Clips November 25, 2002

[Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>]

Clips November 25, 2002

ARTICLES

Threat of U.S. Role Aided Port Deal
Panel Calls for High-Tech Warning System
Verizon Sues to Halt Privacy Rules in Wash. State
Court to decide Kazaa's U.S. liability
Open-source movement faces big adversaries
Online Campaign Fund Reports Prove Popular
Home is where the computer is
Justice is slammed again on INS systems
Praise on the Hill for Forman, but more work remains
Georgia considers bar code biometrics for driver's licenses
NEC shows off environmentally friendly PC
White House science team outlines anti-terrorism focus
Officials appeal for continued e-signature exemptions
Users Begin to Demand Software Usability Tests
Senators sketch out new broadband bill for '03
Internet forces schools to grapple with speech, copyright issues
China Tries to Woo Its Tech Talent Back Home
Electronic Transcripts Ease Way to College
Grocery Stores Checking Out Fingerprints
New spam seems to come from your own address


************************
Los Angeles Times
NEWS ANALYSIS
Threat of U.S. Role Aided Port Deal
The union and shipping lines resolved issues with an imposed settlement 
hanging over them.
By Nancy Cleeland
Times Staff Writer

November 25 2002

The contract that promises labor peace at West Coast ports for six years 
was months in the making, but only in the last few weeks did dockworkers 
and shipping lines move beyond acrimonious posturing to serious deal-making.

The deadlock between the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and 
the Pacific Maritime Assn. broke when federal mediators and a veteran 
AFL-CIO negotiator convinced both sides that any contract they reached on 
their own would be preferable to one forced on them by Congress or the 
courts. Under the Taft-Hartley Act, which was invoked by President Bush in 
early October to restore the flow of transpacific commerce, those options 
were possibilities.

"When I was able to convince both sides that an imposed settlement was not 
the way to go, that's when we saw some movement," said a weary Peter J. 
Hurtgen, director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service who 
jumped into negotiations as they broke down in late September. He had 
pushed for an agreement by Sunday.

Two other events this month also changed the dynamics of negotiations: 
Republicans won a majority in both houses of Congress, diluting the union's 
power in Washington. Then the U.S. attorney's office declined to pursue 
shipping company claims that the union was orchestrating disruptive 
slowdowns on the docks, sending a clear message that the industry could not 
count on further White House intervention.

A deal on the tough issue of technology was announced three weeks ago, 
leaving pension and wages as the final obstacles to a deal.

Those were resolved over the weekend, when shipping companies agreed to 
boost pensions by more than 50%, to a maximum benefit of $63,000 per year, 
according to officials involved in the talks. Wages, which now start at 
about $27 per hour, will rise by $3 an hour over six years, they said.

For the last several weeks, negotiators regularly worked past midnight as 
Hurtgen shuttled between conference rooms at a San Francisco hotel.

"There was a tremendous amount of movement," he said. "It was painful, but 
without the pain I don't think you would have gotten to the end point, 
which is an agreement that both the parties can live with."

A rank-and-file vote is probable in early January, said union President 
James Spinosa, who was optimistic the accord would be approved.

"I think once they understand what we've done here they're going to be 
pleased with the efforts of our negotiating committee," he said Sunday.

The deal would have a substantial effect on marine clerks, who are among 
the highest-paid dockworkers, earning on average $118,000 last year, 
according to industry records. They would relinquish control over 
information flowing into the ports by computer.

Under previous contracts, clerks had the right to retype every cargo list 
and trucking order as it entered, which port terminal operators said was 
highly inefficient. An estimated 400 to 600 marine clerk jobs are expected 
to be eliminated during the next few years as a result. However, the 
contract guarantees lifetime employment to all 1,600 registered clerks in 
the union.

In return, the union maintains jurisdiction over all remaining clerk jobs 
and gains control over certain planning positions, which are now nonunion.

The length of the contract, at six years, is double the term of recent 
contracts. Lengthy contracts often are viewed as concessions by labor. In 
this case, however, the amount of time was needed to fund the pension 
increases sought by union negotiators, Hurtgen said. Shipping lines said 
the longer contract should help ensure stability as the new technology is 
implemented.

The contract also sets out a collaborative process for implementing 
labor-saving technology.

"It requires the parties to sit down and talk about technology, what the 
process is, how it gets implemented, rather than using the adversarial 
process of implementing it and then fighting over it," said Joseph Miniace, 
PMA's president and lead negotiator.

"We are now forcing ourselves to sit down and act like businesspeople 
taking care of a business that has a lot of public impact," he said.

The conciliatory words Sunday were a far cry from the tough stance Miniace 
took heading into negotiations last spring, when he warned that shipping 
companies would not tolerate union slowdowns and were prepared to shut down 
the ports if they were staged.

In late September, after the union rejected a technology proposal and 
shipping companies reported signs of a slowdown, Miniace made good on that 
threat. He closed ports along the coast for 10 days.

They were reopened Oct. 9 under a federal court injunction, after Bush 
invoked the Taft-Hartley Act for the first time in 24 years. The lockout 
stranded more than 200 enormous container vessels, disrupted retailers and 
manufacturers, and underscored the nation's dependence on global trade. 
About $300 billion in goods, from produce and automobiles to electronics 
and clothing, flow through West Coast ports each year.

On Sunday, Miniace declined to discuss the shutdown, other than to say it 
was "necessary." But he added that he was deeply troubled by its effect on 
the U.S. economy. "You hate to hear about the personal problems that you 
have been part of creating," he said.

For its part, the negotiations have caused the ILWU to reassess its 
long-standing tradition of feisty independence. The unusual hard line of 
shipping companies, which the union said was bolstered by support from the 
White House, forced the union to seek allies.

In mid-summer, the AFL-CIO sent senior officials to the talks. And when 
they deteriorated, Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka, the federation's No. 
2 official, joined the talks in San Francisco.

Trumka, the former president of the United Mine Workers and a skilled 
negotiator, was credited by all sides with being a stabilizing force at the 
table. A union spokesman said his presence persuaded the ILWU to become 
more active in the labor federation, which it joined only in 1988.

"The culture of the ILWU will never be the same when it comes to 
bargaining," said Ron Judd, the federation's regional director. "They 
realize now there are forces out there they have to contend with. They 
can't be an isolated island in the greater sea of the labor movement anymore."

Ramon Ponce de Leon, president of the ILWU's Local 13 in Los Angeles who 
sat in on negotiations during the last week, conceded that all sides in the 
long, contentious process made mistakes. But he insisted the shipping 
companies were the aggressors by ordering the lockout.

"There's no template for negotiating after a lockout when the whole economy 
is dependent on your industry. It all has to go on instinct," he said.

"It was a learning process for everybody. You know, you learn in the 
valleys, when your back's against the wall. That kind of experience brings 
you knowledge. What we do with that knowledge over the next six years will 
show whether we gained wisdom or not."
*******************************
New York Times
November 25, 2002
Panel Calls for High-Tech Warning System
By PHILIP SHENON

WASHINGTON, Nov. 24  An expert panel that includes some of the government's 
leading emergency managers has recommended the creation of a 
high-technology national warning system that would alert the public to 
emergencies, including terrorist attacks and other crises.

In a report scheduled to be made public on Monday, the group said that the 
government's current emergency warning systems were inefficient and 
outdated, and that a new integrated system should be the responsibility of 
the Department of Homeland Security.

While the group did not call for the end of the color-coded terrorism alert 
system created in March by the White House, it did note that there was 
widespread public confusion over the system.

The group, which calls itself the Partnership for Public Warning and 
includes representatives from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the 
Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the 
American Red Cross, said the current hodgepodge of emergency warning 
systems "do not reach most of the people at risk."

"We believe that the new Department of Homeland Security should take 
responsibility for leading development of a national all-hazard public 
warning architecture," the group said. "The need for such a system is 
considered extremely compelling."

President Bush is scheduled on Monday to sign the bill creating the 
Department of Homeland Security and to announce that he will nominate Tom 
Ridge, now the White House domestic security adviser, to be the 
department's first secretary. The department would formally open its doors 
in late January.

A spokesman for Mr. Ridge, Gordon Johndroe, said today that the 
administration was already studying the nation's emergency warning systems.

"Since Sept. 11, we've been looking at the most effective ways to alert 
people to the terrorism threat," Mr. Johndroe said. "We are in the process 
of working with a variety of industries, their associations, as well as 
media organizations and government entities."

The group's report, which grew out of a conference among the emergency 
managers last June, noted that the federal warning system known as the 
Emergency Alert System was a vestige of the cold war and had been "designed 
to allow the president to warn the entire nation of major events such as an 
incoming enemy missile with a nuclear warhead."

The group suggested that a new system could allow the government to issue 
warnings of terrorist attacks and other threats via telephone, cellphone, 
television and radio, possibly through computer chips embedded in the devices.

"Warnings about events seconds, minutes or hours away need to be 
disseminated rapidly through special warning systems," the group said. "At 
2 a.m., traditional communications channels are simply ineffective."

The chairman of the panel, Peter Ward, a retired seismologist with the 
United States Geological Survey, said in an interview that much of the 
technology needed to create a national alert system already existed. "We're 
not talking about big money; we're not talking about big government," Mr. 
Ward said.

He said the need for the system had grown immensely since the Sept. 11 
attacks and that the government needed to find a way on a 
neighborhood-by-neighborhood, even person-by-person, basis to alert the 
public to imminent threats.

"Our vision down the road is that every person at risk from natural 
disaster, an accident or terrorism would get a heads-up," he said. "Every 
piece of electronics you own  be it a cellphone, a car phone, a computer, a 
radio, a television  should have the ability of giving you that heads-up."

He said the possibility that terrorists might use weapons of mass 
destruction on American soil should increase the urgency to create a 
technically advanced system.

"It's not hard to think of many scenarios with weapons of mass destruction 
where, if you can get to people right away and tell them to get out of 
harm's way, you can save thousands of lives," he said. "Our ability to do 
that at the moment is almost nonexistent. What worries me is that one of 
these days, an event like that will happen and thousands of people will 
die, and they didn't need to."
*******************************
Associated Press
FTC OKs AOL Time Warner Applications
Fri Nov 22

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Federal Trade Commission on Friday unanimously 
endorsed four AOL Time Warner Inc. applications seeking approval of 
nonaffiliated Internet Service Providers and alternative cable broadband 
service agreements.



In December 2001, New York-based AOL Time Warner received regulatory 
approval to offer America Online service over its cable and television 
networks by allowing certain Internet rivals to have the same access.


The FTC had been reviewing the rival service deals over the past two years, 
as part of the conditions it placed on AOL and Time Warner before allowing 
their $124 billion merger to proceed in December 2000.


In a press release Friday, the FTC said four nonaffiliated ISPs could 
compete with AOL Time Warner on a regional basis: LocalNet Corp. in 
Portland, Maine; Duro Communications Corp. in Birmingham, Ala., 
Jackson/Monroe, Miss., Memphis, Tenn., and North and South Carolina; 
ShreveNet Inc. in Shreveport, La.; and Applied Technology Group Inc. in 
Bakersfield, Calif.


Shares of AOL Time Warner closed Friday at $15.89, up 20 cents, or 1 
percent, on the New York Stock Exchange (news - web sites).

********************************
Reuters
Verizon Sues to Halt Privacy Rules in Wash. State



NEW YORK (Reuters) - Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ - news), the 
largest U.S. telephone carrier, on Friday filed a lawsuit against 
Washington state regulators charging that their rules to safeguard customer 
privacy would inhibit the company's ability to serve customers and develop 
new products.


Verizon said the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission (WUTC) 
adopted rules that put restrictions on its ability to speak to its 
customers regarding other products and services it provides.


"No recognized privacy interest is served by restricting the ability of 
telecommunications carriers to speak with their own customers about 
improvements to existing services or new communications-related services," 
Verizon said in the lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for 
the Western District of Washington State.


The rules, which require customers to agree to allow their personal 
information to be used, also would inhibit Verizon's ability to discuss and 
analyze customer information internally and among affiliates, independent 
contractors and joint venture partners, the company said.


The use and discussion of some customer information is crucial for "the 
development of new products and services and to its ability to market those 
products and services to the most likely buyers within its customer base," 
New York-based Verizon said.


The WUTC acknowledged that its rules were tough, but said consumers wanted 
stiff protections for personal information such as where, when and to whom 
they place calls, as well as the types of services they use and how 
frequently they use them.


TOUGHEST IN THE NATION


"Our rules, we understand, are the toughest in the nation for consumer 
privacy," said WUTC spokeswoman Marilyn Meehan. "We certainly don't dispute 
that the rule is strong, but we think that's what consumers expect and 
deserve and that's what they've asked us for."


Verizon contended that the WUTC's rules "are substantially more 
restrictive" than those that were struck down on in 1999 by the Court of 
Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, which found that the rules ran afoul of free 
speech rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.


In response the court decision, regulators at the Federal Communications 
Commission (news - web sites) in July adopted new rules that telephone 
companies be allowed to share, without consent, private customer data with 
affiliates that offer communications-related services.

Under the federal rules, consumers have the right to opt out of having 
their information used for marketing purposes. But consumers must approve 
when a telephone company wants to share their information with unrelated 
third parties or affiliated companies that do not provide 
communications-related services.

"Given that both the Tenth Circuit and the FCC (news - web sites) already 
have concluded that the restrictive 'opt-in' approach taken by the WUTC is 
contrary to the First Amendment," Verizon said it sought an injunction 
preventing the WUTC's new rules from going into effect on January 1.

The WUTC argued that its rules balance customers' privacy and the 
companies' freedom to run their businesses. The state regulators "carefully 
balanced what we thought were the First Amendment rights of companies to 
speak with their customers, and customers who want more protection of their 
privacy. It's a question of whose property you think that information is," 
Meehan said.
****************************
News.com
Court to decide Kazaa's U.S. liability
By John Borland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
November 24, 2002, 6:00 AM PT


A Los Angeles federal judge will hear arguments Monday as to whether record 
companies and movie studios can sue the parent company of Kazaa, the most 
popular online file-swapping service, in the United States.

Much of Kazaa's future, from a business and legal perspective, hangs on the 
judge's decision. The parent company, Sharman Networks, is headquartered in 
Australia and incorporated in the Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu, and has 
tried to keep business contact with the United States to a minimum in order 
to decrease its legal risk.

If a judge says Sharman can be sued in the United States, Kazaa will get 
sucked into the same legal maelstrom that has grabbed Napster, Aimster, 
Audio Galaxy, Grokster and Morpheus, closing some of the popular services 
and threatening the existence of the others. The Kazaa case is the biggest 
yet in the recent copyright wars that have been testing the international 
reach of U.S. courts.


"There are obviously a lot of companies that hope being offshore will give 
them some immunity from the incredible litigation machine," said Fred von 
Lohmann, senior intellectual-property attorney for the Electronic Frontier 
Foundation, which is representing Sharman rival Streamcast Networks in an 
associated case. The judge's decision, von Lohmann said, "will send an 
important message."

The issue of cross-border legal reach has become increasingly important as 
companies dealing in file-swapping, and other Internet businesses offering 
copyrighted works, have popped overseas. Record companies, movie studios 
and software companies have been forced to scramble and use unconventional 
legal and technological means to attack these services.

The Kazaa case itself may not lead to a sweeping legal precedent, however. 
Jurisdictional arguments rise and fall on whether a company has sufficient 
contact with United States residents to make it liable under U.S. law. 
However, in Sharman's case, the company itself has a contract with its 
peer-to-peer technology vendor, Blastoise, which says that disputes should 
be litigated in Los Angeles court, according to a record industry attorney.

"There's nothing novel in the law here," said Recording Industry 
Association of America (RIAA) Senior Vice President Matt Oppenheim.

Sharman attorney Rod Dorman said the earlier contract has been renegotiated 
so that any disputes would take place in the United Kingdom, not the United 
States. He says the company simply hasn't had enough business contact 
inside the United States to be sued there.

That doesn't mean the company is trying to avoid legal contact with the 
record labels or movie studios altogether. The copyright holders can come 
to the company's headquarters in Australia and sue it there, Dorman said.

"Sharman has not purposively availed itself of the privileges of doing 
business in California to a sufficient amount to establish jurisdiction," 
Dorman said.

Sharman has expanded its operations to allow commerce activities and 
advertising inside its Kazaa file-swapping service over the past few 
months. However, it has backed away from offering a promised paid 
subscription service, many of the subscribers to which would have likely 
been U.S. residents. That decision could be revisited should a judge rule 
that it is already subject to U.S laws.

If Sharman loses this round, the company will be added to a larger lawsuit 
ongoing against Streamcast Networks and Grokster, two rival file-swapping 
companies that use the same underlying technology as Sharman.

A critical hearing in that case will be held Dec. 2, in which both sides 
will argue that the case should be concluded immediately with a so-called 
summary judgment without going to a full trial. Each side is arguing for 
the completion of the case in its own favor.

The hearing Monday will take place at 1:30 PST in Federal Judge Stephen 
Wilson's court in Los Angeles.
****************************
Boston Globe
Free software vs. Goliaths
Open-source movement faces big adversaries
By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff, 11/25/2002

is speech completed, Eben Moglen retreated into the living room of MIT 
computer science professor Hal Abelson, uncapped a pen, and wrote out a 
check for $20,000.

No doubt he can afford it. Law professors at Columbia University probably 
earn a pretty penny. Still, the money's going to the Free Software 
Foundation, the Cambridge nonprofit group that might be termed the Vatican 
of the open-source software movement. Moglen's been fighting the 
foundation's legal battles for years, free of charge. You'd think that 
would be enough of a contribution.

Moglen didn't think so. He'd come to town to appeal for donations from 
concerned software geeks and couldn't pass the hat without putting in a few 
bucks of his own.

But why so generous? Because Moglen is one worried guy. Even though the 
free software movement has generated a host of major products - the Linux 
operating system, the Apache Web server, the Emacs text editing system - 
Moglen thinks the movement faces a struggle for survival, with scarcely a 
dime in its war chest. ''We're a small organization running a big 
revolution,'' said Moglen, ''and we have big adversaries.''

The foundation is based on the idea that software should be entirely open, 
with users free to study its underlying source code and modify it in any 
way they wish. Its enemies, in Moglen's view, are the companies that want 
to turn our computer software and hardware into hermetically sealed black 
boxes. Commercial software makers, movie makers, and music producers are 
desperate to prevent us from making perfect - and perfectly illegal - 
digital copies of their products.

Their arsenal includes software patents to prevent other free software 
writers from emulating useful new features, laws that forbid free software 
programmers from bypassing encryption software, and, perhaps someday, a 
chip that could stop your machine from running free software at all.

Free software folk are utterly opposed to the idea of patenting software 
and ferociously hostile to computers with built-in anti-

piracy hardware. And they insist on the right to produce software that 
bypasses any security feature the music and movie makers might conceive. 
All this sets the stage for a series of legal duels that the Free Software 
Foundation presently can't afford to fight.

The organization is already engaged in a campaign against the Digital 
Millennium Copyright Act, a law that bans consumers from circumventing the 
encryption of digital music and movies. Norwegian teenager Jon Johansen 
wrote a program that cracked digital movie encryption, so he could view 
DVDs on his Linux computer; his reward was a brief stay in jail. So far US 
courts have upheld the DMCA and refused to allow Web sites to offer copies 
of Johansen's software. But the foundation vows to continue the fight.

They've won some potent allies, too. Richard Clarke, President Bush's 
director of computer network security, has said that the DMCA's antipiracy 
restrictions should be relaxed. And US Representative Rick Boucher, a 
Virginia Democrat, has drawn up legislation to do exactly that. ''There is 
a rising tide of public sentiment that the DMCA went too far,'' says 
Boucher. ''It criminalizes conduct that is really innocent.'' Boucher's law 
would legalize Johansen's software for personal use, but not for those 
wanting to mass-produce illegal copies of a video.

Still, Boucher said it may be a couple of years before his legislation is 
passed. Meanwhile, the Free Software Foundation must keep battling the 
DMCA. And there are more battles to come.

Patents, for instance. Microsoft Corp. last year said it would freely share 
its patented methods for file swapping between computers - with one 
exception. Producers of free software would not be allowed to use the patent.

Moglen calls it a warning shot. Microsoft could undercut the growing 
popularity of Linux by patenting future technologies, then refusing to 
license the patents to free software makers. This could make it impossible 
for Linux or other free software products to interoperate with Windows. And 
the Free Software Foundation's only recourse would be a long, costly fight 
in the patent courts.

''We have no truck with software patents, and we will continue to litigate 
against them,'' Moglen said. But his $20,000 wouldn't even cover the 
photocopying bills in a major patent fight. No wonder he's passing the hat.

On the far fringes of peril, there's the plan by Senator Ernest Hollings, a 
South Carolina Democrat, to force computer makers to build anti-piracy 
chips into their hardware. Boucher said this legislation died in committee, 
thanks to vehement opposition from Vermont Democrat Senator Patrick Leahy. 
But Moglen still frets about the lobbying clout of the Hollywood movie 
studios, and calls upon his fellow geeks to pony up now for the conflicts 
to come.

The coders who gave us free software only cared about writing quality code, 
and never mind about politics and patent rights. Their own success has 
brought that era to an end. Whether free software can remain free is 
becoming an issue of national policy and, as Moglen said, ''we live in a 
place where policy discussion is conducted with money.''

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@xxxxxxxxxx
******************************
Associated Press
Open-source movement faces big adversaries
By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff, 11/25/2002

is speech completed, Eben Moglen retreated into the living room of MIT 
computer science professor Hal Abelson, uncapped a pen, and wrote out a 
check for $20,000.

No doubt he can afford it. Law professors at Columbia University probably 
earn a pretty penny. Still, the money's going to the Free Software 
Foundation, the Cambridge nonprofit group that might be termed the Vatican 
of the open-source software movement. Moglen's been fighting the 
foundation's legal battles for years, free of charge. You'd think that 
would be enough of a contribution.

Moglen didn't think so. He'd come to town to appeal for donations from 
concerned software geeks and couldn't pass the hat without putting in a few 
bucks of his own.

But why so generous? Because Moglen is one worried guy. Even though the 
free software movement has generated a host of major products - the Linux 
operating system, the Apache Web server, the Emacs text editing system - 
Moglen thinks the movement faces a struggle for survival, with scarcely a 
dime in its war chest. ''We're a small organization running a big 
revolution,'' said Moglen, ''and we have big adversaries.''

The foundation is based on the idea that software should be entirely open, 
with users free to study its underlying source code and modify it in any 
way they wish. Its enemies, in Moglen's view, are the companies that want 
to turn our computer software and hardware into hermetically sealed black 
boxes. Commercial software makers, movie makers, and music producers are 
desperate to prevent us from making perfect - and perfectly illegal - 
digital copies of their products.

Their arsenal includes software patents to prevent other free software 
writers from emulating useful new features, laws that forbid free software 
programmers from bypassing encryption software, and, perhaps someday, a 
chip that could stop your machine from running free software at all.

Free software folk are utterly opposed to the idea of patenting software 
and ferociously hostile to computers with built-in anti-

piracy hardware. And they insist on the right to produce software that 
bypasses any security feature the music and movie makers might conceive. 
All this sets the stage for a series of legal duels that the Free Software 
Foundation presently can't afford to fight.

The organization is already engaged in a campaign against the Digital 
Millennium Copyright Act, a law that bans consumers from circumventing the 
encryption of digital music and movies. Norwegian teenager Jon Johansen 
wrote a program that cracked digital movie encryption, so he could view 
DVDs on his Linux computer; his reward was a brief stay in jail. So far US 
courts have upheld the DMCA and refused to allow Web sites to offer copies 
of Johansen's software. But the foundation vows to continue the fight.

They've won some potent allies, too. Richard Clarke, President Bush's 
director of computer network security, has said that the DMCA's antipiracy 
restrictions should be relaxed. And US Representative Rick Boucher, a 
Virginia Democrat, has drawn up legislation to do exactly that. ''There is 
a rising tide of public sentiment that the DMCA went too far,'' says 
Boucher. ''It criminalizes conduct that is really innocent.'' Boucher's law 
would legalize Johansen's software for personal use, but not for those 
wanting to mass-produce illegal copies of a video.

Still, Boucher said it may be a couple of years before his legislation is 
passed. Meanwhile, the Free Software Foundation must keep battling the 
DMCA. And there are more battles to come.

Patents, for instance. Microsoft Corp. last year said it would freely share 
its patented methods for file swapping between computers - with one 
exception. Producers of free software would not be allowed to use the patent.

Moglen calls it a warning shot. Microsoft could undercut the growing 
popularity of Linux by patenting future technologies, then refusing to 
license the patents to free software makers. This could make it impossible 
for Linux or other free software products to interoperate with Windows. And 
the Free Software Foundation's only recourse would be a long, costly fight 
in the patent courts.

''We have no truck with software patents, and we will continue to litigate 
against them,'' Moglen said. But his $20,000 wouldn't even cover the 
photocopying bills in a major patent fight. No wonder he's passing the hat.

On the far fringes of peril, there's the plan by Senator Ernest Hollings, a 
South Carolina Democrat, to force computer makers to build anti-piracy 
chips into their hardware. Boucher said this legislation died in committee, 
thanks to vehement opposition from Vermont Democrat Senator Patrick Leahy. 
But Moglen still frets about the lobbying clout of the Hollywood movie 
studios, and calls upon his fellow geeks to pony up now for the conflicts 
to come.

The coders who gave us free software only cared about writing quality code, 
and never mind about politics and patent rights. Their own success has 
brought that era to an end. Whether free software can remain free is 
becoming an issue of national policy and, as Moglen said, ''we live in a 
place where policy discussion is conducted with money.''

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@xxxxxxxxxx

****************************
New York Times
November 25, 2002
Online Campaign Fund Reports Prove Popular
By REBECCA FAIRLEY RANEY

In the last five years, new technology has pushed data about campaign 
contributors out of file cabinets into the around-the-clock visibility of 
the Web. Many states adopted the new electronic filing systems with 
reservations, but most state election officials reported in a survey 
released today that they worked well, saved money and were popular with the 
public.

The officials also reported strong satisfaction with the new systems among 
candidates and the news media. The survey, by the Center of Governmental 
Studies, a nonprofit research group in Los Angeles, covered officials in 50 
states, six cities and six Canadian provinces.

"We used to have crowds of reporters waiting for copies," said Lee 
Daghlian, director of public information for the New York Board of 
Elections in Albany. "Now, no one shows up here."

The survey found that 46 states and the federal government collected 
campaign financial disclosure statements with computer technology. Most of 
those states post some of that information on their Web sites. Twenty 
states require candidates and committees to file electronically if they 
raise or spend a certain amount of money.

In some states, candidates may choose whether to file reports on paper or 
electronically. Officials in some of those states, including Florida and 
New Mexico, indicated in the survey that they wanted to make electronic 
filing mandatory.

"We're learning that if it's not mandatory, most filers won't take the time 
to do it," said Bob Stern, president of the Center for Governmental 
Studies. In many cases, Mr. Stern said, candidates fear that making the 
data public faster places them at a disadvantage.

The survey found that most criticism of electronic filing involved 
technical issues. Several officials said they needed more oversight of 
software vendors, more technical expertise in their offices and more 
testing of the computer programs.

Many state legislatures have fought over computer filing and Internet 
disclosure. In California, six bills to approve electronic disclosure were 
killed in three years. The seventh bill passed in 1997.

Opponents argued that the systems were costly, would create more work for 
government and invaded contributors' privacy.

In the 28 jurisdictions with figures available, the median cost of setting 
up the systems was $164,000. The costs ranged from less than $25,000 in 
Arizona and Alaska to more than $1 million in California. For the 20 
jurisdictions in which the figures were available, the median annual budget 
for the programs was $87,500.

New York State started requiring candidates to file financial reports 
electronically in 1999. The state issues free software to help them do so. 
Once filed, the reports are posted on the Internet.

Mr. Daghlian said the greater disclosure encouraged more accurate 
reporting. "The public looks at it, so what's filed is of better quality 
and more honest," he said.
****************************
News.com
Home is where the computer is
By Lisa M. Bowman
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
November 24, 2002, 9:01 PM PT


Computers are playing a more central role in the home, with more and more 
people citing them as the most important electronic device in their household.
A Harris Interactive study backed by Microsoft and Dell Computer found that 
50 percent of respondents said the computer was more important than any 
other digital device they own, including CD players, cell phones and DVD 
players. The 2002 International Digital Lifestyle study polled 1,500 people 
in the United States and Europe who own a computer and at least one other 
digital device--a prime target market for many consumer electronics makers.

The study did not ask people about their television use, however.


"We're seeing a lifestyle shift from almost exclusive television use to a 
higher percentage of people's lives spent on a computer," said Mark Oldani, 
director of marketing at Dell.

The study also found that nearly one in three computer owners plans to buy 
another digital product this holiday season.

If the respondents follow through on their shopping promise, it will be 
welcome news to the tech sector, which is bracing for what could be another 
dismal holiday season. Although a greater number of people are expected to 
spend more money online than ever before, uncertainty about the economy and 
the global situation may discourage people from spending with abandon.

The Harris study showed that younger people who are on the verge of 
entering their prime spending years are more likely to value their 
computers, with 57 percent saying it's their most important machine. Among 
35- to 49-year-olds, 48 percent said the computer was at the top of their 
list, and just 44 percent of those over 50 counted computers as their top 
electronic gadget.

What's more, 84 percent of U.S. respondents and 69 percent of Europeans 
surveyed said their computer bolstered their confidence in other products.

Computer use also varied significantly according to the age group. Many 18- 
to 34-year-olds said listening to music was the most important activity 
they performed with their PC; people in the 35 to 49 age range often cited 
job-related tasks; and people over 50 leaned toward e-mail.

Not surprisingly, most people--some 61 percent of respondents--said 
connecting to the Internet was their most important task. That number was 
consistent across age and gender.
******************************
Government Computer News
Justice is slammed again on INS systems
By Wilson P. Dizard III

The General Accounting Office, investigating at the behest of House 
Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), has concluded 
that the Justice Department has failed to properly oversee major IT 
projects at the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

GAO auditors found that Justice's process for overseeing IT investments was 
severely flawed, said Randy Hite, the office's director for IT architecture 
and systems.

Noting that Justice has the responsibility to ensure that INS and its other 
agencies spend their IT dollars effectively, Hite said, "If you or I were 
going to do that, we would want to know certain information about a 
project: What I am going to get for what dollar expenditure over what time, 
and how I am going to measure whether that is accruing or not?"

But, Hite said, Justice "is not measuring the progress being made on these 
projects. You can't manage what you don't measure."

Hite added that the results of the investigation, in the report Justice 
Plans to Improve Oversight of Agency Projects, are particularly troubling 
because of the INS' poor track record in implementing IT projects and its 
integral role in homeland security.

"The antidote gets to the underlying cause," Hite said. "The cause in this 
case is that actually doing their jobs has not been a priority for them."

Hite cited the Judiciary Committee's longstanding concern for the 
effectiveness of Justice's IT operations, which has led to several hearings 
on the matter. Other lawmakers joining Sensenbrenner in requesting the 
report were ranking minority member John Conyers (D-Mich.), chairman of the 
Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims George Gekas (R-Pa.) and that 
subcommittee's ranking minority member Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Ga.)

In asking GAO to conduct the study, the lawmakers cited criticism of 
Justice IT efforts by the department's inspector general and the prospect 
that continued failures in INS systems would frustrate efforts to prevent 
crime and terrorism by aliens.

The GAO reviewed four INS systems:


the Automated I-94 system, which was designed to capture arrival and 
departure data at some ports of entry but was retired in February because 
it did not meet mission needs.


the Enforcement Case Tracking System, which serves to book persons who are 
arrested.


the Automated Biometric Identification System, which screens aliens on the 
basis of biometric and other data.


the Integrated Card Protection System, which produces three types of 
identification cards.

Justice generally agreed with the results of the report and said it would 
improve its systems management oversight. Hite said Justice CIO Vance Hitch 
has pledged to reform IT management at the department.
*********************************
Government Computer News
11/22/02
Praise on the Hill for Forman, but more work remains
By Jason Miller

Congressional staff members this week lauded the work of Mark Forman, 
associate director for IT and E-Government in the Office of Management and 
Budget, for pushing agencies toward collaboration and efficiency on the 25 
Quicksilver e-government projects. But they also said the projects have a 
long way to go and that Congress will be paying attention.

In fact, the General Accounting Office will issue a report on the projects 
to the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee by the end of the year, said 
Kevin Landy, a professional staff member for the committee. Its chairman 
Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) requested the report.

Landy spoke earlier this week at a roundtable discussion in Falls Church, 
Va., sponsored by the Industry Advisory Council. He was joined by Peter 
Levine, staff director for the Senate Armed Services Committee; Melissa 
Wojciak, staff director for the House Government Reform Subcommittee on 
Technology and Procurement Policy; and Steve Kelman, a professor at Harvard 
University's Kennedy School of Government and former administrator of the 
Office of Federal Procurement Policy.

"The [25] projects are a small number of all the agencies' e-government 
projects, and I'm not sure Mark Forman knows about all of them," Landy 
said. "But good management must trickle down from the top and he is trying 
to put good management in place."

Levine said having a top-down management approach makes sure all the rules 
and regulations are being followed and that is important to get projects 
such as these done.

Wojciak said Forman deserves much of the credit for bringing agencies 
together. She said the E-Government Act of 2002, which Congress recently 
sent to the president to be signed, will codify Forman's office to ensure 
continued oversight.

"We've seen with the President's Management Agenda that there really is 
management in the Office of Budget and Management," she said. "The 
subcommittee will be interested to see how the scorecard will be used to 
bring agencies up to speed and force them to use better management tools."

Kelman said Forman's position within OMB supplied him with the tools to 
move agencies. "I'm moderately optimistic that these projects will get 
done, and Mark is doing the things that need to be done," Kelman said.
***************************
Government Computer News
11/22/02

FAA continues smart card program without funding

By Dipka Bhambhani
GCN Staff

The Federal Aviation Administration made small strides earlier this month 
in developing its smart card program, despite funding woes caused by the 
federal budget impasse.

The Transportation Department agency's contractor, Advanced Management 
Technology Inc. of Arlington, Va., bought software from ImageWare Systems 
Inc. of San Diego to build the backbone of the agency's online smart-card 
tracking system.

But Transportation cannot issue a request for proposals for any large 
smart-card program because the agency has no funding, FAA spokeswoman 
Rebecca Trexler said.

The agency has no smart-card deployment plan"It's sort of up in the air at 
this point," she saidbut is working on one piece of the system.

The development is part of the FAA's ID Media Program to create 16 kinds of 
credentials, badges and ID cards for FAA employees, special agents and 
federal marshals.

The ImageWare software developers' kit includes identification card 
software that will help the agency produce credentials online for ID cards, 
visas and possibly passports, and connect those credentials to a 
proprietary FAA database that will store employee information.

A Microsoft SQL Server database will include background and clearance 
information as well.

So far, the agency has decided to use the technology only to support its 
in-house tracking system for smart cards, Trexler said. The software can 
fit into existing access-control, time and attendance, point-of-sale and 
human resource applications, and will create a common interface to a system 
that all Transportation agencies can use.

Each DOT agency will have a different-looking card but will connect to the 
same system, Trexler said.

FAA also is conducting a smart-card pilot for the entire department, she 
said. Biometric cards for logistical access also is in FAA's plans but will 
not be part of the initial smart-card deployment. "We don't have an 
expected rollout because we have no money," she said.
****************************
Government Computer News
11/21/02
Georgia considers bar code biometrics for driver's licenses
By Dipka Bhambhani

Georgia next year could be among the first states to begin attaching facial 
biometric data to its driver's licenses and nondriver identification cards. 
The state this week signed a six-year, $20 million contract with Viisage 
Technology Inc. to manage its ID production system.

The technology places biometric data in a bar code on the back of newly 
issued cards.

The Littleton, Mass., company's Viisage FaceExplorer devices could collect 
facial images of card applicants and link them to the state's Automated 
Fingerprint Identification System, which was developed by Sagem Morpho Inc. 
of Tacoma, Wash.

Georgia's Department of Motor Vehicle Safety has been collecting 
fingerprints since 1996 in an AFIS system separate from the FBI's 
Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System. 3M Co.'s Confirm 
security film will protect the cards from tampering.

DMVS commissioner Tim Burgess said the agency was considering long-term 
requirements in case the state legislature mandates biometrics or other 
strong identifying security mechanisms for the state's IDs.

"The requirements are likely to change," Burgess said.

"[Viisage] presented a proposal we felt was technically qualified," he 
said. "We asked for new security features, the capability to do things like 
facial recognition, a new point-of-sale system and digitized document 
scanning at all workstations, which will be a significant improvement in 
our ability to detect fraudulent breeder documents used in the issuance of 
drivers licenses."

Burgess said that although Viisage can provide advanced security features 
to state IDs, the DMVS wants to discuss with the state's governor-elect and 
the Legislature whether implementing biometrics and other security features 
are necessary.

"We did not want the Legislature to require some feature in the future or 
Congress to come along and mandate a feature and us say 'Our technology 
won't allow us to do that,' " Burgess said.

Viisage provides facial recognition technology to five other states. 
Illinois has been using its products to discover who is holding multiple 
government-issued ID cards. That state's Vehicle Services Department 
compares new photographs against thousands stored in its databases.

"There's a lot of pressure to make improvements soon," said Jay Maxwell, 
CIO of the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, speaking 
Tuesday at the CardTech/SecurTech ID conference in Washington. "We see that 
as a good way to use facial recognition technology."

Maxwell said Illinois has already found "tens of thousands" of people with 
multiple ID cards under different names. In January, he said, he will 
propose new standards to make state cards more uniform. Biometrics will not 
be part of the proposal, however.

Georgia will also implement Viisage's FacePass device for access to DMVS 
facilities. The company said the contract paves the way for state police to 
work with the DMVS to create an identity-checking system.

Maxwell said the primary value of biometrics on state-issued cards is not 
to help police verify identities of stopped drivers, but rather to reduce 
fraud. "What we're trying to solve is people using multiple licenses," he said.
******************************
Government Computer News
11/21/02
NEC shows off environmentally friendly PC
By John Breeden II

LAS VEGASNEC Solutions Inc. showed off its new ecologically friendly, 
eerily quiet PC yesterday at Comdex. The computer has no cooling fan that 
would contribute to noise pollution. Company officials also said the PC 
contains no harmful chemicals or materials.

The PowerMate eco has a 900-MHz Crusoe processor from Transmeta Corp. of 
Santa Clara, Calif., and a 20G hard drive. The standard unit has 256M of 
RAM and ships with Microsoft Windows XP or Windows 2000.

The system, which sells for $1,599, complies with the Environmental 
Protection Agency's Energy-Star specifications for energy-efficient 
appliances and meets the much stricter standards for low energy consumption 
set by Japan. The emphasis on energy efficiency that has made the system 
popular overseas will help it find approval with government buyers in 
America, NEC officials said, particularly in states such as California, 
where energy consumption issues receive a lot of attention. It is rated at 
31 watts of power consumption.

"We are bringing our [energy-efficiency] expertise to the U.S. market with 
the introduction of the PowerMate eco," said Larry Miller, vice president 
and general manager of the Mobile Solutions Division of NEC. "When you hear 
about children getting lead poisoning from rummaging through landfills in 
developing Third World countries searching for spare computer parts to 
sell, you realize the industry has a responsibility to address these 
problems."

The eco has a lead-free motherboard and comes standard with a 15-inch TFT 
XGA LCD monitor that contains no boron. The monitor and computer together 
have an 11.5-inch by 8.9-inch footprint. The system comes with either a 
CD-RW or DVD drive. There are two PC Card slots, one Type III-B Mini-PC 
slot and a serial port.

The plastic case is also environmentally friendly, company officials said. 
It is constructed of NEC's patented NuCycle recyclable plastic. NEC 
officials also said the computer contains no cadmium, cyanic compounds, 
hexavalent chromium or organic phosphatespollutants found in most computers.
*******************************
Government Computer News
11/21/02

Agencies still struggle with management agenda

By Jason Miller
GCN Staff

The Energy Department's work on its e-government projects earned the 
department the biggest jump in that category in the latest President's 
Management Agenda grades, handed out by the Office of Management and Budget 
last week.

Energy improved to yellow from red in overall e-government to join nine 
others that garnered yellow or green scores for their e-government work.

OMB gave 26 agencies red, yellow or green scores for their efforts to meet 
the goals of five agenda items: human capital, competitive sourcing, 
financial management, e-government and budget and performance. Green means 
an agency has met all standards; yellow means it has met some criteria; and 
red means it has serious problems. OMB also graded agencies' progress in 
meeting the goals.

The final scorecard for fiscal 2002 showed mixed progress on e-government 
for many agencies. Six agencies, including Energy, the General Services 
Administration, NASA and the Health and Human Services, State and Treasury 
departments, dropped a grade on progress compared to their midyear reports. 
State received the worst mark, dropping to red on progress from yellow.

The National Science Foundation again received the only green on 
e-government. In fact, the foundation received the only two greens for 
current status among all five agenda items. It also earned a green score 
for financial management.

The scorecard for the first quarter of 2003 will be printed in the 
president's 2004 budget submission to Congress.

"After planning improvements, we have entered that important stage of 
implementation where our success or failure will be evident not just by 
looking at our status on the scorecard, but also by what concrete steps we 
have taken to improve management in the executive branch," said Mark 
Everson, OMB's deputy director for management.

The latest scorecard can be found at www.results.gov.
*******************************
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.
******************************
Government Executive
November 22, 2002
White House science team outlines anti-terrorism focus
By Bara Vaida, National Journal's Technology Daily

The Bush administration's science and technology policy team has identified 
five areas related to fighting terrorism that likely will receive 
additional investment as the fiscal 2004 budget is developed for release 
early next year, according to White House science adviser John Marburger.

The research areas are information infrastructure development, behavioral 
and risk management, terrorist-related crime and networks, public health 
and crisis response intervention and socioeconomic intervention, and 
international policy, Marburger said in a speech to the Consortium of 
Social Science Associations on Monday.

To "identify areas that warrant additional investment," Jim Griffin, 
assistant director of social, behavioral and educational issues at the 
White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), worked with 
staff from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of 
Health, the Justice and Education departments, the Centers for Disease 
Control and Prevention, the Pentagon and the CIA through the 
administration's anti-terrorism task force created this year.

In the field of information infrastructure, the administration plans to 
emphasize research on developing distributed databases for state and local 
emergency-response resources to facilitate rapid access to information. In 
the behavioral research arena, they will concentrate on individuals' risk 
assessments and reactions to extreme events.

The research priority looking at terrorism networks will examine how 
terrorist groups select, recruit and train members, and how they choose 
attack methods and organize. In the public health field, the aim is to 
conduct studies on traumatic effects of stress and their influence on 
behavior. Finally, scientists will seek to understand vulnerabilities in 
the economy that could be susceptible to various types of attacks.

Marburger noted that the administration's interagency task force on science 
and technology, called the National Science and Technology Council, is 
creating a subcommittee to address issues on education workforce 
development. The goal is to work on issues ranging from projected 
shortfalls in skilled workers to effective methods of promoting women and 
minorities.

While Marburger did not identify how much money would be allocated to such 
research, he said in a Wednesday speech that the broad research and 
development budget for fiscal 2004 would be higher than the $110 billion 
allocated for fiscal 2003.

"Since 1950, Americans have won half the Nobel Prizes. That has happened 
because our society believes science is important and has invested heavily 
in it," Marburger told a group gathered for a science awards ceremony. 
"President Bush asked Congress this year to appropriate the largest budget 
for science ever, more than $110 billion. That number will increase again 
next year, despite competing urgent national needs."

Since Bush took office, scientists have been watching the budget process 
closely, and some have been lobbying Congress and the administration to 
spend more on non life-sciences research.
********************************
Government Executive
November 22, 2002
Officials appeal for continued e-signature exemptions
By Maureen Sirhal, National Journal's Technology Daily

Federal courts and the Environmental Protection Agency are urging the Bush 
administration to maintain language that exempts documents relating to 
court cases and hazardous materials from a law that gives legal weight to 
electronic signatures.

In comments filed earlier this month, judicial officials told the National 
Telecommunications and Information Administration that they want more time 
to promulgate their own rules for expanding the use of electronic-based 
documents before being forced to comply with the 2000 Electronic Signatures 
in Global and National Commerce (ESIGN) Act.

That statute gave legal weight to transactions such as mortgages or loans 
completed entirely electronically. But it also included exemptions in six 
categories so that lawmakers could better study the potential impact of the 
move to e-signatures.

NTIA is collecting comments on those six categories and will report to 
Congress by June. The categories include: court records; wills and 
testaments; domestic and family law records; contracts governed by state 
commercial law; cancellation notices for utility services; cancellation 
notices for health or life insurance benefits; property foreclosures, 
evictions and default notices; product-recall notices; and shipping papers 
for hazardous materials and dangerous goods.

The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts said its exemptions should be 
maintained. "The federal judiciary continues its efforts to consider how 
best to balance the needs of the courts, litigants (including consumers) 
and the public in the specific content of judicial processes," the office 
stated. "Removing [the] ESIGN exception ... might create uncertainties" in 
those arenas.

Judicial rules already allow the use of e-signatures on certain records. 
But the office noted that eliminating the ESIGN exemption and providing 
full legal acceptance of e-signatures for all court documents could raise 
concerns about issues that "may be peculiar to court contexts," such as 
ensuring that due-process rights of criminals are protected.

EPA also argued that revoking the exemption for documents concerning 
hazardous materials would inhibit the agency's ability to implement legal 
mandates to ensure that products such as pesticides are properly handled.

Under ESIGN rules, the EPA noted that labels for pesticides could be 
electronically stored but added that "unlabeled pesticide containers and 
application devices themselves present dangers" because workers could not 
instantly identify a product and might misapply it. The exemption also 
ensures that certain materials are transported and tracked with proper 
identification, EPA said.

But some opponents of the exemptions argue that they discourage innovation 
and stalls advances in the covered sectors. University of Cincinnati law 
professor James O'Reilly, for example, told NTIA that the ESIGN exemption 
for hazardous waste is hampering improved efficiency in the sector when it 
comes to transporting materials.
*******************************
Computerworld
Users Begin to Demand Software Usability Tests
Boeing requiring vendors to follow new usability standard for products
By Patrick Thibodeau
NOVEMBER 25, 2002

WASHINGTON -- The Boeing Co. is changing the way it buys software and is 
making a product's usability -- the ease with which end users can be 
trained on and operate the product -- a fundamental purchasing criterion. 
It's a move the aerospace giant sees as an essential means of controlling 
IT costs.

"We simply can't afford to pay for products that cost us a lot of overhead 
anymore," said Keith Butler, a technical fellow at Boeing's Phantom Works 
research and development arm. When thousands of end users are involved, 
design flaws can cost millions of dollars in lost time and productivity, he 
said.

What's helping Boeing change its purchasing approach is the recent 
development of a standard for comparing product usability that was 
spearheaded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Called the Common Industry Format for Usability Test Reports, the standard 
outlines a format for reporting test conditions and results and gives user 
companies enough information about a test to replicate it. It's a means for 
objectively evaluating software, say its backers.

Next month, NIST intends to seek international standards recognition. The 
standard has already received American National Standards Institute 
certification.

CIF's success as a purchasing tool depends on whether other companies 
follow Boeing and make usability a "peer," as Boeing officials put it, of 
such traditional purchasing criteria as a product's functionality, price 
and system requirements. If that happens, users say, the standard could 
have a far-reaching effect in improving the usability of software.

"The real value of CIF, quite honestly, is that if vendors know we are 
expecting it, meaning large software purchasers, they will focus their 
attention on usability and hopefully make their products better before they 
ever come out the door," said Jack Means, superintendent of usability at 
State Farm Insurance Cos. in Bloomington, Ill.

Boeing played a lead role in the development of CIF after its experience 
and internal studies showed that usability played a significant role in 
total cost of ownership. In one pilot of the CIF standard on a widely 
deployed productivity application, the Chicago-based company said improved 
product usability had a cost benefit of about $45 million.

Butler said it's much better to have vendors refine an interface design 
"than to have thousands of end users doing it involuntarily on top of their 
jobs and then just feeling frustrated."

Spotting Problems Early

Doug Francisco, director of IS architecture at Boeing's commercial airplane 
division, maintains that CIF will improve the ability of the IT department 
to spot problems before a product is rolled out to employees. The company 
has looked at usability in purchasing, "but sometimes we wouldn't discover 
the inefficiencies of a software product until we brought it in-house," he 
said.
Microsoft Corp., in its capacity as a CIF development participant, has 
incorporated the usability testing it conducted on its Windows XP, Windows 
ME and Windows 2000 operating systems into the CIF format, said Kent 
Sullivan, Microsoft's usability lead for the Windows client.

Sullivan said Microsoft is prepared to use CIF but noted that its adoption 
will depend on customer demand. Microsoft typically doesn't receive 
questions about usability from customers, so when users do ask about it, he 
said, "it indicates that they are ahead of the curve a little bit."

In the past year, interest in CIF has grown from about 50 firms taking part 
in the NIST effort to more than 150, including PeopleSoft Inc., Oracle 
Corp. and Eastman Kodak Co.

The CIF format will also be adapted for hardware testing, said Emile Morse, 
who heads the effort for NIST. Morse said she believes CIF makes it 
possible for vendors and users to discuss usability as a science rather 
than marketing hype. "I think CIF gives a lot of credibility to the 
practice of usability," she said.
********************************
Computerworld
Senators sketch out new broadband bill for '03
By Gretel Johnston, IDG News Service
NOVEMBER 22, 2002

A bill expected to be introduced in the U.S. Senate early next year is 
being promoted to encourage the expansion of broadband Internet access by 
making more broadcast spectrum available to devices that incorporate new 
technologies such as Wi-Fi.

Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and George Allen (R-Va.) have announced 
plans to introduce the bill in the 108th Congress, which convenes in 
January. The bill proposes to jump-start expansion of broadband 
technologies in a way that sponsors say breaks with traditional thinking 
about how that can be accomplished.

The Boxer-Allen proposal would require the Federal Communications 
Commission to make more broadcast spectrum available for devices that 
incorporate new technologies such as Wi-Fi wireless network connectivity, 
according to a statement issued by Boxer yesterday. The bill would also 
require the FCC to develop guidelines for the expanded portion of the 
broadcast spectrum that will be used by these devices to avoid signal 
congestion and interference.

Current regulations limit Wi-Fi and similar technologies to a small portion 
of the spectrum, which in turn limits their development, Boxer said. The 
Wi-Fi 802.11b connectivity specification is used for high-speed wireless 
Internet connectivity. Wi-Fi "hot spots" -- the zones where it's possible 
to connect -- are typically found in places such as airport lounges and 
coffee shops.

Another goal of the Boxer-Allen legislation is to give rural communities 
new ways of accessing the Internet.

The proposal would follow an ill-fated attempt in the current Congress to 
spur the growth of broadband that set off fierce debates within the 
industry. The Internet Freedom and Broadband Deployment Act, better known 
as the Tauzin-Dingell bill, won approval in the House of Representatives in 
February, but died in the Senate.

That bill was crafted to make it easier for incumbent local phone companies 
such as Verizon Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp. to offer high-speed 
Internet services. But it also would have eliminated regulations that 
require incumbents to open the data component of their local telephone 
networks to competitors before receiving approval from regulators to enter 
long-distance data markets.

Work is already under way in Washington to reform U.S. spectrum policy. 
Earlier this month, the FCC began considering recommendations, including 
more flexible use of spectrum, made by a task force assigned to look at the 
U.S. spectrum policy. Also recommended are a major revision of rules 
governing signal interference and the resale or lease of spectrum under 
certain conditions.

The recommendations are aimed at modernizing the rules that guide 
management of the nation's spectrum and at allowing the rules to evolve 
from a traditional government "command-and-control" model to a more 
flexible, consumer-oriented approach, the FCC said in a Nov. 7 statement 
accompanying the task force's report.
*****************************
USA Today
Internet forces schools to grapple with speech, copyright issues

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP)  With each click of his mouse, Harvard sophomore 
Mathias Crawford moves deeper into a virtually limitless library of free 
movies, TV shows and DVDs  and drives the entertainment industry batty.

"The programs just make it so easy to use this stuff," Crawford says, 
skimming over lists of the latest Austin Powers and Star Wars movies. The 
files live on other people's hard drives but could, in seconds, be summoned 
to the one in Crawford's dorm room over Harvard's powerful computer network.

It was on college campuses  where cash-starved, music-loving students found 
wide-pipe networks  that file-swapping first caught fire with Napster.

But Napster's demise only unleashed a flood of other services that trade 
not only music but TV shows and movies. Usership of file-sharing service 
KaZaA quadrupled in the past year to more than 9.4 million, according to 
comScore Networks, which tracks the sector.

Universities are in a bind. Let such services run rampant, and risk the 
wrath of the entertainment industry and clogging their networks. But by 
clamping down too much, they risking intruding on the rights of students.

"For colleges, this really is the proverbial digital rock in a digital hard 
place," said Casey Green of the Campus Computing Project, which studies 
technology issues that affect campuses.

Pressure to crack down is increasing.

Last month, four entertainment industry groups sent a letter to 2,300 
university presidents urging a tough stand against copyright infringement. 
Harvard used to get three or four complaints a year from the industry about 
activity on its network; now it investigates 25 a week.

Many schools don't need to be convinced. File-swapping grinds their 
networks to a halt, crowding out legitimate uses.

A growing number of schools, including Harvard, are employing a policy 
called bandwidth or packet "shaping." By limiting how much of the network 
is allocated to services like KaZaA, they keep the network clear for other 
users, but don't block particular services or directly monitor students.

"It seems to be a good approach for us," said Jerry Smith, information 
systems director at 7,000-student Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, 
Kan., which started shaping nine months ago after other approaches failed.

And, universities say, they go after abusers and abide by legal 
responsibilities to cut off service to repeat offenders. Northeastern 
University in Boston has a daily class on responsible computing for 
offenders  a kind of cyber-detention, said Bob Weir, vice president of 
information services at Northeastern University.

Most desist. But that's only if students get caught, and most don't.

The rules can be gray, and universities are loath to alienate students by 
cracking down too hard and depriving students of their beloved networks. At 
Northeastern University in Boston, the 1,800 students who responded to a 
recent survey ranked Internet connection quality their top consideration in 
choosing housing, ahead of even food and their roommate.

"Every cohort of students that comes into this place has markedly greater 
expectations associated with the Internet," said Weir, who just oversaw a 
$1 million upgrade of Northeastern's network 18 megabits to 70.

Ultimately, schools say they're reluctant to keep tabs on exactly what 
students are doing with their computers.

"We don't want to get into that business," said Brian Rust, a spokesman for 
the information technology division at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, 
which has 41,000 students.

Still, some believe more monitoring is inevitable. Michael Zastrocky, a 
former college administrator and now an analyst at research firm Gartner, 
estimates 80% of schools that "don't monitor or don't get involved" will 
face an episode of negative publicity or legal action within five years 
(though their legal vulnerability is unclear).

Meanwhile, monitoring software is improving, and universities may soon run 
out of excuses for not using it.

"It's not a requirement to have software that monitors access but I think 
it's going to become one in the next three to five years," Zastrocky said.

It may already be happening. Surveying schools nationwide, University of 
Michigan professor Virginia Rezmierski found extensive evidence that some 
kinds of "logging" by network administrators is already in place.

Most of the activity is appropriate, network management, she said. But, she 
said, many schools aren't setting up policies that distinguish between 
looking for patterns and other types of logging that match content to IP 
addresses.

"There was more of that than I expected to find," she said. "They're doing 
more logging, and they want to do more."

Monitoring worries civil liberties advocates, who say the free exchange of 
information is one of the basic principles of university life.

"What's going on here is an attempt of the recording industry and other 
copyright trade associations to turn higher education institutions into 
policing bodies," said Chris Hoofnagle of the Electronic Privacy 
Information Center, a privacy rights group that countered the entertainment 
industry's letter to university presidents with its own urging them not to 
go overboard.

The entertainment industry disputes the charge.

"Exactly how universities do this is up to them," said Cary Sherman, 
president of the Recording Industry Association of America, one of the 
signers of the letter to university presidents. "We certainly wouldn't be 
proposing that they invade anybody's privacy."

He insists universities and industry are on the same side. After all, 
universities have their own intellectual property to protect.

So far, education, bandwidth shaping and monitoring have done almost 
nothing to stem the flow of files. The entertainment industry has cited 
estimates that as many as 2.6 billion copyrighted files are illegally 
swapped each month.

A musician himself, Harvard's Crawford has mixed feelings about copyright 
protections. A jazz and hip-hop fan, he uses the Web to track down music he 
can't find elsewhere, and often buys CDs after scoping them out online. He 
says he plays by the rules and obeys the law, but says he'd be happy to pay 
a little more tuition for full but guilt-free access.

He hopes Harvard won't get too intrusive, but acknowledges its dilemma.

"I'm glad I'm not in that position," he said.
***********************************
Los Angeles Times
China Tries to Woo Its Tech Talent Back Home
Silicon Valley dot-com casualties can return to a booming economy in their 
native land.
By Rone Tempest
November 25 2002

SAN JOSE -- After two decades of watching thousands of top computer 
engineering and science students immigrate to the United States, the 
Chinese government has launched an aggressive push to win back some of the 
country's brainpower from the economically stressed Silicon Valley.

"We think some Chinese engineers will go back to China because they have 
been laid off here and have no jobs," said Wang Yunxiang, China's consul 
general in San Francisco. "In comparison, the overall situation in China is 
very good."

Since 1979, when the late leader Deng Xiaoping broke with China's 
isolationist policy, more than 400,000 mainland Chinese students have 
traveled abroad for graduate study. Only a relatively small number, 
estimated at 10% to 25%, have returned home.

Many ended up settling in the Silicon Valley, where they own start-up tech 
businesses or work as integrated circuit design engineers in many of the 
region's most successful companies.

But the downturn in the U.S. high-tech industry, along with a booming 
market in China, has renewed hopes that the people whom former Premier Zhao 
Ziyang once called China's "stored brainpower overseas" may be ready to return.

Many cities have shiny skyscrapers labeled hopefully in Chinese: "Returning 
Student Entrepreneurial Building." Chinese companies and development parks 
now offer salary and benefits for recruits roughly equivalent in purchasing 
power to those here in one of America's most expensive communities.

The Chinese government also sponsors all-expenses-paid trips to China, 
where top officials fawn over visiting engineers, who are sumptuously 
entertained.

A returning engineer with several years' experience in America can expect 
free housing, a car and driver, and other perks not available in the United 
States. Foreign science and technology degrees convey high social status on 
returning engineers.

Different Job Markets

"We are kind of in the doldrums in the job market over here, but over there 
people are welcomed with open arms," said Robert P. Lee, chief executive of 
two Silicon Valley software companies and president of the Asia America 
MultiTechnology Assn., one of several business associations composed 
primarily of mainland and Hong Kong Chinese engineers.

"The benefit packages are smaller but, in the local economy, still quite 
good," he said.

Many expect the recruiting push to accelerate now that 59-year-old Hu 
Jintao, a graduate of the prestigious Qinghua University engineering 
school, has been chosen as the country's new leader. In a rare overseas 
visit laden with political symbolism, Hu toured the Silicon Valley even 
before being named general secretary of the ruling Communist Party last week.

The China push was on display most recently at a San Jose job fair -- paid 
for by Chinese state sponsors -- that drew more than 4,000 China-born 
engineers to the Santa Clara County Convention Center.

"It was much bigger than the typical recruiting session that traditional 
Chinese provincial governments have been doing over the past two years," 
said AnnaLee Saxenian, a UC Berkeley professor who has done extensive 
studies of the Silicon Valley's immigrant communities. "There is a sense 
now that they can draw on this overseas Chinese community who are now 
willing to go back and start companies."

"Platinum" sponsors, which included the Shenyang and Shanghai technology 
parks, paid $10,000 to take part in the fair. China's Ministry of Science 
and Technology was listed as a "supporting organization." The only U.S. 
participant was Pittsburg, Calif., a struggling blue-collar city on the 
Sacramento River that came seeking new businesses. At many of the booths, 
engineers were lined up several deep.

"Ten years ago," said Stephen W.Y. Lai, who was manning a booth at the job 
fair for the Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks, "no one would have 
been interested because there were too many opportunities in the U.S."

Some of those attending the Nov. 8-10 "China Meets Silicon Valley" event 
said they were attracted by the opportunities they see in China.

Chu Jiajin, 69, a retired electrical engineering professor from China, said 
he is tempted to return to his native land after being laid off from his 
$100,000-a-year job at Quicksilver Technology, a start-up integrated 
circuit company in San Jose.

But his son, Jeff Chu, 37, is hesitant. The younger Chu and his wife, both 
engineers and naturalized American citizens, live comfortably in a $900,000 
home in Cupertino and are reluctant to give up their combined $250,000 
salaries to take a risk on making it in China.

"There are some good opportunities that I would consider in China if we 
were not doing so well here," said the younger Chu, a chip designer with a 
graduate degree in electrical engineering from San Jose State University.

Though the weekend job fair represented the biggest single event of its 
type, the Silicon Valley has been the destination for smaller recruiting 
delegations in recent months. Shanghai alone sent several dozen recruiters 
into the valley recently.

Chinese engineers and their start-up companies play an extremely important 
role in the technology economy here, accounting for an estimated $10 
billion in annual sales.

But if the patterns established by an earlier "reverse brain drain" to 
Taiwan in the late 1980s and early '90s hold true, both places can 
experience some benefits. The engineers will maintain their academic and 
business links with the U.S. and the American industry will benefit from 
the cheaper labor costs and manufacturing in China.

One factor helping the Chinese government effort is that, in the era of 
globalization and China's acceptance into the WTO, the flow of brainpower 
is no longer a one-way street.

In fact, top executives travel back and forth between China and the Silicon 
Valley so frequently now that in Chinese they are jokingly called astronauts.

Maintaining Ties

Even if they do choose to return to China to establish businesses, many 
engineers will probably maintain their U.S. citizenship or academic 
connections in North America.

"It used to be that if you went to the U.S., it was, 'Bye-bye, see you when 
you're 65,' " said Ping K. Ko, a former professor of microelectronics at UC 
Berkeley who now runs a high-tech venture capital company in China. "But 
opportunity now is worldwide. It's no different than working in California 
and looking for job opportunities in Texas."

For that reason, Saxenian said, she prefers the term "brain circulation" to 
the classic "brain drain" to describe the immigration shifts affecting the 
Silicon Valley.

"If they started to go back in very large numbers ... it could affect the 
Silicon Valley," Saxenian said. "But I don't see that happening in the 
short run. Most people understand that this is still the center of tech and 
the biggest market."

For its part, the Chinese government still encourages its top students to 
seek graduate education in the United States. "There will be no reverse in 
students coming here," Wang said.

But through its recruiting drive and other inducements, the government is 
hoping more will come back, ending the historic outflow of top graduates. 
They include green card holders, those who possess H1B visas for skilled 
high-tech workers and naturalized American citizens -- including many who 
benefited from the blanket asylum granted to students after the 1989 
Tiananmen Square democracy movement.

About 30% of the Silicon Valley's technology businesses, which account for 
a total of $19.5 billion in sales and 72,800 jobs, are run by Chinese and 
South Asian entrepreneurs, Saxenian said.

A popular joke in the valley in recent years is that the corporate acronym 
IC stands not for "integrated circuits" but for the Indians and Chinese who 
run them. Companies founded by entrepreneurs from China make up the largest 
group.

Forty-year-old Li Ping, one of those entrepreneurs, is torn by the lure of 
China.

"We are running out of opportunity here," said Li, who owns a high-tech 
machine shop in San Jose. "China is like the American West at the turn of 
the century."

But having gained American citizenship and with children in American 
schools, Li, like many other Chinese engineers here, fears he may be too 
entrenched in his new country to make the break for the old.

"It makes me think of an old Chinese expression," he said, sipping a glass 
of California red wine at the job fair's ornate banquet, "San si nian he 
dong san si nian he xi."

Literally translated, it means, "Someone who has lived 30 years on the east 
bank of the river should then live 30 years on the west bank to provide 
balance."
******************************
Los Angeles Times
Electronic Transcripts Ease Way to College
Ventura County school is making paper records a thing of the past.
By Jenifer Ragland
Times Staff Writer

November 25 2002

It's a problem that has been around as long as students have been applying 
to college: the lost high school transcript.

Teenagers complain about it. Admissions counselors agonize over it. Last 
year, Hollywood took it on with the comedy "Orange County," in which a 
high-achieving student's hopes of going to Stanford are threatened when his 
school botches the transcript transmission.

Now, some campuses are aiming to end those worries as they begin making the 
ubiquitous paper transcript a thing of the past.

Among the pioneers is Oak Park High School in Ventura County.

This week, Oak Park will begin using a new software program that enables 
students to have their records sent electronically -- directly from Oak 
Park's computers to the computers of colleges and universities.

Instead of waiting in long lines at the registrar's office and filling out 
a paper form for each transcript request, students will be able to order 
the documents from their home computers, using the school's Web site.

Rather than wait for weeks to learn whether a transcript arrives at its 
destination on time, students will get confirmation e-mails within 48 hours.

The technology was developed by a small Thousand Oaks software company, 
Docufide, and Oak Park is the first school to use it.

Colorado high schools and colleges began a similar effort this fall with a 
Los Angeles Internet company, Xap.com.

In a handful of other states, including North Carolina and Pennsylvania, 
officials are working with Xap to develop programs.

With the majority of American high school students now applying for college 
online, electronic transcripts are the next logical step, officials say.

"It's faster, it saves money and there are fewer people handling it, so 
having it misplaced is less likely," said Jeanne Adkins, director of the 
Colorado Student Loan Program, a partner in that state's electronic 
transcript project.

"I think this is the start of something major."

Early Attempts Failed

First attempts at electronic transcript transfers began more than a decade 
ago, officials from several universities said, but nothing worked well 
enough to completely change the system.

Programs tried by universities in Texas and Florida were too cumbersome and 
expensive for most cash-strapped high schools to implement. And Colorado's 
system works only between high schools and colleges within the state.

Docufide's software is designed to work with any high school in the country 
that stores student data electronically, said Mark Cohen, the company's 
president.

Universities don't need the software to accept transcripts sent via 
Docufide, he said.

"We're trying to provide a true conduit between high schools and colleges 
where one doesn't exist," he said.

The software is free to high schools. Students will pay a $3 fee for each 
transcript they order electronically.

About 29 million high school transcripts are sent out each year nationwide, 
said Jeffrey Harris, a co-founder of Docufide and an Oak Park High alumnus.

Cohen said the software has built-in verification of each step in the 
transfer process, as well as other checks and balances, to reduce the 
potential for data loss.

Built-in security features also prohibit anyone from intercepting 
transcripts or altering them, he said.

Welcomed by Students

At Oak Park High, where 65% of seniors go directly to four-year 
universities, students welcomed the new program.

"There's so much stuff to keep track of already, and the transcript 
requests are just one more piece of paper you have to fill out," said Colin 
Richard, 17, the school's student body president, who is applying to eight 
universities this fall.

"This way it will be so much easier because I can do it at home at 3 in the 
morning if I want to."

Oak Park Principal Cliff Moore said he sees the potential to save time and 
money in the busy registrar's office.

"I think it's a thing of the future," he said.

Nordhoff High School in Ojai will be the second school to use Docufide, 
Harris said, and many more are waiting to sign on.

About 100 colleges have agreed to accept transcripts through Docufide, 
Harris said, including Pepperdine University in Malibu.

Paul Long, dean of enrollment at Pepperdine, said transcripts are the only 
portion of the school's undergraduate application process not yet handled 
electronically.

"It's the one document that students can't control, and there are always 
mix-ups," Long said. "This, to me, will be very beneficial once we get it 
in place."

Last week, Oak Park sent Pepperdine the first test transcript using the 
software, and it looked great, Long said.

But other higher education systems, including the University of California 
and Cal State University, want to develop their own systems rather than 
rely on a private company.

Officials at UC and CSU are waiting for an electronic transcript process 
expected to be available through a state project called California School 
Information Services, said a Cal State spokeswoman, Colleen Bentley-Adler.

That system won't be ready for another several years.

Registrar to Benefit

At Oak Park, Pat Ramirez may be the person who benefits most from the 
transition to electronic transcript transfers.

As the school's registrar, Ramirez ensures that each record is printed out, 
signed, stamped certified and mailed to colleges. She handles as many as 
2,500 requests a year.

"It's quite time-consuming," she said. "This is going to really free me up 
to better help students."

Kelly Smith, an Oak Park senior who is filling out 10 college applications 
this fall, said she also will appreciate the time saved.

The transcript task is not only onerous, Smith said, it's nerve-wracking.

She said she has heard a number of nightmare stories about lost 
transcripts. "This way seems a lot safer," the 17-year-old said.
****************************
Los Angeles Times
Grocery Stores Checking Out Fingerprints
Small shops are using biometric technology that retrieves customers' data 
to cut losses from fraud.
By Melinda Fulmer
Times Staff Writer

November 25 2002

You might not peg La Playa Market, a cramped Inglewood bodega with a single 
checkout lane, as an early adopter of technology.

But the store was among the first in the nation to install a groundbreaking 
and controversial personal-identification system that uses unique physical 
characteristics such as an individual's fingerprint to identify customers 
and crack down on check-cashing fraud.

Although large supermarket chains and major discount retailers have been 
slow to introduce the system, mom-and-pop food markets and small urban 
grocery chains are rushing to biometric technology.

The reason? La Playa and other markets in low-income neighborhoods have 
more at stake than the big supermarket chains. As much as 70% of their food 
sales come from customers who don't have bank accounts and rely on local 
markets to cash their checks.

"Most of the things here they could probably get at bigger stores," said 
Ray Hernandez, a clerk at La Playa's meat counter where several customers 
were lining up to cash checks recently. "They come here for this service."

Cardenas Supermarkets, a nine-store chain based in Ontario, said that since 
it installed a fingerprint-scanning system two weeks ago more than 5,000 
customers have signed up.

"It makes it easier for them when they come in," said Cardenas general 
manager Steve Vallance. "They don't have to carry ID."

But it's really more of a benefit to the chain. The system, Vallance said, 
has helped stem the company's losses from check fraud, which in recent 
years had soared as high as $500,000.

"We cash about $3.5 [million] to $4 million in checks a week," Vallance said.

With the company planning to open more stores in the coming years, the 
stakes were getting too high to become complacent, he said. "We had to make 
sure those checks were clean."

Cardenas is using a fingerprint scanner made by Herndon, Va.-based BioPay 
Inc., whose system is in about 30 locations across Southern California and 
300 outlets around the nation, many of them check-cashing businesses. Two 
rival biometric technology firms also are marketing similar supermarket 
systems.

For the BioPay system, a customer must register by scanning his or her 
driver's license or other identification card and a fingerprint. 
Thereafter, when the customer comes in to cash a check, the data are 
retrieved by a touch of an index finger to an electronic pad, or "reader." 
A cashier then swipes the check to detect its magnetic ink, takes a picture 
of the check, verifies the bank information and matches it against a 
database of other checks cashed by that customer.

The system does not cross-reference the information with law enforcement or 
government databases, BioPay President Tim Robinson said. But when a bogus 
check is detected, the system flags it and shares the information with 
other stores if necessary, so the individual is prevented from passing 
counterfeit checks at other locations.

BioPay charges store locations about $75 a month for the system, plus 
$10,000 for each fingerprint machine. Many stores charge a 1% to 2% fee to 
cover the cost of the service. Cardenas charges 5% of an individual's 
check, but gives the customer a voucher for the amount to be used in a 
Cardenas store as an incentive to start spending immediately.

But as handy as the technology may seem, larger grocers -- which do less 
check cashing -- have been slow to embrace the system for credit and debit 
cards. Many fear their customers will consider it an intrusion.

Kroger Co., the nation's largest supermarket operator, is testing the 
electronic identification system in only a few Texas stores. Thriftway 
market chain is running a pilot program in some of its Seattle stores.

Albertson's Inc. officials said they haven't been convinced. "As it becomes 
more cost-effective and as customers tell us this is a service they will 
use," the chain might consider it, spokeswoman Stacia Levenfeld said.

Privacy experts say customers probably don't have a lot to fear from such 
shops as Cardenas and La Playa storing images of their fingerprints, but 
the system is yet another way that consumers are allowing merchants and 
institutions to acquire their personal information.

And although giving up such information might not be a concern now, said 
Lee Tien, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 
San Francisco, it could become one as the technology is used by more 
businesses, which could begin sharing consumers' personal data.

Indeed, the makers of biometric technology, which also can scan retinas and 
faces, are predicting that sales of their equipment will grow to $2 billion 
in 2006 from $200 million this year. There are no federal laws that deal 
with sales of fingerprint data and related personal information.

However, Robinson points out that many consumers routinely give away more 
personal information than BioPay requires when dealing with such businesses 
as car rental firms.

"You have already given away all your privacy," he said, adding that his 
company does not share data with marketers, and shares information about 
bad-check writers only with other businesses.

That shouldn't alleviate consumers' concerns, Tien says.

"You point your finger at one company and say we're not as bad as them. But 
everyone is pooling and sharing this kind of personal information 
promiscuously," he said.

Yet, small grocers say, few of their customers inquire about what is done 
with their personal information.

"Should I be worried?" asked shopper Patricia Luna, as she joked around 
with clerks at La Playa Market last week. "I don't think about it. All I 
want is my money. I'll do whatever they ask."
******************************
San Francisco Gate
New spam seems to come from your own address
David Einstein

Q: Like everybody else, I get a lot of junk mail in my Inbox -- everything 
from get-rich-quick and get-out-of-debt schemes to porno come-ons and ads 
for Viagra. That's bothersome enough, but lately, I've started to get 
spammed by someone I really like -- myself.

Every day, my Hotmail account receives one or two messages that list me as 
the sender. Usually, the mail is sent from an unfamiliar domain, but 
occasionally, the message ends in @hotmail.com, making it look like it's 
coming right from my own address.

What's the explanation for this, and, more importantly, does this mean that 
somebody has hacked my account?

A: Fear not. You are merely the victim of an increasingly popular (with 
spammers) trick to get you to open junk mail. It's called spoofing. The 
sender uses a program that makes it possible to automatically place the 
recipient's name in the From: line of a message.

In the case of Web-based e-mail such as Hotmail, it can even look as if you 
sent the message directly to yourself. It's a smart tactic, because 
psychologists say it arouses curiosity and makes people more likely to open 
mail.

As you noted, it also arouses fear that someone has co-opted your e-mail 
account, but that's not the case. The mail comes from the spammer's server. 
If it makes you feel better, you can see how the message got to you by 
setting your e-mail software to display the routing information in the header.

To do that in Hotmail, click on Options, go to Mail Display Settings and 
choose the Full option for Message Headers.


DELETE OLD AOL VERSIONS
Q: While looking for a file recently, I noticed that I have several copies 
of America Online installed on my hard drive. It seems that when I upgrade 
to a new version of their software, the old version isn't automatically 
uninstalled. My hard drive is getting pretty full, so I was wondering if I 
could delete the old versions of AOL without also deleting files necessary 
for the current version.

A: Indeed you can. The fastest, easiest way to rid yourself of older 
versions of AOL is simply to delete the parent folders for them -- which 
also should delete all the sub folders and everything that's in them.

The parent folders should be named America Online followed by the version 
number. Using Windows Explorer (press the Windows key and the letter E), 
you'll find them in the Program Files folder. The purge won't destroy your 
AOL preference settings, Favorites and the stuff in your Filing Cabinet, 
like saved e-mails -- that's all stored along with your current version of 
AOL.


TRY A DIFFERENT BROWSER
Q: I read Hebrew fairly well, and I'd like to read about current Mideast 
events in the online Hebrew edition of the Israeli daily newspaper Ha'aretz 
(www.haaretz.co.il). The trouble is that when I go there in Internet 
Explorer, all I see is garble. What should I do to get the browser to 
display Hebrew characters?

A: Unfortunately, Internet Explorer by itself does a lousy job of 
recognizing Hebrew. You can choose from several Hebrew encoding schemes in 
the View menu, but the only one that will work is Hebrew (Windows), and you 
have to choose it every time you load a new Hebrew page.

If you choose one of the others, you'll get an alert saying that you must 
install a language pack to properly display the characters. You'll need the 
Windows installation CD to install a language pack.

There is another solution -- use Netscape (www.netscape.com) or Mozilla 
(www.mozilla.org) when you browse Hebrew sites. Both of those browsers are 
built on the same code, they're free and they automatically recognize most 
Hebrew pages.


TIP OF THE WEEK
Cookies can be our friends, but not always. These little files, sent to 
your computer by Web sites, store information such as user IDs and 
passwords that let you automatically sign on to accounts and subscription 
sites. On the other hand, many Web sites send you cookies that give them 
marketing information about you, such as your buying preferences.

Once in a while, it's a good idea to clean out your cookies and start over. 
To delete all the cookies in the latest version of Internet Explorer, go to 
Tools, then Internet Options, and click Delete Cookies under Temporary 
Internet files.

Or, you can selectively delete them, and keep the ones you really need. To 
do that, click, Settings rather than Delete Cookies, then choose View 
Files. Cookie files start with Cookie:, so it's easy to find them. To 
delete a cookie,

right-click it and choose Delete.


HAPPY TRAILS:
Computing Q&A began five years ago. Since then, I've had the pleasure of 
answering hundreds of questions, ranging from "What kind of laptop should I 
buy?" to "What's that grinding noise in my computer?"

Along the way, I tried to provide simple solutions to the problems readers 
encountered with their PCs. I think I got it right most of the time. But 
five years is enough -- for me, at least. So this is my last Q&A column.

Here's one last tip: Don't let a computer come between you and life.
******************************
MSNBC
Pentagon drops Internet ID plan
By Declan McCullagh

Nov. 22  A Defense Department agency recently consideredand rejecteda 
far-reaching plan that would sharply curtail online anonymity by tagging 
e-mail and Web browsing with unique markers for each Internet user. The 
idea involved creating secure areas of the Internet that could be accessed 
only if a user had such a marker, called eDNA, according to a report in 
Friday's New York Times.

       EDNA GREW OUT of a private brainstorming session that included Tony 
Tether, president of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), 
the newspaper said, and that would have required at least some Internet 
users to adopt biometric identifiers such as voice or fingerprints to 
authenticate themselves.
       A DARPA spokeswoman said on Friday that the idea, which had been 
proposed by the agency, was no longer being considered. "We were intrigued 
by the difficult computing science research involved in creating network 
capabilities that would provide the same level of accountability in 
cyberspace that we now have in the physical world," spokeswoman Jan Walker 
said in a telephone interview.
       Walker said it was a "decision by DARPA management" not to pursue 
the idea, which was explored at a two-day workshop in California in August 
and which drew sharp criticism from the group of computer and privacy 
experts that DARPA convened to review the proposal.
       Depending on how eDNA might have been implemented, Congress could 
have enacted a law requiring Internet providers to offer connectivity only 
to authenticated users, or government regulations could have ordered that 
fundamental protocols such as TCP/IP be rewritten or new ones created to 
handle authentication techniques.
       Friday's report comes as a DARPA unit, the Information Awareness 
Office (IAO), has come under fire for its plan to create a prototype of a 
massive database that would collect information about everything from 
Americans' credit card purchases to veterinary records and public 
information. Run by John Poindexter, the retired vice admiral who was an 
adviser to President Ronald Reagan and who became embroiled in the 
Iran-Contra scandal, the IAO also was involved in the eDNA review.
       At the same time, the government has had notable success in 
strengthening its oversight of Internet activities. Earlier this week, the 
Senate passed a bill, expected to be signed by President Bush this month, 
to create a Department of Homeland Security in a massive reorganization of 
federal agencies. A portion of the bill, the Cyber Security Enhancement 
Act, expands the ability of police to conduct Internet or telephone 
eavesdropping without first obtaining a court order, and grants Internet 
providers more latitude to disclose information about subscribers to police.
       Also this week, a secretive federal court removed procedural 
barriers for federal agents conducting surveillance, giving them broad 
authority to monitor Internet use, record keystrokes and employ other 
surveillance methods against terror and espionage suspects.

DEFENSE OFFICIAL: NO PRIVACY AT RISK
       On Wednesday, Defense Department undersecretary Pete Aldridge 
defended the Total Information Awareness (TIA) program to reporters, saying 
"there are no privacy issues" at stake with a prototype under development. 
DARPA was just creating a system that would be turned over to police and 
intelligence agencies for operational use when complete, Aldridge said.
       "The purpose of TIA would be to determine the feasibility of 
searching vast quantities of data to determine links and patterns 
indicative of terrorist activities," Aldridge said. "This is an important 
research project to determine the feasibility of using certain transactions 
and events to discover and respond to terrorists before they act."
      For the last few years, the federal government has fretted about 
Internet anonymity, which can exist in a weak form when people connect from 
behind firewalls or through large Internet providers, or in a strong form 
when technologies such as anonymous remailers or Zero Knowledge's 
now-moribund Freedom network are used.
       In March 2000, then-Attorney General Janet Reno complained about 
law enforcement's "inability to trace criminals who hide their identities 
online" at an event to release a report on unlawful conduct online that 
suggested restrictions on anonymity. Former FBI director Louis Freeh also 
called for the Internet industry to keep records on customers' activity, 
saying the bureau would "encourage the Internet provider industry to 
maintain subscriber and call information."
       In 1995, the U.S. Supreme Court said in the McIntyre vs. Ohio 
Elections Commission case that broad restrictions on anonymity violate the 
First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech: "Anonymity is a shield 
from the tyranny of the majority."
*********************************

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