Clips November 22, 2002

[Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>]

Clips November 22, 2002

ARTICLES

Spam king lives large off others' e-mail troubles
Too much information is CIA's fear
Contempt Motion Filed on Madster
Agency Weighed, but Discarded, Plan Reconfiguring the Internet
2 Students Arrested for Alleged High-Tech Cheating on GRE
Geek 'Vigilantes' Monitor Border
Privacy czar plays homeland role
Privacy czar plays homeland role
*************************
Detroit Free Press
Spam king lives large off others' e-mail troubles
West Bloomfield computer empire helped by foreign Internet servers
November 22, 2002
BY MIKE WENDLAND

You might call it the house that spam built.

Alan Ralsky's brand new 8,000-square-foot luxury home near Halsted and 
Maple in West Bloomfield has been a busy place this month. Outside, 
landscapers worked against the November cold to get a sprinkler system 
installed before the ground freezes. Inside, painters prepared to hang 
wallpaper.

Meanwhile, delivery trucks pulled into the bricked circular driveway with 
computers, routers, servers and other high-tech gear that will hook up to 
the high-speed T1 line installed a few weeks ago.

In the lower level of the home, tucked away in a still-unfinished room, 
will soon be an array of 20 different computers -- the control center of 
what many believe is the largest single bulk e-mailing operation in the world.

It's an operation still very much in business, despite last month's 
much-hyped settlement of a lawsuit against Ralsky by Verizon Internet 
Services. The suit used Virginia's tough anti-spam laws to get Ralsky to 
promise to stop using Verizon servers and pay an undisclosed fee for 
sending out millions of unsolicited e-mails to its customers.

Anti-spam groups and Verizon hailed the settlement as a major victory in 
the war against spam. But that war still feels far away, down on the lower 
level of Ralsky's home, where racks of computers instruct scores of other 
computers halfway around the world to fire off millions of e-mails every day.

Ralsky said the legal fuss and settlement costs were a big hit and that 
things slowed down for a while. But now, after moving a few weeks ago into 
his new $740,000 house, he claims he's back in business.

"I've gone overseas," he said. "I now send most of my mail from other 
countries. And that's a shame. I pay a fortune to providers to do this, and 
I'd much rather have it go to American companies. But I have to stay in 
business, and if I have to go out of the country, then so be it."

The computers in Ralsky's basement control 190 e-mail servers -- 110 
located in Southfield, 50 in Dallas and 30 more in Canada, China, Russia 
and India. Each computer, he said, is capable of sending out 650,000 
messages every hour -- more than a billion a day -- routed through overseas 
Internet companies Ralsky said are eager to sell him bandwidth.

All this is bad news to the anti-spam movement.

"He's very sophisticated in his activities," said John Mozena of Grosse 
Pointe Woods, a founder of the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial 
E-Mail (www.cauce.org), a national spam-fighting organization. "He uses 
hundreds of domains (Internet addresses) to send his spams."

In London, Steve Linford of the Spamhaus Project (www.spamhaus.org) has 
monitored Ralsky for several years.

"There are probably about 150 major spammers who are responsible for 90 
percent of all the spam everyone gets," said Linford. "Ralsky has been the 
biggest of them, and is certainly still in the top five."

Ralsky used to be easy to locate, with a listed address and phone number. 
But his attorney, Robert Harrison of Bloomfield Hills, said Ralsky is so 
hated by anti-spammers that he's had to be less visible.

"There were threats against him, cars driving by and people checking out 
his house," Harrison said. "Someone even left a package of what appeared to 
be dog feces."

Today, Ralsky says he is trying to keep a lower profile, operating through 
cell phones and unlisted numbers. Ralsky agreed to this interview and the 
tour of his operation only if I promised not to print the address of his 
new home, which I found in Oakland County real estate records.

Ralsky admits to using lots of different domain names and Internet 
providers, but said he does nothing illegal. He prefers to call his e-mails 
marketing messages instead of spam.

Whatever you call it, unsolicited messages now account for 36 percent of 
all e-mail, up from just 8 percent a year ago, according to Brightmail, a 
leading anti-spam software maker.

Ralsky has done his share to account for the increase.

"I'll never quit," said the 57-year-old master of spam. "I like what I do. 
This is the greatest business in the world."

It's made him a millionaire, he said, seated in the wood-paneled first 
floor library of his new house. "In fact," he added, "this wing was 
probably paid for by an e-mail I sent out for a couple of years promoting a 
weight-loss plan."

Ralsky said he turns down many who want his services.

"I don't do any porn or sexual messages," he said, citing a promise he made 
to his wife, Irmengard. Instead, he sends e-mail come-ons for things like 
online casinos, vacation promotions, mortgage refinancing and Internet 
pharmacies.

Ralsky acknowledges that his success with spam arose out of a 
less-than-impressive business background. In 1992, while in the insurance 
business, he served a 50-day jail term for a charge arising out of the sale 
of unregistered securities. And in 1994, he was convicted of falsifying 
documents that defrauded financial institutions in Michigan and Ohio and 
ordered to pay $74,000 in restitution.

He lost his license to sell insurance and he declared personal bankruptcy. 
But in 1997, he sold a late model green Toyota and used the money to pay 
back taxes on his house and buy two computers.

A friend had told him about mass marketing on the Internet, and he thought 
it made sense. He bought a couple of mailing lists from advertising brokers 
and, with the help of the computers, launched a new career that soon was 
making him $6,000 a week.

In the lower level of his house, working around a half-dozen computers 
sitting atop temporary tables, two of Ralsky's associates monitored the 
operation.

One of them, Ralsky's list man, concentrated on finding new names to add to 
the 250 million e-mail addresses in his database and weeding out canceled 
accounts.

The other kept track of current campaigns, connecting with the bank of 
e-mail servers in Southfield and watching as e-mails scrolled line-by-line 
in rapid fire down the screen.

"There is no way this can be stopped," Ralsky said. "It's a perfectly legal 
business that has allowed anybody to compete with the Fortune 500 companies."

Ralsky said he includes a link on each e-mail he sends that lets the 
recipient opt out of any future mailings. He said 89 million people have 
done just that over the past five years, and he keeps a list of them that 
grows by about 1,000 every day. That list is constantly run against his 
master list of 250 million valid addresses.

Ralsky's list man is named Charlie Brown. That's his real name, he said, 
describing himself as a native of Louisiana who travels the country working 
as a consultant to bulk e-mailers, developing custom software called 
harvesting programs that constantly scour the Internet, gaining access to 
millions of Web sites and mailing lists every day in search of any and all 
e-mail addresses.

The response rate is the key to the whole operation, said Ralsky. These 
days, it's about one-quarter of 1 percent.

"But you figure it out," said Ralsky. "When you're sending out 250 million 
e-mails, even a blind squirrel will find a nut."

Ralsky makes his money by charging the companies that hire him to send bulk 
e-mail a commission on sales. He sometimes charges just a flat fee, up to 
$22,000, for a single mailing to his entire database.

Ralsky has other ways to monitor the success of his campaigns. Buried in 
every e-mail he sends is a hidden code that sends back a message every time 
the e-mail is opened. About three-quarters of 1 percent of all the messages 
are opened by their recipients, he said. The rest are deleted.

From that response, Ralsky can monitor the effectiveness of his pitch and 
the subject line on the e-mail to make sure he's getting maximum return. He 
said he spends 18 hours a day on the job.

Ralsky said he's frustrated by attacks on his character by the 
anti-spammers. Linford said his organization has been getting Internet 
networks around the world to block mail from any Chinese provider that 
sends Ralsky e-mail.

"When the Chinese providers contact us to ask why their outgoing mail is 
blocked, we tell them because of Ralsky, and they pull his plug," said 
Linford. "He moves on to another provider and it starts all over again."

Earlier this month, said Ralsky, somebody told the Chinese government that 
a Web company from which he leases e-mail servers in Beijing was sending 
messages critical of Chinese policy.

Police promptly raided the business and confiscated Ralsky's servers. 
Although they were returned a few days later, Ralsky now tries to cover his 
tracks better, so opponents won't know what companies and servers he's using.

Linford said he heard of the raid. "It wasn't us that caused it," he said. 
"But there are a lot of anti-spam activists, and apparently some of them on 
their own started organizing a campaign to get the Chinese government to 
think that Ralsky was supporting" the Falun Gong, an outlawed spiritual 
group the Chinese government considers subversive. "We didn't endorse that, 
but it shows you how deep the anti-Ralsky feelings are."

Ralsky, meanwhile, is looking at new technology. Recently he's been talking 
to two computer programmers in Romania who have developed what could be 
called stealth spam.

It is intricate computer software, said Ralsky, that can detect computers 
that are online and then be programmed to flash them a pop-up ad, much like 
the kind that display whenever a particular Web site is opened.

"This is even better," he said. "You don't have to be on a Web site at all. 
You can just have your computer on, connected to the Internet, reading 
e-mail or just idling and, bam, this program detects your presence and up 
pops the message on your screen, past firewalls, past anti-spam programs, 
past anything.

"Isn't technology great?"

Contact MIKE WENDLAND at 313-222-8861 or mwendland@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
*******************************
Chicago Sun-Times
Too much information is CIA's fear
November 22, 2002
BY CURT ANDERSON

WASHINGTON--Broad new surveillance powers granted the Justice Department 
come with a risk for investigators: There may be such an information 
overload that agents could overlook a critical fragment of information that 
would prevent a terrorist attack, a senior CIA lawyer said Thursday.

Provisions of the USA Patriot Act, passed by Congress after the Sept. 11 
attacks, permit the FBI and Justice Department to share with the CIA 
previously off-limits information gathered in secret grand jury proceedings 
and through wiretaps and other domestic eavesdropping.

This already is producing an avalanche of information that poses new 
challenges for analysts at the CIA and other intelligence services, said 
John Rizzo, senior deputy general counsel at the CIA.

''One thing I am concerned about: What do we do with all that 
information?'' Rizzo told an American Bar Association conference on 
national security. ''Woe be it for us if we lose one shard of information 
that in retrospect would have been key if, God forbid, we had another 
terrorist attack.''

This week's ruling by a secret U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court 
of Review enhances the government's domestic surveillance powers to track 
suspected spies and terrorists.

CIA Director George Tenet has repeatedly said that to succeed against 
terrorism, the agency must recruit and adequately pay more talented people, 
including intelligence analysts.

Another change for the CIA will come with establishment of a Homeland 
Security Department, which will provide its own analysis of intelligence 
data from multiple sources and, for the first time, connect state and local 
law enforcement officials with the CIA.

''CIA has never dealt with state and local officials. We will have to learn 
to do so,'' Rizzo said.

The CIA's concerns come as the FBI struggles to shift its primary mission 
from solving traditional crimes to detecting and stopping would-be 
terrorists. Rizzo said the CIA has assigned 30 officers to help the FBI 
improve its analytical intelligence capabilities.

''It will be, frankly, a daunting task for FBI agents,'' Rizzo said. ''It 
will not be easy and it will not be quick. But everyone agrees it's time 
for this to happen.''
*****************************
Los Angeles Times
Contempt Motion Filed on Madster
By Jon Healey
November 22 2002

A group of record companies and music publishers has asked a federal judge 
to hold the Madster online file-sharing system in contempt of court for 
allegedly failing to halt piracy.

The motion, filed late Wednesday, came a week after Madster told U.S. 
District Judge Marvin E. Aspen in Chicago that it was "impractical" to 
comply with a pretrial injunction he issued last month to stop copyright 
infringement.

The labels and publishers asked Aspen to appoint someone to shut down 
Madster until it complies with the order and to cut off the estimated 
$45,000 per month that Troy, N.Y.-based Madster collects from its users.

Originally known as Aimster, Madster enables users to find and copy digital 
music, movies and other files on one another's computers free.

Like the pioneering file-sharing service from Napster Inc., Madster 
eventually was sued for copyright infringement by the major record labels, 
music publishers and movie studios.

The plaintiffs want Madster to filter copyrighted works out of its 
file-sharing system, as a federal judge in San Francisco required Napster 
to do last year. In the meantime, they want Madster to pull the plug on the 
computers that they say are critical to the system's operation.

The motion by the labels and publishers accuses Madster of taking no steps 
at all to comply with the injunction. If the motion is granted, Madster 
would be compelled to show Aspen why it should not be found in con- tempt.

Madster creator John Deep could not be reached for comment. He said this 
month that he couldn't control what users share but that he was developing 
software that users could employ voluntarily to protect copyrighted songs 
and movies.
*****************************
New York Times
November 22, 2002
Agency Weighed, but Discarded, Plan Reconfiguring the Internet
By JOHN MARKOFF

The Pentagon research agency that is exploring how to create a vast 
database of electronic transactions and analyze them for potential 
terrorist activity considered but rejected another surveillance idea: 
tagging Internet data with unique personal markers to make anonymous use of 
some parts of the Internet impossible.

The idea, which was explored at a two-day workshop in California in August, 
touched off an angry private dispute among computer scientists and policy 
experts who had been brought together to assess the implications of the 
technology.

The plan, known as eDNA, called for developing a new version of the 
Internet that would include enclaves where it would be impossible to be 
anonymous while using the network. The technology would have divided the 
Internet into secure "public network highways," where a computer user would 
have needed to be identified, and "private network alleyways," which would 
not have required identification.

Several people familiar with the eDNA discussions said such secure areas 
might have first involved government employees or law enforcement agencies, 
then been extended to security-conscious organizations like financial 
institutions, and after that been broadened even further.

A description of the eDNA proposal that was sent to the 18 workshop 
participants read in part: "We envisage that all network and client 
resources will maintain traces of user eDNA so that the user can be 
uniquely identified as having visited a Web site, having started a process 
or having sent a packet. This way, the resources and those who use them 
form a virtual `crime scene' that contains evidence about the identity of 
the users, much the same way as a real crime scene contains DNA traces of 
people."

The proposal would have been one of a series of technology initiatives that 
have been pursued by the Bush administration for what it describes as part 
of the effort to counter the potential for further terrorist attacks in the 
Unites States. Those initiatives include a variety of plans to trace and 
monitor the electronic activities of United States citizens.

In recent weeks another undertaking of the the Defense Advanced Research 
Projects Agency, or Darpa, the Pentagon research organization, has drawn 
sharp criticism for its potential to undermine civil liberties. That 
project is being headed by John M. Poindexter, the retired vice admiral who 
served as national security adviser to President Ronald Reagan.

Dr. Poindexter returned to the Pentagon in January to direct the research 
agency's Information Awareness Office, created in the wake of the Sept. 11 
attacks. That office has been pursuing a surveillance system called Total 
Information Awareness that would permit intelligence analysts and law 
enforcement officials to mount a vast dragnet through electronic 
transaction data ranging from credit card information to veterinary 
records, in the United States and internationally, to hunt for terrorists.

In contrast, with eDNA the user would have needed to enter a digital 
version of unique personal identifiers, like a fingerprint or voice, in 
order to use the secure enclaves of the network. That would have been 
turned into an electronic signature that could have been appended to every 
Internet message or activity and thus tracked back to its source.

The eDNA idea was originally envisioned in a private brainstorming session 
that included the director of Darpa, Dr. Tony Tether, and a number of 
computer researchers, according to a person with intimate knowledge of the 
proposal. At the meeting, this person said, Dr. Tether asked why Internet 
attacks could not be traced back to their point of origin, and was told 
that given the current structure of the Internet, doing so was frequently 
not possible.

The review of the proposal was financed by a second Darpa unit, the 
Information Processing Technology Office. This week a Darpa spokeswoman, 
Jan Walker, said the agency planned no further financing for the idea. In 
explaining the reason for the decision to finance the review in the first 
place, Ms. Walker said the agency had been "intrigued by the difficult 
computing science research involved in creating network capabilities that 
would provide the same levels of responsibility and accountability in 
cyberspace as now exist in the physical world."

Darpa awarded a $60,000 contract to SRI International, a research concern 
based in Menlo Park, Calif., to investigate the concept. SRI then convened 
the workshop in August to evaluate its feasibility.

The workshop brought together a group of respected computer security 
researchers, including Whitfield Diffie of Sun Microsystems and Matt Blaze 
of AT&T Labs; well-known computer scientists like Roger Needham of 
Microsoft Research in Cambridge, England; Michael Vatis, who headed the 
National Infrastructure Protection Center during the Clinton 
administration; and Marc Rotenberg, a privacy expert from the Electronic 
Privacy Information Center.

The workshop was led by Mr. Blaze and Dr. Victoria Stavridou, an SRI 
computer scientist, one of those who had originally discussed the eDNA 
concept with Darpa officials.

At the workshop, the idea was criticized by almost all the participants, a 
number of them said, on both technical and privacy grounds. Several 
computer experts said they believed that it would not solve the problems it 
would be addressing.

"Before people demand more surveillance information, they should be able to 
process the information they already have," Mark Seiden, an independent 
computer security expert who attended the workshop, said in an interview. 
"Almost all of our failures to date have come from our inability to use 
existing intelligence information."

Several of the researchers told of a heated e-mail exchange in September 
over how to represent the consensus of the workshop in a report that was to 
be submitted to Darpa. At one point, Mr. Blaze reported to the group that 
he had been "fired" by Dr. Stavridou, of SRI, from his appointed role of 
writing the report presenting that consensus.

In e-mail messages, several participants said they believed that Dr. 
Stavridou was hijacking the report and that the group's consensus would not 
be reported to Darpa.

"I've never seen such personal attacks," one participant said in a 
subsequent telephone interview.

In defending herself by e-mail, Dr. Stavridou told the other panelists, 
"Darpa asked SRI to organize the meeting because they have a deep interest 
in technology for identifying network miscreants and revoking their network 
privileges."

In October, Dr. Stavridou traveled to Darpa headquarters in Virginia 
and  after a teleconference from there that was to have included Mr. Blaze, 
Mr. Rotenberg and Mr. Vatis was canceled  later told the panelists by 
e-mail that she had briefed several Darpa officials on her own about the 
group's discussions.

In that e-mail message, sent to the group on Oct. 15, she reported that the 
Darpa officials had been impressed with the panel's work and had told her 
that three Darpa offices, including the Information Awareness Office, were 
interested in pursuing the technology.

This week, however, in response to a reporter's question, Darpa said it had 
no plans to pursue the technology. And an SRI spokeswoman, Alice Resnick, 
said yesterday, "SRI informed Darpa that the costs and risks would outweigh 
any benefit."

Dr. Stavridou did not return phone calls asking for comment.
*****************************
Chronicle of Higher Education
2 Students Arrested for Alleged High-Tech Cheating on GRE
By DAN CARNEVALE

Two Columbia University undergraduate students were arrested Monday for 
allegedly using high-tech transmitters and walkie-talkies to cheat on the 
Graduate Record Examination.

Bryan Laulicht and Sasha Bakhru, both seniors, were arrested after an 
administrator at a Sylvan Learning Center in Garden City, N.Y., found one 
of the students acting suspiciously in a room where the test was offered. 
That Sylvan administrator then called the police.

According to police officials in Nassau County, N.Y., one student was 
taking the test and used a device to transmit questions to the other 
student. That student was looking up answers while sitting in a van parked 
nearby and then relaying the information to the student inside.

The Associated Press reported that Mr. Laulicht had taken the GRE on 
November 11 and had transmitted images of the questions to Mr. Bakhru, who 
was sitting in the van with a laptop computer. The two switched roles on 
Monday, but they began having trouble with their transmitting devices and 
aroused the suspicion of the Sylvan employee.

The two students were arraigned Tuesday and charged with third-degree 
burglary and unlawful duplication of computer material, according to the 
Associated Press. They were released without bail, and are scheduled to 
appear in court today.

Officials at the Sylvan Learning Center declined to comment, and the 
students could not be reached. The police provided a one-page news release 
but would not confirm further details.

Thomas Ewing, a spokesman for the Educational Testing Service, which 
develops and administers the GRE, said it appeared that the two students 
did not share the information from the tests with anyone else. If they had, 
the testing service would have had to spend hundreds of thousands of 
dollars to readminister tests.

"They were obviously trying to subvert the testing process and get an edge 
on the test," Mr. Ewing said. "It's a serious thing that they did."

Mr. Ewing said he did not know of any other instance in which students had 
used high-tech gadgets to cheat on a test. He said it was no surprise that 
the two students were caught, given the amount of equipment they allegedly 
had with them.

"That's why people noticed that they were doing everything except taking 
the test," he said.
***********************************
Wired News
Geek 'Vigilantes' Monitor Border
Nov. 22, 2002

A group of tech-savvy ranchers in Arizona is using military technology to 
monitor and apprehend illegal immigrants crossing the border from Mexico 
into the United States.


Members of the group have spiked their land with thousands of motion 
sensors. They also use infrared tracking devices, global positioning 
systems, night vision goggles, radar and other gear to survey movement near 
the border.


The ranchers, members of an organization called the American Border Patrol, 
said their goal is to use technology to inform the public about the "slow 
invasion" they claim is happening at the southwest border.
But not everyone agrees the group is simply a source of information.

The governor of the Mexican state of Sonora said in a statement on 
Wednesday that he will ask the U.S. government to stop "vigilante groups 
who are hunting" for immigrants along the border.

Gov. Armando Lopez Nogales intends to make his request during the annual 
meeting of the Arizona-Sonora Commission on Friday.

American Border Patrol members confirm they actively guard the border and 
detain suspected illegal immigrants, but deny they are vigilantes.

"I'm not going to argue about immigration law," Glenn Spencer, executive 
director of the American Border Patrol, said. "You want to change the laws, 
go talk to the folks in Washington. As it stands now, we are upholding the 
law."

The ranchers claim that the U.S. Border Patrol, the law enforcement arm of 
the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, is unable to staunch the 
flow of people crossing the border illegally.

Border agents use some of the same technology the ranchers do, but some ABP 
members believe agents haven't been taught how to use the technology.

"Members have told me they have communicated with border patrol agents who 
don't understand GPS coordinates," Spencer said. "Or agents who can't read 
their maps at night because it's dark. You'd think they'd be issued 
flashlights. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad."

The U.S. Border Patrol branch in Tucson, Arizona, did not reply to requests 
for comment.

ABP members use motion sensors to track immigrants' movements. The 
information gathered by the sensors is sent to computers that analyze the 
signal
and determine whether an animal, human or vehicle caused the disturbance. 
That data is then passed on to receivers monitored by ABP members.

ABP member Roger Barnett has $30,000 worth of sensors on his land and 
receivers in his ranch house and trucks. The ranch receiver produces a 
continuous printout of sensor hits.

"Roger can generally tell from the location of the sensor if a given hit is 
good or not," Spencer said. "When I was there two weeks ago, two hits led 
to the discovery of 40 illegal aliens."

When human presence is detected by one of the devices, the ranchers said 
they attempt to apprehend illegal immigrants and turn them over to the U.S.
Border Patrol.

ABP members are further aided by portable battlefield radar units once used 
by Special Forces reconnaissance teams to protect their camps.

A few members have infrared imaging systems in their vehicles. These 
systems register the presence of body heat and allow users to easily locate 
a living being in total darkness.

Spencer said he is opening a test center for security technology, and 
welcomes any company that wants to conduct field trials of its products. 
The patrol documents their operations on a website.

When suspected illegal border crossers are found, patrol members typically 
e-mail the GPS coordinates (longitude and latitude) of their location to 
Spencer, as well as digital pictures or videos. The information is then 
uploaded to the group's website.

Spencer said a new website, to launch in February, will automatically 
produce and update maps from the e-mailed reports.

Visitors to the site will see real-time tracking information on people who 
are attempting to cross the border. Flashing icons will indicate the 
current "hot spots" where visitors can click to zoom in and watch live 
video feeds of the patrol's activities. ****************************
Federal Computer Week
Privacy czar plays homeland role
BY William Matthews
Nov. 21, 2002

After a two-year absence, a privacy czar of sorts is returning to the 
federal government.

The Homeland Security Department will have a privacy officer whose job will 
be to ensure that activities of the new department do not erode the privacy 
of ordinary Americans.

But in light of recent legal, technological and political developments, the 
new privacy chief will have a tough job, privacy advocates predict.

"Many of the missions of the Homeland Security agency are so inherently 
invasive of privacy that it will be difficult for the privacy officer to 
offset the risk to personal privacy," said Chris Hoofnagle, legislative 
counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

For example, the new department will oversee a new data mining system under 
development at the Transportation Security Administration to scour 
electronic databases of airline passengers for information that might 
identify those who pose a terrorist threat.

The department will also have authority to merge massive amounts of 
personal data from the FBI, CIA, law enforcement and other government 
agencies, and even private companies such as phone companies and Internet 
service providers to analyze for evidence that might indicate terrorist 
activity.
All that adds up to "substantial and potentially invasive authorities to 
compile, analyze, and mine the personal information of millions of 
Americans," said Jerry Berman, director of the Center for Democracy and 
Technology.

The Homeland Security Act passed by the Senate Nov. 18 "is huge step 
forward in the hasty expansion of government powers without corresponding 
checks and balances," he said.

The vote to create a new department with the authority to buy and use 
invasive technology is the latest in a string of decisions to increase the 
government's ability to collect and analyze information about Americans.

In October 2001, Congress passed the USA Patriot Act, expanding the FBI's 
authority to collect, wiretap and intercept information. And last May, 
Attorney General John Ashcroft announced new investigative guidelines that 
eased restrictions on FBI surveillance and data mining.

The new department's power concerned House members enough that last summer 
they added a provision to the act creating the position of privacy officer. 
The goal was "to protect against unauthorized use and disclosure of 
personally identifiable information," according the Rep. F. James 
Sensenbrenner Jr., (R-Wis.) chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

Among the privacy officer's responsibilities are to:

*Ensure that the use of information technologies sustain, not erode, 
privacy protections.
*Ensure that the department complies with the Privacy Act of 1974. Evaluate 
proposals for government collection, use and disclosure of personal 
information.
*Conduct assessments on the impact that department rules and practices have 
on privacy.

*Report to Congress annually on department activities that affect privacy.
Reporting to Congress may turn out to be the privacy officer's most 
important function, said Peter Swire, who was chief privacy counselor to 
President Clinton. "That will help create oversight" of the Homeland 
Security Department.

It remains to be seen how effective the privacy officer will be at 
preserving privacy, Swire said. But "it is better to have a privacy officer 
than not to have one," he said.

In testimony to a House committee last summer before the Homeland Security 
Act included a privacy officer, Swire compared the act to a truck. It was 
"all accelerator when it comes to information sharing, but with no breaks," 
he said. "The bill puts the pedal down when it comes to spreading around 
sensitive personal information in hopes of reducing terrorism."

During his tenure as Clinton's chief adviser on privacy matters, Swire said 
he was often most effective behind the scenes. "One of my biggest jobs in 
the White House was to look at proposals before they went public and when 
they had privacy problems, often we could fix them before they came out." 
The privacy officer at the Homeland Security Department could also do that, 
he said.
******************************
Federal Computer Week
Commander lays out IT challenges

The commander of U.S. Pacific Command (Pacom) has a few problems that he 
thinks information technology can do a better job of helping to solve.

Navy Adm. Thomas Fargo said that his command, like the rest of the Defense 
Department, has been charged with minimizing its footprint without 
affecting combat capabilities as it continues fighting the global war on 
terrorism, and he thinks IT can help.

Speaking Nov. 19 at the AFCEA International's TechNet Asia-Pacific 2002 
Conference and Exposition in Honolulu, Fargo said there are five main 
command, control, communications, computers, intelligence (C4I) and 
security challenges that IT can help Pacom overcome:

* Architecture to create a clear blueprint to integrate solutions for 
end-to-end decision-making capabilities.

* Efficiency, from business processes to workforce numbers.

* "Reachback" capabilities to connct deployed forces to the best 
information source for their needs.

* Information sharing with joint and coalition forces.

* Information assurance for increasing information agility without 
compromising security.

The Global Information Grid (GIG), which is designed to provide DOD with a 
working framework for moving to network-centric operations, is a great 
start in helping to solve the architecture problem, but it needs to be able 
to better incorporate service-specific solutions as they are developed, 
Fargo said. To aid in that effort, Pacom is using its new headquarters as a 
pilot for joint information capabilities that maps its C4I solutions onto 
the GIG.

"It's a small-scale pilot as to how to put the framework [together] and 
establish an architecture, and put systems on that are seamless within that 
framework," Fargo told Federal Computer Week.

In the efficiency realm, he said, "Only half of the promise of IT is being 
met." He said that's because his chief information officer's office is 
outsourcing many projects, but the team is not getting any smaller and 
neither is the space being taken up by IT equipment.

"The J6 [Communications Electronics Division] is doing a lot of 
contracting, but not much contracting," he said, using two meanings and 
pronunciations of "contracting" for emphasis. He added that the Navy Marine 
Corps Intranet program is helping reduce the number of servers within 
Pacom, but that only affects about one-third of those machines. "We have 
got to streamline and determine what the return on investment really is."

Fargo said weather information is the best example of how "reachback" could 
enhance combat capabilities without increasing DOD's footprint. He said 
that weather data should be available as an icon on a computer as opposed 
to a separate command, and IT can serve as the link between the forward 
deployed forces and the best information provider for them, whether it's 
Pacom, an air operations center or another source.

Pacom and DOD are doing a better job of sharing information internally and 
with coalition forces, and that's because IT solutions are increasingly 
being built with those environments in mind, he said, adding that U.S. 
allies must take on a "greater share of the security burden, not less," in 
the future.

Fargo added that information assurance alerts are showing up on his desk 
more frequently, and he asked industry to help solve that problem and the 
others.

"IT - both in its capabilities and its hardware - are fundamental to 
winning this global war on terrorism," he said.
******************************

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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ACM TechNews
Volume 4, Number 437
Date: December 20, 2002

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

"Bush Administration to Propose System for Wide Monitoring of
Internet"
"Terrorists on the Net? Who Cares?"
"Study Seeks Technology Safeguards For Privacy"
"Radio Free Software"
"Engineering Group Aims to Expand Web Character Set"
"Free Speech--Virtually"
"Quantum Dots to Form Basis of Next-Generation Computer Displays?"
"InfiniBand Group Sharply, Evenly Divided"
"W3C Finalizes Disability Guidelines"
"Bush Signs NSF Reauthorization Bill"
"Center for Nanoscale Innovation Transfers Knowledge to Industry"
"IBM Stacks 3-D Storage Blocks"
"Rat-Brained Robot"
"Wireless Visionary: The Future of Wireless Chat"
"ICANN to Add Three New Domains"
"The Next Chapter"
"The Race to Computerise Biology"
"2007 or Sooner"

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

"Bush Administration to Propose System for Wide Monitoring of
Internet"
The final version of the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace
is expected to include a proposal requiring ISPs to construct a
centralized system for Internet monitoring, supposedly as an
"early-warning center" designed to offer antivirus safeguards and ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1220f.html#item1

"Terrorists on the Net? Who Cares?"
A new report compiled by Jim Lewis of the U.S. State and Commerce
Department for the Center for Strategic and International Studies
discounts the theory that terrorists or malicious hackers could
bring down the nation's infrastructure by launching an attack ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1220f.html#item2

"Study Seeks Technology Safeguards For Privacy"
In response to a request from the Electronic Privacy Information
Center, the Pentagon yesterday disclosed a report from the
Information Sciences and Technologies Study Group (ISAT) listing
specific technologies that the government should invest in to prevent ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1220f.html#item3

"Radio Free Software"
Electrical engineer Eric Blossom's GNU Radio project represents a
significant step toward the creation of a universal computer that
can operate like any other device, a development that has content
providers up in arms and pursuing legislation that could severely ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1220f.html#item4

"Engineering Group Aims to Expand Web Character Set"
The ASCII standard that most Internet addresses are written in is
based on the notion that most alphabets have about two dozen
characters, but vastly larger alphabets in Asian regions mean
that Web sites in those areas are inaccessible in North America, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1220f.html#item5

"Free Speech--Virtually"
Over the past several years, thousands of people have become
bloggers, or publishers of online journals--Web logs or
"blogs"--that chronicle or discuss a diversity of topics.
However, legal experts warn that many bloggers are unaware that ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1220f.html#item6

"Quantum Dots to Form Basis of Next-Generation Computer Displays?"
MIT scientists report in the Dec. 19 issue of Nature that they
have synthesized a new quantum dot-organic light-emitting device
(QD-OLED) that merges organic materials with high-performing
inorganic nanocrystals.  It has the potential to become the ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1220f.html#item7

"InfiniBand Group Sharply, Evenly Divided"
The six founding members of the InfiniBand Trade Association are
evenly split on whether or not to push forward with the I/O
technology at this time.  For the past two years, InfiniBand has
promised a new way to tie together storage, network, server, and ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1220f.html#item8

"W3C Finalizes Disability Guidelines"
The World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) User Agent Accessibility
Guidelines (UAAG) 1.0 recommend how designers should make user
agents--browsers, media players, and the like--more accessible to
people with disabilities.  The guidelines, which were finalized ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1220f.html#item9

"Bush Signs NSF Reauthorization Bill"
President Bush signed the National Science Foundation (NSF)
Authorization Act of 2002 on Thursday,  which aims to double the
NSF's budget to over $37 billion over the next five years.  More
than $1.5 billion would be funneled into actual research programs ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1220f.html#item10

"Center for Nanoscale Innovation Transfers Knowledge to Industry"
The Center for Nanoscale Innovation and Defense (CNID) is a
collaborative effort between the California universities of Santa
Barbara (UCSB), Riverside (UCR), and Los Angeles (UCLA) to
accelerate the transfer of nanotechnology research and expertise ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1220f.html#item11

"IBM Stacks 3-D Storage Blocks"
IBM scientists are aiming to build a prototype 3D storage grid of
cubic modules by the first quarter of 2003, under the aegis of
the Collective Intelligent Brick project (formerly IceCube).  The
stacked modules are equipped with a dozen hard drives and six ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1220f.html#item12

"Rat-Brained Robot"
Researcher Steve Potter has created a robot that is directed by
thousands of embryonic rat neurons on a silicon chip.  The
so-called hybrot is a cylindrical, coffee mug-sized machine
programmed to move throughout a playpen in response to neuronal ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1220f.html#item13

"Wireless Visionary: The Future of Wireless Chat"
Technology entrepreneur Yossi Vardi says that Internet messaging
will become even more significant in the future, as more devices
go online and wireless technology improves.  Eventually, each
device will adapt messaging technology in the way that is suited ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1220f.html#item14

"ICANN to Add Three New Domains"
Dot-kids, .web, .sex, and .xxx are among the potential new TLDs
that could be chosen by ICANN, Web experts and observers say.
Afilias CTO Ram Mohan believes that the domain name market is
suffering from "TLD fatigue," and as a result, he says that ICANN ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1220f.html#item15

"The Next Chapter"
On the topic of the future of wireless technology, wireless
analyst Amy Francetic believes a large technology company will
come to the aid of 802.11, and Cap Gemini Ernst & Young's John
Jordan expects a U.S. carrier by 2005 to support both 802.11 and ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1220f.html#item16

"The Race to Computerise Biology"
Central to the biotech industry's progress has been the
advancement of bioinformatics, in which biology and computing
merge through the acquisition, storage, and analysis of
biological data.  Bioinformatics leverages the power of computer ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1220f.html#item17

"2007 or Sooner"
Over a dozen disruptive technologies are expected to hit the
telecommunications sector in the next five years.  The
integration of dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM) and
optical Ethernet will facilitate the development of transparent ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1220f.html#item18


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Welcome to the December 4, 2002 edition of ACM TechNews,
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ACM TechNews
Volume 4, Number 430
Date: December 4, 2002

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Top Stories for Wednesday, December 4, 2002:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html

"Patent Holders on the Ropes"
"Sun's Microsoft Remedy Praised"
"Xerox Says New Material Will Allow Plastic Transistors"
"Somewhere Over the Virtual Rainbow"
"Video Game College is 'Boot Camp' for Future Designers"
"Spy-Sized Gizmos Built Into Clothes and Glasses"
"In Switch, HP Announces Support for E-Waste Bill"
"Experiment Points to New Spin on Storage"
"Schneier: No "Magic Security Dust""
"Fractals Add New Dimension to Study of Tiny Electronics"
"Copyright Cartel Still Winning Most of the Time"
"'Grid Computing' Is the Next Wave in High-Performance Computing"
"Wireless Watchers Eyeing Mesh Networks"
"Xerox Hopes Small Technology Copies Innovations of the Past"
"Winning the Cybersecurity War"
"Growing Smaller"
"IT to Fight Terrorism"
"IM Means Business"
"Received Wisdom"

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

"Patent Holders on the Ropes"
Technology standards bodies are writing new rules excluding
patented technologies, a change that some see as a recompense for
years of abuse by patent holders.  The World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C) rejected patented technology that required royalty payments ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1204w.html#item1

"Sun's Microsoft Remedy Praised"
Sun Microsystems is seeking a preliminary injunction from a
Baltimore court to prevent Microsoft from shipping Windows
without including Sun's Java, a programming language that can be
used to develop Internet services software much like Microsoft's ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1204w.html#item2

"Xerox Says New Material Will Allow Plastic Transistors"
Cheap, lightweight, and flexible displays for cell phones, TVs,
and laptops could one day become a reality thanks to a new
material that facilitates the fabrication of organic transistors
on a plastic substrate.  The material, developed by Xerox, will ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1204w.html#item3

"Somewhere Over the Virtual Rainbow"
An extracurricular project that allows middle school girls to
explore the possibilities of the University of Illinois' 3D
virtual reality CAVE environment aims to get more girls
interested in science and less averse to using technology, among ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1204w.html#item4

"Video Game College is 'Boot Camp' for Future Designers"
DigiPen in Vancouver, British Columbia, offers the only
accredited four-year degree for people who want to make video
games; the school is considered the Harvard for that industry.
Other colleges and universities have launched single courses in ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1204w.html#item5

"Spy-Sized Gizmos Built Into Clothes and Glasses"
Technology forecasters such as Wayne Pethrick of the Futures Lab
and Paul Saffo of the Institute for the Future expect
"wearware"--electronics embedded in apparel--will be a major
trend of the coming years.  "It's basically the computer as ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1204w.html#item6

"In Switch, HP Announces Support for E-Waste Bill"
In a reversal of an earlier position that prompted Gov. Gray
Davis (D-Calif.) to kill an e-waste recycling bill in October,
leading global PC manufacturer Hewlett-Packard announced its
support for the legislation, which encouraged Sen. Byron Sher ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1204w.html#item7

"Experiment Points to New Spin on Storage"
Oklahoma University researchers reported in the Oct. 15 issue of
the Journal of Chemical Physics that they were able to
successfully encode and retrieve a 1,024-bit image of a test
pattern onto a liquid crystal molecule by changing the spin ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1204w.html#item8

"Schneier: No "Magic Security Dust""
U.S. security expert and Counterpane Internet Security chief
technologist Bruce Schneier believes that the continued migration
of infrastructure to the Internet, advances in computer power and
usability, and the growing complexity of networking systems will ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1204w.html#item9

"Fractals Add New Dimension to Study of Tiny Electronics"
Research at Ohio State University (OSU) and the University of
Utah has uncovered an organic material that emits fractal
magnetic fields.  As digital devices using magnetic fields--such
as computer hard drives and magnetic strips on ID cards--become ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1204w.html#item10

"Copyright Cartel Still Winning Most of the Time"
Copyright owners are winning most of the battles in their war to
control how content is consumed.  Adobe Systems is in court this
week in the first criminal case for an alleged violation of the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).  The Russian company ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1204w.html#item11

"'Grid Computing' Is the Next Wave in High-Performance Computing"
Research organizations and governments are working to create
supercomputing grids that will provide the aggregate computing
resources of the group to any connected node.  Intel's Rick
Herrmann says universities that have for the last few years ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1204w.html#item12

"Wireless Watchers Eyeing Mesh Networks"
Wireless mesh networking is gaining in popularity because of the
success of the 802.11 wireless standard (Wi-Fi).  MeshNetworks in
Florida created technology that forms a larger peer-to-peer
network from several independent multipoint networks.  By ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1204w.html#item13

"Xerox Hopes Small Technology Copies Innovations of the Past"
Xerox spun off its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) at the
beginning of this year in order to cut costs at the company, but
Xerox researchers are still at the cutting-edge of
nanotechnology, having developed several new devices that promise ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1204w.html#item14

"Winning the Cybersecurity War"
In the post-Sept. 11, 2001 world, cyber-security has become the
paramount issue for network administrators.  Internet attacks are
rising, and CERT reports that while 52,000-plus attacks were
documented in 2001, the first six months of this year has seen ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1204w.html#item15

"Growing Smaller"
Nanotechnology continues to attract negative publicity, including
the recently released Michael Crichton novel "Prey," a story
about bacterium-size machines reproducing into a swarm of
flesh-eating predators.  The concern over nanotechnology even ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1204w.html#item16

"IT to Fight Terrorism"
Former Defense Department intelligence analyst and former Network
Solutions CTO David Holtzman, now a professor at American
University, says the U.S. government views IT as its primary
weapon in the war on terror, though he says it may not always be ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1204w.html#item17

"IM Means Business"
The market for instant messaging (IM) applications is thriving,
and currently consists of a customer base of over 100 million
unique home users and 18 million office users; stock brokerages,
the military, e-tailers, law enforcement, and customer service ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1204w.html#item18

"Received Wisdom"
The use of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology is
much more pronounced than most people realize, because they are
unaware of its widespread presence.  RFID tags are used to
monitor the health of trees and livestock, track the location of ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1204w.html#item19


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