Clips December 10, 2002

[Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>]

Clips December 10, 2002

ARTICLES

Sklyarov testifies in copyright trial
UMBC students' data put on Web in error
New Tools for Domestic Spying, and Qualms
Report suggests ID alternatives
Creating a Web directory
This is citizen-centered?
CDC system will share data with states
Homeland Security's enterprise architecture deadline extended
Patent office unveils electronic application prototype
Defense to influence tech industry to develop systems useful to military
NIPC chief Ron Dick to retire
Is That Really You? Check My DNA
ICANN At-Large Reps Can Keep Jobs
US Warns Against Buying Certain Drugs Via Internet
Landmark Net libel case approved
Domain names competition opens with a twist [New Zealand]

*****************************
CNET
Sklyarov testifies in copyright trial
By Lisa M. Bowman
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
December 9, 2002, 6:51 PM PT

SAN JOSE, Calif.--The long-awaited live testimony of Dmitry Sklyarov 
finally got under way in the ElcomSoft trial Monday afternoon, when the 
Russian programmer took the stand for the defense.
ElcomSoft, a software company based in Russia, is charged with five counts 
of offering and marketing software designed to crack Adobe Systems' eBooks, 
actions prosecutors say violate digital copyright laws.

Sklyarov, whose arrest in July 2001 prompted the case against his employer, 
was expected to be called as a government witness. Sklyarov was jailed 
after giving a speech about his company's software, but prosecutors later 
set aside charges against him in exchange for his testimony in the case 
against ElcomSoft. Instead of calling him to the stand during the trial, 
however, government lawyers played an edited videotape of Sklyarov's 
deposition and would not comment on their decision.


The trial is the first major test of the criminal provisions of the Digital 
Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which outlaw the offering of software that 
can be used to crack copyright protection. The case also raises questions 
about how much control a publisher should have over its products after 
they've been purchased by a consumer.

Because digital material is so easy to copy and distribute, copyright 
holders have sought unprecedented controls over their work, ranging from 
technical measures that prevent replicating and printing to laws such as 
the DMCA. However, many programmers fear such crackdowns could discourage 
technical development and research if engineers fear they will become the 
target of criminal suits.

During Sklyarov's testimony Monday in federal court here, ElcomSoft 
attorney Joseph Burton tried to paint the programmer as an upstanding 
assistant professor who sought to expose flaws in Adobe software as part of 
his dissertation. Prosecutors, meanwhile, sought to portray Sklyarov as an 
associate of underground hacker networks who didn't care whether the 
product he developed broke U.S. laws.

Sklyarov, who declined to use an interpreter while on the stand, testified 
that he developed the Advanced eBook Processor while working for ElcomSoft. 
During questioning from Burton, he said that although the software could be 
used for nefarious purposes such as widely distributing electronic 
documents, he actually intended it to be used so people could make backup 
copies of an eBook they'd bought, print pages, or transfer it to a reading 
device for the blind.

"Was it your intent to violate anyone's rights?" Burton asked. "No," 
Sklyarov replied.

The defense also played a tape of the speech that spurred Sklyarov's 
arrest. During his presentation on flaws in eBook security at the DefCon 
convention in Las Vegas, Sklyarov told the audience that a publisher of an 
eBook "puts itself in danger" when it relies on the insecure software 
provided by software publishers including Adobe.

During testimony Monday, Sklyarov told the jury that his software 
demonstrates security flaws in such software. "The general pubic needs to 
choose which solutions are secure and which are not," he said.

Burton also tried to diffuse government attempts to characterize ElcomSoft 
as a shady company that attends hacker conventions.

"Do you consider yourself to be a hacker?" Burton asked Sklyarov.

Sklyarov said he did not. "I am computer engineer, programmer," he said.

During cross-examination, assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Frewing disputed 
Sklyarov's assertions that his software was intended for the benign 
purposes of helping the blind or letting people print. Frewing pointed out 
that after ElcomSoft's product is applied to an eBook, the statement 
"protections successfully removed" appear.

In one dramatic moment in a relatively anticlimactic afternoon of 
testimony, Frewing forced Sklyarov to acknowledge that he didn't consider 
the legality of his program.

"Isn't it true that when you wrote this software you didn't care whether it 
violated laws in the U.S.?" Frewing asked.

"That's true," Sklyarov said.

ElcomSoft Managing Director Vladmir Katalov took the stand after Sklyarov. 
He testified that ElcomSoft, which also makes password-retrieval software, 
has many major customers for its products, including Adobe and the U.S. 
Department of Justice.
*******************************
CNET
Australian court to hear Net case
By Reuters
December 9, 2002, 9:45 PM PT

CANBERRA, Australia--Australia's highest court ruled Tuesday that a 
defamation case sparked by a story on a U.S Web site could be heard in 
Australia, opening a legal minefield for Web publishers over which libel 
laws they must follow.
The landmark ruling that an article published by Dow Jones was subject to 
Australian law--because it was downloaded in Australia--is being watched by 
media companies, as it could set a precedent for other cases.

Dow Jones argued the case, brought by Australian mining magnate Joseph 
Gutnick for an Internet version of an article from Dow Jones' Barron's 
magazine, should be heard in the United States, where libel laws are 
considered relatively liberal.


Debate centered on whether an alleged defamation was published in New 
Jersey, where Dow Jones's Web servers are located, or in Victoria, 
Australia, where some readers saw the story.

Gutnick, who has initiated defamation proceedings in his home state of 
Victoria, was delighted with the ruling.

"They'll have to be very careful what they put on the Net. The Net is no 
different from a regular newspaper. You have to be careful what you write," 
he told Australian television.

A disappointed Dow Jones said in a statement that it would continue to 
defend the case brought by Gutnick.

Two Victorian courts refused Dow Jones' application. The publisher then 
appealed to the High Court of Australia, which unanimously dismissed its 
appeal.

"The court was asked to determine where that article was published. It has 
made no findings on the merits of the defamation action itself," the court 
said in a statement.

The ruling caught the eye of the media sector because it was believed to be 
the first time a country's highest court has defined where Internet 
publication takes place in a libel case.

The court allowed 18 organizations to make submissions to the hearing, 
including AOL Time Warner, Amazon.com, the Associated Press, Bloomberg, 
News Corp., Reuters and Yahoo.

Dow Jones, which also publishes The Wall Street Journal, had argued that 
exposing Internet publishers to defamation suits in jurisdictions where 
material is downloaded could lead to claims all over the world and restrict 
freedom of speech.

But the court dismissed Dow Jones' concerns of multiple defamation actions 
arising from one publication. It said a publisher could argue it should 
only have to defend itself once.

The court said a claim could be brought only if the person had a reputation 
in the place where the material was published--in this case, Gutnick's home 
town of Melbourne.

Dow Jones said it was encouraged the court ruling recognized the "novel, 
complex and global" issues of Internet publication which the publisher said 
needed international discussion.

The executive director of Australia's Internet Industry Association, Peter 
Coroneos, said the ramifications of the ruling were profound for anyone 
publishing content on the Internet.

"However, the practicalities of bringing legal actions could ultimately 
prevent the mass of suits that some have feared," he said.
********************************
Baltimore Sun
UMBC students' data put on Web in error
2,500 notified that names, Social Security numbers posted in records 
update; 'It was clearly a mistake'
By Laura Barnhardt
Sun Staff
Originally published December 7, 2002

About 2,500 students at University of Maryland's Baltimore County campus 
were notified this week that their names and Social Security numbers had 
accidentally been published on the Internet, university officials said 
yesterday.

The sensitive information has been deleted from public view. But concerns 
remain about the security breach and whether students will become victims 
of identity theft as a result.

"It's frightening. It shocked me that it could go unnoticed by the 
university," said Mark Stewart, a 22-year-old senior from Columbia who 
serves as Student Events Board president.

Jack Suess, chief information officer for UMBC, said, "It was clearly a 
mistake on our part."

He said that thousands of other students' Social Security numbers might 
have been posted on the Internet, but that it didn't appear they had been 
accessed.

The problem began at the end of August when the university deleted e-mails 
with students' Social Security numbers, not realizing there was an archive 
of those e-mails on a Web page. The e-mails had been a normal way of 
updating new students' information and changes in registration information, 
Suess said. By deleting the e-mails, the restrictions on those who had 
access to the Web site archive was also removed, he said.

The Internet search engine Google indexed the Web site containing the 
students' names and Social Security numbers in late August. A student 
searching to see whether there was public information about him on the 
Internet came across the list and informed the university about it Nov. 6, 
said Suess.

The information was then deleted from the Web site, but remained cached in 
Google's system - a problem the student noted Nov. 12. Working with Google 
staff, the information was removed from the Internet on Nov. 15, Suess said.

"Everyone over the last few years has become increasingly concerned about 
identity theft," said Suess. "Your name and Social Security number is a 
piece of information you want to try to protect."

Baltimore County Detective Mark Watkins, who specializes in identity theft 
cases, said identities can easily be stolen with a person's name and Social 
Security number. "The Social Security number is the key to your personal 
credit," he said. "With a name and a Social Security number you're in the 
door, especially at these places that offer instant credit."

Since sending out e-mails last weekend to the 2,500 students whose 
information was exposed, Suess said he has received about 25 replies from 
students who wanted more information. He and other authorities recommend 
everyone check their credit reports annually to ensure there aren't any 
oddities.

Suess stressed that there were only about 15 visits to the Web site and 
that to find the information, the user would have had to have searched by 
name and Social Security number.

Still, students say that doesn't make them feel that much safer.

"The university doesn't seem that concerned," said Brandon Dudley, editor 
of The Retriever, the campus newspaper. "Even if there weren't that many 
hits on the site, it only takes one person [to illegally use the 
information]. ... From talking to students, it seems a lot of them are 
concerned about this."

University officials said they expect to complete a $6 million overhaul of 
the way they track student information by 2005.
**********************************
New York Times
December 10, 2002
New Tools for Domestic Spying, and Qualms
By MICHAEL MOSS and FORD FESSENDEN

When the Federal Bureau of Investigation grew concerned this spring that 
terrorists might attack using scuba gear, it set out to identify every 
person who had taken diving lessons in the previous three years.

Hundreds of dive shops and organizations gladly turned over their records, 
giving agents contact information for several million people.

"It certainly made sense to help them out," said Alison Matherly, marketing 
manager for the National Association of Underwater Instructors Worldwide. 
"We're all in this together."

But just as the effort was wrapping up in July, the F.B.I. ran into a 
two-man revolt. The owners of the Reef Seekers Dive Company in Beverly 
Hills, Calif., balked at turning over the records of their clients, who 
include Tom Cruise and Tommy Lee Jones  even when officials came back with 
a subpoena asking for "any and all documents and other records relating to 
all noncertified divers and referrals from July 1, 1999, through July 16, 
2002."

Faced with defending the request before a judge, the prosecutor handling 
the matter notified Reef Seekers' lawyer that he was withdrawing the 
subpoena. The company's records stayed put.

"We're just a small business trying to make a living, and I do not relish 
the idea of standing up against the F.B.I.," said Ken Kurtis, one of the 
owners of Reef Seekers. "But I think somebody's got to do it."

In this case, the government took a tiny step back. But across the country, 
sometimes to the dismay of civil libertarians, law enforcement officials 
are maneuvering to seize the information-gathering weapons they say they 
desperately need to thwart terrorist attacks.

From New York City to Seattle, police officials are looking to do away 
with rules that block them from spying on people and groups without 
evidence that a crime has been committed. They say these rules, forced on 
them in the 1970's and 80's to halt abuses, now prevent them from 
infiltrating mosques and other settings where terrorists might plot.

At the same time, federal and local police agencies are looking for 
systematic, high-tech ways to root out terrorists before they strike. In a 
sense, the scuba dragnet was cumbersome, old-fashioned police work, albeit 
on a vast scale. Now officials are hatching elaborate plans for dumping 
gigabytes of delicate information into big computers, where it would be 
blended with public records and stirred with sophisticated software.

In recent days, federal law enforcement officials have spoken ambitiously 
and often about their plans to remake the F.B.I. as a domestic 
counterterrorism agency. But the spy story has been unfolding, quietly and 
sometimes haltingly, for more than a year now, since the attacks on the 
World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Some people in law enforcement remain unconvinced that all these new tools 
are needed, and some experts are skeptical that high-tech data mining will 
bring much of value to light.

Still, civil libertarians increasingly worry about how law enforcement 
might wield its new powers. They say the nation is putting at risk the very 
thing it is fighting for: the personal freedoms and rights embodied in the 
Constitution. Moreover, they say, authorities with powerful technology will 
inevitably blunder, as became evident in October when an audit revealed 
that the Navy had lost nearly two dozen computers authorized to process 
classified information.

What perhaps angers the privacy advocates most is that so much of this 
revolution in police work is taking place in secret, said Cindy Cohn, legal 
director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which represented Reef Seekers.

"If we are going to decide as a country that because of our worry about 
terrorism that we are willing to give up our basic privacy, we need an open 
and full debate on whether we want to make such a fundamental change," Ms. 
Cohn said.

But some intelligence experts say that in a changed world, the game is 
already up for those who would value civil liberties over the war on 
terrorism. "It's the end of a nice, comfortable set of assumptions that 
allowed us to keep ourselves protected from some kinds of intrusions," said 
Stewart A. Baker, the National Security Agency's general counsel under 
President Bill Clinton.

Tearing Down a Wall
The most aggressive effort to give local police departments unfettered 
spying powers is taking place in New York City.

It was there 22 years ago that the police, stung by revelations of 
widespread abuse, agreed to stop spying on people not suspected of a crime. 
The agreement was part of a containment wall of laws, regulations, court 
decisions and ordinances erected federally and in many parts of the country 
in the 70's and 80's.

The F.B.I.'s spying authority was restricted, and the United States' 
foreign intelligence agencies got out of the business of domestic spying 
altogether. States passed their own laws. On the local level, ordinances 
and consent decrees were enacted not just in New York but also in Los 
Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle. In the years since, these 
strictures have "become part of the culture," Mr. Baker said.

But the wall is under attack. Last month, a special appeals court ruled 
that the sweeping antiterrorism legislation known as the U.S.A. Patriot 
Act, enacted shortly after the September 2001 attacks to give the 
government expanded terror-fighting capacity, freed federal prosecutors to 
seek wiretap and surveillance authority in the absence of criminal 
activity. In Chicago last year, a federal appeals court threw out the 
agreement that restricted police surveillance. Some officials in Seattle 
would like to follow suit, saying they are effectively sidelined in the 
terrorism war.

In New York, the Police Department has sued in federal court in Manhattan 
to end the consent decree the department signed in 1980 to end a civil 
rights lawsuit over the infiltration of political groups.

Attorney General John Ashcroft and New York's police commissioner, Raymond 
W. Kelly, say the wall is a relic  unnecessary and, worse, dangerous. David 
Cohen, the former deputy director of central intelligence who is now the 
Police Department's deputy commissioner for intelligence, argues that the 
consent decree's requirement of a suspicion of criminal activity prevents 
officers from infiltrating mosques.

"In the last decade, we have seen how the mosque and Islamic institutes 
have been used to shield the work of terrorists from law enforcement 
scrutiny by taking advantage of restrictions on the investigation of First 
Amendment activity," Mr. Cohen said in an affidavit.

The police in other cities cite the same need. "We're prohibited from 
collecting things that will make us a safer city," said Lt. Ron Leavell, 
commander of the criminal intelligence division of the Seattle police.

Mr. Cohen did not argue in his affidavit that the authorities, if 
unshackled, could have prevented the Sept. 11 attacks. But he did suggest 
that the F.B.I.'s failure to dig more deeply into the information it had 
before the attacks turned on agents' fears that they could not climb the wall.

"The recent disclosure that F.B.I. field agents were blocked from pursuing 
an investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui because officials in Washington did 
not believe there was sufficient evidence of criminal activity to support a 
warrant points out how one person's judgment in applying an imprecise test 
may result in the costly loss of critical intelligence," Mr. Cohen said.

Mr. Cohen has also asked that his testimony before the federal court be 
given in secret, unheard even by opposing lawyers. Last week, a judge told 
New York City that it needed to present better arguments to justify such 
extraordinary secrecy.

Civil libertarians, frustrated that they cannot draw the other side into a 
debate, argue that questions about the need for such expanded powers are 
critical, and far from answered. "Who said you have to destroy a village in 
order to save it?" asked Jethro Eisenstein, one of the lawyers who 
negotiated the original consent decree. "We're protecting freedom and 
democracy, but unfortunately freedom and democracy have to be sacrificed."

Even the police are far from unanimous about how intrusive they must be. 
The Chicago police, who have been free from their consent decree for nearly 
two years, say they have yet to use the new power. The Los Angeles police 
have made no effort to change their guidelines.

"I have not heard complaints that the antiterrorist division has been 
inhibited in its work," said Joe Gunn, executive director of the Los 
Angeles Police Commission.

A joint Congressional inquiry into intelligence failures before Sept. 11 
concluded that the failures had less to do with the inability of 
authorities to gather information than with their inability to analyze, 
understand, share and act on it.

"The lesson of Moussaoui was that F.B.I. headquarters was telling the field 
office the wrong advice," said Eleanor Hill, staff director of the inquiry. 
"Fixing what happened in this case is not inconsistent with preserving 
civil liberties."

`It Smacks of Big Brother'
The Congressional inquiry's lingering criticism has added impetus to a 
movement within government to equip terror fighters with better computer 
technology. If humans missed the clues, the reasoning goes, perhaps a 
computer will not.

Clearly, the F.B.I. is operating in the dark ages of technology. For 
instance, when agents in San Diego want to check out new leads, they walk 
across the street to the Joint Terrorism Task Force offices, where suspect 
names must be run through two dozen federal and local databases.

Using filters from the Navy's space warfare project, Spawar, the agents are 
now dumping all that data into one big computer so that with one mouse 
click they can find everything from traffic fines to immigration law 
violations. A test run is expected early next year. Similar efforts to 
consolidate and share information are under way in Baltimore; Seattle; St. 
Louis; Portland, Ore.; and Norfolk, Va.

"It smacks of Big Brother, and I understand people's concern," said William 
D. Gore, a special agent in charge at the San Diego office. "But somehow 
I'd rather have the F.B.I. have access to this data than some telemarketer 
who is intent on ripping you off."

Civil libertarians worry that centralized data will be more susceptible to 
theft. But they are scared even more by the next step officials want to 
take: mining that data to divine the next terrorist strike.

The Defense Department has embarked on a five-year effort to create a 
superprogram called Total Information Awareness, led by Adm. John M. 
Poindexter, who was national security adviser in the Reagan administration. 
But as soon as next year, the new Transportation Security Administration 
hopes to begin using a more sophisticated system of profiling airline 
passengers to identify high-risk fliers. The system in place on Sept. 11, 
2001, flagged only a handful of unusual behaviors, like buying one-way 
tickets with cash.

Like Admiral Poindexter, the transportation agency is drawing from 
companies that help private industry better market their products. Among 
them is the Acxiom Corporation of Little Rock, Ark., whose tool, Personicx, 
sorts consumers into 70 categories  like Group 16M, or "Aging 
Upscale"  based on an array of financial data and behavioral factors.

Experts on consumer profiling say law enforcement officials face two big 
problems. Some commercial databases have high error rates, and so little is 
known about terrorists that it could be very difficult to distinguish them 
from other people.

"The idea that data mining of some vast collection of databases of consumer 
activity is going to deliver usable alerts of terrorist activities is sheer 
credulity on a massive scale," said Jason Catlett of the Junkbusters 
Corporation, a privacy advocacy business. The data mining companies, Mr. 
Catlett added, are "mostly selling good old-fashioned snake oil."

Libraries and Scuba Schools

As it waits for the future, the F.B.I. is being pressed to gather and share 
much more intelligence, and that has left some potential informants uneasy 
and confused about their legal rights and obligations.

Just how far the F.B.I. has gone is not clear. The Justice Department told 
a House panel in June that it had used its new antiterrorism powers in 40 
instances to share terror information from grand jury investigations with 
other government authorities. It said it had twice handed over terror leads 
from wiretaps.

But that was as far as Justice officials were willing to go, declining to 
answer publicly most of the committee's questions about terror-related 
inquiries. Civil libertarians have sued under the Freedom of Information 
Act to get the withheld information, including how often prosecutors have 
used Section 215 of the 2001 antiterror law to require bookstores or 
librarians to turn over patron records.

The secrecy enshrouding the counterterrorism campaign runs so deep that 
Section 215 makes it a crime for people merely to divulge whether the 
F.B.I. has demanded their records, deepening the mystery  and the 
uneasiness among groups that could be required to turn over information 
they had considered private.

"I've been on panel discussions since the Patriot Act, and I don't think 
I've been to one without someone willing to stand up and say, `Isn't the 
F.B.I. checking up on everything we do?' " said John A. Danaher III, deputy 
United States attorney in Connecticut.

Several weeks ago, the F.B.I. in Connecticut took the unusual step of 
revealing information about an investigation to dispute a newspaper report 
that it had "bugged" the Hartford Public Library's computers.

Michael J. Wolf, the special agent in charge, said the agency had taken 
only information from the hard drive of a computer at the library that had 
been used to hack into a California business. "The computer was never 
removed from the library, nor was any software installed on this or any 
other computer in the Hartford Public Library by the F.B.I. to monitor 
computer use," Mr. Wolf said in a letter to The Hartford Courant, which 
retracted its report.

Nevertheless, Connecticut librarians have been in an uproar over the 
possibility that their computers with Internet access would be monitored 
without their being able to say anything. They have considered posting 
signs warning patrons that the F.B.I. could be snooping on their keystrokes.

"I want people to know under what legal provisions they are living," said 
Louise Blalock, the chief librarian in Hartford.

In Fairfield, the town librarian, Tom Geoffino, turned over computer log-in 
sheets to the F.B.I. last January after information emerged that some of 
the Sept. 11 hijackers had visited the area, but he said he would demand a 
court order before turning over anything else. Agents have not been back 
asking for more, Mr. Geoffino said.

"We're not just librarians, we're Americans, and we want to see the people 
who did this caught," he said. "But we also have a role in protecting the 
institution and the attitudes people have about it."

The F.B.I.'s interest in scuba divers began shortly before Memorial Day, 
when United States officials received information from Afghan war detainees 
that suggested an interest in underwater attacks.

An F.B.I. spokesman said the agency would not confirm even that it had 
sought any diver names, and would not say how it might use any such 
information.

The owners of Reef Seekers say they had lots of reasons to turn down the 
F.B.I. The name-gathering made little sense to begin with, they say, 
because terrorists would need training far beyond recreational scuba 
lessons. They also worried that the new law would allow the F.B.I. to pass 
its client records to other agencies.

When word of their revolt got around, said Bill Wright, one of the owners, 
one man called Reef Seekers to applaud it, saying, "My 15-year-old daughter 
has taken diving lessons, and I don't want her records going to the F.B.I."

He was in a distinct minority, Mr. Wright said. Several other callers said 
they hoped the shop would be the next target of a terrorist bombing.
*********************************
Federal Computer Week
Report suggests ID alternatives
BY Dibya Sarkar
Dec. 10, 2002

A national identification system is one approach to strengthening identity 
security, but a white paper published by a coalition of government 
organizations also proposes a "confederated" system in which Americans 
could use multiple identifiers for clusters of agencies and/or businesses.

This approach would enable individuals to sign on to an account once and 
have access to different accounts among several entities they commonly 
transact with, according to the National Electronic Commerce Coordinating 
Council's (NECCC) white paper.

Agencies and companies would have to develop policies, procedures and an 
interoperable technical framework to support such an arrangement. The 
advantage to this system over a national ID system is that no single 
identifier would follow an individual everywhere. Another advantage is that 
there is no single point of failure like that in a national ID system, in 
which there would be centralized control.

"An organized, confederated system would not necessarily have as its goal 
to establish a single business model across all 50 states," according to 
the white paper. "Rather, it could allow states to maintain their own 
processes, yet establish criteria to provide consistent levels of trust in 
the various credentialing systems that states have established. Determining 
exactly what metrics would result in such a trust, however, would be a 
considerable undertaking, but one worth investigating."

NECCC, a consortium that promotes e-government, released the identity 
management white paper during its sixth annual conference in New York City 
Dec. 4-6. It did not recommend one approach over the other, but said they 
should be explored further.

Because of national security and identity fraud concerns, governments are 
grappling with how best to issue valid and tamper-proof IDs and 
authenticate identities while preserving privacy and personal liberties.

A single national system could involve storing personal information  such 
as fingerprints  of every citizen in a large database and issuing ID cards 
that would be used across the public and private sector.

Privacy experts contend that such a database smacks of Big Brother.

A national system has some precedence around the world, but with uneven 
results, said Daniel Greenwood, who directs the Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology's e-commerce architecture program and helped lead and draft the 
white paper for NECCC.

The American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators has been leading 
an effort to strengthen state driver's licenses, which are considered the 
de facto national ID card. Although that group doesn't advocate a national 
system, it wants states to adopt minimum security standards  such as 
personal data or biometric identifiers embedded in the cards  as a way to 
prevent identity theft and fraud.

A coalition of companies known as the Liberty Alliance Project is 
developing the framework for a confederated approach, including a network 
identity and authentication sharing mechanism. The project would entail 
developing business agreements among different organizations so they can 
mutually recognize authentication. Such a system would help boost 
confidence along with e-commerce, representatives said.

The group has about 45 dues-paying sponsors and another 90 affiliate and 
associate members. The group is looking to collaborate with governments and 
other public-sector agencies that would not be charged membership fees.
*******************************
Federal Computer Week
Creating a Web directory
BY Judi Hasson
Dec. 9, 2002

In addition to calling on agencies to improve their Web sites, the 
E-Government Act of 2002 also requires the government to create a federal 
Web directory.

That directory will include a taxonomy  a content categorization standard 
that will enable users to search for information based on subject rather 
than on the agency that possesses it.

"We don't really have good ways of sharing information now. We don't have 
common terminology. We are setting things in motion to begin to do these 
things," said Kurt Molholm, administrator of the Defense Technical 
Information Center, the Pentagon's central repository for scientific and 
technical information.

While the Pentagon has been working to improve its inventory of Web sites, 
no one really knows how many Defense Department sites there are or what 
kind of terminology to use when designing sites, Molholm said.

"A lot of organizations don't have the taxonomy," he said. "And if you 
don't have one, you have to create one. If you have one, you have to 
perhaps cross-reference it."

Agencies have their work cut out for them, said Eliot Christian, the U.S. 
Geological Survey's architect for the Global Information Locator Service 
(www.gils.net).

"Having a directory of all agency Web sites, you would think we would have 
those, and yet we don't," Christian said. "It turns out not to be a 
straightforward problem to figure out what is a government Web site.

"What does it mean to be a government Web site? Is it '.com' or '.edu' or 
'.gov'?" Christian asked.
*******************************
Federal Computer Week
This is citizen-centered?
Editorial
Dec. 9, 2002

In his management agenda, released in August 2001, President Bush said his 
first priority was "to make government citizen-centered," according to the 
agenda document. However, the policy, a Bush administration cornerstone, 
has so far rung hollow.

In the President's Management Agenda, Bush said he wants to "reduce the 
distance between citizens and decision-makers," using, for example, 
e-government programs to make it easier for citizens to access public 
information and work with agencies.

However, when the administration makes it difficult for officials in the 
executive branch to discuss the business of government  the people's 
business  the distance between citizens and decision-makers does not narrow 
but rather widens into a chasm.

Increasingly, government information technology managers, when asked by 
reporters to discuss and explain IT policies and programs in their 
agencies, decline, saying they fear reprisal.

This management by intimidation hinders government reforms by keeping 
agency officials from sharing best practices and vetting ideas in a public 
forum. The approach makes it difficult for the Bush administration to 
reconcile its citizen-centered rhetoric with its management tactics.

Bush's gag order sends a clear message that the administration does not 
respect government managers or value open and frank discussion  a sentiment 
underscored last week when the president declared that federal civilian 
employees should receive a 3.1 percent pay increase in 2003, not 4.1 
percent, but still found it financially feasible to hand out bonuses to 
political appointees.

Bush has called for better government management, but his own 
administration has violated some basic good management tenets: Treat 
employees fairly, with trust and respect, and foster an atmosphere of open 
debate without fear of reprisal. Not doing so will jeopardize Bush's goal 
of creating a citizen-centric government and the ability to create 
information systems and policies to defend the nation.
******************************
Government Computer News
CDC system will share data with states
By William Jackson

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is ready to roll out the 
initial version of its National Electronic Disease Surveillance System, 
which will link the Atlanta-based agency with state public health departments.

"The system now is in the beginning phase of deployment to 20 states," CIO 
James D. Seligman said today at an e-government conference in Washington on 
homeland security.

NEDSS is an application developed by CDC to enable real-time data sharing 
over existing network connections. It includes standards and specifications 
with which states can create their own interoperable applications.

Several states are using NEDSS standards to develop or expand existing 
systems, Seligman said.

CDC received funding for NEDSS in 1999, and last year's anthrax attacks 
underscored the need for the system, said CDC director Julie L. Gerberding.

Twelve letters laced with anthrax spores infected 22 people, killing five.

"People needed more information than we could possibly have anticipated," 
Gerberding said. "We are experiencing a major leap forward in our ability 
to deal with electronic lab reports."

CDC set up its largest emergency operations center in an auditorium from 
which 150 people directed the response to last year's attacks. That 
experience showed the need for a formal center to deal with emergencies, 
Seligman said.

"We're a month away from cutting the ribbon on a new, state-of-the-art 
operations center at CDC," he said.
******************************
Government Computer News
Homeland Security's enterprise architecture deadline extended
By William Jackson

The Office of Homeland Security has gotten a brief reprieve on its deadline 
for developing an enterprise architecture for the new Homeland Security 
Department.

Because of delays in passing the bill creating the department, the original 
Jan. 1 deadline has been pushed to Jan. 25, said Lee Holcomb, the office's 
director of infostructure.

"It's a daunting task," Holcomb said today at the E-gov Conference on 
Homeland Security in Washington.

The effort is further complicated by Congress' failure to pass a fiscal 
2003 budget, he said. "We're operating on zero budget," Holcomb said.

The White House's Office of Homeland Security will continue to exist after 
the new department is organized. During the transition period, the office 
is spearheading development of the enterprise architecture to tie together 
the 22 agencies that will make up HSD. A meeting with all the agencies was 
held last week.

The first job is to establish Day 1 capabilities for the new department, 
Holcomb said. These will include a common directory and e-mail access for 
170,000 people in the new .dhs domain. Internal and external Web portals to 
answer general questions also will be a priority, he said.

Holcomb said his team has turned to industry for advice on establishing a 
common enterprise.
********************************
Government Executive
December 6, 2002
Patent office unveils electronic application prototype
From National Journal's Technology Daily

The Patent and Trademark Office announced on Friday that it has begun to 
implement a prototype for a new system that will allow the agency to fully 
process patent applications electronically.


If successful, the prototype eventually would replace the agency's 
processing paper-based patent applications.


Under the system, select patent applications would be transferred to an 
electronic format and then be reviewed by patent examiners.


"Automating the patent-examination process is another example of the 
ongoing efforts of [office] and the Bush administration to create a 
quality-focused, market-driven, e-commerce-based organization that rapidly 
responds to the demands of the national and global marketplaces," PTO 
Director James Rogan said in a statement.


The European Patent Office designed core software used in the electronic 
image-based processing system contained in the prototype.
***************************
Government Executive
December 5, 2002
Defense to influence tech industry to develop systems useful to military
By William New, National Journal's Technology Daily

Retired Vice Adm. Arthur Cebrowski, head of the Defense Department's office 
for modernizing the military, said on Thursday that he will seek to 
influence commercial technology development at the earliest stages to 
encourage more appropriate military technologies.


"We need to broaden the technology base and marketplace and influence it so 
we're better positioned to take advantage of what's there," Cebrowski said. 
The military also should promote entrepreneurial activity, he said, adding 
that the way to accomplish those goals is by working with venture-capital 
firms.


He made the comments at the "Commercial Information Technology for Defense 
Transformation" conference sponsored by National Defense University, the 
Information Technology Association of America and the Computer Coalition 
for Responsible Exports. Cebrowski is the director of force transformation 
at Defense, with the mandate of transforming military capabilities "from 
the industrial age to the information age," he said.

The idea to influence technology development further upstream came from 
research that his office conducted recently. Most of the transformation 
proposals received from industry were from large, traditional defense 
contractors, but a "not insignificant" portion came from very small firms, 
he said. Often, small firms' technologies eventually will be bought by the 
larger firms and then shared with the military, but Cebrowski said it might 
be possible to influence technology development before it reaches that 
buyout stage.


He said the venture-capital community has been "very responsive" to the 
suggestion that they act as "tech finders" for the military, but now the 
next step rests with the Pentagon. "We'll see what happens," he said.

Cebrowski said the United States spends "most of the world's money with 
regards to defense," and, in doing so, should adapt to change. To address 
change and the new types of decentralized and unpredictable threats, the 
military is moving into "network-centric" warfare, he said.

Cebrowski said the "cultural bias" in the military is toward hierarchy but 
added that networking, where different nodes can connect directly without 
going to the top of the chain, is a better approach now. He also said a 
technical change that the military must address is the prevalence of 
ubiquitous, low-cost technologies, which lowers barriers to competition.


The joint forces of the military face "very severe joint problems" in 
applying information technology, Cebrowski said. A special problem is "last 
mile" interoperability among their devices, he said. Systems may be able to 
communicate at higher levels of command, but a soldier on the ground and 
pilot in the air above sometimes cannot view the same computerized 
information on a target that the other sees, which leads to delays as 
higher-level tactical command has to relay communications.


"The network has more power and is more survivable than the old hierarchy," 
he said.

Margaret Myers, Defense's deputy chief information officer, said in the 
move to a data-centric approach, the military is trying to build security 
requirements so each piece of information is tagged for who can see it. "We 
do know the Achilles Heel [of a network-centric approach] is security," she 
said.
*******************************
Computerworld
NIPC chief Ron Dick to retire
By DAN VERTON
DECEMBER 09, 2002

WASHINGTON -- Ron Dick, the director of the FBI's National Infrastructure 
Protection Center (NIPC), the cyberthreat and warning arm of the bureau, 
plans to retire this month, bringing to a close a 25-year career in law 
enforcement.
Dick, who took the helm of the NIPC in March 2001 during one of the most 
tumultuous times in the agency's brief history (see story), is credited 
with helping the NIPC define its role and mission within a growing and 
complicated federal cybsersecurity bureaucracy and amid incessant assaults 
from an army of critics who often took aim at what they saw as a lack of 
strategic analysis coming out of the agency.

Navy Rear Adm. James Plehal, the NIPC's deputy director, will take over as 
acting director until March 1, 2003, when the agency is expected to be 
absorbed into the Homeland Security Department.

"Ron gets an A on the enforcement side [for] finding and prosecuting 
criminals all over the world, including the Leaves worm creator to the 
Melissa virus creator to the 'I Love You' creator," said Alan Paller, 
director of research at the Bethesda, Md.-based SANS Institute. "Overall, 
I'd say he made a substantial difference in fighting cybercrime."

Harris Miller, president of the Arlington, Va.-based Information Technology 
Association of America called Dick an "effective" leader.

"He has increased the coordination among the government organizations 
involved and has been tireless in his efforts to reach out to the private 
sector to increase information flow between the private and public sector 
on cybersecurity risks and cyberterror threats," said Miller.

Dick is also credited with helping to increase and improve the NIPC's 
analysis capabilities, bringing in Bob Gerber, a career CIA officer, to 
serve as the NIPC's chief of analysis and warning; Leslie Wiser, a new 
watch chief recently hired away from the National Security Agency who was 
also the FBI agent responsible for nabbing CIA spy Aldrich Ames; and a 
Secret Service agent to serve as a liaison between the NIPC and that agency.

In one of his first steps toward demonstrating a coordinated federal 
approach to cybersecurity, Dick publicly introduced the Cyber Incident 
Coordination Group (CICG), which consists of select cyberintelligence 
experts from the CIA, the National Security Council, the Critical 
Infrastructure Assurance Office and the FBI. The CICG was formed late last 
year and conducts virtual meetings to coordinate responses to 
cyberincidents that may pose a risk to national security.

However, one of Dick's biggest challenges during his tenure came in July 
2001. That was when the Code Red worm began its rampage through the 
Internet. Coming as it did on the heels of a series of critical reports 
from the General Accounting Office on the NIPC's performance (see story), 
Code Red was an important test of Dick's leadership ability.

"Everybody issued warnings, and yet we didn't reach a significant number of 
people who utilize the software," he said in an interview in his office at 
the height of the Code Red crisis (see story).

"When I got here, we were basically a start-up," Dick said during that 2001 
interview. "There wasn't a staff here, there weren't facilities here and no 
dedicated source of funding. We basically had to build those capabilities 
from the ground up. It takes time."
*****************************
Wired News
Is That Really You? Check My DNA

Retinal scans. Fingerprints. Face scans. In the post 9/11 world, these 
kinds of biometric measures are increasingly used in public places like 
government offices, airports and rental car kiosks.

But one personal identifier may soon trump all others as a tool for 
security personnel: DNA.

Every human cell contains DNA, the blueprint for all life, and that genetic 
code is unique to each individual. So unless you have an identical twin, 
there's little chance that someone could mistake your DNA for somebody 
else's if it were used as a form of identification.

"DNA is nature's digital signature," said Clay Shirky, an adjunct professor 
in the interactive telecommunications program at New York University.

Shirky recently posted an article on his website outlining how DNA could be 
used as a biometric. Shirky maintains that DNA used as a biometric has the 
advantage of being easily digitized because genetic information can be 
expressed as a formula that contains just four letters -- similar to 
computer code -- which is based on a binary system.

"It occurred to me that DNA has a unique set of characters that are ... 
tied to individuals and is actually digital in its essence. It's encoded in 
base 4 (represented by the letters A, T, C and G)," he said. "Everything 
else we have: retinal scans, thumbprints, etc., have to be digitized after 
the fact."

Everyone's DNA is made up of three billion pairs of the letters A, T, C and 
G. Each pair (A with T and C with G) marks the ends of the rungs on the 
ladder of the DNA double helix.

Slight differences in each person's DNA code can be used as ID markers, and 
scientists are continually developing additional markers to identify 
individual genetic sequences.

Despite DNA's unique implications as an identifier, privacy experts aren't 
exactly shaking in their boots. From a privacy perspective, they say, DNA 
isn't much different than any other form of identification currently being 
used.

"I think DNA at the end of the day raises peoples' concerns because it does 
require taking tissue or fluid physically in a way that the other 
biometrics don't," said Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic 
Frontier Foundation. "It's more intrusive, but I think from an 
informational standpoint it's not that much different."

That said, Tien wonders whether a greater chance of identity theft would 
exist if DNA sequences proliferate as a form of identification.

"People leave DNA all over the place," Tien said. "I can get a sample of 
anybody's DNA I want to, but does that mean I would be able to spoof 
someone? Would I have the key to their information?"

No one uses DNA as an identifier yet, but Shirky said the technology exists 
and it's simply a matter of execution.

"VISA is currently eating about 2 percent of their transactions in fraud," 
he said. "All they have to say is 'Take a scrape of your cheek and mail it 
to us and we'll give you a credit card that has a better APR.'"

Although Shirky is not a privacy advocate himself, he believes Tien and 
others would be remiss not to recognize the potential power of DNA as a 
biometric.

"The privacy experts are ... wrong in believing that all (identifiers) are 
the same, because one kind is different, and that's DNA," he said.

For example, DNA identifiers could provide a simple way for investigators 
to root out discrepancies in a person's identification records as a result 
of pseudonyms or other false information. A felon might have a driver's 
license in New York and also have an arrest record under a different name 
in California. But authorities wouldn't easily be able to determine it's 
the same person.

No matter what search criteria they use -- license number, social security 
number or name -- the two databases will likely not be connected because 
the data is different, Shirky explained.

If authorities uncovered a clue that the two databases represented the same 
guy, they'd have to agree in advance on a primary key to merge the 
information.

But if they had sampled the person's DNA instead of relying on other data, 
using a false name or social security number would be irrelevant. A simple 
search with his DNA string could link the records, Shirky said.

"If this thing I'm talking about (linking databases) happens ... it goes 
from being something that required a lot of advance coordination to 
something that becomes a side effect of simple registration of DNA in the 
system," he said.
*********************************
Wired News
ICANN At-Large Reps Can Keep Jobs

The California company that oversees the Internet's domain-name structure 
has decided to keep its five democratically elected board members through 
early next year -- even though their terms were due to expire this month.

The move must be formally approved at the Dec. 14 meeting of the Internet 
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers in Amsterdam. It comes on the 
heels of protests over the decision to eliminate the elected at-large seats.

"To me it's very obvious that what they're trying to do is defuse the 
criticism of ICANN that has come from their repudiation of the principle 
that institutions that affect the public need to have public 
representatives," said Karl Auerbach, one of five members elected two years 
ago in online elections.

He predicted the board members would be asked to continue on much longer 
than the transition period of several months that ICANN predicted.

ICANN President M. Stuart Lynn scoffed at the characterization that the 
democratically elected board members were being kept on just for 
appearances. "I can only say that's silly," he said. "No one brought 
pressure and criticism. That's a Karl Auerbach fantasy."

Lynn said the transition board that will be set up to map ICANN's future 
will include all nine at-large board members, except for Phil Davidson, 
whose term is expiring. Two new board members will be added.

He left open the idea of returning to online elections in the future, but 
said for the time being limited participation and other difficulties ruled 
it out.

"If anyone can ever straighten out the difficulties, we might go back to 
it, but it's off the table," Lynn said. "One problem is the small amount of 
people who participated. It's also making sure that these online elections 
are free from fraud and capture. No one has done worldwide online elections 
but us. It's very, very difficult, and expensive. The United States had a 
hard time making elections work in Florida. We're little old ICANN."

He said ICANN wants committed, ongoing participation from the Internet 
community, not just the token involvement of an online vote. He also 
bristled at suggestions that in scheduling its meetings around the world, 
ICANN was doing anything other than reaching out.

"Traveling to these meetings is not some fun junket," he said. "It's damn 
hard work. We're at hotels all the time, at meetings. This is not fun. This 
is work."

The global nature of the Internet may in the end present more of a 
challenge to ICANN than domestic critics or maverick board members like 
Auerbach and Andy Mueller-Maguhn.

"Opposition from the likes of Auerbach and Mueller-Maguhn is little more 
than a speed bump," said Michael Geist, an Ottawa Law School professor who 
specialized in Internet law. "The larger challenge, it seems to me, comes 
from the (U.N.) International Telecommunication Union, which continues to 
be very active in bringing together participants in the Internet governance 
field without much regard for what ICANN is up to."
**********************************
Reuters Internet Report
US Warns Against Buying Certain Drugs Via Internet

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. regulators on Monday advised consumers not to 
buy via the Internet the acne drug Accutane, the leprosy treatment 
thalidomide and other medicines that have serious risks and are supposed to 
be used only with special safeguards in place.


The Food and Drug Administration (news - web sites) also told its field 
staff to detain the medicines if they find them being imported from overseas.


"Use of these FDA-approved products without adequate controls or 
monitoring, and using versions of these products not approved by the FDA, 
increases the risk of serious adverse events for patients who might 
otherwise benefit from the drugs' use," FDA Commissioner Mark McClellan 
said in a statement.


Each of the drugs the FDA singled out were approved with restrictions, such 
as limiting their distribution to physicians with special training or 
expertise, or requiring medical procedures such as blood or pregnancy tests.


For example, both thalidomide, which is sold under the brand name Thalomid, 
and Accutane can cause serious birth defects, and pregnancy tests are 
required for women taking either drug.


Another drug, schizophrenia treatment Clozaril, requires regular blood 
tests to check for a potentially dangerous drop in white blood cells.


Other drugs included in the FDA warning were Actiq for severe cancer pain, 
irritable bowel treatment Lotronex, heart drug Tikosyn, antibiotic Trovan, 
the so-called abortion pill Mifeprex, narcolepsy therapy Xyrem, and 
Tracleer, which treats a serious lung condition.
*****************************
MSNBC
Landmark Net libel case approved
Australian high court rules U.S. publisher can be sued there

CANBERRA, Australia, Dec. 10  Australia's highest court ruled Tuesday that 
a defamation case sparked by a story on a U.S Web site could be heard in 
Australia, opening a legal minefield for web publishers over which libel 
laws they must follow.

      THE LANDMARK RULING that an article published by Dow Jones & Co was 
subject to Australian law  because it was downloaded in Australia  is being 
watched by media firms as it could set a precedent over where Internet 
publication occurs.
       Dow Jones argued the case, brought by Australian mining magnate 
Joseph Gutnick for an Internet version of an article from Dow Jones' New 
York-based Barron's magazine, should be heard in the United States, where 
libel laws are considered relatively liberal.
       Gutnick initiated defamation proceedings in the Supreme Court in 
his home state of Victoria in Australia.
       Debate centered on whether an alleged defamation was published in 
the U.S. state of New Jersey, where Dow Jones's web servers are located, or 
in Victoria, where some readers saw the story.
       Two Victorian courts refused Dow Jones' application. The publisher 
then appealed to the High Court of Australia, the country's highest court.
       "The High Court has unanimously dismissed an appeal brought by Dow 
Jones," the court said in a statement.
      "The court was asked to determine where that article was published. 
It has made no findings on the merits of the defamation action itself."
       The court allowed 18 organizations to make submissions to the 
hearing, including AOL Time Warner Inc, Amazon.com Inc, the Associated 
Press, Bloomberg LP, CNN, News Corporation Ltd, Reuters Group Plc and 
Yahoo! Inc.
       Dow Jones argued that exposing publishers to defamation cases where 
Internet material was downloaded would expose them to claims all over the 
world and restrict freedom of speech.
      "The court was asked to determine where that article was published. 
It has made no findings on the merits of the defamation action itself."
       The court allowed 18 organizations to make submissions to the 
hearing, including AOL Time Warner Inc, Amazon.com Inc, the Associated 
Press, Bloomberg LP, CNN, News Corporation Ltd, Reuters Group Plc and 
Yahoo! Inc.
       Dow Jones argued that exposing publishers to defamation cases where 
Internet material was downloaded would expose them to claims all over the 
world and restrict freedom of speech.
*****************************
New Zealand Herald
Domain names competition opens with a twist
10.12.2002
By RICHARD WOOD

The registration of internet domain names has opened up to competition, 
with a twist.

The previous monopoly supplier, Domainz, will operate as a special 
"stabilising registrar", to help the changeover rather than compete on price.

On Saturday domain name sellers Webaddress, Iserve and Iconz connected to a 
new shared registry system, and the Herald understands at least 20 others 
will join over the next three months.

The Internet Society of New Zealand (InternetNZ), which owns Domainz, would 
like some but not all Domainz customers to shift to these other incoming 
registrars.

Society secretary David Farrar said in March that a letter would go out to 
any Domainz customers who had remained by default with Domainz, asking them 
which of the registrars they wanted to be with.

InternetNZ intends to sell Domainz to avoid a conflict of interest, as it 
owns the firm that runs the registry system as well. Its stabilising 
registrar agreement with Domainz ends in September next year.

In October and November Domainz increased its wholesale price for domain 
names to A-level providers from $22.50 a year to $27, and this will go up 
to $39.38 in February. This attracted some criticism.

Domainz chief executive Derek Locke said that although 15 of its resellers 
were receiving a price rise, for more than 100 the wholesale price remained 
the same.

Farrar said the price decision was made at an internet society meeting in 
June in order to provide a larger financial buffer as market changes were 
implemented.

Domainz has yet to decide whether it has a future in wholesaling domain 
names, but Locke said it would not compete in the wholesale market at the 
level of $30 that early competitors are entering at, and he did not expect 
those prices to last.

Farrar said the costs of implementing the new system had been lower than 
expected and it was likely that the wholesale price would drop in future.

Despite suggestions of rising prices the onset of wholesale competition in 
the domain name market has had an immediate effect.

Iserve has dropped its retail price from $45 to $38 a year with no name 
holder or setup fees and has wholesale for high-volume buyers down to 
$29.50 a domain with a $282 a customer annual fee.

Newcomer Webaddress has a bulk-buyer focus, selling domain name 
registrations for $32.63 a year with a minimum $62.50 monthly bill.

Iconz is reviewing its pricing, which is at present $44, to register a name 
with a $50 set-up fee in some situations and a $10 charge per three domain 
names.

Christchurch seller RegisterDirect will join the registry this week. 
Spokesman Michael Schupback said it would review its prices but for now 
keep them at $49.50 retail for domain registration and a $33.75 name-holder 
setup fee.

He expects prices to drop on basic registrations and that money to be made 
up on additional services.

Last month Richard Shearer, of domain name seller Freeparking, questioned 
whether prices would drop, considering that the wholesale price for the 
larger sellers had risen from $22.50 to $27 a year. Freeparking's retail 
price is $44.95, and it has an affiliate program that pays users $5 per NZ 
domain.

Shearer expects FreeParking to have joined the registry before February.

Telecom-owned ISP Xtra has not committed to becoming a registrar. Spokesman 
Chris Thompson said he expected some turbulence and the market would take a 
while to settle down.

He said Xtra did not want to be the "domain name speculative area" of the 
market and its customers demanded that Xtra take a conservative approach 
around supplying domain name services.

A total first-year cost of domain name setup and ownership through Xtra at 
present costs $267.75.
**************************************

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


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Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber:

Welcome to the December 16, 2002 edition of ACM TechNews,
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ACM TechNews
Volume 4, Number 435
Date: December 16, 2002

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Top Stories for Monday, December 16, 2002:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html

"Group Is Launching New Types of Licenses"
"Digital Pearl Harbor Is More Marketing Ploy Than Real Threat"
"IDC: Cyberterror and Other Prophecies"
"New Tactics Could Stave Off Digital Pirates"
"In the World of the Very Small, Companies Make Big Plans"
"Feds Invoked National Security to Speed Key Internet Change"
"Life on the Edge"
"Designing a Robot That Can Sense Human Emotion"
"Nanoparticles Could Aid Biohazard Detection, Computer Industry"
"Word to the Wise: Decentralize"
"Hollow Promise"
"W3C Proposes XML Encryption, Decryption Specs"
"ABA to Vote on UCITA Next Year"
"Integrating America"
"The Robot Evolution"
"Multimodality: The Next Wave of Mobile Interaction"

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

"Group Is Launching New Types of Licenses"
Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society is helping
to launch a new licensing program that aims to increase the
amount of intellectual property in the public domain.  The
Creative Commons will allow content owners to offer three new ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1216m.html#item1

"Digital Pearl Harbor Is More Marketing Ploy Than Real Threat"
Both the government and technology companies are issuing warnings
about possible cyberterrorism incidents in the hopes that it
could spur people into buying and investing in anti-terror
products and tools, which would give billions of dollars to ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1216m.html#item2

"IDC: Cyberterror and Other Prophecies"
International Data (IDC) chief research officer John Gantz made a
dire prediction for 2003 at a Thursday teleconference, in which
he detailed a cyberterrorist attack that will cripple the
Internet for at least 24 hours and wreak economic havoc.  The ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1216m.html#item3

"New Tactics Could Stave Off Digital Pirates"
Consumers must increasingly deal with software with built-in
usability limitations, which many copyright holders are
implementing in an attempt to curb digital piracy and
counterfeiting.  New versions of products such as Microsoft's ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1216m.html#item4

"In the World of the Very Small, Companies Make Big Plans"
More and more companies are investing in nanotechnology, with a
focus on specially tailored molecules that can be incorporated
into other substances.  3M and other manufacturers are marketing
paper-thin optical films synthesized from nanoscale crystals that ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1216m.html#item5

"Feds Invoked National Security to Speed Key Internet Change"
The U.S. Commerce Department approved VeriSign's request to move
one of the two VeriSign-managed root servers just two days after
the request was made.  VeriSign had asked the government to skip
routine administrative decision-making procedures in the name of ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1216m.html#item6

"Life on the Edge"
The Supernova decentralization conference showed the tension
between business mindsets and technologists who are committed to
building out equalizing, networked systems.  Topics included blogs,
Web services, and Wi-Fi--all of which are technologies that do ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1216m.html#item7

"Designing a Robot That Can Sense Human Emotion"
Vanderbilt University researchers Nilanjan Sarkar and Craig Smith
are working on a robot that can determine a person's emotional
state from physiological cues, and respond appropriately; they
detail their work in the December issue of the journal Robotica. ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1216m.html#item8

"Nanoparticles Could Aid Biohazard Detection, Computer Industry"
Purdue scientists have discovered a new way of creating metal
interconnects on chips that saves money, time, and even has
antiterrorism applications.  By dipping semiconductor chips into
a solution of dissolved metal salts, the researchers are able to ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1216m.html#item9

"Word to the Wise: Decentralize"
Technology analyst Kevin Werbach says enterprise IT systems will
continue to decentralize in the future as centralized systems
become too vast and complex to manage.  However, better
management, provisioning, and automatic features are needed for ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1216m.html#item10

"Hollow Promise"
Burak Temelkuran and colleagues report in this week's Nature that
they have constructed a hollow optical fiber that can transmit
light through air rather than glass, a solution that may allow
much more data to travel over fiber-optic lines.  The interior of ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1216m.html#item11

"W3C Proposes XML Encryption, Decryption Specs"
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has given its recommendation
to the XML Encryption Syntax Processing specification and the
Decryption Transform for XML Signature as ways to secure XML data
within documents and aid organizations that are building Web ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1216m.html#item12

"ABA to Vote on UCITA Next Year"
An American Bar Association vote on the controversial Uniform
Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA) in February is
viewed as a turning point in the fate of the software licensing
law.  The ABA will on whether UCITA should be adopted by states; ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1216m.html#item13

"Integrating America"
IT will be key to the success of the Department of Homeland
Security (DHS), which aims to integrate 22 agencies and programs,
and merge 170,000 workers into a cohesive entity.  Office of
Homeland Security CIO Steve Cooper and Treasury Department CIO ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1216m.html#item14

"The Robot Evolution"
MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory director Rodney A. Brooks
says intelligent robots will replace humans as a source for
low-cost manufacturing labor in the future.  In his latest book,
"Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us," Brooks writes ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1216m.html#item15

"Multimodality: The Next Wave of Mobile Interaction"
Multimodality technology aims to integrate speech, touch, and
vision to usher in a new age of mobile interaction that could
enable spontaneous, intuitive communications and hasten the
spread of value-added services, among other things.  Multimodal ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1216m.html#item16


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