Clips September 5, 2002

[Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>]

Clips September 5, 2002

ARTICLES

Anti-spam group almost sends some
A Story Of Piracy And Privacy
Air security fixes are slow to come
New 'entertainment' PCs restrict copying
Anti-terror tracking raises fears of racial profiling
Sept. 11 keeps disaster recovery in forefront
Another file-swapping site to fall silent
Businesses Draw Line On Security
University to challenge copyright laws
Web Freedom Eroded in Terror War
Taking cyber predators to task
Maine rings in a new school year with iBooks
Homeland bill veto threatened
DOD joint concepts in question
Most e-gov initiatives are ready to take off
Lack of cybersecurity specialists sparks concern
Critics protest anti-drug tactics [privacy]
Teenangels make cybersafety a number one priority

**************************
Houston Chronicle
Anti-spam group almost sends some
Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- A consumer group lobbying to outlaw unwanted spam e-mails 
opened its campaign Wednesday with a new Web site but quickly had to fix a 
technical glitch that suggested visitors might unwittingly be added to the 
group's own e-mail list.

The Telecommunications Research and Action Center said it never intended to 
send visitors unwanted e-mails and blamed the problem on an erroneous 
message created by the Web designer.

"The guy that put it up didn't understand it real well," said the group's 
chairman, Sam Simon.

Simon said the problem, which was brought to the group's attention by The 
Associated Press, was fixed quickly and that none of the visitors during 
the site's first day ever received unsolicited e-mails.

Only visitors who opt to receive the group's informational e-mails by 
checking a box on the Web page will receive e-mails, Simon said.

Before the error was fixed, an Internet user who visited the site but chose 
not to receive e-mail updates from the group was greeted with the message: 
"You are currently signed up for news and information."

The Web site, banthespam.com, encourages Internet users to share their spam 
horror stories and add their names to a petition asking federal regulators 
to crack down on spam e-mailers.

The group wants the Federal Trade Commission to sue marketers that send 
spam without authentic return addresses or send e-mails to someone who has 
opted out of receiving the messages.
**************************
Washington Post
A Story Of Piracy And Privacy
By Jonathan Krim


The recording industry and the nation's largest telephone company are 
crossing legal swords in what could be a test case of how far big record 
labels can go to track down computer users who swap music online.

The industry is seeking to force Verizon Communications Corp., which also 
provides customers with high-speed Internet access, to turn over the name 
of one of its users who the record labels claim has made copyrighted music 
available for download by others. The Recording Industry of America also 
demanded that Verizon block access to the user's music files.

The industry contends that it is losing millions of dollars in music sales 
because potential customers are instead downloading digital copies from 
others in violation of copyright law. The battle with Verizon is part of an 
aggressive campaign by the record labels on Capitol Hill, at the Justice 
Department and in the courts to crack down on the practice.

Among other tactics, the industry is using automated software agents -- 
called "bots," short for "robots" -- to patrol the Internet and identify 
computers with music available for download through a popular technology 
known as file sharing. Although the bot can detect the presence of music 
files available for download, it can identify only an Internet address code 
and the service provider, not the identity of the user.

The music industry sent a subpoena to Verizon for the name of one user but 
was rebuffed. It then went to the U.S. District Court in Washington, asking 
the court to enforce the subpoena.

Verizon and a coalition of Internet advocacy groups argue that if the 
recording industry prevails, the constitutional right to privacy of 
millions of Internet users would be compromised.

"RIAA proposes a dazzlingly broad subpoena power that would allow any 
person, without filing a complaint, to invoke the coercive power of a 
federal court to force disclosure of the identity of any user of the 
Internet, based on a mere assertion . . . that the user is engaged in 
infringing activity," Verizon's legal filing said.

Verizon does not defend piracy of copyrighted works, but Sarah Deutsch, 
Verizon's associate general counsel, said the record industry is seeking a 
legally "creative" way to require the Internet provider to violate its 
customer's privacy. She added that because the music files reside on the 
user's computer, not on Verizon's network, the only way to block access to 
them would be to terminate the user's Internet account.

Verizon argues that under the terms of the 1998 Digital Millennium 
Copyright Act, the provider of a user's Internet connection is not 
responsible for any action taken by that user. Deutsch said that the law 
was passed before file-sharing technology was even contemplated and that 
the record labels are now trying to retrofit it, in effect, to be applied 
to file sharing.

The industry takes a broader view of the federal law, arguing that its 
terms obligate owners of networks to comply with subpoenas in cases of 
copyright infringement.

RIAA President Cary Sherman said Verizon is trying to have it both ways: 
The telecommunications company says it is not responsible for policing file 
sharing, but it won't provide the the information that would allow the 
record industry to do so.

He added that the demand that Verizon block access to the user's files was 
only a formality to comply with the terms of the copyright act; the RIAA 
simply wants to warn the subscriber that he or she is violating the law.

Deutsch said the industry's motives in the case are particularly suspect 
because Verizon offered a simple alternative: The RIAA could sue the user, 
naming him or her as an unknown party, and then subpoena Verizon for the 
user's name. Under that scenario, Deutsch said, Verizon would comply 
because there would be a valid legal action pending.

But the labels "would like to be able to serve millions of these types of 
subpoenas and collect subscriber names, and then pick out the most 
favorable for a lawsuit against the user community," Deutsch said.

In briefs filed last night, the RIAA said that until Verizon's refusal to 
honor the subpoena, many Internet service providers had given it the 
identities of individuals accused of copyright violations.

"It's ironic that Verizon's position basically encourages us to sue their 
subscriber," he said.

Deutsch said the user has not been notified of the dispute because the 
company's view is that the subpoena is invalid. In other cases, in which 
potentially illegal material is hosted on Verizon's network, users receive 
notification and time to take the material off the system before Verizon 
does so, she said.

Despite mounting efforts by the recording industry -- including 
successfully shutting down the trailblazing Napster service -- file sharing 
continues to boom. According to the Web site of Kazaa, one of the leading 
providers of file-sharing software, nearly 14 million copies of its product 
have been downloaded by users, 2.6 million of them in the past month.

File-sharing software can be used for documents, media files or other data, 
and Kazaa warns its users against violating copyrights. But music swapping 
abounds.

In response, the music industry is pushing on a number of fronts. At the 
industry's behest, 19 members of Congress asked the Justice Department to 
aggressively enforce the law, and the agency has said it will do so.

Pending legislation sponsored by Reps. Howard L. Berman (D-Calif.) and 
Howard Coble (R-N.C.) would allow the industry to hack into offenders' 
computers to disrupt file sharing, while the industry is also putting out 
fake music files to try to discourage downloads.
************************
The Arizona Republic
Air security fixes are slow to come
Nation's skies remain vulnerable

By Tom Zoellner
The Arizona Republic
Sept. 05, 2002 12:00:00


The most remarkable thing about the changes to airport security is how 
little change has actually been accomplished.


After the suicide jet attacks of Sept. 11, the nation was braced to accept 
that flying would never be the same again, that airlines would undergo a 
sea change in their thinking and procedures.

But today, at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport and other major 
airports nationwide, the post-Sept. 11 reforms amount to a muscled-up 
version of the same basic security screen erected after a wave of 
hijackings to Cuba in 1969.

Passengers are still being led through 1970s-era magnetometers, security 
screeners are mostly private employees with minimal training, no real 
computer profiling system is in place, pilots are unarmed with anything but 
their fists, and most baggage is loaded without scrutiny.

What's more, the massive federal agency created to handle all of the 
promised changes, the Transportation Security Administration, is still 
searching for a staff, a clearly defined mission and a sense of rapport 
with the nation's 429 airports.

The Phoenix office of the agency has just six employees and no target date 
for federalizing the staff of 400 checkpoint monitors at Sky Harbor.

And although Phoenix airport officials successfully evicted Argenbright, a 
security-screening firm notorious for its incompetence, there has been 
virtually no change in staffing levels at checkpoints.

Confidence is lacking

"We are just as vulnerable," said Mike Boyd, an aviation security 
consultant based in Denver.

"Before 9/11, security screening was basically competent only from keeping 
a lovesick high-schooler from hijacking a jet to impress his girlfriend. 
That's still what we have today.

"If inconvenience and bureaucracy could prevent terrorism, we'd be the 
safest nation on Earth."

The federal government has, indeed, relaxed some of its post-Sept. 11 
security directives. Curbside drop-offs were reinstated. A ban on taking 
paper coffee cups through the metal detectors was quietly rescinded.

Critics complain that meaningful security has been sacrificed in the name 
of keeping the airlines profitable; the Transit Administration responds 
that it is doing all it can to reshape a century-old aviation culture.

"It's a double-edged sword," acknowledged Robert Brown, director of 
security at Sky Harbor. "We have to make it safe and secure, but at the 
same time, it is a business."

The real substantial changes still lie in the future, federal and local 
officials say.

Much work to be done

The federal security director for Phoenix, Marcia Florian, said the Transit 
Administration is still working on a plan to redesign metal-detecting 
checkpoints at Sky Harbor, with the help of a team of consultants from 
Lockheed Martin.

The plan is to streamline the more intensive passenger screenings, 
including selective shoe removal and pat-downs, instituted after the terror 
attacks.

Construction could begin in October, she said.

There are still no clear answers on when all luggage will be electronically 
inspected for bombs. Phoenix airport Director David Krietor recently joined 
132 other airport directors in urging Congress to move back a Dec. 31 
deadline for installing bomb-detection systems in all airports.

Virtually nobody in the aviation industry thinks that high-quality 
Electronic Detection Systems that peer into luggage like a CAT scan will be 
online by the end of the year. There are only two at Sky Harbor now; at 
least 30 will be needed.

Inferior equipment

The Transit Administration has proposed meeting the deadline with the 
cheaper and less-reliable Electronic Trade Detection systems, which involve 
a chemical swipe that detects suspicious residue.

Meanwhile, field testing of an upgraded risk-analysis system for all 
passengers, known as the Computer Assisted Passenger Profiling System, or 
CAPPS II, is a year away.

The system would integrate a customer's flying and purchase patterns with a 
cross-list of police watch lists and other intelligence information. 
Airlines now use a far less-sophisticated computer system developed in the 
1980s, known as CAPPS, to single out passengers for intensive pat-down 
searches.


Reach the reporter at tom.zoellner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx or (602) 444-2474.
*******************************
New 'entertainment' PCs restrict copying
By Joe Wilcox
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
September 3, 2002, 5:58 AM PT
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-956285.html


Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard on Tuesday released additional details about 
digital entertainment PCs coming for the holidays. But new anti-copying 
technology could hamper sales say analysts and potential buyers.


The new consumer computers run Windows XP Media Center Edition, a variation 
of Microsoft's flagship operating system. Besides normal PC functions, 
Windows Media Center PCs offer a second user interface through which people 
can access the operating systems' digital media features via a remote 
control. HP, as well as Samsung, will start offering the new systems 
sometime before the holiday-shopping season, with HP's models selling in 
the high $1,500 range to around $2,000.


Microsoft sees Windows Media Center PCs as ideal for college students or 
young urbanites living in cramped spaces where a combination computing and 
entertainment system might be more appealing than separate devices. Besides 
digital photo, music and movie features already available with Windows XP, 
the new PCs also would serve as TV tuners and digital video recorders 
(DVRs) for copying TV shows to the computer's hard drive.


But Microsoft has included copy-protection with the operating system that 
uses encryption to lock recorded TV shows to the PC. Already, consumers can 
legally record television programs to VHS tapes for personal use and view 
them on another VCR in the household. Microsoft has taken a more 
conservative approach by thwarting the sharing of programs recorded 
digitally. That strategy might make sense as Microsoft attempts to attract 
Hollywood movie studios with its digital rights management and anti-copying 
technologies. But consumers may not react favorably to the copy protection, 
say analysts.


"You have to applaud their efforts (on copyright protection). But this is 
not a mainstream product, particularly if you're going to limit it where 
consumers are not going to be able to share that digital media between 
their DVD players and other devices," said ARS analyst Toni
Duboise. "To take that (copying) flexibility away from consumers is a big 
mistake. There's no way consumers are going to like this proprietary way of 
doing business."


Von Ehman, a Windows user and an analyst for West Virginia state government 
in Charleston, also balked at the copy-protection mechanism.


"If you copy protect in any way, the kids will scream bloody murder," he 
said. "It's a young person's market, and that would be a suicide" for 
Microsoft in the marketplace. Ehman, who is a musician, said that "99 
percent" of all the copying he has seen is for personal use or archiving 
purposes. "I believe it (copying/dubbing) is, for the most part, harmless 
and in a positive sense actually promotes the product for the artist or 
business, be it music or video."


Jodie Cadiuex, marketing manager of Windows Media Center, defends 
Microsoft's decision to copy protect TV programs recorded to the PC's hard 
drive.


"Microsoft is in a leadership position here where we've got an opportunity 
to help Hollywood feel comfortable with digital distribution and to help 
them develop (digital rights management) solutions so consumers can have 
content everywhere," she said. "We have two relationships we have to 
balance here: the consumer who wants the content and Hollywood so they feel 
comfortable with that process and don't clamp down and make that impossible."


Convergence computing Microsoft introduced the new version of Windows, 
code-named Freestyle, during January's Consumer Electronics Show in Las 
Vegas. The company released Window XP Media Center Edition to PC 
manufacturers last week, after the release of Service Pack 1--the first 
collection of Windows XP updates and bug fixes.


HP's version, dubbed Media Center PC, is expected to sell for $1,500 to 
$2,000 without a monitor, depending on the configuration. HP would not 
disclose final model details but said that each PC would come with at least 
a 2GHz Pentium 4 processor, 512MB of RAM, 100GB or more of storage, a 
DVD+R/RW drive, a CD-ROM drive, a 64MB Nvidia GeForce 4 graphics card, a 
Creative Labs Audigy sound card, five USB 2.0 and two FireWire ports, and 
200-watt Klipsch speakers--Pro Media 2.1 on most models and the 5.1 version 
on the $2,000 PC.


The HP Media Center PC also will feature a 6-in-1 media reader, supporting 
Smart Media and Sony Memory Stick cards, among other portable storage options.

Besides access to the digital media features through the keyboard or remote 
control, the digital media user interface can be brought up by any one of 
five buttons on the front of the PC. These access the five main digital 
media features: music, pictures, photos, DVD and TV.


"Our target audience is anyone who sees a place anywhere in the home where 
there's a need for a PC and a TV or an entertainment center," said Mark 
Bony, HP's Pavilion PC product manager. "We're also targeting 
consumers--students or small apartment dwellers, where space is a premium."


While the features are compelling, analysts predict that the 
digital-entertainment PCs will be, at best, niche products for a number 
reasons.


"Everyone's been waiting for the great convergence product," Duboise said. 
"This is putting the PC as a replacement device for the television, but 
it's not there yet. People are not ready to replace their televisions with 
their PCs."


Duboise also questioned whether the audience is simply too small to begin 
with. "This is a young audience, maybe those who are starting out or 
high-techies. It's going to be a small audience. It certainly isn't going 
to be mainstream."


Microsoft and HP also face a challenge because of the system's pricing, 
despite the abundance of high-end hardware. Consumer craving for expensive 
PCs has not been great, given the economy and other factors. Year to date, 
the average selling price of retail PCs has been $824,
according to NPDTechworld. That is about half the price of the entry- level 
HP Media Center PC. PCs priced $1,500 and above accounted for only about 
4.5 percent of the retail PC market. In that range, the average selling 
price is $1,577 so far this year.

"I think the numbers kind of speak for themselves," said NPDTechworld 
analyst Stephen Baker.


Overprotective options

Analysts and users see the built-in copy protection as a potential sales 
killer because it restricts the use of the built-in DVR, one of the most 
compelling features of the new PCs.


DVRs, which are sold as companion products for TVs by TiVo and Sonicblue's 
ReplayTV, are expected to become standard equipment on PCs over the next 
few years, say analysts.

Already Sony ships Vaio PCs with DVRs and most of the other features found 
on the HP Media Center PC. But Sony does not impose copy protection. So a 
consumer could use Sony's GigaPocket Personal Video Recorder software to 
record a TV show, convert the file to MPEG-2 video with another Sony 
application and burn the program to a DVD.


Don Simon, a Windows user from Seattle, Wash., recently bought a Vaio 
RX780G PC. The avid TiVo user has networked other PCs to the Vaio, so he 
can "seamlessly watch TV on any PC in my house. If Microsoft comes out with 
a product that does less than Sony's, I'd be skeptical of its success. I 
certainly wouldn't buy it."


Meta Group analyst Steve Kleynahans said that Microsoft made the decision 
to put in the copy protection fairly far along in the development of 
Windows XP Media Center Edition.


"I know this wasn't in the product all along," he said. "I think it was 
Microsoft being overcautious. I really think it's unfortunate because it 
does hamper the functionality and usability of the platform."

Cadiuex acknowledged Microsoft took the risk of alienating some customers 
with its copying restrictions.


"We don't make these decisions in a vacuum, not considering the potential 
responses from our consumers," she said. "They're difficult decisions to 
make, especially when you know somewhere down the line that certainly not 
the majority, but some, of the people aren't going to be thrilled."


Microsoft might have good reason to be cautious given, Hollywood's tough 
stance toward the computer industry and a ReplayTV lawsuit related to 
sharing content.


"You've got a company that itself depends on its own intellectual property 
not being copied taking technical steps to prevent the intellectual 
property of other companies from being illegally copied," said Rich Gray, a 
Menlo Park, Calif.-based intellectual property attorney. "There is good 
strong case law, mainly the Sony Betamax case, that you, a single user, can 
make a recording of a TV show for your own personal use. What Microsoft has 
done is allow that capability while imposing a technical fix that will 
prevent copies from being made that are clearly illegal or are at least in 
a gray area."


Matt Rosoff, a Directions on Microsoft analyst, sees another motivation at 
work and one that has more to do with future business prospects than 
concerns about customer dissatisfaction or potential legal problems.

"Microsoft generally believes that digital entertainment, digital media, is 
the thing that's going to drive the next cycle of PC upgrades," he said. 
"There's not that much more new you can do with your PC that you're not 
already doing."


Microsoft hopes to sell Hollywood its digital rights management technology. 
At the same time, the company doesn't want Hollywood to use its marketing 
or legal muscle to shut the PC out of digital entertainment.


"If the content owners look at the PC as this Wild West where the content 
and intellectual property is stolen, the content owners will try to get 
around the PC," Rosoff said. "That's something Microsoft wouldn't want to 
see happen."
*****************************
The Arizona Republic
Anti-terror tracking raises fears of racial profiling
By Sonni Efron
Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON - A new anti-terrorist tracking system that will require 
fingerprinting and photographing tens of thousands of visitors to the 
United States is prompting an angry outpouring from Muslim nations.


The measures set to begin Sept. 11 have aroused concern inside the State 
Department that they could antagonize some of the very people whose backing 
the United States hopes to enlist in its ongoing war against terrorism.

State Department officials said the visitors most likely to be 
fingerprinted are males ages 16 to 45 from 26 nations where terrorism is 
deemed to be a concern.

The names of the 26 countries are classified, but they are widely believed 
to be mainly Muslim nations.

"It's going to create three lines at the airport: a U.S. citizen line, a 
non-U.S. citizen line, and a dark people/Arab line," said James Zogby, 
founder of the Arab American Institute in Washington.

A State Department official conceded that there had been "friction" with 
the Justice Department over the issue, adding, "The State Department is 
concerned with how this procedure will be perceived overseas, particularly 
in the Middle East."

In addition, there are growing concerns that tougher scrutiny of thousands 
of foreign visitors, if not performed quickly and discreetly, could depress 
tourism, trade and business.

Already, tougher visa regulations imposed since Sept. 11 are causing delays 
of six weeks or more in issuing U.S. visas.

A spokesman for the Justice Department, which has been battling the State 
Department over how to implement the tracking system, vigorously defended 
the new procedures, imposed under the Patriot Act enacted by Congress in 
the wake of Sept. 11, as essential for keeping tabs on foreigners who might 
do America harm.

Spokesman Jorge Martinez emphatically denied that the National Security 
Entry-Exit Registration System will discriminate against any particular group.

But the Justice Department refused to say what the criteria will be for 
singling out which visitors deserve extra scrutiny. It would describe only 
the two main categories: any non-immigrant alien whom the State Department 
determines to pose an elevated national security risk, or any alien whom 
the Immigration and Naturalization Service deems to pose a national 
security threat, based on the latest intelligence about terrorists.

An INS spokeswoman said the agency did not expect delays at airports 
starting Sept. 11, contending that the beefed-up inspection process for 
certain visitors would take only about 10 minutes per person.

But diplomats and travel industry officials are worried about long lines 
and the reaction of foreign travelers. Some are concerned that other 
countries may retaliate and impose reciprocal fingerprinting and other 
restrictions on Americans who travel abroad.

Civil libertarians question whether U.S. intelligence is equipped to 
analyze all of the fingerprints and information it collects.

And some Arab-Americans fear the process could reinforce the perception 
that America doesn't want Muslim visitors and that the war on terrorism is 
being waged through racial profiling.

For security reasons, the Justice Department isn't saying which airports 
will be the first to implement the system. But Martinez said all ports of 
international entry will have it running by Oct. 1.
***************************
Sun Sentinel
Broward elections official assailed by GOP, still short of poll workers
By Buddy Nevins and Scott Wyman

State officials were asked Wednesday to rule on whether Broward County 
Supervisor of Elections Miriam Oliphant's plans for this year's elections 
violate Florida law.

The request for a state ruling came the same day the supervisor conceded 
she was in "dire need of a minimum of 112 volunteers" to staff next 
Tuesday's primary. The volunteers would staff 14 locations where votes will 
be transmitted via modems to the Broward County elections office's central 
computers.

The news that Oliphant still was short of workers, contained in a letter to 
city clerks, comes less than three weeks after she insisted she had enough 
people to run the election.

Oliphant remained upbeat Wednesday at a news conference called to reassure 
the public about the upcoming elections.

"I say to all the voters of Broward County that on Sept. 10, we will have a 
successful election," she said.

But at the same time she was talking to the news media, Oliphant faced a 
potentially bigger problem.

In a letter to state election officials, George LeMieux, chairman of the 
Broward Republican Party, asked for a ruling on whether Oliphant, a 
Democrat, must have both Republican or independent poll workers along with 
Democrats in each precinct.

Florida law states that no precinct can be staffed exclusively by members 
of one party.

"We are very concerned with this," LeMieux said. "You must have different 
parties represented at each polling place."

Oliphant has refused to comply with the law, LeMieux said. He said that she 
"refused to tell us how many Republican poll workers she had. I don't think 
she knew."

Her lawyer, Robert Buschel, disagreed with LeMieux's interpretation of the 
law, but conceded that Oliphant does not necessarily have Republican and 
Democratic poll workers at each precinct.

Buschel, who has been negotiating with the GOP, said Oliphant doesn't think 
she has to determine whether each poll has members of different parties, 
just that the entire group of 5,000 poll workers has enough Republicans and 
Democrats.

"Mrs. Oliphant has assured the Republicans that the workers will reflect 
the community and that no one will be targeted," Buschel said. "These 
people at the polls are sworn poll workers and will do what's right."

LeMieux was unmoved.

"The law is clear as a bell," LeMieux said. "She refused to address this 
and challenged us to find a contrary opinion to hers. That's what we are 
doing."

LeMieux said he wants the state to order Oliphant to comply with the law 
and shuffle her poll workers around, so that no poll is staffed only by 
members of one party. The GOP was particularly concerned that polls in the 
November general election for governor contain enough Republicans.

"If she doesn't do it, we could go to court before Nov. 5," LeMieux said. 
"If we don't have people from different parties as workers, you are open to 
fraud."

His letter was received Wednesday by Ed Kast, director of the state 
Division of Elections. Kast said only that he expected his lawyers to 
respond to it by today. Two other complaints LeMieux had with Oliphant's 
procedures for next week's elections were settled after talks with Buschel. 
LeMieux said he still wanted an agreement on these technical points in 
writing. This is not the first time that the Republican chief has clashed 
with the Democratic supervisor. A month ago, LeMieux pressured Oliphant 
into withdrawing a poll worker training tape that portrayed a GOP voter as 
verbally abusive to a black woman.

"These are not partisan issues," LeMieux said. "Everybody wants this 
election to run fairly and without a hitch  Republicans and Democrats. She 
has been criticized by plenty of Democrats, too."

But Mitch Ceasar, the county's Democratic chairman, criticized LeMieux for 
"making this a partisan issue. There will be hitches in this election with 
the new machines. The problems need to be ironed out without his stirring 
the pot for publicity purposes for his party."

LeMieux denied he was complaining to gain publicity for the GOP.

Oliphant has been besieged by complaints in recent days.

More than a third of Broward's almost 1 million voters have had their 
polling locations switched, causing some to travel miles to vote. Many 
voters complained that they received two new voters cards in the mail 
telling them to vote in two different polling locations. Others said their 
dead relatives received cards. Still others said they have been told to 
vote in cities other than where they live. Meanwhile, other South Florida 
counties reported few of the problems that Broward was experiencing.

Miami-Dade County voters experienced some minor trouble in trying to cast 
early votes, a process allowed by the new election law passed this year.

U.S. Rep. Carrie Meek, D-Miami, was initially unable to vote at a Miami 
library. Meek was held up for more than 30 minutes after a county laptop 
computer failed to recognize the congresswoman as a registered voter, said 
Meek spokesman Tola Thompson.

Palm Beach County received the approval of the state's chief elections 
officer on Wednesday. Secretary of State Jim Smith declared that he had 
"not a lot of concern" after visiting the county elections office.

He is scheduled to visit Broward and Miami-Dade counties today.

Oliphant said the election will be reassessed after November to eliminate 
any problems found next week and in November.

Staff Writers David Cazares and Anthony Man contributed to this report.

Buddy Nevins can be reached at bnevins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx or 954-356-4571.
****************************
Computerworld
Sept. 11 keeps disaster recovery in forefront
By Stacy Cowley, IDG News Service
09/03/02

In February 2001, Gartner Inc. published a white paper titled "How Will You 
Get Your Data Back After the [insert catastrophe here]?" Seven months 
later, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks filled in that blank, stunning the 
U.S. and forcing businesses to consider disaster recovery on a previously 
unimagined scale.
By 9 a.m. that day, as hundreds of thousands of workers passed through 
lower Manhattan on their way to their jobs, smoke was billowing over the 
city from the first hijacked plane's crash into the World Trade Center's 
north tower (see story). Within hours, the entire complex was in ruins, 
throwing Manhattan's transportation and communications systems into turmoil 
and the nation into shock over the vicious attacks on New York and Washington.

"There was a sudden awareness: We could have not just a building, but a 
regional catastrophe," said Dianne McAdam, an analyst at Illuminata Inc. in 
Nashua, N.H. "What happened with Sept. 11 in Manhattan, it was a loss of 
the phone lines, the data lines, the transportation, of parts of the entire 
communications infrastructure."

Even a buildingwide catastrophe was more than CareerEngine Network Inc. was 
prepared to handle.

The small, 3-year-old Web developer was located on the 21st floor of the 
World Trade Center's south tower, which was hit by a hijacked plane soon 
after the crash into the north tower. Several of the company's dozen 
employees would normally have been at work by the time the attacks began, 
but a series of minor emergencies and delays -- a sick child, a broken 
train, an apartment problem -- conspired to keep the staff out of the 
office and unscathed. CareerEngine's infrastructure, however, was demolished.

"We lost all our information about our customers. In some cases, we didn't 
even know who owed us money and who didn't. We had to contact all of our 
clients and have them work with us to re-create our records," said George 
Benoit, the company's chairman and CEO.

CareerEngine creates customized career information and job listings Web 
sites for Web publishers. Those Web sites, hosted remotely, remained live 
without interruption. But the company's internal data was wiped out.

"We had been making backups. And then we left them in the same place, in a 
different area," Benoit said. "We figured maybe there would be a fire, 
something like that we'd have to deal with. We never thought the building 
would fall down."

The dramatic events of last Sept. 11 galvanized some planners into action 
in a way that natural, more routine calamities like earthquakes and storms 
haven't. U.S. companies are starting to take disaster recovery as seriously 
as their European counterparts, said Ken Boyd, director of advanced 
disaster recovery solutions at IBM.

The 1993 Trade Center bombing, coupled with last year's attacks, created an 
environment here that resembles what European companies have faced for 
years from terrorist threats, he said.

"Before Sept. 11, we had a few [disaster recovery planning] calls a week," 
he said. "Now we are getting a few calls a day."

That has also been the case at data replication vendor NSI Software Inc. 
(NSI) in Hoboken, N.J. "The visibility of data protection and availability 
has been raised to an all-time high," said Bob Guilbert, vice president of 
marketing. NSI has been expanding the staff of a services unit it launched 
in October, an offering that quickly attracted several dozen customers 
seeking help constructing a business continuity plan.

Businesses are increasingly considering the possibility of a disaster that 
paralyzes a large geographic area, according to analysts and vendors.

"One of the lessons that customers learned from Sept. 11 in one sense is 
that it was a regional disaster -- not just a floor or a building, but all 
of the infrastructure around the World Trade Center," Boyd said.

The scope of the disaster undermined some companies' disaster recovery 
plans, as workers couldn't reach buildings to handle manual tasks and 
organizing phone calls couldn't be made. Consequently, IBM now stresses to 
customers the importance of automating data backup, Boyd said.

"You have to ask, How automatic is your disaster recovery?" he said. "How 
much are you depending on people to make decisions? Because you may not 
have a scenario that lets that happen."

Since the attacks, IBM has set up a technical design council that examines 
the disaster recovery proposals the company makes to its clients, checking 
that they will work in real-world conditions. IBM engineers examine the 
bandwidth connecting primary and recovery sites, for example, and evaluate 
hardware products to ensure those will work together as well in practice as 
they do in theory.

Customers are also extending the distances between data centers, realizing 
that a backup in New Jersey for a network in Manhattan could be vulnerable, 
Illuminata's McAdam said.

In the year since the attacks, customers in the New York metropolitan area 
have been adding "heavy lifting" data centers outside the New York, New 
Jersey and Connecticut area as an extra safeguard, said David Palermo, vice 
president of marketing for Wayne, Pa.-based SunGard Data Systems Inc., one 
of the industry's major providers of disaster recovery and business 
continuity protection services.

By the end of the week of the attacks, which killed three SunGard employees 
who were visiting clients at the World Trade Center, nearly 100 of 
SunGard's customers had placed the company on alert, and 30 had declared 
disasters (see story). The disaster declaration number was close to what 
the company fielded during the entire prior year. After SunGard bought the 
disaster recovery business of Comdisco Inc. last November and acquired its 
customers, those figures rose to 226 alerts, with 77 declared disasters 
(see story).

The severity of the Sept. 11 attacks prompted some businesses to escalate 
plans to implement or improve their protection plans, but, as is always the 
case, action lagged behind talk, Palermo said.

"It's the same thing as with Hurricane Floyd, with earthquakes, with any 
other disaster. It has the ability to make people say, 'Wow, we've been 
thinking about this forever.' But after any of those events, many more 
businesses think about it than actually end up doing something about it," 
he said.

For large enterprises, particularly those in heavily regulated industries, 
such as the financial services firms that fill lower Manhattan, fairly 
extensive emergency planning is a routine part and cost of doing business. 
Small and medium-size businesses are less likely to have plans in place, 
but even those that do face daunting obstacles in recovering from a 
catastrophe. Gartner estimates that two out of five companies that 
experience a disaster go out of business within five years.

Having a complete plan for both data backup and an off-site emergency work 
location for its employees allowed the New York Shipping Association Inc. 
(NYSA) to be fully operational two days after the Sept. 11 attacks 
destroyed its World Trade Center office. The 70-year-old organization, 
which coordinates cargo operations in the New York and New Jersey ports, 
drafted detailed plans after scrambling to recover from the 1993 World 
Trade Center bombing, said NYSA President Frank McDonough.

A SunGard customer, NYSA evacuated all of its employees safely on Sept. 11 
and relocated approximately 100 of them to several temporary SunGard 
facilities in the region. Within the day, its staff had fully wired 
temporary workspaces, and data retrieval efforts were under way.

"I don't think there's a darn thing that we would have done differently. 
I've talked to the tech people a few times about this, and there's no 
second-guessing," McDonough said. After several temporary relocations, the 
company found a permanent new headquarters in March in Iselin, N.J., and 
considers itself fully recovered from the attacks.

But plans as comprehensive as NYSA's are expensive. SunGard has 15,000 
recovery workspace positions throughout North America and Europe, but 
keeping such a physical office backup on tap carries a price tag that 
starts at several hundred dollars per month, per seat. Data backup can be 
less expensive -- low-end prices for a single server are a "couple hundred 
per month," estimates SunGard's Palermo -- but even those costs can be hard 
to fit into the budget for a small business.

"There was a lot of interest [after Sept. 11] and a lot of projects in 
planning phases, but many businesses have no appreciation of how difficult 
it's going to be to do," McAdam said. "This is not just throwing another 
backup at a remote location. The [small and medium businesses], some of 
them had a bit of sticker shock."

Sticker shock has so far kept CareerEngine Network from creating more 
extensive emergency plans, even though Benoit says he regrets not having a 
strategy in place before Sept. 11. While insurance and a $117,000 relief 
grant covered some of the company's losses, he estimates that his business 
lost $1.5 million because of the attacks. That financial hit, along with 
the depressed business climate of the past year, has forced CareerEngine 
Network to trim its staff from 12 to seven, and left it even less able to 
set aside money for disaster planning.

"One thing we emphasize to people is that disaster recovery is about 
recovering from an unplanned outage, while business continuity is having an 
infrastructure in place that supports running 24/7," McAdam said. "That's a 
very expensive infrastructure to build, but once you get it built, you 
really get disaster recovery for free. What we have to do is work with 
customers and get them to elevate their thinking, to think less about 
disaster recovery and more about keeping their business up and running 24/7."

Demand for high-availability products is soaring as companies realize their 
IT dependency, SunGard's Palermo said.

Ten years ago, disaster recovery was about retrieving mainframe tapes and 
rebuilding data centers. A 48-hour window emerged as the time a typical 
enterprise could expect to spend regrouping. But now, many businesses 
"can't go more than several minutes" without sustaining major damage, he 
said, and online storage systems and other new technologies are aiding them 
in creating failover systems and other backups to minimize downtown.

Tape will continue to serve long-term archival needs, but ever-dropping 
hardware prices allow customers to consider electronic storage strategies 
that would previously have been prohibitively costly, Guilbert said. He 
sees that trend, coupled with the increased awareness, as among the biggest 
post-Sept. 11 changes for the market.

"A year and a half ago, NSI would spend a lot of time [at shows] educating 
prospects. They'd say, 'What is replication? What does it mean?' That has 
clearly changed," he said. "Now we're definitely seeing a more educated 
CIO. I ask what sort of replication they're using now, and the answer is, 
'We're not.' But they're trying to get educated on all the technology and 
solutions available because now they know they should be using something."

Ashlee Vance in San Francisco contributed to this report.
********************
News.com
Another file-swapping site to fall silent
By John Borland

An Illinois federal judge said Wednesday that he would order the Madster 
file-trading system, formerly known as Aimster, to halt song-swapping in 
the next few days.
The decision marks the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) 
second substantial court victory against a file-trading company, just a day 
after the RIAA's legal victory in bankruptcy court shut Napster's doors for 
what appears to be the last time.

In a detailed and often pointed opinion, Judge Marvin Aspen said that 
Aimster, which played a brief but colorful role on the file-trading stage 
not long after Napster's appearance, was clearly responsible for 
large-scale copyright infringement.



"Defendants manage to do everything but actually steal the music off the 
store shelf and hand it to Aimster's users," Aspen wrote.

As with Napster's final loss Tuesday, the immediate result of the 
Madster-Aimster case will have little impact on the file-swapping world. 
The owner of the service, an entrepreneur named John Deep, and the several 
companies associated with him that were connected with Aimster, all 
declared bankruptcy in March. The vast majority of file-traders have 
migrated to other platforms such as Kazaa, StreamCast Networks' Morpheus, 
or iMesh.

But because, like Napster, it is one of the only full court opinions 
rendering a verdict on the file-swapping companies' legality, the Aimster 
case continues to hold the interest of recording industry and technology 
insiders.

The RIAA welcomed Aspen's ruling as a complete victory.

"This unequivocal ruling today underscores that companies and individuals 
will not be permitted to build a business on music they do not own and will 
be held responsible for their actions," said RIAA Chief Executive Officer 
Hilary Rosen, in a statement. "This decision helps to support the continued 
development of the legitimate online music market for fans, which is, of 
course, our goal in all of our online enforcement activities."

In his opinion, Aspen called on the RIAA to propose language for an 
injunction blocking Madster from illegal activity. Deep said the RIAA would 
be hard-pressed to do that in a way that didn't block legal uses of the 
system, such as instant messaging.

"This is going to be where they are going to be caught making 
misrepresentations to the court," Deep said. "On the face of it, it isn't 
possible to do."

In the ruling, Aspen dismantled many of the arguments typically used in 
defense of file-swapping services. "Ongoing, massive, and unauthorized 
distribution and copying" of music through the service is something very 
different from "personal use," an activity protected by law, he said. It 
didn't matter that Aimster didn't know of individual, specific files being 
transferred, because it had "constructive" knowledge that copyright 
infringement was happening on a wide scale, he added.

Moreover, the circumstances of Aimster's case made matters far worse for 
the company. Although it claimed it couldn't have knowledge of 
infringements because of an encrypted network, Aspen wrote that it was 
"disingenuous...to suggest that they lack the requisite level of knowledge 
when their putative ignorance is due entirely to an encryption scheme that 
they themselves put in place."

Worse, the company actively encouraged people to download copyrighted works 
on its Web site, and through a paid "Club Aimster" program, the judge said.

"Indeed, our factual findings demonstrate that Aimster actually goes to 
great lengths to both influence and encourage the direct infringement among 
its users," Aspen wrote.

The judge gave record industry attorneys five days to suggest language for 
a preliminary injunction that would block Madster's operations, advising 
them to look closely at the language that was used for Napster. Madster 
will have two days to reply, and the injunction will go into place shortly 
afterwards, barring a successful appeal.
****************************
Wired News
FBI Says Hotmail Hard to Find
Associated Press   Win a 50" HDTV or a Xerox Printer!

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- The government said Wednesday that a vigorous 
investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui's computer activity turned up no sign 
of an e-mail account the accused Sept. 11 conspirator said he used.

In response to a judge's questions, prosecutors and an FBI computer expert 
said "xdesertman@xxxxxxxxxxx" was not found because Microsoft's free 
Hotmail service does not verify an account user's identity.

The Hotmail service also is unable to provide the account of a particular 
user on a particular computer at a specific date and time, according to the 
government's written motion.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema last week ordered the FBI to explain 
how it examined the computers Moussaoui said he used prior to the Sept. 11 
attacks, and to tell her why it could not find the account.

Some computer experts disagreed with the government's conclusions, saying 
indications of Hotmail usage would automatically show up in a number of 
locations on a user's computer.

"Speaking generally, if a computer is used to access Hotmail, it's 
generally very easy to prove," said Kevin Mandia, a former Air Force 
computer investigator who now trains FBI agents as a consultant for 
Foundstone.

Mandia said, however, that a user could take deliberate steps to remove 
evidence that a Hotmail account was used.

Matthew Yarborough, a former U.S. prosecutor in Dallas who specialized in 
computer crimes, added, "If he was using his laptop to access that account, 
it should have telltale signs."

Moussaoui, charged with conspiring with the 19 hijackers to commit 
terrorism, had asked the judge to force prosecutors to turn over any 
information they uncovered about the account.

"The FBI conducted an aggressive and responsible investigation into 
Moussaoui's computer and e-mail activity, particularly given the great 
demands placed on the FBI's computer investigation capabilities in the wake 
of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks," the government said.

The pleading contended:

It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to find Hotmail account names 
from a computer unless the user downloaded account information to the 
computer or to an electronic storage system. The United States found no 
evidence Moussaoui did so.

The FBI learned after Sept. 11 that Moussaoui had used a computer at 
Kinko's in Eagan, Minn., to connect to the Internet, but was informed by 
employees that data from the relevant time period had been erased in 
accordance with company policy.

Earlier court papers indicated Moussaoui was carrying a Kinko's receipt 
from Aug. 12, 2001, four days before he was arrested on immigration charges.

The account did not turn up in searches of two computers: one from the 
apartment Moussaoui shared with another man, Mukkarum Ali, in Norman, 
Okla.; and a second owned by the University of Oklahoma.

The FBI executed a search warrant Sept. 11 for Moussaoui's laptop computer 
and a floppy diskette, and discovered he used an e-mail account, 
pilotz123@xxxxxxxxxxx, to communicate with flight schools. Information from 
that account will be used at trial, the pleading said.
**************************
Washington Post
Businesses Draw Line On Security
Firms Resist New Rules For Warding Off Terror
By Eric Pianin and Bill Miller

While the Bush administration has waged its campaign to strengthen homeland 
security since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, many of the nation's largest 
and most influential businesses have quietly but persistently resisted new 
rules that would require them to make long-term security improvements.

Most major companies and industries swiftly upgraded their security systems 
in the wake of the attacks, just as the federal government increased 
security at borders, airports, tunnels and bridges. But corporate chiefs 
and lobbyists from industries -- including banking, retail sales, chemical 
manufacturing and nuclear power -- are bridling at government efforts to 
impose even tougher safeguards. For example:

? Lobbyists for retailers and manufacturers are balking at a requirement 
that their ocean carriers give 24-hour notice before loading products bound 
for U.S. ports. Customs officials want more time to check whether 
terrorists have stashed explosives in big cargo containers, but the 
companies view it as an unnecessary obstacle that will slow business and 
increase costs.

? Banks are fighting proposed Treasury Department requirements for new 
steps to guard against money laundering by foreign financial institutions 
setting up U.S. accounts.

? Representatives of Dow Chemical Co., Dupont Co., ExxonMobil Chemical Co. 
and other major chemical manufacturers are lobbying against proposed rules 
and laws that would force them to enhance security well beyond the steps 
they have already taken.

Many corporate officials contend they already are doing everything feasible 
to protect against renewed terrorist attacks. In some cases, industry 
lobbyists have been able to kill outright or water down proposed security 
measures, while others are battling proposals by Congress or the 
administration.

The private sector's resistance is no small matter. By taking a 
business-as-usual approach, some industries remain riddled with security 
problems and are highly vulnerable to terrorism, according to some 
lawmakers, terrorism experts and industry watchdogs.

Nearly 90 percent of the nation's critical infrastructure -- from shipping 
and banking to nuclear power production, food processing and chemical 
manufacturing -- is privately owned. Corporate leaders' decisions will 
largely determine how the nation, as a whole, responds to calls for greater 
protections against further terrorist strikes.

"In the end, the business of business is not to make the country secure," 
said Ivo H. Daalder, a Brookings Institution scholar who has analyzed 
terrorist risks. "The business of business is to make the shareholders 
rich. That's the dilemma we face."

Business leaders often cite the high costs associated with new government 
initiatives, including the anti-bioterrorism and airport security 
legislation approved by Congress last year and the new restrictions on 
border crossings and international shipments of goods. Still reeling from 
the economic downturn, corporate America is unwilling to spend the billions 
of dollars required to meet many of the new standards being proposed by 
lawmakers and bureaucrats.

Private business spent an estimated $55 billion a year on private security 
before Sept. 11, according to the Council of Economic Advisers. In the 
post-9/11 era of heightened security concerns, corporate America may have 
to increase that spending by 50 percent to 100 percent, according to some 
experts.

"We are the industry driving the U.S. economy," said Jonathan Gold, 
director of international trade policy for the International Mass Retail 
Association, a trade alliance whose members generate more than $1 trillion 
in annual sales. "Any increased delays or costs would really impact not 
only our industry but hurt the U.S. economy and consumers."

Food Rules
Food processors, for one, have lobbied aggressively to kill or dilute 
government proposals to expand the federal role in protecting against the 
possible sabotage of the nation's food industry. Counterterrorism experts 
have warned that agricultural and food processing operations -- regulated 
by a hodgepodge of federal agencies -- are vulnerable to biological attacks 
that could kill Americans and severely damage the industry.

However, industry groups including the National Food Processors Association 
and the National Grocers Association say that they could accomplish far 
more through voluntary information-sharing and planning arrangements with 
the FBI and other agencies.

"Frankly, I think we're a model for the rest of the economy," said Kelly 
Johnston, executive vice president of the food processors group. Carol 
Tucker Foreman of the Consumer Federation of America said that while 
lawmakers have provided agencies with additional manpower and funding for 
food inspection, neither Congress nor the administration has addressed the 
underlying problems of a decentralized and chaotic food inspection system.

"Nothing has been done to address this lack of focus, so I think we remain 
more vulnerable than we need to be," she said. "Some parts of the industry 
have worked very hard to make sure the threat of terrorism does not result 
in any additional regulatory authority for the federal government."

Nuclear, Chemical Security
Nuclear power and chemical industry executives have also fended off scores 
of proposals that would have saddled them with potentially costly security 
requirements.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and industry officials blocked 
efforts this year to federalize the security forces at 103 commercial 
nuclear power plants. The chemical industry, meantime, has vigorously 
fought legislative and regulatory efforts to tighten security at its 
facilities. In both cases, industry officials said federal intervention 
would complicate voluntary programs and improvements already underway.

"It's our belief that the nuclear power plants are probably the 
best-defended civilian facilities in the United States," said William 
Beecher, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. "We've taken 
security seriously for more than 25 years."

But some lawmakers and independent experts say that "gaping holes" remain 
in the defenses of the nuclear and chemical industries, and that a more 
comprehensive approach is essential to guard against potentially 
catastrophic attacks on plants near populated areas.

"The state of security before 9/11 was pitiful," said Edwin Lyman, 
scientific director of the Nuclear Control Institute, a watchdog group. 
"Now it is a little better [because of] additional ad hoc measures. But 
there is no way to know how effective they are because the NRC isn't 
running tests to challenge the effectiveness of them."

For nearly a year, nuclear power plants have operated at the highest state 
of readiness in response to a series of chilling government warnings that 
international terrorists planned to seize a nuclear power plant or crash a 
hijacked aircraft into a reactor. Yet as public concern about the safety of 
these plants mounted, the NRC and the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the 
main industry lobbyist, argued that Congress should play only a minor role 
in addressing security issues.

The industry's biggest concern was a proposal by Senate Majority Whip Harry 
M. Reid (D-Nev.) calling for profound changes in security. Reid's original 
bill would have required fundamental changes in nuclear industry 
contingency planning and training for dealing with worst-case scenarios, as 
well as federalizing all security personnel under the control of the NRC.

Scott Peterson, vice president of the NEI, dismissed Reid's proposal as a 
"non-starter" that would throw the industry's security program into 
disarray. Industry officials intensely lobbied -- and won over -- many 
members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee during 
meetings and tours of nuclear power plants.

Reid abandoned his proposal this summer and instead worked out a bipartisan 
compromise approved by the committee that includes several provisions long 
sought by industry -- such as authorizing guards at all nuclear plants to 
carry automatic weapons and to arrest suspected terrorists.

The chemical industry has been even more adamant in opposing mandatory 
federal regulations. The Environmental Protection Agency and the White 
House's Office of Homeland Security for months have tried to craft new 
security standards for chemical plants that produce and store hazardous 
materials. But industry lobbyists and their congressional allies have 
exploited rifts in the administration to keep the proposals bottled up.

The American Chemistry Council, which represents the nation's largest 
manufacturers, including Dow Chemical and Dupont, says companies are 
already doing all that is necessary, including building fences, hiring more 
guards and eliminating stockpiles of deadly liquid chlorine. But the 
industry group represents a small fraction of the chemical, water and waste 
treatment plants that handle large quantities of hazardous chemicals, and 
some lawmakers say an industry-wide approach is needed to close security gaps.

The Senate environment committee in late July approved a bipartisan bill 
crafted by Sen. Jon S. Corzine (D-N.J.) that would give plant operators 18 
months to certify their compliance with new prevention-and-response plans 
developed under the aegis of the EPA. The chemical industry, the American 
Petroleum Institute, the National Association of Manufacturers, the U.S. 
Chamber of Commerce and others have joined forces to try to kill the bill 
if it reaches the Senate floor this fall.

Shipments by Sea
Retailers and manufacturers are also fighting new screening procedures for 
U.S.-bound cargo, despite repeated warnings from Customs Commissioner 
Robert C. Bonner that terrorists could stash nuclear, chemical or other 
weapons in one of the 5.7 million containers that arrive at U.S. ports each 
year.

Ocean carriers are not required to provide copies of their cargo manifests 
until they arrive. Most carriers voluntarily provide the information 
electronically two days or more before arrival. But Customs officials want 
it 24 hours before goods are even loaded overseas.

"To us, 24 hours just doesn't make sense," said Gold, the official from the 
International Mass Retail Association, whose members operate more than 
100,000 stores, manufacturing facilities and distribution centers 
nationwide. International retailers say the new regulations would disrupt 
companies that rely on "just-in-time" shipments, and would add unnecessary 
time and costs to retailers dependent on steady overseas shipments.

The retail association also contends that providing information so far in 
advance to the ocean carriers could increase the risk of theft. They say 
that the information could wind up in the hands of competitors. Gold said 
his members believe that they -- not the carriers -- should provide 
information about the shipments directly to Customs in secure communications.

Objection From Banks
There is also tension between the Treasury and U.S. banking and trade 
officials over how far to go in verifying customers' identities and 
uncovering suspicious activities, to comply with the USA Patriot Act, the 
anti-terrorism legislation that Congress passed after Sept. 11.

In July, the American Bankers Association, the Securities Industry 
Association and nine other financial trade associations formally objected 
to a proposed regulation that would force them to gather more information 
on foreign institutions that open "correspondent accounts" in U.S. banks.

David D. Aufhauser, general counsel for the Treasury Department, said the 
banks should comply for the sake of public safety. "The financial 
institutions are the gateway to America for capital that could be intended 
to injure people," he said. "I recognize they say this is an added burden. 
But the return is exponentially more than the cost."
**************************
News.com
University to challenge copyright laws
By Declan McCullagh

Duke University's law school has received an anonymous $1 million gift to 
fund advocacy and research aimed at curtailing the recent expansion of 
copyright law.
The school, which plans to announce the gift at a conference in Washington 
on Thursday, is using the money to fund a center focused on finding "the 
correct balance" between intellectual property rights and material that 
should be in the public domain.

James Boyle, a Duke law professor and co-director of the school's Center 
for the Study of the Public Domain, says that the center is likely to look 
skeptically at recent laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) 
and a measure that extended duration of copyrights by 20 years.


"This is an attempt to figure out the balance between intellectual property 
and the public domain," Boyle said. "How much protection do we need?...If 
you want to have a rich culture and an innovative society, you have to 
leave a large amount of material freely available for all to use."

By using the term public domain, Boyle is talking about creative works such 
as movies, books and music that are not covered by copyright law. A work 
enters the public domain when the creator voluntarily relinquishes 
copyright protection, or, as in the case of Shakespeare's writings, when 
the copyright term expires.

Boyle says he is not a copyright abolitionist. He agrees that some legal 
protection is necessary. But, he added, "the burden of proof should be on 
those who say we need to have property rights in this situation. Why will 
this work? Why is this necessary? We see the system getting out of control, 
out of balance. This is a way to restore the balance."

Recent debates in Congress have started from the viewpoint of the Recording 
Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of 
America, rather than from what's good for consumers, Boyle said.

Kate Bartlett, the law school's dean, said she could not reveal the name of 
the donor. The person "wants to keep even the general background 
information confidential," Bartlett said.

Eight movie studios have successfully wielded the DMCA to force 2600 
magazine to delete a copy of a DVD-decoding utility from its Web site, and 
the U.S. government last year arrested a Russian programmer on charges of 
creating and selling a program to rip the copy-protection technology away 
from Adobe Systems' electronic books.

More recently, Reps. Howard Berman, D-Calif., and Howard Coble, R-N.C., 
have introduced a bill designed to limit peer-to-peer piracy. It would 
rewrite federal law to permit nearly unchecked electronic disruptions if a 
copyright holder has a "reasonable basis" to believe that piracy is 
occurring on peer-to-peer networks.

On Thursday, the National Academy of Sciences is convening a two-day 
conference in Washington titled, "The Role of Scientific and Technical Data 
and Information in the Public Domain."
**************************
Associated Press
Web Freedom Eroded in Terror War
By JOHN LEICESTER, Associated Press Writer

PARIS (AP) - Several Western democracies have become "predators of digital 
freedoms," using the fight against terrorism to increase surveillance on 
the Internet, an international media-rights group said Thursday.



Reporters Without Borders criticized not only authoritarian states such as 
China that tightly police Internet use, but also Western 
governments  including the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Spain, 
Italy and Denmark  and the European Parliament.

"A year after the tragic events in New York and Washington, the Internet 
can be included on the list of 'collateral damage,'" the Paris-based group 
said in a report. "Cyber-liberty has been undermined and fundamental 
digital freedoms have been amputated."

The report accused China, Vietnam and other countries hostile to dissent of 
using the international counterterrorism campaign "to strengthen their 
police mechanisms and legal frameworks relating to the Web and to increase 
pressure on cyber-dissidents."

Among cases cited was that of Li Dawei, a former policeman sentenced in 
July to 11 years in prison on charges of using the Internet to subvert the 
Chinese government.

But even among Western democracies, "many countries have adopted laws, 
measures and actions that are poised to put the Internet under the tutelage 
of security services," Reporters Without Borders said.

It said measures to record information about Web sites visited and e-mails 
sent and received risk turning Internet providers and telecommunications 
firms "into potential branches of the police."

Since Sept. 11, many governments have sought to respond to concerns that 
terrorists can use the speed, ease of communication and relative anonymity 
of the Internet to plan attacks, swap information, transfer funds and 
publicize their ideas.

Critics fear the measures will erode users' privacy and freedom of speech, 
cause them to trust the Internet less and ultimately hurt the Internet's 
value as a new communications medium.

Two other advocacy groups, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and 
Privacy International, also said in a report this week that governments 
worldwide have made it easier for authorities to eavesdrop on telephone and 
online conversations in order to fight terror.

Reporters Without Borders cited dozens of measures adopted or proposed by 
governments to expand police powers on the Web, including:

_A Canadian anti-terrorist law adopted last December "clearly undermines 
the confidentiality of exchanges of electronic mail," the group said.

_"Magic Lantern" technology being developed by the FBI ( news - web sites) 
will allow investigators to secretly install over the Internet powerful 
eavesdropping software to record every keystroke on a person's computer.

_A new French law requires Internet providers to keep records of e-mail 
exchanges for one year and make it easier for authorities to decode 
messages protected by encryption software.
*****************************
Federal Computer Week
Taking cyber predators to task


Whether it's soliciting sex from minors or distributing child pornography, 
crimes against children have risen as Internet usage has soared.

To keep pace with the problem, the federal government, in conjunction with 
state and local law enforcement agencies, has established task forces 
geared toward investigating crimes, training personnel and reaching out to 
the community.

That effort, coupled with advances in technology, such as a secure portal 
to exchange extremely sensitive information, may help stem the increasing 
tide of such incidents, officials said.

Leading the high-tech crackdown are the Internet Crimes Against Children 
(ICAC) task forces, regional programs funded by the Justice Department.

Justice launched the task force project after then-FBI Director Louis Freeh 
and Ernest Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and 
Exploited Children (NCMEC), testified in Congress that state and local law 
enforcement agencies needed to be enlisted in the fight.

Congress provided $2.3 million in special appropriations to create what 
amounted to "law enforcement cyber units," said Ron Laney, director of the 
child protection division at the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency 
Programs, which oversees the ICAC task force program.

Every year since then, the government has increased funding to create and 
sustain the ICAC task forces. This year, funding grew to $6.5 million, 
Laney said, adding that the Bush administration's proposal for the next 
fiscal year is $12.5 million. Thirty task forces have been set up 
nationwide. Another six have been proposed for development by the end of 
the year and possibly another four or five next spring, he added.

The task forces not only investigate Internet crimes but also help train 
and provide technical assistance to other state and local law enforcement 
agencies.

"The issues of child exploitation are exploding and getting bigger," said 
Ruben Rodriguez, director of NCMEC's exploited child unit. "More 
individuals are using the Internet to entice children to disseminate 
illegal content, child pornography. Obviously, this communication medium is 
facilitating the exploitation of the world's children."

The exploited child unit acts as a resource center and provides leads for 
federal agencies, such as the FBI, the Customs Service and the U.S. Postal 
Service, state and local task forces and other agencies through a cyber hot 
line.

The ICAC board of directors, which is composed of the leaders of each of 
the task forces and other participating groups, recently began testing a 
new secure Web portal called the Law Enforcement Data Exchange, or LEDX.

LEDX is designed to enable task forces and other agencies to securely share 
sensitive information about investigations, training practices and 
educational tools for parents and children. The system also has a 
high-level search engine that can provide law enforcement officers with 
excerpts or specific information on an individual, such as aliases.

Integrated Digital Systems/ScanAmerica Inc. is absorbing ongoing expenses, 
including design fees, to keep the site running. The company also provides 
LEDX members with Incident Document Management Software Edge 3.0, a case 
file management system and a way for agencies to transfer paper records and 
files to LEDX.

Besides ease of use and better information sharing, the system can 
eliminate the mishandling of extremely sensitive and graphic case material.

"We had people go ahead and FedEx us cases, which is pretty standard," said 
Capt. Rick Wiita of the Bedford County Sheriff's Office in Virginia. "And 
the next thing you know, the secretary two doors down gets the package, 
opens it on up. They open up images of child pornography and our evidence. 
OK, so what happens to our chain of evidence now? It's contaminated. It 
happened one time. It was a nightmare. We didn't want it ever to happen 
[again]."
***************************
Government Computer News
Maine rings in a new school year with iBooks
By Wilson P. Dizard III

The 18,000 seventh-graders in Maine will begin class this year with new 
Apple iBook notebook computers, as the Maine Learning and Technology 
Initiative begins its first full year of providing the systems to students.

Maine Gov. Angus King has pressed for the program since 2000. Last winter, 
prospects for the initiative dimmed as state legislators called for a raid 
on the program's trust fund to defray a looming state budget deficit. But 
backers of the program prevailed and the state's Education Department in 
January awarded a four-year, $37 million contract to Apple Computer Inc. to 
provide the notebooks as well as training for teachers and other services 
[www.gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/17738-1.html].

The initiative's fund is now about $25 million, said King's spokesman, Tony 
Sprague. Under King's plan, regular appropriations will support the program 
after the trust fund is exhausted in four years.

The project will supply 239 schools, some of which opened in mid-August; 
all the schools will be open by the end of this week, Sprague said. Next 
year, the Education Department plans to extend the program to the eighth 
grade, with the purchase of 18,000 more notebooks. The department has made 
sure that about 1,000 notebooks will be bought each year for teachers.

Sprague said schools that participated in a pilot program involving about 
700 students in the spring semester reported reduced absenteeism and fewer 
discipline problems. Teachers in the pilot reported that the notebooks 
helped students become engaged in their studies, Sprague said.
**************************
Federal Computer Week
Homeland bill veto threatened

The White House on Sept. 3 threatened to veto the Senate's homeland 
security bill unless certain restrictions are taken out and the 
administration's requested management flexibilities are added back in.

This is the latest action in the increasingly heated debate between the 
Bush administration and the Senate over the creation of the proposed 
Homeland Security Department and other functions designed to combat terrorism.

The statement of administration policy released by the Office of Management 
and Budget lists three steps that the Senate must take before President 
Bush will sign the bill. The White House is calling for the Senate to:

n Remove new restrictions on the president's existing national security 
authorities, particularly the section restricting the president's ability 
to exempt agencies involved in national security matters from the Federal 
Labor Relations Management Act.

n Eliminate the call for a new statutory homeland security office within 
the Executive Office of the President to be headed by a Senate-confirmed 
director.

n Provide the proposed Homeland Security Department's secretary with 
increased flexibility to reorganize people and functions, and transfer 
funding between organizations.

Last week Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), chairman of the Senate Governmental 
Affairs Committee, sent a letter to his colleagues outlining his objections 
to these same portions of the administration's plans and requests.

And at a meeting of the President's Homeland Security Advisory Council last 
week, experts from government and the private sector said the homeland 
security effort would most likely not be successful unless the management 
flexibilities called for by the Bush administration are in place.

Those advisers also suggested several additional steps that could be taken 
to make the changes in the federal system fully effective, including 
requiring senior executives and managers slated to join the proposed 
department to apply for the new positions they would hold.
****************************
Federal Computer Week
DOD joint concepts in question

The Defense Department's Joint Forces Command lacks some key management 
elements, and that makes it unclear whether its recommendations on joint 
experimentation will have an impact on military transformation, according 
to a General Accounting Office report released last week.

The Joint Forces Command has been the DOD's executive agent for joint 
concept development and experimentation for four years. In that time, the 
command has made progress in increasing joint participation in military 
exercises and experimentation. It also recently wrapped up Millennium 
Challenge 2002, the largest joint military experiment designed to see how 
well the critical systems of the individual services link with one another.

However, no recommendations from joint experimentation have ever been 
approved or implemented, according to the GAO report released Aug. 29, 
"Military Transformation: Actions Needed to Better Manage DOD's Joint 
Experimentation Program."

The Joint Forces Command issued three recommendations last year, but they 
were not approved by the Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC) due to 
confusion among the Joint Staff and the Joint Forces Command about a 
proposed change in guidance requiring additional cost and timeline data to 
be included in the submissions.

"As a result, it is not clear when these recommendations will contribute to 
military transformation," according to the GAO report, which noted that the 
command plans to resubmit the recommendations this year. However, "several 
DOD officials expressed concern that the resource allocation process may be 
too slow to provide rapid and timely funding for the implementation of new 
concepts merging from joint experimentation and that other, more rapid 
resource mechanisms may be needed."

The GAO report made four recommendations to aid the command:

* Approve and issue guidance that clearly defines the information required 
to accompany joint experimentation recommendations for the JROC's review 
and approval.

* Require the commander in chief of the Joint Forces Command to develop 
strategic planning tools to use in managing and periodically assessing the 
progress of its joint experimentation program.

* Require that the Defense secretary develop quantitative and qualitative 
performance measures for joint experimentation in DOD's annual performance 
report to provide a better assessment of the program's contribution to 
advancing military transformation.

* Clarify the role of the Office of Force Transformation and its 
relationship to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Joint Forces 
Command and other key stakeholders in the joint experimentation program.

The report was not entirely critical. It found that the command has 
increased participation of key military and non-DOD stakeholders, such as 
civilian agencies, academia, industry and foreign allies, in 
experimentation activities. The report also noted that the command had 
embraced videoconferencing, e-mail and the Internet to obtain input and 
integrated the results of military operations, technology efforts and other 
DOD organizations' experiments into its activities.

To further improve communications and participation in joint 
experimentation planning, Joint Forces Command will soon launch a virtual 
planning center on its intranet to provide DOD stakeholders with weekly 
updates on pertinent information. Requirements for the site will be 
developed this fall, and the project will be started soon after.

DOD received a draft copy of the GAO report, and the department concurred 
with its recommendations in an Aug. 8 letter from Christopher Lamb, acting 
deputy assistant secretary of Defense for plans and resources. Lamb's 
letter also said that DOD guidance documents will "address and clarify" the 
issues raised in the report.
*************************
Federal Computer Week
Letter to the editor
Protect notebooks, networks
Sept. 3, 2002

We all should be alarmed about the loss of laptop computers at government 
agencies ["Laptops lost, stolen at Justice"]. But this is nothing new.

In 2000, a laptop was stolen from a State Department conference room by a 
stranger who simply walked into the building. Since then, laptop thefts 
nationwide have increased more than 50 percent. Based on estimates I've 
seen, about 1,600 units are stolen each day in this country.

But theft of the physical device is only part of the problem. Protecting 
the data stored on notebooks is the real issue. Also, a notebook can be 
used to gain access to networks because laptops sometimes contain 
remote-access log-in scripts, e-mail addresses and passwords. So protecting 
notebooks also means protecting networks.

What makes data theft insidious and frightening is that we may never know 
that someone has gained unauthorized access to sensitive information. 
Remember: If a person can steal a laptop, that same person can probably 
download information from a laptop without ever stealing the hardware. 
Think about it. Who is watching your laptop at the office when you go out 
to lunch? Who is guarding your data when you're on a road trip and you 
leave your computer in your hotel room?

The range of techniques available to protect computers and data is very 
broad  and surprisingly simple. Security cables, alarms (motion-sensor 
alarms are available, to answer a letter to the editor dated Aug. 21), 
equipment tagging, data encryption software and access control technologies 
are a few.

But the important point is that more than one technology should be used.

For instance, use a physical lock, which is easily displayed. That will 
slow down or turn away the opportunistic thief. However, spies undeterred 
by locks and other devices will be thwarted by strong data encryption 
software and computer access control programs.

We've written a monograph on this subject and would be happy to send it to 
any interested person. Feel free to contact PC Guardian at 
info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx In the subject line, write "Notebook Theft Monograph."

Steven Lerner-Wright
PC Guardian
*************************
Government Computer News
Most e-gov initiatives are ready to take off
By Jason Miller

Mark Forman and his colleagues at the Office of Management and Budget 
expect to be busy over the next four months with the launch of up to 21 
first or second iterations of the 24 Quicksilver e-government initiatives.

OMB's associate director for IT and e-government yesterday discussed how he 
sees agency projects moving over the next six to eight months at the 
Interagency Resources Management Council conference in Hershey, Pa.

"The first cycle was getting up Web sites, simple tools to show that the 
government can provide integrated customer-centric focus," Forman said. 
"Virtually all the projects will have that first iteration done with some 
neat tool. Now we are about to start or, in some cases are already into, 
the second iteration. It is all about re-engineering; it is all about 
changing the way we do work, fixing the management problems to make it 
simpler."

Forman said the first version of the Transportation Department's Online 
Rulemaking system and the second iteration of the Interior Department's 
Recreaction.gov Web site will be unveiled in late September. The General 
Services Administration's E-Authentication prototype will launch in 
mid-September, letting citizens perform transactions with three or four 
projects, including some that are not among the 24 e-government 
initiatives, Forman said.

The Small Business Administration is planning to release the second version 
of its Business Compliance One-Stop by early November, Forman said.

Two other projects came online earlier this summer, Forman said. The Health 
and Human Services Department put an E-Grants portal prototype online, and 
the Treasury Department's Simplified and Unified Tax and Wage Reporting 
project put the 94x series of forms on the Web.

Forman said Disasterhelp.gov moved past its initial problems after Joe 
Allbaugh, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the agency 
leading the effort, sorted out several obstacles to the project with the 
head of another agency, which Forman declined to name. Forman said the site 
should be up in the next two months.

The Defense Department is working with the State and Commerce departments 
to launch an e-government project outside of the 24 Quicksilver 
initiatives. Forman said U.S. Export, a joint business case the three 
agencies will submit later this month, will let agencies conduct 
complicated paper processes for some licenses online.

"I'm very happy with the change we are seeing," Forman said. "We have to 
continue to focus on the Web. This is the fundamental way we are dealing 
with the public."

Forman said that by next summer OMB will give the projects' managing 
partners the choice of two Web service platforms that will let the 
initiatives more easily share similar transactional processes. He said the 
platforms will be the IBM Grid Computing Platform and Microsoft .Net.

"Not every organization that does that transaction will have to own a piece 
of software to do that," he said. "This is one of big reasons we focused on 
enterprise architectures so we can sync this up across agencies. This is a 
revolution in IT industry that we have to be in the forefront of and free 
up resources to focus on it."
************************
Government Computer News
Homeland Security Office will set up a videoconferencing system
By Jason Miller

The Homeland Security Office is setting up a secure videoconferencing 
system to let director Tom Ridge communicate more easily with state governors.

James Flyzik, a senior adviser to Ridge, discussed the office's progress on 
a variety of projects during the opening ceremony of the Interagency 
Resources Management Council conference.

The videoconferencing system will be in place by the end of the year, 
Flyzik said. It will use Integrated Services Digital Network and other 
types of fast connections.

"It will start with portable devices and over time merge into a permanent 
system," he said. "We want to be able to set it up and take it down quickly."
************************
Government Executive
Lack of cybersecurity specialists sparks concern
By Molly M. Peterson, National Journal's Technology Daily

The United States is facing an alarming shortage in skilled workers to 
protect the nation's critical infrastructures from cyberterrorism and other 
threats, several homeland security and high-tech experts said Wednesday.

"There is going to be more demand ... for people with [information 
technology] skills," Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology 
Association of America, said during a cybersecurity conference in 
Washington sponsored by the MIS Training Institute. "It is a huge problem 
we have in this countrynot having enough people with adequate skills and 
training."

Stressing the need to make information security second nature, Mark Holman, 
deputy assistant to the president for the White House Office of Homeland 
Security, said the president's forthcoming national strategy for 
cybersecuritydue to be released Sept. 18will address the need for skilled 
workers to help defend computer networks.

Holman said the strategy aims to be a "living document" that will grow and 
change as the technology changes. The document will contain sections that 
address home users' security and network security issues, Holman said. It 
also will categorize critical infrastructure issues by industry, such as 
water filtration, electricity or telecommunications.

Government and industry also must educate each other about infrastructure 
vulnerabilities and threats through information-sharing analysis centers 
(ISACs) and other partnerships, according to Ronald Dick, director of the 
FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center.

Dick noted that although about 90 percent of the nation's infrastructures 
are owned and operated by the private sector, "the scale at which the 
private sector looks at vulnerability assessments is very narrow from a 
national infrastructure-protection standpoint."

Finding and retaining skilled workers to protect the military's critical 
infrastructures also must be a priority, according to Pennsylvania 
Republican Curt Weldon, who chairs the House Armed Services Procurement 
Subcommittee.

Weldon said the military is facing a crucial shortage in information 
security specialists, in part because workers with those skills can earn 
more money in the private sector. "It's been a challenge to keep that level 
of competence in the military," Weldon said. "We're still on the cutting 
edge, but ... it's extremely difficult."

Weldon said he plans to propose a new scholarship program in which the 
federal government would pay the undergraduate and graduate tuitions of 
students seeking careers in information security. Those students in turn 
would spend several years as "cyber warriors" in the military.

Weldon said "information dominance" will be a military buzzword in the 
coming years because terrorist networks and enemy states that could never 
match U.S. strength on the battlefield are looking to cyber warfare as a 
central strategy.

"All that smart technology that allows us to dominate any battlefield at 
any time is all computer-dependent," Weldon said. "We've never fought this 
kind of threat before."

A failure to protect the nation's critical infrastructures could have 
disastrous consequences, both at home and on battlefields abroad, Weldon 
said. "We don't know when or where the next attack will occur," he said. 
"But I can tell you this: It will involve information systems."


Maureen Sirhal contributed to this report.
***************************
USA Today
Critics protest anti-drug tactics
By Donna Leinwand, USA TODAY

In drug-plagued neighborhoods of Wilmington, Del., it's become a nighttime 
routine: Police "jump out" squads descend on a street corner, round up a 
few suspected dealers and cart them off to jail.

But then the cops go a step further: They detain others in the area for up 
to two hours, take digital photographs of them, get their names and other 
details, and then put the information in a database to use in future 
investigations.

The new database is part of an increasingly aggressive anti-crime effort in 
Wilmington that has drawn criticism from civil liberties groups. It also 
has thrust the city of 73,000 to the forefront of a national debate over 
whether law enforcement's use of such technology violates citizens' privacy.

Like several cities, Wilmington has embraced a range of surveillance 
techniques to try to make its streets safer. Video cameras monitor downtown 
corridors, and cameras at intersections photograph the license plates of 
red-light runners.

In troubled neighborhoods, police have asked residents to sign affidavits 
waiving their Fourth Amendment right to refuse a search of their property, 
so officers without search warrants can nab drug dealers who hide on front 
porches, in laundry rooms and in apartment buildings.

The affidavit plan did not raise many objections  or much interest  when it 
was introduced in June. Only two residents have signed such forms.

But the camera-toting squads that began that month quickly drew fire. 
Critics say spying on residents and keeping a database of "potential 
criminals" invades privacy and tramples the presumption of innocence.

"The 'jump out' squads are the tactic of rounding up the usual suspects," 
says Barry Steinhardt, director of the technology and liberty program for 
the national American Civil Liberties Union in New York City. "They are 
stopping, searching and putting into a database photographs of people whose 
only crime is being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's bad law 
enforcement, and it's bad for civil liberties."

Wilmington City Councilman Theo Gregory, a public defender who opposes the 
tactic, says the brief detentions amount to "guilt by association."

City officials who support the database program and other surveillance 
techniques say they have helped to lower Wilmington's crime rate at a time 
when many cities are seeing crime rise. The officials also say police 
dragnets in high-crime areas rarely snag innocent people.

Wilmington Mayor James Baker and Police Chief Michael Szczerba, who 
oversees 289 officers, say the approach has contributed to an 8% drop in 
major crimes such as homicides, burglaries, robberies, rapes and assaults 
this year, compared with 2001. Shootings, however, were up 40% during the 
first six months of this year. Through June, there were 49 shootings, 
compared with 35 at the same time in 2001.

Szczerba says the people who are detained almost always are involved in the 
drug trade, perhaps as "touters" who stand in the street to drum up 
business, or as lookouts for dealers. Officers may not arrest such people 
if they do not catch them doing anything illegal, but the officers may 
detain them for up to two hours to gather intelligence.

The mayor's office says police have detained 588 people since the corner 
deployments began in June. Of those, 471 have been arrested.

The other 117 were not arrested but, like those who were, had their names 
and photos put into the police database. City officials say 84 of those who 
were not arrested had at least three felony convictions.

"If you come into our city to take in a ballgame or dine at a restaurant or 
go to a theater, you likely won't know about these corner patrols," 
Szczerba says. "But if you come to sell drugs or drink alcohol on the 
corner or just be a general nuisance, you're going to see us."

U.S. courts have held that people in public places have no reasonable 
expectation of privacy and may be photographed without their knowledge. 
Innovations such as the digital-photo databases could bring a new round of 
legal challenges, Steinhardt says.

Wilmington's database represents the latest turn in a national movement in 
which cities, after nearly a decade of historically low crime rates, are 
turning to advances in surveillance technology to try to curb what many 
officials view as inevitable increases in crime.

More than a dozen U.S. cities use surveillance cameras. Los Angeles has 
motion-sensitive cameras in high-crime areas to discourage dumping, 
graffiti and crime. When a sensor is triggered, the camera takes a picture 
and plays a recording: "We will use this photograph to prosecute you. Leave 
now."

Virginia Beach and Tampa monitor public areas with video cameras linked to 
sophisticated software that allows authorities to quickly compare the 
facial features of those who are taped. Federal police in Washington have 
put surveillance cameras on national monuments. Pittsburgh monitors its 
city pools with digital video cameras that provide live feeds that can be 
monitored remotely by computer.

In Wilmington, more than 100 surveillance cameras have scanned downtown 
streets since April 2001. Most of the cameras were installed by private 
businesses and corporations, but they are linked to a network of 13 cameras 
on public land that can send live video feeds to police dispatchers.

A private security company monitors the cameras for 16 hours a day to track 
suspicious activity, Szczerba says.

City officials say the cameras have had some success in tracking criminals. 
Officials from a merchants' group that helped to sponsor the cameras held a 
news conference in April 2001 to show video of two men who allegedly stole 
newspapers from a vending machine. The cameras tracked the suspects as they 
carried off the papers in a shopping cart until police drove up to arrest 
them, the local newspaper reported.

Earlier last year, the city put 10 cameras at intersections to catch 
red-light runners. By May 2002, the cameras had been responsible for 25,000 
tickets.

The affidavit program took effect June 1. Homeowners who sign the agreement 
give police advance permission to enter their property without a search 
warrant.

Gregory fears such moves will lead to illegal interrogations of residents. 
He says he hasn't received any complaints from constituents. But he adds 
that he is concerned that many people might be unaware of their right not 
to answer questions from police, or that they could be afraid to complain.

Wilmington's police chief says his officers are operating within the law. 
"Any time you are progressive and assertive in the way you police," 
Szczerba says, "you're going to draw attention."
**************************
USA Today
Teenangels make cybersafety a number one priority

PALO ALTO, Calif. (Reuters)  As if sexual predators and computer viruses 
weren't enough for the youngest set of Web surfers to worry about, they 
also have to be on the lookout for their peers.

That's the view of one teenaged expert on security issues involving younger 
computer users. Hackers and predators are considered the biggest threats, 
but some dangers are to be found closer to home, this expert says.

"Parents always think it's pornography. Actually it's other people," said 
17-year-old Tyler of Hortonville, Wis., who asked that his last name not be 
used.

Tyler is one of about 60 active Teenangels, a group of volunteers who work 
to ensure the safety of children and teenagers on the Web by producing 
educational videos, teaching kids about anti-virus software and compiling 
tips on how to avoid predators.

Tyler has received six weeks of specialized online safety instruction from 
the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Justice, local law 
enforcement, librarians, educators and others.

In working on the problem, Tyler has discovered that not all of the dangers 
are posed by adults ââ?¬â?? something that parents and computer security 
professionals tend to overlook. While predatory adults and experienced 
hackers clearly put teens and children ââ?¬â?? or their computers ââ?¬â?? 
in serious danger, other kids may also inflict major damage. As anyone who 
has survived their teens knows, a friend today may be an enemy tomorrow.

"Kids can harass each other; you have to watch out and not give out too 
much information," Tyler advised.

Some kids send computer worms for kicks. Others use personal information to 
change someone's passwords, and then send trouble-making Internet messages 
from that account. Still others build hate sites targeting certain people 
or groups.

Tyler said he protects himself with anti-virus software and by limiting 
what he reveals when online. It also helps that his friends aren't 
"computer people."

"They're sports people, they like to hang out at the mall or do other 
things," said Tyler.

"These kids are Internet safety experts. I'd put them up against anyone 
else," said Parry Aftab, who started Teenangels four years ago in New 
Jersey. The group falls under an umbrella Internet safety and education 
organization called WiredSafety.org. Affiliated groups include 
WiredKids.org, WiredPatrol.org and WiredCops.org.

Aftab hopes to expand Teenangels, which now has two active chapters, with 
the help of committed local sponsors.

Kids are eligible for Teenangels when they turn 13 and can remain in the 
group through their college years, said Aftab, an Internet security and 
privacy lawyer who also penned The Parent's Guide to Protecting Your 
Children in Cyberspace.

Teenangels works because kids listen to other kids, Tyler and Aftab said.

"I've given up on parents. Parents just aren't doing it," said Aftab. 
"They're not talking to their kids about protected sex. They're not talking 
to their kids about drugs. They're not talking to their kids about the 
Internet."

That being the case, she got kids talking ââ?¬â?? then started listening 
and learning.

"We catch the newest trends on how predators are trying to lure them ... 
the latest things they're doing. They've helped us enormously," she said.

While WiredSafety leaves the hands-on fight against child pornography and 
cyberstalking to adults, Aftab stressed that kids have a big role to play 
in awareness and education.

And, as a recent case showed, Internet-inspired meetings between teens also 
can have deadly consequences.

Last month, a 17-year-old boy in New York was accused of killing a 
14-year-old girl he met in an Internet chat room.

The two had spent lots of time talking on the telephone, but just hours 
into their first face-to-face meeting, the boy stabbed and beat the girl to 
death. He then torched her house in an effort to cover the crime.

Police later learned that she was home alone and had told the boy that she, 
too, was 17.
*****************************


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