Clips February 6, 2003

[Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>]

Clips February 6, 2003

ARTICLES

Some Users of Free Tax E-Filing Say the 'E' Doesn't Stand for 'Easy'
States mining data to boost tax revenue 
Major Dot-Com Retailers Begin Levying Sales Tax 
Talk of Tile Problem Was Brief 
A Persistent Questioner Leads the Columbia House Inquiry
Satellite Tracking Spurs Stalking Fears
E-Clearance success will let OPM clear Defense personnel 
NMCI budget larger than expected
Aid for jobless IT workers urged
Wi-Fi as Savior? France's Farm Dwellers Hope So

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Los Angeles Times
Some Users of Free Tax E-Filing Say the 'E' Doesn't Stand for 'Easy'
By Kathy M. Kristof
Times Staff Writer

February 6 2003

The Internal Revenue Service's new free e-filing program is giving some Americans yet another reason to hate tax season.

Less than a month old, the alliance between the IRS and private tax preparation firms that was designed to encourage more Americans to file their tax returns online is drawing some sour reviews.

Among the gripes: Some taxpayers said they have been charged for services they thought were free. Others said they ran into technical problems and gave up trying to file their return after hours of trying. Still others complain that they had to buy additional services to get the free tax-filing service.

Computer programmer Rance Naffziger of Tucson got so frustrated while trying to file his return electronically last month that he ended up filing a paper return by mail.

"I know electronic filing is supposed to be the wave of the future, but I figure I can wait another year," he said. "I'm happy knowing that the paper copy I sent in stands a decent chance of being read by a government official and having them get back to me."

IRS officials acknowledge there have been problems with the fledgling service, but say the complaints account for a tiny fraction of e-filing volume and are largely attributable to growing pains. "This is obviously new for all of us," said Terry Lutes, director of electronic tax administration for the IRS. "It is a learning experience for us and a learning experience for some of the companies."

The free e-filing initiative is part of an IRS program that's been in the works for more than a year. The agency, which had once contemplated providing free electronic filing direct to the public, agreed late last year to offer the service through a partnership with several private firms.

The IRS' partners range from brand names such as H&R Block Inc., Intuit Inc. and CCH Inc. to relative unknowns such as ESmartTax and FreeTaxReturn.com. The partners agreed to offer free e-filing to at least 60% of the nation's taxpayers in return for the marketing boost involved in being an IRS affiliate.

Consumer groups were suspicious of the plan, saying that tax firms were likely to use it as a way to market other, for-fee services.

But complaints from consumers have focused on other issues, including software glitches and getting charged for services they thought were free.

Some taxpayers may have been charged for what they thought was a free service because the 17 firms involved in the program are allowed to change their qualification standards on short notice. For example, some offered free e-filing only to taxpayers earning less than a set threshold or to those above or below a certain age, while others offered free e-filing only to residents of specific states. But a few firms already have changed their criteria, knocking out eligibility for those age 45 or over or New York residents, for instance.

The result: A taxpayer who started a return but didn't complete it immediately could find a site's free offer was rescinded before the tax return was filed. That appears to have forced some taxpayers to cancel the process and start over, or pay a fee for a service they thought would be free.

"The companies' offerings are changing," Lutes said. "We were uncomfortable with this initially but realize that these companies are not charities. We had to give them some wiggle room."

Stephen Ryan, general counsel for a group representing the e-filing firms, said the tax preparation firms in the partnership agreed to provide refunds in these situations.

In other cases, the fee could have been triggered by taxpayer errors. If taxpayers start the process at one of the tax firms' Web sites -- rather than the IRS Web site at www.irs.gov -- they may be charged for the service.

Naffziger of Tucson suspects that's why FileYourTaxes.com, which says it offers free e-filing to all Arizona residents, was about to charge him $36.50 for filing his return. When he tried to edit his return or delete it so he could start over, the site wouldn't let him fix or delete his information.

"When I selected the prompt saying edit an existing return, it just refreshed the screen," he said. "It wouldn't let me go back in there."

Naffziger sent the site an e-mail asking how he could make the system accept his changes. When he got no response, he gave up.

Stan Kistner, a Florida retiree, had a different problem with FreeTaxUSA. When he entered data from his 1099 forms, which report income from dividends and interest, it showed up on the electronic tax form but not on the summary page that included all the data that would be filed with the IRS.

"Being the honest taxpayer I am, I want to pay what's owed," Kistner said. When he couldn't reach the site's technical support staff, he also gave up.

Thomas Lain of Fort Worth said that after spending more than an hour filling out forms on TaxBrain's site, he was asked to enter a "discount code" so he wouldn't be charged for the service. He went to the firm's chat room to ask how to get the code. The site specialist referred Lain back to the IRS.

"After about 20 minutes of looking at the IRS site, I gave up on finding the code," he said. "So I went back to the TaxBrain site and removed all the information I had stored."

TaxBrain did send the code a day later, but it was too late, Lain said. He'd sent in a paper return.

Officials at several of the tax services said the computer glitches probably are caused by unanticipated volume. The system has been deluged since the IRS launched the program, and much of the activity comes from first-time users, noted C.C. Chen, president of ESmartTax, which is based in Milpitas, Calif.

Though the focus of the program was to get more first-time filers, it also lends itself to more errors and complaints because these taxpayers aren't familiar with some of the vagaries of electronic filing, Chen said.

Overburdened sites may not have been able to respond as quickly to consumer questions as they would normally, said John Vora, president of Tax Simple in New Jersey. Vora said his site got 1,600 hits in the first hour the program was available.

In the first two weeks, 300,000 taxpayers free-filed through the IRS program. "You cannot design for that kind of an onslaught," Vora said. Even sites that had ramped up found their staffs and servers overloaded.

It was another kind of hitch, though, that stymied taxpayer Marie Kopec of Tucson. She was unable to get the free federal filing at FileYourTaxes.com without paying $17.50 to file her state tax return -- and linking fee services with free services is forbidden under the IRS agreement.

FileYourTaxes.com Vice President Timur Taluy said Kopec must have erred. If she selected the state filing -- clearly marked as a fee service -- and failed to change her mind before the federal and state returns were coupled near the end of the process, she would be charged, he said.

Kopec acknowledged that she chose the state return option at first, but said she wasn't given a chance to change her mind.

She considered paying the state return fee but wanted to pay by check. That required an additional $10 payment, and her return wouldn't be filed until the check cleared.

If she wanted to contact the site to ask a question, that too could trigger a fee.

Kopec logged off the site. "I'm going to mail my return," she said.
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New Jersey Star Ledger 
States mining data to boost tax revenue 
Tuesday, February 04, 2003

Los Angeles officials scoured 324,000 electronic files in the process of hunting down Don Mann, an admitted business- tax violator. 

But in Mann's case, their prize looks pretty paltry. If Mann's accountant is correct, all that searching will lead the Van Nuys, Calif., resident to cough up about $100 in delinquent business license taxes. 

Mann, a freelance movie consultant, concedes he didn't pay the tax, saying he didn't know about it. City officials acknowledge that is likely given the obscure nature of the levy. 

Yet in this age of stressed state and local budgets, with declining revenues and mounting expenses, every little bit counts. And stories like Mann's are bound to become far more common. 

Cities, counties and states across the country are turning to a practice known as data mining to squeeze more money out of taxpayers, often through the collection of little-known levies such as business taxes and so-called use taxes. 

"It amounts to combing through files that can tell you something about taxpayers, or people who should be taxpayers, and matching those results to your files," said Harley Duncan, director of the Federation of Tax Administrators in Washington. 

Mann's saga is a classic example of data mining in action. The Los Angeles business license tax isn't new, and the city has long believed all businesses, including small firms and sole proprietors, should pay it. But few freelancers and home-based workers have complied, and the city had no way of knowing who wasn't paying. 

That changed in 2001, when a state law was passed allowing the California Franchise Tax Board to share information gleaned from Californians' income tax returns with cities and counties. That gave city finance departments a way to check on taxpayer compliance, and Los Angeles asked for files on anyone living in the city who reported income from self-employment or owning a business. 

The city received 324,695 files. About half of those taxpayers were dismissed as duplicates and bigger businesses that already paid tax under a corporate name. The rest were sole proprietors, self-employed individuals or people who worked at home or had some outside freelance income. Late last year, Los Angeles sent notices demanding three years' worth of tax payments on their gross revenues. 

Mining computer files to trap recalcitrant or oblivious taxpayers isn't confined to business taxes or the Golden State. A far bigger area of increased national scrutiny is the use tax, which essentially is a sales tax that kicks in on purchases for which no sales tax was imposed. 

For instance, if you bought a $10,000 piano from a retailer in Oregon, where there is no sales tax, and had it shipped to Los Angeles, where there is an 8.25 percent sales tax, you avoided paying $825 in taxes at the point of purchase. But the obligation to pay the tax never went away -- it simply shifted from the retailer to the consumer. 

The consumer using that new piano in Los Angeles owes a use tax equal to what would have been paid in Los Angeles as sales tax. This piano buyer is obligated to file a form with the state Board of Equalization and send a check for using the piano at home. 

All across the country, officials are "taking a closer look at purchases of big-ticket items brought into their states," Duncan said. It was just such a pact that tripped up former Tyco Chairman Dennis Kozlowski. 

Although New Hampshire doesn't have a sales or use tax, it has an information-sharing agreement with New York, which does. After Kozlowski bought millions of dollars of artwork and shipped it from New Hampshire to New York, Kozlowski got hit with charges of evading New York taxes. 

Not every case is pursued with such vigor. When cross-border transactions involve relatively small amounts, state officials haven't bothered to badger residents into compliance, said John Logan, a state tax expert at CCH Inc., a tax publishing house, adding that it's simply too time consuming and costly. 

"In the big picture, it's a lot of money, but on the individual consumer basis, it's nickels and dimes," Logan said. 

States want sellers to collect taxes, even on Internet sales, but retailers aren't always cooperative. And the U.S. Supreme Court has been on the retailers' side. A 1992 decision from the high court said that states couldn't force national retailers to collect sales taxes until the states came up with a consistent set of tax rules. 

In the interim, cities and states are stuck with mining their taxpayers to shake loose whatever revenue they can. 

"Data mining isn't enough, in and of itself, to bring states through this particular crisis," Duncan said. "But if you're in Iowa and you're looking for $25 million to augment a program, and you can pick it up by better mining your tax base, that's significant." 
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Washington Post
Major Dot-Com Retailers Begin Levying Sales Tax 
By Brian Krebs
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Thursday, February 6, 2003; 12:00 AM 

Some of the nation's largest retailers this week started voluntarily collecting taxes on all of their online sales.

The companies are among the first in the nation to collect sales taxes from online shoppers across the country, not just shoppers who live in the states where the companies maintain actual stores or distribution centers.

In return, 38 states and the District of Columbia agreed to absolve the retailers from any liability for taxes not previously collected on Internet sales.

Arizona, California and South Carolina are not parties to the deal, and four other states have not yet signed on. Most of the retailers involved have physical locations in the 45 states that levy sales taxes.

The agreement is expected to give states a new source of revenue to battle historic budget deficits. It also is a victory for state and local governments that want to simplify their tax systems to accommodate e-commerce and level the playing field between online and main street merchants.

Atlanta attorney John Coalson, who represented the retailers in the negotiations, declined to say which ones accepted the plan, saying that revealing their names would let the states that rejected the deal chase down the companies for back taxes.

"If we disclose who these companies are, it's like putting a target on their back," he said.

The companies that Coalson represented were required to begin voluntary sales tax collections on Feb. 3. No source contacted for this story would reveal the names of the participating retailers. In the past week, however, Wal-Mart, Marshall Fields, Target, Toys R Us and Mervyn's each posted new sales tax notices on their Web sites, saying that the companies will charge taxes for buyers living in the states where sales taxes are on the books.

Under current federal law, Internet merchants must charge applicable sales taxes if the buyer is located in the same state as the company. But the new deal effectively applies the same sales tax laws to retailers' online and bricks-and-mortar operations. Online units are often chartered as separate entities and maintain physical locations in only a handful of places, thus exempting customers from most states from paying sales taxes.

For example, Wal-Mart has 1,500 stores scattered across all 50 states, but WalMart.com, a separate subsidiary, has a physical presence in only nine states.

WalMart.com and other retailers who changed their tax collection rules declined to say whether they were party to the amnesty agreement. Wal-Mart and Toys R Us said they made the changes in response to feedback from customers who wanted to be able to return or exchange items bought online at the companies' bricks-and-mortar stores.

"We decided we would not be able to do that unless we charge sales tax for those online purchases," said Toys R Us spokeswoman Susan McLaughlin.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. spokeswoman Cheryl Lin said that voluntarily collecting online sales taxes was the right thing to do. "Many states are struggling with tax revenue shortages that affect funding for everything from schools to fire and rescue. This is our effort to help customers and the states they live in," she said.

A notice on Amazon.com, which has partnered with Target Brands Inc. sites like Target.com, Fields.com and Mervyns.com, says: "Effective February 2, 2003, target.direct and marshallfields.direct will be required to charge sales tax in all states other than Alaska, Hawaii, and Vermont. The new collection requirements will apply to all orders shipped and charged on or after February 2, 2003, even if your order was placed prior to this date."

The sales tax collection deal follows efforts by tax administrators in several states to find ways to tie main-street retailers to their online cousins.

California regulators last year ruled that online bookstore Barnesandnoble.com must collect taxes on sales to customers in California. The state said that although the company's two operations were incorporated separately, a link existed because the brick-and-mortar stores gave out $5 coupons to be used at the company's Web site.

"What we want to do is clarify that online sales from companies that have physical presences here are not going to [be] permitted to use their tax dodge subsidiaries to escape tax collection obligations," said Carole Migden, a member of the state's Board of Equalization, which manages the state's sales and property taxes.

Arkansas and Minnesota require Internet retailers to collect taxes if their local main-street affiliates accept returns or exchanges for online purchases. Louisiana has also considered similar legislation.

The amnesty is a symbolic victory for members of the Streamlined Sales Tax Project, a group of 36 states and the District of Columbia that approved a plan to make it easier for states to collect sales taxes on products sold online.

The project calls on states to simplify their tax codes to accommodate e-commerce, and outlines easier tax-reporting requirements for online merchants.

Diane Hardt, co-chairman of the Streamlined Sales Tax Project and tax administrator for the Wisconsin Department of Revenue, applauded the amnesty deal.

Most states have started taking concrete steps toward adopting the streamlined sales tax proposal. Congress and the White House also would have to act before the online sales tax plan could be implemented.
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Computerworld
GPS/GIS mapping helps narrow search for shuttle debris
By Bob Brewin
FEBRUARY 05, 2003

Using Global Positioning System-derived location data to define the debris field from the breakup of the shuttle Columbia, researchers and undergraduates from Stephen F. Austin University in Nacogdoches, Texas, have helped narrow search patterns in East Texas, where thousands of pieces of the spacecraft have been located. 
Darrel McDonald, director of the Humanities Undergraduate Environmental Sciences (HUES) geographic information system (GIS) program at the school, said the data from the nearly 1,000 pieces of shuttle debris already located has helped emergency workers better focus on the areas they need to search along the vehicle's debris path. 

The shuttle debris data collection effort -- staffed by teams from both the HUES GIS program and the university's Forest Resources Institute -- has helped produce digital maps that provide a retrogressive pattern of debris, McDonald said. "This has improved the search effort, but has not totally solved the problem" of finding debris that could explain what happened to the Columbia upon re-entry Saturday morning, he said. 

The shuttle crashed just after 9 a.m. EST, killing all seven crew members on board and raining debris in heavily wooded areas of East Texas and neighboring Louisiana. 

The university is now fielding between 60 and 70 teams, with a total of between 150 and 200 people working to locate shuttle debris, McDonald said. The field crews use professional grade GPS receivers from Trimble Navigation Ltd. in Sunnyvale, Calif., to locate particular pieces of debris. 

That location information is stored in an onboard datalogger, and when field workers return to the lab it is run through postprocessing software to enhance the accuracy of the data, McDonald said. 

While raw data received from the 24-satellite GPS array provides location accuracies to within 100 feet or better, the Trimble postprocessing software improves that accuracy to around three feet, McDonald said. That finely tuned data is then fed into ArcInfo GIS software from Environmental Systems Research Institute Inc. (ESRI), in Redlands, Calif. The ESRI software plots the data points on a digital map overlaid with information about the locations of roads and topographic features. That map is enhanced by satellite photographs from Spot Image Corp. 

McDonald said the Stephen F. Austin GIS lab then provides the maps -- updated daily as field workers input more data -- to local, state and federal agencies, including NASA and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). He said FEMA is working to install a high-speed data line between the university's GIS labs and FEMA's command post in Lufkin, Texas. So far, he said, the GIS labs have provided mainly paper maps to federal, state and local agencies. 

Mike Phoenix, manager for international higher education reprograms at ESRI, said the shuttle debris mapping project taps into the essential power of GIS systems: the ability to visualize data and see patterns. He said advancements in both GPS and GIS technologies have provided NASA and emergency agencies with tools that weren't available 17 years ago in the aftermath of the explosion of the Challenger shuttle. 
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Washington Post
Talk of Tile Problem Was Brief 
Outside Review of Situation Wasn't Requested 
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Thursday, February 6, 2003; Page A01 

A dozen or so officials gathered in a windowless room at the Johnson Space Center in Texas on the 12th day of the space shuttle Columbia's final flight for a routine briefing about its progress. The mood in the room was relaxed and upbeat, despite nagging questions about some insulation that apparently had peeled off a fuel tank and struck the left wing 81 seconds after launch, causing undetermined damage. 

It was at this 6 a.m. meeting when a flight engineer named Ralph Roe told the assembled officials -- including a representative of the crew and an official charged with policing the flight's overall safety -- that some NASA engineers and contractors had modeled the potential damage to the wing's heat-deflecting tiles in their computers.

Their conclusion was that even if several tiles had been destroyed or deflected off the orbiter, and the shuttle's underlying aluminum skin had been dented, the skin would not burn through in the 3,000-degree temperatures of reentry into Earth's atmosphere. There was, Roe said, no "safety of flight issue." 

NASA said yesterday that it still believes this judgment was correct, and that something else must have caused the shuttle's destruction. That may well turn out to be the case, but a review of the initial deliberations, including interviews with informed NASA officials, showed that mission management discussions of the problem -- while the shuttle was still aloft -- were brief and relatively unquestioning.

No one in the room during that early morning meeting dissented, said several NASA officials privy to the deliberations. No one asked detailed questions about the modeling or asked to look at the raw mathematical data. No one at the meeting called for more review, and no one called for independent consultations with tile or insulation experts who did not work for NASA or its contractors. No one from NASA's headquarters in Washington was at the meeting, although someone might have been listening via an audio link, officials said.

About five minutes after the conversation began Jan. 27, "the issue was dispensed with, basically," said a participant who asked not be named. Roe "had worked it to its conclusion, and we felt it was done."

When the meeting ended after about 30 minutes, a one-paragraph summary was widely disseminated. But from that moment until the 16th day of the flight, Feb. 1, when the Columbia disintegrated while reentering Earth's atmosphere, no NASA managers met again to discuss the problem. 

Most post-flight speculation about the crash, both inside and outside NASA, has focused on the insulation that struck a glancing blow against the left wing just after launch. NASA is looking at a range of other hypotheses. One that has received fresh attention in the past few days is that the shuttle might have been struck during flight by space junk, something unrelated to the insulation, which also might have helped disable its heat protection during reentry.

But the fervor with which the agency and members of an outside commission have reexamined the tile-insulation hypothesis contrasts with the unhurried pace and more narrow scope of the agency's internal review during the flight.

Michael Kostelnik, a top shuttle official at NASA headquarters, has described the agency's in-flight review as "a very stringent process drawing on the past experience, models and a lot of different activities." On Feb. 2, Ron Dittemore, the Houston-based shuttle program manager, said: "The technical community got together, and, across the country, judged" the impact. 

NASA declined yesterday to permit an interview of Roe or of Mark Erminger, a safety official present at many of the team's meetings. But the agency said in response to questions that the management team discussion was brief, and that "no more than three or four people worked on the actual engineering analysis of the foam-tile impact." It said these were all NASA employees and contractors, including engineers from Boeing and United Space Alliance. NASA's top space flight official, William Readdy, later clarified this statement, saying these individuals at Johnson Space Center were supported by many other engineering experts.

Kostelnik said Tuesday that he was "not privy to details" of the analysis during the flight. He also said Dittemore "didn't participate in those particular things," although he was informed of the judgment "of those teams of professionals."

Alex Roland, military historian at Duke University and a frequent critic of NASA, cautioned against leaping to conclusions but said his impression is that the shuttle program is operating "in the same institutional atmosphere" that led to the 1986 Challenger explosion, that of "a program constantly stressed by problems you couldn't afford to fix." 

Days before Columbia's liftoff, the craft and its crew passed through a rigorous Flight Readiness Review at the Johnson Space Center in which top officials from the Kennedy and Marshall space flight centers joined in certifying the craft's readiness for launch.

Space shuttle officials take this procedure seriously: NASA rules bar a liftoff unless the heads of these centers or their designees sign the bottom of a five- or six-page document summarizing the resolution of all safety-related issues raised during servicing of the orbiter and final flight preparations.

No mention was made in the Columbia's final readiness review -- or in two previous flight-readiness certifications for planned Columbia flights in August 2000 and March 2002 that were deferred at the last minute -- of any concern about tiles or insulation on the external tank, according to two people who saw it.

The document instead focused on last-minute analysis of a series of cracks found in a ball joint near fuel lines for the main engines of other shuttle orbiters, besides the Columbia; it concluded that even if the same cracks had recurred in the Columbia, they posed no risk to the flight.

So the flight was cleared without any new discussion of a problem that arose on at least two previous space shuttle flights -- the shedding of some insulation from the external tank during launch -- or the loss of tiles on virtually every previous flight without serious consequence.

The readiness review did examine the risk that the orbiter or its crew would be lost to a strike by orbital junk -- the potentially deadly detritus of man's past forays into space, including bits of metal, solder and computer chips from hundreds of exploded boosters and satellites. Since space debris started building up, NASA has worried about it.

Because of the orbiter's extraordinary speed in space -- on average 17,000 mph -- a strike by a grain of sand packs as much energy as a bowling ball traveling 60 mph on the ground. A strike by junk the size of a pea is comparable to being struck on Earth by a 600-pound safe traveling 60 mph. NASA has taken great pains to minimize the risk of a debris strike in orbit, including reversing the craft so that the crew compartment is protected by the tail.

The risk estimates are based on complex modeling of the prevalence of debris in or near the path of the orbiter throughout its flight, and draw on orbital debris data catalogued by NASA and the Air Force. In this case, the Final Readiness Review declared there was 1 chance in 370 that either the crew or the orbiter would be lost because of a strike by space junk -- a figure well within NASA's standard safety limits. NASA officials said yesterday that the analysis is being redone as part of the inquiry into the calamity.

The launch Jan. 16, according to a brief internal NASA report three hours later, was "nominal with no problems identified." But within one day, NASA technicians spotted a puffy white cloud as they reviewed film from the 1960s-era video cameras trained on the orbiter, its external fuel tank and its rocket boosters during launch.

The delay in retrieving and analyzing the film means that even if a massive strip of heat-resistant tiles had somehow been peeled off during launch, the crew would not have known about it quickly enough to turn the orbiter back to Earth before it reached outer space and faced a high-temperature reentry.

"No one looks at tiles and insulation in real time during ascent," said a NASA engineer who asked not to be named. "There is no way to know about any [tile-related] problem before it reaches orbit." As a result, NASA is betting heavily during each launch that the tiles, which are essential for the craft to return to Earth, will remain almost completely intact.

The video of the Columbia clearly showed something, presumably insulation surrounding the tank, striking the leading edge of the orbiter's left wing, which is protected by a special carbon coating. The discovery was first briefed Jan. 18 to the mission management team of flight controllers at Johnson Space Center -- those who direct the crew from the ground and are responsible for every aspect of the shuttle's operations after liftoff.

Each of the team members is responsible for different sub-systems on the orbiter, such as propulsion, guidance, electrical or environmental control equipment, as well as "flight integration," the payload -- in this case a large scientific experimentation capsule -- and the mission's overall safety. Most are senior members of the shuttle programs, and on this particular flight, there were no newcomers in the room.

"This is a group of engineers working in concert with each other," said one official, noting that almost everyone on the Columbia's mission management team had been together for at least 20 missions. "No one from the outside world is involved. This is all the home-grown-operations world," with highly specialized experience, another official said.

Although Columbia's crew was kept busy performing dozens of scientific experiments, the mission was not considered particularly taxing on the ground. And so the overall management team decided not to meet over the three-day weekend between Jan. 19 and 21, despite the uncertainties associated with the insulation strike on the tiles.

They were not briefed again on the issue until they returned, when Roe reported that his team had studied the videos frame by frame, only to conclude that "the resolution . . . is insufficient to see individual tiles." But Roe also said the reflection of light from the tile surface after the dissipation of the puffy cloud provided "no indications of larger-scale damage." Roe and deputy chief flight director Linda Ham agreed not to request a visual inspection of the tiles by Air Force ground cameras because the cameras often provide poor images and the risk was considered low.

More modeling was then performed by Roe's engineers, culminating in the briefing Jan. 27. Any member of the team could have requested a more exhaustive examination of the problem at that meeting, four NASA officials said, but none did.
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New York Times
February 6, 2003
A Persistent Questioner Leads the Columbia House Inquiry
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON, Feb. 5  Representative Sherwood Boehlert is consumed with voting his conscience, once bringing a pillow to a committee hearing and asking colleagues if their votes on water-quality legislation would pass "the pillow test"  that is, whether they would sleep well at night.

A Republican, he is willing to buck his party's leaders, waiting until the very last minute to announce his vote to impeach President Bill Clinton, then immediately pressing for censure  a lesser sanction  after casting it. He is blunt, once calling President Bush's budget plan for some federal science agencies "anemic."

Now this plain-spoken 65-year-old lawmaker from the 23rd Congressional District in upstate New York will lead the House investigation into the breakup of the space shuttle Columbia, a prospect that makes some Republican loyalists in Washington nervous.

"Everything is fair game," Mr. Boehlert, the chairman of the House Science Committee, declared in an interview this morning. He promised an inquiry that would examine not only whether cost-cutting may have endangered astronauts' lives, but also whether decisions by his own friends  including Sean O'Keefe, the NASA administrator, and members of Congress who control the agency's budget  contributed to the disaster.

"Where evidence leads me to conclude he or she made the wrong decision, that's going to be uncomfortable," Mr. Boehlert said. "But we have to deal with the facts."

For every national crisis, there is a Congressional investigation and often, a lawmaker who becomes its public face. Watergate, most famously, had Sam J. Ervin Jr. Organized crime had Estes Kefauver. The Iran-contra scandal had George J. Mitchell. The Columbia disaster is about to have Sherry Boehlert.

He is not one to seek out the limelight, those who know him say, though he does not shy from it. "He's this odd combination of friendliness and persistence," said Chet Lunner, a Department of Transportation spokesman who knows Mr. Boehlert well. "You don't leave a room not knowing where Sherry stands." 

Balding and bespectacled, with an easy manner that has won many friends on Capitol Hill, Mr. Boehlert is perhaps best known as an ardent environmentalist and leader of the "green Republicans."

He takes the helm of the House investigation by dint of his lead role at the Science Committee, a job he was given partly because of his intelligence; partly because he is a well-liked veteran of 20 years in Congress; and partly because the science panel is a relative backwater, where the conservative Republican leaders of the House figured he would not cause much trouble.

Now Mr. Boehlert could do just that. He said today that while he would keep House leaders informed, he considered the investigation "an obligation" and "a special assignment" and did not expect to take any direction from them.

"I wasn't elected to go to Washington to turn in my voting card to the leadership," he said.

Mr. Boehlert will be joined in his inquiry by Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who is chairman of the Commerce Committee. The two will lead a joint hearing next Wednesday, with Mr. O'Keefe of NASA as the sole witness. After that, the House and Senate committees plan to proceed independently.

History suggests that the House inquiry will take the lead. Mr. Boehlert acknowledged as much today, noting that his committee has had an explicit mandate to oversee the space agency ever since it was established in 1958. When the space shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986, the House Science Committee presented the main Congressional report.

On Saturday, even as the nation was absorbing the loss of the Columbia, Mr. Boehlert's staff began to review records of the Challenger explosion and analyze NASA's budget.

One area he will focus on, Mr. Boehlert said today, is the agency's relationship with the outside contractors that worked on the shuttle.

"He doesn't follow the crowd," said Vernon J. Ehlers, a Michigan Republican and physicist whom Mr. Boehlert frequently consults on scientific issues. "He's a free spirit."

That quality can lead to political trouble; Mr. Boehlert had a tough re-election battle this year in the district, which covers a swath of the Mohawk Valley centering on Utica and Rome. And not everyone in Washington appreciates his views.

"He has been highly opinionated and somewhat out of the mainstream," said Scott Segal, who as director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, an industry group, has tangled with Mr. Boehlert on environmental issues.

Mr. Segal added, "The amount of influence he has with the House leadership is an open question."

Mr. Boehlert has worked in Washington, one way or another, for nearly 40 years. He arrived in 1964 after persuading Representative Alexander Pirnie, a predecessor, to hire him. The two met when Mr. Boehlert was working his way through college as a waiter in a Utica restaurant.

After working for Mr. Pirnie, then his successor, and then as Oneida County's chief executive, Mr. Boehlert was elected in 1982. He hoped, as many freshmen do, for an assignment to the powerful Appropriations Committee, but got the science committee instead. When named the committee chairman in 2001, he promised to run the panel "in a way that would make Einstein smile."

A die-hard Yankee fan, he has developed a deep affinity for the space program. On one cabinet door in his office are the signatures of baseball Hall of Famers  Mr. Boehlert's district includes Cooperstown, N.Y.  who have visited. On another are those of astronauts.

A sign of how Mr. Boehlert might run the Columbia inquiry could be gleaned from his actions following Sept. 11. Prodded by families who lost relatives in the World Trade Center attacks, the hearings he held explored whether engineering failures led to the collapse of the towers. Mr. Boehlert's persistent questioning helped establish that while three federal agencies were investigating the structural collapse, none had the authority to really take charge.

"Those of us who testified found ourselves a little bit uneasy that we hadn't gotten on the scene quicker, that we didn't get the evidence as quickly as we probably should have," said Dr. Arden Bement, director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Of Mr. Boehlert, he said, "He doesn't take no for an answer."

Following the hearings, Mr. Boehlert pushed through legislation, signed last year by President Bush, that gave Dr. Bement's agency the authority to investigate building collapses. The bill grants the institute subpoena power, a move Dr. Bement said his scientists first resisted, but one that Mr. Boehlert and victims' families insisted was crucial. 

The bill earned Mr. Boehlert the admiration of Sally Regenhard, who lost her son in the towers' collapse and later founded the Skyscraper Safety Campaign, a nonprofit group. "For us," Ms. Regenhard said, "he was the quiet watchdog."

Mr. Boehlert said he thought of people like Ms. Regenhard when he considered his task, and would like the families of the seven dead astronauts to "have that same pride."

As he spoke, Tuesday's memorial service in Houston was fresh on his mind. "I looked over and saw the families," he said. "I'm not embarrassed to say the tears flowed."
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Associated Press
Satellite Tracking Spurs Stalking Fears
Thu Feb 6, 5:23 AM ET
By KEVIN ORLAND, Associated Press Writer 

MILWAUKEE - Connie Adams found it impossible to escape her ex-boyfriend.


He would follow her as she drove to work or ran errands. He would inexplicably pull up next to her at stoplights and once tried to run her off the highway, authorities said. 


When he showed up at a bar she was visiting for the first time, on a date, Adams began to suspect Paul Seidler wasn't operating on instinct alone. 


He wasn't  Seidler had installed a satellite tracking device in Adams' car, according to police in Kenosha, Wis., 30 miles south of Milwaukee. 


"He told me no matter where I went or what I did, he would know where I was," Adams testified at a recent court hearing. 


Police say Adams' case and several others across the country herald an incipient danger  high-tech stalking. 


Just as the global satellite positioning system can help save lives, so can its abuse endanger them, advocates of stalking victims say. 


"As technology advances, it's going to be almost impossible for victims to flee and get to safety," said Cindy Southworth, director of technology at the National Network to End Domestic Violence in Washington. 


In the Adams case, Seidler pleaded innocent last month to felony counts of stalking, recklessly endangering safety, burglary and a misdemeanor count of disorderly conduct. His trial is pending. 


Adams does not want to speak to reporters about the case, said Susan Karaskiewicz, a Kenosha County prosecutor. 

Police say Seidler put a global positioning tracking device between the radiator and grill of Adams' car. Such gadgets use a constellation of Defense Department satellites to pinpoint location and can send their coordinates via cellular networks to wireless handsets or computers. 


Trucking companies use GPS systems to track of hazardous cargo and monitor drivers. Corrections authorities use them to monitor sex offenders. Hikers, boaters and motorists use GPS devices to keep from getting lost. GPS technology is also being built into cell phones to help emergency dispatchers find 911 callers. They're also being used to prevent car theft. 


Southworth trains victims advocates, law enforcement and prosecutors on stalkers' use of the technology, which she says is only just beginning to be abused. 


The Stalking Resource Center at the National Center for Victims of Crime has found at least one other case of a GPS system being used to stalk a victim. 


In it, a Colorado appeals court in July upheld Robert Sullivan's conviction for stalking his ex-wife and installing a GPS device in her car to track her movements. 


GPS is not the first technology to be misused by stalkers, who have also employed the Internet, microchip-sized cameras and even caller identification, said Southworth, though it is the most dangerous to date. 


Just as she once taught victims how to block caller ID when they use the phone, Southworth now suggests victims occasionally check under their car's hood. 


Police are also finding GPS devices useful. Marla Wagner, sales manager at L.A.S. Systems, the same McHenry, Ill.-based company that made Seidler's device, said the company has sold GPS systems to about 10 police departments during the last year. The Kenosha Police Department is also buying a system from L.A.S. Systems. 

Tracy Bahm, the Stalking Resource Center's director, said some states are working to update their stalking statutes to include the high-tech variety. 

The center typically advises states to keep their statutes broad enough to include technologies that don't yet exist. 

"As society and technology evolve, stalkers will always find new ways to harass their victims," Bahm said. 
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Government Computer News
E-Clearance success will let OPM clear Defense personnel 
By Jason Miller 

The Office of Personnel Management Friday will announce it has completed the link between its Security/Sustainability Investigations Index and the Defense Department?s Joint Personnel Adjudication System to make personnel data more easily accessible. 

This is the second milestone for the E-Clearance Quicksilver projectone of five OPM is leading. The linkage also will pave the way for the Defense Department to turn over all of its clearance investigations to OPM. Senior government officials today announced OPM?s new task, which will bring about 80 percent of all federal clearances under the agency?s management. 

The administration proposed the consolidation in its fiscal 2004 budget sent to Congress earlier this week. Officials said Congress must pass legislation for the changeover to happen. 

?The consolidation provides one standard system for confirming a clearance,? an official said. ?The E-Clearance project will ensure continuity of data for the clearances.? 

OPM also on Friday will announce it has moved the security clearance form that employees must fill out online. 

The consolidation will not involve moving DOD?s historical data, but only new clearance data, officials said. Defense will maintain its legacy systems. 

Officials said employees will connect to OPM?s Personnel Investigations Processing System through the Web and fill out the forms online in a secured environment. The information then will be processed and the employee will be cleared through the online system. 

Officials said OPM is prepared for the high volume of clearances DOD will need. OPM processed more than two million clearance requests in 2002. 

OPM and DOD will put together a migration plan and a Web site for employees to find information about the consolidation, officials said.
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Federal Computer Week
NMCI budget larger than expected
BY Matthew French 
Feb. 5, 2003

The Navy Marine Corps Intranet will see a financial windfall if Congress approves the funding President Bush is seeking for the Navy Department's networking project.

Earlier reports that the Pentagon had given approval to seek funding of $1.1 billion were a half-billion dollars short. When the Defense Department unveiled its proposed fiscal 2004 budget Feb. 3, it showed that NMCI is slated to receive $1.6 billion, pending congressional approval.

According to a Navy Department breakdown of its fiscal 2004 budget, the $1.6 billion will support the implementation of about 365,000 seats, phased in quarterly. 

The $1.6 billion marks a nearly $1 billion increase in funding over the $646 million NMCI received in the fiscal 2003 budget. 

Kevin Clarke, a spokesman for EDS, the Plano, Texas, company that won the $6.1 billion contract to develop the Navy-wide information network, late last month confirmed that $1.1 billion had been submitted by the comptroller's office for approval. He later deferred questions to the NMCI program office.

NMCI officials would not say what the $1 billion bump in funding might do in terms of accelerating the rollout of the program, and they refused to speculate on how much the project would receive until Congress approves the final budget.

"The president's budget request is our budget and it is our job to work within those numbers," said Capt. Chris Christopher, NMCI's deputy director of plans, policy and oversight. "Any opinion as to questions such as 'would we be able to increase rollout, reduce legacy applications more quickly, etc., with a budget increase' would be pure speculation.'"

NMCI has produced mixed results since its inception, but has made significant gains during the past several months. The program recently received approval to cut over as many as 160,000 seats, and EDS executives expect that amount could rise by another 150,000 in the next several weeks. To date, about 57,000 seats have been cut over.

That additional cutover of 150,000 seats will depend on EDS meeting certain service level agreements.
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News.com
Toner company fights DMCA lawsuit 


By Declan McCullagh 
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
February 5, 2003, 7:09 PM PT


In a final round of skirmishing prior to a court hearing Friday, a North Carolina company argued that a controversial copyright law does not prevent it from selling computer chips that allow toner cartridges to be reused. 
Static Control Components said in a legal brief filed this week that Lexmark, the No. 2 printer maker in the United States, is trying to bilk customers and stifle competition by invoking the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). 

U.S. District Judge Karl Forester has set a hearing on Lexmark's request for a preliminary injunction for Friday in Lexington, Ky., in the case, which is the first to pit the long-established right to reverse-engineer against copyright law. 


In December 2002, Lexmark sued Static Control, a family-owned business in Sanford, N.C., claiming that its Smartek chips sold to toner cartridge remanufacturers violate the DMCA. The Smartek chip "circumvents the technological measure" that the printer uses to verify the cartridge is original and not remanufacturered, Lexmark claims. 

On Jan. 10, Forester accepted Static Control's offer to temporarily cease manufacturing the Smartek chip until a hearing could be scheduled. 

In an interview with CNET News.com on Wednesday, a top Hewlett-Packard executive slammed the printer rival for wielding the DMCA against the remanufacturing industry. "We think it is stretching it," HP Senior Vice President Pradeep Jotwani said. "The DMCA was put in place (to protect) things like movies, music and software applications." 

Static Control's 41-page brief warns that if Lexmark's claims were successful, they would set a worrying precedent and cause DMCA-protected chips to sprout in many consumer products. "One readily could envision, for example, an automobile manufacturer applying technological measures...to prevent competition in the aftermarket for replacement tires, wiper blades or other automotive parts; camera manufacturers attempting to foreclose the use of competitors' lenses or brands of film; a ball-point pen manufacturer using a technological measure and an 'ink low' program to shut out replacement ink refills; or a cell phone manufacturer applying technological measures to replacement batteries," the brief says. 

This lawsuit is the latest of several recent DMCA cases--both civil and criminal--that have tested the limits of the 1998 copyright law, 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 U.S. Justice Department recently lost a criminal case against a Russian firm that created a program that cracked Adobe's electronic books. 

Under section 1201 of the DMCA, it is generally unlawful to circumvent technology that restricts access to a copyrighted work or sell a device that can do so. But Congress also included exemptions in the DMCA explicitly permitting activities such as law-enforcement purposes, encryption research, security testing and interoperability. 

Static Control has seized on the last exemption, which permits reverse-engineering "for the purpose of enabling interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs," and says its creation of the Smartek chip is also protected by traditional fair use rights enshrined in U.S. copyright law. 

Its attorneys cite the landmark 1993 Sega v. Accolade decision from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In that case, the court said: "Where disassembly is the only way to gain access to the ideas and functional elements embodied in a copyrighted computer program and where there is a legitimate reason for seeking such access, disassembly is a fair use of the copyrighted work, as a matter of law." 

Static Control also claims that Lexmark's code allegedly protected by the DMCA is nothing more than "than bare-bones implementations of mathematical formulae and scientific observations that cannot be protected by copyright." Lexmark uses the government-standard Secure Hash Algorithm-1 (SHA-1) to calculate a "hash" value as a way to verify that the cartridges are original. 

Lexmark could not be reached for comment Wednesday. 
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Boston Globe
Aid for jobless IT workers urged
Group says many are not eligible for unemployment benefits extension
By Diane E. Lewis, Globe Staff, 2/6/2003

A survey of 3,000 laid-off Massachusetts high-tech professionals released yesterday reveals one-third have been jobless for more than a year, making them ineligible for the 13-week extension in unemployment benefits authorized by the federal government last month.

The survey, commissioned by the 495 Networking Support Group, a nonprofit organization representing 650 unemployed technology workers, appeared online two weeks ago at a site created by the group. The organization plans to use the findings to help persuade state and federal legislators to develop solutions for the chronic unemployment that has plagued high-tech professionals over the past year.

The survey's findings will be discussed today during a breakfast for legislators at the Congregation B'Nai Shalom in Westborough. In all, about 150 legislators and group members are expected to participate, according to Tony Badman, founder of the group.

He said the organization wants the state to consider giving companies tax incentives to develop on-the-job training programs that would allow laid-off tech professionals to teach and utilize their skills. Under such a plan, the tech professionals would collect unemployment benefits as a wage for working.

Currently, Badman said, only 8 percent of those who responded to the online survey were eligible for the second emergency extension of jobless benefits. That extension began in March 2002 and ended in December 2002. On Jan. 8, however, Congress passed legislation extending the program through May 2003. Some applicants may be eligible to collect through August 2003 under the latest extension, according to the Labor Department.

Under the extension, jobless workers collecting unemployment insurance payments will receive an additional 13 weeks of payments. Unemployed workers who have exhausted all benefits would not be eligible, however.

According to the 495NSG survey, 25 percent of the respondents cannot afford health insurance, 22 percent are living off retirement savings, 52 percent have not had an interview since they became unemployed, and 53 percent are no longer confident they will find full-time work in their profession in 2003.

''We have people within the group who are facing the real possibility of homelessness,'' said Badman, who founded the group after he was laid off from his position as a manager in the IT customer service division of EMC Corp. more than a year ago. ''There is a real sense of urgency.''

Of those polled, more than 61 percent have bachelor of arts degrees, 18 percent have master's degrees, and 2 percent have doctoral degrees, Badman said. He noted that 65 percent of the survey respondents are older than 40.

''We are talking about experienced, educated people with something to offer,'' he continued. ''We need a three-way partnership between our group of well-organized professionals, the state, and private industry to help solve the problem of unemployment in Massachusetts.''
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New York Times
February 6, 2003
Wi-Fi as Savior? France's Farm Dwellers Hope So
By KRISTEN HINMAN

PARIS NEAR Sillé-le-Guillaume, a rural patch of western France, Ginette Sybille moves some 8,000 fowls, 150 swine and 120 head of cattle on and off her 395-acre farm each year. She conducts most of her business with slaughterhouses in the region, but each time an animal changes hands, Mrs. Sybille has to register the transaction online with the government. 

"We are managing with our dial-up Internet connection," she said, "but a faster one would make a big difference."

Sillé-le-Guillaume's 6,500 residents call it "grove country." But the area's top official, Michel Quillet, is aiming for a new nickname: "rural technopolis." By May, it will become France's first testing ground for rural deployment of high-speed Internet service using the wireless networking standard called Wi-Fi. 

Wi-Fi - short for wireless fidelity, and also known as 802.11b - allows computer users equipped with special network cards to connect wirelessly over a radio frequency to a ground station providing high-speed Internet service. Its use is booming in airport lounges, hotels and cafes worldwide, but it is only starting to gain attention as an alternative to cable or phone lines for residential and commercial Internet service. 

Until last November, France's regulatory agency for communications barred public use of Wi-Fi networks, whose frequencies had been reserved for military use. Now, 38 of France's 95 administrative jurisdictions, or departments, are authorized to experiment with Wi-Fi. 

"We realized it could help rural communities," said Jean-François Hernandez, an agency spokesman. 

While only about 1.5 million Internet users in France have high-speed connections at home through cable or phone lines, wiring is in place to provide such service to about three-quarters of France's 59 million residents. The prospects for increasing availability are limited, however, because operators say investment in rural areas is too costly. 

Increasingly, rural residents thus feel stranded, even threatened.

"We are already so far removed," said Xavier de la Hitte, a graphic designer in the southwestern town of St.-Antonin-Noble-Val, "that we are the people who need broadband most. Without it, our businesses are doomed." 

When he moved from Toulouse to the countryside in 1995, Mr. de la Hitte considered his business competitive. But once other firms had high-speed Internet access over phone lines and could send clients hefty graphic files with ease, he realized he was in trouble. France Télécom, which operates the town's phone network, had no plans to offer such service locally. So St.-Antonin and a neighboring commune, Caylus, joined to propose a trial Internet connection using a Wi-Fi network linked to a satellite receiver. 

Altitude Télécom, based in the northern city of Rouen, is the operator for the Sillé-le-Guillaume effort. A company engineer, Bertrand Lebarbier, said he saw the potential for 6,000 subscribers. Altitude Télécom is measuring demand to determine the number of antennas that will circle the commune. Each must be linked by another radio-based technology, known as fixed wireless, to Altitude's network in Alençon, 20 miles away. Mr. Lebarbier said the network would cost $270,000 and take about a month to put in place. 

The Île de Ré, an island of 15,000 residents off the Atlantic coast, is also getting ready for Wi-Fi, but with a different approach.

Olivier Zablocki, a land development consultant, has received a license to build a network of 120 Wi-Fi locations on the island, connected to 10 satellite dishes providing the Net connection. He has formed a cooperative whose 120 members will underwrite 80 percent of the venture, which he expects to become profitable within three years.

Mr. Zablocki said that public access to wireless networks was overdue. "Citizens, the very people who build networks, don't have the freedom to use them?" he asked. "That policy didn't make any sense."
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Federal Computer Week
NIMA is source of Iraq imagery
BY Dan Caterinicchia 
Feb. 5, 2003

The National Imagery and Mapping Agency provided the declassified satellite pictures of Iraq that Secretary of State Colin Powell presented today to the United Nations Security Council, according to sources close to the situation.

Powell presented images that he said were of 15 munitions bunkers, four of which had active chemical munitions inside. A senior U.S. official told the Associated Press that the pictures were cleared for Powell's use just before his presentation to the council. 

Powell used them to show that Iraq has been moving weapons stockpiles from one site to another in order to keep them hidden from U.N. weapons inspectors, according to the AP report.

NIMA provided the satellite images to CIA Director George Tenet, who declassified them for Powell's presentation to the U.N., a source close to the situation told Federal Computer Week.
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