Clips September 11, 2002

[Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>]

Clips September 11, 2002

ARTICLES

Secret court meets to hear government plea for more wiretap powers [Patriot 
Act]
Chaotic, close: Reno-McBride race undecided as poll problems anger voters 
[E-Voting]
Here we go again: Confusion reigns in sequel to 2000 election [E-Voting]
Long delays leave some black voters angry and suspicious [E-Voting]
Digging Herself Out of Debt Through Others' Pockets
Web standard to ease secure portal sign-on
Letters to the editor - Flexibility in hiring [Homeland Security]
Cities seek 'fair share' from feds
U.S.-Canadian projects to shore up border are under way
Commercial sector shares threat information
Entertainment industry seeks quick ruling in file-swapping case
Attack anniversary cyberthreats unfounded, experts say
VeriSign, Intel team up on secure computing
Technology lags, and problems persist [Airport Security]
Mobilizing America: Tech vs. Terrorism - Part 2
E-mail worm uses Sept. 11 lure
Bill urges rules for policing privacy
Web-based disaster plans sought
Voting Machines Cause Problems in Montgomery County [Maryland]


*************************
Sun-Sentinel
Secret court meets to hear government plea for more wiretap powers
Associated Press
Posted September 10 2002, 11:16 AM EDT

WASHINGTON -- A secret appellate court has met for the first time in its 
24-year history to consider a request from the Justice Department for more 
power to wiretap suspected terrorists and spies, according to department 
officials.

The appeals court, the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance 
Court of Review, convened in a high-security room at the Justice Department 
in Washington Monday and made no announcement of whether it had made a 
decision.

But senators immediately asked the court to publicly release its decision 
and the arguments Justice Department lawyers made in front of it, so 
lawmakers can know how government prosecutors are using the changes to the 
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act granted after the Sept. 11 attacks 
last year.

``We need to know how this law is being interpreted and applied,'' Senate 
Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. said Tuesday. No answer had been 
received from the Monday request, Senate officials said.

The appeal stems from a decision from the main court that assesses the 
legitimacy of Justice Department and FBI requests to spy on people 
suspected of foreign espionage inside U.S. borders.

Civil liberties groups denounced the secret nature of the court.

``Hearing a one-sided argument and doing so in secret goes against the 
traditions of fairness and open government that have been the hallmark of 
our democracy,'' said Ann Beeson, a litigation director at the American 
Civil Liberties Union.

When or if the court's ruling on the department's request will ever be made 
public was not clear.

In August, the secret court struck down a government surveillance request 
and the government's assertion that national security concerns justify some 
lessening of previously recognized civil liberties or privacy rights, 
lawyers said.

The Justice Department had argued that under the new laws, the FBI could 
use the surveillance law to perform searches and wiretaps ``primarily for a 
law enforcement purpose, so long as a significant foreign intelligence 
purpose remains.''

The USA Patriot Act, passed late in 2001, changed the surveillance law to 
permit its use when collecting information about foreign spies or 
terrorists is ``a significant purpose,'' rather than ``the purpose,'' of 
such an investigation. Critics at the time said they feared government 
might use the change as a loophole to employ espionage wiretaps in common 
criminal investigations.

Senate Republicans and Democrats disagreed on whether the USA Patriot Act 
loosened the wiretap laws to include criminal investigations.

``It was not the intent of the amendments to fundamentally change FISA from 
a foreign intelligence tool into a criminal law enforcement tool,'' Leahy 
said. ``We all wanted to improve coordination between the criminal 
prosecutors and intelligence officers, but we did not intend to obliterate 
the distinction between the two, and we did not do so.''

But Republicans said that was the exact intent of the law. ``It is clear 
that Congress intended to allow greater use of FISA for criminal purposes 
and to increase the sharing of intelligence information and coordination of 
investigations between intelligence and law enforcement officers,'' said 
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.
*******************************
Main Herald
Chaotic, close: Reno-McBride race undecided as poll problems anger voters
BY LESLEY CLARK, TYLER BRIDGES AND BETH REINHARD
lclark@xxxxxxxxxx

Bill McBride appeared close early today to pulling an upset victory over 
Janet Reno for the Democratic nomination for governor, although rampant 
polling snags in Reno's South Florida stronghold left the final tally in doubt.

Returns from across the state showed McBride ahead with a small lead -- but 
his margin was dwindling as results delayed by Election Day mishaps 
trickled in from Reno's South Florida stronghold.

By 2 a.m., nearly a fourth of the votes in Miami Dade County and just under 
half the votes in Palm Beach County remained uncounted. The 
too-close-to-call contest, combined with the glitches at the polls, seemed 
eerily reminiscent of the 2000 presidential race that took nearly six weeks 
to settle.

If the margin of victory between McBride and Reno is less than one-half of 
one percent, a new election reform law passed in Florida in the aftermath 
of the 2000 debacle mandates an automatic recount.

''The returns are still coming in,'' a hopeful Reno told about 250 
boisterous supporters gathered at a Bal Harbour hotel late Tuesday. ``It 
looks like it will be a long night, but I just had to come down and say 
thank you. We're on to victory tonight.''

McBride, the Democratic Party establishment's favored son, awaited the 
results in a Tampa hotel, his campaign staff on edge, rapidly calculating 
whether McBride's solid performance in the more conservative regions of 
North and Central Florida could blunt Reno's overwhelming support in South 
Florida.

''I feel like throwing up,'' said McBride's campaign manager, Robin Rorapaugh.

McBride, on the verge of a political upset, told supporters early this 
morning that he expected to win, but that the results may not be known for 
several more hours.

''The only person more nervous than me right now is Jeb Bush,'' he said to 
loud cheers. ``If we win this thing, we'll slingshot out.''

The real show had been billed as the general election to challenge Gov. Jeb 
Bush, but Reno versus McBride assumed increased urgency in recent weeks as 
union cash and support from the party establishment propelled McBride in 
opinion polls to within two points of Reno's once seemingly insurmountable 
lead.

Miami state Sen. Daryl Jones, running a distant third in the race, may have 
eroded support from Reno and was showing better returns than strategists 
had predicted.

`ALL OPTIONS'

The mishaps at the polls in South Florida intensified the contest, with 
Reno strategists fearing that hundreds of her supporters were turned away. 
Reno was delayed when she tried to cast a ballot at 7 a.m.

Her campaign began laying the foundation for a legal challenge, given the 
chaos at the polls.

''We are leaving all options on the table until we see the full 
implications of today's screw-ups,'' campaign manager Mo Elleithee said.

The campaign launched more than 200,000 phone calls to seniors and blacks 
after the governor -- following her request -- extended polling hours 
statewide by two hours to give more time to people who had been unable to 
vote because of glitches. Seven sound trucks lumbered through a dreary rain 
in black neighborhoods in the two counties, pitching Reno's same message, 
and the candidate herself appeared on television to spread the word.

Unlike Reno, McBride had no trouble voting, arriving at a precinct in 
Thonotosassa, a rural suburb of Tampa, after a morning workout at home. He 
later recorded a telephone message, urging supporters to take advantage of 
the additional two hours. His campaign and unions made more than 250,000 
calls to alert voters.

A nervous McBride, who has campaigned for two weeks buoyed by recent polls 
and attacks from the Bush campaign that he believes underscore his message 
that he is a more formidable opponent, watched the returns from in the 
company of friends, advisors and his two children.

''If I were the governor and I saw this many people hanging around the 
campaign at midnight, I'd be a little bit scared,'' his wife, Alex Sink, 
told a ballroom of supporters.

Reno's quirky campaign took her from the dance floor of a glam South Beach 
nightclub to the cab of a red Ford pickup, trekking from Pensacola to South 
Florida, but counting mostly on Broward County's massive condo communities 
and Miami-Dade County's black neighborhoods to lift her to victory.

McBride, a former managing partner at Holland & Knight, one of the largest 
firms in the country, garnered support from the party establishment, 
racking up union endorsements and cash, billing himself as the moderate 
Democrat who could best oust Bush.

Though the campaign began as a cakewalk for Reno, it ended up as a struggle.

A year ago, the woman who spawned a Saturday Night Live spoof was a shoo-in 
for the Democratic nomination. Early polls showed the former Clinton 
appointee with near universal name recognition and a commanding 40-point 
lead over McBride, then an obscure Tampa lawyer most Floridians had never 
heard of.

But the Democratic Party establishment, wary of Reno's political 
independence and controversial baggage, never accepted her as a 
front-runner. Party strategists considered her too liberal for the Central 
and North Florida moderates and conservatives they contend they need to 
unseat Bush.

Reno, though, theorized that she could turn out the Democratic base -- 
blacks, gay men and lesbians, women, seniors, government employees -- in 
large enough numbers to beat Bush. She embraced her controversial record, 
boasting on the campaign trail that ordering a raid of the Branch Davidian 
complex near Waco, Texas, and sending Elián González to live with his Cuban 
father was proof that she could make tough decisions and stick by them.

McBride, too, showed tenacity, staying in the race while more popular and 
better known Democrats, former U.S. Rep. Pete Peterson and U.S. Rep. Jim 
Davis, among them, bowed out in the face of Reno's overwhelming edge.

It began to pay off for him when he successfully secured the backing of key 
state legislators, party activists and, most importantly, high-profile 
labor endorsements, including the influential Florida Education 
Association, which considered the unknown lawyer more ''electable'' than Reno.

The endorsements boosted McBride's political legitimacy, provided him with 
a burst of favorable publicity and, most significantly, pumped union 
dollars into his campaign, along with an army of grass-roots activists.

Reno, who had the endorsement of several smaller unions, downplayed the 
significance, but the money let McBride secure a major television presence, 
contributing to a late-campaign surge that brought the political neophyte 
to within striking distance of Reno.

Though she garnered celebrity endorsements -- touring condos with Martin 
Sheen and confidently booking a post-primary, mid-September Elton John 
fundraiser and concert -- Reno's outsider status made it more difficult for 
her to raise money and attract a crack campaign staff. Instead, she waged 
an earnest appeal directly to voters, with countless visits to black 
churches and senior centers. There, she was embraced by legions of adoring 
fans, especially in black communities where she is revered for her Clinton 
administration ties and her reputation for cracking down on deadbeat dads.

McBride, who outraised her $4.2 million to $2.6 million, waged an air war, 
flying to far campaign events but appearing repeatedly on television.

McBride, too, was initially aided by the man he had hoped to oust in 
November. The Republican Party of Florida launched a series of anti-McBride 
ads that McBride partisans said signaled the GOP's unease about facing McBride.

The ads might have began working in Bush's favor, as McBride's campaign 
began calling Democrats over the weekend, saying that the attacks on 
McBride's performance as managing partner were unfounded. They also forced 
the McBride campaign to spend far more on TV and radio than it had planned 
in the campaign's final days.
***************************
Main Herald
Here we go again: Confusion reigns in sequel to 2000 election
BY MARTIN MERZER, JONI JAMES AND ALFONSO CHARDY
mmerzer@xxxxxxxxxx

Two years and $125 million after the 2000 presidential election fiasco, a 
plague of inexperienced poll workers and malfunctioning machines again 
enraged and disenfranchised thousands of South Floridians on Tuesday.

Election officials were compelled to extend voting hours statewide. But 
even that aroused chaos Tuesday night in Broward County, which along with 
Miami-Dade County again took center stage in an electoral horror show.

Some poll workers in Broward abandoned their posts at 7 p.m., apparently 
unaware they were supposed to serve voters for an extra two hours. 
Sheriff's deputies hustled to polling places to secure equipment and 
prevent other workers from leaving.

Then, early this morning, Broward election officials revealed that results 
from 140 precincts were still coming into the elections center. At several 
regional vote tabulation centers, faulty equipment prevented sending the 
information to election headquarters.

Several statewide contests were still too close to call, and the Broward 
returns could prove decisive.

Similar problems were reported this morning in Miami-Dade, where returns 
from an unknown number of precincts never made it to election headquarters. 
Police were dispatched to those precincts, and final results were not 
expected until noon.

Tabulation problems also occurred in Palm Beach County, where only 56 
percent of the vote was counted by 2 a.m.

And so, the day ended much as it began -- in confusion.

''I'm livid,'' said Hope Cunningham, unable to vote in Hollywood. ``There's 
steam coming out of my ears.''

Most voters elsewhere in the state cast ballots without difficulty, but it 
was a different story for many people in Miami-Dade and Broward.

Scores of precincts failed to open on time, and many limped along with only 
a fraction of their new touch-screen machines working.

The apparent reasons: inadequately trained poll workers and machines that 
may have been broken or were extraordinarily difficult to reset.

DADE TROUBLES

A measure of the tumult:

Shortly after 7 a.m., according to Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas, at least 
178 of the county's 754 precincts reported some degree of problem.

At 9:45 a.m., 68 precincts were still completely closed to voters, and 110 
precincts reported that at least half their machines did not work, he said.

By 10:50 a.m., 32 precincts were still closed -- and 45 operated at only 
half capacity.

By 4 p.m., all precincts were open, although some still had inoperative 
machines.

Perhaps more ominously, some South Floridians claimed that their party 
affiliations were erroneously listed on the rolls, rendering them 
ineligible to vote in the proper primary.

Others were handed improper documents by poll workers and had to argue for 
the chance to participate in their party's primary. Still others found that 
the precinct addresses listed on their new voting cards were incomplete or 
simply wrong.

In some ways, the problems exceeded those of two years ago, when virtually 
every precinct at least managed to open on time.

''I frankly think, what in the hell have they been doing for two years?'' 
said Florida Secretary of State Jim Smith, who announced the two-hour 
statewide voting extension.

The flood of complaints from South Florida began as polls opened -- or 
didn't -- at the appointed hour of 7 a.m. Many problems stretched deep into 
the day and to every corner of the region.

Some hardy, if unhappy, voters seemed determined to wait as long as necessary.

At 9 p.m., with the doors locked to new voters, 50 people still waited in 
line to vote at Premiere Eglise Baptiste Horeb, a church in North Miami. 
Several of the machines were inoperable for most of the day.

In Broward, where new Elections Supervisor Miriam Oliphant's grasp of her 
duties was questioned even before the election, the number of troubled 
precincts was difficult to obtain, but there appeared to be plenty of them.

At Sunrise Lakes Phase I in West Broward, a mostly older crowd waited more 
than three hours to vote.

''I've never seen anything like this,'' said Sid Liss, an elections clerk 
who had trouble getting the machines to work. ``I've been here since 5:30 
this morning, and I'm ready to blow my stack.

''You tell Mrs. Oliphant she'd better leave for Shanghai, because she's in 
trouble,'' Liss said.

Though most South Floridians successfully cast votes, thousands experienced 
substantial delays and other complications. Many of them gave up completely 
or remained in line and vented anger in all directions.

The causes seemed to boil down to two familiar categories: poll workers and 
machinery.

Many South Florida precinct clerks and other key workers failed to show up, 
especially in Broward. Some of those who came to work seemed inadequately 
trained -- proving unable to activate the newfangled, ATM-type touch-screen 
machines that debuted Tuesday.

''How could this happen after what happened in 2000?'' said Lori Sugg, 
turned away from a polling place in Pembroke Pines after the precinct 
clerk, assistant clerk, registration book and machine activation devices 
were all missing in inaction. ``I don't understand.''

Election officials in Miami-Dade and Broward blamed most of the trouble on 
human error.

Gisela Salas, an assistant Miami-Dade supervisor of elections, said many 
poll workers simply failed to turn on the machines properly.

Each device must be booted up with an activator cartridge that must remain 
in the machine for six minutes. Many workers apparently pulled out those 
cartridges too soon, crashing the machines.

''A lot of the poll workers were not patient,'' Salas said.

Michael Limas, chief operating officer for Election Systems & Software, 
which made the machines, claimed that his equipment was blameless.

''When our technicians have gone to polling places, they haven't been 
repairing machines,'' he said. ``They've had to start the machines over for 
people.''

He said the failure to properly use the activator cartridges was like 
``putting a floppy disk in your computer to copy a large file and popping 
it out before it's finished.''

David Leahy, Miami-Dade's elections supervisor, said ES&S had 64 
technicians on duty in the county to handle problems.

Asked if that was enough technical support, Leahy smiled and said: ``Not 
given the problems we had. We didn't anticipate having these many problems.''

Even Reno was delayed in casting her vote because of machine trouble in 
Miami-Dade. ''I have to wait outside?'' an incredulous Reno asked poll workers.

Reno later demanded that Gov. Jeb Bush extend the voting. As a backup, she 
also filed an emergency court request to keep the polls open.

The result: Bush declared ''a state of emergency'' allowing him to suspend 
state law and order the polls to remain open two extra hours.

In the Orlando area, election officials had to count by hand 42 percent of 
Orange County's vote because the ballots were tearing as they were fed 
through optical-scanning machines. The county has nearly 426,000 voters.

In tiny Union County, officials said they would have to count all ballots 
by hand because their optical-scan system somehow showed that every vote 
cast was for a Republican candidate.

Glitches were reported in other parts of the state, but those problems 
seemed minor in relation to those that flared in South Florida and received 
widespread publicity.

BUSH ANGERED

So, in the end, after $125 million was spent by the state and counties on 
new touch-screen machines and other electoral changes, Florida sustained 
another black eye.

''There has been ample time to prepare for this election,'' said a clearly 
angry Bush. ``There is no excuse for not having precinct workers in a 
precinct for voting. There is no excuse for not turning on the machines. It 
is shameful.''

Said U.S. Rep. Carrie Meek, a Miami Democrat:

``It seems that, no matter how many assurances we get of safeguards and 
improvements, voting in Dade County is a lot like going to a casino. You 
hope it will work out, but you know it's beyond your control.''

In Broward, even before the election, Oliphant had been criticized for 
confusion that surrounded the recruiting of poll workers, the selection of 
polling places, the duplicate mailing of voting cards to some residents and 
other apparent missteps.

To many, Oliphant seemed overwhelmed by her job -- and the events of the 
day did little to reverse that impression.

''What do I think about her efforts?'' said voter Ilene Sager. ``I think 
they're nonexistent. What ability? I don't see that she has any ability.''

Oliphant remained out of public view through much of the day, but she 
surfaced at 2 p.m. and quickly blamed poll workers for the problems.

``We got last-minute cancellations from our clerks.''

CHANGES PROMISED

Oliphant vowed to redesign her system of assigning poll workers in time for 
the Nov. 5 general election. A former member of the Broward School Board, 
she gave herself a grade ''B'' for Tuesday's work.

''Once we got the polls open, things started going smoothly,'' she said.

Not really. Some election workers said Oliphant's office never notified 
them of the voting extension.

One legal expert said Tuesday's poll problems could lead to legal action, 
especially by candidates who lost close races or by disgruntled voters.

''We should start hearing the rumblings on Wednesday morning,'' said Miami 
attorney Kendall Coffey, a key player on Democrat Al Gore's legal team in 
the 2000 presidential election dispute.

The new machines and other changes were made necessary by that ''hanging 
chad'' debacle, which called into question the integrity of Florida's 
voting system and left the nation without a president-elect for more than a 
month.

On Tuesday, 60 percent of the state voted on new equipment. And about one 
of every three voters in Miami-Dade and Broward voted at a new location 
this year.

Many elections supervisors had predicted some confusion, but nothing like this.

In Pembroke Pines, five workers at precinct 37X-1, including three 
first-time poll workers, tried to explain to voters why they still couldn't 
vote at 8 a.m., an hour after the polls opened.

Without precinct clerks, registration books and activators, the place was 
chaotic.

''Nobody is more upset than we are,'' said Jacquelyn Simone, a first-time 
poll worker. ``We all went to our class, and it looked like everything was 
going to go smoothly.''

It did not.
**********************
Main Herald
Long delays leave some black voters angry and suspicious
After computer foul-ups, leaders see echoes of 2000
BY ANDREA ROBINSON
arobinson@xxxxxxxxxx

South Florida's black community, still struggling to heal from the disputed 
2000 presidential election, demanded answers Tuesday for the 
''unconscionable'' screw-ups that caused voters in some of their precincts 
to wait hours before casting ballots.

The snafus -- which some leaders predicted last week -- caused an angry 
state NAACP President Adora Obi Nweze to call for the removal of some 
county elections supervisors, in particular Miami-Dade Elections Supervisor 
David Leahy.

''Somebody else needs to be put into that job,'' Nweze said late Tuesday. 
``People ought to have had an opportunity to vote, both black and white. 
They haven't had that opportunity in South Florida. When do we stop this 
shell game?''

State Sen. Kendrick Meek, who canvassed North Dade polls earlier in the 
day, said Leahy should resign and County Manager Steve Shiver should ``get 
someone who can run the elections. . . . What happened is unconscionable.''

State and national black leaders said it was too early to tell if blacks 
were disproportionately disenfranchised, but they charged that neither the 
state nor the counties had ensured voters that their rights were safe.

WORST CASE

The worst was seen at Precinct 507 in Liberty City's Thena C. Crowder 
Elementary, where the voting machines sputtered to a start in the morning, 
then crashed until mid-afternoon.

There are 1,200 registered voters in the precinct, which is 90 percent 
Democrat and 95 percent black.

Many walked away angry and suspicious after their first attempt to vote failed.

''Voting in Miami-Dade reminds me of being in a third-world country,'' said 
retired teacher Wilhelmenia Jennings, 85, who came to vote with her 
92-year-old sister, Witlean Butler. Both were turned away.

Emotions in black neighborhoods were high early Tuesday. Gospel radio 
station WMBM 1490-AM was flooded with alerts from Broward and Miami-Dade 
voters shortly after the 7 a.m. precinct openings.

Former Miami City Commissioner Athalie Range was among an estimated 500 
angry voters who waited at Precinct 511, Jordan Grove Baptist Church in 
Liberty City. Computer glitches forced it shut until after noon. As the 
delay continued, talk of conspiracy against black voters grew.

By 12:30, only two of the machines worked. Some voters, including 
86-year-old Range, were trapped in an afternoon downpour.

''One of [the poll workers] said the batteries were put in wrong. That's no 
excuse,'' Range said. ``I expected that things would go relatively 
smoothly. I expected a glitch or two but not a precinct down for several 
hours with no relief in sight.''

Criticism also poured in from the NAACP and the People for the American 
Way, which set up a project to monitor six largely minority precincts in 
Broward that experienced widespread problems in the November 2000 
elections. No monitoring information on those precincts was available late 
Tuesday.

''This doesn't have to happen,'' said Vicki Beasely, a lawyer who has 
monitored elections in Virginia and New Jersey with the National Coalition 
on Black Civic Participation. ``The job of an elections supervisor is to 
anticipate these problems and solve them.''

EARLY INDICATION

As early as last week, black community leaders had predicted problems would 
crop up, after U.S. Rep. Carrie Meek was turned away from casting an 
absentee ballot because of a computer malfunction at a Miami library 
branch. Some would-be voters left in frustration, but Meek called Leahy, 
who verified her information with poll workers so she could vote.

On Tuesday, Meek criticized Miami-Dade's process.

``I had hoped that the problems I had experienced . . . when I went to vote 
-- inoperable computers and backup systems that fail -- had been corrected, 
but the mess that has been reported this morning in dozens of Dade 
precincts shows that Dade's voting system is just as broken as ever.''

The incident involving Meek occured on the same day that the state settled 
a federal voting rights lawsuit. That lawsuit, filed by the NAACP and four 
other civil rights groups, alleged top elections officials, the departments 
of Children & Families and Motor Vehicles and Highway Safety and seven 
counties -- including Miami-Dade, Broward and Duval -- had disenfranchised 
scores of black voters during the Nov. 7, 2000, election that put George W. 
Bush into the White House.

The state agreed -- among other things -- to develop uniform, statewide 
poll worker training and voter education standards.

Staff writers Luisa Yanez, Jennifer Maloney and Erika Bolstad contributed 
to this report.
***************************
News.com
Falwell parody site preaches free speech
By Declan McCullagh
September 10, 2002, 4:56 PM PT

Rev. Jerry Falwell's attempt to seize control of JerryFalwell.com should be 
rejected, lawyers for the parody Web site told a court in Virginia.
They said in legal papers filed on Monday that a federal district judge 
should dismiss Falwell's claims of trademark infringements and libel and 
throw out the case.

A central argument to the brief is that because the defendant in the case, 
Gary Cohn, lives in Illinois, he should not be sued in Virginia.


"It's important to protect the evolving, but pretty close to established, 
principle throughout the country that people who express their opinions on 
passive noncommercial Web sites can only be sued at home," said Paul Levy, 
an attorney for Cohn. "Otherwise, people who don't have profits against 
which to balance the risks of having to spend money on a lawyer would be 
chilled from speaking freely."

Levy works for Public Citizen, a nonprofit organization founded by Ralph 
Nader that has become increasingly active in free-speech cases involving 
the Internet.

The brief also says Falwell's trademark claim should be dismissed because 
Cohn's site is noncommercial, and the libel charges are nonsense because 
"the statement that Falwell is a 'false prophet' is an opinion that cannot 
be proved true or false."

JerryFalwell.com and JerryFallwell.com, both created by Cohn, mock the 
Virginia preacher, likening his political views to those of Yassar Arafat, 
Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

Falwell's comments after the terrorist attacks last Sept. 11 drew public 
opprobrium and even a rebuke from the White House.

Last September, Falwell said on the "700 Club" show: "The abortionists have 
got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when 
we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really 
believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the 
gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative 
lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way--all of them who have 
tried to secularize America--I point the finger in their face and say, 'You 
helped this happen.'"

John Midlen, an attorney for Falwell, said he expected the case would not 
be dismissed. "The trademark claims are solid, and I don't know where 
they're getting their law from," Midlen said. "Many of the cases that they 
cited are irrelevant or they misinterpreted them."

"On the libel, they have a good time skewing what the plaintiff has 
alleged, and they make quite a bit about how whether Jerry Falwell is a 
false prophet is a matter of opinion," Midlen said. "That is not the 
plaintiff's libel contention at all. The plaintiff's libel contention is 
when the defendant equated Dr. Falwell as being the same as David Koresh. 
That's your libel."

Falwell first tried to use the Uniform Dispute Resolution Procedure, 
created by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, to grab 
the pair of domain names from Cohn. In June, a panel of three arbitrators 
rejected Falwell's claim, saying the sites were "a legitimate noncommercial 
or fair use of the domain name." A few weeks later, Falwell filed a 
complaint in federal district court.

The ACLU of Virginia also is representing Cohn in the case, filed in the 
western district of Virginia. No trial date has been set.
****************************
Computerworld
Technology aids hunt for terrorists
By DAN VERTON
SEPTEMBER 09, 2002

Analysts and field operatives from the CIA and the National Security Agency 
(NSA) have stepped up offensive operations against terrorists around the 
world using sophisticated text and audio search and analysis technologies.

"We've increased the number of teams around the world collecting 
information and disrupting [terrorist] activities," acknowledged Philip 
Lago, executive secretary of the CIA. "The tempo of that activity has 
increased dramatically."

Those operations have also increased the volume of raw technical 
intelligencephone, radio and video recordings as well as textflowing into 
the headquarters of the CIA and NSA in Langley, Va., and Fort Meade, Md., 
respectively. The result: a dramatic upswing in demand for technology to 
help ensure that analysts don't miss critical communications or code words 
that could be used to launch an attack.

One of those technologies is the Name Reference Library from Language 
Analysis Systems Inc. (LAS) in Herndon, Va. The software analyzes name 
origins, tells the user whether or not multiple middle and last names are 
in the right order (Egyptian- and Saudi-born citizens often use multiple 
generational names), and provides a list of the top 10 spelling variants as 
well as gender associations.

LAS is working on a product that will enable processing of native scripts, 
said Jack Hermansen, the firm's president. "If you can capture Mohamed in 
Arabic, for example, it's only spelled one way. The problem is in the 
transcription to other languages," he said. LAS plans to complete 
development work on the new version in the next six months.

Meanwhile, NSA analysts, who are responsible for intercepting and analyzing 
hundreds of terabytes of archived and real-time voice, data and video 
communications, are getting help from Fast Talk Communications Inc.

Fast Talk President Armistad Whitney said the company's software can break 
down speech to its smallest components, called phonemes. The phonemes can 
then be indexed and searched for keywords. The software can retrieve any 
word, name or phrase from voice data, regardless of speaker or dialect, 
with up to 98% accuracy and up to 72,000 times faster than in real time, 
company officials said. Analysts can therefore search through 20 hours of 
audio in less than 1 second.

The company signed two contracts with the intelligence community within the 
past 90 days. Currently in the deployment phase, the software is being 
loaded on laptop computers for use in the field and on multiprocessor 
enterprise systems at agency headquarters, Whitney said.
****************************
Los Angeles Times
Digging Herself Out of Debt Through Others' Pockets
Ex-spendthrift finds fame, if not fortune, panhandling on the Internet.
By BETTIJANE LEVINE
Times Staff Writer
August 27 2002

If ever there was a musical waiting to be written, it's Karyn Bosnak's 
tale--the true saga of a bubbly small-town blond who learns about life and 
debt when she moves to the big city.

Act 1: Our heroine is a winsome lass from Gurnee, Ill., near where her 
sweet, shopaholic mother owns a frozen-custard shop and her straight-arrow 
dad (a telephone repairman) never bought anything he couldn't afford to pay 
for with cash.

Bosnak's parents divorced when she was small. Her mother remarried and 
continued to shop. "My mom thinks shopping solves everything," Bosnak said 
in a telephone interview. "She was like, 'Feeling low? Let's buy a blouse 
to cheer you up.' Or 'You got good grades? Let's shop to celebrate.' We 
were once on vacation and she actually charged a Mercedes on a credit card. 
I just grew up that way."

(K.C. Dieck, Bosnak's mother, confirms that story but says she did not 
leave the car on her credit card. "I went home and immediately refinanced 
it." Shopping "runs in our family," she said. "My mother loved it, too.")

Bosnak, who says only that she's in her 20s, graduated from Chicago's 
Columbia College in 1996, took some local TV production jobs and left in 
2000 to find her fortune in New York. She was soon earning $100,000 a year 
as a cable TV producer, she said. That seemed a fortune indeed. With that 
kind of money, she figured, she could afford just about anything.

The credit card companies agreed. They sent her more plastic cards than she 
could comfortably carry in her new Gucci wallet. She used them all. "The 
offers came in the mail. I had seven cards at my peak. I would run them up, 
get a new card, transfer the balance, and then I had a zero balance on the 
first one. It was great."

Bosnak also fell in love. Not with a guy, but with Bergdorf Goodman, the 
handsome stone edifice on upper Fifth Avenue, just steps from the Plaza 
hotel, across from Trump Towers. It is a wonderland packed with goodies 
that only the very rich can afford. Bosnak felt very rich.

She made frequent pilgrimages from her one-room East 57th street apartment 
(at $1,950 per month) to the store's cosmetic counter, where she regularly 
loaded up on La Prairie products, paying up to $150 per jar. Then she'd bop 
around the shop, swathing her shapely size 6 figure in Prada, Gucci, BCBG, 
Theory and Shelli Segal clothes. She bought $400 shoes, $500 bags, $600 
coats--"That's not a bad price for a warm coat"--and she never paid cash.

Next, she'd hop a cab to Bloomingdale's, "it was open till 9," and in 
addition to clothes, she'd charge "all sorts of great stuff for the house."

Bosnak's constant stream of lattes, manicures, pedicures, bikini waxes were 
adding up. Her monthly haircut and blond highlights alone cost $400, which 
she said is "standard price for a good cut and color out here." Her 
twice-weekly personal trainer cost $800 per month. "It sounds so 
over-the-top," she said, "but it's just what things cost in New York."

Just about the time that Bosnak sat down to add up her credit card bills, 
(which tallied about $20,000 after little more than a year), she lost her job.

Act 1 ends operatically. Our heroine flings herself onto her goose-down 
comforter, sobbing uncontrollably in her Fendi robe. She has nowhere to 
turn. She is too embarrassed to even tell friends how much she owes; she 
cannot tell her family. What's worse, the economy has tanked and she cannot 
land even a menial job. Curtain falls.

Act 2: Bosnak's Brilliant Idea. She is alone at her laptop, in her new, 
less expensive Brooklyn apartment, which she shares. She cannot afford to 
go out. She has bought an Internet domain name and set up a Web site 
(http://www.savekaryn.com) and has begun cyber-begging to pay off her debts.

"Hello! My name is Karyn, I'm really nice and I'm asking for your help! You 
see, I have this huge credit card debt and I need your help to pay it off. 
So if you have an extra buck or two, please send it my way!"

After just over a month, a few thousand dollars have trickled in. She's 
received 10,000 e-mails on her multi-page site. She adds to it every day. 
An introductory letter explains who she is without revealing her full name 
and how she got in this mess. A page called "The Daily Buck" tells the 
things she's doing to save and earn money. She's selling her clothes on 
EBay, cutting her own hair, using Oil of Olay, shopping at Old Navy, if at all.

An entry from last Wednesday: "Today I broke down and ordered some 
much-needed contact lenses." She didn't buy them from her doctor, where 
they're $30, she writes on her site, but did extensive pricing research on 
the Web. She then tells readers where she found lenses for $10 less. She is 
helping others. She is also becoming a Miss Financial Lonelyhearts of 
sorts, answering e-mails from around the world--India, Australia, New 
Zealand, England--from people in worse debt than she is who want her 
advice. She starts to feel wise. In control. Of use. She still does not go 
out, even with good friends, she explained, "because I am still in debt and 
I am too embarrassed to talk about it."

She has realized recently that she loves to write. Her Web site is packed 
with cheery, practical prose that is neither profound nor deeply 
personal--just an ongoing surface explanation of her life and times.

And she is becoming controversial. Anti-save-Karyn Web sites are popping 
up. Chat rooms are full of pro- and anti-Karyn chatter. Is she a 
self-centered, spoiled spendthrift or a clever girl who has seen the error 
of her ways and is trying to go straight? TV and print journalists are 
e-mailing her their phone numbers, asking her to call. She eventually does.

Brief stories have appeared in papers around the country, but she remained 
anonymous. She did not want to divulge her name until her bills were paid. 
About two weeks ago, she finally told her mother about her debt and her 
Internet begging scheme, and all went well. When she tried to tell her dad, 
he kept hollering, "You owe what?! You owe what?!"

"I can't get to tell him the Internet part because he can't get over the 
fact that I ran up such bills. He is in shock."

Curtain falls as Bosnak is trying to futilely explain how it all happened.

Act 3: A Milwaukee journalist finds Bosnak's 80-year-old grandfather in 
Wisconsin, who inadvertently reveals his grandchild's full identity. She 
decides to out herself before anyone else does--even though she still owes 
$10,000. On Aug. 16 she goes on the "Today" show, where she is interviewed 
by Matt Lauer. "He's a real dreamboat," she later said. Agents watch the 
show, find her telegenic, sunny, marketable. They call with proposals for 
her to do books and films. "Nothing is finalized yet," she said. "In fact," 
she confided, "I'm not sure any of that will work out." But what definitely 
will benefit her future, she said, is all she has learned from this experience.

"I realize I've lived the wrong way. It's not just about shopping and debt. 
It's that I always chased the jobs that paid the most money. I'd leave each 
job for one that paid better, though I never was really happy in any of 
them. I liked the people but not the career. TV production was what I knew 
how to do, and I felt stuck with it."

Since she's been unemployed and poor, she said, she's "just happy with who 
I really am. I don't feel the need to shop anymore. Even if I had money, 
I'd never do it again." As a result of all this, she's found things she's 
really good at, things she likes to do. Like writing.

"This Web site is very me. I now know I can get my feelings across when I 
write. I've had about 500,000 hits in the past two months," she said, and 
she thinks maybe that's because people like what she writes.

She may have a point. Other cyber-begging sites have been up longer than 
hers and have received nowhere near the response. Most are crass, one-note 
solicitations from people who seem to believe they deserve a handout. One 
man is panhandling for a Hummer, others just for fun and profit. Bosnak's, 
on the other hand, comes across as sincere. She said she's proud she's been 
totally open and honest throughout her financial crisis. She did wrong, she 
admitted it, she asked for help. She furthermore didn't want anyone to 
contribute to her instead of giving to charity. "If they had an extra buck 
after everything, I hoped they'd send it to me."

Her future looks brighter now than when she was earning big bucks. "I've 
learned I can really communicate this way," she said. Whether current 
offers pan out or not, she plans to write a book about her experience. And 
she'd like to find work that involves writing, something in marketing or 
public relations, perhaps. "It was my major in college, and maybe I 
shouldn't have strayed away."

Choral finale: Bosnak is at home with her new retinue of managers, agents 
and attorneys, all of whom are belting out advice on her upcoming book, TV 
talk show and indie film. Anything's possible, it's a musical, right?
************************
 Federal Computer Week
Architecture models advancing
BY By Diane Frank
Sept. 10, 2002

Work on the Federal Enterprise Architecture is advancing slowly but surely, 
and agencies should have several more models to work with by the end of 
December, the government's chief architect said Sept. 9.

The enterprise architecture, led by the Office of Management and Budget, is 
intended to provide the administration and individual agencies a better way 
to track and invest in the information technology infrastructure that 
supports all government services.

OMB is developing several "reference models" to support the architecture 
and will be working with organizations that have experience in building 
these models, such as the National Association of State Chief Information 
Officers (NASCIO), said Robert Haycock, chief architect at OMB. He was 
speaking at a ArchitecturePlus program seminar in Washington, D.C., that 
was sponsored by the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics 
Association's Bethesda chapter.

One model  the business reference model, which outlines agencies' IT 
investments according to the lines of business they support -- is moving 
into its second version as OMB works to incorporated feedback from 
agencies, Haycock said. OMB released the first version for comment in July, 
and the second version should be available in early or mid-January so that 
agencies can use it during the fiscal 2005 budget development process, he said.

OMB started with the business reference model because "we wanted to be able 
to describe the business of an agency before we dive into the technology," 
Haycock said.

Other reference models include ones for performance, data, application and 
technical issues. They will focus on the common factors in each area across 
government. All, except the data reference model, should be available in at 
least a first version by the end of December, Haycock said.

OMB is still figuring out the best approach for the data reference model, 
but the performance reference model may be the one that takes the most 
work, Haycock said. The performance reference model, which will help 
identify common performance measures across government, likely will take 
longer to finish because of the basic difficultly of developing performance 
metrics, he said.

The version of the performance reference model that comes out this year 
will be a draft form that agencies will be asked to contribute specific 
performance measures to, he said.

For now, the Federal Enterprise Architecture includes only the civilian 
agencies, but OMB is working with the Defense Department to include its 
unclassified and classified infrastructure. OMB is also beginning to talk 
to the intelligence community to include those systems as well, Haycock said.
*************************
Federal Computer Week
Web standard to ease secure portal sign-on

Impetus is growing for an emerging Web standard that will enable agencies 
to set up portals through which users can conduct transactions via multiple 
sites or access multiple applications after a single log-in.

Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) 1.0 enables different 
applications, computing platforms and security systems to exchange user 
authentication information, so users do not have to re-enter their user 
names or passwords as they move from site to site within a Web portal.

If adopted by a broad range of security vendors, the standard could have 
implications for both businesses and federal agencies, according to 
industry experts.

"Federal agencies are rapidly getting into Web services, providing services 
through the Internet and intranets based on Web protocols," said James 
Kobielus, a senior analyst with the Burton Group, a consulting firm. "SAML 
enables single sign-on in a secure way."

"SAML is equally important to the federal government as well as the private 
sector," said Jahan Moreh, chief security architect at Sigaba Corp., a 
developer of secure messaging products.

Many technology requests for information recently issued by federal 
agencies involve the need for a way to securely exchange information 
between agencies and citizens. "This is where a standard like SAML becomes 
important, because it will allow users to authenticate at one place [an 
agency or Web site], and get services from another place" that has a 
trusted relationship with the agency or business, according to Moreh.

A key to the standard's success will be vendor adoption. So far, the 
standard, which will be ratified in November by the Organization for the 
Advancement of Structured Information Standards, is supported by all of the 
major identity and access management vendors, including companies such as 
Baltimore Technologies PLC, Entrust Technologies Inc., IBM Corp., Novell 
Inc., Netegrity Inc., Oblix Inc., RSA Security Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc.

Microsoft Corp. is a major exception, opting instead to support the 
Kerberos authentication standard and its own Passport technology as core 
protocols in its .Net framework for Extensible Markup Language Web services.

Of the identity management vendors, Baltimore Technologies and Netegrity 
have released products that use the SAML 1.0 specifications.

Meanwhile, Sigaba last month received security validations from the U.S. 
and Canadian governments for its use of SAML and the Advanced Encryption 
Standard, as well as support for various public-key infrastructure 
technologies.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Canadian 
Communications Security Establishment recently awarded Federal Information 
Processing Standards 140-1 validation to Sigaba's Gateway Version 3.0.20. 
That is the mandatory security requirement for systems used by all U.S. 
federal agencies.

Sigaba software resides between an organization's e-mail server and the 
firewall, encrypting outbound messages and decrypting inbound messages 
based on organization-defined policies. The software works with any 
authentication method and uses SAML to build a network of trust between 
organizations, Moreh said.

But SAML still faces hurdles, according to Kobielus. Currently, it only 
defines "a Web services protocol to support exchange of authentication and 
authorization decisions among affiliated security environments," Kobielus 
said. It doesn't yet define all the details needed for seamless Web single 
sign-on across vendors' products, he noted.

"There is much work to be done," Moreh agreed. SAML 1.0 emphasizes Web 
browser profiles, he added.

Few SAML-based products are currently on the market; however, the Burton 
Group anticipates there will be a "critical mass" of products for 
enterprises to use to start testing SAML-based interoperability by year's end.

***

A doorway to e-gov

Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) 1.0 defines a standard way to 
exchange user authentication information across applications, systems and 
security infrastructures.

SAML takes advantage of protocols such as Extensible Markup Language and 
Simple Object Access Protocol. The standard defines request and response 
messages that security domains exchange when sharing user authentication 
and authorization information.

Basically, SAML enables a user to log on to a network or Web portal by 
using a password or Kerberos, a security system that authenticates users. 
The authentication decision and the context for that decision are sent to 
an affiliate Web site via SAML.
***************************
Federal Computer Week
Letters to the editor - Flexibility in hiring

Following is a response to an FCW.com poll question that asked, "Should 
managers joining the proposed Homeland Security Department have to reapply 
for their jobs?"

The new homeland security agency needs managers who are capable of 
responding to a crisis on very short notice without regard to established 
policies and procedures. Therefore, it is critical that the new agency have 
the flexibility to hire those managers who have the ability to respond 
under pressure and think outside of the box.

Frank Real, Department of Veterans Affairs

***

In most cases, supervisors moving to the new agency would be performing the 
same duties and have the same or additional responsibilities. It seems to 
me that it would throw the system into utter chaos to make those who 
already know and perform the jobs reapply for the same position.

You must also factor in the interim period while all the jobs are being 
rated, ranked, reviewed, interviewed for and selected. What happens to 
performance and efficiency levels during this period?

Larry Strother, Treasury Department
***************************
Federal Computer Week
Cities seek 'fair share' from feds

Since last September, America's cities have beefed up security at airports 
and public facilities, conducted vulnerability assessments of potential 
targets, implemented chemical and biological surveillance technology, and 
improved communications and protective gear for their first responders.

But they have done so largely without help from either the Bush 
administration or Congress.

That's according to a half dozen mayors who discussed their cities' 
homeland security efforts as they spoke Sept. 9 during a Washington, D.C., 
press conference sponsored by the U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM).

The mayors said information sharing and the use of best practices is 
greater among municipalities and the federal-local relationship is stronger 
than before. However, they said such measures are only the beginning and 
much more needs to be done. The mayors said their budgets are stretched to 
their limits and, in some cases, they've had to raise taxes to pay for 
security, including overtime pay for police, firefighters and paramedics.

One by one, the mayors demanded that federal officials live up to their 
pledge of helping cities with such expenses.

"We're not asking the federal government to be creative," said Baltimore 
Mayor Martin O'Malley. "We're asking the federal government to fund at 
least a fair share for homeland defense, for common defense."

"We in cities are being asked to do more with less," said Philadelphia 
Mayor John Street. "We feel today that we're being left behind and cities 
are being taken advantage of."

In Akron, Ohio, which has a population of 220,000, the city has spent about 
$2 million to secure public facilities, said Mayor Don Plusquellic. But 
that figure may not include additional costs, such as overtime pay for police.

Mayor Betty Flores of Laredo, Texas, said she has been asking the federal 
government for the past two years to help improve border security near her 
city. She recently raised property taxes by 4 percent to fund added 
security measures, and she said many border and customs agents are leaving 
her city for better pay and positions at other federal agencies, such as 
the Transportation Security Administration.

Scott King, mayor of Gary, Ind., said assessments that U.S. cities are more 
secure than a year ago are exaggerated. A report card would show a "series 
of incompletes at best."

To help local law enforcement agencies, he called for full funding of two 
federal grant programs: the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) 
program, which faces a proposed 80 percent cut in the fiscal 2003 budget, 
and the Local Law Enforcement Block Grant, which faces a 23 percent 
proposed reduction.

The mayors also called for direct federal funding to cities. Earlier this 
year, President Bush proposed $3.5 billion to help bolster security, of 
which 25 percent would be given to states and 75 percent would be earmarked 
for first responders. However, national groups representing municipal 
officials said they feared those earmarked funds would be chipped away by 
state governments facing severe revenue shortfalls.

Many of the nation's cities are calling for homeland security block grants, 
where the federal government would directly provide funds to 
municipalities. Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) has proposed such a bill, 
which is supported by several other senators.

O'Malley rattled off eight measures where the federal government could help 
cities bolster security:

* Establish one federal watch list, instead of 58, that can be easily 
accessed by authorized law enforcement officers from every governmental level.

* Every metropolitan area should have intelligence units to coordinate all 
policing actions.

* Every metropolitan area should have some type of bio-surveillance technology.

* Every metropolitan area should perform vulnerability assessments of 
critical infrastructures.

* Every metropolitan area should have mitigation strategies in case of attack.

* Every metropolitan area should have updated emergency response plans.

* Every metropolitan area should have an interoperable and redundant 
communications system.

* First responders should be properly equipped to handle two simultaneous 
emergencies, and they and their families should be inoculated against 
biological threats.
**************************
Government Computer News
U.S.-Canadian projects to shore up border are under way
By Jason Miller

The Customs Department and the Canadian Customs and Revenue Agency have 
begun a pilot of an intelligent transportation system that uses Global 
Positioning System data to monitor ships in the St. Lawrence Seaway.

The pilot is one of several initiatives the U.S. and Canadian governments 
are pursuing under the Smart Border Action Plan signed by the two countries 
in December.

President Bush and Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien yesterday said 
during their meeting in Detroitthe busiest border crossing between the two 
countriesthat new programs to improve border security had been launched or 
are on track.

Besides the seaway monitoring pilot, the Free Secure and Trade program 
yesterday began registering companies that transport commercial items 
across the border.

FAST will accelerate many cross-border commercial shipments by reducing the 
information necessary to meet customs requirements, dedicating lanes at 
major crossings to FAST participants and limiting physical examinations. 
Six crossings along the U.S.-Canada border will begin using FAST in December.

Bush and Chrétien also discussed the Nexus alternative inspection program, 
which began yesterday in Detroit. Similar to FAST, the program allows 
border officials to speed the processing of prescreened, low-risk 
travelers. Canadian and U.S. agencies will issue photo identification cards 
to approved travelers, who will have their own dedicated border-crossing lane.

The Customs Service, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Canada 
Customs and Revenue Agency, and the Citizenship and Immigration Canada are 
participating in this program.

Additionally, the two countries agreed to share passenger information and 
records concerning high-risk travelers. The data-sharing program will begin 
next spring. Meanwhile, the FBI and Royal Canadian Mounted Police will 
implement a system for exchanging criminal records.
**************************
Government Computer News
Commercial sector shares threat information
By William Jackson

The Information Sharing and Analysis Centers, established in key commercial 
sectors to help protect the nation's critical infrastructure, have evolved 
over the last year, developing a structure to share threat information 
among ISACs.

"Code Red was the turning point," said Pete Allor, operations director for 
the IT ISAC. "We realized how useful we could be. That's also the first 
time we reached out to government, and government reached back."

Allor, who also is manager of the threat intelligence servicethe X Forcefor 
Internet Security Systems Inc. of Atlanta, spoke about the role of ISACs 
during an interview yesterday at the Networld+Interop/Comdex trade show.

ISACs were created with the government's blessing over the past several 
years as vehicles for sharing information about threats and vulnerabilities 
within commercial sectors, such as financial services, utilities and IT. 
Each group is autonomous, and although they often cooperate with government 
they have no formal relationships with agencies. Developing closer ties 
with government is one of the next steps in the evolution of ISACs.

The outbreak of several varieties of the Code Red virus in July of 2001 
spurred cooperation between ISACs. The events of Sept. 11 and the 
appearance of NIMDA in quick succession brought them together in a more 
formal way. ISACs for the IT, telecommunications, financial services, oil 
and gas, electrical utility and ground transportation industries created 
the Inter-ISAC Information Exchange.

"No ISAC was looking for a super-ISAC," Allor said. "There is no 
hub-and-spoke configuration." Information about threats is shared on an 
as-needed basis.

As the name implies, the exchange does not include the government. 
"Sometimes we had things we wanted to talk to each other about that we 
weren't ready to talk with the government about," Allor said.

That does not mean information is not shared with government. "As ops 
director of the IT ISAC, I talk with the National Infrastructure Protection 
Center at least once a day," Allor said. "We have a good relationship."

But concerns about confidentiality and liability put restrictions on 
private-public information sharing. "The biggest problem most companies see 
is the Freedom of Information Act," Allor said. The fear that information 
about threats provided to the government could be released under FOIA is 
keeping companies quiet. "If I feel I'm not protected, I have no incentive 
to talk."

Several bills have been introduced to shield information about 
infrastructure threats from FOIA, but critics have complained they are too 
broad and could let companies hide information to forestall prosecution or 
regulatory oversight.

The ISACs will meet again in October to further their own relationship and 
explore ways to improve relations with government.

"We are working on some more functional things," Allor said. This includes 
developing a common XML format for exchanging information within an ISAC. 
The next step would be developing formats for exchange between ISACs.
*************************
USA Today
Entertainment industry seeks quick ruling in file-swapping case

LOS ANGELES (AP)  Entertainment industry groups have asked a federal court 
judge to rule before a trial on their copyright infringement claims against 
Internet file-swapping services KaZaA, Grokster and Morpheus.


Attorneys for StreamCast Networks, which distributes the peer-to-peer 
software program Morpheus, have also asked the judge to rule that 
distribution of the software does not violate copyright law.

The Recording Industry Association of America, Motion Picture Association 
of America and the National Music Publishers Association asked a United 
States District Court judge Monday to issue a summary judgment in their favor.

The groups argued that evidence gathered in the past several months makes 
it "abundantly clear" that the file-swapping services are illegal.

Briefs from both sides were filed under seal at the request of the 
defendants, who have claimed issues of confidentiality.

In a statement, the three plaintiffs claim the Internet services patterned 
themselves after the file-swapping company Napster and built their services 
into a "candy store of infringement" that allows users to find music and 
movies online without paying the copyright holders.

Napster recently filed for bankruptcy after a federal judge ordered it to 
rid its service of thousands of songs protected by copyright law.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which represents StreamCast, also filed 
a summary judgment motion Monday, arguing that the Morpheus software is 
legal because it has substantial non-infringing uses and because the 
company cannot be held liable for misuse of its software.

Included in its filing was a supporting statement from recording artist 
Janis Ian.

The three plaintiffs in the case brought their suit last October. In March, 
U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Wilson ruled that the case would go to 
trial later this year.
**************************
USA Today
Attack anniversary cyberthreats unfounded, experts say

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters)  Fears of a cyberattack inspired by the Sept. 11 
attacks faded Tuesday, a day ahead of the anniversary, with the only threat 
to emerge a year-old virus hoax called "World Trade Center Survivor."

Experts predicted that Wednesday is likely to be just another day on the 
Internet, and if anything a quiet day for cybercriminals.

The anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, 
which claimed the lives of more than 3,000 people, is expected to be a 
solemn occasion across the United States, with business activity slowing to 
a crawl.

"Tomorrow, I honestly predict we will see less hacking activity than we saw 
yesterday," Rob Rosenberger, editor of Vmyths, a Web site that details 
virus hoaxes and other computer security myths, said Tuesday.

"Al Qaeda's MO (modus operandi) is that they strike when we are having an 
ordinary day," Rosenberg said of the militant Islamic group blamed for last 
year's Sept. 11 attacks.

"If Osama was going to double-click us to death he would have done it six 
weeks ago. He's low-tech. He likes flying aircraft into skyscrapers," the 
computer expert said.

While there is no evidence of any looming digital Armageddon, there remains 
the everyday threat from the 62,000 known viruses circulating on the Web 
and the 200 actively spreading viruses, according to virus tracker 
WildList.org.

Posing no threat to anyone was the purported "WTC Survivor" virus that 
first surfaced last October in an e-mail that warned that it had the 
destructive potential to erase data from the computer's hard disk drive.

The hoax resurfaced this week. Details about it can be found at www.vmyths.com.

"I have no sense at all that there will be a special cyber event" related 
to the attacks anniversary, said Alan Paller, research director at the 
System Administration, Networking and Security Institute in Bethesda, Md.

"You would really have to stretch to get any more worried tomorrow than you 
were today," he said. "It's like washing your car in case it rains."
*****************************
USA Today
Radio-based security system tracks inmates, officers

Frank Ochoa, imprisoned on an attempted carjacking conviction, thought he 
had the guards fooled. The inmate at a minimum-security prison in the 
California desert slipped his electronic bracelet around a hot cup of 
coffee and made a run for it. Ochoa apparently didn't know that by 
tampering with the tracking device, he had triggered an alarm at the 
Calipatria prison's security control center. Guards caught Ochoa less than 
a mile away.

The sophisticated radio monitoring system that helped capture Ochoa two 
years ago is now being installed at a handful of other U.S. prisons. If 
widely adopted, it could one day change the way correctional facilities are 
run.

"It completely revolutionizes a prison because you know where everyone 
is  not approximately but exactly where they are," said Larry Cothran, a 
technology consultant to the National Institute of Justice.

Using radio transmitters monitored by a network of receivers, the system 
tracks prisoners and corrections officers to within 20 feet. Inmates wear 
tamper- and water-resistant bracelets while officers wear pager-like devices.

It's a high-tech version of the head count, except these head counts are 
conducted every two seconds versus the old-fashioned method of five to 
eight times a day.

Any time an inmate tampers with or removes the bracelet  or strays out of 
range  the bracelet trips an alarm. Guards monitoring the prison can not 
only pinpoint the location but also know who is in the vicinity.

The monitoring device for officers has a red button that allows them to 
signal for help and an automatic "man-down" alarm if the device ends up in 
a horizontal position.

If guards aren't careful, the tilt mechanism has been known to trigger 
alarms if the device gets twisted on their belt or they drop their pants, 
said Chris Trott, president of the Calipatria guards union.

"Sometimes you go to the bathroom and your alarm goes off," he said.

Location data shows up as dots on a computerized map  blue for corrections 
officers and yellow for inmates. A list indicates who each dot represents 
and all movements are stored in a database, for investigative purposes.

So far, Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Technology Systems International appears to 
be the only company selling such a product in the United States.

Called TSI PRISM, the system is based on technology Motorola developed in 
the 1980s with an eye towards military uses. The company decided instead to 
license it to TSI, which spent seven years honing it for prisons.

The state of Michigan, which recently installed a $1 million PRISM system 
at its new maximum-security 200-inmate juvenile prison, thinks the 
technology will aid investigations of assaults and of sexual contact  a 
common violation among inmates, many of whom are sex offenders.

"If someone says someone assaulted him last night, this system can help us 
figure out if he was telling the truth," said Marlys Schutjer, acting 
director with Michigan's Bureau of Juvenile Justice. "It should really help 
a lot in cutting through a lot of guessing games."

Trott said guards using the devices credit them for helping to understand 
prisoner involvement in fights or other incidents.

"It's almost like having a videotape of the incident, because you can track 
who was there," Trott quoted guards as saying.

Another system is being installed in a large medium-security prison being 
built in Logan, Ill.

Tight government budgets, however, are a huge hurdle to widespread 
adoption  at least until the cost decreases. Outfitting a prison generally 
costs $1 million or more, according to Greg Oester, TSI's president.

California has been an early adopter of such prison management technologies 
as electrified fences and pepper-laced water hoses. But its current budget 
crunch has delayed the possibility of a PRISM system purchase, said state 
corrections spokesman Russ Heimerich.

"If money were not an issue, it would be a welcome addition," said Tim 
Ochoa, an associate warden at the 300-inmate Calipatria State Prison, which 
has been testing the system for three years.

Guards at Calipatria initially opposed the system, thinking it would be 
used to spy on them. But prison officials agreed not to use monitoring data 
against them, Tim Ochoa said, and the officers now support its use.

As for prisoners, they don't have a say in the matter.

Inmates aren't entitled to many of the freedoms non-felons enjoy, and the 
system hasn't raised serious objections from a civil rights perspective, 
said Jay Stanley of the American Civil Liberties Union.

The PRISM system could be customized to trigger alarms when rival gang 
members get close to each other, or when an inmate does not return to his 
bunk after a certain hour.

All are potentially powerful features, said Cothran, who saw the 
development of hundreds of prison-related products during a 22-year stint 
leading the Technology Transfer Committee of California's Department of 
Corrections.

"It really impacts every single aspect of a prison," Cothran said. "It will 
make it much safer for an officer to do his shift."
****************************
USA Today
VeriSign, Intel team up on secure computing

LOS ANGELES (Reuters)  Internet security company VeriSign and chip giant 
Intel on Tuesday said they will work together to build content security 
directly into new computers, potentially saving companies time and money 
and protecting confidential data from prying eyes.


VeriSign and Intel said that starting next year, "digital certificates," 
which authenticate a user's identity for purposes including encrypting and 
decrypting files, making payments, and accessing corporate networks, would 
come with Intel's new chip for laptops, code-named "Banias."

VeriSign said the deal was the first of its kind between a security company 
and a hardware company, and comes after repeated high-profile incidents in 
recent years in which corporate executives and government officials have 
lost laptops with sensitive information.

Financial terms of the multiyear deal were not disclosed.

The "Banias" line, built from the ground-up, will make its debut early next 
year, and VeriSign said laptops with chips incorporating digital 
certificates and supporting the Banias line, as well as the accompanying 
software, would appear shortly thereafter.

"It's quicker, it's cheaper and it's lower-cost for the end user," John 
Weinschenk, vice president of the enterprise services group at VeriSign, 
told Reuters.

"The end users don't really understand everything about security, nor do 
they have to," he added.

Weinschenk said the deal was limited to the Banias chipset, though he said 
the two sides were exploring possible expansion to other product lines. 
Beyond laptops, the Banias/digital certificate combination is being 
explored for devices like personal digital assistants, he said.

Weinschenk said the new security system would make such incidents less 
worrisome, as it would be easier to encrypt the contents of the hard drive 
and harder to access them without proper authentication.

Intel has said that part of the Banias chipset is processing for wireless 
communications, and Weinschenk said the digital certificates would come 
into play there as well, speeding up the identification process for users 
who want to access corporate intranets through private networks.
*************************
Los Angeles Times
Technology lags, and problems persist with smuggled weapons despite more 
screeners
By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar
September 11 2002

Thousands more sky marshals are flying. Most airport workers have been 
given criminal background checks. Intelligence sharing is better. At Los 
Angeles International Airport, 49 lanes are open for screening passengers, 
up from 42 before the Sept. 11 attacks, with a goal of at least 60.

Yet today's air travel system is still riddled with holes. As of midsummer, 
federal agents were still sneaking guns and fake bombs past airport 
screeners on about 25% of the tries.

At the same time, the sight of grandmothers having their knitting needles 
confiscated annoys travelers, including some in important positions. While 
experts insist random testing is vital, Rep. John L. Mica (R-Fla.), 
chairman of the House aviation subcommittee, grumps, "Our passenger 
profiling is politically correct but also dumb."

Most planned longer-term reforms are troubled. The plan to test every 
checked bag for explosives means installing hundreds more testing machines 
that are expensive, not fully reliable and don't exist in sufficient 
numbers. Congress may have to stretch its Dec. 31 deadline.

Help is a year or more away: A second generation of the computer-assisted 
passenger pre-screening system could be tested next year. It will merge 
passenger information with intelligence reports and watch lists. Details 
are classified, but the system might green-light a business traveler who 
flies the same routes every month, never changes reservations and always 
buys a round-trip ticket with a corporate credit card. A warning flag might 
pop up for a traveler who's moved frequently, visited countries where 
terrorists operate, abruptly switched flights and paid cash for a one-way 
ticket.
**************************
News Factor
Mobilizing America: Tech vs. Terrorism - Part 2

When the U.S. was attacked in September 2001, we realized we were at war 
with a new kind of enemy. Politicians responded to the terrorist attacks by 
doing what politicians do best: They created bureaucracies, formed 
committees and issued reports. What they should have done was put America 
on a war footing to produce intelligent devices, ubiquitous networks and 
powerful software to stop terrorists from striking again. [Full Story: 
http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/19367.html]
*****************************
News.com
E-mail worm uses Sept. 11 lure
By Margaret Kane
September 11, 2002, 7:38 AM PT

A new e-mail worm has surfaced that uses the terror attacks of Sept. 11 to 
lure victims, antivirus groups say.

The worm has the subject line "All people" and appears to be from 
"main@xxxxxxxxxx" It has an attachment titled "11September.exe." According 
to antivirus company McAfee.com, the worm starts a mass mailing to all 
people found in Microsoft's Windows and Outlook address books.

The worm is believed to have originated in Russia. But according to McAfee, 
the programming is buggy and it fails to work on many systems. The company 
classified the worm as a low-level threat.



Antivirus software maker Symantec said that fewer than 50 infections had 
been reported as of Tuesday night.

The text of the message claims the attachment has photographs that offer 
new evidence of the events of Sept. 11 and claims that "America and England 
have begun bombardment of Iraq."

"This seems to be a poor attempt from a wannabe virus writer to exploit the 
commemoration of Sept. 11," Mikko Hypponen, manager of antivirus research 
at F-Secure, said in a statement. "However, as the worm seems to crash 
regularly, it won't go far."

This is not the first time virus writers have tried to exploit the terror 
attacks. A worm was launched weeks after the attacks last year that claimed 
to be a message of peace. And the Nimda worm, which infected hundreds of 
thousands of systems, was set loose only a week after last year's terror 
attacks.
***************************
News.com
Bill urges rules for policing privacy
By Declan McCullagh
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
September 10, 2002, 4:15 PM PT

A House committee on Tuesday approved a bill that would require federal 
agencies to take privacy more seriously.
The Judiciary committee approved the Federal Agency Protection of Privacy 
Act by voice vote, which means it goes to the full House for a possible 
floor vote within the next month.

Written by Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., the bill requires federal agencies to 
prepare and publish a "privacy impact analysis" of any proposed regulation. 
Because it would not actually prohibit privacy-intrusive proposals, it is 
seen as a modest proposal that enjoys support from both Republicans and 
Democrats.


"Americans deserve to know how government regulations will impact their 
personal privacy, and this legislation reforms the regulatory process to 
make sure that occurs," Barr said after the vote. "This bill will not only 
make the federal government more accountable to the American people, but it 
will also serve to slow the growing erosion of citizens' privacy rights."

The measure would permit Americans who are "adversely affected" by agencies 
who did not prepare privacy impact statements to sue for relief in federal 
court. It does not apply to private firms or state and local government 
agencies.

A Barr aide said the bill was expected to go to the House floor for a vote 
before a scheduled adjournment in early October.

Sen. Max Cleland, D-Ga., has introduced a similar bill in the Senate, but 
no hearings have been held so far.

After the Democrat-controlled Georgia legislature reshaped his district, 
Barr lost in the Republican primary last month. He told CNET News.com at 
the time that he planned to stay involved in the nationwide debate over 
privacy.
***************************
News.com
Ensuring privacy's post-attack survival
By Jeffrey Eisenach and Peter Swire
September 11, 2002, 4:00 AM PT

The bill to create the new Department of Homeland Security is now before 
the Senate. The new Department, once created, will enhance the federal 
government's ability to collect and use information about American 
citizens--or in today's favorite catch phrase, to "connect the dots."

But which dots will be connected, by whom and for what purpose? Here is a 
sample quiz for you to consider:

? First, imagine a program in which the federal government trains mail 
carriers and utility workers to look for possible terrorist activities in 
the homes and neighborhoods where they work, and report to a centralized 
database. Is this a common sense updating of Neighborhood Watch or the 
creation of an informant society?


? Second, consider having frequent fliers volunteer to undergo a thorough 
background check in exchange for faster check-in at the airport. Should 
this be the free choice of business travelers? Or is it a dangerous idea, 
forcing individuals into a choice between divulging secrets to the 
government or being consigned to the long, slow "suspects" line at the 
airport?

? Third, city governments can take advantage of low-cost video technology 
to set up watch on public streets and buildings. Is this effective policing 
of public spaces or another step into a world in which the government can 
follow citizens anywhere, potentially watching lovers embrace or reading 
the lips of people speaking at a sidewalk café?

These three questions, of course, all involve actual proposals since Sept. 
11. The first is the Terrorist Information and Prevention System (TIPS), 
which the Bush Administration has said would no longer include information 
gathered in people's homes. The others involve the "trusted traveler" 
program under consideration at the Department of Transportation and the 
video surveillance cameras installed in Washington, D.C.

We do not pretend that there are easy answers. At the moment, the need to 
connect the dots associated with terrorism is first on our minds, as it 
should be. In the future, however, there will be temptations to combine the 
information-gathering power of technology with the police power of the new 
Homeland Security Department to pursue all sorts of "worthy" agendas.

The obvious risk is a permanent diminution in privacy, personal liberty and 
the open society freedoms that have characterized America from the start.

As a Republican and a Democrat who have each served in the White House (one 
under Ronald Reagan, the other under Bill Clinton), we believe these issues 
deserve much greater public attention than they have received to date. That 
is why we support, as part of the legislation the Senate will take up this 
fall, a new commission on privacy, personal freedom and homeland security.

The legislation creating the Department of Homeland Security provides a 
natural opportunity to form a commission that can consider these enduring 
concerns. One important mission of the commission would be to take account 
of the revolutionary changes in recent years in communication, surveillance 
and database technology, and the implications of those changes for 
individual privacy and personal liberties. The last such national 
commission issued its report a quarter century ago, in 1977.

The commission would also examine how to maintain the rule of law, 
government accountability and the goals of the Freedom of Information Act 
in this new era. Since terrorists can access almost any data over the 
Internet, how do we continue to have open government without compromising 
our security?

More broadly, the chilling reality of deadly threats from abroad striking 
within our own nation, by both physical means such as airplanes and by 
virtual means such as cyberattacks, suggests that we are going to have to 
reconsider the tradeoffs between freedom and security.  The sustained 
national debate the commission would foster should help us consider what 
personal liberty and the Bill of Rights will mean in a time of new 
technology and new security concerns. Whatever tradeoffs we make, it is 
important we make them in the open.

Creating a commission, of course, should not substitute for creating other 
checks and balances in the Homeland Security Department or more broadly in 
government. The House of Representatives voted to add a chief privacy 
officer to the new department. The House also clarified that nothing in the 
bill is designed to authorize a national ID card or system.

Whatever checks and balances survive the congressional process, there 
should also be a way to study these issues after this year's push to 
legislate is over. The commission would address conservatives' concerns 
about the growing intrusiveness of government into all aspects of daily 
life. It would address liberals' concern, harking back to the 1960s and 
1970s, that vulnerable individuals and groups will become the special 
targets of government snooping.

Most important, the commission on privacy, personal freedom and homeland 
security would address the concerns of all Americans that we organize 
government not only to defeat terrorism and protect our nation, but also to 
maintain the heritage of freedom that gives those efforts meaning.
**************************
MSNBC
Web-based disaster plans sought
 Real-estate group plans system to aid rescuers
 By Ray A. Smith
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Sept. 11  Building Owners and Managers Association International, an 
advocacy group for the commercial real-estate industry, is exploring the 
implementation of a Web-based program that provides firefighters, police 
officers and other rescue personnel with critical information about a 
building to better prepare them in case disaster strikes.

       THE PROGRAM, called Rapid Responder and made by Prepared Response 
Inc., Tacoma, Wash., allows rescuers to access specific building 
information online by typing in an address. The critical information, 
including a map and floor plans, then pops up so police and firefighters 
know how to get to the building in danger and where to go once they are 
there. The company designed the system in 2000 after the Columbine High 
School shootings.

       Prepared Response, which develops and maintains security 
applications for the public and private sector, would charge owners by the 
square foot for collecting data. And there would be a monthly fee for 
storing the data, maintenance and upgrades.

       BOMA, which has 18,500 members who own or manage more than nine 
billion square feet of commercial properties and facilities in North 
America and abroad, and Prepared Response hope that the program's use will 
save lives by speeding up emergency response.

       Prepared Response hopes it will save insurance costs as well. 
Sterling Griffin, chief strategy officer and founder of Prepared Response, 
says the company is pushing state insurance rating bureaus to grant 
so-called fire credits  points for safety measures that can reduce 
rates  to building owners who use the system.

       "We're definitely evaluating their processes and procedures to 
determine if there is a reason to recognize their service for fire 
insurance rate credit," says David Bruell, manager of information systems 
at Washington Surveying and Rating Bureau, a property insurance rating bureau.
****************************
Euromedia.net
Action against EU's anti-privacy legislation
11/09/2002  Editor: Joe Figueiredo

An activist group in the Netherlands, Bits of Freedom, has initiated a 
joint protest campaign with the Dutch Socialist Party against the proposed 
EU law that will require telecom operators and service providers to retain 
all subscribers' communication details for long periods.

With the Dutch Second Chamber's standing committees on justice and home 
affairs scheduled to discuss this issue on September 11, these two groups 
have opened a website explaining their action and requesting people to send 
a protest letter or e-mail to the Dutch Justice Minister, Piet Hein Donner, 
and select Second Chamber members.

Their 'Nederland geen afluisterstaat' (The Netherlands is no eavesdropping 
state) action follows a recent letter to Minister Donner from the CBP, the 
independent Dutch data protection authority, in which the CBP also raised 
privacy concerns with the proposed legislation.
**************************
Washington Post
Voting Machines Cause Problems in Montgomery
By Colleen Jenkins
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 11, 2002; 12:29 AM

Returns in one of the most closely watched and hotly contested elections in 
the nation were muddled last night when poorly trained election workers in 
Montgomery County struggled to master new computerized voting machines.

The leading candidates in the 8th Congressional District emerged shortly 
before midnight to warn their supporters to prepare for a long night before 
the outcome could be determined.

Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan acknowledged there were "some 
shakedown problems."

"We had problems opening up the polling places and closing the polling 
places and getting the [computer] cartridges to the Board of Elections," 
Duncan said. "It's an unfamiliar system for the judges. . . . It's the 
first time we used this system."

Duncan said the county would "work hard" to resolve the problems before the 
Nov. 5 general election.

County officials said poll workers had to shut down each poll site, 
tabulate the precinct results on a paper printout and then drive the 
printout and memory cards from each unit to the county's election headquarters.

"That takes time," said Montgomery election deputy director Sara Harris. 
"It's really not an unexpected holdup. There's a learning curve for all of 
us, and it's moving along pretty much as expected."

Harris acknowledged that the county needed to do more training of its 
precinct workers before November to improve their performance.

Joe Torre, a state elections board project manager, said cars were lined up 
outside Montgomery's election board at 11 p.m. with judges waiting to hand 
off their memory cards. All the cards had to be processed through one 
central election management system, he said.

"It's a slow process," he said. "It's brand new to them. Why wouldn't they 
release [the results] as soon as they start to get them?"

The other three counties juggling the new process had better results. In 
Prince George's County, the machines worked smoothly, said Charles Deegan, 
the Republican member of the county board of elections. At each of 204 
polling places, election judges collected the totals from each machine into 
a single "accumulator" and then transmitted the totals via modem to 
election board headquarters in Upper Marlboro.

The first results were available at 8:21 p.m.  21 minutes after the polls 
closed.

"Hey, if Prince George's can do it, anybody can do it," Deegan said.

Montgomery appeared to suffer, he said, because the county asked election 
judges to drive the memory cards from each polling place to a central location.

"In a county of that size, or in Prince George's, it's just not feasible," 
Deegan said. "We're 725 square miles, 204 precincts. It's a big county."

Deegan said some of Prince George's 2,100 voting machines were first used 
in a special election to replace a deceased county councilman earlier this 
year. General training for election judges across the county began in the 
middle of June.

The machines also worked well in rural Allegany County, where poll judges 
pulled memory cards from each of 202 machines and drove them into 
Cumberland from 36 polling places, said elections administrator Kitty Davis.

Allegany didn't try to use modems or to accumulate totals on a single 
machine in each polling place because "we wanted baby steps," Davis said. 
"The machines have a lot more bells and whistles, but we did not fully 
utilize them because we wanted our judges and the public to get comfortable 
with the new process."

In Dorchester County, election officials were finished tabulating results 
from the county's 38 precincts by 9:30 p.m. Some election judges had to 
drive an hour to bring their memory cards to the county election board, 
said election director Donna E. Rahe.

"Everything worked out just great," she said. "I'm very pleased with my 
chief judges and judges and the community."

Campaign workers waited in frustration for Montgomery's delayed results.

"I wish the Montgomery board of elections would tell us what they know," 
said Jonathan Cohen, 45, of Bethesda, at Chris Van Hollen's campaign party. 
"I've got kids at home with the babysitter and the babysitter has school 
tomorrow."

The late-night troubles in Montgomery followed a day alreayd rife with 
technological snags and confusion across the four counties showcasing the 
new touch-screen machines that Maryland officials plan to take statewide by 
2006.

Early morning glitches frustrated some voters and marred the launch of the 
new touch-screen voting machines in four Maryland counties yesterday, but 
by late in the day, poll workers and voters gave mostly positive reviews of 
the system.

"I like it better," said Bernice Williams, who is in her seventies, as she 
voted at Leisure World of Maryland, a retirement community in Silver 
Spring. "It's faster. We won't have any hanging chads. It's the 21st century."

Instead of stepping into a curtained voting booth with punch cards or lever 
machines, voters in the four counties that had the most antiquated systems 
encountered machines that resemble automated tellers. Voters received a 
card encoded for their precinct and political party that they inserted into 
a machine to display a ballot, and touched a computer screen to make 
selections.

The four counties and the state split the $15?million cost of the new 
system for their sites. The machines are the Maryland General Assembly's 
response to the Florida vote-count controversy that delayed results from 
the 2000 presidential election for weeks. But the initial rough spots 
perturbed some voters.

Melba DeLope, 52, a cosmetologist in Silver Spring, had voted only for a 
gubernatorial candidate before her white, plastic voting card popped out of 
the machine. Perplexed and rushing to get to work, DeLope turned in the 
card unfinished.

"I feel like I was cheated," she said.

Margaret Dolan, 51, experienced a similar problem in Silver Spring about 6 
p.m. Her Republican ballot let her vote only for the school board race, and 
when she reported the error to an election judge, she said he responded 
"that was just too bad."

"I was really annoyed because I had spent a good part of the day going over 
the ballot deciding who to vote for," she said.

Electrical problems halted voting for about 15 minutes at precincts in 
Chevy Chase and Silver Spring, said local poll workers. Some machines in 
Montgomery and Prince George's didn't work as soon as they were turned on.

Torre said the machines have a backup battery that should prevent votes 
from being lost.

Election officials tried to introduce the new AccuVote-TS system, 
manufactured by Global/Diebold Election Systems, in advance at events such 
as festivals.

Their preparation helped familiarize hundreds of voters with the new 
technology, but it didn't prevent complaints. Some election workers said 
there weren't enough machines to meet demand., although each county had 
twice as many of the new machines as they had of the old. Montgomery and 
Prince George's counties, the state's largest jurisdictions, each had more 
than 2,000 new machines.

Voting procedures and human error seemed to cause more trouble than the 
machines, officials and voters said. At Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, 
voters said poll workers had trouble turning on the machines and finding 
the cards that needed to be programmed.

It was 20 minutes before the first voter could be processed.

"It was like watching amateur hour," said Marcus Smith, a Bethesda resident 
who voted at the high school. "I got the impression they were slowly 
figuring out how it worked., but it looked like a real mess this morning."

Many senior citizens at the Leisure World poll site wandered from table to 
table, unsure of where to go. They were supposed to pick up a registration 
card from one set of election judges, get a ballot encoded at another table 
and then wait to be escorted to an open voting machine. But some residents 
said they had not bargained on the more elaborate process.

"Once you get to the machine and get it started, it's duck soup . . . but 
it's getting to the machine and getting it activated that's the holdup," 
said Joan Barry, a senior citizen and Democratic precinct vice chairwoman.

Some election workers in Allegany and Dorchester counties initially had 
trouble encoding cards, election officials said. But technical support 
people patrolled the 329 machines at the sites and quickly fixed problems, 
said Allegany election director Catherine O. Davis.

"We've learned a few things," Davis said. "In dealing with our judges, 
perhaps we weren't clear enough. . . . We're coming from 1950s technology."

"I liked the new system," said Larcenia Cromwell of Prince George's County. 
"It is very important that we come out today and vote."

The procedural mishaps somewhat overshadowed the new system's advantages. 
The machines featured large, clear print  in English and Spanish in 
Montgomery and Prince George's  and a safeguard against people voting for 
more candidates than allowed. They also featured an audio ballot, giving 
the illiterate and the blind their first opportunity to vote unassisted, 
officials said.
***************************


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


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Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber:

Welcome to the September 11, 2002 edition of ACM TechNews,
providing timely information for IT professionals three times a
week.  For instructions on how to unsubscribe from this
service, please see below.

ACM's MemberNet is now online. For discussion (and voting)
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Remember to check out our hot new online essay and opinion
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ACM TechNews
Volume 4, Number 397
Date: September 11, 2002

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Top Stories for Wednesday, September 11, 2002:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html

"A Year Later, Online Privacy and Security Still Weak"
"Administration Pares Cyber-Security Plan"
"Worldwide 'War Drive' Exposes Insecure Wireless LANs"
"Organic Electronics"
"Firms Offer to Recycle TVs, Monitors to Avoid Government Fees"
"The UI of the Fifth Revolution"
"Hewlett Takes A Step Forward In the World Of Tiny Chips"
"Quantum Software Gets the Picture"
"Mozilla Rising"
"An Insider's Look at Homeland Security and Technology"
"Hot Spots"
"National Science Foundation Launches Grid Testbed"
"Single Atom Memory Device Stores Data"
"Digital Divide"
"Electronics in the Round: Mixing Plastics and Silicon Yields
Form-Fitting Circuitry"
"Seeking CRM Integration"
"Retaining Top Talent"
"Business Process Management"
"A Year After 9/11: Where Are We Now?"

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

"A Year Later, Online Privacy and Security Still Weak"
Online privacy has been eroded and security remains loose since
the Sept. 11 attacks a year ago.  Although resistance from the IT
community helped prevent a national ID rollout and restrictions
on encryption software, the government has more leeway to pilfer ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0911w.html#item1

"Administration Pares Cyber-Security Plan"
The Bush administration has made some revisions to the National
Strategy to Secure Cyberspace in the hopes that industry will
voluntarily adopt the plan, according to a government official.
Companies have argued against certain recommendations as being ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0911w.html#item2

"Worldwide 'War Drive' Exposes Insecure Wireless LANs"
Many wireless LAN users do not deploy basic security measures,
according to the results of a "Worldwide Wardrive" that was
conducted in Europe and North America over the past week.
Self-proclaimed hobbyists carried out the wardrive using free ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0911w.html#item3

"Organic Electronics"
The University of Arizona Optical Sciences Center is focusing on
the deposition of ultrathin organic molecules onto plastic
substrates in an effort to create electronics such as radio
frequency (RF) tags that could, for instance, allow grocery items ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0911w.html#item4

"Firms Offer to Recycle TVs, Monitors to Avoid Government Fees"
Television manufacturers Panasonic, Sony, and Sharp plan to
demonstrate that they can recycle their discarded products
responsibly through the Electronics Recycling Shared
Responsibility Program, thus obviating the need for ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0911w.html#item5

"The UI of the Fifth Revolution"
The so-called Fifth revolution of computing will require a
radical user interface that takes into consideration several
aspects of mobile computing, including:  A small form factor,
voice input, profiling that allows devices to operate according ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0911w.html#item6

"Hewlett Takes A Step Forward In the World Of Tiny Chips"
Hewlett-Packard scientists have unveiled a process for
manufacturing molecular electronics at lower cost and much higher
density than the most sophisticated semiconductor chips being
used today.  The breakthrough was disclosed today by Dr. R. ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0911w.html#item7

"Quantum Software Gets the Picture"
University of British Columbia physicist Ralf Schutzhold has
developed an algorithm that proves that a quantum computer would
be able to discern a linear pattern faster than a conventional
machine.  His algorithm draws patterns from raw data, which is a ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0911w.html#item8

"Mozilla Rising"
Mozilla, the open-source project behind the Netscape browser, is
gaining popularity for its programming ease.  Experts say that
using Mozilla's XML-based XUL language to build an application
interface is not much more difficult than building Web pages ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0911w.html#item9

"An Insider's Look at Homeland Security and Technology"
In an interview with PC Magazine, Office of Homeland Security CIO
Steve I. Cooper discusses how his group characterizes and
implements anti-terror technologies.  Component areas he cites
include intelligence-gathering; integration; information ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0911w.html#item10

"Hot Spots"
The Boston area's roughly 100 public Wi-Fi access points, or hot
spots, are a mix of free and for-fee services, reflecting a
growing trend nationwide to create both free "community networks"
for individuals and "for-pay" projects aimed at business users.  ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0911w.html#item11

"National Science Foundation Launches Grid Testbed"
The National Science Foundation is overseeing a program that uses
eight American universities as trial sites for grid computing
technologies developed under the aegis of the National Science
Foundation Middleware Initiative (NMI).  The NMI Integration ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0911w.html#item12

"Single Atom Memory Device Stores Data"
Researchers from the University of Wisconsin and Switzerland's
University of Basel collaborated on the development of an atomic
memory system that allows data to be stored in individual atoms.
The system enables one atom to represent the difference between a ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0911w.html#item13

"Digital Divide"
Legislators have become embroiled in the heated argument between
Silicon Valley and the entertainment industry over the
enforcement of copyright protection on the Internet.  Earlier
this year, top Hollywood executives such as Peter Chernin and ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0911w.html#item14

"Electronics in the Round: Mixing Plastics and Silicon Yields
Form-Fitting Circuitry"
In the Aug. 26 issue of Applied Physics Letters, Princeton
University's Pai-Hui I. Hsu and colleagues describe their efforts
to combine silicon-based transistors with polyimide plastic in
order to create circuitry that can be molded to any surface.  ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0911w.html#item15

"Seeking CRM Integration"
Companies that must integrate their diverse CRM applications
while minimizing deployment costs are turning to a number of
solutions.  Best-of-breed applications can be linked together via
EAI or messaging middleware, while data warehousing, Web ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0911w.html#item16

"Retaining Top Talent"
Many countries are stepping up efforts to prevent the loss of
highly skilled professionals to other countries, according to a
study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD).  Developing countries suffer the most brain ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0911w.html#item17

"Business Process Management"
Approximately 70 percent of 727 executives polled by CIO Insight
in August report that their companies are continuously improving
their business processes and are very committed to such a goal,
but little more than one-third describe their processes as ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0911w.html#item18

"A Year After 9/11: Where Are We Now?"
One year after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, digital
technologies and communications media have drawn fire from key
figures as contributing to the tragedy.  These same parties are
pressuring Congress, state governments, and international ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0911w.html#item19


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