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Clips March 4, 2003
- To: "Lillie Coney":;, Gene Spafford <spaf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>;, John White <white@xxxxxxxxxx>;, Jeff Grove <jeff_grove@xxxxxxx>;, goodman@xxxxxxxxxxxxx;, David Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>;, glee@xxxxxxxxxxxxx;, Andrew Grosso<Agrosso@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>;, ver@xxxxxxxxx;, lillie.coney@xxxxxxx;, v_gold@xxxxxxx;, harsha@xxxxxxx;, KathrynKL@xxxxxxx;, computer_security_day@xxxxxxx;, waspray@xxxxxxxxxxx;
- Subject: Clips March 4, 2003
- From: Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 04 Mar 2003 11:29:23 -0500
Clips March 4, 2003
ARTICLES
Case tests Congress' ability to make libraries block porn
For Homeland Agency, Transitions Just Starting
Military Wants Its Own Spies
EU Backs Single Patent in Competitive Drive
Man Guilty in Internet-Related Killing
FAA computer specialist files complaint against union
Major Internet vulnerability discovered in e-mail protocol
DOD issues more IA instructions
Bush touts DHS' interoperability
Elimination of cybersecurity board concerns tech industry
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USA Today
Case tests Congress' ability to make libraries block porn
By Joan Biskupic, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON When a special U.S. court was considering whether Congress may require public libraries to put filters on their computers to block sexually explicit Web sites, it heeded testimony from young library patrons.
Emmalyn Rood of Portland, Ore., used a computer at a local library to find information on lesbian issues when she was in her early teens and questioning her sexual orientation. College student Mark Brown went to a library in Philadelphia to look up cancer treatments and cosmetic surgery when his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer.
"I needed to figure things out a little bit for myself before I talked to my family," says Rood, now 17 and attending Simon's Rock College in Massachusetts. "There is nothing in the world as valuable as information."
The special three-judge panel ruled last May that a filter requirement forces public libraries to violate the First Amendment rights of users. The court said current software technology can block legitimate sites about homosexuality, breast implants and health concerns while allowing access to some hard-core pornography.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear the government's appeal as it tries to revive the Children's Internet Protection Act of 2001. The act requires public libraries that receive federal money to block access to online pornography and obscenity. Because of legal challenges by the American Library Association, library patrons, Web publishers and others, the law hasn't taken effect.
The closely watched case tests the extent of Congress's ability to attach strings to its funding and to try to shield children and others from the abundance of online porn. More broadly, it calls attention to the evolving importance of the Internet and the enduring value of the public library in American life.
Much of the world's knowledge is now available with a few computer keystrokes, and about 95% of all public libraries provide public access to the Internet.
The dispute also points up how difficult it is for government to try to block the tide of dirty pictures on the Internet without impinging on the First Amendment.
The Supreme Court struck down as too broadly written two earlier congressional efforts to protect children from raunchy material: a law that made it a crime to send indecent messages over the Internet to anyone under 18, and a statute that banned computer-generated "virtual" pornography.
But in this case, U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson says, libraries are merely being asked to screen online offerings as they do print collections.
"Public libraries have broad discretion to decide what material to add to their collections," Olson says. "The use of filtering software to block access to online pornography falls well within the permissible limits of that discretion."
Olson, who will argue the case Wednesday, stressed in his written brief that the filtering conditions are imposed only on libraries that accept federal funds for Internet access and related services.
Most of the public libraries nationwide receive federal funds. The lower court found that of all Americans who use the Internet, 10% do it through local libraries.
Washington, D.C., lawyer Paul Smith, who will represent the American Library Association, the American Civil Liberties Union and other challengers, says the Children's Internet Protection Act is censorship. "A library, after all, is an institution that exists to enable private citizens to access whatever information they may seek," he says. Users should be able to decide for themselves "where to go in cyberspace and why," he says.
The act permits librarians to override filters if a patron is trying to obtain permissible materials that have been wrongly blocked. But the lower-court panel said testimony from Rood and Brown led it to conclude that some patrons would be too embarrassed to ask a librarian for help.
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Washington Post
For Homeland Agency, Transitions Just Starting
By Christopher Lee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 4, 2003; Page A21
The Department of Homeland Security is an adolescent among federal agencies: Most of its biggest changes are ahead of it.
Born Jan. 24 with just a few hundred employees, the new department underwent a growth spurt over the weekend, absorbing most of its 22 component agencies and 179,000 workers. It also acquired a new chain of command -- with Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge at the top -- that makes the department responsible for deterring terrorism and responding to attacks or natural catastrophes such as floods and hurricanes.
"We are the nation's incident manager, whether it's a terrorism-related incident or a natural disaster," Ridge told reporters yesterday.
Despite the fanfare of the transition, not much has changed yet. The overwhelming majority of the department's employees are doing the same work in the same place as they did last week, officials concede.
"The only thing that has transpired has been a paperwork shuffle, and the nuts and bolts and the nitty-gritty hasn't been dealt with yet," said Bobby L. Harnage Sr., president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union.
Ridge, however, said important changes are on the way.
For instance, the department plans to hire 570 additional agents and 1,700 new inspectors for the new Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, to screen travelers and their bags and vehicles at the nation's border crossings, airports and seaports, Ridge said yesterday in a speech at the National Association of Counties' legislative conference. Also, each of the country's 300 ports of entry now has an "acting port director" to coordinate the work of inspectors -- from the Customs Service, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Agriculture Department's Animal, Plant and Health Inspection Service and the Border Patrol -- who are now part of the new Bureau of Customs and Border Protection.
Ridge emphasized the new moves after state and local officials, as well as congressional Democrats, criticized the Bush administration for spending too little money on the department, particularly on grants for police and firefighters and other "first responders." He pledged to "do everything we can to get the money out the door as quickly as possible and into your hands."
Apart from money concerns, the reorganization is important, Ridge told reporters, because the department will inspire a greater sense of mission for employees.
"Their importance, their relevance, their role in protecting their country and their community has been elevated and I think every one of them knows that," he said.
Many things still need to be done, however, before the new department is running at full steam.
A big challenge will be to integrate the computer and e-mail systems of the various component agencies so they can share information internally, communicate with state and local officials and integrate payroll and accounting functions. So far, officials have done little more than inventory the existing systems and brainstorm about a new one, Ridge said.
"We first need to be connected internally, and so the infrastructure that we develop in the months ahead will be critical to that effort, and critical to the overall success of the organization," Ridge said.
A politically more difficult task will be to craft a personnel system that capitalizes on legislation granting department officials broad new authority over pay, hiring and promotions without alienating workers fearful of losing their civil service protections.
Saying he was sensitive to employee complaints that they had been told little about how their jobs might change, Ridge said officials will sit down with public employee unions this month to begin hammering out a personnel system.
But he said workers must not get distracted by such concerns: "Right now homeland security is your number one mission, is your primary mission, and we will work with others with regard to job security."
Harnage, the union official, said Ridge "has said the right things" but "there isn't a deep trust there yet."
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Government Computer News
03/03/03
DISA feeds warfighters bandwidth
By Wilson P. Dizard III
The Defense Information Systems Agency plans to meet its customers' needs by providing more bandwidth to warfighters and military decision-makers, the agency's director said today.
Air Force Lt. Gen. Harry D. Raduege spoke at the Information Processing Interagency Conference, in Orlando, Fla.
"We're taking bandwidth and putting it in the hands of the warfighter in an assured way," he said. "Information has to be there, and it has to be there in abundance."
DISA is working to purchase bandwidth to keep up with the information needs of the commands and defense agencies that form its customer base, Raduege said.
"It has to be power to the edge," he said. "We want to create Web-smart, wisdom-rich users. Power to the edge can also mean providing information to the secretary of Defense so he can make the right decision."
Frequently, bandwidth must be deployed to remote zones where "there isn't a rich communications infrastructure," Raduege said.
He said DISA is taking steps to keep track of day-to-day tasks while managing transformation of the agency in response to changing customer needs. Raduege has created two "500-day" plans to guide change at DISA, based on his discussions with commanders and defense agency leaders.
Another of Raduege's goals is envisioning applications for emerging technology. "Today in DOD we are looking to pierce the fog of war with the light of information," he said. DISA also seeks to foster intercommunication across the Defense Department, Raduege said, and prevent stovepipes by using systems that have been approved by Pentagon command and control authorities.
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USA Today
Military Wants Its Own Spies
Moving onto the CIA's turf, the Pentagon is seeking a cadre of operatives for global reconnaissance and the fight against terrorism.
By Greg Miller
Times Staff Writer
March 4, 2003
WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon is planning to assemble its own network of spies who will be posted around the world to collect intelligence on terrorist organizations and other military targets, moving squarely into a cloak-and-dagger realm that has traditionally been the domain of the CIA, according to Department of Defense officials familiar with the plans.
Officials said the aim is to form a deep roster of intelligence operators capable of handling a range of assignments from reconnaissance for military operations to long-term clandestine work in which Pentagon spies would function like CIA case officers, working undercover to steal secrets and recruit informants.
The number of spies is expected to be in the hundreds, although officials cautioned it could be years before a force that size is in position.
The program would be managed by the Defense Intelligence Agency, a little-known Pentagon spy shop that mostly conducts intelligence analysis. Recruits would be drawn from all four branches of the military, with an emphasis on attracting those with special forces backgrounds. All would undergo the same training as CIA case officers at the agency's southern Virginia training facility for clandestine service, known in intelligence circles as the Farm.
The effort stems in large part from frustration within the Pentagon over the extent to which the military was forced to rely on the CIA in the opening stages of the war in Afghanistan. It also reflects concern that there are too few CIA officers deployed around the world, and that they are not adequately focused on collecting intelligence that is useful to the military, several officials said.
"The CIA doesn't have the number of assets to be doing what the secretary of Defense wants done," said one Pentagon official familiar with the plans. "This is a capability the secretary wants the Department of Defense to have."
Pentagon officials stressed that the plans are being pursued in close coordination with the CIA, and that Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and CIA Director George J. Tenet have discussed the matter. Officials at the agency declined to comment.
Still, the Pentagon effort marks a particularly aggressive incursion by the military at a time when the Pentagon and the CIA are increasingly encroaching on one another's turf.
"The predominant effort will be" with the CIA, said Richard L. Haver, a special assistant to Rumsfeld on intelligence matters. But he and others made it clear that the Pentagon wants its own people in global hot spots.
Alluding to the military's lack of presence in Afghanistan before the war there began, Haver said, "We can't have a situation where the military sits there in total ignorance."
Haver indicated that budgeting for the Pentagon spy program is already taking shape. "I've seen budget lines, billet numbers, etc.," though he declined to be more specific, saying he "wouldn't want to tell the enemy too much about exactly what we're doing here."
Congressional aides said intelligence committee members in the Senate and House have yet to see details of the plans. But they noted that there is broad support among lawmakers for expansion of the nation's ability to collect human intelligence an area identified as a major shortfall by investigators of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Intelligence experts said the new program is a logical step at a time when the Sept. 11 attacks and the ongoing terrorist threat have exposed inadequacies in the nation's intelligence capabilities. But some said there is also cause for caution.
"There is an institutional concern about locating intelligence functions in a mission-oriented agency," said Steven Aftergood, an intelligence policy analyst at the Federation of American Scientists, "because often the result is you get intelligence that is influenced or deformed by the mission."
Though the CIA increasingly conducts its own paramilitary operations, the agency's fundamental mission is to serve as an unbiased gatherer of intelligence to inform policymakers. The Pentagon exists to carry out operations, and may seek to gather intelligence that justifies those missions.
Recasting the old saying that to a hammer, everything looks like a nail, Aftergood said, "when you've got a Stealth fighter, everything looks like a target."
Indeed, officials said a major objective of the new spy plan is to produce more "actionable intelligence," a Pentagon buzzword for information leading to military operations. Last year, Rumsfeld gave the U.S. Special Operations Command which includes the Army Green Berets and the Navy SEALs the lead among military organizations in the hunt for Al Qaeda.
The capture in Pakistan on Saturday of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, an Al Qaeda leader, was a credit to the CIA and the FBI. But many in the spy community say that Rumsfeld is frustrated with the performance of intelligence agencies on a number of fronts, including the pace in finding other Al Qaeda figures and the lack of information on the whereabouts of biological and chemical weapons in Iraq.
Rumsfeld, who came into the job convinced of the need for significant reform in the intelligence community, has engineered a number of spy community shake-ups.
Last year, he pushed through Congress the creation of a new senior position at the Pentagon, undersecretary of Defense for intelligence, that will have broad authority over most of the 14 separate agencies that constitute the intelligence community.
Although the CIA director is nominally in charge of coordinating the efforts of those agencies, the Pentagon controls about 85% of the nation's spy spending, including the budgets of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency.
Some see the move as an effort by Rumsfeld to consolidate control over the nation's spy community at a time when some lawmakers, considering post-Sept. 11 reforms, were pushing to give expanded authority to the CIA director.
The Pentagon has made other recent moves to challenge the CIA's influence. Last year, the department set up a separate intelligence analysis unit to study links between Iraq and Al Qaeda, at a time when the CIA was more skeptical that there were such links.
But the CIA is also expanding into turf that has traditionally belonged to the military. The agency is in the midst of a major expansion of its own paramilitary force, known as the Special Operations Group, for which it often lures away members of the military's special forces.
The CIA's firing of a hellfire missile on a car full of terrorist suspects in Yemen in November also served as a reminder that the Pentagon no longer has a monopoly on striking targets from the sky.
The military has always had human intelligence-collection capabilities, traditionally built into each branch of the service. The various programs were consolidated in the early 1980s into what is known as the Defense Human Intelligence Service, a component of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Pentagon officials said the so-called Humint service now accounts for about 1,000 of the agency's 7,000 employees. But only a portion of the officers in the service work overseas, and the vast majority of those are military attaches diplomatic officials who work in embassies recognized by their host countries, and overtly gather information on other nations' militaries.
A tiny fraction of those in the Humint service are covert or clandestine operators, working undercover to steal secrets. That is the segment poised for major expansion in a program run by Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton, director of intelligence operations at the Defense Intelligence Agency. Dayton was formerly a military attache in Moscow.
Officials said the plans reflect a recognition that the military had become too reliant on satellite imagery, electronic intercepts and other technical means of collecting information.
Officials said those techniques worked well during the Cold War but are of limited use in penetrating terrorist networks that don't have tank columns to track and can communicate by messenger or encrypted e-mail.
The CIA is in the midst of its own major expansion of its clandestine service. Officials say recent recruiting classes have been among the largest in agency history. Still, former CIA officials said there are probably no more than 500 or so CIA case officers positioned around the world. Pentagon officials said that simply isn't enough.
The consequences of the shortage came to a head in the early going in Afghanistan, when the CIA had to dip into the ranks of retirees to find officers to send to the country to link up with Northern Alliance leaders and coordinate their efforts with U.S. air support.
The agency had "a cadre of people that could do that," Haver said. "The problem was that cadre wasn't huge. You wanted to do X, Y and Z but found out you couldn't get to Z because you didn't have enough assets to connect up with the right people in the right way."
Even if there were an abundance of CIA case officers, Haver said they aren't always focused on the military's priorities.
A network of spies drawn from the armed services "will know intuitively what to look for," Haver said. "Instead of looking for how the economy is performing, or whether the steel industry is producing advanced steel or not, which is the sort of thing the CIA [collects], we're talking about whether bridges can withstand" the weight of U.S. tanks.
Former CIA officers acknowledged that they rarely focused on collecting intelligence of tactical value for the military, and that an expanded roster of Pentagon spies could fill key gaps.
"Maybe that means getting eyes on some terrorist place in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon," one former official said. "Whereas we would try to recruit a guy who sells fruit near the terrorist's house to give us a report on what's going on there, these [Pentagon] guys would just go in there and look at it from a soldier's perspective. When do the guards change? Who goes in and out?"
An Arab American soldier might slip in and out of such locations disguised as a tourist or dressed as a native. The problem may come, however, if the military begins competing with the CIA for positions in U.S. embassies or other cover arrangements in global trouble spots.
"You cannot just establish yourself in a country without having a reason to be there," the former CIA official said. "What are they going to do? Set up shop in Damascus? As what? The only cover we have in Damascus is the embassy, and that's about the size of a breadbox."
Pentagon spies could pose as arms dealers or use other cover arrangements to build contacts with warlords and strongmen around the world. But they would likely be shunned by foreign intelligence services, many of which quietly cooperate with the CIA but could not afford the political fallout if their citizens learned they were linked to the U.S. military. As Haver said, "Spying on them is one thing; dropping 2,000-pound bombs on their heads is another."
The Pentagon's plan may also face internal, cultural impediments. As one Pentagon official said, the long-standing view of many in the military has been that the fastest course to advancement is to be a "trigger-puller," that is, directly involved in the execution of offensive operations. Traditionally, military intelligence assignments have been considered career detours.
The detours could last a decade or longer if recruits for the new program are required to undergo intelligence training and language training and then be stationed for years in a far-off locale, the minimum time commitment required to master cultural nuances and become an effective spy.
While Pentagon officials said the program is still in the planning stages, the Defense Intelligence Agency is already making other changes to raise its profile in the war on terrorism. The agency is recruiting a new contingent of counter-terrorism analysts who have special forces training, enabling them to work alongside commando units as they execute missions.
Special Forces units have always had intelligence officers in their ranks, but the new analysts are said to be equipped to link directly to national intelligence centers in suburban Virginia using secure satellite communications and other technologies.
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Reuters
EU Backs Single Patent in Competitive Drive
Mon Mar 3,12:32 PM ET
By Lisa Jucca
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union (news - web sites) ministers endorsed on Monday plans for a new EU-wide patent system that would halve the cost of registering new inventions as part of moves to boost competitiveness and spur growth.
Ending a 30-year stalemate to get the new system approved, the ministers struck a deal after agreeing they would set up a centralized court for patent decisions by 2010.
Germany, which wanted a greater role for national EU courts, withdrew its objections and backed a planned Community Patent Court after it was granted up until the end of the decade to adapt to the system.
"We have a common approach," Hansjoerg Geiger, German secretary of state for the justice ministry, told reporters at a meeting of EU industry and research ministers.
The EU sees a single system for approving patents as part of efforts to make the 15-nation bloc the world's most competitive economy by 2010. Industry had also wanted simpler procedures.
The issue of the common court was the final point to be resolved. EU member states had also argued over which language should be used for a patent.
The ministers struck a broad agreement, but technical details still have to be worked out before formal adoption of the law expected later this year.
CHEAPER PATENTS
The Commission says a system of EU patents will reduce the cost of getting patent rights for inventions in the bloc to 25,000 euros ($27,040) from 50,000 euros.
Although this would still be more than twice the cost of a patent in the United States, the EU sees the planned move as a positive step.
"The single patent is an essential element of competitiveness," said Noelle Lenoir, French EU affairs minister. Technology advocates have long called for a revision of the EU patenting system, arguing that the current relatively cumbersome procedure creates a competitive disadvantage for EU firms, particularly for young technology companies.
"Anything that streamlines the patent process is good for innovation. And anything that speeds up innovation is good for the technology sector," said Chris Lewis, a technology analyst with Yankee Group.
The language row which had held up the patent proposal was agreed last year. Under the new system only the patent's claims, the part of the document which describes use and function, will be translated in all 11 EU official languages.
The rest of the document will be translated in English, German or French. Translation fees make up the bulk of the costs for patenting inventions in the EU.
The Commission, which drafted the planned bill, was against a long transition period for the new court as it wanted to see the single patent system and the court kick off at the same time.
EU officials said they did not expect the system to be up and running before 2010, the same time as the court, and not considered a long transition period. (Additional reporting by Bernhard Warner in London) ($1=.9247 Euro)
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Associated Press
Man Guilty in Internet-Related Killing
Mon Mar 3, 7:52 PM ET
DANBURY, Conn. - A man accused of strangling a 13-year-old girl he met on the Internet pleaded guilty Monday to manslaughter and sexual assault.
Saul Dos Reis, 25, entered an Alford plea, meaning he did not admit guilt but conceded the state has enough evidence to convict him of strangling Christina Long on May 17, 2002.
The Brazilian (news - web sites) national has said that he strangled the girl accidentally while they were having rough sex in his car after he picked her up at a mall.
Police said the two met in an Internet chat room. The case led to a push in Congress for a kids-only domain on the Web.
"He's not doing well. He looked like hell," defense attorney James Lenihan said of his client. "His appearance reflected the emotional turmoil and the complete and utter devastation this has wrought on him."
Dos Reis faces a maximum 30 years in prison; he could have been sentenced to as many as 50 years if he had been convicted at trial.
He still faces federal charges of using the Internet to entice a minor into a sexual act and traveling across state lines to have sex with a minor.
Lenihan said he hasn't started negotiating a plea in the federal case.
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Associated Press
H&R Block Jabs at TurboTax Software
Tue Mar 4, 4:37 AM ET
By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Business Writer
SAN FRANCISCO - After pulling its punches for months, H&R Block Inc. has unleashed an ad campaign jabbing at a sore spot in the TurboTax software made by rival Intuit Inc.
While trying to boost sales of its own TaxCut program, Block is taking aim at an anti-piracy feature Intuit recently attached to its top-selling TurboTax programs that triggered a customer backlash.
In hundreds of online postings, consumers have railed against TurboTax's new product activation requirement for shackling the program's printouts to a single computer and secretly installing a security measure that consumes a computer's memory.
As part of its effort to placate offended customers, Mountain View-based Intuit recently pledged to make product activation less controversial next year.
But Kansas City, Mo.-based Block is trying to keep the product activation issue in the limelight with a marketing push on the Internet and in stores where the TurboTax and TaxCut are sold.
The ads emphasize that Block's TaxCut programs don't require product activation and can be easily used on multiple computers. Block's TurboTax barbs include an ad that declares, "Your tax software should instill confidence. Not install controversy."
Block is going on the offensive as the tax-filing season shifts into high gear. The company believes TurboTax's product activation is prodding disenchanted customers to consider alternatives, said Chrys Sullivan, Block's director of software products.
The mudslinging approach represents a change in tone.
When consumers first began complaining about TurboTax's product activation feature, Block refrained from criticism and even suggested it might adopt similar anti-piracy measures next year.
Block no longer is considering that possibility, Sullivan said, because "not having product activation has played well with the public."
Intuit believes the product activation outcry has died down and will fade entirely after the company fine tunes the feature next year.
"The concerns will all be put to rest," said Intuit spokesman Scott Gulbransen.
There's little indication the complaints about TurboTax have hurt Intuit so far.
In January, TurboTax Deluxe the nation's most popular tax preparation program held a 31.5 percent share of retail sales, up from 28.6 percent last year, according to NPD Group, a research firm.
Meanwhile, the market share of Block's TaxCut Deluxe fell from 14.2 percent in January 2002 to 13.9 percent in January 2003, NPD said.
Block paints a much different picture, drawing upon a broader range of confidential statistics provided to the company by NPD.
Based on retail sales of all TaxCut programs from Nov. 17 through Jan. 31, Block said its market share had climbed from 28.4 percent last year to 30.4 percent. TurboTax's total market share during the same period fell from 71.2 percent last year to 69.6 percent this year, Block said.
Investors are more interested in another number Intuit's revenue from TurboTax sales. In the company's most recent quarter ending Jan. 31, TurboTax generated $95 million, an 11 percent increase from the previous year.
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Government Executive
March 3, 2003
FAA computer specialist files complaint against union
By Tanya N. Ballard
A computer specialist at the Federal Aviation Administration has accused the National Air Traffic Controllers Association of failing to represent its members.
In February, Joe Coonce, a computer specialist in FAA?s Logistics Division, asked the Federal Labor Relations Authority to investigate NATCA?s actions to secure a governmentwide pay raise for information technology workers represented by the union.
When the Office of Personnel Management announced the IT pay raise two years ago to help agencies fill entry-level positions at lower grades, FAA did not automatically give the raise to its eligible employees when it took effect in January 2001. FAA officials contended that unions must negotiate for the pay raise because the agency?s pay system does not fall under the General Schedule. When FAA announced its position, Coonce, who is a member of NATCA, said he asked the association to file a grievance against the agency.
?At that time NATCA advised me that ? there was no reason for us to attempt it, that they would attempt to bargain raises during pay negotiations,? Coonce said.
But while NATCA decided to address the issue in negotiations, the Professional Airways Systems Specialists (PASS) union, which represents a group of computer specialists at the agency, proceeded to file a grievance on behalf of its members in February 2001. After much wrangling, PASS in September 2002 won the raise for its members retroactive to Jan. 2001. In its decision, FLRA said nothing in the law prevented FAA from giving eligible employees the IT pay raise.
?When PASS won the arbitration and subsequent appeals, I again repeatedly asked that NATCA file this grievance, and get its members the raise,? Coonce said. ?This is a separate issue from any negotiations, since we should receive this raise without the benefit of negotiation, as stated in the PASS decision. Also any raise or decision made in negotiations would do nothing about any back pay.?
When NATCA officials again declined to address the IT pay raise issue through the grievance process, Coonce filed a complaint with FLRA alleging that NATCA was ?derelict in its responsibilities to its members.?
?This charge is based on two issues,? Coonce said. The first was for ?not filing the grievance when the opportunity first presented itself? and the second was ?that by continuing to make this issue a pay negotiation item, they are giving the agency too much leverage.?
According to NATCA spokesman Doug Church, union officials are working hard to negotiate a contract that covers the pay raise, as well as other issues affecting its IT members.
?NATCA is providing the best representation we know, which is active negotiation at the bargaining table,? Church said. ?We stress patience, because we are in contract negotiations on the very things that he is bringing to light here.?
The complaint is pending.
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Computerworld
Major Internet vulnerability discovered in e-mail protocol
By DAN VERTON
MARCH 03, 2003
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been working in secret for more than two weeks with the private sector to fix a major Internet vulnerability that could have had disastrous consequences for millions of businesses and the U.S. military.
Since early December, the DHS and the White House Office of Cyberspace Security have been working with Atlanta-based Internet Security Systems Inc. (ISS) to alert IT vendors and the business community about a major buffer-overflow vulnerability in the sendmail mail-transfer agent (MTA).
Sendmail is the most common MTA and handles 50% to 75% of all Internet e-mail traffic. Versions of the software, from 5.79 to 8.12.7, are vulnerable, according to an ISS alert issued publicly today.
According to sources familiar with the investigation, ISS discovered the vulnerability on Dec. 1. It contacted the homeland security officials on Dec. 5, who began alerting IT vendors that distribute sendmail, including Sun Microsystems Inc., IBM, Hewlett-Packard Co. and Silicon Graphics Inc., as well as the Sendmail Consortium, the organization that develops the open-source version of sendmail that is distributed with both free and commercial operating systems. Those vendors were told of the flaw on Jan. 13. The seriousness of the vulnerability, coupled with the fact that the hacker community wasn't yet aware of it, led the government and ISS to decide it was better to keep the news under wraps until patches could be developed.
The Sendmail Consortium is urging all users to upgrade to Sendmail 8.12.8 or apply a patch for 8.12.x or for older versions. Updates can be downloaded from ftp.sendmail.org or any of its mirrors, or from the Sendmail Consortium's Web site. The consortium said patch users should remember to check the Pretty Good Privacy signatures of any patches or releases obtained. It also suggested that users running the open-source version of sendmail check with their vendors for a patch.
Emeryville, Calif.-based Sendmail Inc., the commercial provider of the sendmail MTA, is providing a binary patch for its commercial customers that can be downloaded from its Web site at: www.sendmail.com/.
"The Remote Sendmail Header Processing Vulnerability allows local and remote users to gain almost complete control of a vulnerable Sendmail server," according to an alert prepared today by the DHS. "Attackers gain the ability to execute privileged commands using super-user (root) access/control. This vulnerability can be exploited through a simple e-mail message containing malicious code.
"System administrators should be aware that many Sendmail servers are not typically shielded by perimeter defense applications" such as firewalls, warned the DHS alert, which hadn't yet been made publicly available as of midafternoon. "A successful attacker could install malicious code, run destructive programs and modify or delete files."
In addition, attackers could gain access to other systems through a compromised sendmail server, depending on local configurations, according to the DHS warning.
According to ISS, the sendmail remote vulnerability occurs when processing and evaluating header fields in e-mail collected during a Simple Mail Transfer Protocol transaction. Specifically, when fields are encountered that contain addresses or lists of addresses (such as the "From" field, "To" field and "CC" field), sendmail attempts to semantically evaluate whether the supplied address or list of addresses is valid. This is accomplished using the crackaddr() function, which is located in the headers.c file in the sendmail source tree.
A static buffer is used to store data that has been processed. Sendmail detects when this buffer becomes full and stops adding characters, although it continues processing. Sendmail implements several security checks to ensure that characters are parsed correctly. One such security check is flawed, making it possible for a remote attacker to send an e-mail with a specially crafted address field that triggers a buffer overflow.
"Sendmail's vulnerability offers a legitimate test [of the new DHS and its ability to work with the private sector] because sendmail handles a large amount of Internet mail traffic and is installed on at least 1.5 million Internet-connected systems," said an alert from the SANS Institute in Bethesda, Md., that was obtained by Computerworld today. "More than half of the large ISPs and Fortune 500 companies use sendmail, as do tens of thousands of other organizations. A security hole in sendmail affects a lot of people and demands their immediate attention."
Of particular concern to the White House was the potential vulnerability of the U.S. military, which is poised to begin offensive military operations in Iraq and is simultaneously facing the possibility of conflict on the Korean peninsula. As a result, early versions of available patches were distributed first to U.S. military organizations on Feb. 25 and 26, according to the SANS alert. The advance military alert was followed last Thursday and Friday with alerts to various government organizations in the U.S. and around the world, including the Information Sharing and Analysis Centers (ISAC).
"Some of the large commercial vendors developed patches very quickly. But the delayed notice to smaller sources of sendmail distributions and limited resources at those organizations meant that not all the patches would be ready by early in the week of February 23," according to the SANS analysis of the public/private response effort.
A senior-level coordination group of government and private-sector experts then decided, based on a review of cyberintelligence from various hacker discussion boards and a series of sensors deployed around the world by ISS, that it was safe to wait until all the patches were available before alerting the general business and Internet community to the vulnerability.
Beginning today at 10 a.m. EST, alerts began flowing from the Federal Computer Incident Response Center to federal agencies and from the ISACs to companies responsible for critical infrastructure. At noon EST today, ISS released its own advisory, followed by a general alert from the CERT Coordination Center at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
*******************************
BBC Online
Iranians arrested for net dating
March 4, 2003
Dozens of young Iranians have been detained for "unlawful actions" after using a website to arrange dates, officials say.
A militia commander said 68 men and women were arrested in the capital Tehran, according to a report by Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency (Irna).
The Basij militia also detained the operators of the dating website, Irna said.
Correspondents say the Basij enforce Iran's strict morality laws and often raid mixed parties and gatherings, but this is the first time an operation against internet users has been reported.
Tip-offs
General Ahmad Rouzbehani told Irna: "Some people were using an internet site to allow girls and boys to talk and arrange meetings in a place in north Tehran where they had illegal relations."
He said the young people may have been duped and added that the "matchmakers" were also arrested and handed to judiciary officials.
Computers, satellite dishes and CDs were also seized in a series of raids prompted by tip-offs to the morality police, General Rouzbehani told the news agency.
He asked families to be "more sensitive to the use of the internet by their children and to prevent from their deviation by advising them, given the expansion of the [internet] facilities in the society".
Free speech
Official figure show about 3% of Tehran residents have access to the internet.
Most people use net cafes to go online as there are only a handful of internet service providers in the country.
Internet chat rooms provide a way for youngsters to talk freely about taboo subjects such as sex.
Over the past year, there has been a big rise in the number of Persian weblogs, online journals where cyber-diarists let the world in on their lives.
There are more than 1,200 Persian blogs, which focus largely on social rather than political issues, such as the opposite sex, music and films.
*******************************
Federal Computer Week
DOD issues more IA instructions
BY Matthew French
Feb. 27, 2003
The Pentagon recently issued the second part of its information assurance (IA) policy that sets guidelines on using Defense Department networks.
DOD Instruction 8500.2 sets forth implementation of the rules and policies in Directive 8500.1, which was issued in late October 2002.
The directive calls for the different agencies within DOD to protect its data as it is shared across the Global Information Grid (GIG). Instruction 8500.2, dated Feb. 6, "implements policy, assigns responsibilities, and prescribes procedures for applying integrated, layered protection of the DOD information systems and networks."
"The Department of Defense has a crucial responsibility to protect and defend its information and supporting information technology," the 8500.2 policy states. "Factors that contribute to its vulnerability include increased reliance on commercial [IT] and services; increased complexity and risk propagation through interconnection; the extremely rapid pace of technological change; a distributed and nonstandard management structure; and the relatively low cost of entry for adversaries."
Donald Jones, a member of the IA Directorate for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence, said 8500.2 offers the different parts of DOD the guidance necessary to implement the rule in 8500.1.
DOD Directive 8500.1 makes it departmentwide policy for IA requirements to be identified and included in the design, acquisition, installation, operation, upgrade and replacement of all DOD information systems.
"The guidance [8500.1] was developed largely in response to changing security needs brought about by DOD's growing dependence on interconnected information systems, particularly desktop computer networks, and increased concern about the protection of unclassified but sensitive information," according to a DOD spokesperson.
8500.2 indicates the Defense IA program is predicated upon five essential competencies that ensure a successful risk management program, which include:
* The ability to assess security needs and capabilities.
* The ability to develop a purposeful security design or configuration that adheres to a common architecture and maximizes the use of common services.
* The ability to implement required controls or safeguards.
* The ability to test and verify.
* The ability to manage changes to an established baseline securely.
*******************************
Federal Computer Week
Bush touts DHS' interoperability
BY Judi Hasson
Feb. 28, 2003
President Bush officially launched the Homeland Security Department on Friday, promising cooperation and interoperability for the 22 federal agencies being folded into it.
At a Washington, D.C. ceremony marking the March 1 opening of DHS -- the largest reorganization of the federal government in 50 years -- Bush promised a united defense because "oceans no longer protect America from the dangers of the world."
"Every member of this new department accepts an essential mission -- to prevent another terrorist attack," Bush told Cabinet members and federal workers involved in homeland defense. "Yours is a vital and important step in reorganizing the government to meet the threats of a new era as we continue to work to secure this country."
Bush said the agencies joining the department will retain their long-standing responsibilities, but there will be information-sharing and interacting among agencies with the goal of preventing another terrorist attack.
The department will house a Terrorist Threat Integration Center that will integrate and analyze all threat information collected domestically and abroad. It will also include a science and technology directorate that will develop ways to detect weapons of mass destruction, he said.
"As these technologies are deployed, border inspectors will have better tools to intercept dangerous materials before they enter our country," Bush said. "Emergency services personnel will be able to identify biological or chemical weapons and agents so they can use the most effective decontamination methods available."
As part of the effort to detect biological threats, the department is deploying early warning sensors around the country to help detect potential biological attacks.
Beginning March 1, the Transportation Security Administration, the Customs Service, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and parts of the Immigration and Naturalization Service will be integrated into the Bureau of Customs and Border Control to protect the nation's borders because "we need to know who's coming in and who's going out of our country."
"And I will be issuing a directive ordering the establishment of a unified national incident management system. The system will provide government agencies with common procedures and standards for preparing and responding to emergencies," Bush said.
*******************************
Government Computer News
03/03/03
Weakness endangers Net e-mail
By William Jackson
Staff Writer
Security experts today announced the availability of patches to fix what is being called a critical vulnerability in the world?s most popular e-mail transfer agent.
The vulnerability affects both open-source and commercial versions of the Sendmail Mail Transfer Agent, which is installed on more than 1.5 million systems connected to the Internet and has been reported to handle from 50 percent to 75 percent of Internet e-mail traffic.
Since the buffer overflow flaw was discovered Dec. 1 by researchers at Internet Security Systems Inc. of Atlanta, developers and distributors of the software have worked to create software patches.
Patches are available for open source versions at www.sendmail.org and for commercial versions from www.sendmail.com and from other vendors.
At the time of today?s announcement, no evidence had been found that an exploit for the vulnerability had been created. But security experts urged fast action to fix the flaw.
?Sendmail is too big a target for attackers to ignore, so it makes sense to act immediately to protect your systems,? the SANS Institute of Bethesda, Md., said in a statement.
The vulnerability was the first test of the cyberresponse capabilities of the new Homeland Security Department. HSD and White House officials helped coordinate the response, according to ISS.
The vulnerability is in a security check used by Sendmail to validate addresses, either ?to? or ?from,? in e-mail header fields. A specially malformed address could trigger a buffer overflow and give an attacker root access to affected servers. Sendmail versions from 5.79 to the current 8.12.7 are vulnerable.
Effects of a successful attack could be extreme latency or unavailability of affected servers and compromised data integrity in incoming and outgoing traffic.
Sendmail advises users either to upgrade to Version 8.12.8 or to apply the appropriate patch to the earlier versions.
ISS notified the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center (now a part of Homeland Security) Dec. 5. It began coordinating with federal agencies, including the White House Office of Homeland Security and HSD on Feb. 7. Major Sendmail distributors, including Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM Corp., the Sendmail Consortium, SGI and Sun Microsystems Inc., began working on fixes. On the federal side, the Defense Department, Federal CIO Council, Federal Computer Incident Response Team, and Office of Management and Budget were added to the coordinating team.
The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project has assigned the identifier CAN-2002-1337 to the vulnerability, which is being evaluated for inclusion in the CVE list on the Web at cve.mitre.org.
Original plans called for announcing the vulnerability last week, but some smaller developers and distributors had not completed work on patches. Because monitoring of hacker chats showed no discussion of an exploit for the vulnerability and sensors detected no exploits in the wild, the announcement was delayed until today.
Information on the vulnerability is available at www.fedcirc.gov, at www.cert.org/advisories/CA-2003-07.html and www.iss.net.
*******************************
Government Executive
March 3, 2003
Elimination of cybersecurity board concerns tech industry
By Bara Vaida, National Journal's Technology Daily
An executive order that President Bush issued on Friday shifted a portion of the White House's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board to the Homeland Security Department, leaving high-tech groups unsure who in the administration will specifically oversee cybersecurity.
The board, which drafted the national cybersecurity strategy, and the position of White House special adviser on cybersecurity were officially dissolved, spurring high-tech representatives to furiously lobby the administration to ensure that one individual will be specially tasked to work on cybersecurity.
"We got assurances that cybersecurity remains a priority ... but it isn't clear as of today who will be in charge," said Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America, who noted that the "Slammer" computer worm recently caused $1 billion in damage to the economy and that hackers last month used the Internet to steal credit-card information on 8 million individuals. "More so than ever before, we need a strong advocate for cybersecurity in Washington, D.C."
Tiffany Olson, who has been deputy chief of staff at the board, said its operations and implementation portions are being shifted to the information analysis and infrastructure protection division in the Homeland Security Department. The board is to be merged with the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Board, the Commerce Department's Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office, the General Service Administration's FedCirc and several other small agencies focused on physical and cybersecurity.
Olson said the new division would be in charge of implementing the national cybersecurity plan and will serve as the "focal point" on cybersecurity in the government. "We believe that the special adviser role will be moved to [the department], but it won't disappear," she said.
Cybersecurity policy will continue to be coordinated by the White House within the new Homeland Security Council, which was created to replace the White House Office of Homeland Security, she said. The council is a "peer" group to the existing National Security Council and is structured like that entity, Olson said, adding that there will be "a group of experts" at the Homeland Security Council focused on both physical and cyber infrastructure policy.
Richard Clarke was Bush's cybersecurity adviser from October 2001 until he left the post last month for the private sector. Howard Schmidt replaced Clarke in the interim, but it is not clear what job Schmidt will take in the administration. Olson said "no individual positions have been identified at this point."
Mario Correa, director of Internet and network security policy at the Business Software Alliance, said that while the cybersecurity adviser's position remains unclear, the industry will continue to lobby the administration about the "wisdom" of having one person with the ear of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge to focus on cybersecurity.
*******************************
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ACM TechNews
Volume 5, Number 452
Date: January 31, 2003
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Top Stories for Friday, January 31, 2003:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html
"Consortium Pushes for Cybersecurity R&D"
"In Net Attacks, Defining the Right to Know"
"Bush Proposes Antiterror Database Plan"
"A Big Test for Linux"
"Dispute Could Silence VoiceXML"
"Total Information Awareness: Down, But Not Out"
"The Lord of the Webs"
"Project Seeks to Balance Power, Performance in Embedded Computers"
"Standard May Boost Chip Bandwidth"
"The Apache of the Future"
"Security Clearinghouse Under the Gun"
"Uniting with Only a Few Random Links"
"Red Light, Green Light: A 2-Tone L.E.D. to Simplify Screens"
"IEEE 802.16 Spec Could Disrupt Wireless Landscape"
"Why Voice over IP Is on Hold"
"No Hiding Place"
"Intelligent Storage"
"Recycling Tax Plan for PCs Due for Debate"
"Building the Nanofuture with Carbon Tubes"
******************* News Stories ***********************
"Consortium Pushes for Cybersecurity R&D"
The Institute for Information Infrastructure Protection (I3P), a
consortium of 23 security research institutions funded by the
National Institute of Standards and Technology, released a report
Thursday in which it recommended that the U.S. government and ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0131f.html#item1
"In Net Attacks, Defining the Right to Know"
Last weekend's Slammer worm attack and the network slowdowns its
caused rekindled a number of controversial issues among security
experts, most notably the responsibility of companies to publicly
disclose hacker intrusions to consumers. Few security breaches ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0131f.html#item2
"Bush Proposes Antiterror Database Plan"
In the latest move by the White House to boost data-sharing
between U.S. police and spy agencies, President Bush used
Tuesday's State of the Union Address to announce the Terrorist
Threat Integration Center (TTIC), a government database that ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0131f.html#item3
"A Big Test for Linux"
SCO Group's Jan. 22 announcement that it will create a licensing
division and recruit lawyer David Boies to investigate and
protect its intellectual property has stirred up worry within the
Linux and open-source communities. At stake are SCO-owned Unix ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0131f.html#item4
"Dispute Could Silence VoiceXML"
The VoiceXML 2.0 specification is nearly ready, as evidenced by
the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) candidate recommendation
issued on Wednesday. However, the standard's implementation
could be hindered because of an intellectual property dispute. ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0131f.html#item5
"Total Information Awareness: Down, But Not Out"
The development of the Total Information Awareness (TIA) system
may have hit a snag with the Senate's unanimous decision that the
Defense Department conduct a cost-benefit analysis in order to
study the project's potential impact on Americans' privacy and ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0131f.html#item6
"The Lord of the Webs"
World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee has been working on a new
schema for the Internet called the Semantic Web for the past four
years. As head of the World Wide Web Consortium based at MIT, he
coordinates scientific research and standards-setting for the ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0131f.html#item7
"Project Seeks to Balance Power, Performance in Embedded Computers"
Virginia Tech computer and engineering professor Sandeep Shukla
intends to develop strategies for optimizing performance and
power usage in embedded computers. He says embedded computers
already are pervasive in our everyday lives and that they will ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0131f.html#item8
"Standard May Boost Chip Bandwidth"
The HyperTransport 2.0 specification, which will be incorporated
into Advanced Micro Devices' (AMD) upcoming Opteron and Athlon 64
processors, is expected to be released by the HyperTransport
Consortium in late 2003 or early 2004, according to consortium ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0131f.html#item9
"The Apache of the Future"
Groups using the Apache Web Server to run their Web sites are
unlikely to move quickly toward the new 2.0 version because the
1.3 version works fine and has more robust module support. Dirk
Elmendorf of Rackspace Managed Hosting says version 1.3 has all ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0131f.html#item10
"Security Clearinghouse Under the Gun"
NGS Software managing director David Litchfield fired off an
email this week sharply criticizing Carnegie Mellon's Computer
Emergency Response Team (CERT) Coordination Center for what he
terms "a betrayal of trust" in its disclosure of security ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0131f.html#item11
"Uniting with Only a Few Random Links"
Gyorgy Korniss of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is conducting
research that could yield significantly improved
parallel-computing simulation methods by employing "small-world"
networking. Scientists often use large-scale computer networks ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0131f.html#item12
"Red Light, Green Light: A 2-Tone L.E.D. to Simplify Screens"
A surprise discovery by University of Amsterdam graduate student
Steve Welter may lead to simpler and more flexible displays.
While testing experimental organic light-emitting polymers
(OLEDs) created at Philips Research under the direction of ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0131f.html#item13
"IEEE 802.16 Spec Could Disrupt Wireless Landscape"
An IEEE committee researching the 802.16 wireless
metropolitan-area network (MAN) specification has approved that
technology for use in the 2- to 11-GHz range. Committee chairman
and National Institute of Standards and Technology wireless ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0131f.html#item14
"Why Voice over IP Is on Hold"
The slow adoption of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)
technology in the enterprise can be attributed to various
factors, according to experts. One of them is the economic
slump, while another is little awareness of the technology's ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0131f.html#item15
"No Hiding Place"
A surveillance-based society is emerging, thanks to people's
increasing access to the Internet and the proliferation and
advancement of technologies that can be monitored or are used for
monitoring, including digital cameras, face-recognition software, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0131f.html#item16
"Intelligent Storage"
Storage devices imbued with intelligence, also known as
object-based storage devices (OSDs), allow for limitless system
scalability since they assume the low-level storage management
duties previously completed by the storage server. Because those ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0131f.html#item17
"Recycling Tax Plan for PCs Due for Debate"
In an effort to promote the recycling of electronic waste, Rep.
Mike Thompson (D-Calif.) will likely introduce a bill next month
that adds a maximum recycling tax of $10 to the purchase price of
PCs, laptops, and monitors, according to aides. The EPA would ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0131f.html#item18
"Building the Nanofuture with Carbon Tubes"
Carbon nanotubes offer many potential applications that run the
gamut from flat-panel displays to super-strong fabrics to fuel
cells to synthetic muscles, but the emergence and growth of the
nanotube industry will depend on the development of a simple and ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0131f.html#item19
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