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Clips April 14, 2003
- To: "Lillie Coney":;, Gene Spafford <spaf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>;, John White <white@xxxxxxxxxx>;, Jeff Grove <jeff_grove@xxxxxxx>;, goodman@xxxxxxxxxxxxx;, David Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>;, glee@xxxxxxxxxxxxx;, Andrew Grosso<Agrosso@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>;, ver@xxxxxxxxx;, lillie.coney@xxxxxxx;, v_gold@xxxxxxx;, harsha@xxxxxxx;, KathrynKL@xxxxxxx;, computer_security_day@xxxxxxx;, waspray@xxxxxxxxxxx;
- Subject: Clips April 14, 2003
- From: Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2003 14:15:11 -0400
Clips April 14, 2003
ARTICLES
Survey Finds Americans Split on 'E-Government'
Internet Ads Promising Cures or Protection
Irate Phone Customers Find an Ear
Homeland Security for Sale
Spam takes ideological turn
State and local governments face hurdles on remote sensing
Proposed law won?t slow encryption abuse, some experts say
Rumsfeld sets early deadlines for transformation
Bill would pay agencies to give up spectrum
U.S. regulators issue disaster recovery guidelines
Intrusion prevention touted over detection
Researchers developing next-generation space shuttle
Idaho man takes junk e-mail senders to court
U.S. buys data on foreign citizens
Information lets federal agencies to track tourists, immigrants
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Washington Post
Survey Finds Americans Split on 'E-Government'
By Judy Sarasohn
Monday, April 14, 2003; Page A14
A new survey on Americans' growing relationship with "e-government" -- government services and information online -- reflects their concerns about privacy and security.
The report said that 49 percent of its general American population survey believe it is appropriate for the government to search its existing databases for information that could help it track down terrorists. But 42 percent disagreed, believing that "protecting privacy should be a top priority."
Also, 52 percent of Americans, according to the survey, believe that government investment in e-government would enhance homeland security by helping agencies, such as the FBI, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the police to share information quickly and to better coordinate emergency response. But 36 percent said it would hurt homeland security, partly because Internet technology might be vulnerable to attack.
The survey, the third annual on e-government, was conducted in February by Hart/Teeter Research on behalf of the Council for Excellence in Government, which has long supported expansion of e-government, and Accenture, a consulting, management and telecommunications company. The survey was to be released today. Patricia McGinnis, chief executive of the council, said the survey shows "how e-savvy people are becoming."
According to the report, 68 percent have Internet access at home, school or work, and seven in 10 go online at least once a day. Further, 50 percent of all Americans and 75 percent of American Internet users have used a government -- federal, state or local -- Web site to get information or conduct a transaction.
Of those who go online, 66 percent say they have used a credit card over the Internet, and 70 percent have bought a product or service. Although 70 percent gave personal information to a commercial Web site to get a product or service, only 29 percent did so to a government Web site.
Americans are generally accessing government Web sites to get information -- to find an office address or list of services -- but they also expressed interest in using government Web sites for other purposes, such as renewing a driver's license (61 percent) and determining eligibility for government programs (59 percent).
Although the survey report was optimistic about the future of e-government, it noted that the "public is not ready for online voting," noting that only three in 10 supported the concept while 54 percent strongly opposed online voting and 13 percent somewhat opposed it.
The survey also found opposition to a voluntary national identification card with personal information in digital form, "a controversial extension of e-government." Despite the report's showing of Americans turning to government Web sites, only 8 percent said they were very familiar with e-government, a situation that has not changed since 2001. But the report said this indicates that although people may be familiar with specific online government services, "they do not relate those services to the broader concept of online government."
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New York Times
April 14, 2003
Internet Ads Promising Cures or Protection
By MELODY PETERSEN
Type "SARS" into an Internet search engine and advertisements from a variety of companies pop up offering products as diverse as health supplements, disinfectants and special protective suits that marketers say will keep the new disease, severe acute respiratory syndrome, at bay.
One company offers a disinfectant that it says "kills SARS supervirus." A supplement maker advertises a pill that it says will ward off SARS by bolstering the immune system. Another Web site offers the "SARS protective kit," including a respirator, antimicrobial hand-cleaners and a pair of latex gloves, all on sale for $155.
Entrepreneurship may be the pulse of the American economy, but federal health officials warn that consumers should be wary of claims like these and unswayed by companies that seem to be playing on fear.
Dr. Mark B. McClellan, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said on Friday in an interview that the risk of contracting the disease in the United States was "very, very low." The best defense, he said, is to avoid traveling to China, Singapore or other countries where the cases have been concentrated.
"The evidence on SARS is very limited today," Dr. McClellan said. "We have no evidence so far that any specific drug is effective against it."
One Internet advertiser, Antec International, a British company, and its American distributor, BiosafetyUSA, is selling Virkon, a disinfectant that it says kills the agent that causes SARS.
Dr. Ronald B. Turner, a professor at the University of Virginia and a specialist in infectious diseases, said Antec could not have tested the disinfectant because so little is known about SARS.
The cause of the disease remains unknown, although scientists with the World Health Organization strongly suspect that it is a previously unknown member of the coronavirus family that may have mutated or jumped into humans from animals.
Heinz J. Niedermaier, chief executive of BiosafetyUSA, confirmed that the company had not tested Virkon in relation to SARS. But Virkon, he said, has been proved to kill strains of the coronavirus, which is best known for causing the common cold. The claim that Virkon kills SARS, Mr. Niedermaier acknowledged, may be an exaggeration.
Young Again Nutrients, which also advertises on the Internet, says its supplement, Beta Glucan, can bolster the immune system and help protect against SARS.
"We're just saying that a strong immune system is your best defense," said John Livingston, the company's chief executive.
But Dr. Turner said the company's advertising claims were speculative. He said it was not clear that the product would actually strengthen the immune system, and if it did, whether that would even help against SARS. People do not become infected with SARS, he said, because their immune systems are weak.
Companies can buy ads and help improve their placement in the results of Internet searches at sites like Google and Yahoo. Google permits companies to choose the keywords that they want to bring up their ads. The most prominent ad placement goes to those who bid the most on that keyword, in this case SARS, and to those ads that are clicked on by the most users. Google advertisers pay only when someone clicks on their ads.
On Saturday, SARS was the second-most searched phrase on Yahoo, after the television series "American Idol."
Some of the companies now advertising are established safety equipment businesses that sell respiratory masks, antimicrobial skin wipes, gloves and protective suits to companies and law enforcement agencies. But with SARS, some have set up Web sites to sell to the public.
ANI Safety and Supply in Lincolnwood, Ill., is advertising a myriad of products to help protect against SARS.
Krikor Topouzian, the company's vice president, said that when he heard about SARS, he ordered as many extra respiratory masks as he could. Buying the masks from the manufacturers now is hard, he said, because they say they have a backlog of two weeks or more.
"There are people out there who may be making unreasonable and irresponsible claims," Mr. Topouzian said, "but we're trying to be careful."
Companies like ANI have benefited from other recent biological scares. It was anthrax-contaminated mail in 2001. Then came the buildup to the war with Iraq and a run on duct tape. Now it is SARS.
News reports showing people wearing masks in Hong Kong and jets quarantined on runways because of SARS have helped increase Americans' anxieties.
More than 160 suspected cases of SARS in the United States have been reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but officials say the number of actual cases is probably far lower because authorities are casting a wide net in looking for those infected. So far, no one in the United States has died.
Federal health officials have said that it is far too early in the epidemic to predict whether the United States will escape its worst effects.
Dr. McClellan said that masks might be needed by health care workers caring for patients with suspected cases of SARS, but that most people do not need them.
The best precaution, he said, is simply washing the hands frequently and using an alcohol-based cleanser when washing is not possible.
Dr. McClellan said the F.D.A. had found a similar increase of exaggerated advertising claims in the anthrax scare. The agency sent warning letters to several companies that made questionable claims about their products' anthrax-fighting abilities. Regulators also sent letters to companies that were selling foreign-made ciprofloxacin, the generic name for the antibiotic Cipro, a treatment for anthrax.
"This is something we'll be keeping a close eye on," Dr. McClellan said.
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Wired News
Irate Phone Customers Find an Ear
02:00 AM Apr. 14, 2003 PT
Two years ago, 31,345 California residents complained to the state about their phone companies. Finally, someone is listening.
Most of the complaints -- 57 percent of them -- stemmed from billing disputes. Another 17 percent of the complaints had to do with unauthorized fees and services, while 9 percent of the people griped about poor service. The remaining 14 percent of the problems were lumped together by the California Public Utilities Commission under the "other" category.
The PUC responded to these grievances with a list of rules it dubbed the Telecommunications Consumer Bill of Rights, which it will vote on sometime this spring, a PUC spokeswoman said.
The proposal -- the first of its kind in the country -- would in essence force all phone companies (local, long distance and cell-phone service providers) to provide timely and consistent service. That includes a 24-hour, 7-day-a-week hotline with live operators to handle customer inquiries.
The bill would hold the carriers accountable for their marketing and billing practices and even force them to provide phone service to some customers who have not yet paid their bills. Those would be the folks who have filed petitions with the PUC and are waiting for a response.
No doubt, customers who say they were wronged by their phone company are thrilled at the idea of a government mandate for better service.
Some industry observers, however, have scoffed at the proposed rules as yet another example of government's intrusive and needless legislation.
"Wireless is still at the point where it's growing," said Sonia Arrison, a director at the San Francisco public policy think tank Pacific Research Institute. "The networks are still being built. We are still trying to decide what network we are going with. In this process, there will be trial and error. Some people, when they see errors, they complain. That is not a reason for legislation. It's like killing the goose before it lays an egg."
Travis Larson, spokesman for the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association, agreed. He said at the very least, California's proposed legislation would prove to be an "administrative nightmare for wireless carriers."
The proposal includes a mandate that all "written solicitations by carriers or their agents" must be "unambiguous, legible and in the equivalent of 10-point type or larger."
"We're concerned about the proliferation of regulation on the state level," Larson said. "If 50 different states write 50 different ? regulations, it will wreak havoc on any industry. Imagine if California required everything in 14-point font and double-sided and New York had different regulations regarding the design of bills?"
The PUC, however, said the backlash against phone companies was so overwhelming in 2001 that it warranted some kind of a response. In the last four years, the number of complaints against phone carriers in California has risen dramatically from approximately 11,000 grievances filed in 1999 to about 18,000 complaints in 2000 to an all-time high of 31,345 petitions by the end of 2001.
Most of the complaints were filed by customers who said they were deceptively or erroneously charged for a service.
"You can see that we have tracked those (complaints) and want to put these safeguards in place," a PUC spokeswoman said. "We seem to be up at the forefront in that other states will follow suit and propose similar types of consumer rights."
To Arrison's chagrin, both Arizona and New Mexico are considering similar proposals, although their legislation is "less burdensome" on the industry than the rules introduced in California, she said.
Larson bemoaned the spike in paperwork and bureaucracy the California law would require every time a carrier wanted to reach its customers.
Under the California Telecommunications Consumer Bill of Rights, which is still up for debate before the PUC, all carriers must post their current state tariffs on the Internet, as well as their rates, terms and conditions for service. Any advertisement they release that includes a price for service must also include any geographic limitations and other hidden disadvantages and fees, the PUC said.
Under the proposal, carriers must refund deposits for basic phone service -- with interest -- after one year of receiving timely payments from the customer. All telephone bills "must be clearly organized and may only contain charges for consumer-authorized products and services," the PUC said.
Basic service can't be discontinued on any day that customer service representatives weren't at hand to help customers. Emergency 911 service -- even for cell-phone users -- must work regardless of whether customers have paid their bills.
"Yesterday, my wireless carrier sent me an SMS (short-text message) offering me unlimited SMS for $2.99 a month," Larson said. "All I had to do to receive that offer was to reply to that message. It took me exactly 5 seconds. If California's rules are implemented, it would require the carrier to send an authorization form to the consumer, for the consumer to sign that authorization form and to then send it back to the carrier. That is not consumer-friendly regulation."
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Washington Post
Homeland Security for Sale
Firms Shift Focus To Capitalize on Defense Spending
By Michael Barbaro
Monday, April 14, 2003; Page E01
When North American Access Technologies Inc. debuted its mobile emergency command center in Washington three months ago, federal officials liked just about everything they saw: the concept (a converted 20-foot-long box truck), the equipment (on-board computers, Ethernet, telephones) and the price (about $100,000).
Their only beef was with the name.
"We were selling it as a disaster-recovery solution but they strongly suggested we call it homeland security solution," said Julius N. Neudorfer, director of network services at the Hawthorne, N.Y., company. He happily obliged, revising billboards and brochures in time for an information technology exposition last week at the Washington Convention Center. "I hate to be blasé, but we just listen to what they tell us."
Homeland security. First there was the agency. Then there was the department. Now there is the brand.
Nineteen months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, thousands of small and midsize U.S. companies like North American Access Technologies are rearranging priorities, renaming operations, repackaging products, and more or less reinventing themselves to cash in on what they hope will be hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending on domestic defense.
Locally, Presearch Inc. of Fairfax is trying to persuade the federal government to install the company's dial-up video technology, now used to catch shoplifters inside CVS pharmacies, on board thousands of airplanes to monitor cabin security. Human Genome Sciences Inc. of Rockville, best known for helping unravel the human genetic code, is hoping to win a government contract to produce an antidote for anthrax. And Juldi Inc. of Herndon, which has never worked with the government, is pitching its software as an ideal tool for integrating sensitive computer systems in the defense community.
Publicly, many of these companies characterize the sudden shift as a civic -- if not patriotic -- duty. Privately, they say it is a savvy business tactic. At a time when capital markets and venture capitalists have all but sealed their vaults, government research and purchasing money for domestic security is more or less immune to the economic slowdown.
The Homeland Security Department's requested budget for 2004 is $36.2 billion, a 7.4 percent increase from fiscal 2003. Of that, an estimated $800 million is designated for science and technology, which could help prop up three sectors of the economy -- biotechnology, telecommunications and software -- that were among the hardest hit after the dot-com crash.
As a result, industry and government officials said, homeland security is luring as many cash-strapped charlatans as it does cutting-edge innovators.
"There is a lot of junk out there," said Ronald J. McKenzie, senior vice president of Presearch, which is partnering with Verizon Communications Inc. to sell AirPics, a wireless video surveillance system. He has come up with a name for the duds, "bleeding-edge technology," which can cost undiscriminating clients millions of dollars. "Homeland security," McKenzie said, "is full of bleeders."
Like just about everybody else in the burgeoning homeland security sector, McKenzie declined to name names. But with so many companies vying for the same contracts, backroom sniping about the competition is becoming more common, particularly on the convention circuit.
"Simply the best and most powerful encryption solution in the world," read the banner for Washington-based software maker Meganet Corp., which set up a booth inside the Homeland Security Pavilion at FOSE, the information technology convention hosted last week by PostNewsweek Tech Media, a subsidiary of The Washington Post Co.
Meganet has just introduced the VME BioDrive, a fingerprint identification system designed to limit access to computer files. Should anyone doubt it was the best of its kind, the company's attorney, Ralph L. Lotkin, was on hand to explain that a competitor's version has "electrostatic problems."
The conventions themselves are powerful evidence of homeland security's new allure. Vice presidents of homeland security divisions stand behind booths describing homeland security technology that would be ideal for, say, the Homeland Security Department.
"If you wanted to spend the next 100 days at homeland security conferences, you could do it," said Stephen W.T. O'Keeffe, founder and president of O'Keeffe & Co., a high-tech advertising firm in McLean.
Officially, at least, the Department of Homeland Security is grateful for every idea that comes its way -- about two dozen a day through e-mail and telephone, said Alfonso Martinez-Fonts Jr., special assistant to the secretary for the private sector. Most pitches begin with an age-old ploy: "I recently met with the secretary; I know the undersecretary." There's no way to really check, so he listens politely.
Three-year-old Juldi is tossing its hat into homeland security because the alternative for a money-hungry software start-up -- venture capital funding -- would cede too much corporate control to professional investors, said chairman and chief executive Irfan Ali.
Not everybody, of course, is a new arrival to the domestic security market. Industry experts say the more established government contractors, many of whom shun the convention scene, are quietly gobbling up contracts based on existing relationships with federal agencies. Homeland security is the fashionable brand, they say, but the work remains basically the same.
Software giant Oracle Corp. of Redwood City, Calif., says it hasn't bothered with a flashy campaign to lure new government customers. Nevertheless, the Transportation Safety Administration, created shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, has already adopted its financial management software, previously in use by the Department of Transportation.
"The government is looking for solutions rather than component parts," said Steven R. Perkins, a senior vice president at Oracle and head of its homeland security division. New players "who have one piece of the puzzle are not going to help the cause dramatically."
When it comes to new players, measuring the effectiveness of homeland security products can be difficult. Many have no track record with the government. Others have not yet commercialized their technology. In either case, a company is at a distinct competitive disadvantage, industry experts say.
Compelling test data of any kind helps. Human Genome Sciences, for example, can point to detailed testing that shows its anthrax antidote is effective in animals. It plans to apply for funding to manufacture the drug under President Bush's proposed $6 billion biodefense program, code-named Bioshield.
The company's early experience illustrates another incentive for publicly held companies to invest in homeland security: Its stock shot up more than 30 percent the week it announced the drug.
Then there is North American Access Technologies. Before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the company offered computer networking services. Today, it also sells a crisis-management center on wheels. The company says the vehicle employs "ruggedized, high-density systems" and can host "multiple terabytes of data." But there is no way to test its performance after, for example, a nuclear dirty bomb is released until such an attack occurs.
Or there is Tripod Data Systems of Corvallis, Ore., a unit of Trimble Navigation Ltd., which makes a $1,500 handheld computer called the Recon. The company says the 17-ounce device is waterproof, with internal parts sealed; can operate in an environment 22 degrees below zero; and can withstand a four-foot fall 26 times.
What makes this handheld computer a better homeland security device than, say, Compaq's, Toshiba's or Microsoft's?
Says sales representative Peter Kimura: "It's much more rugged."
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Washington Post
Spam Takes Ideological Turn
By Janet Kornblum, USA TODAY
Almost as soon as the first bombs dropped on Iraq, spammers started launching their own attacks across the Internet. And in a new twist, people aren't just using junk e-mail to sell you war-related T-shirts, coins and so-called cures for biological attacks. They're using mass e-mail marketing software to spread their ideas about the war across the Net.
The amount of spam measured by watchers of junk e-mail has shot up in the past month. On March 4, anti-spam company Commtouch of Mountain View, Calif., detected 268,057 spam "attacks" (each attack is a single e-mail message sent to an average of 500,000 recipients). On April 3, the company detected 338,434 attacks, an increase of 26%.
CEO Gideon Mantel says unsolicited mass e-mail about the war is at least partly to blame.
Anti-spam company SurfControl, based in Scotts Valley, Calif., says war-related spam rose from insignificant amounts in March to nearly 10% of all spam that SurfControl monitors.
The Federal Trade Commission also has noticed the increase. In February, the agency, which regulates e-commerce, received 292 pieces of spam containing the terms "Iraq," "war" and "troops." In March, it received 2,469 e-mails containing those terms, a 745% increase but still only a tiny fraction of the 120,000 pieces of spam that the FTC receives every day at its uce@xxxxxxx reporting address.
Most war-related spam uses emotional or patriotic pitches to sell items such as "Support USA Troops 2003" T-shirts, books (How to Survive a Chemical or Biological Attack), car flags and commemorative coins such as the so-called Operation Freedom U.S. Coin.
But it also appears that some individuals with no intention of making any money are buying cheap spamming software that allows anyone to blast an e-mail out to thousands, turning mass-marketing lists into personal soap boxes.
"Kudos to the President of the United States on having safeguarded the larger interests of humanity," starts one mass-mailed message sent Friday. And the letter closes with this statement: "We bought your list to support the U.S. Army and our president in what they are doing."
"This is the Internet equivalent of the protests in the streets," says anti-spam activist John Mozena of the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail.
Experts doubt that idea spam will become widespread or that it will ever catch on with legitimate organizations. Though most people delete spam without even opening it, it's cheap enough that if even a few people look, it's effective.
"We wouldn't do it," says Dan Solomon, CEO of Mindshare Internet Campaigns, which develops online communications strategies for public affairs campaigns. "We wouldn't recommend that our clients do it, both because it annoys people and we wouldn't think it would be very effective."
But he understands why others might use it. "It's no different than crazy people talking on talk radio," Solomon says. "Are they 'effective?' I don't know. But that's not what they're thinking about. They're thinking about expression. As long as people exist who just want to communicate and don't want anything in return, there will be people who will do this."
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Government Computer News
04/14/03
State and local governments face hurdles on remote sensing
By Jim Sweeney
Recent developments have created new opportunities for state and local governments to use remote sensing data. Many of the hurdles they face in using this data are nontechnological, according to a study released earlier this month by a committee of the National Research Council.
A critical issue, the committee found, is that remote sensing is often not perceived as a must-have technology. Its financial and operational benefits must be sold to decision-makers, especially with many state and local governments facing fiscal problems. This usually requires a strong advocate, sometimes an elected official but most often a government employee.
As an example of the benefits of remote sensing, the committee cited Richland County, S.C., which used light detection and ranging (lidar) data to supply land contour information overnight to a company that wanted to build a plant in the county. Using surveyors would have taken 45 to 90 days, the report said, and cost an additional $140,000.
The committee also cited North Carolina, which is updating flood insurance maps. A cost-benefit analysis by the U.S. Geological Survey said the state would gain $3.35 for each dollar spent on the program, and lose $57 million each year it did not have updated maps. As an added benefit, the new maps could be used for community planning and other purposes.
The committee noted that four agencies in one state had bought the same remote sensing image. Central management of remote sensing data, and regional cooperatives to purchase and use data, could avoid these inefficiencies, the study said.
Licensing restrictions need to be addressed if governments want to share remote sensing data, the study said. The committee also said it is unclear whether the public, under freedom of information laws, can access data from commercial vendors.
Procurement and budget rules should be studied carefully before buying remote sensing data, the committee recommended. "Expenditures for remote sensing data are likely to occur unevenly within and across fiscal years," the study found. Another budget issue is whether the purchase of remote sensing data is considered a capital or operating expense.
The committee identified some technical matters to consider:
having adequate technical staff
the lack of standards for digital spatial data
the fact that the federal government uses the metric system but many state and local governments use the English system.
"Using Remote Sensing in State and Local Government: Information for Management and Decision-Making" is posted at www.nap.edu/catalog/10648.html.
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Government Computer News
04/14/03
Proposed law won?t slow encryption abuse, some experts say
By William Jackson
SAN FRANCISCOProposed legislation that would add a significant stretch of prison time for people who use cryptography in the commission of a crime could have a chilling effect on the technology, some privacy advocates fear.
But officials of RSA Security Inc. of Bedford, Mass., say it already is too late to slow down the use of strong encryption for digital communicationthe genie is out of the bottle.
"I don't know how you could go back," said Brett Michaels, director of RSA's government sales. Encryption is too tightly integrated with too many applications essential for e-government and e-commerce to eliminate or restrict, he said.
Draft legislation for Patriot II, a follow-on to the USA Patriot Act reportedly under consideration in the Justice Department, has been discussed at a number of recent IT and security conferences, including this week's RSA Security Conference here. The bill would call for increased prison time for people convicted of a felony if they knowingly used cryptography in committing the crime. It could add up to five years for a first offense and up to 10 years for subsequent crimes.
RSA was in the front lines of the crypto-wars of the last decade, in which a rapidly evolving cryptography industry confronted government restrictions on development and exportation of the technology in the name of national security and law enforcement.
Industry and privacy advocates won out in 1999 when export restrictions were largely dropped and government gave up its grip on sophisticated cryptography. In the end it was economics, not philosophy, that decided the battle, said John Worrall, RSA vice president of worldwide marketing.
"It came down to a market economy," Worrall said. U.S. export policy was locking American companies out of the worldwide market for security and privacy technology.
Since then, the government has turned to the private sector and academic world in selecting its newest Advanced Encryption Standard algorithm, the standard for federal use. But some fear that Patriot II would herald a return to tension between government and industry.
Worrall disagrees. "Nobody is going back and saying encryption can't be used," he said. "If it stops at that, I don't think we're on a slippery slope. I think that door has been closed."
Michaels said the argument over stricter sentencing is not the same as the original argument over whether cryptography should be in private hands.
"The issue of what happens in the commission of a crime is another issue altogether," he said. "The demand for e-business and e-government is so strong I don't believe there will be any chilling effect."
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Government Computer News
04/11/03
Rumsfeld sets early deadlines for transformation
By Dawn S. Onley
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has released his Transformation Planning Guidance, which offers a detailed blueprint for how the Defense Department will transform its fighting forces from the industrial age into the information age.
Throughout history wars have been fought using the cutting-edge technologies of their times, Rumsfeld said in his reportbut never before has the United States had such significant enhancements to technology as exist today.
?The department must align itself with the ongoing information revolution, not just by exploiting information technology, but by developing information-enabled organizational relationships and operating concepts,? Rumsfeld wrote in the guidance.
Rumsfeld said the transformation would affect three core areas in DOD: how the military fights, how it conducts business and how it works with interagency and multinational partners.
?If the United States fails to transform, then our current military superiority and the relative peace, prosperity and stability it underwrites will erode,? Rumsfeld said. ?Some adversaries hope the United States will become complacent. They hope that they will be able to better exploit diffusion of knowledge and IT ? and thereby negate or leap ahead of current U.S. military advantages.?
Rumsfeld established deadlines, including July 1 for the Joint Forces Command to develop and submit to him an integrated interoperability plan that can be achieved within the decade.
Because a key element of transforming the military is interoperability, Rumsfeld said, services are now required to identify initiatives to:
Improve interoperability to deploy a secure, robust and wideband network
Adopt post-before-processing intelligence and information concepts
Use dynamic, distributed, collaborative capabilities
Achieve data level interoperability and net-ready nodes of sensors, platforms, weapons and forces.
In addition, service leaders have until Nov. 1 to build what Rumsfeld called transformation road maps for achieving goals that include:
Systems that can participate in a Joint Technical Architecture collaboration
Systems that are tested and evaluated to determine capabilities, limitations and interoperability in realistic joint warfare scenarios and missions
New command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance weapons and logistics systems that incorporate IP
Systems that are capable of post-before-processing functionality
Selected legacy systems that are retrofitted with these capabilities.
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Government Executive
April 11, 2003
Bill would pay agencies to give up spectrum
From CongressDaily
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., Friday introduced a bill designed to streamline the process of paying federal agencies to relocate from government radio frequency spectrum that has been allocated for commercial use.
Sens. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., Sam Brownback, R-Kan., and John Ensign, R-Nev., are original cosponsors. The House Energy and Commerce Telecommunications Subcommittee marked up similar legislation Wednesday.
"Spectrum is a critical resource for our armed services, and any relocation process should consider the needs of our military operations," McCain said. "I believe that this bill successfully provides for the ability for our military and other federal agencies to have the confidence that their relocation costs will be fully reimbursed, while providing commercial bidders with certainty regarding the full cost of the right to use the spectrum and the ability to use it in a timely fashion."
The bill would establish a new federal spectrum relocation fund, so that when spectrum occupied by a federal agency is auctioned, proceeds from the auction would be deposited into the fund. Federal agencies could then withdraw money to cover the expense of the relocation, McCain said.
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Computerworld
U.S. regulators issue disaster recovery guidelines
By LUCAS MEARIAN
APRIL 11, 2003
Three U.S. regulatory agencies have released disaster recovery guidelines for financial institutions notable for their lack of any recommended minimum distance between primary and secondary data centers and their recognition that achieving many of the goals could take years.
The Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 8 issued a white paper describing objectives for disaster recovery and business continuity plans that should be set in place.
The agencies stated that they expect organizations that fall within the scope of the white paper to "adopt the sound practices within the specified implementation time frames."
The regulators focused mostly on what they described as "core clearing and settlement organizations," or the largest brokerages, custodian banks and clearing firms, saying they should substantially achieve disaster recovery and sound business continuity practices by the end of 2004.
In the event of a wide-scale disaster, the nation's financial system "rests on the rapid recovery and resumption of the clearing and settlement activities that support critical markets," the agencies said.
The guidelines include the recommendation of recovering operations "within the business day on which a disruption occurs, with the overall goal of achieving recovery and resumption within two hours after an event."
"The paper's business continuity objectives, sound practices and timetables will clearly improve the resilience of the U.S. financial markets," Donald Kittell, executive vice president of the Securities Industry Association, stated in a press release.
The document also said that the focus of financial firms should be on "appropriate back-up capacity necessary for recovery and resumption of clearing and settlement activities for material open transactions in the wholesale financial markets."
The agencies' business continuity objectives include rapid recovery and timely resumption of critical operations following wide-scale disruptions or loss of staff in "at least one major operating location," and a high level of confidence through ongoing testing that plans are "effective and compatible."
In August, an interagency white paper that was released on strengthening the resilience of the U.S. financial system was soundly criticized by banks and brokerages for its suggestion that there be a minimum distance of 200 to 300 miles between a primary and backup data center (see story).
Many firms considered it technically unfeasible. For example, Fibre Channel, the most common network protocol used between data centers, has a distance limit of about 62 miles, or 100 kilometers.
"We were pleased, because they took into account the dialogue agencies had with the industry after the first white paper came out [in August]. That's the key point. We're all working together," said Margaret Draper, a spokeswoman for the Securities Industry Association in New York.
Draper said the white paper could eventually become the basis for industry-specific rules that would be administered by self-regulatory organizations, such as the National Association of Securities Dealers Inc. and the New York Stock Exchange.
Regulators said firms should also maintain sufficient geographically dispersed resources to meet recovery and resumption objectives.
But the agencies stated that they aren't recommending that firms move their primary offices or data centers outside of metropolitan locations, because they understand that financial firms need to maintain processing sites near the financial markets.
*******************************
Computerworld
Intrusion prevention touted over detection
By JAIKUMAR VIJAYAN
APRIL 11, 2003
Next week's RSA Conference 2003 in San Francisco will feature a range of security technologies meant to let corporations more proactively defend themselves against a growing array of cyberthreats.
Unlike most traditional firewall and intrusion-detection products, which passively detect problems, the new tools use rules, usage models and correlation engines to enforce authorized network behavior. In some cases, these tools automatically prevent unauthorized or malicious tasks from executing.
But many of the technologies are still in their infancy, are largely untested in enterprise environments and may not deliver all of the promised functionality just yet, users and analysts cautioned.
Rules-based protection
One of the vendors touting such products at this week's conference, sponsored by Bedford, Mass.-based RSA Security Inc., is Entercept Security Technologies Inc. The San Jose-based company will release an updated version of a host-based intrusion-prevention software tool that uses virus signature information and behavioral rules to intercept suspicious activity before it accesses an application.
For example, if a rule states that only Web server processes can access Web files, all attempts by other processes to do so will be automatically blocked by Entercept software, company officials said.
Network Associates Inc. announced April 4 that it would acquire Entercept for $120 million in cash, and on April 1 the company said it would buy San Jose-based Intruvert Networks Inc. for $100 million (see story).
Entercept's technology recently helped Arlington County, Va., protect its core databases from being corrupted by the Slammer worm and has contributed to a more proactive security posture, said Vivek Kundra, the county's director of infrastructure technologies.
"Historically, we would learn of an attack only after it happened, and we would react to it. Now we are in a position to prevent some of it as well," he said.
Also this week, Teros Inc. in Sunnyvale, Calif., will add a new module called SafeIdentity to its Teros 100 Application Protection System. Teros 100 is an "in-line" hardware device that sits directly on the network in front of a Web application server and inspects every packet going in and out of the server in real time.
Like other intrusion-prevention products, Teros' technology blocks anything that deviates from predetermined norms for a particular server or application. While Teros claims that its product can determine what those norms should be, companies that are unwilling to leave that decision to the technology can specify them.
Baker Hill Corp., a Carmel, Ind., provider of application services to the banking industry, has placed such "default deny" application firewalls in front of several Microsoft Internet Information Servers, said Eric Beasley, a senior network administrator at Baker Hill.
Among other benefits, the technology has eliminated the need for Baker Hill to immediately patch its servers every time a Microsoft vulnerability is discovered, Beasley said. Since the Teros firewall is designed to allow only a very limited set of activities on the servers it protects, any malicious activities triggered by viruses like Slammer are automatically stopped, he said.
Traditional firewall technologies aren't equipped to stop attacks that come through commonly used ports such as Port 80, said Raj Dhingra, a vice president at Intruvert, a provider of intrusion-detection systems (IDS).
The company this week will announce IntruShield 1.5, a hardware appliance that sits on corporate networks and sifts through the contents of each packet looking for problems. The technology is able to modify, drop or block individual packets or entire sessions if needed, company officials said. It can also modify firewall policies while an attack is happening or provide real-time alerts for manual follow-up, they said.
The product has resulted in more accurate and real-time reporting of vulnerabilities, said Andrew Berkuta, manager of network and physical security at HomeBanc Mortgage Corp., an Atlanta-based mortgage lender.
"Originally we were more in the 'detect and tell us' mode," said Berkuta. IntruShield "understands the traffic flow and gets into more of a dynamic prevention" mode, he said.
But Kundra and other users offered several caveats. For one thing, the tools have to mature so that they're able to consistently block malicious activity without interfering with legitimate traffic. Currently, companies often have to fine-tune and extensively customize such products to prevent that problem, Kundra said.
IDS devices have long been notorious for generating false positives, and there's little to show that the new tools are much better, said Ted Julian, president of Arbor Networks Inc., a vendor of network anomaly detection products in Lexington, Mass. For automatic prevention to become a reality, "the need for better filtering and detection methods is patently obvious," he said.
Such devices could also be single points of failure for companies that rely too heavily on them. Baker Hill, for instance, is investing in load-balancing technologies to spread the load flowing into its Teros systems. The company plans to install standby servers in case its primary systems fail, Beasley said.
*******************************
USA Today
Researchers developing next-generation space shuttle
April 14, 2003
GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) The future of manned space flight is in the hands of University of Florida scientists who have been given a key role in the research and engineering for the next generation space shuttle. Florida is the lead institution in the Institute for Future Space Transport, which also includes researchers from six other universities in a $16 million initiative.
Wei Shyy, director of the institute at UF and chairman of the university's Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, said researchers are investigating four areas:
New engine technologies, including the supersonic combustion ramjet, known as scramjet, and combination rocket spacecraft. A ramjet is a simple jet engine that uses no moving parts.
Stronger and more reliable spacecraft, including ways to rid the shuttle of the troublesome fragile tiles.
Improved systems to monitor the health of the spacecraft and its life-support systems.
Better ways to integrate all of the spacecraft's diverse systems.
Other institutions involved in the research are Mississippi State University, Cornell University, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Syracuse University, North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University, and Prairie View A&M University in Texas.
One of NASA's visions for the next generation space shuttle is a spacecraft that leaves from a runway and not a launch pad. The design of the next generation shuttle is still up in the air, but some artists' concepts appear right out of Star Trek.
One drawing depicts a spacecraft that resembles an elongated ice cream cone with a needle nose and stubby wings at the rear. Another depicts a spacecraft that is about half a vertical circle with a protruding nose and short wings to the sides.
Research already was underway at UF, NASA, and the other universities when the Columbia broke apart over Texas as it headed for a Florida landing Feb. 1. All seven astronauts aboard were killed.
Crew safety will be a critical component of the research, particularly in light of the disasters involving Columbia and Challenger, which blew up shortly after liftoff in January 1986.
"The goal is to find a technology so you can fly as frequently and safer than is now possible," Shyy said. "We want to cut down on the cost and improve the safety factor."
The main problem with the current space shuttle is that it is too expensive to fly and too complex to fly frequently. When first built, the shuttle was billed as an affordable way to deliver satellites and men into orbit, possibly on a weekly basis. It never worked that way.
"We will not be able continue to rely on the space shuttle for frequent low-orbital missions," Shyy said.
Costs were much higher than originally anticipated and the time needed to turn around a shuttle after landing until its next mission can take as long as six months.
It costs about $10,000 per pound to get the shuttle into space. In the next generation shuttle, officials would like to cut that figure to about $100 a pound.
Each shuttle, which costs about $450 million to launch, was expected to fly 100 missions. At the current time, the shuttle fleet has flown 113 times, the last being the Columbia disaster. Fourteen astronauts have died in two shuttle accidents.
The three remaining shuttles Endeavor, Discovery and Atlantis are expected to keep flying until 2020, although that schedule could change if NASA decides to build an orbital space plane.
The 2004 federal budget includes $1 billion for the Space Launch Initiative, splitting the money between the orbital space plane and next generation space shuttle technology.
"We are in the early stages of research and technology development," said Harry Cikanek, chief of the Space Transportation Project Office at the John Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio.
Key decisions on the future of the shuttle and the orbital space plane will be made in the next few years, Cikanek said.
A major barrier researchers hope to overcome is the development of new engine technology using scramjets or other new engines to power spacecraft through the atmosphere into the edge of space.
"We haven't focused on any concept as the right answer," Cikanek said.
When the current space shuttle launches, it has to carry its own supply of oxygen and hydrogen to put it into orbit. The huge orange external tank, which carries 500,000 gallons of liquid oxygen and hydrogen, supplies fuel to the shuttle's three main engines for about 8 minutes and 30 seconds. The oxygen alone weighs 1.4 million pounds.
Shyy said the goal of researchers is to develop an engine that uses air from the atmosphere, much like a jet engine. But at the speeds needed to break free of gravity about seven miles per second no engine exists to adequately use oxygen from the air.
If the scramjet engine could be developed, it would not be necessary to haul a fuel tank and the spacecraft's payload could be increased.
NASA is expected to test scramjet technology this year on a 12-foot-long unpiloted aircraft, the X-43, which is expected to reach 10 times the speed of sound. For a spacecraft to reach orbit, it has to reach more than 17,500 mph, or about 17 to 20 times the speed of sound, Shyy said.
The problem with a scramjet, he said, is "hypersonic technology is simply not even close."
If the scramjet tests fail, the next generation shuttle would have to continue to use rockets to launch into space.
*******************************
USA Today
Idaho man takes junk e-mail senders to court
BOISE (AP) Kevin Wilson is on a mission to rid his e-mail of unwanted electronic advertisements.
The technical writer and adviser at Boise State University has gone to small claims court against two companies that have spammed his e-mail accounts. He is part of a national network of anti-spam advocates engaged in what many fear is a fruitless battle.
"Many people don't even remember a time when they didn't get daily porno e-mail or Nigerian scam letters," Wilson said. "But my issue has nothing to do with content. It's that it's unwanted."
He has taken advantage of an Idaho law that lets people sue e-mailers for $100 if they continue to send material after they have been asked to stop.
There are national groups urging Congress to ban unsolicited e-mails just like it has banned unsolicited transmissions to fax machines. Others are pushing states to approve tough laws even tougher than Idaho's that let computer users go after spammers.
In Boise, Internet service provider Fiberpipe uses software to screen and delete e-mails from known spam offenders as a business selling point.
Jason Ater of Fiberpipe admits it's expensive, but not filtering out spam just aggravates customers.
"Our customers just want to communicate with friends and family and not be intruded upon," Ater said. "No one is asking for 100 spam e-mails to come into their inbox."
Wilson concedes his court effort is fruitless since there seems to be an endless number of spammers worldwide. Stopping one, he acknowledges, will not even make a dent in the problem.
But he wants to make a point.
"I hear all the time just press delete," he said. "But we have a law on the books. I'd like to see if it's enforceable."
*******************************
MSNBC
U.S. buys data on foreign citizens
Information lets federal agencies to track tourists, immigrants
ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 13 Over the past 18 months, the U.S. government has bought access to data on hundreds of millions of residents of 10 Latin American countries apparently without their consent or knowledge allowing myriad federal agencies to track foreigners entering and living in the United States.
A SUBURBAN ATLANTA COMPANY, ChoicePoint Inc., collects the information abroad and sells it to U.S. government officials in three dozen agencies, including federal immigration investigators who?ve used it to arrest illegal immigrants.
The practice broadens a trend that has an information-hungry U.S. government increasingly buying personal data on Americans and foreigners alike from commercial vendors including ChoicePoint and LexisNexis.
U.S. officials consider the foreign data a thread in a security blanket that lets law enforcers and the travel industry peer into the backgrounds of people flowing into the United States. The information can also be used with other data-mining tools to identify potential terrorists, or simply unmask fake identity documents, company and government officials say.
?Our whole purpose in life is to sell data to make the world a safer place,? said ChoicePoint?s chief marketing officer, James Lee. ?There is physical danger in not knowing who someone is. What risks do people coming into our country represent? You may accept that risk, but you want to know about it.?
LEGALITY OF SALES UNCLEAR
Privacy experts in Latin America question whether the sales of national citizen registries have been legal. They say government data are often sold clandestinely by individual government employees.
ChoicePoint appears to be the largest perhaps the only vendor of foreigners? personal details, selling entire national identity databases from Latin America since 2001.
The data encompass the personal details of people living in countries from Mexico to Argentina, people who probably never imagined officials in Washington could, with a few keystrokes, read identity files meant for functionaries in Mexico City, San Salvador or Bogota.
?It?s the globalization of a very unfortunate American consumer problem,? said Robert Ellis Smith, a lawyer who monitors credit agencies as publisher of Privacy Journal.
Smith says Latin governments ought to protect their citizens by passing privacy laws similar to European statutes that prohibit wholesale purchases of personal information.
In Mexico, where there is already keen mistrust of the U.S. government, most citizens would be outraged to learn their addresses, passport numbers and even unlisted phone numbers are being sold to Washington, says Julio Tellez Valdes, a law professor and data protection expert at the Monterrey Technical Institute.
?We let the Mexican government control our situation, but not the U.S. government,? Tellez said. ?We don?t live in America.?
ChoicePoint says it buys the files from subcontractors in Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua. But it refuses to name the sellers or say where those parties obtained the data.
From Brazil, ChoicePoint sells telephone numbers and details on business leaders. The company recently stopped updating its citizen registry from Argentina, because of a lack of demand and restrictions of a new privacy law, said Lee, the marketing director.
VOTER, DRIVER REGISTRIES TARGETED
The files appear to originate in agencies that register voters or issue national IDs and drivers licenses. ChoicePoint provided partial copies of contracts, which required contractors to certify they?ve bought the information legally.
If ChoicePoint can sell foreigners? details to Washington, it is also in the position to sell data on U.S. citizens to foreign governments. It won?t, for policy reasons.
?We don?t think it?s the right thing to do, so we?re not doing it,? Lee said.
In Mexico, ChoicePoint says it buys driving records of 6 million Mexico City residents and the country?s entire voter registry and provides them to the U.S. government.
If the voter records originated with Mexico?s Federal Electoral Institute, the sales are illegal, said Victor Aviles, the institute?s spokesman.
?If someone sold it, he is committing a crime,? Aviles said.
Tellez said low-level government workers routinely sell electronic data to marketers and pocket the profits.
A proposed privacy law under debate could hand prison terms to those who sell information on Mexicans without their permission. The bill, which also criminalizes sending Mexican data to the United States, is being opposed by the U.S. Direct Marketing Association and marketing companies like Reader?s Digest and American Express.
Tellez predicted that lobbying pressure would weaken the bill.
In Colombia, ChoicePoint buys the entire country?s citizen ID database, including each resident?s date and place of birth, passport and national ID number, parentage and physical description.
?I don?t believe 31 million Colombians authorized that,? said Nelson Remolina, a Colombian lawyer and privacy expert, referring to the number of records ChoicePoint obtained. The Colombian government is only supposed to divulge records requested by name, or when permission is granted by the subject, he said.
PRIVACY LAWS PROTECT SOME REGIONS
ChoicePoint isn?t just interested in Latin Americans. But Lee said the company?s attempts to collect personal data elsewhere haven?t fared well.
The company is prohibited from buying data troves in Europe and other regions with strict privacy laws, or where governments refuse to sell citizen data. ChoicePoint also operated in Hong Kong, South Korea and other East Asian countries until demand dried up a few years ago, he said.
Another obstacle is primitive record-keeping by governments, like those in the Middle East that still use paper, or where records are kept in non-Roman script like Arabic or Japanese, Lee said.
At U.S. agencies with access to ChoicePoint?s Latin American data, officials often said they didn?t know how it was used. The Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, for example, declined to respond to repeated Associated Press requests for information on the Border Patrol?s use of the data.
The Justice Department?s $67 million four-year contract with ChoicePoint?s is the largest among federal agencies. But most of that is spent by agencies looking up U.S. records like credit and crime histories not data from foreign governments.
IMMIGRANTS TARGETED?
Last year, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, now part of the Department of Homeland Security, paid $1 million for unlimited access to ChoicePoint?s foreign databases, according to a contract provided by the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
An agency official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the files were used by its investigators and Quick Response Teams to round up undocumented immigrants in non-border areas of the United States.
Although officials at the agency now reorganized into the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement won?t say what effect the ChoicePoint data had on those investigations, figures show officers arrested 80,000 immigrants in that period.
?It?s a force multiplier,? the official said of the data.
Broad government contracts for ChoicePoint?s Latin American data would also make the information available to federal drug agents working in Colombia, Mexico and elsewhere, along with U.S. personnel in overseas embassies and consulates.
U.S. intelligence agencies also have access, under ChoicePoint deals with the departments of Justice, Treasury, State and Energy.
Increased use of the foreign data, coupled with new rules giving immigration inspectors wide leeway to decide whether or not to allow a traveler to enter the country, could mean more Latin Americans will be blocked from the United States.
Immigrant advocates say this could eventually hurt economies dependent on money sent home by Latins working in the United States.
?These will be people who have visas to come here, but based on some information that?s in the possession of the U.S. government, they?re simply turned back without a hearing,? said Joan Friedland, an attorney with the National Immigration Law Center in Washington D.C.
?It?s the worst of all possible worlds. It weeds out the people who should be allowed to come here and doesn?t do anything to weed out those who shouldn?t.?
*******************************
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ACM TechNews
Volume 5, Number 482
Date: April 14, 2003
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Top Stories for Monday, April 14, 2003:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html
"Future of Technology Is Hardly Ever What Anyone Has Predicted"
"I've Seen the Real Future of Tech--And It Is Virtual"
"Master of Innovation?"
"Sharpening Our Senses"
"Intrusion Prevention Touted Over Detection"
"Humanoid Robots: The Face of the Future?"
"Itanium Gets Superconducting Software"
"Government Urged to Bridge Skills Gap"
"Space Net Would Shift Military to Packet Communications"
"W3C Advances Semantic Web Drafts"
"Andreessen Assesses Browser Prospects"
"Honeypots: The Next Intrusion Detection Solution"
"GUIs Face Up to the Future"
"Smart Tools"
"Gathering in Clusters"
"UCITA: Blessing or Curse?"
******************* News Stories ***********************
"Future of Technology Is Hardly Ever What Anyone Has Predicted"
Technology companies are often considered to invent the future,
but even as they construct the components for a future killer
app, they are not likely to realize what it is until it happens.
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison recently predicted that the technology ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0414m.html#item1
"I've Seen the Real Future of Tech--And It Is Virtual"
Ten years after entrepreneur Bill Davidow presented the concept
of the virtual corporation, virtualization has started to usher
in a transformation of corporate infrastructure, writes Stewart
Alsop. Widely distributed networks have become easier to ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0414m.html#item2
"Master of Innovation?"
China aspires to become a technology standards-maker by
leveraging its growing consumer base, national brainpower,
low-wage workforce, and central government control. Although
many technology products are made in China today, Asian neighbors ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0414m.html#item3
"Sharpening Our Senses"
The Department of Homeland Security is expected to create a new
Web site fielding solicitations from sensor technology vendors.
Although some proposals may give some the feeling that Big
Brother is watching, new sensor technology will help law ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0414m.html#item4
"Intrusion Prevention Touted Over Detection"
The upcoming RSA Conference 2003 will showcase security
technologies that focus more on intrusion prevention than
detection, and enforce authorized network activities through the
application of behavioral rules, usage models, and correlation ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0414m.html#item5
"Humanoid Robots: The Face of the Future?"
Robotics experts such as Dallas University's David Hanson believe
the future of human-machine interaction will be robots equipped
with human faces that can model a range of expressions. Hanson's
K-bot is a case in point: The machine consists of a head with ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0414m.html#item6
"Itanium Gets Superconducting Software"
National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure
(NPACI) researchers announced on Thursday that version 2.3.2 of
the NPACI Rocks software (a.k.a. Annapurna) will fully support
Intel's high-end Itanium processor, thus simplifying the ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0414m.html#item7
"Government Urged to Bridge Skills Gap"
Karen Price, CEO of e-skills UK, has called on the U.K.
government to do more to improve the level of computer skills
taught in schools. Price made an appeal to Education Secretary
Charles Clarke during an event in which e-skills UK, the ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0414m.html#item8
"Space Net Would Shift Military to Packet Communications"
A next-generation space-communications architecture designed to
be shared by American intelligence, defense, and space agencies
was revealed by the Defense Department and National
Reconnaissance Office (NRO) on March 8. Called the ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0414m.html#item9
"W3C Advances Semantic Web Drafts"
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) issued a quintet of Semantic
Web revisions last week, describing in more detail several
elements of the Web Ontology Language (OWL), including the OWL
overview, guide, reference, semantics and abstract syntax, and ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0414m.html#item10
"Andreessen Assesses Browser Prospects"
Opsware board chairman Marc Andreessen, who co-developed the
Netscape Web browser precursor Mosaic, notes that the browser has
not undergone any major changes since its debut a decade ago:
"After 10 years, it's still a user sitting in front of a Web ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0414m.html#item11
"Honeypots: The Next Intrusion Detection Solution"
Honeynet Project founder Lance Spitzner details the usefulness of
honeypots--bogus systems and services designed to lure malicious
hackers--and how they can be used to substantially improve
intrusion detection. Honeypots are supposed to cost-effectively ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0414m.html#item12
"GUIs Face Up to the Future"
A number of U.K.-based companies are working to radically enhance
the function and usability of graphical computer interfaces
(GUIs). Visual Information (VI) is a family-owned affair whose
flagship product is Vi Business Analyst (ViBA), a front-end ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0414m.html#item13
"Smart Tools"
Artificial intelligence is being employed in many sectors, both
public and private, and has led to significant productivity and
efficiency gains across the board. Financial institutions have
reduced incidents of credit-card fraud through the application of ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0414m.html#item14
"Gathering in Clusters"
More and more enterprises are considering clustering technology
as a way to save money and boost the performance of their
computer systems, especially for intensive data management
chores; among the advantages clustering offers for such companies ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0414m.html#item15
"UCITA: Blessing or Curse?"
Almost 10 years ago, the National Conference of Commissioners of
Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL) proposed a national software
licensing law that stirred up resentment from consumer groups, IT
business users, and others because it allowed software vendors to ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0414m.html#item16
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