Clips January 9, 2003

[Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>]

Clips January 9, 2003

ARTICLES

Charges dropped against former student in Web speech case
Panel lets security makers off the hook
Lawmakers poised to consider Internet tax bill
Va.'s Davis to Head Key Panel
House approves Homeland Security headquarters lease
West Point Creates Campus Wireless Network After Overcoming Security Issues
Retinal-scans to remove social stigma from English school
Hotmail: A Spammer's Paradise?
Lexmark invokes DMCA in toner suit
Bush taps Cooper for homeland CIO
IT reforms at forefront in Virginia
Tauzin Reverses Stance on Do-Not-Call List
Denmark and Greece only states to introduce EU Copyright Directive
****************************
USA Today
Charges dropped against former student in Web speech case

BEAVER, Utah (AP)  Misdemeanor defamation of character charges against a 
former high school student who used his Web site to attack fellow students 
and administrators have been dropped, ending a case that drew national 
attention and resulted in the overturning of Utah's criminal-libel law.

Ian Lake was arrested, jailed and charged in May 2000 for his Web site 
comments that called his Milford High School principal a "town drunk" and 
accused classmates of having loose morals.

The Utah Supreme Court ruled in November that the criminal-libel law under 
which Lake originally was charged was unconstitutional.

"Considering the Supreme Court ruling, we cannot see how justice is being 
pursued with these (defamation) charges and ask they be dismissed," Von 
Christiansen, the newly sworn-in Beaver County attorney, said Tuesday. He 
was quoted in a copyright story in The Salt Lake Tribune.

Fifth District Juvenile Court Judge Hans Chamberlain then dropped the class 
B misdemeanors, which were brought by then-County Attorney Leo Kanell 
before the Supreme Court overturned the criminal libel law.

"Time to get going with life now," said Lake, who returned to Utah from 
California for the proceedings.

Lake, now 19, said he had been working up until last week in a real-estate 
office in Desert Hot Springs, Calif., and plans to take the admissions exam 
for the University of California at Riverside.

"The best part about the case was that it got me out of Milford and to 
California, where I graduated with honors from Palm Springs High School," 
Lake said. "The bad part was it cost my family a lot of money."

His father, David Lake, said legal bills have cost the family $50,000, even 
though his son has been represented by court-appointed attorneys.

He said Kanell, who is now an assistant county attorney, "wasted a lot of 
tax money in his personal pursuit of my son."

Kanell, who did not attend the proceedings Tuesday, maintains the 
defamation charges would have passed constitutional muster if they had been 
pursued, but he agreed with the dismissal as many of those involved have 
moved from the area.

He said the news media sensationalized the case and foiled his attempts "to 
help a young man who has problems.

"The media (were) a stumbling block by all the attention they gave this," 
Kanell said. "They never felt sorry for those who were deeply hurt (by Ian 
Lake's actions) and how he affected their decisions to leave or retire from 
the school district."
*****************************
News.com
Panel lets security makers off the hook
By Declan McCullagh
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
January 8, 2003, 4:45 PM PT

Security software and hardware makers should not have to submit their 
products for mandatory performance testing, a federal advisory council said 
Wednesday.
Members of the National Infrastructure Advisory Council (NIAC), a 
presidentially appointed panel, voted during a conference call Wednesday 
afternoon to remove language from a draft cybersecurity report that could 
have required that all "security products that protect critical 
infrastructure" undergo strict review.

The advisory report is scheduled to be sent to President George W. Bush in 
the next month, and any legal requirements it recommends imposing on the 
private sector would have to be approved by Congress.


Union Pacific Chairman and CEO Richard Davidson, chairman of NIAC, began 
the call by saying that the performance testing requirement is "probably 
not as palatable to the IT companies and probably is a little too strong in 
terms of regulation recommendations."

Davidson's note of caution was echoed by Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers. 
"We found that mandatory testing and evaluation testing and procedures in 
the area of security is something that has actually slowed down innovation 
and is always two to three steps behind," Chambers said. He suggested that 
this could result in a regulation that meets a lowest common denominator 
requirement.

Akamai Technologies' George Conrades said he would support the government's 
taking a market approach--using its purchasing power--to oversight of the 
cybersecurity industry. This would help quell concerns about slowing down 
innovation, the company chairman and CEO said. Conrades also agreed with 
the removal of the word "mandatory" from the report.

Margaret Grayson, CEO of network security firm V-One, suggested that 
certain "products be required to interoperate with each other." Other NIAC 
members, including Chambers, spoke out against the proposal, and Grayson 
eventually amended the testing requirement to become only advisory.

President Bush created the NIAC by executive order in Oct. 2001, after the 
Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and appointed most members to it a year later.

The crafting of the NIAC recommendations is linked to the unveiling in 
September of a draft White House proposal recommending that industry and 
individuals take greater care in securing data rather than recommending 
tough new laws and regulations requiring specific industry segments to 
secure themselves.
*****************************
USA Today
Lawmakers poised to consider Internet tax bill
January 9, 2003

LANSING, Mich. (AP)  There soon may be no way to avoid paying the sales tax 
on Internet and catalog purchases in Michigan as state lawmakers appear 
poised to consider a bill to collect those taxes.

The legislation would be based on an agreement recently reached by a group 
of 33 states, including Michigan. It's intended to create more uniform tax 
laws so taxes on purchases made across state lines can be more easily 
collected.

Michigan's budget woes are giving a boost to the bill, which would bring in 
an estimated $100 million to $300 million in sales and use tax revenue that 
now goes uncollected each year, according to the nonpartisan Senate Fiscal 
Agency.

However, the national agreement calls for states to pay for some of the 
collection system, which would include computer software for retailers to 
report sales tax revenues and which state should collect it.

The agreement would be voluntary for retailers who do business in different 
states, said Ellen Marshall, spokeswoman for the Streamlined Sales Tax 
Project.

Simplifying the tax code would make it more attractive for retailers to 
collect sales tax, state Treasury spokesman Terry Stanton said Wednesday.

Many online retailers say it's too difficult to figure out the patchwork of 
sales taxes across the nation and make sure the money is collected and sent 
to the states from which residents are making online and catalog purchases.

Consumers are required to pay sales tax on purchases made online, over the 
telephone and by mail, but people don't always pay it and the state doesn't 
go after them.

In Michigan, the 6% sales tax accounts for 28% of the state's total tax 
revenue, Stanton said. The sales tax brought in about $6.5 billion last 
year, he said.

Michigan's single sales tax rate puts it ahead of other states where 
officials have to figure out how to collect different local and state taxes 
to create a uniform system, Stanton said.

"The state is between 80% and 90% compliant with the agreement now," he 
said. "Some sales and use tax statutes would have to be changed in 
legislation, but we wouldn't be starting from scratch."

Under the national agreement, a business would charge the appropriate tax 
at the time of purchase and then electronically submit the tax information 
to the state, said Eric Rule of the Michigan Retailers Association.

Proposed legislation may contain some tax credits for retailers to purchase 
the electronic equipment, he said.

Supporters of the Streamlined Sales Tax Project, including Democratic Gov. 
Jennifer Granholm and Republican House Speaker Rick Johnson, say it would 
level the playing field between Michigan retailers and out-of-state 
merchants who sell through catalogs and the Internet.

"The mom and pop stores have been calling me about it," said Johnson, of 
LeRoy. "It's not a new tax, it's a fairness issue that will help keep some 
people in business."

Despite the support of Johnson and Granholm, the bill isn't likely to 
receive quick approval from the GOP-controlled legislature.

Two years ago, the House narrowly approved a bill to allow Michigan to 
participate in the national group's efforts to develop a way to collect 
taxes. A number of Republicans think the bill will mean new taxes and 
stifle economic growth.

Rep. Leon Drolet, a Republican from Macomb County's Clinton Township, said 
the bill may have a hard time in the current legislature, which he 
considers more conservative than the one that left office Dec. 31.

Although the state faces a deficit and could use the money, the slow 
economy is hurting taxpayers as well, he said.

"We don't need the money, the people need the money to keep the economy 
going," Drolet said.

The bill to participate in the national Streamlined Sales Tax Project 
expired on Dec. 31. Johnson said the House may consider a bill to extend 
the state's participation in the group.

Michigan doesn't need to be in the group to be part of the most recent 
agreement on collecting sales taxes across state lines. But it may need to 
be a member to be part of any future agreements.
*****************************
Washington Post
Va.'s Davis to Head Key Panel
Thursday, January 9, 2003; Page A08

Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) was named chairman of the House Government 
Reform Committee last night, succeeding term-limited Rep. Dan Burton 
(R-Ind.) as head of the panel that oversees civil servants, federal 
contractor and governmental operations and investigations.

"We Republicans were elected as reformers," said Davis, 54, who is credited 
with helping preserve the GOP House majority in 2000 and 2002 as head of 
the National Republican Congressional Committee. He called the committee 
"ground zero" in GOP efforts "to streamline the federal government."

The chairmanship is a plum assignment, with the power to initiate 
investigations into most government functions and to oversee at least some 
homeland security activities. Davis 54, a five-term incumbent from Fairfax 
County, was chosen over Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Calif.), 50, an eight-term 
incumbent, and Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), 57, who is serving his 16th year.
*******************************
Government Executive
January 8, 2003
House approves Homeland Security headquarters lease
By Jason Peckenpaugh
jpeckenpaugh@xxxxxxxxxxx

The Bush administration won approval from the House Wednesday for its plan 
to lease a headquarters for the Homeland Security Department, a move that 
could aid plans to locate the new department in Northern Virginia.


The House approved a prospectus that calls for 225,000 square feet to 
275,000 square feet for the new headquarters, paving the way for the 
General Services Administration to award a lease later this month. The 
approval means the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will 
not review the arrangement, as it typically does with major federal leases. 
The lease provision was included in a continuing resolution, providing 
temporary fiscal 2003 funding for agencies, which passed by voice vote. The 
Senate has yet to act on the measure.


On Wednesday The Washington Post reported that the Bush administration is 
considering three sites for the Homeland Security headquarters, all of 
which are in Northern Virginia. Two are in the Tysons Corner area near the 
Dulles Toll Road, and one is in Chantilly, Va., near Route 28.


Reps. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., and Steny Hoyer, D-Md., criticized the 
House's move, saying it kept Congress from modifying a selection process 
that was biased towards Northern Virginia. "Even prior to the insertion of 
the lease provision in the [continuing resolution] today, the District of 
Columbia never had a fair chance to get the lease for the temporary 
headquarters," Norton said at a press conference.

"Ramming this provision through the House today is unfair not only to the 
jurisdictions who were bidding for the site of the headquarters, but 
doesn't take into consideration the needs of the employees whose lives will 
dramatically shift when the site is complete," Hoyer said in a statement.


A GSA official would not comment on the selection process, which he said 
was still ongoing. But GSA is on track to pick a site by the end of next 
week. GSA's solicitation, issued Dec. 12, says the government intends to 
move furniture and equipment to the new building by Jan. 17, and move the 
first homeland security employees by Jan. 24, according to the official.


The chosen site must also be able to provide up to 250,000 square feet of 
additional office space, and have a 50-foot setback from the street for 
perimeter security.


Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., said this leasing strategy nets enough office 
space to house up to 2,200 employees, a fraction of the 17,000 
Washington-area employees who are slated to move to the new department.


"Does this administration have any intention of ever creating one 
department under one roof?" he asked at the press conference.


Reaching any of the three potential sites for the headquarters could create 
new commuting challenges for Homeland Security workers. None of the three 
sites are accessible by Metro, the Washington subway system. The two sites 
in the Tysons Corner area can be reached by bus.


Laura Allen, press secretary for the Coalition for Smarter Growth, a 
Washington-based pro-transit group, said the new department should be 
located near a Metro station. "The federal government should certainly not 
be involved in putting new offices in areas where you have no choice but to 
drive," she said.
*******************************
Chronicle of Higher Education
West Point Creates Campus Wireless Network After Overcoming Security Issues
By FLORENCE OLSEN

The U.S. Military Academy, in West Point, N.Y., has begun using wireless 
networks in its classrooms -- but only after conducting extensive research 
on security hazards and waiting two years for fast wireless technology to 
become available.

West Point officials believe the wireless network they now have is secure, 
which makes it unlike most wireless networks on college campuses. But to 
secure the network, West Point had to pay about $625,000, about five times 
what the network itself cost.

Most colleges have dealt with the threat of casual attackers by recognizing 
the problem and providing secure Web pages for students' coursework. But 
West Point officials say they had to invest in a much more secure approach 
because their campus network is connected to the Department of Defense 
network, making it a more likely target of deliberate attackers.

"We cannot pose a threat to the rest of DOD through our network," says Col. 
Donald J. Welch, associate dean for information and educational technology.

In setting up their wireless network, West Point officials created what is 
known as a virtual private network -- VPN, for short -- and installed 60 
access controllers around the campus.

The VPN software, which West Point purchased separately from its wireless 
network, is made by Cranite Systems, a software company located in San 
Jose, Calif. The software uses the federal government's most advanced 
encryption algorithm to guarantee the privacy of data files and network 
information.

The access controllers act as firewalls between the academy's 
wireless-access hardware and the campus's wired network. According to 
Colonel Welch, an expert in information security, the access controllers 
prevent even an "insidious type of attack."

Technicians have installed 150 wireless-access hubs so far. Coverage of the 
entire campus will be completed by the start of the fall semester.

West Point is using a fast wireless technology, known as 802.11a, which 
requires more access devices than does the more commonly used but slower 
802.11b technology. The main advantage of the 802.11a networks, beside 
speed, Colonel Welch says, is that they are relatively free of the 
congestion that often disrupts communications on the slower networks.

West Point's network is set up so that each classroom of 18 or fewer 
students has its own wireless cell. Within that cell, the network bandwidth 
is about 25 megabits per second, or five times as fast as the effective 
bandwidth of 802.11b networks.

"We can watch TV over the wireless," says Colonel Welch. "Bandwidth has not 
been a constraint."
********************************
USA Today
Retinal-scans to remove social stigma from English school
January 9, 2003

LONDON (AP)  A new high school said Wednesday its students will be charged 
for their lunches with a retina scanning device to prevent poor children 
who eat for free from being ridiculed in the cafeteria.

Dr. Ed Yates, headmaster of the Venerable Bede school, said the advanced 
eye-recognition software will be in place when the institution opens its 
doors to 900 students in September in Sunderland, western England.

He said the school is concerned that if students are forced to pay for 
their lunches in cash the poor ones who receive food for free could be 
stigmatized. So officials have decided to make the entire school "cashless."

The retina scanning device also will be used in the library when students 
take out and return books, Yates said.

He assured parents the low-intensity light of the retina scanning devices 
will be safe for all students.

"We think we are the first (school) in the country to use this," he said of 
the device. "But this is not a James Bond school for spies. ... This is not 
science fiction. This is technology that exists."
********************************
Wired News
Hotmail: A Spammer's Paradise?
02:00 AM Jan. 09, 2003 PT

If so many spam offers weren't totally bogus, Hotmail users would be 
incredibly well-endowed, slim people with plenty of hair who make big money 
working at home when they aren't having great sex provoked by free porn and 
herbal Viagra.

Many users of the free e-mail service offered by Microsoft's MSN.com say 
that within a day of creating a new Hotmail account the spam starts flowing 
in, almost as if spammers have sunk a tap directly into Hotmail's user 
database and are slurping up a free-flowing torrent of e-mail addresses.

And according to Steve Linford, of the anti-spam Spamhaus Project that's 
almost exactly what's happening.

Spamhaus has proof that at least one spammer has been conducting a massive 
dictionary attack against the mail servers of both Hotmail.com and MSN.com, 
at the rate of three to four tries per second, 24 hours a day, continuously 
for the last five months.

A dictionary attack utilizes software that opens a connection to the target 
mail server and then rapidly submits millions of random e-mail addresses. 
Many of these addresses have slight variations, such as 
"jdoe1abc@xxxxxxxxxxx" and "jdoe2def@xxxxxxxxxxxx" The software then 
records which addresses are "live" and adds the addresses to the spammers 
list. These lists are typically resold to many other spammers.

Dictionary attacks are not new, and many e-mail servers are protected 
against them, but Hotmail and MSN servers are not.

Linford figures that in the attack he's been tracking, the spammers have 
hit Hotmail's server more than 52 million times. Even assuming a pitifully 
low 1-percent rate of live addresses gleaned from those hits, it still 
amounts to a significant number of e-mail addresses being added to spam lists.

According to Linford, the attack is originating from servers operated by 
American spammers in Beijing, China.

Linford said he has tried to contact Hotmail and MSN representatives to 
offer assistance in stopping the current attack, but has received no response.

Microsoft did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Steve Atkins, of the anti-spam website Sam Spade, said that Hotmail is the 
primary target of spammers, who often use dictionary attacks to harvest 
addresses from Hotmail servers.

"Other providers do suffer from address harvesting in this way. Vanity 
domains with catch-all e-mail addresses suffer particularly, but none are 
targeted with quite the ferocity that Hotmail is."

Given the sheer volume of e-mail traffic Hotmail/MSN servers handle each 
day, spammers conducting dictionary attacks can hide undetected for many 
months. But the attacks are stoppable.

"Hotmail could deal with this particular problem if they chose to do so by 
detecting such traffic and permanently blocking the addresses it occurs 
from," Atkins said.

Linford said he would be happy to tell Hotmail engineers where the attacks 
are originating from, if someone would get back to him.

"But those spammers will simply move to new IP addresses and resume," 
Linford added. "Microsoft needs to implement anti-dictionary attack -- also 
called anti-brute-force attack -- protection on their mail servers."

Atkins agreed that Hotmail/MSN should protect their servers against these 
sorts of spam attacks, but added that it would require a serious cash 
investment to design, build and deploy such protection for an e-mail system 
the size of Hotmail.

"There's not that much business incentive for Hotmail to do this, as their 
use of Brightmail spam filtering reduces the amount of spam that people 
receive directly in their inbox, so users of Hotmail don't see a large 
fraction of the spam they receive," Atkins said.

"But that spam is still delivered to the users' bulk-mail folder, so it 
counts toward their mailbox quota."

Hotmail users get two megabytes of storage space on Hotmail's servers. If 
an account goes over that limit, Hotmail begins deleting messages. Once 
removed, messages cannot be recovered. Users who want more storage space 
can pay for an expanded version of the service.

According to Linford, until Hotmail/MSN finds a way to permanently prevent 
the attacks, the only way to protect against harvesting attacks is to 
create a long user name with plenty of random characters interspersed with 
digits -- one that even dictionary-attack software trying billions of 
random combinations can probably not guess.
*****************************
News.com
Lexmark invokes DMCA in toner suit
By Declan McCullagh
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
January 8, 2003, 7:28 PM PT

Printer maker Lexmark has found an unusual weapon to thwart rivals from 
selling replacement toner cartridges: the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
A federal judge in Kentucky has scheduled a hearing for Thursday in the 
case, which Lexmark filed against Static Control Components in an effort to 
slam the brakes on the toner cartridge remanufacturing industry. Lexmark is 
the No. 2 printer maker in the United States, behind Hewlett-Packard, and 
manufactures printers under the Dell Computer brand.

This lawsuit is the latest of several recent DMCA cases--both civil and 
criminal--that have tested the limits of the 1998 copyright law, in which 
Congress intended to limit Internet piracy. Eight movie studios wielded it 
to force 2600 magazine to delete a DVD-descrambling utility from its Web 
site, but the Justice Department lost a case last month against a Russian 
company that created a program that cracked Adobe's electronic books.


Lexmark claims that Static Control violated the DMCA by selling its Smartek 
chips to companies that refill toner cartridges and undercut Lexmark's prices.

The legal action escalates what has been a technological cold war, pitting 
the aftermarket ink and toner industry against printer manufacturers who 
try to prevent customers from buying products from third parties. In an 
essay titled "OEM Warfare," Static Control CEO Ed Swartz says: "The OEMs 
will continue to escalate their technologies to erect barrier after barrier 
to our industry. Each barrier will require an ever growing amount of time, 
money, talent and effort to overcome."

Under section 1201 of the DMCA, it is generally unlawful to circumvent 
technology that restricts access to a copyrighted work.

In a 17-page complaint filed on Dec. 30, 2002, the company claims the 
Smartek chip mimics the authentication sequence used by Lexmark chips and 
unlawfully tricks the printer into accepting an aftermarket cartridge. That 
"circumvents the technological measure that controls access to the Toner 
Loading Program and the Printer Engine Program," the complaint says. The 
Toner Loading Program checks toner levels in the cartridge, and the Printer 
Engine Program controls operations such as paper feed and the actual 
transfer of the dry ink to paper.

Lexmark is asking U.S. District Judge Karl Forester to order Static Control 
to "deliver up for destruction" all Smartek chips and to cease selling 
them. Static Control could not be reached Wednesday for comment.

Jessica Litman, a professor at Wayne State University who specializes in 
copyright law, said it's likely that Lexmark would not have been able to 
succeed in its lawsuit without the DMCA, but stands a good chance with it.

Pre-DMCA cases involving video game consoles concluded that it was legal to 
copy code for the purposes of interoperability, Litman said. In Sony v. 
Connectix, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that it was 
legal for Connectix to copy the Sony PlayStation's BIOS for the purpose of 
interoperability.

"I think they almost certainly would have skated were it not for the 
existence of the DMCA," Litman said of Static Control. "I would have 
expected the eastern district of Kentucky to follow the 9th Circuit to say 
that reverse engineering and copying of the code was fair use because it 
was enabling interoperability."

Cindy Cohn, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil 
liberties group in San Francisco that's one of the chief critics of section 
1201 of the DMCA, said she expected more cases like the one brought by 
Lexmark.

"We have long said that the DMCA's potential use as an anticompetitive tool 
has been great," Cohn said. "Now we're seeing it happen."

Lexmark's complaint also alleges traditional copyright infringement, saying 
the Smartex chips contain "unauthorized, identical copies of Lexmark's 
copyrighted Toner Loading Programs."
*****************************
Federal Computer Week
IT reforms at forefront in Virginia
BY Matt Caterinicchia
Jan. 8, 2003

Virginia Gov. Mark Warner's proposal to restructure information technology 
management in the state government  part of a broader package of 
reforms  will go before the General Assembly when it convenes this afternoon.

The reforms, which Warner announced Dec. 10, 2002, at a meeting of the 
Southern Technology Council, will consolidate state IT functions within one 
agency, the Virginia Information Technologies Agency, resulting in the 
removal of three existing agencies and two government oversight boards.

The biggest beneficiaries of the governor's proposals are the citizens of 
Virginia, George Newstrom, Virginia's secretary of technology, said in an 
interview this week. "The main focus is providing the citizens with better 
services as well as save them a substantial amount of money," he said. "We 
want services to be enhanced as well as save money to constituents."

The elimination of the Department of Information Technology, the Department 
of Technology Planning and the Virginia Information Providers Network 
Authority will not result in a net loss of jobs, Newstrom explained. "There 
are currently 2,000 jobs in technology. There will be 2,000 jobs when we 
are done," he said.

By consolidating about $450 million in annual spending on IT, the state 
seeks to generate savings by eliminating redundant activities and taking 
advantage of the buying power of the state for computer hardware and 
software purchases.

Along with agency consolidation and the attempt to achieve long-term cost 
savings, Warner wants to provide increased opportunities for state 
government IT employees. According to Newstrom, government employees will 
benefit from the IT reform because the consolidation of the agencies will 
"keep our employees at the forefront of technology."

The proposal will include the following opportunities for government 
employees that are not readily available under the current system in 
Virginia's state government:

* Training and retraining of employees to ensure that skills keep pace with 
the changing nature of technology.

* Access to technology tools, resources and techniques.

* A professional focus that emphasizes customer service to both state 
government agencies and Virginia's citizens.

If the proposal is approved, the legislation will go into effect July 1. 
"We will be poised and fully ready to implement by this date," Newstrom said.

"This effort is one of the boldest in the country that I can see," he said. 
"We are seeing a tremendous amount of curiosity from other states."
*****************************
Government Computer News
1/08/03
Bush taps Cooper for homeland CIO
By Wilson P. Dizard III

President Bush plans to appoint Steven I. Cooper, now CIO of the Homeland 
Security Office, to be the CIO of the Homeland Security Department, the 
White House has announced.

Bush also sent his nominations of Tom Ridge, director of the Homeland 
Security Office, to be Secretary of Homeland Security and Navy Secretary 
Gordon England to be deputy secretary of the new department. Both must be 
confirmed by the Senate; their nominations had been announced earlier. The 
CIO position does not require Senate confirmation.

Before joining the White House's Homeland Security Office, Cooper had been 
CIO of Corning Inc. of Corning, N.Y. and director of corporate information 
systems at Eli Lilly and Co. of Indianapolis.

Since his appointment as CIO of the Homeland Security Office, Cooper has 
led teams that have been crafting the information architecture of the 
Homeland Security Department. The early goals of the homeland security IT 
officials include consolidating overlapping systems in the 22 agencies that 
will form the department, creating an e-mail system to link all the 
department's employees and launching a portal for the new department.

"One of the areas that is going to show up on Day 1 is the intelligence 
analysis and infrastructure protection capability," Cooper said recently.
*********************************
Washington Post
Tauzin Reverses Stance on Do-Not-Call List
Congressman Pledges Support for FTC's Proposed Telemarketing Registry
By Caroline E. Mayer
Thursday, January 9, 2003; Page E04

Amid a strong show of congressional support for a government program to 
curb unsolicited calls, a key House committee chairman yesterday dropped 
his opposition to a Federal Trade Commission request for quick funding for 
a national do-not-call list.

After a 90-minute committee briefing with FTC Chairman Timothy J. Muris, 
Rep. W.J. "Billy" Tauzin (R-La.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce 
Committee, said he will help the agency obtain quick approval for the plan 
-- as long as the funding is limited and Congress has a chance to review 
the program in a couple of years.

"We are working with the FTC to try to get one to two years' funding 
authority" for the anti-telemarketing registry, Tauzin spokesman Ken 
Johnson said shortly after the briefing. "We are shooting to get this 
done," he added, so the $16 million in funding can be approved by the end 
of this month and the do-not-call list can be operational by the end of the 
year.

Tauzin's support contrasted with reservations he expressed as recently as 
Tuesday. In a letter to Muris late last month, Tauzin said he would block 
the agency's request for immediate funding until his committee had 
"adequate opportunity to properly review and evaluate" the plan.

During the briefing, one committee member after another denounced 
telemarketing calls and applauded Muris for his agency's efforts to limit 
unwanted telephone solicitations.

"This is a giant step forward for consumers often plagued by unsolicited, 
intrusive telemarketing calls," Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) said, just 
as his cell phone started to ring. "No, I don't want to change my phone 
service; take me off that list," he said, as if berating a telemarketer, as 
the audience in the committee room laughed.

"It will be nice to return to the days when you want to answer the phone," 
added Rep. John M. Shimkus (R-Ill.).

Not only was the praise bipartisan, but several congressmen suggested that 
Congress consider taking the do-not-call list even further by enacting 
legislation to broaden the FTC's authority to bar solicitations from 
politicians. Even Tauzin said he was "personally offended by recorded calls 
from politicians."

Under the FTC's plan, announced last month, consumers would be able to join 
a national do-not-call list by dialing a toll-free number from their home 
telephone and then punching in some numbers, or by signing up via the 
Internet. Telemarketers calling numbers on that list would risk being fined 
up to $11,000 for each banned call. The $16 million needed to fund the list 
would be repaid by the telemarketers, who would have to pay a fee to gain 
access to it to know whom not to call.

Although Tauzin said he would support a pilot program, he wondered whether 
the FTC has the authority to go ahead with its plans and worried that 
without further congressional action, the do-not-call list could be 
challenged in court. Tauzin also noted that some industries, such as 
insurance, banking and telecommunications, would be exempt because the 
agency doesn't have authority to regulate those businesses.

"The last thing we need is for two separate agencies to have different 
jurisdictional scope crafting their own regulations," he said.

Muris said the Federal Communications Commission is reviewing its 
telemarketing rules, and he hopes that agency will issue new rules forcing 
those industries to comply with the FTC's do-not-call list.

K. Dane Snowden, chief of the FCC's bureau of consumer and governmental 
affairs, said both agencies are "going to make sure we don't contradict one 
another as we go forward."
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Euromedia.net
Denmark and Greece only states to introduce EU Copyright Directive
08/01/2003  Editor: Leigh Phillips

Denmark and Greece are the only member states to have introduced the EU 
Copyright Directive as law prior to the December 2002 deadline for 
implementation.

Although their introduction has been encouraged by Hollywood and the 
software industry, the new regulations on copyright protection have run 
into much opposition from online civil libertarians, who welcome the delay 
in implementation.

Campaigners view the directive as a possible obstacle to open source 
development and the legitimate free use of copyright material, while 
industry feels the directive is needed to combat what it views as digital 
piracy.
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