Clips February 7, 2003

[Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>]

Clips February 7, 2003

Patent scare hits streaming industry 
Bush Orders Guidelines for Cyber-Warfare 
Bush Data-Mining Plan in Hot Seat  
Progress Seen in Border Tests of ID System
Web Magazine Retracts Virus Hoax Story [Computerworld]
Journalist perpetrates online terror hoax
2 Nabbed in U.K. in Internet Worm Probe 
Calif. Man Charged with Hacking ViewSonic System
Alleged Student Hacker Indicted in Massachusetts
Chronicle of Higher Education
Valenti's Views [Piracy]

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Patent scare hits streaming industry 
By John Borland 
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
February 6, 2003, 4:00 AM PT

Michael Roe, proprietor of the small RadioIO Webcasting station, got a surprise FedEx package this week, containing a notification that he was violating patents owned by a company he'd never heard of. 

That's not uncommon in the technology world--the surprise was the scope of the claims. The sender, a company called Acacia Media Technologies, said it owned patents on the process of transmitting compressed audio or video online, one of the most basic multimedia technologies on the Net. 

Roe, who recently finished fighting an expensive legislative battle over copyright fees for the music his station plays, was flabbergasted. Acacia only wanted three-quarters of a percent of his revenue, but every bit hurts at this point, he said. 


"It's extortion," Roe said. "It's just another example of someone seeking to extend patents for an old technology to...cover completely new technology. It's absurd." 

This week's letter to RadioIO is just a small part of an expanding licensing campaign by Acacia, which confidently says it holds sweeping patents likely to cover the activities of a huge swath of Internet multimedia companies, ranging from Microsoft to America Online. They could even cover pay-per-view movies on cable TV and in hotel rooms. On Wednesday, the company signed up its latest licensee, Mexican satellite telecommunications company Grupo Pegaso. 

Bold patent claims on seemingly generic software ideas or business practices are an increasingly common part of the technology landscape. But there is reason to take Acacia seriously. Radio Free Virgin, the online music division of Richard Branson's Virgin corporation, said it agreed to license the technology late last year after a careful legal review. 

Zack Zalon, general manager of Virgin's Net radio site, says he gets wheelbarrows full of patent claims on a routine basis. This was the first one he and his attorneys took seriously enough to sign a license. 

"We did research on the claims and found that they were pretty clear--somewhat broad, but specific enough to cover us," Zalon said. "We realized that they were tight enough that a license would be substantially less expensive in the long run than litigation." 

Indeed, patent experts say, those are the ground rules for a game that is being played with increasing frequency online and elsewhere, as more companies attempt to turn intellectual property into royalties in a time of economic malaise. 

A rash of instances in which seemingly basic Web technologies and practices have been subject to patent claims has come up over the past year. Telecommunications giant SBC Communications is claiming rights to Web site "frames." Another company says it has rights to the e-commerce site staple known as the shopping cart. And a myriad of Web streaming and multimedia patents have surfaced in recent years, ranging from SightSound Technology's claim to hold rights in the process of selling downloadable music to Intouch Group's claim to patents on putting snippets of music on Web sites as samples. 

"I'm seeing a lot more of it," said Rich Belgard, an independent patent consultant. "With the economy the way it is, you see a lot more people trying to leverage their intellectual property. It's one of the few ways left that people can actually make money." 

With a well-funded legal team, years of experience and research, and an apparently solid set of patents, Acacia appears to be making one of the most daunting of these recent efforts. 

Up the stream without a paddle
Acacia Media Technologies is part of a larger corporation called Acacia Research, which holds intellectual property in several areas. One of its subsidiaries owns critical technology used in the television content-blocking V-Chip and last year alone earned close to $25 million in royalties from that side of the business. 

The company's digital media strategy began in earnest several years ago. It had determined that it owned about a third of the patents it needed to mount a licensing strategy for Web streaming, and its attorneys spent considerable time researching the rights held by another set of companies that Acacia ultimately purchased in 2001. By the time Acacia finished, it owned five U.S. patents and 17 international patents dating back to 1991. 

"We spent an enormous amount of time doing prior art searches in the U.S., Europe and Japan," said Robert Berman, Acacia's general counsel. Prior art is a patent term that means someone else has already invented the process, barring another party from winning or enforcing a patent. "We did a tremendous amount of research on these patents' enforceability." 

Once the company felt certain it had its legal ducks in a row, it started writing letters. According to Berman, the patents could affect virtually anyone involved in the business of providing on-demand digital audio or video, from software companies to network service providers to the actual content companies. However, Acacia initially decided to contact solely content providers, reasoning that they were the ones with end-customer billing relationships, and would provide recurring revenue streams. 

Its first targets, beginning late last year, were adult Web sites. It sent letters similar to the one RadioIO received this week to 27 pornography-related sites, asking companies to take out licenses worth 1 percent to 2 percent of the streaming-related revenue. The adult companies were shocked and banded together to find strategies to combat Acacia's claims. 

Berman said a few of the companies have signed licenses, but others are holding out. The company is about to initiate patent infringement suits against several of these holdouts, he said. 

The next step was Web companies. Radio Free Virgin was one of the first. That company signed a license Dec. 20. RadioIO got its letter this week. Berman said other letters have gone out to companies large and small, although he would neither confirm nor deny whether Acacia has tried to tap larger players such as America Online, RealNetworks or Microsoft. 

Berman said the company is about to approach cable companies that provide digital or digitized pay-per-view services. 

RealNetworks, one of the earliest companies associated with streaming, declined to comment specifically on Acacia's claims. 

 From this point on, much will depend on the courts. A patent lawsuit could cost millions of dollars in litigation fees, and many companies--like Virgin--may find it simpler to pay Acacia than to challenge its claims. Acacia says it provides all the information it can to ensure that people can make that choice rationally. 

"This it what it is, and we're willing to tell people what we have, so they can make a decision," Berman said. "This is not a scam. We're not holding people up." 

Outside observers say Acacia's strategy of taking adult sites to court first is deliberate. Those sites are likely to fight the claim, but don't have the resources of Microsoft or RealNetworks to pour into patent litigation. Should Acacia win, a court judgment will make it easier for it to persuade the larger, more profitable companies to sign their own licenses. 

An attorney for Helio.net, a company helping to organize the adult sites, did not return calls for comment. 

Nevertheless, a court strategy is always risky. Judges and juries have been known to throw out overbroad patents before, and legal teams on the defense often spend considerably more time than the overworked United States Patent and Trademark Office in researching possible previous inventions that would invalidate a patent. 

"All patents can be challenged," Belgard said. "I think there are many Internet patents that can and should be challenged and invalidated."
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Washington Post
Bush Orders Guidelines for Cyber-Warfare 
Rules for Attacking Enemy Computers Prepared as U.S. Weighs Iraq Options 
By Bradley Graham
Friday, February 7, 2003; Page A01 


President Bush has signed a secret directive ordering the government to develop, for the first time, national-level guidance for determining when and how the United States would launch cyber-attacks against enemy computer networks, according to administration officials.

Similar to strategic doctrine that has guided the use of nuclear weapons since World War II, the cyber-warfare guidance would establish the rules under which the United States would penetrate and disrupt foreign computer systems. 

The United States has never conducted a large-scale, strategic cyber-attack, according to several senior officials. But the Pentagon has stepped up development of cyber-weapons, envisioning a day when electrons might substitute for bombs and allow for more rapid and less bloody attacks on enemy targets. Instead of risking planes or troops, military planners imagine soldiers at computer terminals silently invading foreign networks to shut down radars, disable electrical facilities and disrupt phone services.

Bush's action highlights the administration's keen interest in pursuing a new form of weaponry that many specialists say has great potential for altering the means of waging war, but that until now has lacked presidential rules for deciding the circumstances under which such attacks would be launched, who should authorize and conduct them and what targets would be considered legitimate.

"We have capabilities, we have organizations; we do not yet have an elaborated strategy, doctrine, procedures," said Richard A. Clarke, who last week resigned as special adviser to the president on cyberspace security.

Bush signed the order, known as National Security Presidential Directive 16, last July but it has not been disclosed publicly until now. The guidance is being prepared amid speculation that the Pentagon is considering some offensive computer operations against Iraq if the president decides to go to war over Baghdad's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons development programs.

"Whatever might happen in Iraq, you can be assured that all the appropriate approval mechanisms for cyber-operations would be followed," said an administration official who declined to confirm or deny whether such planning was underway.

Despite months of discussions involving principally the Pentagon, CIA, FBI and National Security Agency, officials say a number of issues remain far from resolved. "There's been an initial step by the president to say we need to establish broad guidelines," a senior administration official said. "We're trying to be thorough and thoughtful about this. I expect the process will end in another directive, the first of its kind in this area, setting the foundation."

The current state of planning for cyber-warfare has frequently been likened to the early years following the invention of the atomic bomb more than a half-century ago, when thinking about how to wage nuclear war lagged the ability to launch one.

The full extent of the U.S. cyber-arsenal is among the most tightly held national security secrets, even more guarded than nuclear capabilities. Because of secrecy concerns, many of the programs remain known only to strictly compartmented groups, a situation that in the past has inhibited the drafting of general policy and specific rules of engagement.

In a first move last month to consult with experts from outside government, White House officials helped arrange a meeting at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that attracted about 50 participants from academia and industry as well as government. But a number of participants expressed reservations about the United States engaging in cyber-attacks, arguing that the United States' own enormous dependence on computer networks makes it highly vulnerable to counterattack.

"There's a lot of inhibition over doing it," said Harvey M. Sapolsky, an MIT professor who hosted the Jan. 22 session. "A lot of institutions and people are worried about becoming subject to the same kinds of attack in reverse."

Government officials involved in drafting the new policy insist they are proceeding cautiously, recognizing the risks of crossing the threshold into cyber-warfare and acknowledging the difficulties still inherent in trying to model how a major cyber-attack might play out. By penetrating computer systems that control the communications, transportation, energy and other basic services in a country, cyber-weapons can have serious cascading effects, disrupting not only military operations but civilian life.

"There are questions about collateral damage," Clarke said. As an example, he cited the possibility that a computer attack on an electric power grid, intended to pull the plug on military facilities, might end up turning off electricity to hospitals on the same network.

"There also is an issue, frankly, that's similar to the strategic nuclear issue which is: Do you ever want to do it? Do you want to legitimize that kind of weaponry?" Clarke added.

A sign of the Pentagon's commitment to developing cyber-weapons was its decision in 1999 to assign responsibility in this area to a command under a four-star general -- at the time, Space Command, which last year merged into Strategic Command. In addition, a special task force headed by a two-star general has been established to consolidate military planning for offensive as well as defensive computer operations.

Maj. Gen. James David Bryan, who heads the Joint Task Force on Computer Network Operations, said his group has three main missions: to experiment with cyber-weapons in order to better understand their effects; to "normalize" the use of such weapons, treating them "not as a separate entity" but as an integral part of the U.S. arsenal; and to train a professional cadre of military cyber-warriors. 

The Pentagon's general counsel also attempted four years ago to establish some legal boundaries for the military's involvement in computer attack operations, issuing a 50-page document that a senior defense official said in a recent interview remains "the basic primer" on the subject. It advised commanders to apply the same "law of war" principles to computer attacks that they do to the use of bombs and missiles -- namely, the principles of proportionality and discrimination.

This means hitting targets that are of military necessity only, avoiding indiscriminate attacks and minimizing civilian damage. So, for instance, sending a computer virus through the Internet to destroy an enemy network would be ruled out as too blunt a weapon, the senior defense official said.

One challenge that the Pentagon has been facing in exercises simulating computer attacks is getting military commanders to specify just what effects they would hope to achieve with a cyber-weapon.

"In the beginning, when we would ask, 'What do you want us to do for you,' the answer would come back very general," Bryan said. More recently, Bryan added, the stated objectives have become more specific, which has helped in designing more precise cyber-weapons.

Even so, effective and predictable computer attacks depend heavily on detailed intelligence about enemy networks and access to them. For all the heightened attention to cyber-warfare, specialists contend large gaps exist between what the technology promises and what practitioners can deliver.

"This whole area still leaves a lot to the imagination in terms of what can be done," said John P. Casciano, a retired two-star general who supervised Air Force computer operations.

Given the newness of the weapons, their potential power and the uncertainty about how they would work, the Pentagon's Joint Staff has issued classified "rules of engagement" that strictly require top-level approval for any cyber-attack.
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Reuters
Court Rules in Favor of Vote Swap Web Site
Thu Feb 6,10:01 PM ET

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court ruled on Thursday in favor of a Web site that enabled Gore and Nader voters to swap their votes in the 2000 presidential elections. 

San Francisco resident Alan Porter set up a discussion forum, www.votexchange2000.com, two weeks before the 2000 election pitting George W. Bush against Vice President Al Gore (news - web sites) and third-party candidate Ralph Nader (news - web sites). 

That site and others allowed citizens to swap Gore votes in states where Bush was likely to win anyway for the Green party candidate Nader. A Nader supporter in a state with a closer contest would then pledge to vote for Gore in return. Swaps of votes for other candidates were also theoretically possible. 

"Through these discussions, the participants could agree to informally 'swap' their votes, generating additional votes for the Democratic candidate in crucial swing states while allowing the third party candidate to become eligible for federal financing in future elections," the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said in its decision. 

California's Secretary of State Bill Jones wrote to the operator of a similar site to threaten prosecution unless the web page was closed. Porter decided to shut down his site but filed a lawsuit against Jones. 

Porter said his First Amendment rights to freedom of speech had been violated. After a lower court initially dismissed part of the case and ruled against Porter on another claim, the 9th Circuit on Thursday reversed the decision. Another lower court will now reconsider the matter. 

"We conclude that the risk of this kind of First Amendment chill is present here," a panel of three judges wrote in their decision. 

The American Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites) welcomed the decision. 


"We're please that the court's ruling permits us to challenge the legality of the secretary of state's partisan attempt to silence political speech on the Internet during the 2000 election," said Mark Rosenbaum, legal director of the ACLU's southern California office. 
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Wired News
Bush Data-Mining Plan in Hot Seat  
02:00 AM Feb. 06, 2003 PT

Despite assurances by the Bush administration that the Total Information Awareness program would not violate Americans' civil liberties, a broad coalition of grassroots organizations called Wednesday for greater oversight of the experimental data-mining program. 

The Pentagon is developing the TIA in an effort to scour the Internet, as well as public and private databases, for suspicious patterns that might indicate a potential terrorist threat.

Critics say the system would be Big Brother incarnate, a tool that would pry into the medical, financial, travel and educational transactions of law-abiding citizens. Proponents say the electronic dragnet is necessary to protect the United States against future terrorist attacks. 

During a telephone conference with reporters Wednesday, members of groups representing the political spectrum -- from the conservative Eagle Forum to the left-wing American Civil Liberties Union -- united to drum up support for legislation that would withhold funding for the TIA until questions about the program's potential for abuse were addressed. 

"It's totally contrary to the freedoms that the war on terrorism aims to protect," said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). Wyden's amendment -- which blocks funding for the electronic dragnet until the administration submits a detailed report to lawmakers regarding the program's scope and impact on civil liberties -- was unanimously passed by the Senate in January. 

The measure, which was tacked onto a spending package, needs to be adopted by the House before becoming law. 

But some conservative analysts, such as the Heritage Foundation's Paul Rosenzweig, argue the Wyden amendment goes too far. 

In an online analysis, Rosenzweig argues that if the measure becomes law, it could hamper law enforcement efforts to stop future terrorist attacks. 

The press conference also addressed concerns about the creation of a central database that would store citizens' personal transactions and information. 

"The mere gathering of this information is a risk," said Barbara Simons of the Association for Computing Machinery, a nonpartisan international organization with 75,000 members. 

ACM sent a letter to Congress in January questioning the feasibility of the TIA's stated goals. 

Not only would a central database be a potential magnet for hackers, but it could also be targeted by terrorists themselves who are looking to steal an innocent person's identity and mask their own, Simons said. 

Department of Defense officials have consistently said that the TIA will not pose privacy concerns.
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New York Times
February 7, 2003
Progress Seen in Border Tests of ID System
By JENNIFER 8. LEE

NOGALES, Ariz., Feb. 6  Immigration officials say they are moving rapidly to meet a congressionally mandated deadline for a sophisticated new identification system to be in use at its 100 most porous entry points over the next year. 

The system will use ID cards encrypted with digital photos, signatures, biographical information and fingerprints that have been issued by the State Department and the Immigration and Naturalization Service by the millions over the last five years. Until recently, the immigration service has not had the machines to read the information on the cards  a shortcoming that came to light in Congressional hearings into the 2001 terror attacks. The machines cost $8,500 each.

For two months the border agency has been testing 30 machines here and at two other crossing points, in Texas and California, and at three airports. The initial results seemed promising, officials say. For example, they say the machines were not fooled by people with similar appearances, catching 150 people, including a woman using her twin sister's card. "Statistically, it's a very eye-opening number," said Robert Mocny, director of the immigration service's entry-exit program office. 

The machines foiled a variety of sophisticated counterfeit attempts, officials said. Inspectors spotted cards on which the front photograph was changed to match the impostor, but the photograph encrypted in the back was still of the original person. 

Even if the system is perfected and put in place at every crossing, officials acknowledged, it could not prevent every illegal entry because it now only takes into account Mexican citizens, American permanent residents and Canadian residents. 

But the improved identity system will be the largest program using machines to compare detailed measurements of features like fingerprints and facial structure, and would offer a new level of security for the borders, the officials said.

In the push for better security, many government agencies have explored such biometric technologies to identify people with fingerprint matching, facial recognition and iris scanning. But concerns about privacy, rival technology standards and costs have largely mired progress for projects like standardized driver's licenses.

The immigration system, which is required by federal legislation, would be the government's first significant foothold in using machines that track identifying aspects of the human body. Already 15 million people in North America  10 million American green-card holders, 5 million Mexican citizens with special cards allowing regular border crossings and hundreds of thousands of Canadians  have cards, making this program the largest of its type in the world, government officials say.

Each card is much like a driver's license, except it has a 1.4-inch metallic strip that holds digitized information much the way a CD holds data. The cards hold 10,000 times the information on a common magnetic strip on most credit cards.

"Overnight it will be the largest biometric-based border clearance system ever attempted," said Richard Norton of the International Biometric Industry Association.

In addition the program here, the testing is in effect at Los Angeles Airport, Hartsfield International Airport in Atlanta and San Antonio Airport and the land entry points of San Ysidro, Calif., and Falcon Dam, Tex.

Immigration officials say document fraud is the most common way to enter the United States illegally, accounting for about two-thirds of apprehensions. It is common for people to pay dealers in illicit documents a fee to use a border-crossing card and mail it back once across. 

At the Nogales crossing, people walk up to the checkpoint, hand in their cards and place a forefinger on a small fingerprint scanner. 

The machines scan biographical information, photos and fingerprints off the back of the cards. The fingerprints are compared only to a recorded image of the prints on the card, not to a central database of all fingerprints. Inspectors visually compare people's faces with the photos that come on the screen. 

Immigration officials say the special cards store more information and are more difficult to modify illegally than what the industry calls "smart cards," which have computer chips embedded in them.

In May 2002, President Bush signed the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act, which requires the government to define a biometric standard for people entering the country in 2003. By October 2004, the State Department and immigration service can issue only machine-readable documents that include biometric identifiers and all ports of entry must have biometric machine equipment installed. 

More notably, the act requires the immigration service to integrate its databases into a single system that uses the government-defined biometric standard and can be shared with other agencies, such as the State Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. 

The legislation also requires foreign governments to use biometric technology in passports.

The lack of uniform standards across the states has largely stymied efforts to bring biometric technology into common use in the United States. But the push toward computer-encrypted identity cards worries civil liberties groups. 

"With more information systems, there are more opportunities for abuse," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which is pushing the government to release more information on its biometric plans.

Tying identity to the body is a phenomenon less than half a century old in the United States, largely driven by a law enforcement need to distinguish criminals. Until Colorado and California became the first states to put black-and-white photos on driver's licenses in 1958, identity was generally captured on sterile pieces of paper detached from the physical body: birth certificates, Social Security cards and draft cards.

But demand for photo identification has transformed driver's licenses from a public safety credential into the primary identification document in American life. Today, even though they adhere to different standards, a number of states are using biometric technologies such as digital fingerprinting and facial recognition with their driver's licenses. 
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New York Times
February 7, 2003
F.B.I. Recruits Chinese Students in U.S.
By MATT RICHTEL

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is recruiting Chinese students at American universities to gain insight into what it says is an intensified effort by the Chinese government to obtain militarily useful technologies in the United States, according to law enforcement officials.

A senior F.B.I. official said the program was aimed at students and scholars because they were sometimes tapped by the Chinese government to collect information, particularly in nuclear physics and disciplines that could be used to advance military communications, missile tracking and battlefield command and control.

The effort, which the official said had been going on for six months and entailed paying students from China, comes as the F.B.I. seeks to revitalize its battered reputation as a counterintelligence unit in the aftermath of terrorist attacks. 

It reflects the complex, evolving economic relationship between China and the United States, particularly in the area of technology.

China consumes billions of dollars a year in American technology products, and Chinese scholars and entrepreneurs increasingly are the business partners of Americans, making it a serious challenge to discern which technology transfers are legitimate and which constitute a national security threat.

Policy experts say the Chinese government wants to acquire more advanced military technology, particularly in communications.

One F.B.I. official involved with the recruiting of students said there were students acting as agents for the Chinese government  or who might be tapped to do so  who could lend insight into the specific technologies being sought. 

He said students were being paid for providing information, but would not say how much.

"We're not interested in kids taking history or English 101," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "We want lists of students in the nuclear physics program."

The official said the F.B.I. was trying to identify people with access to the directives of the Chinese government who "can tell us where they're focusing their efforts." 

He added that the F.B.I. field offices were also looking for people who "if they go home, or when they go home, would be in a position to assist us."

A second F.B.I. official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said the bureau was making the effort in part because the government was seeing "a more focused, more directed and more prioritized collection effort" to obtain American technology. He said the Chinese were seeking nuclear weapons technology, and advanced military technology to be used for missile systems and electronic warfare.

In a statement responding to questions, the Chinese government said the idea that it was "collecting military, scientific and technological intelligence in the U.S. is sheer fabrication and not worthy of comment."

The two senior F.B.I. officials said most of the tens of thousands of Chinese students and thousands of scholars visiting the United States for conferences and exchanges were not involved in any organized effort to procure technology. 

Further, the officials said much of the technology sought by the Chinese government was not necessarily proprietary, but public information of the type that could easily be found at a university library.

There is nothing new to the assertion that Beijing is directing an effort to obtain advanced technology. Some China scholars are skeptical that the effort has intensified, as the F.B.I. contends.

James Mulvenon, a China scholar with the Rand Corporation, said there was no evidence that the Chinese were involved in some new "vacuum cleaner campaign of technology." Still, he and several other scholars said there was value in government efforts to develop intelligence through Chinese students.

"We need to know more about the linkages between the Chinese military, Chinese government and Chinese industry," Mr. Mulvenon said. One way to go about it, he said, "is to actually talk to the people most strongly wooed by this apparatus  by the Chinese industry, government and military."

Mr. Mulvenon said his research indicated that for the 2001-02 school year, 63,211 Chinese students were in American degree programs. They represent 11 percent of all foreign students in the United States. 

One challenge for the F.B.I., China scholars said, is finding students who already work for the Chinese government, or may do so, to act as sources of information.

"There's a massive Chinese presence in this country," said Nicholas Lardy, a scholar at the Brookings Institution. "To separate those who are here legitimately from those with a government mandate to get a hold of proprietary technology is very difficult."

Richard Bush, also a Brookings Institution scholar, said that he was not familiar with the F.B.I. program, but that the bureau "has not a very good reputation" in terms of counterintelligence, "so one would have to be cautious that this approach is going to be effective." 

He added that the F.B.I. would have to worry about Chinese students "being turned" by the Chinese government and the F.B.I. then "being fed bad information."

A scholar who has discussed the program with the F.B.I., speaking on condition of anonymity, said that in the last year "there has been a very strongly renewed effort" by the F.B.I. to monitor and recruit Chinese students. He said it was "part and parcel of the effort" by the F.B.I. and the Immigration and Naturalization Service "to track all foreign students." 

But he said that in the case of the Chinese, the F.B.I. was approaching students in nuclear physics, aerodynamics, engineering related to missiles or space satellites, nanotechnology, and disciplines related to supercomputers and encryption.

He said the F.B.I., in an effort to establish ties with students, had organized meetings with Chinese student groups on some campuses, seeking to recruit translators.

The F.B.I. official involved in recruiting students said those being sought may or may not already be working for the Chinese government or military. 

The official said the Chinese military might seek to recruit a student to send over scientific information, sometimes seemingly very basic. The Chinese government will tell the student, "get on the university system and e-mail us everything about widgets," the official said. "It's open-source information," he said, but the student "has still done something."

Henry Tang, the co-chairman of the Committee of 100, a Chinese-American institute in Washington, said that whether to cooperate with the F.B.I. "is the decision of the individual student." 

But Mr. Tang, who said he was not familiar with the recruiting program, said he worried about a policy and statements from the F.B.I. that could unfairly cast aspersions on tens of thousands of Chinese students, and Chinese-Americans more generally.
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Associated Press
Web Magazine Retracts Virus Hoax Story 
Fri Feb 7,11:21 AM ET
By JIM KRANE, AP Technology Writer 

NEW YORK - In a bizarre case of one journalist deceiving another, an Internet news site published  then embarrassingly retracted  a story that claimed a radical Islamic group was behind a virus-like attack that clogged the Internet. 


The Web site of Computerworld magazine published on Wednesday an article penned by journalist Dan Verton that he based on an e-mail interview with a person he identified as "Abu Mujahid," a member of Pakistan-based Harkat-ul-Mujahadeen. 


Verton wrote that "Mujahid" claimed the group, believed linked to Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s al-Qaida network, had unleashed the destructive Jan. 25 Internet worm attack. 


A four-year staff writer for Computerworld and a former Marine intelligence analyst, Verton thought he had a scoop and wrote a splashy story that said Harkat had acknowledged releasing "the Slammer worm as part of a 'cyber jihad' aimed at creating fear and uncertainty on the Internet." 


But Mujahid was really Brian McWilliams, 43, a free-lance journalist in Durham, N.H., whose employers include Salon.com and Wired News. 


McWilliams said he had duped Verton because he wanted to teach reporters "to be more skeptical of people who claim they're involved in cyberterrorism." 


Experts have been unable to trace the origin of the so-called Slammer worm and say they have no evidence terrorism was involved. 


McWilliams' online journalism methods created the climate for deception. 


He said he registered the Internet domain name harkatulmujahideen.org  one transliteration of the group's name  for use as a "honeypot" to attract correspondence from Muslim radicals, planning to use messages received as story fodder. 


Traditional journalism ethics dictate that reporters don't misrepresent their identities. McWilliams defended the technique, saying it was "in the grand tradition of undercover reporting."

About three hours after Verton's story appeared on Wednesday evening, Computerworld removed it from the Web site and replaced it with a disclaimer saying it was taken down "due to questions about its authenticity," Editor-in-Chief Maryfran Johnson said. 


The story had also been advertised to 200,000 recipients of Computerworld's daily e-mail, Johnson said. Computerworld is a trade magazine based in Framingham, Mass., and published by International Data Group. 


On Thursday, Computerworld published a new story by Verton titled "Journalist perpetrates online terror hoax." 


Verton, who frequently reports on hacking and computer security, said he fell victim to "an elaborate scheme to dupe security companies and journalists." 


"I feel like I've been had, and that's never an easy thing to swallow," Verton wrote. "So, I'm left here scratching fleas as the price you sometimes pay for sleeping with dogs." 


Not only did McWilliams cloak his true identity, but, McWilliams said, he left a mirrored version of the Web site on a server in Pakistan, and even sought to boost its authenticity by defacing it in an effort to make it appear that pro-U.S. hackers had attacked the site. 


Verton said the hoax was convincing enough that his calls to the FBI (news - web sites)'s National Infrastructure Protection Center turned up no clues to its inauthenticity. 

   



After the story ran on Wednesday, Johnson said she received a call from a friend who reported that McWilliams was bragging on an e-mail list about having tricked Computerworld. 

"I couldn't believe a journalist could do this to another journalist," Johnson said. 

McWilliams said it's he who is incredulous. 

He said he had trouble believing Verton and Computerworld would publish such a story without checking the Web site's registry or his e-mail header information. 

Had they done so, they would have learned that Abu Mujahid was in the United States, not Pakistan. McWilliams said he regrets letting the scheme progress to the point of publication. 

"I wanted to see whether he'd go the extra mile to see who he's dealing with," McWilliams said. "I would've at least asked for a phone number. He didn't ask for any sort of corroboration." 

For the magazine's part, Johnson said the experience was "a real good object lesson" in the risks of e-mail interviews. 

"We've gotten so comfortable with the medium that we forget that," she said. "Every reporter can learn from things like this."
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Associated Press
2 Nabbed in U.K. in Internet Worm Probe 
Fri Feb 7, 5:24 AM ET

LONDON - Two men were arrested Thursday on suspicion of being part of an international group that police blamed for damaging computer systems worldwide through a virus-like Internet worm. 


A 19-year-old electrician was held in Darlington, northeastern England, and a 21-year-old unemployed man was in custody in nearby Durham in an operation involving the U.S. Secret Service, the FBI (news - web sites), the Department of Justice (news - web sites) and Britain's National Hi-Tech Crime Unit. 


Authorities say the two men are part of an international gang of Internet hackers who call themselves the "THr34t-Krew." 


Police say their homes were searched and computers seized, and they were being questioned on Thursday by the Crime Unit. 


At the same time, another suspected hacker base was searched in Illinois and more computers found, they said. 


Police say an Internet worm created by THr34t-Krew several years ago has now infected about 18,000 computers worldwide. 


Last month, a different worm, dubbed "Slammer" or "Sapphire," struck hundreds of thousands of computers, clogging Internet pipelines and slowing traffic for Internet users. 
*******************************
Reuters
Calif. Man Charged with Hacking ViewSonic System
Thu Feb 6, 8:22 PM ET

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A former employee of ViewSonic Corp. was arrested on Thursday for allegedly hacking into its computer system and destroying data, shutting down a server that was central to the firm's foreign operations. 


Andy Garcia, 39, was taken into custody on a federal indictment that charges him with unauthorized access to a protected computer and being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm. 


ViewSonic, a privately held company based in Walnut, California, makes computer monitors and high-definition televisions. The company has received financing from Intel Corp. (NasdaqNM:INTC - news) and is working with that chip giant and Microsoft Corp. (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) to roll out a new line of portable video players. 


The company's founder Chief Executive James Chu is the majority shareholder. 


Prosecutors say Garcia accessed ViewSonic's computers in April of 2000, about two weeks after he was fired from the company, and deleted files on one of the servers that he had maintained in his job there. 


The missing files made the server inoperable, prosecutors said, making it impossible for ViewSonic's office in Taiwan to access important data for several days. 


Prosecutors said Garcia, who previously had been convicted of two felonies, was also charged with possession of a semi-automatic weapon found during a search of his home. 

*******************************
Reuters
Alleged Student Hacker Indicted in Massachusetts
Thu Feb 6, 6:09 PM ET
By Greg Frost 

BOSTON (Reuters) - A college student was indicted on Thursday on charges he placed software on dozens of computers that allowed him to secretly monitor what people were typing, and then stole around $2,000 using information he gleaned. 


In what may serve as a cautionary tale for people who use computers in public areas, Douglas Boudreau allegedly installed keystroke monitoring software on more than 100 computers at Boston College and then watched as thousands of people sent e-mail, downloaded files and banked online. 


According to an indictment by a Middlesex County grand jury, Boudreau compiled a database of personal information on about 4,800 faculty, staff and students at Boston College. 


He also stole about $2,000 using the computer information he gathered, according to the office of Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly. 


Richard Smith, a Massachusetts-based Internet security consultant, said the software in question is typically used by jealous husbands or wives to spy on their spouses -- or by employers who want to snoop on their workers. 


The software is not new but poses a "sinister" threat to unwitting computer users, Smith said, noting that Boudreau could have used it with far more devastating consequences. 


"With the amount of information he gathered from so many different people, there could have been a lot of things he could have done," Smith said. "I'm surprised this kind of thing hasn't been done more often." 


Boudreau, who faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted on all charges, was not immediately available for comment. 


Boston College said it suspended Boudreau, 21, last year once it learned of his scheme. 


"While we are grateful to the attorney general's office for their assistance in this case, it's important to state that Mr. Boudreau gathered personal identification numbers on students but never misused them in any way," said Jack Dunn, a spokesman for the college.

Dunn said the college was obligated by law to report the scheme to state prosecutors once it learned of it. Dunn said the Warwick, Rhode Island-based student had cooperated with police during their investigation. 
*******************************
Chronicle of Higher Education
To Guard 3 Students' Privacy, Georgetown U. Expunges Thousands of E-Mail Messages
By SCOTT CARLSON

Administrators at Georgetown University shut down the university's e-mail system and altered the accounts of thousands of students on Tuesday night to erase a mass e-mail message from the university that contained private student information. The message, which had been inadvertently sent out in a crime report by the university's public-safety department, detailed various incidents on campus and named three students. 

Juan C. Gonzalez, the university's vice president of student affairs, said that "failures at many levels" let the private information go out in the crime report around 3 p.m. on Tuesday. He says that the university's department of public safety did not edit the document or get approval before it sent the message out. He would not provide further details about the message. 

Once the error was discovered, around 5 p.m., administrators held an emergency meeting with legal counsel and technical staff, and resolved to immediately shut down the system and erase the message, account by account. 

The system was down for about 14 hours, as Georgetown's technical staff members worked overnight on the problem. "It was extraordinarily complicated," Mr. Gonzalez said. "This was not a decision made lightly." 

Mass electronic mailings go out gradually in batches, not all at once. University administrators were able to stop the message from going to undergraduate students. However, they estimate that the message was delivered to about 3,000 graduate-student accounts before the system shut down. The technical staff used an automated program to find the message in each account and replace it with a blank message. 

Ardoth A. Hassler, associate vice president for university information services, says that some students have set up their university accounts to automatically forward e-mail messages to private accounts. Those messages in private accounts could not be deleted, she said. 

On Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Gonzalez and John Q. Pierce, the university registrar, sent a message to students, staff members, and faculty members, telling them that the message had been deleted. 

"We want to reassure you that email messages and accounts are otherwise undisturbed and that no one read any email in this process," the message said. Mr. Gonzalez and Mr. Pierce also urged those who received the message to "please be respectful of each other and do not share its contents." 

Mr. Gonzalez said that after the error was discovered, the university immediately contacted the three students who were named in the e-mail and told them what happened. "They have been very reasonable," he said. 

Few faculty members responded to calls from The Chronicle for comment on the issue. In an e-mail message, Wayne A. Davis, a professor of philosophy and president of the Faculty Senate, said the university's action "was an appropriate response to an urgent problem." 

Other faculty members said the incident was an unsettling reminder of the university's power over their e-mail accounts. "Just the reminder that the administrators have the capacity to read everything in our mailboxes is unnerving," said one professor, who asked not to be named. "The potential for them to rewrite the messages is pretty disturbing." 

However, Nicholas J. Quinonez, a senior and the vice chairman of the Assembly of the Georgetown University Student Association, was far less worried. "I now know that the university can get into your e-mail and pull e-mail messages," he said. "But it's so much trouble for the university to do that, I'm not fearful of it happening. I would venture to say that it will never happen again, and if it does I would think that the university would have a good reason for it."
*******************************
Harvard Business Review
Valenti's Views
The MPAA president and former LBJ aide opens up on a range of topics

By Derek Slater
Jack Valenti has led a prolific political life. A decorated World War II pilot, Valenti served as a special assistant to President Lyndon Johnson until 1966. Since then, he has served as the President of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), turning the entertainment studio consortium into a lobbying juggernaut. Valenti helped pioneer the movie industry's voluntary rating system and has tirelessly fought government censorship. He has also headed the Motion Picture Export Association, protecting American film studios' interests in other countries.

In recent years, Valenti has become an outspoken leader in the fight against piracy on the Internet. Known for his sharp rhetorical abilities, Valenti always speaks about piracy in calamitous terms, prophesizing the eventual death of the movie industry. To defend its copyrights, MPAA successfully sued publishers of a program that undermined the copy prevention technology on DVDs and is currently suing several file-sharing services. In addition, Valenti has taken his case to Congress, pushing for mandated copy prevention technologies in all digital devices that play movies, music, and other media.

But many people have criticized Valenti's hard-line stance, calling it anti-technology and anti-consumer. These critics assert that Valenti's copy prevention mandates will harm innovation, forcing all technologists to ask the MPAA's permission before creating the next generation of amazing gadgets. Copyright holders have always fought new technologies, from Marconi's radio to cable television to VCRs, and in no case have their apocalyptic visions come true. Furthermore, copy prevention technologies will go beyond ending piracy by limiting how consumers can make personal use of their legally purchased movies.

After delivering a speech on "Persuasion and Leadership" at Harvard's Institute of Politics, Valenti sat down with the HPR to discuss his side of the digital debate and his life in politics.

HPR: You once remarked that "VCR is [to the movie industry]...as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone." Even though the movie industry profits from video rentals, the MPAA still fears new technologies like digital VCRs and the Internet. What are the significant differences between the threat posed by the VCR and by today's technologies?

Jack Valenti: I wasn't opposed to the VCR. The MPAA tried to establish by law that the VCR was infringing on copyright. Then we would go to the Congress and get a copyright royalty fee put on all blank videocassettes and that would go back to the creators [to compensate for videocassette piracy].

I predicted great piracy. We now lose $3.5 billion a year in videocassette analog piracy. It was a 5-4 Supreme Court decision that determined VCRs were not infringing, which I regret. As a result, we never got the copyright royalty fee, but everything I predicted came true.

Now the difference between analog piracy and digital piracy is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug. For example, it's very cumbersome to deal in piracy of videocassettes; it costs a lot of money. But in digital piracy, with the click of a mouse a twelve year-old can send a film hurdling around the world.

The music industry now is suffering nine, ten, fifteen percent losses in revenue. When you compound that over the next three or four years, the music industry is dead. I don't see a future for it. After awhile, who's going to produce it?

It now costs about $350,000 to produce a CD; it costs $80 million to make and market a movie. Big difference. The MPAA could live with the fifteen million homes that currently have broadband internet access. But when sixty million homes have broadband, plus the people on fast connections in universities, making it so easy to bring down a movie in minutes...

We're breeding a new group of young students who wouldn't dream of going into a Blockbuster and putting a DVD under their coat. But they have no compunction about bringing down a movie on the Internet. That isn't wrong to them. Why? I don't know.

HPR: The MPAA has backed several bills mandating copy prevention technologies. Critics have lambasted these bills for curbing consumer's "fair use" rights, including the ability to make back-up copies. How can we balance the interests of consumers and the movie industry?

JV: What is fair use? Fair use is not a law. There's nothing in law. 

Right now, any professor can show a complete movie in his classroom without paying a dime--that's fair use. What is not fair use is making a copy of an encrypted DVD, because once you're able to break the encryption, you've undermined the encryption itself. 

HPR: Even if breaking the encryption is for a legitimate purpose, to make a back-up copy?

JV: But you've already got a DVD. It lasts forever. It never wears out. In the digital world, we don't need back-ups, because a digital copy never wears out. It is timeless. 

The minute that you allow people to break an encryption, you lose all security. If anyone can do it under the rubric of fair use, how can we protect the artists?

Today, it's illegal to copy a videocassette. No one has a fair use to copy a videocassette. If you lose it, you get another one, and there's nothing wrong with that. That's what people have been doing for generations.

HPR: Why do we need government mandates for copy prevention technologies?

JV: You have to have copy prevention mandated by the government sooner or later because otherwise everybody's not playing by the same ground rules. For example, the standards of my cell phone have to be mandated by the FCC because everybody has to operate off the same standards. Also, all railroad tracks in this country are the same standardized width. 

If you don't have tightly focused, narrowly drawn mandates, either regulatory or congressional, then, if I'm a maverick computer maker in Taiwan, I can say, "Hell, I'm not going to play by the rules. I'm going to do it so everybody can copy." Then Toshiba and Sony and IBM can say, "Well if he does that, then I want to do it." We always operate on the fact that everybody needs to know that there's a 55 mph speed limit. That's called a standard.

HPR: You served as special assistant to President Johnson at the formative stages of the Vietnam War. Given your experience, what do you consider most crucial to keeping the war on terrorism, in light of conflict in Iraq, from becoming a quagmire?

JV: Nobody realizes that when Johnson became president on Nov. 22, 1963, we had 16,000 fighting men in Vietnam. Nobody remembers that.

The problem in Vietnam was that we couldn't get these people to negotiate. Johnson always believed that there was no such thing as victory--only negotiation. He never could get the Vietcong to the negotiating table. A lot of people urged him to go all out, as Richard Nixon did later, to bomb them into the Stone Age; he refused to do that, ultimately to his detriment.

I think you need to remember what de Tocqueville once wrote, that "The people grow tired of a confusion whose end is not in sight." If you're going to go to war, you must have the people with you. If you lose the confidence of the American people, you face a terrifying problem.

So long as George Bush has the majority of the American people on his side in the war on terrorism and the war against Iraq, he'll be just fine. But if he ever begins to lose that support, he will not do fine. That's what you learn from Johnson.

HPR: In an interview with CNN.com, you discussed how costly the lack of censorship was to President Johnson during the Vietnam War. Having fought against the government's attempts to censor the movie industry, how do you think the government should approach censorship during wartime? 

JV: At all costs, the government should stay out of censorship, except in war. When soldiers lives may be at stake, I think you can. Vietnam is the only war we've ever fought in the history of our country, without censorship. But in any other arena, I'm totally opposed to censorship in any form. I'm a great believer and defender of the First Amendment.

HPR: How do you view the influence of lobbyists in government and campaign finance reform? Do organizations like the MPAA have an undue influence because they have money?

JV: I think lobbying is really an honest profession. Lobbying means trying to persuade Congress to accept your point of view. Sometimes you can give them a lot of facts they didn't have before. 

Money, however, is negative--it's corrupting the body politic. Even though money might be the most self-conflicting force in politics today, there are too many loopholes in this McCain-Feingold bill. All these lobbyists in town who are callous to what the bill stands for are going to exploit it. They'll turn to state parties and special interest groups and the money will keep pouring in. It's a tragedy.
*******************************



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Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber:

Welcome to the February 12, 2003 edition of ACM TechNews,
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ACM TechNews
Volume 5, Number 457
Date: February 12, 2003

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Top Stories for Wednesday, February 12, 2003:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html

"Congress Agrees to Bar Pentagon From Terror Watch of Americans"
"Software Licensing Act Hits Snag With Lawyer Group"
"Woman Sues Software Makers Over Licensing Terms"
"MEMS to Remain a Niche Technology?"
"If U.S. Launches Cyberattack, It Could Change Nature of War"
"Researchers Announce World's Smallest Switch"
"New Mac Tool Is Kon-Fabulous"
"DARPA Releases Strategic Plan"
"Falling Prey to Machines?"
"Intel Developer Forum To Cover New Tracks, Latest Advancements"
"At FCC, Gadget-Freak Powell Shapes Digital Future"
"The Internet Might Just Save the Planet"
"Bridging the 'Power Gap'"
"Applying Space Technology on Earth"
"EU Proposes Agency to Coordinate Internet Security"
"Goodbye GUI? Ambient Orb a Computer 'Mood Ring'"
"The Best Thing Since the Bar-Code"
"Blurring Lines"
"Mega-Bandwidth Gets Real"
"Take a Number"

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

"Congress Agrees to Bar Pentagon From Terror Watch of Americans"
Negotiators from the Senate and the House of Representatives have
agreed to prohibit the Pentagon from using the Total Information
Awareness (TIA) project to spy on innocent American citizens.
Last Friday's announcement that the Pentagon would set up several ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0212w.html#item1

"Software Licensing Act Hits Snag With Lawyer Group"
The Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA), which
proponents claim would create a software licensing law that could
be applied nationally and reduce liability costs for software
vendors, may be in jeopardy because the American Bar Association ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0212w.html#item2

"Woman Sues Software Makers Over Licensing Terms"
A San Francisco-area chef is suing software vendors Microsoft and
Symantec, and their retailers, for not allowing consumers to
return software when they do not agree with its licensing terms.
Cathy Baker's lawyer, Ira Rothken, says existing contract law ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0212w.html#item3

"MEMS to Remain a Niche Technology?"
Panelists at the International Solid State Circuits Conference
(ISSCC) in San Francisco expected microelectromechanical (MEMS)
devices to be a key market driver without making any definite
predictions about when they will take off.  They wondered whether ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0212w.html#item4

"If U.S. Launches Cyberattack, It Could Change Nature of War"
The nature of war could undergo a fundamental shift if a nation
launches a coordinated cyberattack on another, according to
historians.  The effects of such an attack are hard to predict,
and that is why the U.S. military is debating the use and ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0212w.html#item5

"Researchers Announce World's Smallest Switch"
Physics scientists have created the world's smallest electrical
switch using a single molecule sandwiched between two gold
surfaces.  A scanning tunneling microscope's gold tip is used to
switch the benzene-dithiolate (BDT) molecule, which contains ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0212w.html#item6

"New Mac Tool Is Kon-Fabulous"
A new open-architecture Mac software called Konfabulator promises
to allow anyone to create their own mini-applications.  Arlo
Rose, who together with Greg Landweber created Kaleidoscope for
customized Mac environments, plans to replicate that success with ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0212w.html#item7

"DARPA Releases Strategic Plan"
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) outlined
eight key research areas in a report disclosed to the public on
Feb. 6.  In the area of counterterrorism, one of DARPA's chief
projects is the Total Information Awareness (TIA) project, a ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0212w.html#item8

"Falling Prey to Machines?"
John Holland, recipient of the first computer science Ph.D in
1959, says artificial intelligence is possible, but will take far
more work on the conceptual side.  Holland is now a computer
science and psychology professor at the University of Michigan ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0212w.html#item9

"Intel Developer Forum To Cover New Tracks, Latest Advancements"
The upcoming Intel Developer Forum (IDF), a leading industry event for
designers and developers, will offer new tracks on Intel technology as
well as in-depth technical training on the latest advances in computing
and communications.  IDF, slated for Feb. 18-21 at the San Jose McEnery ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0212w.html#item10

"At FCC, Gadget-Freak Powell Shapes Digital Future"
FCC Chairman Michael Powell is an avowed technology aficionado
and unabashed advocate of free market economics, and Powell's
vision for the technology industry is to promote progress by
having the government study the markets and intervene as little ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0212w.html#item11

"The Internet Might Just Save the Planet"
Despite the global economic downturn, several Internet-driven
trends are providing new growth and promise, writes Jeff Davies.
First, communication barriers have largely been erased, allowing
one-person businesses to be available all the time via cell ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0212w.html#item12

"Bridging the 'Power Gap'"
Because portable electronic devices have developed so quickly in
the last few years, their functions have outstripped traditional
batteries' ability to power them adequately.  President Bush
attempted to address this need in his recent proposal for ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0212w.html#item13

"Applying Space Technology on Earth"
Searchers for debris of the space shuttle Columbia used global
positioning devices to mark the exact location of finds.
Observers say many popular current technologies, including the
Global Positioning System (GPS), were originally spawned or made ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0212w.html#item14

"EU Proposes Agency to Coordinate Internet Security"
The European Union on Monday proposed creating an agency to
monitor Internet security throughout Europe.  It could take up to
nine months for the European Parliament and the EU member
countries to approve the agency; Erkki Liikanen, EU information ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0212w.html#item15

"Goodbye GUI? Ambient Orb a Computer 'Mood Ring'"
Forthcoming products developed by Ambient Devices have the
potential to dramatically change computer/person interaction,
according to Ambient executives.  One of the products is a large
orb that is wirelessly linked to Internet data feeds via pager ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0212w.html#item16

"The Best Thing Since the Bar-Code"
Academic researchers are working with businesses to develop smart
label technology that promises to replace the bar code as a
universal method for identifying and tracking just about
anything.  Consumer goods manufacturers see radio-frequency ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0212w.html#item17

"Blurring Lines"
The availability of new technology that can be used in the office
as well as in the home gives IT managers and chief technologists
more to think about when they make their IT decisions.  Employees
are increasingly purchasing new wireless communications devices ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0212w.html#item18

"Mega-Bandwidth Gets Real"
Advanced networking, high-bandwidth technologies are already
being used to link hundreds of sites throughout the United
States, and they are starting to penetrate the corporate sector.
Over 200 U.S. colleges, government sites, and corporations are ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0212w.html#item19

"Take a Number"
Although the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) has been
awarding business-method patents (class 705) since 1998, many
people say they can be detrimental to commercial activities.  An
example of business-related intellectual property is Amazon.com's ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0212w.html#item20


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Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber:

Welcome to the March 7, 2003 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.

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ACM TechNews
Volume 5, Number 466
Date: March 7, 2003

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Top Stories for Friday, March 7, 2003:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html

"Silicon Valley Reels Under Job Losses"
"Spectrum Allocation Draws Intense Debate"
"E-Mail Flaw Tests U.S. Safety Net"
"Analysis: Warnings About Cyber-Terrorism Are Overblown"
"Net Speed Record Smashed"
"Getting to Know All About You"
"White House Launches Technological Peace Corps"
"Disorder in the Court"
"Internet Vulnerabilities Caught in BIND"
"Who's Minding the E-Store?"
"Swimming With MIT's Virtual Fish"
"Andreessen: 'The Valley Is Going to Save the Valley'"
"Tech Firm Alliance, Not Group of Pols, Can Defeat Pirates"
"Toshiba Unveils Innovative Fuel Cell"
"Unjaded and Jubilant at TED"
"Tomorrow's 5G Cell Phone"
"Tag, You're It"
"The Man in the Middle"
"Look Ma, No Hands!"

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

"Silicon Valley Reels Under Job Losses"
Thousands of technology workers shaken out by the Silicon Valley
job implosion, now in its third year, are re-evaluating their
career prospects, while thousands more are hoping to re-enter the
tech market by beefing up their resume and interviewing skills.   ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0307f.html#item1

"Spectrum Allocation Draws Intense Debate"
Industry officials, academics, and policy makers hashed out ideas
on radio spectrum allocation at a recent Stanford University
conference.  Participants advocated auctioning off spectrum,
opening it for public use, leveraging new technology, and a ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0307f.html#item2

"E-Mail Flaw Tests U.S. Safety Net"
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) used a recently
disclosed security hole in the Sendmail email transfer
application as an opportunity to test its cybersecurity early
warning system, according to the SANS Institute.  The ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0307f.html#item3

"Analysis: Warnings About Cyber-Terrorism Are Overblown"
Computer security experts are increasingly skeptical about
terrorists or sympathizers hacking into sensitive computer
infrastructure and causing major catastrophe in the United
States.  Although there seems to be no shortage of such groups ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0307f.html#item4

"Net Speed Record Smashed"
Particle physicists at Stanford have tested the fastest-ever
Internet transmission, sending 6.7 gigabytes of data from
Sunnyvale, Calif., to Holland's Amsterdam in just one minute.
The 6,800-mile length was traversed at 923 megabits per second, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0307f.html#item5

"Getting to Know All About You"
Robotic design now involves not just mechanics, sensors, and
computers, but also a study of how humans and machines interact
with one another.  While previous generations of robots were
preprogrammed and designed physically for specific tasks, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0307f.html#item6

"White House Launches Technological Peace Corps"
The White House on Tuesday announced the creation of the Digital
Freedom Initiative, a three-year pilot program that will send
technology and financial industry volunteers from U.S. companies
to developing countries around the world in an effort to improve ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0307f.html#item7

"Disorder in the Court"
A U.S. District Court in California has created an exception to
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) that could
jeopardize online companies' immunity to actions taken by
individual users.  The CDA was written seven years ago, making ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0307f.html#item8

"Internet Vulnerabilities Caught in BIND"
The Internet Software Consortium (ISC) on Monday released BIND
9.2.2, a new version of the BIND domain name server.  ISC first
said on its Web site that the release is "a maintenance release,
containing fixes for a number of bugs in 9.2.0 but no new ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0307f.html#item9

"Who's Minding the E-Store?"
Federal government law enforcement agents often seize property
involved in alleged crimes whether the property is a drug
dealer's speedboat or a hacker's hot-rod desktop, and now
government agents also are seizing domain names under the same ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0307f.html#item10

"Swimming With MIT's Virtual Fish"
MIT students plan to line the floor and walls of the institute's
famous Infinite Corridor with screens displaying
computer-generated tuna and pike that can seemingly move in three
dimensions and respond to visitors' movements via sensor ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0307f.html#item11

"Andreessen: 'The Valley Is Going to Save the Valley'"
Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen has had less success with
subsequent ventures such as Web hosting company Loudcloud and
data-automation software firm Opsware, which trades now at $2 per
share.  Andreessen says the dot-com recession is affecting ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0307f.html#item12

"Tech Firm Alliance, Not Group of Pols, Can Defeat Pirates"
The Alliance for Digital Progress (ADP) President Fred McClure
says the solution to digital piracy lies in industry
collaboration, not politically mandated technological solutions.
Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-S.C.) last year introduced legislation ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0307f.html#item13

"Toshiba Unveils Innovative Fuel Cell"
Toshiba has created a prototype fuel cell designed for use in
mobile devices that delivers better performance than current
lithium-ion batteries.  By using the water by-product of the fuel
cell to dilute the methanol fuel, Toshiba engineers were able to ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0307f.html#item14

"Unjaded and Jubilant at TED"
The Technology, Entertainment and Design conference (TED) is a
bellwether technology conference for the technology elite that
flourished in the 1990s and predicted the eventual adoption of
cell phones and PDAs before it happened, and focused on DNA ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0307f.html#item15

"Tomorrow's 5G Cell Phone"
Next-generation cell phones could be cognitive radios (CRs), a
term coined by Mitre computer scientist Joseph Mitola to mean
software radios that learn from users and act on their behalf.
Mitola says his vision is still about five to 10 years from ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0307f.html#item16

"Tag, You're It"
Slowly but surely, enterprises are finding it easier and cheaper
to track and manage assets through radio frequency identification
(RFID) technology, in which products and other items are equipped
with electronic tags containing ID data that can be read ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0307f.html#item17

"The Man in the Middle"
In an interview with Roll Call, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said
the Bush administration could consider a short-term stimulus
package, increasing exports, free-trade agreements, and funding
more research and development as strategies for stimulating the ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0307f.html#item18

"Look Ma, No Hands!"
The year 2003 will witness the market debut of
business-productivity telematics applications designed to enhance
in-car electronics.  Delphi Automotive Group is readying a
Bluetooth-based multimedia and off-board navigation system called ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0307f.html#item19


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Subject:      ACM TechNews - Friday, March 14, 2003
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Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber:

Welcome to the March 14, 2003 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 the latest on ACM
activities, member benefits, and industry issues,
visit http://www.acm.org/membernet

Remember to check out our hot new online essay and opinion
magazine, Ubiquity, at http://www.acm.org/ubiquity

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ACM TechNews
Volume 5, Number 469
Date: March 14, 2003

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Site Sponsored by Hewlett Packard Company ( <http://www.hp.com> )
     HP is the premier source for computing services,
     products and solutions. Responding to customers' requirements
     for quality and reliability at aggressive prices, HP offers
     performance-packed products and comprehensive services.
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Top Stories for Friday, March 14, 2003:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html

"Spam's Cost To Business Escalates"
"Tech Wars: P-to-P Friends, Foes Struggle"
"Does File Trading Fund Terrorism?"
"Carbon Chips Net Step Post-Silicon, Says Scientist"
"Social Software and the Politics of Groups"
"Who Cares About the Fastest Internet Ever?"
"Yaha Virus Uses Netizens as Pawns"
"Twins Crack Face Recognition Puzzle"
"Recognizing the Dance on the Dotted Line"
"Two Programmers Speculate on the Future of Software Development"
"Military's 'Sneaky Wave' Out of Hiding"
"Gadget Accessibility Slowly Spreading"
"Alliance to Certify, Publicize Public Wireless Access Zones"
"'Snow Days' Could Take Down Net"
"Thousands 'Trojaned' Through Net Shares: CERT"
"Thinking Outside the ICANN Box: Creating a Prototype Based on
 Internet Experience--Part II"
"Goal Oriented"
"Flaws Put Open Source on Hot Seat"
"Nano's Balancing Act"

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

"Spam's Cost To Business Escalates"
The war is raging between purveyors of unsolicited commercial
email (spam) and the various legislative, industry, and consumer
groups that want to stamp it out, and the spammers appear to have
the upper hand:  Ferris Research estimates that spam-related ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0314f.html#item1

"Tech Wars: P-to-P Friends, Foes Struggle"
The government and the U.S. entertainment industry are trying to
stop unlawful file-sharing through peer-to-peer (P2P) networks by
applying pressure on academic institutions and large companies
where such practices are rampant.  However, attempts to do ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0314f.html#item2

"Does File Trading Fund Terrorism?"
Although witnesses and representatives at the U.S. House
Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and
Intellectual Property hearing on Thursday testified that profits
from illegal file-trading via peer-to-peer services were being ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0314f.html#item3

"Carbon Chips Net Step Post-Silicon, Says Scientist"
IBM's Phaedon Avouris is working on carbon nanotube replacements
to today's silicon computer chip technology.  Besides the
physical limitations ever-shrinking silicon-based chips will face
in 10 years, Avouris points out that the advanced chip-making ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0314f.html#item4

"Social Software and the Politics of Groups"
Thanks to the advent of the Internet and social software that
facilitates group communications, large numbers of people can now
converse with each other without being inconvenienced by
conventional barriers of physical location and time.  This in ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0314f.html#item5

"Who Cares About the Fastest Internet Ever?"
Last week's announcement that Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC)
researchers had successfully transmitted 6.7 billion bytes across
10,000 kilometers at a rate of 1 Gbps, thus achieving a new
Internet land-speed record, may have been less than ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0314f.html#item6

"Yaha Virus Uses Netizens as Pawns"
An Internet battle between Pakistani and Indian hacker groups
threatens regular users, but corporations are unlikely to be
affected.  On March 12, the Indian Snakes hacker group released
the Yaha.Q version of their email worm, which organizes ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0314f.html#item7

"Twins Crack Face Recognition Puzzle"
International security may be revolutionized by a new face
recognition technology developed by students Michael and
Alex Bronstein.  The Bronsteins, who are identical twins, were
jokingly challenged by Technion Institute professor Ron Kimmel to ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0314f.html#item8

"Recognizing the Dance on the Dotted Line"
Shoppers may no longer have to carry debit or credit cards while
identity thieves and forgers could be thwarted with the advent of
biometric handwriting recognition technology, according to
advocates.  Biometric handwriting systems do not analyze the ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0314f.html#item9

"Two Programmers Speculate on the Future of Software Development"
The next five years for the software development industry will
see an increasing amount of work being done offshore, in places
such as India where costs are cheaper, according to former CNet
developers Dan Seewer and Kevin Cobb.  Cobb said software ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0314f.html#item10

"Military's 'Sneaky Wave' Out of Hiding"
The IEEE is studying proposals from Philips, Texas Instruments, and other
wireless-networking companies to decide which technology will be
used for 802.15.3a, a wireless personal area network (WPAN)
specification designed to compete with the highly popular ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0314f.html#item11

"Gadget Accessibility Slowly Spreading"
Spurred by government mandates as well as the drive to make
money, technology companies are now working harder to make
computers, Web sites, and other forms of communications
technology accessible to people with disabilities.  Among the ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0314f.html#item12

"Alliance to Certify, Publicize Public Wireless Access Zones"
The Wi-Fi Alliance trade group, which includes such members as
Microsoft, Dell, Intel, Nokia, Philips, and Texas Instruments,
plans to make people more aware of the Wi-Fi wireless networking
standard in two ways.  First, the group wants to give a "seal of ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0314f.html#item13

"'Snow Days' Could Take Down Net"
To stay abreast of ever-changing network security threats and
protective measures, many tech security managers attend the
annual SANS Institute security conference.  Major topics of this
year's meeting, held this week, focused on software holes that ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0314f.html#item14

"Thousands 'Trojaned' Through Net Shares: CERT"
A rise in network share-based attacks may foreshadow a massive
distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, according to a
warning issued by CERT/CC today.  The advisory asserts that
hackers have compiled an army of thousands of "zombie" systems ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0314f.html#item15

"Thinking Outside the ICANN Box: Creating a Prototype Based on
 Internet Experience--Part II"
A new proposal, "The Internet an International Public Treasure,"
contains an outline for researchers and participants to begin
developing a prototype of a workable Internet governing
structure.  The document addresses preparation and ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0314f.html#item16

"Goal Oriented"
Seagate Technologies and other large companies are turning to
online accountability systems as a way to maintain alignment
between corporate goals and employees' efforts.  In response to
worries that such systems could lead to an Orwellian model of ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0314f.html#item17

"Flaws Put Open Source on Hot Seat"
The disclosure of the SendMail and Snort security flaws last week
highlighted the problems of building and installing open-source
patches.  "With open source you really have a double-edged
sword," notes Dan Ingevaldson of Internet Security Systems, the ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0314f.html#item18

"Nano's Balancing Act"
A growing movement of activists, academics, and business leaders
is trying to strike a balance between nanotechnology's potential
benefits and its hazards through such organizations as Rice
University's Center for Biological and Environmental ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0314f.html#item19


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-- To review Wednesday's issue, please please visit
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