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Clips April 25, 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;, BDean@xxxxxxx;
- Subject: Clips April 25, 2003
- From: Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2003 15:40:32 -0400
Clips April 25, 2003
ARTICLES
Verizon Ordered to ID Song Swappers
EU Puts Provisional Tax on S. Korean Chip
Linux founder opens door to DRM
DHS e-mail system ready to roll
Nevada inventor can sue California [Privacy]
TSA awards smart card contract
NOAA sites get Web botox
Interior yanks Norton?s e-mail server overnight
eHealth plans national health network to fight epidemics like SARS
FBI Laboratory Moves to New Home
U.S. Smokers Buy Cigarettes Online, States Fight Back
File Sharing Forfeits Right To Privacy
Online, All the Time, an All-Seeing Surveillance System
They have a file on you [Privacy]
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Los Angeles Times
Verizon Ordered to ID Song Swappers
By Jon Healey
Times Staff Writer
April 25, 2003
Expanding on his earlier order, a federal judge ruled Thursday that Verizon Communications Inc. must reveal the names of two alleged music pirates to the Recording Industry Assn. of America, rejecting arguments that the RIAA's tactics violated consumers' rights to privacy and free speech.
The decision by U.S. District Judge John D. Bates in Washington could open the door to a new anti-piracy campaign by the record companies, one targeting individual users of online file-sharing services. The RIAA has been expected to launch such a campaign for several months, but the dispute with Verizon put that effort on hold.
At issue is a provision in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act designed to let copyright owners quickly obtain the names and addresses of alleged pirates. Under the provision, copyright owners with evidence that their works are being pirated through an Internet service provider's network can obtain a subpoena from a federal court clerk requiring the Internet provider to disclose who has the infringing material.
The RIAA obtained a subpoena July 24 that demanded the identity of a Verizon Internet customer in Pennsylvania who was offering hundreds of songs for copying on Kazaa, a popular file-sharing network. Verizon refused to comply, saying the subpoena provision applied only to customers who stored infringing material on an Internet provider's network, not on their own computers.
The case went to Bates, who ruled in January that Verizon had to comply with the subpoena. Shortly after Verizon asked Bates to suspend the ruling pending an appeal, the RIAA slapped the company with a subpoena for a Kazaa user in New York offering hundreds of songs for copying.
Verizon and its allies, including several other Internet providers and civil liberties groups, challenged the second subpoena on constitutional grounds. Among other things, they argued that the subpoena provision violates privacy rights, endangers anonymous speech and threatens public safety by giving a powerful tool to stalkers and other abusers.
Bates disagreed. There is no constitutional protection for piracy, he wrote, and the 1998 law includes "substantial protection for Internet users against baseless or abusive subpoenas."
He added, "If an individual subscriber opens his computer to permit others, through peer-to-peer file sharing, to download materials from that computer, it is hard to understand just what privacy expectation he or she has after essentially opening the computer to the world."
Bates ordered that his ruling not take effect for two weeks, giving Verizon time to seek a suspension from the Court of Appeals.
Although RIAA officials praised the ruling, three consumer groups complained that it allows the RIAA to go on "fishing expeditions for private information."
Sarah Deutsch, vice president and general counsel of Verizon, said the decision exposes any Internet user to "identity thieves and stalkers," adding that the company would ask the appeals court to suspend Bates' ruling.
Paul Goldstein, a copyright expert and law professor at Stanford University, said Internet providers concerned about abusive subpoenas can do what Verizon did: contest them in federal court. "There's no evidence to date that it is being abused," he said.
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Associated Press
EU Puts Provisional Tax on S. Korean Chip
Thu Apr 24,11:40 AM ET
By SOO-JEONG LEE, Associated Press Writer
SEOUL, South Korea - The European Union (news - web sites)'s head office on Thursday imposed a provisional 33 percent tax on imports of computer memory chips made by Hynix Semiconductor Inc., accusing the South Korean firm of receiving illegal subsidies.
The EU Commission said the provisional duty would be in force for four months while its investigation was continuing.
"This decision follows an investigation where Hynix has been found to benefit from subsidies in the form of financing provided by government-owned or -controlled Korean banks to the detriment of the European chip industry, which suffered severe losses," it said in a statement.
However, it cleared fellow South Korean chip maker Samsung Electronics Co., No. 1 in the business worldwide, of any wrongdoing.
If finalized, the move will deal a further blow to Hynix, the world's third-largest chipmaker. Earlier this month, the U.S. Commerce Department (news - web sites) issued a preliminary ruling that accused Seoul of unfairly subsidizing Hynix and threatened duties of about 58 percent on Hynix chips.
South Korea (news - web sites) called the EU Commission's preliminary ruling "regrettable."
"We hope that the European Union will make a final decision by conducting a fair and objective investigation, so that this issue does not hinder close South Korea-EU economic and trade relations," the South Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
South Korea maintains that its banks financed Hynix with legal loans, independent of government influence.
It plans to send its trade minister, Hwang Doo-yun, to Paris this month to express its regret.
The EU Commission is expected to make a final ruling by Aug. 24, South Korean officials said.
Last year, Infineon Technologies of Germany and Micron Technology of the United States filed complaints to the EU and the U.S. Department of Commerce, saying unfair subsidies to their South Korean competitors had allowed them to undercut global chip prices.
Samsung and Hynix are two of the world's largest computer memory chip makers, and exports of dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, chips are South Korea's biggest export item.
South Korea exported $5.97 billion worth of DRAM chips last year. Shipments to the United States accounted for 32.5 percent of the total at $1.94 billion.
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Los Angeles Times
Student Insult Web Site Closed
Operators blame public outcry over postings of crude, malicious rumors.
By Erika Hayasaki
Times Staff Writer
April 25, 2003
A Web site that published crude and malicious rumors about Southern California middle and high school students was shut down Thursday after a public outcry from parents and students.
Schoolscandals.com, a 3-year-old Web site run by Western Applications, a Nevada-based corporation, had featured links for chat rooms about nearly 100 Southern California middle and high schools with postings referring to students as "whores," "sluts" and "losers."
Those chat rooms are now closed, and a message reads that the bulletin board has been suspended "until some method could be devised to control the content on the forum There is nothing any of us can do about it. We have no money, so we have no power."
Ken Tennen, a West Hills attorney who represents the Web site owners, did not return telephone calls Thursday, although he told The Times last week that those who were calling for the site to be shut down were trying to "silence free speech."
Ray Lopez, producer of the "John and Ken Show" on KFI-AM (640) radio, said they first aired a segment about the Web site last week after reading about it in The Times, and received hundreds of e-mails and telephone calls from angry students and parents.
"High school students are really insecure to begin with, and something just needed to be done about this," Lopez said.
One woman, whose son attends a Las Virgenes School District school and who had counseling after being ridiculed on the site, said she was thrilled that it was shut down.
"I am glad the Web site is over and [my son] is glad it's done," she said. "He doesn't want to be hurt anymore, and he doesn't want other kids to be hurt."
The message now on the site complains about the radio station's campaign against it.
A 1996 federal law protects many Internet service providers from lawsuits about their content.
Only those sites that hold the right to create and edit material on their sites can be held liable for content, said Mark Radcliffe, a cyberspace and new media law attorney.
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CNET News.com
Linux founder opens door to DRM
By John Borland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
April 24, 2003, 5:32 PM PT
Linus Torvalds, the founder of the Linux operating system, threw a curve ball to the open-source programming community Thursday.
In a posting sent to a key Linux-focused e-mail list, Torvalds outlined a controversial proposal: Nothing in the basic rules for the Linux operating system should block developers from using digital rights management (DRM) technology. DRM tools are technological locks or identification measures that range from ensuring a software program is genuine to protecting a movie against unauthorized copying.
In some open-source and "free software" circles, such locks and authentication measures are seen as infringements on programmers' freedom. In his posting, Torvalds took a more pragmatic approach--Linux is an operating system, not a political movement, and people should ultimately be able to do what they want with it, he said.
"I also don't necessarily like DRM myself," Torvalds wrote on the "Linux-kernel" mailing list. "But...I'm an 'Oppenheimer,' and I refuse to play politics with Linux, and I think you can use Linux for whatever you want to--which very much includes things I don't necessarily personally approve of."
The posting and subsequent discussion brought to light what remains a serious tension in some open-source programming circles.
Proprietary software and hardware developers, led in large part by Microsoft and Intel, are in the midst of a long-term "trusted computing" initiative that backers say will allow computer users to feel confident that software running on their machine is free of viruses and Trojan horses. As outlined in plans such as Microsoft's Palladium, however, that requires building authentication capabilities deep into computer hardware and operating systems.
Some open-source developers suspect that this is code for saying that some software--such as that created by the open-source community--won't be able to run on standard machines or won't interoperate with standard programs. Others fear that the authentication tools will simply allow big content companies such as movie studios or record labels far more control over how computer owners use their content.
In his discussion, Torvalds conceded that content owners such as Walt Disney could see their hands strengthened if rights-management technology were built deeply into computing systems--but noted that the drive to have trusted software was also a valuable goal. The two could not be separated, he added.
"There is zero technical difference. It's only a matter of intent--and even the intent will be a matter of interpretation," Torvalds wrote. "This is why I refuse to disallow even the 'bad' kinds of uses--because not allowing them would automatically also mean that 'good' uses aren't allowed."
The posting prompted immediate debate on and off the list, both about the viability of DRM inside the Linux operating system and the desirability of having a policy that allowed it. Many people approved of Torvalds' pragmatic approach, but others remained skeptical for technical or societal reasons.
"As Linus has pointed out, there are desirable and there are undesirable uses of DRM," wrote a Werner Almesberger. "If endorsing DRM will just get us flooded with the undesirable ones, plus an insignificant number of the desirable ones, we'll have made a lousy deal."
Another poster, named Tony Mantler, noted that any DRM-based Linux protections could simply be avoided by swapping in a version of Linux that only pretended to have the protections.
"Making DRM in Linux secure would be like winning a hand of poker against someone who can change all the playing cards at will," wrote Mantler.
Torvalds has issued edicts on thorny legal issues of Linux before. For example, he decreed that it's permissible to let the kernel--the open-source code at the heart of Linux--call upon proprietary modules of software. That's an important issue in some cases, such as video card companies that might want to support Linux but not reveal the inner workings of the software that controls their products.
Discussion remains ongoing about whether DRM in Linux is a good idea--or even whether Torvalds has enough sway in the community to make his opinion stick. Torvalds said later he was willing to be persuaded to a different point of view.
"One of the reasons for posting (the message) was to get feedback, after all," he wrote in an e-mail to CNET News.com. "I always reserve the right to change my mind as a result of discussion."
News.com's Stephen Shankland and Evan Hansen contributed to this report.
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Federal Computer Week
DHS e-mail system ready to roll
BY Sara Michael
April 24, 2003
The Homeland Security Department's common e-mail system is ready to roll this weekend, but officials have had trouble putting together the department's network infrastructure, said DHS chief technology officer Lee Holcomb.
"We're at the point where we're ready to pull the switch," Holcomb said, referring to the e-mail system while speaking April 23 at an executive forum sponsored by Computer Marketing Associates Inc.
Although the intranet is completed, integrating the systems of the 22 agencies that merged into the department in January has presented a challenge. DHS officials faced technical barriers with the legacy systems and cultural differences that complicated information sharing, Holcomb said.
"There really were few mechanisms to integrate information across agencies," he said. "One challenge is to integrate these agencies within the department under one goal."
Because DHS didn't have a detailed enterprise architecture when the department was launched Jan. 24, officials identified several guiding principles. One of those is creating a culture of information- and system-sharing, Holcomb said.
"We're throwing out a different model at DHS. Information generated by the department is property of the department" and should be accessible to the appropriate people in the department, Holcomb said. "It's turning the pyramid upside down. Instead of need-to-know, it's need-to-communicate, and we're making a few people uncomfortable with that."
Holcomb said another guiding principle has been finding a balance between homeland security and privacy, and noted that mechanisms are in place to strike that balance.
Since January, department officials have focused on several short-term projects, such as working with states to develop secure videoconference systems and working with the Justice Department to link to the Regional Information Sharing Systems network and the Law Enforcement Online network. Day-one infrastructure issues also have been a major focus, and officials looked to major private-sector mergers for lessons learned in communication, e-mail systems and dedicated integration teams.
"We use that as a guidance for our day-one efforts. Unfortunately, our Day One is like 60 days," Holcomb said.
Turning to year-one projects, Holcomb identified what he viewed as 10 key priorities within the department although he said the list changes daily as priorities change. He mentioned the following as examples:
* The Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System II, which will perform background checks by combing government and commercial databases to assess the risk airline travelers pose.
* The Automated Commercial Environment, Customs' modernization plan designed to track cargo.
* An entry/exit system to track foreign visitors at ports of entry.
* The National Emergency Management Information System, which process disaster benefits.
Holcomb also listed several critical information technology projects in the department, such as smart cards for identifying all DHS employees, wireless communications, portal and content management solutions, a converged wide-area network, and e-learning initiatives.
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San Francisco Gate
Nevada inventor can sue California
Justices rule protections don't apply in Nevada
A Nevada inventor who has been fighting California for a decade over a multimillion-dollar tax bill can sue California's tax board for allegedly rummaging through his trash and invading his privacy, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.
A California law shields the Franchise Tax Board and its employees from lawsuits for actions while assessing or collecting a tax. But the high court ruled unanimously that Nevada is not required to follow that law in a suit by one of its residents, Gilbert Hyatt of Las Vegas.
Hyatt held one of the most important patents in the computer industry -- for the microprocessor chip at the heart of personal computers -- for six years in the 1990s, before the patent was largely revoked by a federal office. In 1991, he moved from California to Nevada, which has no state income tax, shortly before receiving $40 million in licensing fees.
The California Franchise Tax Board concluded he was still a California resident when he got the money, and billed him for taxes and penalties that now exceed $20 million, according to published reports. That dispute remains unresolved and was not before the high court, which instead addressed a separate suit by Hyatt.
In 1998, Hyatt sued the California board in Nevada, claiming that tax auditors engaged in various abusive practices, such as going through his mail and garbage and sharing confidential information with his competitors. That suit has been tied up in lengthy pretrial proceedings in Nevada courts over California's attempt to invoke its own state law, which would bar the suit in a California court. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court said the case could proceed.
Nevada does not shield its own agencies from damages for intentional wrongdoing and does not have to provide such protection to California agencies,
the court said, upholding a ruling by the Nevada Supreme Court.
Although the U.S. Constitution requires states to honor each other's laws, a state is not required to violate its own "legitimate public policy" -- in this case, Nevada's policy of allowing suits that allege intentional misconduct by state officials, said Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. She rejected California's argument that the acts alleged in Hyatt's suit were part of the state's sovereign authority to enforce tax laws.
The Franchise Tax Board and its chairman, state Controller Steve Westly, declined to comment on the ruling, and Hyatt's lawyer was not available. But the California Taxpayers Association, a business-sponsored group, said the ruling should encourage state tax officials to act with care when they venture into states with differing laws.
"This case was about defending the indefensible: California's immunity from suit for intentional torts," said the group's chief lawyer, Greg Turner. "Perhaps California needs to revisit its blanket immunity statute."
The case is Franchise Tax Board vs. Hyatt, No. 02-42.
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Federal Computer Week
TSA awards smart card contract
BY Judi Hasson
April 24, 2003
The Transportation Security Administration awarded a $3.8 million contract April 23 to Maximus Inc. to help develop a universal smart card for transportation workers.
Seeking to tighten security around public transportation systems, Adm. James Loy, undersecretary of transportation for security, said 12 million transportation workers would use the cards to gain access to secure areas at transit sites. The card will include some kind of biometric identifier and make it easier for officials to complete a background check on workers.
"On Sept. 11, [2001,] the terrorists used our own aviation system against us, which caused a catastrophic loss to lives and to the transportation system and to our national economy," Loy said. "The Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC) program is being designed to 'plug the holes' that may still exist by not allowing persons with dubious backgrounds to have access to secure locations of a transportation facility."
The program will be designed to clearly identify workers entering secure locations or nonpublic areas. Only limited information will be kept on the ID card and in a database, according to Loy.
Under the 150-day contract, Reston, Va.-based Maximus is expected to test and evaluate different kinds of IDs for a variety of transportation systems.
The company will be working with several subcontractors, including EDS, ActivCard Inc., Data-Trac, SEI Technology Inc., Information Spectrum Inc. and Actcom Inc.
"TWIC is the next step to enhance security for all the modes of the transportation system, keeping us one step ahead of the terrorist," Loy said.
It will provide employees at airports, seaports, railways and other locations with secure access to buildings and systems. Through a single network of databases, it will enable quick dissemination of threat alerts and revocation of access.
The program received $35 million for pilot projects and prototypes in fiscal 2003, and its funding more than tripled to $127 million in the Bush administration's fiscal 2004 budget request.
TSA will run the pilot projects at facilities in the Philadelphia/Wilmington, Del., and the Los Angeles/Long Beach, Calif., areas. Workers will participate on a voluntary basis and carry their existing cards as well as the test cards.
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Government Computer News
04/25/03
NOAA sites get Web botox
By Wilson P. Dizard III
The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration turned a new face to the Web this week, after treating two sites to cosmetic surgery.
Yesterday, the Commerce Department agency launched a new site for the NOAA Ocean Service, at www.oceanservice.noaa.gov. The site expands access to data from NOAA?s 10 program and staff offices that handle ocean and coastal information.
The Ocean Service site covers marine life and ecosystem information, marine navigation, and tides and currents. It has an extensive collection of maps, many online publications and a news section.
Also this week, NOAA relaunched its home page, at www.noaa.gov. The reshaped site maintains links that its userswho number in the millions annually, according to NOAAhave visited in the past, as well as new features to make it easier to navigate.
NOAA computer specialist Janet Ward redesigned the site with the assistance of the agency?s CIO Office and high-performance computing and communications group.
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Government Computer News
04/24/03
Interior yanks Norton?s e-mail server overnight
By Wilson P. Dizard III
The Interior Department last night disconnected one of two e-mail servers in the office of secretary Gale Norton because of concerns that the system did not comply with court orders in the American Indian trust litigation.
The department reactivated the server today at about 2 p.m., an Interior spokesman said.
?The server was taken down as a precautionary measure, to be certain that the system was operating in accord with court procedures,? Interior spokesman Dan Dubray said. The incident, which began at about 8 p.m. Wednesday, interrupted the e-mail access of many employees, Dubray said.
Interior is operating under court orders that require it to shield American Indian trust information from possible hacking or interception.
U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth ordered the department to disconnect virtually all its systems from the Internet in December 2001, in the wake of court findings that the trust accounting systems could be hacked easily.
Since then, Interior has restored almost all its Internet connections, but the Bureau of Indian Affairs remains offline.
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Computerworld
eHealth plans national health network to fight epidemics like SARS
By Bob Brewin
APRIL 24, 2003
A consortium of public health agencies, hospitals, health care plans and medical IT systems vendors is working to create an automated early warning system to fight epidemics of new diseases such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) as well as provide alerts of bioterrorism attacks.
While some cities such as New York developed such systems after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks -- the U.S. as a whole lacks a cohesive, standards-based system, according to Janet Marchibroda, CEO of the Washington-based eHealth Initiative, which represents the health care-based consortium. But eHealth hopes to change that soon.
In June, eHealth and the New York-based Markle Foundation will kick off a three-month test of a Web-based National Healthcare Collaborative Network designed to electronically collect patient data from hospitals and automatically distribute it to public health agencies.
Nine hospitals from across the country, along with a number of local, state and federal agencies, plan to participate in the project, she said. Roughly 80% of the vendors in the health care industry also plan to participate.
Dr. Russell Ricci, general manager of IBM's global health care division, said automated syndromic surveillance -- the ability to capture information about symptoms such as high fever and respiratory problems -- would be a key component of the pilot project. Besides emergency room data, Ricci said, the program will also work to capture information about sales of over-the-counter medicine, because "drug store chains know a flu epidemic is coming before emergency rooms, based on the sales of tissues," Ricci said.
According to Ricci, the pilot project will show how sophisticated data mining techniques can be applied to the health care industry, which does not have an automated system to gather such key public health indicators. Ricci said the project would also demonstrate how to tie together stovepiped hospital information systems using industry standard off-the-shelf tools. Those tools are essential for the exchange of data in an industry replete with systems that can't share data with one another, he said.
Dr. Seth Foldy, health commissioner of the city of Milwaukee, welcomed the eHealth pilot project but said, "this is not going to be easy. ... Maybe eHealth can build a business case and demonstrate that it is possible."
Early warning syndromic surveillance systems provide information that diagnosis-based systems can't, he said. Diagnosis-based systems can often take days, too late to provide an early warning of a coming epidemic. By contrast, syndromic systems can discern a problem much earlier, Foldy said.
Tracking SARS
Currently, Milwaukee uses a Web-based syndromic surveillance system that is part of emergency room management software developed by two organizations: the Frontlines of Medicine Project in Mequon, Wis., a nationwide collaboration of emergency physicians and medical informatics specialists, and the EMSystem division of Infinity Healthcare, both also located in Mequon.
Foldy said Frontlines added a SARS Surveillance Program (download PDF) to its emergency room system earlier this month. The program illustrates how the national system envisioned by eHealth might work.
The SARS component consists of a Web-based form, which emergency room personnel download to track and record SARS-types symptoms as well as recent travel by patients to SARS areas, such as China. If a patient has SARS-type symptoms and has recently traveled to a SARS zone, they are instructed to call the state health department immediately, Foldy said. Then, at the end of the day, hospitals upload the data they collect to the health department.
Dr. Ed Barthell, chief medical officer for EMSystem, said "hundreds" of its users in 28 regions across the country have downloaded the form. Infinity provides ASP-based emergency room software to major cities such as Denver, Phoenix, Minneapolis and Orlando. EMSystem clients access information through a J2E Web browser, with information stored in an Oracle database housed on both Intel-based and Sun Microsystems Inc. servers, Barthell said.
Tigi Ward, an epidemiologist and the public health coordinator for surveillance in the Lubbock, Texas, public health department, learned earlier this year the value of the city's syndromic surveillance system, the Rapid Syndrome Validation Project (RSVP) (download PDF), developed by Sandia National Laboratories, in Albuquerque, N.M.
In January, a researcher at Texas Tech Health Sciences Center reported that 30 vials of plague bacteria in his lab were missing. Though the researcher later admitted inadvertently destroying the vials, the incident raised fears of a potential bioterrorism attack.
Ward said she quickly turned to RSVP -- a PC-based program installed at the health department and at emergency rooms throughout the city. Checking the symptoms reported by RSVP, Ward said she quickly determined that "the community was not at risk."
"I start and end my day with RSVP, because it quickly gives me the electronic lay of the land," she said.
Ward said the RSVP software -- also in use by public health departments in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico and Texas -- allows her to quickly scan symptoms reported by emergency room physicians, alerting her to "unusual" occurrences within specific areas.
Bioterrorism fears push New York to act
Fears about a bioterrorism attack impelled the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to develop its own syndromic surveillance system (download PDF) shortly after the attacks against the World Trade Center, said Rick Heffernan, director of data analysis in the Department's Bureau of Communicable Diseases. While hospitals and emergency rooms in New York had information that could provide an early warning of a bioterrorism attack, the information was so isolated that "people were seeing the trees but not the forest," Heffernan said.
With backing from the New York-based Sloan Foundation, the city scrambled to set up a syndromic surveillance system, which started to electronically gather information from emergency rooms citywide in October 2001, he said. Now, the system can capture data from 74% of the hospitals in the city and 2.4 million emergency room visits a year.
Unlike Milwaukee, New York has automated what Heffernan calls "data harvesting" so clinicians do not have to manually send data to the health department. In fact, 40 emergency rooms transmit their data using file transfer protocol.
But raw data needs analysis, and for that Heffernan said New York turned to SatScan software originally developed by the National Cancer Institute to track cancer clusters geographically. New York runs the small SatScan program as an executable file within a health department statistical software package from the SAS Institute Inc. in Cary, N.C. SatScan takes emergency room data and plots it by ZIP code, allowing health officials to zero in on clusters of symptoms that could indicate an epidemic or bioterrorism attack long before traditional methods, Heffernan said.
New York's syndromic surveillance system is so powerful, Heffernan said, that if the SARS outbreak had first occurred there instead of Asia, the city would have had a good chance of identifying it long before hundreds of sick patients started to flood emergency rooms.
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Washington Post
FBI Laboratory Moves to New Home
Quantico Facility Opens Today
By Dan Eggen
Friday, April 25, 2003; Page A21
The FBI's new $130 million laboratory complex, wrapped in ribbons of glass and topped with stylized smokestacks, looks something like a cruise ship as it rises out of the Northern Virginia countryside.
FBI leaders hope that the Quantico facility -- which celebrates its grand opening today -- will carry the bureau's forensic abilities into the coming century, while riding out the lingering controversy over the quality and reliability of its work.
With nearly 500,000 square feet of space and $25 million worth of new equipment, the building has been in the works for seven years, allowing the bureau's 650 lab employees to move out of cramped and aging quarters at the J. Edgar Hoover Building in downtown Washington. At the new facility, lab rooms are separated from regular office space by corridors and independent venting systems, ensuring that scientific analysis will be conducted in a sterile environment, officials said.
"We were placed in a building that was made for office work, not laboratory work," lab director Dwight Adams said yesterday during a news media tour of the new facility. "This building has been specifically designed for laboratory work."
The FBI lab, which traces its roots to 1928 and displays the .45-caliber revolvers used by bank robber John Dillinger and mobster Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd, is widely considered to be one of the top forensic analysis centers in the world. Its scientists and technicians have examined evidence in cases ranging from the Oklahoma City bombing to the mass killings in Kosovo, and are on the leading edge of DNA analysis and other advanced techniques.
But the lab has also wrestled with scandals and controversies over the past decade that have raised serious doubts about the reliability of its work. In the mid-1990s, a whistle-blower's allegations of shoddy scientific practices resulted in a Justice Department investigation that found misconduct, including misleading reports, inaccurate testimony and prosecutorial bias. To this day, prosecutors are still reviewing some of the 3,000 convictions that may have been tainted by the scandal.
The latest incidents involve two of the most modern forensic techniques used by bureau scientists: DNA fingerprinting and lead-bullet analysis.
In the first case, a former lab technician is the subject of a Justice Department probe on the improper testing of 103 DNA samples. An internal quality-control system revealed that technician Jacqueline Blake had failed to compare DNA evidence with control samples as required by testing protocols, casting doubt on the accuracy of the results, FBI officials said. Blake has resigned.
FBI spokesman Paul Bresson said that about half of the cases have been found to be unaffected because no suspect had been identified or because the problem was caught before the samples left the lab. The rest of the cases are under review, and the mistakes have already become a major issue in a New Jersey civil rights case against five police officers charged in the death of a prisoner. The officers are challenging blood evidence that Blake analyzed.
Lab officials said they have notified prosecutors, outside labs and others involved in the relevant cases. They argue that the bureau should be given credit for discovering the problem last year.
"The good news is that we caught it on our own and acted to handle the problem quickly," Bresson said.
The other major category to come under recent scrutiny is the controversial technique known as lead-bullet analysis, in which scientists compare trace chemicals found in bullets at crime scenes with ammunition found in the possession of suspects.
The technique, which has been used by the FBI for more than two decades, is coming under fresh scrutiny from defense attorneys, some scientists and -- perhaps most challenging for the bureau -- one of the FBI's own former metallurgists, William Tobin, who has written reports and offered testimony questioning the method.
Critics say the FBI has overstated the certainty of matching bullets using trace elements, and that hundreds of convictions may be in doubt. The FBI, which stands by lead analysis as a proven forensic technique, has nonetheless asked the National Academy of Sciences to conduct an independent review of the lab's work.
The issue came into sharp focus last year when Kathleen Lundy, a lab scientist who performs lead analysis, informed her superiors that she had erred in testimony during a Kentucky murder case and failed to correct the mistake at the time. Although Lundy updated her testimony, Kentucky prosecutors brought a misdemeanor indictment against her earlier this year, and some prosecutors have already scrapped plans to use her as an expert witness.
Lawrence Goldman, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said the lab is too eager to endorse "junk science" such as lead analysis, and is unfairly influenced by its close relationship with the FBI and police agencies.
"There are technicians who have done tests improperly; there are technicians who have lied," Goldman said. "The basic problem is that the FBI lab employees are people who think of themselves as law enforcement people as opposed to scientists."
Adams, the lab's director, disputes that. "We're not out to prove a theory; we're out to find the truth," he said. "I've enjoyed testifying for the defense just as much as the prosecution."
Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), who led an investigation of the earlier whistle-blower allegations, said he is concerned that the latest incidents may indicate that serious problems remain. FBI and Justice Department officials briefed Grassley and his staff on the issues earlier this week.
"The FBI crime lab must be beyond reproach and abide by the highest standards," Grassley said in a statement. "Congress needs to reexamine what's going on at the lab, what's been fixed and if anything is still broken."
*******************************
Washington Post
U.S. Smokers Buy Cigarettes Online, States Fight Back
By Adam Tanner
Reuters
Friday, April 25, 2003; 9:59 AM
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Erna Mueksch, a smoker for 63 years, grows animated as she recalls how she took up the habit, hoping to attract the attention of the good-looking guys at dance halls in her native Estonia.
Mueksch, 83, is still smoking all these years later, but has cut back from a pack to half a pack a day, complaining that U.S. taxes have doubled prices in the last five years.
"It's no use; you can't fight City Hall," the California woman said. "I am a second-class citizen."
But many other smokers are fighting back by going online to find bargain prices for cigarettes, a practice that is angering U.S. states, health campaigners, traditional retailers and the big tobacco companies themselves.
"Cigarettes are an ideal product for distribution through the Internet," said Ali Davoudi, founder of esmokes.com and president of the Online Tobacco Retailers Association.
"The average person out there shopping for cigarettes online is your average, hard-working blue-collar American, looking to save money on a product that, for whatever reason, no matter what you say, is an addictive product. They're addicted."
The savings available via the Internet may also prove to be addictive. A carton of Marlboros from Yesmoke.com in Switzerland costs only $15, postage included, whereas the average cost of a 10-pack carton in the United States is $37. The tab is even higher in New York City, where smokers pay more than $3.50 a pack just in taxes, which can mean a full-retail price tag of $75 a carton.
U.S. smokers are catching on to the savings. Forrester Research estimates Internet cigarettes sales will be $5 billion in 2005, more than double what is expected this year. That means states could lose $1.4 billion in tax revenue, the study found.
LEGAL HORNET'S NEST
Big tobacco companies, state and federal governments and health advocates are up in arms about this flourishing corner of the Internet and are launching an ever-growing legal assault.
California, the latest to enter the fray, this month sued five online and out-of-state cigarette vendors, accusing them of costing the state $54 million in lost tax revenue and of selling to minors.
"It is substantial and growing," state Attorney General Bill Lockyer said in an interview. "In California we do surveys of kids to find out where they are getting cigarettes, and the number of illegal purchases is growing."
"We estimate that about 20 percent of minors are purchasing illegally, and the revenue lost to state and local government is fairly substantial ... there is no effort, on delivery, to check identification or age, or getting someone to sign for the delivery."
Current rules leave it up to the buyer, not the retailer, to pay state sales tax on online cigarettes. Few do.
"The Internet is a boon to us all," said Ray Domkus, 58, a semi-retired auto worker in Burbank, California, who has smoked for 40 years. "We don't want to pay the high taxes that the states want us to pay."
"Many of us are on fixed incomes and I would say a good half of us are buying from out of state," said Domkus, who is also head of a California smokers rights group.
States are fighting back, and courts are seeing many cases like the one filed by California against online tobacco.
In January, New York City sued several Web sites for evading the city's steep taxes, and a number of states have also taken legal action. As of March, Philip Morris had filed 18 lawsuits against Internet retailers, and it has sent warning letters to 80 others.
WEB OF DECEIT?
Philip Morris says it has surveyed 500 sites selling online cigarettes to American customers and found that not a single one complies with basic standards of tax reporting or safeguards against sales to minors.
"Overall, the number of people purchasing (Internet) cigarettes is still relatively small, but growing at a rather alarming rate," said Tom Ryan, a Philip Morris USA spokesman. "Alarming, I say, because much of that growth is based on illegal sales."
"The long-term effect is decidedly negative on our business," said Ryan, whose company controls 62 percent of the name-brand U.S. cigarette market. "We have invested enormous resources of our own into the legitimate distribution of our products."
The Online Tobacco Retailers Association said such complaints are based on fears of shrinking market share. Online sales are one factor helping little-known discount brands get to market, much to the annoyance of big tobacco, Davoudi said.
"We are not out there selling a product that is illegal," he said. "It's a product that for whatever reason, yes, is damaging, but it is a legal product."
Philip Morris says discount brands now have a market share of 10 percent, up from only 3 percent in 1997.
Davoudi also said his group's members refuse to sell to anyone younger than age 21.
"We have a much better, much more reliable way of making sure that cigarettes get into the hands of adults," he said.
"There is nothing you can do to prevent a kid from walking up to somebody standing outside a store and saying 'Here's 10 bucks, buy me a pack of cigarettes and you keep the change."'
*******************************
Washington Post
File Sharing Forfeits Right To Privacy
Judge Tells Verizon To Identify Customer
By Jonathan Krim
Friday, April 25, 2003; Page E01
A federal judge yesterday reaffirmed the recording industry's right to compel Internet service providers to turn over the names of customers suspected of illegally sharing music online, raising the specter of the record labels serving hundreds or thousands of subpoenas seeking to crack down on digital file swapping.
U.S. District Judge John D. Bates rejected arguments by Verizon Communications Inc. that revealing the names would violate subscribers' right to privacy. In doing so, Bates refused to put on hold a subpoena that the Recording Industry of America served on Verizon last summer for the name of one of its 1.8 million customers, who the association claims is illegally circulating copyrighted works.
The RIAA said that without such information, it cannot contact the customer and demand that he or she stop the activity.
"If users of pirate peer-to-peer sites don't want to be identified, they should not break the law by illegally distributing music," said RIAA President Cary Sherman. Yesterday's decision made it clear that such people cannot rely on Internet service providers to "shield them from accountability," he said.
In U.S. District Court in Washington, RIAA lawyers said they intend to serve a "substantial number" of subpoenas on Internet service providers. Because file sharing is popular with teenagers, parents could be legal targets if they are the subscribers to services that connect their homes to the Internet.
Verizon argued that it should not be compelled to reveal names based on a simple demand from the RIAA.
The company will ask a federal appeals court to put off the subpoena until it hears the case. Bates gave Verizon two weeks to seek a delay.
"Verizon will continue to use every legal means available to protect our users' privacy," said Sarah B. Deutsch, the company's associate general counsel. "We feel strongly that the due process rights of perhaps of millions of Internet subscribers now hang in the balance." She said the constitutional issues in the case would warrant appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary.
Part of the dispute is how a 1998 law, called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, enables copyright holders to protect their work in digital form. Under the law, a copyright holder can request a subpoena by asserting that a violation has occurred, and the subpoena can be issued by a court clerk without review by a judge.
Verizon argued that such a system could lead to cyber-stalking and other abuse. A wife-beater could pretend to be a copyright holder and serve a subpoena demanding the location of a battered spouse who is hiding, Deutsch said.
Verizon, which said it opposes digital piracy, instead wants copyright holders to sue "John Doe" defendants, after which the Internet service providers would turn over the names.
Bates rejected Verizon's arguments, saying that copyright holders must provide detailed, sworn declarations in support of their request for subpoenas and that Internet service providers have the right to contest them.
"Verizon's bald speculation of mistakes, abuse or harassment, that has yet to occur to any degree . . . is simply not enough," Bates wrote in his opinion.
Overall, he wrote, "Verizon's customers should have little expectation of privacy (or anonymity) in infringing copyrights."
Bates said Congress intended to enable copyright holders to move quickly to stop infringement, and that the harm RIAA suffers from continued infringement outweighed any harm Verizon might suffer by turning over the customer's name before the case is heard on appeal.
The recording industry estimates that it lost $5 billion worldwide last year as a result of people sharing music files. It has battled file-sharing services in court and was able to shut down pioneer Napster Inc.
But other services persevered and grew, and RIAA decided to go after individuals. In addition to pressuring Internet service providers for names, the association recently sued four University of Maryland students, claiming copyright infringement.
*******************************
New York Times
April 24, 2003
Online, All the Time, an All-Seeing Surveillance System
By JEFFREY
IN the 2001 remake of the film "Ocean's Eleven," a band of thieves switches surveillance cameras pointed at a Las Vegas casino's safe to a recorded image of a replica safe that they have built in a nearby warehouse. By the time casino officials discover that the safe they are monitoring is not the real one, the thieves are well on their way to making off with $150 million.
Fooling security systems always seems to work in Hollywood. But in real life, it's not so easy these days. Not only are surveillance cameras more common in this era of increased concern about security, but they are also much more sophisticated.
Such systems no longer depend on a limited number of analog cameras with dedicated fiber optic wiring and banks of monitors connected to video recorders. Today, so-called network cameras use digital images, which can be easily stored and manipulated on a computer server and monitored from remote locations by using the Internet. Tiny cameras can be added to a security system, sometimes for temporary use, by simply hooking them up to a computer network. It is even possible to route video from analog cameras through servers that turn their images into digital pictures.
"Two PC servers can now do all the recording that used to take 100 VCR's," said Fredrik Nilsson, director of business development for Axis Communications, a Swedish company that sells network video cameras.
The systems have become popular with school officials and managers of shopping malls and convention centers and with local and state transportation departments, which provide live pictures that motorists can view over the Internet before heading out. "The biggest advantage is that it uses the existing infrastructure," Mr. Nilsson said. "It's as easy as plugging the camera into a computer network."
But the ease with which the high-tech surveillance cameras can be set up and used worries people who are concerned about the invasion of privacy. The Washington Police Department came under fire for a system it purchased from Axis that enables it to monitor activities through a network of cameras mounted at busy intersections, in the subway system and at tourist sites like the National Mall.
The system, which is activated during heightened terror alerts, allows the authorities to manipulate the cameras so they can, for instance, pan and zoom in on activity they consider suspicious. The remote access also means that officers can view images on computer monitors installed in squad cars.
Axis also supplied cameras to the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City for the 2002 Winter Olympics. Bart Allen, director of operations at the convention center, which continues to use the system, said the cameras were economical and improved security. With the center's old analog system, he said, security guards could record the images from only 5 of the 80 cameras located around the center at any one time. "So if something happened in an area we weren't recording, we didn't have a record of it," Mr. Allen said. Now, images at all 80 locations can be recorded.
What's more, because cameras can easily be added or moved anywhere a network connection is available, the system can cover much more ground than an analog system. If a vendor brings valuable equipment to a trade show at the convention center, for example, Mr. Allen said, he can set up a camera to watch it. Network cameras can be programmed to record only when there is movement in the field of vision so that no computer memory is wasted on monitoring empty rooms. And it is easier to find a specific moment on a digitized video, as anyone who has tried to locate a specific scene in a movie on a DVD or a videotape knows.
The new system has already foiled burglaries at the convention center, Mr. Allen said. "We put a camera on a bunch of laptops in a room and we ended up catching one of our own security guards helping himself to a few of them," he said. "Big Brother is everywhere."
Sean Grogan, vice president for operations for Springfield Food Court, a company that operates food courts in shopping malls and airports, said he was attracted to the network cameras because they can store a digital archive at little cost. With his old analog system, he had a videotape for each day of the week. Each Tuesday, for instance, he taped over the previous Tuesday's tape.
When the company was sued recently by an employee who claimed to have fallen at work four months earlier, Mr. Grogan was able to find the digital images from that day on his computer server. It showed that no one had fallen, he said. "If we had the old system," he said, "it would have been my word against theirs."
*******************************
Los Angeles Times
They have a file on you
Restaurants are using computers to track what diners eat, drink, say and do. You want better service? You got it.
David Shaw
April 23, 2003
LIKE a rapidly increasing number of restaurants, the Brentwood Restaurant & Lounge maintains a computerized database on its customers' preferences, habits and idiosyncrasies. Although these notations are designed primarily to provide better service, they also include such entries as:
? "Please provide prompt service. He believes he's the biggest writer in Hollywood and has told us so."
? "Don't seat at [table] #19. He tried to have sex there last time he was in."
? "Never take this person's reservation. Ever ever if you value your life."
These directives which become a permanent part of the customer's dining history, instantly available to the restaurant staff with a couple of touches on the computer screen are made possible thanks to software developed by OpenTable.com, an online restaurant reservation service.
OpenTable.com has more than 1,400 member restaurants in more than 30 cities including 88 in Los Angeles. Most tend to be upscale Bastide, Spago Beverly Hills, Melisse, Michael's and L'Orangerie among them but some are much more modest (Bombay Cafe, for example, and Pete's Cafe & Bar, World Cafe and Barefoot restaurant).
Although OpenTable initially emphasized online reservations in its marketing campaign, that function accounts for, on average, only about 5% of the total reservations at member restaurants. A more important element of the service to restaurants and customers alike is the data-tracking capability of the OpenTable software for all customers, no matter how they made their reservations. OpenTable enables restaurants to collect and access quickly such information as their customers' favorite wines, waiters, water and tables, their food allergies, their birthdays and anniversaries everything they need to know to "treat every customer like a VIP," in the words of Thomas Layton, chief executive of OpenTable.
Making customers feel pampered
In Los Angeles, where egos seem especially large and especially fragile and where dietary habits often range from the merely exotic to the obsessively ascetic, the ability to make customers feel pampered and important is especially useful.
"OpenTable lets us give customers the feeling that, 'These people know who I am and they care about what I want and what I like and don't like,' " says Harvey Friend, general manager of the Water Grill in downtown Los Angeles.
"If a guy comes in for the fifth time, and he likes his crab taken out of the shell, we should know that and do it and not have to ask him," Friend says. "If he's allergic to onions or garlic, we should know that and not have to ask him."
Some information that restaurants enter as "customer codes" or "customer notes" are far more personal and not always complimentary.
"Orders and eats at a snail's pace. Schooled in hell and graduated with honors," reads the note on one woman who dines regularly at Michael's in Santa Monica.
"Very cheesy guy," reads another. "Always drinks Veuve Cliquot but pronounces it 'Vave Click-it'. Always comes in with a different girl. Doesn't tip well. Usually pretty soused by the time they leave."
Don't such records raise questions about invasion of privacy and whether Big Brother is now watching you eat?
"I was concerned about that when we first started with OpenTable," says Danny Meyer, who owns five New York restaurants, including Gramercy Tavern and Union Square Cafe. "But I used to keep track of regular customers' seating and waiter preferences and birthdays and favorite wines and all on 5x7 cards; now we use computers to do the same thing, only better."
I agree and I realize I may be in a minority. In our cyber age, many people worry increasingly about how much information the government and corporate America gathers about them. I worry about that too.
But the OpenTable data gathered by individual restaurants is not available to any other restaurant, and I think it's perfectly legitimate and ultimately beneficial to most customers. I also think that if you're obnoxious, if you're rude, if you repeatedly make reservations and fail to show up, if you're a lousy tipper, well, why shouldn't the restaurant make note of that and act accordingly? Even if that means refusing your reservation.
Why shouldn't people be accountable for their behavior especially in a public place, like a restaurant?
Besides, the vast majority of customer notes I've seen are informational, not negative, and they're designed solely to help restaurants serve customers better, to meet their various needs and desires and yes to cosset and coddle them.
If you prefer a certain table or a certain waiter, if it's your wedding anniversary, if you prefer olive oil to butter, why shouldn't the restaurant keep track of that and cater to those preferences?
I, for example, appreciate restaurants knowing that my wife wants a Chivas on the rocks, with a water back, as soon as she comes in and that I enjoy a glass of Champagne, usually bring my own wine and like most everything cooked rare.
"A customer may not have been in for eight months but we can still say, 'Hello, Mr. Johnson. It's so nice to see you again. Happy anniversary,' " says Jon McGavin, a food and beverage director for the Ritz-Carlton hotels. "And then, without his asking, we bring him a vodka and tonic, made with Absolut, his brand."
Paul Einbund, sommelier at Melisse in Santa Monica, recalls an evening when "a customer came in whose wife just had a baby, and I couldn't remember the baby's name. I knew we'd entered it in OpenTable so I ran over, tapped the computer screen, got the name, walked to their table and said, 'So, how's little Madison Brianna?'
"They were thrilled."
OpenTable also enables restaurants to follow customers' progress through dinner, to know what course they're on and whether service is appropriately paced and to build an e-mail list for special events and reservation confirmations (although they don't have customers' e-mail addresses unless the customers provide them).
Restaurants generally pay about $1,300 to have the OpenTable computers installed, then pay an average of $300 a month for the service. (The figure varies greatly, depending on what software they order and how many terminals they have.) Restaurants also pay $1 for every seat reserved through OpenTable.com.
The computers are generally installed at the reservation desk so that when customers call, the reservationist can instantly find their names in the database and respond accordingly.
"If you have a new hostess, she might not know your regular customers," says Michael McCarty of Michael's, "but she can use OpenTable and suddenly she can see that the person on the other end of the phone is a 'VIP, friend of Michael's, likes Beefeater martinis on the rocks, with a twist, likes to sit in the garden, usually brings his own wine and shouldn't be charged corkage.' "
Restaurants customize their own codes for customers.
At Chaya Brasserie in West Hollywood, "X" stands for VIP. At Grace, also in West Hollywood, "NL" is "needs love," while "NLL" is "needs lots of love" and "NATAL" is "needs amazing total amounts of love" all for customers whose behavior embodies varying degrees of difficulty.
Spago Beverly Hills uses "TLC" ("tender love and care") for any customer who was kept waiting on the phone or who says, as Spago customers often do, "I hear you're only nice to the top Hollywood stars."
Spago is well-known for its celebrity clientele, and the last name of any VIP customer is thus listed in all capital letters in the computer, says Tracey Spillane, the restaurant's general manager.
In the case of especially important guests, the "customer code" might say "Notify Tracy" or "Notify Lee" (chef Lee Hefter) or "friend of Wolf" (owner Wolfgang Puck), so they can be alerted as soon as the customer arrives. Or the note might list the number of times the customer has been in (more than 600 times in the past year and a half for Marvin Davis, former owner of 20th Century Fox).
"We print out our lunch reservation list, complete with all the notations, at 10 every morning, and we print the dinner list at 4 every afternoon," Spillane says. "The lists are given to the chef and the maitre d' to be sure they're prepared to attend to any special requests" ("massive peanut allergy," for example, or "must be table 34, only bumped to 24 by" so-and-so).
"OpenTable also makes it easier to trace and respond to complaints," Spillane says. "We know when they came in, where they sat, who their server was, what they ate and drank, how much they paid and what time they left."
OpenTable began in San Francisco, where it's still headquartered, in the fall of 1999, quickly added New York and expanded rapidly to other cities too rapidly for its resources. In late 2001, the company decided to back off, to focus its sales and marketing efforts in those two cities, plus Chicago and Washington, D.C. Then, in mid-2002, it resumed marketing in five other cities, including Los Angeles. Most of its member restaurants are now in those nine cities.
Early this year, OpenTable added to its client list the French Laundry in Yountville, widely thought to be the best (and most-difficult-to-get-into) restaurant in the country.
Unlike most other restaurants, which have their entire inventory of tables available for OpenTable.com reservations, the French Laundry makes only two tables available for each meal.
A database for details
Although general manager Laura Cunningham is happy with the OpenTable.com reservations, she clearly values most highly the system's data management capabilities.
"We have a customer coming in soon who proposed to his wife here and is coming back here on his wedding day. Another customer always orders caviar, doesn't eat fried food, lobster, onions or foie gras, took six smoking breaks last time and always wants his coffee and dessert outside, no matter what the temperature is.
"Having all that in our database, readily accessible, lets us treat him properly."
The French Laundry has one of the most sensitive and sophisticated customer service operations of any restaurant I know. They have a concierge whose full-time job is handling information on individual guests, and, every night, the wait staff is expected to file "table reports" on anything of interest or concern that happens at any table.
The French Laundry has had its own database with information on 5,000 customers for years. Now the staff merges that information with OpenTable and adds to it every night.
"We just had a woman come in say she only likes the inside of her bread, " Cunningham told me when we spoke last week. "She said she doesn't even like to see the crust."
The staff entered that information in OpenTable, and "the next time she comes, we'll have the kitchen cut the crusts off six or eight slices of bread as soon as she gets here."
*******************************
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Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber:
Welcome to the April 25, 2003 edition of ACM TechNews,
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ACM TechNews
Volume 5, Number 487
Date: April 25, 2003
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Top Stories for Friday, April 25, 2003:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html
"Linux Founder Opens Door to DRM"
"Firms Call for Open High-Speed Net"
"Baby DMCAs Punish Copy Crimes"
"To Print or Not to Print: California Studies Electronic Voting Security"
"The Eyes and Ears of War"
"The PATRIOT Software Bonanza"
"Giving PCs the Boot--Responsibly"
"Like a Swerving Commuter, a Selfish Router Slows Traffic"
"Where Spam Comes From"
"Nanocomputer Skips Clock"
"Microsoft Research Gives a Glimpse of the Future"
"Perspective: A Mosaic of New Opportunities"
"Wired by a Kindred Spirit, the Disabled Gain Control"
"Engineers Aim to Make Average Singers Sound Like Virtuosos"
"Critical Path"
"Will Ceiling Fall?"
"Wi-Fi Means Business"
"TeleLiving: When Virtual Meets Reality"
"The State of Desktop Speech"
******************* News Stories ***********************
"Linux Founder Opens Door to DRM"
Linux founder Linus Torvalds posted a message on the
"Linux-kernel" mailing list Thursday indicating that he sees no
prohibition against developers deploying digital rights
management (DRM) technology, even though some open-source ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0425f.html#item1
"Firms Call for Open High-Speed Net"
The Coalition of Broadband Users and Innovators, whose members
include Walt Disney, Amazon.com, and Microsoft, want the FCC to
adopt guidelines that retain the Internet's basic open
architecture, without which innovation could suffer. The FCC ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0425f.html#item2
"Baby DMCAs Punish Copy Crimes"
State lawmakers are proposing bills that limit digital copying
and impose penalties on violators, leading opponents to label
them super-DMCAs, after the controversial Digital Millennium
Copyright Act. Van Stevenson of the Motion Picture Association ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0425f.html#item3
"To Print or Not to Print: California Studies Electronic Voting Security"
A special task force appointed by California Secretary of State
Kevin Shelley in February is studying the security and
dependability of touch-screen voting machines to see whether they
should provide a printed audit trail to ensure an accurate vote ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0425f.html#item4
"The Eyes and Ears of War"
In Iraq, U.S. military technological capabilities have far
surpassed any demonstrated in past wars: The United States has
brought to bear on the battlefield a lethal menagerie of IT, much
of it developed in the commercial sector. Pentagon Office of ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0425f.html#item5
"The PATRIOT Software Bonanza"
Software vendors are rushing to help financial services firms,
universities, and others comply with the USA Patriot Act, which
requires, among other things, more robust anti-money laundering
efforts. Other markets opened wider by the Patriot Act, as well ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0425f.html#item6
"Giving PCs the Boot--Responsibly"
The National Safety Council estimates that discarded computers in
the United States will total 315 million by 2004, yet only about
11 percent of computers are being recycled. Manufacturers such
as Dell and Hewlett-Packard are developing and implementing ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0425f.html#item7
"Like a Swerving Commuter, a Selfish Router Slows Traffic"
Cornell University researchers Tim Roughgarden and Eva Tardos
have formulated an analogy between Internet traffic and highway
traffic that equates motorists with routers: Shortcuts in both
systems serve the selfish interests of individuals that result in ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0425f.html#item8
"Where Spam Comes From"
Researchers at the Center for Democracy and Technology conducted
a study to determine how exactly spammers get hold of email
addresses. The project, which commenced last summer, involved
the establishment of 250 addresses that were posted on Web sites ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0425f.html#item9
"Nanocomputer Skips Clock"
Computing power could be ratcheted up tremendously through the
advent of nanocomputers that use molecule-sized components, and
researchers at Japan's Communications Research Laboratory (CRL)
have formulated a low-power, highly reconfigurable nanocomputer ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0425f.html#item10
"Microsoft Research Gives a Glimpse of the Future"
Microsoft Research has 55 distinct research efforts underway,
including those involving machine interface design and software
development technologies. Rick Rashid, who started the group in
1991, heads operations in Microsoft's Redmond, Wash., campus and ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0425f.html#item11
"Perspective: A Mosaic of New Opportunities"
Groove Networks CEO Ray Ozzie asserts that the potential of what
tech visionary Mark Anderson terms the "Global Computer"--a vast
network consisting of all worldwide transistors interconnected by
the Internet--has barely been tapped. He writes that many people ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0425f.html#item12
"Wired by a Kindred Spirit, the Disabled Gain Control"
Farleigh Dickinson University computer scientist Eamon Doherty is
integrating computers and robotics into tools that can
significantly improve the everyday lives of severely disabled
people. Routine tasks that healthy people take for ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0425f.html#item13
"Engineers Aim to Make Average Singers Sound Like Virtuosos"
Mark J.T. Smith of Purdue University's School of Electrical and
Computer Engineering has teamed up with Georgia Institute of
Technology graduate student Matthew Lee to devise computer
algorithms for voice analysis and synthesis so that human singing ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0425f.html#item14
"Critical Path"
Discouraged by layoffs, increasing outsourcing, and downturns,
both employed and unemployed IT professionals are losing faith in
the IT career path, and are advising the younger generation to
develop more marketable skills; this could lead to a scarcity of ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0425f.html#item15
"Will Ceiling Fall?"
Tech workers are increasingly incensed over the perceived loss of
jobs to foreign companies and workers, and are pressing
politicians to lower the ceiling for H-1B visas issued each year.
A number of legislators have already responded, including Rep. F. ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0425f.html#item16
"Wi-Fi Means Business"
Four years after its debut as a tool primarily for enthusiasts on
the network fringe, wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) has started to
penetrate the corporate sector. Buoyed by its ability to provide
cheaper high-speed Internet connections, firms are embracing ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0425f.html#item17
"TeleLiving: When Virtual Meets Reality"
New technological trends are bringing TeleLiving--conversational
human-machine interaction that facilitates a smoother, more
comfortable way to educate, shop, do one's job, and even
socialize--closer to reality. High-speed broadband ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0425f.html#item18
"The State of Desktop Speech"
The growing sophistication of desktop speech recognition and
text-to-speech technologies will open up new markets and boost
economic returns for users. Doctors and lawyers represent a
steady customer base for desktop dictation products, given their ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0425f.html#item19
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ACM TechNews
Volume 5, Number 463
Date: February 28, 2003
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Top Stories for Friday, February 28, 2003:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html
"It's Open Season on Spammers"
"Inventor of Swarming Robots Wins Prize"
"Rivals Chip Away at Microsoft's Dominance"
"Handhelds Gain Space"
"Are the Feds Reading Your E-Mail?"
"Turning the Desktop Into a Meeting Place"
"Congress Targets P2P Piracy on Campus"
"Santa Clara County OKs Touch-Screen Voting"
"Microsoft-Backed Bill Would Dilute Spam Law, State Says"
"Genetic IT: Systems With Evolving Value"
"Telematics Spec Delivered Amidst Growing Doubts"
"With 6 Degrees of Separation, Computers Stay in Sync"
"Many Laid-Off Silicon Valley Techies Work for Free to Brush Up
on Skills"
"Links Adding Up for Grid Computing"
"NSF Expands Cyber Corps Program"
"Cyber Plan's Future Bleak"
"The Linux Uprising"
"Wireless Mesh Networks"
******************* News Stories ***********************
"It's Open Season on Spammers"
Legislators, regulators, and security specialists flocked to this
week's Data Security Summit in Washington, D.C., where a
hot-button topic was the growing problem of unsolicited
commercial email (spam) and ways to control it so that consumer ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0228f.html#item1
"Inventor of Swarming Robots Wins Prize"
MIT doctoral candidate James McLurkin received this year's
Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for creating robots that are
programmed to swarm like bees. The machines are equipped with
sensors and radio gear that enable them to scan for environmental ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0228f.html#item2
"Rivals Chip Away at Microsoft's Dominance"
Governments, educational institutions, and even businesses are
switching from Microsoft products to open-source solutions, which
offer comparable computing capabilities at a much cheaper price.
As a result, open source is gaining on flagship Microsoft tools ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0228f.html#item3
"Handhelds Gain Space"
University of California at Berkeley researcher Ka-Ping Yee has
turned a handheld computer display into a window that allows
users to work in a much larger virtual workspace more easily.
Instead of using the pen to scroll over a larger document or ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0228f.html#item4
"Are the Feds Reading Your E-Mail?"
Senate Judiciary Committee members Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.),
Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Arlen Specter (R-Penn.) are
sponsoring the Domestic Surveillance Oversight Act, which
requires that the FBI and the Department of Justice disclose how ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0228f.html#item5
"Turning the Desktop Into a Meeting Place"
Software engineer Robb Beal's Spring computer interface differs
from traditional desktop interfaces by using hypertext
representations of people, places, and things instead of icons
for applications and Web sites, thus simplifying frequent user ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0228f.html#item6
"Congress Targets P2P Piracy on Campus"
A House of Representatives subcommittee that oversees copyright
law held a hearing on the issue of peer-to-peer (P2P) piracy on
college campuses on Wednesday under new subcommittee chairman
Lamar Smith (R-Texas), and during the hearing a bipartisan slate ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0228f.html#item7
"Santa Clara County OKs Touch-Screen Voting"
Heeding the advice of computer experts and voting advocates,
California's Santa Clara County on Tuesday became the first U.S.
county to agree to purchase touch-screen voting systems that
provide a "voter-verified" paper record for each ballot. The ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0228f.html#item8
"Microsoft-Backed Bill Would Dilute Spam Law, State Says"
An amendment to Washington state's anti-spam law that was backed
by Microsoft and which would have weakened Washington state's
anti-spam protections will die in a Senate committee, partially
due to the work of the state's Attorney General's Office that ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0228f.html#item9
"Genetic IT: Systems With Evolving Value"
Businesses need to think about how to align their IT capabilities
with future software evolution, which currently is heading toward
systems that evolve rather than overlap one another. With
automation as the first wave of IT innovation in business, and ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0228f.html#item10
"Telematics Spec Delivered Amidst Growing Doubts"
After four years of development, the Automotive Multimedia
Interface Collaboration (AMI-C) presented an approximately
2,000-page multimedia interface standard to the worldwide auto
industry on Feb. 26. "This gives a common baseline for everyone ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0228f.html#item11
"With 6 Degrees of Separation, Computers Stay in Sync"
A team of scientists have developed a mathematical model
demonstrating that the "six degrees of separation" theory, which
speculates that any two people can be connected through no more
than six other people, also applies to synchronized computing. ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0228f.html#item12
"Many Laid-Off Silicon Valley Techies Work for Free to Brush Up
on Skills"
Technology workers in Silicon Valley are increasingly accepting
jobs with no pay in an effort to boost their knowledge and
improve their chances for future employment, according to
employers and recruiters. Some companies offer potential ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0228f.html#item13
"Links Adding Up for Grid Computing"
Grid computing, in which unused computing capacity is tapped to
handle complex calculations, has started to migrate out of the
academic sector and into the corporate arena. Moreover, the
relative simplicity of grid computing can be a boon to users who ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0228f.html#item14
"NSF Expands Cyber Corps Program"
The National Science Foundation (NSF) doled out 13 more awards to
U.S. universities and colleges in order to boost the capacity of
its Scholarship for Service program, also known as the Cyber
Corps. President Bush promoted the program after the Sept. 11 ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0228f.html#item15
"Cyber Plan's Future Bleak"
Security experts and Washington insiders doubt that many of the
initiatives contained in the National Strategy to Secure
Cyberspace will be deployed, owing to a vacant leadership
position and few specifics on how the private sector, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0228f.html#item16
"The Linux Uprising"
The open-source Linux operating system has exceeded the vision of
its creator, Linus Torvalds, by penetrating the business sector
and emerging as a threat to Microsoft's dominion over the server
industry. Companies such as DaimlerChrysler are finding it ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0228f.html#item17
"Wireless Mesh Networks"
Point-to-point or point-to-multipoint networks typical of
industrial wireless communications systems have limited
scalability and reliability, respectively, and can be impacted by
unfavorable environmental conditions. Wireless multihop mesh ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0228f.html#item18
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-- To review Wednesday's issue, please please visit
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0226w.html
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http://www.acm.org/technews/
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