Clips April 16, 2003

[Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>]

Clips April 16, 2003

Cell Firms Challenge FCC Rule
Crackdown on sales of bogus licenses
Latin American officials demand investigation into data sales
More Talk, Little Action in War on Cyber Terrorism
OMB and OPM aim for expert IT project managers 
Midshipmen Disciplined Over Downloads 
Issaquah man denies AOL spam allegation 
Music-swapping software makes comeback 
Tune Out, Turn Off, Drop Offline  
Digital homeland library readied
System taps data for bioterror clues
E-mail encryption program catches on with DOD contractors 
Defense official describes progress toward net-centricity 
IRS boasts gains from Free File, PC filing 
Defense program spurs wider government use of smart cards 

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Los Angeles Times
Cell Firms Challenge FCC Rule
By Jube Shiver Jr.
Times Staff Writer

April 16, 2003

A lawyer for the wireless industry asked a skeptical federal appeals court panel Tuesday to overturn a potentially costly Federal Communications Commission rule that would allow cellular subscribers to keep their existing phone numbers when switching carriers.

The FCC rule, which experts say probably will trigger widespread defections among subscribers seeking better rates or service from rival carriers, is similar to a so-called number portability requirement that was imposed on traditional wire-line carriers in the mid-1990s.

The wireless industry rule is scheduled to take effect Nov. 24, unless the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia overturns it.

Although the questions from the three appellate judges focused mostly on technical and procedural issues, telecommunications analysts gave the edge to FCC lawyer John Ingle over Andrew McBride, who argued on behalf of Verizon Wireless and the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Assn.

"I think the FCC is highly likely to get wide deference from the court on this issue," said Rudy Baca, an analyst for Precursor Group, a Washington investment research firm.

Alarmed that the FCC number portability rule would spur more subscribers to drop their service when their contracts end, the cellular association and Verizon, the nation's biggest mobile phone carrier, challenged the rule as "arbitrary and capricious."

About 27% of the nation's 144 million cell phone subscribers already drop their service each year, a percentage known as the churn rate.

"The FCC lacks the statutory authority to implement number portability," said McBride, arguing that the FCC could not implement a rule based on agency speculation that it would confer "some future benefit."

But the judges repeatedly interrupted McBride's arguments and questioned whether they had jurisdiction even to hear the appeal, noting that the case was not filed in a timely manner.
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Los Angeles Times
Crackdown on sales of bogus licenses
The FTC is suing six spam operators in an effort to stop the marketing of fake international driving permits.
By Jeanne Wright
Special to The Times

April 16, 2003

In a campaign this year to shut down Internet sales of bogus international driver's licenses or permits, the Federal Trade Commission has sued six popular marketers, alleging misleading and deceptive practices.

Such spam offerings often are aimed at non-English-speaking immigrants, whose legitimate driver's licenses have been suspended or revoked, or international travelers. The e-mails and ads for these documents make outlandish claims to lure consumers and charge as much as $375 per license.

"Congratulations! You have found the only alternative driver's license program that is 100 percent LEGAL," read the ads on Drivelegal.com, one of the now-defunct spam operations targeted by the FTC. "We can help you get back on the road even if you have a suspended or revoked driver's license," the Web site claimed.

The U.S. District Court in Riverside issued temporary restraining orders in January against Yad Abraham of Riverside and his two Internet businesses, according to FTC attorney Raymond E. McKown. Some of Abraham's personal and business assets also were frozen by the court, McKown said.

Abraham could not be reached for comment.

Restraining orders also were issued in other courts to stop the five other marketers from selling international driver's licenses.

Since 1997 Abraham and his businesses, Sharpthorn Internet Solutions and Internex, "enticed at least 6,000 consumers to purchase the $350-and-up" international driver's licenses, making at least $2.1 million in sales, court documents revealed.

Drivelegal's Web site told consumers the licenses would protect them from getting points on their driving records, because the licenses would not be "connected to any government database," according to the FTC.

Drivelegal.com told consumers the licenses were legally issued by the Bahamas, and it provided consumers with a false address in the islands, the FTC said.

The Web site even encouraged women to use their maiden names to avoid detection by their states' motor vehicle departments, the agency said.

The irony is that legitimate international driver's licenses are helpful tools for travelers, and they also are inexpensive to buy legally.

The State Department has authorized only two organizations -- the American Automobile Assn. and the American Touring Alliance -- to issue international driver's licenses for $10 apiece. That's a far cry from the online prices being charged by spammers.

Carol Thorp, spokeswoman for the Automobile Club of Southern California, warns that Web sites offering international driver's licenses for use in the U.S. are rip-offs.

Since the FTC crackdown, "we've seen a significant decrease" in Internet spam purporting to sell international driver's licenses that replace a suspended license or can be used as official identification, said FTC attorney Lemuel W. Dowdy.

The agency said the licenses were "worthless" and were not officially recognized by governments.

But license scams do continue to pop up on the Internet, according to Brightmail Inc., an anti-spam software company in San Francisco.

"We're still seeing a significant attack by these kinds of spammers," said Francois Lavaste, the company's vice president for marketing.

Authentic international driver's licenses are allowed by the United Nations Road Traffic Convention of 1949 and are issued in numerous countries. The licenses look a bit like passports and are rendered in several languages. Travelers still should carry a valid license from their home country.

In California, international driver's licenses are not recognized as valid. The state, however, does recognize licenses issued by another country, state or territory in which the driver resides.

Jeanne Wright responds in this column to automotive questions of general interest. Write to Your Wheels, Business Section, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012. E-mail: jeanrite@xxxxxxxx
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USA Today
Latin American officials demand investigation into data sales

MEXICO CITY (AP)  Mexican officials promised Monday to investigate a report that the personal data of Mexican voters and drivers was being sold to the U.S. government, without Mexicans' knowledge or permission. 


Nicaragua's president also called for an investigation of the sale of citizens' identity files to a suburban Atlanta company, ChoicePoint, which provides it to U.S. government agencies as reported by The Associated Press. The story made headlines in the region on Sunday (Related story: Government scours commercial databases for terror suspects). 

"This is a particularly grave action, to sell confidential information and what's even more grave is that it has been sold to a foreign government," said Rep. Ricardo Moreno Bastida, a Mexican congressional liaison to the Federal Electoral Institute, or IFE, which oversees voter records. 

Alberto Alonso, executive director of the IFE's Federal Voter Registry, said that if the report proves true the agency would ask the attorney general to investigate. 

The AP had reported that the driving records of 6 million Mexico City residents and the country's entire voter registry  65 million people  were sold to U.S. government agencies, allowing officials to track Mexicans entering and living in the United States. 

The Nicaraguan president, Enrique Bolanos, said he ordered the Interior Ministry to investigate "if a crime is being committed, and if so, to stop it." He said anyone found to have sold the data could be subject to severe penalties. 

The Nicaraguan and Mexican databases were just a portion of digital dossiers that ChoicePoint told the AP it has collected on hundreds of millions of residents of 10 Latin American countries and sold to the U.S. government in the past 18 months. 

The office of Costa Rican President Abel Pacheco ordered an investigation, said Pacheco's cabinet-level representative, Rina Contreras. 

ChoicePoint maintains it bought the data legally, under contracts with subcontractors who certified they followed privacy laws. The company will cooperate with any investigations by Mexico or other Latin governments, said James Lee, ChoicePoint's chief marketing officer. 

The company also buys identity files from subcontractors in Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. It also sells some data from Brazil and Argentina. It refuses to name the sellers or say where those parties obtained the data. 

U.S. officials say the data from Mexico and elsewhere could help law enforcers and the travel industry identify potential terrorists, or simply unmask fake identity documents. Immigrant advocates in the United States have said the files could make entering the United States more difficult for Latin Americans. 

In Mexico, a similar accusation that private voter information was being sold to foreign governments arose in 1998, but an investigation was inconclusive, Alonso of the voter registry said. 

Both federal and Mexico City laws prohibit public distribution of personal data contained on voter rolls and driver registration lists, noted Rep. Ranulfo Marquez, a congressional liaison to the IFE. 

Marquez called for an investigation and a formal diplomatic protest with the United States. He said authorities of all of the Latin American countries involved should launch international investigations. 

Marquez said he suspected the United States leaked the information as "part of a diplomatic strategy" to pressure Mexico at a time when relations have been strained by Mexico's refusal to back the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, he said. 

Moreno noted that later this week, Mexico will be watched when it votes on an annual U.N. resolution censuring the government of Cuban President Fidel Castro for its oppression of political movements. 

In past years, Mexico, a longtime ally of Cuba, has abstained from the vote. But last year, the pro-U.S. administration of President Vicente Fox supported the resolution. 

"This information (on personal data) has been made public precisely at a time when relations are difficult and when the vote on Cuba is approaching," Moreno said. 
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Reuters
More Talk, Little Action in War on Cyber Terrorism
Tue Apr 15, 9:21 PM ET

By Andrea Orr 

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (Reuters) - At a time when war in Iraq (news - web sites) has heightened fears of terrorism, the technology industry is not moving quickly enough to guard against intrusions from hackers, identity thieves and more concerted attacks by rogue governments, computer experts said Tuesday.


"It's an issue that we don't think is getting enough attention," Art Coviello, president of RSA Security Inc (Nasdaq:RSAS - news), told a press conference at the 10th annual security conference organized by his company here. 


Howard Schmidt, the White House cyber security adviser who is working with the technology industry to improve security, told the news conference that work to date had been strong on new ideas to improve security, but slow to execute. 


"We've had a lot of discussion over the role of the private sector," Schmidt said, adding, "we're definitely a work in progress." 


Despite repeated warnings of rogue nations preparing for cyber-attacks that could cripple vital computer-run U.S. infrastructure, no such attacks are known to have occurred to date. 


"I think we're more concerned with weapons of mass destruction," said Russ Cooper, of the research and security services company TruSecure, based in Herndon, Virginia. 


Cooper said he was dismayed by the lack of progress made since last September, when the U.S. government unveiled a draft plan to beef up cyber-security. 


"I think we're dramatically behind schedule," he said, noting that both the cutbacks in spending by high-tech companies as well as the lack of clear rules for businesses to follow online, has kept Internet security lax. 


If computer systems have so far been spared a massive terrorist attack, smaller security breaches from hackers and pranksters with no political agenda occur on a daily basis. 


The Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) tracked some 52,658 online security "incidents" in 2001, more than double the 21,756 reported in 2000, and way up from 9,859 in 1999. 


Data for 2002 is not out yet but by most accounts, security breaches, ranging from credit card thefts to denial of service attacks (news - web sites) that can cause Web sites to crash, are continuing to rise. 


Members of the high-tech advocacy group TechNet said that while the threat of a political-based cyber terrorist attack may have been overstated, random pranksters had the ability to do much damage.
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Government Computer News
04/15/03 
OMB and OPM aim for expert IT project managers 
By Jason Miller 

The Office of Management and Budget is working with the Office of Personnel Management to develop a policy requiring agency systems project managers to hold a commercial certification or show long-time professional success running IT projects. 

An OMB official said the policy is a first attempt at shaping the definition and requirements for systems project managers. OPM likely will issue the formal policy, but no deadline has been set, the official added. 

Federal agencies are in dire need of qualified IT project managers. OMB said 1,400 systems projects, including 700 on the at-risk list, do not have experienced leaders. 

The guidance will require employees to be certified by the Project Management Institute or another similar commercially accredited program or they must demonstrate that they were within 10 percent of cost, schedule and performance goals on an IT project they ran. The official said the goal is to help agencies gain management expertise. 

OMB will require agencies to prove they have qualified project managers for each IT project identified in their fiscal 2005 budget requests, said an agency project manager who has seen the draft policy. 

?The cost and time to get a PMI certification or similar one is a lot to ask by next October,? the manager said. ?Agencies are scurrying around trying to find alternatives. But there is no way we can have enough people certified by the time we have to submit our proposals. My guess is there will be some give and take between OMB and the agencies to meet this request.? 

Another government official said certification is a good thing, but employees must have the option of where to get accredited.
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Washington Post
Midshipmen Disciplined Over Downloads 
Naval Academy Chooses Not to Impose Maximum Sanctions Against 85 Students 
By Nelson Hernandez and Amy Argetsinger
Wednesday, April 16, 2003; Page B03 

The U.S. Naval Academy has punished 85 midshipmen caught downloading copyrighted files onto their computers in November but did not impose the maximum penalties of court-martial or expulsion, according to an academy document.

The document, first obtained by the Baltimore Sun, shows that academy officials disciplined most of the 92 midshipmen whose computers were seized in a Nov. 21 raid, which attracted nationwide attention as the first example of a college cracking down on unauthorized network use.

An investigation after the raid found that the future Navy and Marine Corps officers were using the school's state-of-the-art T3 Internet connection to download vast quantities of copyrighted movies, music and computer games. They stored the material on large-capacity hard drives hooked to their government-issue computers, which had been turned into miniature Web sites that attracted traffic from all over the country.

One midshipman, who had several friends involved in the case, said that the students were gathered together and disciplined en masse two months ago. According to the midshipman, who would not give his name for fear of retribution, the offenders were given between 30 and 60 days of "restriction" and up to 75 demerits. Midshipmen with more than 400 demerits cannot graduate.

A midshipman on restriction is forbidden to leave campus for anything other than sports competitions and is required to report to superiors five times a day -- beginning at 6:30 a.m. and ending at 10:30 p.m. -- in an inspection-quality uniform. If the midshipman skips the report or the uniform does not pass muster, the period of restriction is extended.

"Your life is just hell if you get restriction," said the midshipman. "Sixty days is one of the heftiest ones they can hand out and still keep you here."

Still, the matter was treated as a "conduct offense," less serious than an "honor offense," which would have resulted in expulsion or permanent damage to the future careers of the midshipmen.

Conduct offenses are any of the hundreds of things that can get a student into hot water, such as failure to shine one's shoes, sneaking off campus or drinking while underage. Honor offenses -- lying, cheating or stealing -- are often grounds for expulsion or a court-martial. 

Cmdr. Bill Spann, academy spokesman, would not comment on specific punishments but called them appropriate. "This amounted to the next generation of the nation's combat leaders being held accountable for their actions," Spann said. 

The midshipman also speculated that the academy picked a few students to make an example of. Before the incident, he said, a vast number of students used the campus's fast connection to snag music, movies and computer games. "I'd say easily half this place was downloading [stuff]," he said. "I'll tell you, I was."

Now, though, he and his classmates have been scared straight, he said.

"We've been successful in getting the message across," Spann said.

Some experts said the Naval Academy case underscores a general reluctance among higher education officials to harshly discipline students for file-sharing offenses.

The concerns are both philosophical and logistical. "If a campus was to adjudicate every case of peer-to-peer file sharing, the caseload would be staggering," said Kevin Kruger, associate executive director of the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators.

Rodney Petersen, director of information technology policy and planning at the University of Maryland, argued that punishing students is not a core part of a university's mission. "Our purpose is to educate and change their behavior," he said. "That would suggest that more informal approaches are more appropriate."

Maryland has issued numerous warnings to students found using the university's server to download movies or music. However, only serious repeat offenders are referred to the university's judicial system, Petersen said. 

The most serious punishments among those students was a warning or probation.

Many colleges, in fact, have moved from threatening students with disciplinary action to simply pleading with them to desist, telling them that by downloading large files they are draining bandwidth from their own server and slowing down their own Internet access. "Students are not moved by the legal argument," Kruger said. 
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Seattle Times
Issaquah man denies AOL spam allegation 
By Tricia Duryee
Times Eastside business reporter

An Issaquah man who has been served papers in two lawsuits by America Online denies the company's claims that he has been sending unsolicited mass e-mail, or spam, that promoted adult Web sites and anti-virus software. 

"I don't want to be associated with that," said Michael Levesque, 24. 

As part of AOL's ongoing battle against spam, the company filed five lawsuits late last week against more than a dozen people and companies. It wants $10 million in damages and a court order to stop the spam. 

In all, AOL has filed 20 lawsuits against more than 100 people and sent hundreds of "cease-and-desist" letters to those it says are sending spam to its members. 

AOL said it identified the defendants and other spammers by collecting complaints from its members through its "Report Spam" function. Members used that function 8 million times to report the 1 billion e-mails AOL says were sent by the most recent round of defendants. 

One of the lawsuits filed against Levesque accused him and his Issaquah-based company, Byte Night, of sending spam to market Web sites that feature adult content. The other claims Levesque and George A. Moore Jr., owner of Maryland Internet Marketing in Maryland, sent unsolicited e-mail to market anti-virus software. 

Levesque said he had nothing to do with sending unsolicited 

e-mails but says he did have an agreement to sell anti-virus software for Moore. He said he marketed the software through a Web site and occasionally dropped advertisements into Web forums or newsgroups targeting business owners online. 

"We were marketing it, but not through spam," Levesque said. He said he shut down the site about three months ago because it wasn't profitable. AOL said it had sent him a letter about two months ago asking him to stop. 

Gary Harkins, an anti-spam activist in Atlanta trying to shut down pornography sites that send unsolicited e-mail, said that late last year, he shut down one of the sites AOL accused Levesque of promoting. 

  
  
Harkins said he shut down more than 450 pornography sites, often working with companies hosting the sites. Typically, the sites violate hosting-company policies requiring accurate contact information. 

Levesque, a self-taught software developer, wouldn't say exactly what his company does. He says he moved to Issaquah about a year ago after working for a tech company in Los Angeles. 

Tricia Duryee: 206-464-3283 or tduryee@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 

Eastside business reporter Kristina Shevory contributed to this report. 
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CNET News.com
Music-swapping software makes comeback 
By Ian Fried 
April 15, 2003, 5:16 PM PT

If at first you get a cease-and-desist letter, try again. 
That was the approach of Mac software developer James Speth, who was determined to create a program that would allow users of Apple's iTunes jukebox software to share their music over a network. 

In January, Apple Computer ordered Speth to stop distributing his iCommune software, saying that he had improperly co-opted Apple software intended only to allow hardware such as MP3 players to connect to iTunes. Speth took the original program off of his Web site, but pledged to rewrite the program without Apple's code. 

 

Now, nearly three months later, Speth says he has accomplished his goal, posting online what he says is a program that does the same thing as the original--allows people to share their music libraries within iTunes--only this time without appropriating Apple's code. 

An Apple representative did not immediately have a comment on the new version. 

Even if Speth is able to steer clear of Apple's lawyers, he might incur the wrath of the recording industry, given that the new version allows songs to be downloaded onto a user's hard drive, rather than just played as a streaming music file. 

"There's undoubtedly some potential problems with the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America)," Speth said. However, he noted that with iCommune there is no central server that stores the locations of available music, and that the software is open-source, making it difficult to stop the software from proliferating. As for his own liability, Speth hopes the fact that he is not making any money on the effort will keep him out of hot water. 

In a case of unusual timing, the re-emergence of iCommune comes amid speculation that Apple may make a bid to buy the largest of the world's top recording labels, Vivendi's Universal Music Group. 

Speth's program, which was posted Monday on open-source site Sourceforge allows Mac owners to share their iTunes playlists--and the music files associated with them--over a standard network. 

Those who want to make their music available can use iCommune to create a link that can be shared with those who they want to be able to access their playlists. The music then can be made to appear as a playlist within iTunes or can be downloaded using a separate download program. 

Speth said he accomplished this by using a combination of little-known features in iTunes along with code written in AppleScript, the Mac's built-in scripting language. 

Next, Speth said, he'd like to incorporate Apple's open-source Rendezvous technology, which could allow iCommune to automatically discover other users over a network. He also hopes that others will collaborate on the venture, now that he has placed the software code into the open-source community. 

Speth first started working on iCommune in April 2002 as a way to have his iTunes library talk to a Linux-based machine that was connected to his stereo. In the fall, he started working on a broader release that he finished just in time for January's Macworld Conference & Expo. Rewriting the program to exclude Apple's proprietary code took the better part of three months, he said. 

As for what prompts him to keep working on it, Speth says it's just a feature he wants himself and others to have. Apple's legal maneuverings served as added inspiration. 

"With the new version I was highly motivated by not wanting to let Apple have the last word," Speth said. "I'm just trying to make a neat little addition to their system, as I see it."
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Wired News
Tune Out, Turn Off, Drop Offline  
02:00 AM Apr. 15, 2003 PT

The digital divide is not just about the haves and the have-nots. It's also about the yawning gap between those who are comfortable using technology and those who fear or despise it. 

It's a gap strewn with broken computers, faulty ISPs and confusing technical manuals, as well as various other financial, social, psychological and physical factors.

The usual suspects turn out in conspicuously low numbers online: minorities, people with lower incomes, the elderly and disabled people, according to a new study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project. 

But another group is gaining among the offline population. Seventeen percent of people surveyed are Internet dropouts. 

They were online once but were tripped up by technical problems that have kept them offline sometimes for a year or more. And 25 percent are online now but have dropped off in the past for a lengthy period of time for the same reasons, the study found. 

"People don?t actually have a progression from a nonuser to new user and then onto broadband user," said Amanda Lenhart, a research specialist at the Pew project who wrote the new report. "That's the case with some people, but with others there are more fits and starts. They try it, then they don?t like it, or they get knocked off and spend a year trying to come back online." 

Another emerging group left out of the Internet revolution are those who have the opportunity to go online if they want to, but don't. 

A total of 80 million American adults -- 42 percent of the adult population -- say they don't use the Internet, the study found. But 20 percent of them have Internet access in the next room and choose not to go online. Or, some of them get family members to go online for them. 

"Many of the people whom we talked to define themselves as people who don?t use technology," Lenhart said. "They view themselves as high-touch versus high-tech." 

About 27 percent of Americans are completely removed from the online world, according to the study. They've never tried going online and aren't surrounded by anyone else who uses the Internet. 

People surveyed cited social and psychological reasons for not using the Internet. Those who feel "personally empowered" are more likely to go online, while those who feel less in control of their lives are less likely to go online, the study found. 

Disabilities also keep some Americans from using the Internet. Almost 75 percent of disabled Americans do not go online, and 28 percent of them said their disability or impairment made it difficult or impossible to go online. 

About 40 percent of nonusers think they will go online some day, and 56 percent believe they will never go online, the study found. 

The Pew study is based primarily on a national telephone survey of 3,553 Americans, as well as focus groups in the Washington D.C. and Baltimore areas. 

Experts working to narrow the digital divide say focusing on the subtleties of why people don't go online and helping them incorporate technology into their daily lives is the key to narrowing the digital divide. 

One Economy, a nonprofit in San Francisco, works with government and private organizations to bring technology to low-income housing residents around the country. The organization also takes the next step to help individuals use the Internet to seek health information, pay bills or apply for low-interest loans online, among other tasks. 

"One of the major focuses of our company is to create a culture of technology in the home because that's where it makes a bigger difference, not at a computer center or a library because single mothers don't have time to go there," said Francisco Mora, director of programs at One Economy. "They have 15 minutes after they put their kids to bed or finish their two jobs."

The Pew study also found that while the Internet population has grown, the same inequalities that have existed for years remain in force when it comes to those who are not online. 

"The population of the Internet growth has really flattened, in fact it's almost stopped since 2001, when you balance the number of people coming online versus people going offline," Lenhart said.

While understanding the subtleties of offline populations might be helpful, the biggest reason for not getting online still comes down economics, experts said. 

The East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy in Oakland, California, which has studied the boom and bust of the 1990s, found not surprisingly that the decade created many high-tech jobs. But there was also an explosion of low-pay service jobs during the same period, a trend that has played out across the country, according to Amaha Kassa, co-director of the organization. 

The majority of people in these positions, including retail clerks, janitors and hotel housekeepers, are not using the Internet because they don't have enough money for basic necessities, let alone to pay for a computer and Internet access. 

"When people are really struggling to make ends meet," Kassa said, "access to the Internet and the use of this incredible tool of electronic communications is pretty low on their list of priorities of what they're trying to accomplish."
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Federal Computer Week
Digital homeland library readied
BY Colleen O'Hara 
April 16, 2003

The Naval Postgraduate School plans to launch a digital library by June, offering up research on homeland security issues.

The library will be open to students at the school, employees of the departments of Justice and Homeland Security, and likely other federal agencies as well, said Lillian Gassie, head of technical services and systems at the Naval Postgraduate School Dudley Knox Library.

The Justice Department had asked the school to develop a homeland security curriculum and an associated library. The library will focus on homeland security policy and planning issues to match what the curriculum offers, Gassie said.

Visitors to the library will be able to choose from a list of major categories, such as border security, intelligence analysis and asymmetric warfare, that will lead them to associated terms and research.

The data in the library is gleaned from locally held documents, public repositories, and commercial and agency data sources, and eventually will come from the Internet and other additional sources. "We're looking to collaborate with people to add more data," Gassie said.

When it came to building the library, organization was crucial, Gassie said.

The school started by identifying experts in specialized domains, the associated homeland security terms and buzzwords, and their relationship, Gassie said April 15 at the E-Gov Knowledge Management conference in Washington, D.C. The event was sponsored by E-Gov, part of FCW Media Group.

"We looked at what's out there and identified existing taxonomies" that the school could use because there was no taxonomy for homeland security, she said.

A taxonomy shows the correlation among terms used by a community of practice. It also supports site navigation, search engines and knowledge maps.

When it came time to create and refine the taxonomy for the library, the school choose a manual approach -- the terms are added manually to the metadata fields, for example -- partly because funding was coming in gradually, preventing the school from taking a "big bang" approach to systems development, Gassie said.

Eventually the site will become more automated and integrated with other functions, such as a search and retrieval system.

Some of the tools that the school used to build the library under a tight budget include:

* MAIstro from Data Harmony Inc., to create and manage the taxonomy and perform automated indexing;

* Sirsi Rooms from Sirsi Corp., to build and organize the portal; and

* Scout Portal Toolkit open-source software from the University of Wisconsin, to build a digital library.
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Federal Computer Week
System taps data for bioterror clues
BY Dibya Sarkar 
April 16, 2003

Two Massachusetts-based companies, Metatomix Inc. and SiteScape Inc., have developed a Web-based syndromic surveillance system that provides real-time monitoring of potential bioterrorist threats by culling data from a variety of sources.

Syndromic surveillance involves tapping data from laboratories, clinics, pharmacies, hospitals or public health departments, looking for clusters of particular symptoms that may signal a bioterrorist attack.

"What we do is, we tie non-invasively into those systems," said Karen Cummings, Metatomix's vice president for marketing. She said the company's SMARTE (Surveillance, Monitoring and Real-Time Events) system was designed so organizations and agencies would not give up ownership of their data. Nothing is required on a participating agency's end except a secure port to access their information system.

SMARTE takes structured and unstructured data into an "interchange platform," she said, "and aggregates it into a persistent cache." The data is formatted into Extensible Markup Language.

Data would temporarily reside in a dedicated server, preferably owned by a state agency, where it would be analyzed but not stored, Cummings said, adding that the system would adhere to federal privacy and security guidelines.

"All of this information is held in the strictest confidence with the owners of the information," said Scott Marshall, the company's director of marketing. Key authorized personnel, such as the head of an emergency management agency or a public health department, would view such data, he added.

Rules-based engines for specific scenarios would be integrated into the platform, she said. For example, if an unusually high number of influenza or Lyme disease cases were reported during a season when occurrences should be low, SMARTE would trigger an alarm, alerting someone in charge to take a closer look.

Through geocoding, a user can drill down further and see specific data about a hospital, area or region and contact others should further action be required. The system would be able to show an affected area's resources, such as hospital bed capacity and the availability of vaccines.

SMARTE would also conform to developing federal systems such as the National Electronic Disease Surveillance System and Health Alert Network, they said.

Cummings said that the political challenge of sharing information exists, but progress is being made.

"It's certainly taken more time than we would have expected," she said. "States have done a really decent job of assessing what they have."

Several states are in negotiations with the companies regarding SMARTE, she said.
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Government Computer News
04/16/03 
E-mail encryption program catches on with DOD contractors 
By Vandana Sinha 

A public-key infrastructure system the Defense Department extended to its contractorswhich initially drew a tepid responseis gaining support as more vendors sign on to secure their e-mail messages to agency officials. 

Under the DOD Interim External Certificate Authority program, three companiesDigital Signature Trust Co. of Salt Lake City, Operational Research Consultants Inc. of Chesapeake Va., and VeriSign Inc. of Mountain View, Calif.have been providing the PKI software to protect e-mail communications, work flow and document access between DOD and its contractors. 

Contractors download the digital certificates, which range in price from $119 to $150 apiece, into their Internet and e-mail browsers, encrypting messages traveling across the public Internet. While the program, which is internally managed by the Defense Information Systems Agency, is more than two years old, it had elicited a relatively weak response until recently. 

?More and more DOD partners are using the service now,? said Rob Carey, e-business leader for the Navy Department. 

In December 2001, a few hundred digital certificates were in play. Now, VeriSign alone counts 20,000 certificates. In the last two months, the company said, the number of digital certificates has increased by more than 50 percent, particularly among air and commercial transport carriers, which VeriSign attributes to the war in Iraq. 

The adoption rate could shoot even higher once contractors begin playing a bigger role in rebuilding Iraq. ?Today, there?s very limited use in Iraq,? said Barry Leffew, VeriSign?s vice president for the public sector. ?But it will expand with postwar reconstruction.?
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Government Computer News
04/16/03 
Defense official describes progress toward net-centricity 
By Dawn S. Onley 

Network-centric operations has leapfrogged from the concept stage into reality, according to Mike Frankel, deputy assistant secretary of Defense for command, control, communications, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and IT systems. 

Frankel said the Defense Department is building the infrastructure for the Global Information Grid and all of its layer components, from communications to services. He spoke today at the Association for Enterprise Integration?s Network Centric Operations 2003 conference in Vienna, Va. 

Communications is a key layer in the network-centric program, Frankel said, citing the $5.7 billion Joint Tactical Radio System and the $800 million GIG-Bandwidth Expansion program. 

The Defense Information Systems Agency recently released a request for proposals for GIG-BE, which would be a worldwide 10-Gbps Defense network. 

JTRS, meanwhile, is undergoing a shift in how it will be used, Frankel said. ?JTRS is no longer a networking program,? he said. ?Instead of replacing lots of boxes [under the program], we are now talking about an intelligent routing radio system. What we?re building is an internet.?
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Government Computer News
04/16/03 
IRS boasts gains from Free File, PC filing 
By Susan M. Menke 

The IRS this week said its online Free File initiative ?surpassed expectations,? with more than 2.4 million taxpayers using the free service available through a consortium of preparers. 

Acting IRS commissioner Bob Wenzel said in a statement that he expects the word to spread fast about Free File?s ease and convenience. 

E-filed returns went up about 10 percent this year compared with 2002, whereas returns from the TeleFile phone service dropped about 6 percent. The largest gainalmost 28 percentwas among taxpayers who sent their own returns from home computers. In addition, more than 9 million taxpayers have checked their refund status online at IRS.gov. 

Fulfilling all those requests cut the IRS site?s availability to below 90 percent and raised access time to six or seven seconds late on April 14, said Roopak Patel, senior Internet analyst at Keynote Systems Inc. of San Mateo, Calif. Keynote monitored the IRS home page response time in the nation?s 25 largest metropolitan areas. 

?There was a flurry of users getting last-minute information and downloading tax forms,? Patel said. ?It?s a common behavior pattern.? 

He said a popular tax-filing site, 1040.com, showed the same pattern a day later, as taxpayers rushed to file before the deadline. For a while, Patel said, the site took more than seven seconds to open over a T-1 line. 

In expectation of an e-filing boom, the IRS plans to propose legislation giving e-filers, by 2007, an extra 15 days after April 15 to transmit their returns.
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Government Computer News
04/15/03 
Defense program spurs wider government use of smart cards 
By William Jackson 

SAN FRANCISCOWith the number of Common Access Cards in use approaching the 2 million mark, the Defense Department has opened the way for smart-card use throughout government. 

Issuing the cards at a rate of 12,000 a day, ?DOD is leading in identity management,? said Brett Michaels, head of government sales for RSA Security Inc. of Bedford, Mass. ?Their effort, funding and conviction have blazed a trail for the rest of the public sector.? 

Government smart-card use was a hot topic at the RSA 2003 Security Conference this week. 

The CAC program is ?far and away the largest U.S. government application of smart-card technology,? said Dave Ludin, North American vice president of sales and solutions at Gemplus Corp. of Redwood City, Calif. ?It has spurred interest throughout the government. You can see it in the Transportation Security Administration.? 

Defense hopes to have about 4 million cards issued to active duty military personnel and contractors behind its firewall by the end of this year, said Mary Dixon, director of the Common Access Card Office of the Defense Manpower Data Center. 

That does not mean that the job of issuing cards will be over, she said. DOD will continue issuing about 1.3 million cards a year to replace existing cards and accommodate incoming personnel. But the department is now shifting its focus to applications, Dixon said. 

The cards, which DOD began work on in 1999, are used as standard ID cards, and their embedded chips also can be used for logical access to IT systems and for other types of authentication. 

?This summer we will be piloting some contactless technology," Dixon said. "We hope in fiscal 2004 to be able to add biometrics.? 

She said the type of biometric has not been decided, although "it is most likely fingerprints or iris scans. We are designing the card so it will be vendor neutral and biometric type neutral.? 

Government officials would like to see more widespread use of smart cards, but a lack of interoperability has been the largest barrier to sweeping adoption, said Jim Dray, principal scientist for the National Institute of Standards and Technology's smart-card program. 

?The government has been trying for some time to do this, and it has turned out to be a problem," Dray said. "There are many attempted rollouts of smart-card technology over the years. The real roadblock is that there has not been enough interoperability between products.? 

NIST is working to change that with its Government Smart-Card Interoperability Standard. Version 1 of the standard was issued in August 2000. NIST now is working on Version 2.1. 

The new version will include provisions for contactless use and biometrics. ?DOD has been proactive in feeding information to us" for biometric specifications, Dray said. 

Gemplus? Ludin said smart cards would be among the technologies tested this year for the Transportation Workers ID Credentials at the Philadelphia-Wilmington port on the East Coast and the Los Angeles-Long Beach port on the West Coast. 

In addition to TWIC, the State and Treasury departments also are rolling out smart-card programs using the same card stock as the Common Access Cards, said Neville Pattinson, director of business development and technology for Schlumberger Ltd. of New York. 

?Many other government agencies are using the experience of the DOD and the Common Access Card Office,? Pattinson said. 

Smart cards for years have been on the brink of acceptance in the United States but have been slow to catch on. DOD?s decision to forge ahead with its program was a watershed for the industry. 

As military personnel enroll they are issued cards at 900 sites around the world. The number of sites speeds up the issuing process but creates management difficulties. 

TSA is looking at a more centralized system to save money, Pattinson said. Transportation workers, including truck drivers and port and airport employees, would be able to enroll for TWIC locally, but cards probably would be issued from a central site. 

Even before the TWIC pilot is complete, DOD will begin issuing its first round of replacement Common Access Cards late this year.
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