

"This is the biggest step forward in getting to a global coalition network 
to put all the players in," he said.

COWAN-C has not yet been used, but is available for "when we get to a point 
that we need it," Fordice said, adding that that shouldn't be too long 
because COWAN-A is in "almost continuous use," and the opportunity to link 
to even more coalition partners such as Germany, France and Italy will 
contribute to fighting the global war on terrorism.

Separate, physical COWAN local-area networks are required for each enclave, 
and can be set up for about $40,000 per ship. Fordice called the ship-based 
solution "COWAN-lite," and said it requires a laptop, a router, and a 
cryptographic tool linking into the standalone battle force e-mail system.

"COWAN is a success and is being used during Operation Enduring Freedom," 
but there are many restrictions on information sharing among the coalition 
partners, said Adm. Walter Doran, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. "We 
must get this one right."

Randall Cieslak, Pacom's chief information officer, agreed and said the 
most difficult part of that is overcoming individual nations' 
information-sharing policies, since some are willing to share certain data 
with the United States or another country, but not necessarily with all the 
other participants.
*****************************
Federal Computer Week
Official touts intuitive decision-making
BY Dan Caterinicchia
Nov. 25, 2002

In the Information Age, military commanders can no longer rely on 
checklists to make decisions on the battlefield. Instead, they should be 
using information tailored to their personal tastes to make intuitive 
decisions, said one Marine Corps leader.

Brig. Gen. Jerry McAbee, deputy commander of Marine Forces Pacific, said 
"the checklist approach to decision making is not what we need for the 21st 
century."

Military leaders need a networked knowledge system that draws information 
from databases worldwide. This system should present them with the best, 
but incomplete, set of facts on a battlefield situation, from which they 
can make an intuitive decision on how to act, he said. Commanders using 
intuition in battle is what puts "war in the realm of art rather than science."

McAbee said this Nov. 21 at AFCEA International's TechNet Asia-Pacific 2002 
Conference and Exposition in Honolulu.

The system that McAbee described is still years, maybe even decades, away 
from becoming a reality. The first phase, he said, should be determining 
the right stimuli to spark an individual's intuitive reasoning, and through 
what senses they are best delivered.

He also said that virtual reality training and simulation systems have 
given the military services a glimpse of the future on this path, but that 
new technology is needed to complete the vision.

"Instead of trying to deliver a perfect picture of the battlefield, we need 
to shift from that because the battlefield is chaotic and commanders are 
trained early on in their careers to make decisions based on their 
experience, intelligence and intuition," McAbee told Federal Computer Week.

He said that all people do that differently - some prefer audio aids, while 
others prefer information presented visually.

"One shoe doesn't fit all," McAbee said. "We need to tailor that stimuli. I 
think it will be incremental and we may never [fully] develop the system, 
but we need to start down that road and start developing the system in some 
areas to assist commanders in intuitive decision making."

He told Federal Computer Week that the TechNet audience was the first to 
hear his knowledge system vision, which he said was inspired by retired Lt. 
Gen. Paul Van Riper, who "has done more thinking on this than anyone else."

McAbee presented numerous examples dating back to the Revolutionary War 
where partnerships among the government, industry and research communities 
created technologies that played to commanders' strengths and helped the 
United States attain victory. He asked the conference audience to do their 
part to make history repeat itself.
******************************
CNET
Future cell phones to see the light
By Sandeep Junnarkar
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
November 27, 2002, 7:08 AM PT

The University of California at Davis announced this week it has received a 
grant from the Defense Department to build a new generation of cell phones 
that transmit and receive optical signals.
The optical cell phones could make wireless communications speedier and 
more secure than existing optical fiber networks, researchers said.

U.C. Davis will share the $5 million, four-year grant from the Defense 
Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) with the Lawrence Livermore 
National Laboratory.

The researchers hope to build chip-sized devices that use a technology 
standard already in some cell phones. That technology, called Code Division 
Multiple Access (CDMA), transmits and receives optical signals. CDMA, which 
runs about 20 percent of the world's wireless networks, is a proprietary 
standard. Qualcomm owns the patents.

A different technology in widespread use employs a method called wavelength 
division multiplexing, in which each cell phone uses a different wavelength 
of light, according to the researchers. In contrast, optical CDMA would 
encode each pulse, or bit of information, across a segment of wavelengths. 
The receiver uses a key to decode the signal and re-create the original pulse.

"Security-wise, there are strong advantages to optical CDMA because you can 
change the code at any time," U.C. Davis electrical engineer Zhi Ding said.

Some cell phone systems, such as those from Sprint PCS and Verizon 
Communications, already use a type of CDMA for radio waves, according to 
the researchers.

The optical CDMA project is part of the California Institute for 
Information Technology Research in the Interests of Society (CITRIS), which 
is a coalition of U.C. campuses and industry partners. The organization's 
goal is to apply technology to aid in emergency response, natural disasters 
and environmental monitoring.
********************************
Info World
Identity theft raises questions about security
By Paul Roberts
November 27, 2002 7:36 am PT

WITH THE ANNOUNCEMENT Monday of the breakup of a New York-based identity 
theft ring that absconded with the sensitive financial data of over 30,000 
U.S. consumers, attention has quickly turned to lax security in the systems 
that lenders use to obtain information from credit bureaus such as Experian 
Information Solutions, Trans Union and Equifax.
[Story 
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/11/27/021127hntheft.xml?s=IDGNS]
******************************
Info World
NSF helps fund grid computing project
By Gretel Johnston
November 26, 2002 4:30 pm PT

WASHINGTON -- THE U.S. government-funded TeraGrid project has received the 
green light to move forward with another stage, one that calls for the 
Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center at Carnegie Mellon University and the 
University of Pittsburgh to join the grid, which already links computer 
centers at four other research facilities and universities.

[Story 
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/11/26/021126hnteragrid.xml?s=IDGNS]
******************************
Reuters Internet Report
Anti-Piracy Group Orders Net Downloaders to Pay Up
Tue Nov 26,12:17 PM

By Bernhard Warner, European Internet Correspondent

LONDON (Reuters) - In a unique crackdown on illegal file-sharing, a Danish 
anti-piracy group mailed invoices to alleged pirates demanding compensation 
for downloading copyrighted materials off the Internet, an attorney for the 
group said on Tuesday.



The Danish Anti Piracy Group (APG) identified 150 alleged pirates asking 
them to pay a combined $133,600, said Morten Lindegaard, an attorney for 
the group. The biggest offenders face a bill of $13,360.


"We are demanding full payment for the use of these copyrighted materials," 
Lindegaard said. The APG has worked with the Danish branch of music trade 
body International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, to crack down 
on online piracy. The decision to seek compensation for downloads opens up 
a controversial new front in copyright holders' ongoing campaign to curb 
consumer piracy on the Internet, a phenomenon blamed for a decline in CD 
sales and upswing in the free trade of video games, computer software and 
video games.


The tactic is drawing protests from some technical and legal experts who 
insist that without the violators' computer it's impossible to prove the 
existence of copyright violations. Others question the size of the bills.


"In this case, we're talking about compensation for the damage the Anti 
Piracy Group claims its members have suffered. It's the courts that decide 
the amount of compensation to be paid due to copyright infringement, not 
the victim." said Martin von Haller Groenbaek, a Danish attorney 
specialising in IT law.


KAZAA, EDONKEY USERS TARGETED


In each case, the Danish users were accused of downloading copyrighted 
materials from file-sharing networks Kazaa and eDonkey, two popular 
so-called peer-to-peer (P2P) networks in Denmark, Lindegaard said.


Lindegaard, 29, and his helpers -- four Danish university students -- 
developed a software program that monitored Danish file swappers on the two 
P2P networks, honing down to the users' Internet Protocol, or IP, address 
to confirm they were logged on from Denmark.


The program also traced the files shared and the time at which they were 
downloaded. After reviewing the evidence, a judge ordered the users' 
Internet service providers to pass on the violators' billing addresses.


In each case, the alleged pirate first learned they were being investigated 
when they received a bill in the post, which began arriving late last week.

A spokesman for the Danish Consumer Council said they received roughly 50 
complaints from the fined individuals. After an initial investigation, the 
council determined the APG complied with local data protection laws, the 
spokesman added.

STUDENTS, PROFESSIONALS FINGERED

Lindegaard said the accused range from high school students to 
professionals. They downloaded materials ranging from Eminem (news - web 
sites) songs to the latest Star Wars film to the video game, "Grand Theft 
Auto."

"The top 10 computer games, music and movies -- it's all there," said 
Lindegaard.

The alleged pirates were billed based on the amount of files they shared. 
For a single music file, they were charged $2.67; $26.70 for a movie and 
approximately $50 for a video game, Lindegaard said. But technical experts 
threw into question the fairness of the bill, pointing to the fact that 
copyrighted material from time to time is distributed for free across the 
Internet in a legitimate manner.

For example, major record labels allow users to download select songs from 
new album releases off the Web. The tracks typically expire after a period, 
but in some cases the deactivated track may still appear on a users' hard 
drive.

Also, the labels, movie studios and video game makers have increasingly 
distributed bogus files on P2P networks that resemble the genuine article, 
down to file size and title, to frustrate would-be downloaders.

"How do you know each of these copyrighted materials is illegal? That's the 
big issue here," said Urs Gattiker, a professor of technology and 
innovation management at Aalborg University in Denmark.
*******************************
Reuters Internet Report
Tech Firms Draft Guidelines for Web Tracking Tool
By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Internet users could have a better idea of how they 
are tracked online under a set of voluntary guidelines issued by an 
industry group on Monday.


The guidelines are the first to specifically address invisible tracking 
devices called "Web bugs" that can be used to monitor traffic on a Web 
site, collect names for "spamming" campaigns, or allow advertising agencies 
to build up a detailed profile of a computer user's habits.


Marketers say the invisible, pixel-sized devices allow them to tailor the 
online environment to better meet customers' needs, but Web bugs have long 
raised the hackles of privacy advocates who say they allow marketers to 
profile users without their knowledge.


Developed by privacy consultants, the U.S. Postal Service and high-tech 
players like DoubleClick Inc (NasdaqNM:DCLK - news). and Microsoft Corp 
(NasdaqNM:MSFT - news)., the guidelines require that companies reveal when 
they use Web bugs, what sort of information they collect, and how the 
information is used.


Companies would have to obtain user permission before transferring any 
personal data -- such as e-mail addresses and telephone numbers -- to an 
outside party.


Because they only take the form of guidelines, compliance would not be 
mandatory. But companies seeking the seal of approval from privacy 
compliance groups like TRUSTe will be required to abide by them.


The move should help dispel consumer unease over a technology that is 
mostly used for innocuous purposes like counting hits on a Web site, said 
Trevor Hughes, executive director of the Network Advertising Initiative, 
which helped draft the guidelines.


"There was a significant amount of confusion and mistrust of the 
technology," Hughes said. "So we said, 'Let's describe it and define it and 
let it see the light of day."'


Privacy expert Richard M. Smith, who has studied Web bugs for years, said 
the guidelines were a positive step, but could still result in confusion if 
companies chose to couch their notices in a thicket of legal jargon.


"Notice is a tricky thing. You could just bury it in a privacy policy and 
nobody's going to read it," he said.

The guidelines are unlikely to end all abuses as spammers, which use the 
technology to amass lists of "live" e-mail addresses, are unlikely to abide 
by them, he said.

But the use of Web bugs in e-mail will likely decline as Microsoft is set 
to announce a new version of its popular Outlook e-mail reader that allows 
users to block them, Smith said.

An official at the Federal Trade Commission said the guidelines were useful 
as well.

"We're not concerned about the technology, but the misuse of information 
that's collected through the technology," said Brad Blower, an assistant 
director in the FTC's consumer-protection division.
****************************

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