Clips May 12, 2003

[Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>]

Clips May 12, 2003

ARTICLES

PITAC nominees strong in cybersecurity
Open source on hold in Oregon
DHS poised for mock terror attacks
Four agencies get e-gov rating boost on OMB management scorecard 
Blogs play a role in homeland security
Feds, health insurers focus on sharing bioterror data
CERT warns of 'Peido-B' virus threat
Online Auctions Have Everything -- Including, Increasingly, Scam Artists 
SEC Sues Spammer for Alleged Web Fraud 
Spam thrives despite effort to screen it out
Flexible E-Paper on Its Way  

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Federal Computer Week
PITAC nominees strong in cybersecurity
BY Judi Hasson and Diane Frank 
May 9, 2003

President Bush announced May 8 that he plans to appoint 25 new members to the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC), which offers advice on maintaining America's dominance in advanced information technologies.

The panel provides information to the president, Congress and federal agencies involved in IT research and development, and helps guide the Bush administration's efforts to accelerate the development and adoption of IT policies for the nation.

Its members are leading IT experts from industry and academia, many of whom have worked in or with the government. 

The nominees include two candidates who will serve as co-chairmen  Edward Lazowska, professor and chairman of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington, and Marc Benioff, a former Oracle Corp. executive and entrepreneur recently described by Fortune magazine as the "Prince of Software."

Other include:

* Ruzena Bajcsy, director of the Center for IT Research in the Interest of Society at the University of California-Berkeley, and former assistant director of the Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate at the National Science Foundation.

* Eugene Spafford, a professor of computer sciences at Purdue University, director of Purdue's Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security.

* Peter Tippett, chief technology officer of Herndon, Va.-based TruSecure Corp.

"These appointments come at a critical time for our economic security and our homeland security, particularly in the area of cybersecurity," said House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.). "These new PITAC members are some of the best scientific, engineering and business minds in the country, and I believe their collective knowledge and experience will be enormously beneficial to the president and to the nation."

James Foley, chairman of the Computing Research Association, said the appointments are a sign that the president recognizes the importance of IT "for the economy, for national security, for health and education, and the general well-being of our citizenry."
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Federal Computer Week
Open source on hold in Oregon
BY Brian Robinson 
May 9, 2003  

A bill that would push Oregon's state agencies to consider the use of Linux and other open-source software in information technology procurements is treading water.

During hearings last month, industry opponents voiced major concerns over the effects such legislation would have on software development.

As originally introduced, H.B. 2892 would have required state agencies to consider the use of open software in any IT purchases. Agencies already committed to using proprietary software could continue to use it, but they would have to justify its use when open-source software is available for the same purpose.

If passed, it would make Oregon one of the first state governments in the nation to require consideration of open-source software purchases.

Rep. Phil Barnhart, the bill's author, claimed the law is necessary to help agencies cut costs, to enable better interoperability among IT systems and to increase opportunities for Oregon's high-tech companies and workers.

Industry representatives, however, claimed the legislation would squelch software innovation, does not take into account hidden costs such as maintenance of open-source software and might actually harm the high-tech industry in Oregon.

The bill puts "government squarely in the position of picking technological 'winners and losers' and seeking to influence technological development by fiat, rather than market forces," Mario Correa, director of software policy for the Business Software Alliance, told an Oregon House panel.

Major companies, in particular Microsoft Corp., have also weighed in against the bill.

Although House Speaker Karen Minnis has not yet scheduled a work session to finalize the bill and bring it before the full House for a vote, Barnhart says the bill is far from dead. He is redrafting it to tone down language that mandated consideration of open-source software by agencies, and he claims the bill is garnering bipartisan support.

"We're still working on trying to make something happen this session, either as a stand-alone bill or through language inserted into other relevant bills," he said. "We're in this for the long haul, whether it happens this session or not."

Robinson is a freelance journalist based in Portland, Ore. He can be reached at hullite@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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Federal Computer Week
DHS poised for mock terror attacks
BY Judi Hasson 
May 6, 2003

SAVANNAH, Ga. -- The information technology team at the Homeland Security Department (DHS) will be working around the clock next week to monitor an exercise simulating a terrorist attack on Seattle and Chicago, the department's chief information officer said today.

Steve Cooper said his team of top-level IT officials would be looking for any cybersecurity lapses and actions that should have been taken but were not.

"We'll be watching for lessons learned: Is there something we missed? Do we need to fill a gap?" he told Federal Computer Week at the semiannual CIO Summit, sponsored by FCW Media Group.

The five-day exercise, known as TopOff 2 (Top Officials 2), will begin May 12. It will include DHS and the State Department working in conjunction with federal, state, local and Canadian officials. The exercise will analyze the response to a terrorist attack.

The operation includes a sequence of events that would happen in a terrorist campaign with weapons of mass destruction. The operation will simulate a radiological device explosion in Seattle and a covert biological attack in Chicago, and evaluate how authorities respond to these incidents.

Some 25 agencies and the American Red Cross will be involved in the exercise, DHS Secretary Tom Ridge said May 5 in discussing the event.
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Government Computer News
05/12/03 
Four agencies get e-gov rating boost on OMB management scorecard 
By Jason Miller 

The departments of Health and Human Services and State, the General Services Administration and the Agency for International Development took the biggest recent steps toward gaining green ratings for e-government on the President?s Management Agenda?s scorecard. 

The four agencies improved their progress scores, moving from yellow to green, according to the most recent report card, which the Office of Management and Budget just released. Using a color-grading scheme, OMB issues two grades for each of the agenda?s five management categories. One score rates overall status; the second rates progress on implementing specific programs. 

The Transportation Department and the Smithsonian Institution were the only agencies to drop a grade on progress, going to yellow from green. The remaining agencies? progress ratings went unchanged. 

OMB is tracking 27 agencies? efforts to meet Bush administration management goals on human capital, competitive sourcing, financial management, e-government and budget and performance integration. A green rating means an agency has met all of OMB?s requirements; yellow means it has met some criteria; and red means it has serious problems. 

The administration releases a scorecard every quarter, and changes in scores are compared to the last ratings. The most recent scorecard reported progress of agencies? work between January and March. 

Agencies? scores remained static for overall efforts toward getting to green on e-government. The National Science Foundation is the only agency that has reached green; 11 agencies are at yellow; and 14 are at red. 

On the other four management agenda items, the departments of Commerce and Education improved to yellow from red for overall status in the human capital category. Otherwise, agencies? ratings did not make any progress toward their overall scores in the other categories. 

The latest scorecard is posted online at www.results.gov/agenda/scorecard.html.
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Computerworld
Blogs play a role in homeland security
By DAN VERTON 
MAY 12, 2003

Weblogs, the Internet technology that allows anyone with a browser to publish a personalized online journal, are increasingly being used to support the intelligence-sharing requirements of homeland security efforts. 
Providence, R.I.-based Traction Software Inc. today will announce that the Western States Information Network (WSIN) has deployed Traction's TeamPage enterprise weblog software to support law-enforcement task forces that are working on terrorism and drug investigations. 

Karen Aumond, assistant director of the WSIN, said a new project called the Advanced Terrorism Information Exchange, which is being expanded to local water departments, fire departments and other critical-infrastructure organizations, will be one of the first initiatives to benefit directly from enterprise weblogs. 

"What typically happens is that there is a flurry of e-mails, and everybody is copied on the e-mail," Aumond said. "And they are automatically purged after 60 days if you don't archive them. By doing this [posting e-mails to a weblog], we can forward these e-mails to a central place, and then we can access them from the road. And what's even better, we can search them." 

Criminal-intelligence analysts are using TeamPage to create access-controlled weblogs, or blogs, as repositories for research data collected for further analysis. The WSIN watch center in Sacramento, Calif., uses them to share user tips, training schedules and articles that are of interest to law-enforcement task forces. 

The enterprise weblog "has all the hallmarks of a disruptive technology," said Greg Lloyd, Traction's co-founder and president. "Unlike ERP hell or groupware hell, where it may take six months just to deploy infrastructure, weblogs that use the standard Web infrastructure can be deployed in 15 minutes." 

Many Benefits 

Peter Brockmann, vice president of marketing at Irving, Texas-based bTrade Inc., is using a weblog as a marketing tool for the company's business-to-business software. Low cost is only one advantage that blogs have over more traditional and complex collaboration products, he said. "The other tools allow you to do more, but what's nice about a blog is it's real easy. It's highly tuned to allow for rapid publishing," he said. 

Blogging is "no-brainer Web technology," Brockmann added. By deploying it, "you save yourself a lot of headaches, heartburn and pain." 

Weblogs can also benefit corporate cultures, analysts said. "Knowledge management systems are often so formal and top-down-driven that the normal worker sees no benefit in using them or contributing," said James Gaskin, an IT consultant in Dallas. "Blogs, like e-mail, flatten the hierarchy and let everyone contribute without having to stare down a suit at a meeting or contradict a manager in person." 

Sundar Kadayam, chief technology officer at Intelliseek Inc., a Cincinnati firm that develops Web-based intelligent-agent and knowledge-discovery technologies, said blogging applications can add to the problem of information overload if they don't incorporate personalized searching and alert mechanisms -- capabilities that Intelliseek is developing. "When those types of capabilities are layered on top of blogging tools, you're going to see the mainstream adoption of weblogs in the enterprise setting," he said. 
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Computerworld
Feds, health insurers focus on sharing bioterror data
By DAN VERTON 
MAY 09, 2003

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Monday plans to begin a five-day exercise to test government and private-sector information-sharing in response to mock terrorist attacks involving weapons of mass destruction. 
The White House is billing the exercise, called TopOff 2 (for Top Officials 2), as the most comprehensive terrorism-response exercise ever undertaken in the U.S. It will include 19 federal agencies, the American Red Cross and officials from Washington, Illinois, the District of Columbia and Canada. The scenario will consist of near-simultaneous mock attacks involving a radiological device in Seattle and the covert release of a biological agent in Chicago. 

A key aspect of the exercise will be the ability of state and local officials in the U.S. and Canada to identify medical patients complaining of symptoms that indicate exposure to a biological agent and to communicate that information in a timely manner to other federal and state officials. 

The exercise comes as the U.S. health insurance industry nears the completion of a pilot project that aims to create a nationwide data mining, surveillance and information-sharing system for the type of regional health crisis envisioned in TopOff 2. 

Relying on a mix of private funding and a $1.2 million grant from the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, four member organizations of the American Association of Health Plans (AAHP) are testing a national bioterrorism syndromic surveillance system that uses real-time data collected from more than 20 million people in all 50 states. The primary goal of the program is to "develop and implement standards, protocols, infrastructure and analytic tools for detecting and reporting unusual geographic clusters of symptoms or complaints" of acute illness that might indicate that a covert bioterrorism attack has taken place, AAHP President and CEO Karen Ignagni said during a House of Representatives hearing last Monday. 

Dr. Jim Norton, program manager at project participant HealthPartners Inc., said his Bloomington, Minn.-based organization's mainframe-based research database wasn't timely enough to meet the 24-hour reporting requirement of the surveillance system. As a result, a significant amount of programming was required to pull the data out of the medical operations mainframe, put it into a standard file format, strip out all personally identifying information and assign geographic and demographic codes to each patient. 

Transmitting the data to the central server operated by Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Inc. in Wellesley, Mass., remains a 36-hour manual process, he said. Once fully automated, reporting will occur every 24 hours. Pattern-recognition software and trend analysis are also still works in progress, said Norton. Some algorithms have been developed, but officials aren't satisfied with how they handle geographic analysis of outbreaks. 

Debra Ritzwoller, clinical research investigator at Kaiser Permanente Colorado in Denver, said daily encounters with patients are scanned for a set of 700 diagnosis codes. That data is then grouped into syndromes and further classified by age, sex and ZIP code. 

"We expect to be able to pick up something two or three days sooner with this system than you would by waiting for people to come into emergency rooms," said Norton. "That will be critical to preventing the spread of these diseases."
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Computerworld
CERT warns of 'Peido-B' virus threat
By Paul Roberts, IDG News Service
MAY 09, 2003

The CERT Coordination Center is warning Internet users to beware of a new e-mail-borne threat that could allow an attacker to run malicious code on a victim's computer. 
The new threat, known as "Peido-B," "VBS/Inor.B" or "Mother's Day Virus," arrives in an e-mail that masquerades as an administrative message. 

The e-mail contains the text "THIS IS A WARNING MESSAGE ONLY YOU DO NOT NEED TO RESEND YOUR MESSAGE" and contains an executable attachment named "sys_con.hta," according to an alert posted by Sophos PLC. When recipients launch the attachment, a Trojan program known as "Troj/DLoader-BO" is installed on the user's system. Trojan programs are malicious software, often masked as legitimate programs, that secretly compromise computer security. 

Troj/Dloader-BO downloads and executes a file from the Web site http://masteraz.hypermart.net within three days of being run for the first time and modifies the configuration of the Microsoft Windows operating system so that the program is started along with Windows, according to Sophos. 

The warning from CERT appeared on the organization's Web page under the heading "Current Activity," which CERT said is reserved for "frequent, high-impact types of security incidents currently being reported to the [CERT Coordination Center]." CERT is based at the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. 

Despite that fact, Sophos, one of the few antivirus companies that did issue an alert for Peido-B, said that it had received only "a small handful" of reports of individuals who had been infected by it, said Carole Theriault, an antivirus consultant at Sophos in Abingdon, England. 

The alert was issued in response to a number of calls from individuals and organizations on Wednesday, according to Brian King, Internet security analyst at CERT. He called the company's Current Activity page a "very informal" list of threats intended more for the use of the CERT community. 

"It's where we put information that may become advisories in the future. If we get a fair number of calls, we put it up there to help our staff ... even if it's not that significant an Internet threat," he said. 

CERT requires reports from multiple, dispersed sources before issuing any kind of notice or alert, King said. 

While the timing of the Peido-B virus may loosely coincide with the celebration of Mother's Day in the U.S. on Sunday, neither the e-mail message nor the attachment that installs the Trojan program seem tailored to the holiday, calling into question CERT's characterization of the new threat as a "Mother's Day Virus." 

The mention of a Mother's Day virus came from individuals who called CERT to report the new virus, according to King. Those users reported hearing rumors of a Mother's Day virus that matched the description of the Peido-B e-mail. 

CERT wasn't immediately able to comment on the alert. CERT encouraged users to install antivirus software and to update their virus information files, if necessary. 

Companies should also consider other measures such as filtering files with an .hta extension and monitoring outgoing HTTP for attempts to retrieve executable files, CERT said.
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Computerworld
FTC cracks down on sites trying to profit from do-not-call list
By LINDA ROSENCRANCE 
MAY 09, 2003

The Federal Trade Commission is trying to stop the owner of two Web sites from making deceptive claims that visitors can use the sites to preregister for the commission's do-not-call registry. 
In a statement yesterday, the FTC said it had asked a federal judge to grant a temporary restraining order against two Web sites, Free Do Not Call List.org and National Do Not Call List.US, owned by Ken Chase in Novato, Calif. 

The FTC filed its complaint against Chase in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Francisco Division. 

Chase couldn't be reached for comment, but as of this morning, the Web sites weren't operational. 

"These scam artists are seizing on the public's interest in the do-not-call registry," Howard Beales, director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in the statement. "But the law doesn't allow third-party profiteers to be in the do-not-call business." 

Beginning in July, the FTC said, it will be up to individual consumers to register their own phone numbers -- for free -- on the only bona fide national do-not-call registry. The registry was created to give consumers a way to fight back against telemarketing calls (see story). 

According to the FTC, consumers who responded to Chase's claims and attempted to preregister for the list received an e-mail acknowledging that their preregistration was received and informing them that the information will be transmitted to the FTC as soon as the list becomes available. 

The complaint alleges that consumers are told that by subscribing to a service offered at one of the sites they can stop receiving telemarketing calls as well as unsolicited faxes and junk mail. The cost for the service, which falsely claims that it can place consumers on the FTC's do-not-call registry, is between $9.99 and $17.99 per year. 

The FTC said consumers who sign up via either of the two Web sites might think their names are included in the national registry and might not sign up on their own. 

An FTC spokeswoman said the commission found out about the Web sites after consumer complaints as well as from its own investigation. 
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Washington Post
Bidding for Trouble? 
Online Auctions Have Everything -- Including, Increasingly, Scam Artists 
By Leslie Walker
Sunday, May 11, 2003; Page F01 

The white poodle should have been a tip-off.

Antiques dealer Thomas Perry had taken a picture of a giant antique teak ship's wheel outside his gallery in Chester, Conn., and offered it for sale on his One of a Kind Antiques Web site. It added to the charm of the photo that Buffalo, his poodle, had wandered into the shot.

But then Perry's photo popped up on eBay, the online auction site. Someone was offering his ship's wheel for sale, using his written description -- and his poodle. Perry had been a seller on the Internet auction site, but he was about to be dragged into the increasingly murky world of Internet auction fraud.

As eBay has grown rapidly into the world's largest marketplace -- with 69 million registered users and 16 million items up for auction or sale at any given moment -- it also has attracted cyberversions of the con artists, shoplifters and pickpockets who populate any teeming bazaar.

While most cases of online fraud involve failure to deliver advertised goods, online auction fraud is growing steadily more complex and sophisticated, with twists that make it harder to figure out what happened, much less track down the scam artists. Identity theft is rampant in online fraud, usually involving sellers posing as other people. And one of the newer twists is fake Web sites, including elaborate ones that appear to be legitimate escrow services, just waiting for an unscrupulous "seller" to suggest that his buyer deposit his payment with the escrow service for safety. Another involves bogus eBay "password verification" forms inviting victims to fork over their passwords.

Such deceptions bewilder and fool a lot of people, as Perry knows firsthand. He gets calls from irate eBay buyers who thought they were buying from Perry because a seller on eBay used his name when communicating with them by e-mail. Perry hasn't lost any money, but he has spent untold hours trying to defend his reputation and persuade eBay to cancel auctions he's convinced were shams. 

It turns out the poodle picture was not the only one of Perry's images that pirates pilfered and used in bogus auctions. He said his online antiques picture archive has become a gold mine for fraudsters too lazy to create their own listings. Images of rare grandfather clocks, diamond pendants and necklaces are just a few of those that have been copied and listed on eBay, he said, some repeatedly. One bidder had to kiss $5,000 goodbye after he sent a certified check to England for a Cartier pendant that he thought he was buying from Perry.

"It's gotten out of control in the last six months," Perry said. "On any given day there are at least eight or 10 of my items that were pirated on eBay for sale."

Cracking Down 
Federal and state prosecutors, meanwhile, are worried enough about what they call a "significant" problem with Internet auction fraud that they announced a major crackdown on April 30. Federal Trade Commission and state prosecutors detailed legal actions they'd taken in 57 recent cases in which online auction sellers had bilked thousands of consumers.

Most did involve nondelivery of goods -- and not just luxury items. The non-deliverables included dental equipment, athletic clothing, musical instruments, candles, sunglasses and "demonic toys."

While a few involved Yahoo auctions, the vast majority took place at eBay Inc., the Web's top auction destination, where goods valued at $5.3 billion swapped hands in the first quarter. For its part, the San Jose company contends it has the multi-headed fraud monster under control, with no more crime occurring in its virtual community than you'd encounter in a conventional store. Its managers say fraud touches a tiny fraction of its transactions, partly thanks to the elaborate "feedback" system that helps build trust among strangers. In each eBay transaction, the buyer and seller can rate one another; results are tallied and displayed in a system of points and color-coded stars.

EBay's chief fraud fighter, former federal prosecutor Rob Chesnut, readily acknowledged in an interview last week that fraud is tough to prove and track, especially since eBay doesn't consider itself a party to its transactions but rather lets buyers and sellers handle all payment and shipping on their own. But he said eBay has grown steadily more aggressive in trying to thwart fraud and soon will roll out another round of security measures.

Already, eBay runs sophisticated software analysis against its millions of auction listings, looking for fraud patterns it declines to discuss. It has a bunch of former prosecutors and police officers on its fraud-fighting team, including a former Scotland Yard inspector and a police officer from Australia. This month eBay hired President's Bush outgoing cybersecurity czar, Howard A. Schmidt, to be its new vice president of security. And hundreds of the estimated 800 people who work in eBay's Salt Lake City customer service operation focus on fraud.

Last year eBay tightened its registration system, instituting electronic address and credit card verifications that run in the background when new users sign up. Chesnut said those changes marked a turning point.

"Up until early last year, eBay's position toward fraud had been that we would react if the community let us know about a problem," he said. "We did not take proactive steps on our own to go out and find the problem and prevent it. What I think is really significant about those announcements last year is that it really marks a shift in an approach from being reactive to being proactive."

EBay has long said fraudulent deals represent less than one-one-hundredth of 1 percent of its total transactions, but Chesnut acknowledged that this statistic counts only the claims paid under the company's fraud-protection insurance plan. Users who file a complaint validated by eBay's fraud division are eligible for reimbursement up to $200, after a $25 deductible.

But eBay does not count as a fraud victim anyone who paid by credit card. It sends those folks to file claims with their credit card companies. Moreover, it doesn't count folks who get burned and don't bother to file a claim with eBay -- a number that could be really big.

Federal Trade Commission lawyer Tara Flynn said investigators have found that for every victim who steps forward, there can be five to 10 more the investigators run across who were bilked by the same person but kept quiet. "The thing I have found shocking is how few people do complain," she said.

Partly for that reason, FTC officials say they are trying to get a better handle on how big the auction rip-off problem is. Already, the FBI has pegged it as the No. 1 fraud complaint on the Internet, with more than 50,000 cases reported to the FTC last year, up dramatically over previous years.

Chesnut nonetheless said the trend line at eBay is encouraging: Fraud doesn't appear to be on the upswing, at least not as fast as listings: "If anything, the percentage is going down," he said. "As we have rolled out greater fraud detection and prevention measures over the last year, the numbers are declining, not rising."

That, of course, is of little comfort to victims, some of whom think eBay could do more to police its site, educate users about safe payment methods and help them when they do fall prey to scoundrels. In the case of Thomas Perry's ship's-wheel-and-poodle picture, it seemed clear, at least to Perry, that whoever listed the wheel on eBay didn't really have it in his possession. So Perry sent eBay's fraud division links to both Web pages, expecting the auction to be halted.

Instead, Perry got back what appeared to be a form e-mail from eBay saying it had failed to detect enough similarities between the two photographs to prove they were the same.

"Not the same?" Perry recalled last week. "That was my poodle peering out from behind the wheel in both! They obviously didn't look at them."

EBay said it can't talk about specific complaints because of privacy concerns.

Taking Hits 
Another frustrated bystander is Jana Kraus, a human resources professional in Manhattan who buys and sells first-edition books on eBay in her spare time. Someone hacked her eBay account last month and, posing as her, sold plasma TV sets for several thousand dollars each. The scam artists relied on her 771 positive feedback points to lure unsuspecting buyers, she said. After the victims failed to get their televisions, a few posted negative feedback for her.

"I can't sell on eBay with feedback saying 'She is a scam artist,' " Kraus said. "I am a very nice person. I send free, very nice postcards of New York with everything I sell."

To add injury to insult, for each of those fraudulent TV "sales," Kraus was charged eBay's listing fee and seller commission . Kraus said she spent more than 10 hours trying to communicate with eBay to get the bogus commissions removed from her credit card. Eventually, eBay returned the money and removed her negative feedback.

New Jersey antiques dealer Michael Lehr took a harder hit. He said he bought a painted Rookwood vase on eBay for $1,125 and wired the money to Indonesia -- and then never heard from the seller. But Lehr figured there was little point to filing a claim or law enforcement report, because he doubted American prosecutors could recover funds from a bank in Indonesia, much less arrest a resident there.

"I took the different approach, of being aggressive," he said. Acting like a digital posse, he searched for other fake auctions on eBay and reported what he found to eBay's fraud division. When eBay didn't yank some of the listings, he occasionally took matters into his own hands, entering phony bids to ward off unsuspecting bidders. He ran into other self-styled auction vigilantes doing the same thing, bidding under names such as "Don't bid dummy."

Another dealer, who owns a Syracuse shop specializing in American decorative arts, got dragged in, too. Dave Rudd, who runs the Web site Daltons.com, said he discovered in March that scam artists were lifting images and descriptions of merchandise off his Web site and using them to create fake eBay auctions. First he saw a hand-painted Rookwood pottery piece that he owned, worth more than $3,000, offered on eBay, then a $36,000 clock that was listed three times, he said. Believing his site had been targeted partly because it publishes prices, Rudd started withholding some prices.

"I bet there were 40 different items of mine on eBay," Rudd said. "It has slowed down, but I don't think it has stopped." 

Speaking generally, eBay's Chesnut said image duplication by scam artists does happen, though rarely. "If you are trying to advertise an item you don't have, it helps if you can come up with a picture," Chesnut said. "One reason they are bad guys is they don't like hard work. Rather than doing their own photography, when presented with an easier option they will go with that."

Chasing Scam Artists 
Successful prosecution of online crimes is tough but on the rise. FTC lawyer Steven M. Wernikoff led a team that investigated a tangled web of deception in Chicago, which led to legal action being filed against a man and a woman who allegedly fleeced buyers of more than $90,000 on eBay. The woman was accused of stealing people's identities from a hotel where she worked to set up bogus accounts. The man was accused of assuming the identities of people he disliked, including one woman who had kicked him out of her house.

"This case involves an amazing array of accounts and identities being used," Wernikoff said. "Eventually we were able to piece it together. But when sellers use stolen IDs, they are using technology to their advantage, because it is more difficult to find them."

Maryland Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr. said his office is still trying to catch an Internet auction con artist who operated out of Towson. Maryland recently announced a settlement with another man, Michael Rymer of Germantown. Curran said Rymer agreed to make restitution totaling $142,000 to 82 consumers who had purchased laptop computers from him on eBay but never received the merchandise.

The attorney general noted that Rymer had successfully sold on eBay for a while before he suddenly stopped delivering the goods. That, Curran noted, shows how risky it can be to trust sellers you've never met, even when they seem to have a track record. He said it's crucial for buyers to research sellers thoroughly, and to use traceable payment methods such as credit cards.

Prosecuting scam artists overseas is tougher, obviously, than catching crooks in Montgomery County. Consider the bogus escrow service called Premier-Escrow.com, which federal regulators shut down and still have under investigation. The FTC said the Web site posed as an escrow service that promised to hold money for auction winners until they got their goods. But in reality, its operators often posed as buyers and scammed sellers out of expensive computers and other goods, the FTC alleged.

The FTC obtained a restraining order against the elusive site operators but, according to Flynn, hasn't been able to find them. Investigators are probing a connection to Romania and talking to law enforcement authorities there.

The recent FTC crackdown was intended to be the opening shot in an aggressive government war against auction fraud, according to FTC lawyers.

"The truth is I think everybody could do more," Flynn said. "Auction houses could do more, consumers can do more, and we can do more." 
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Washington Post
SEC Sues Spammer for Alleged Web Fraud 
By JUDITH BURNS
Monday, May 12, 2003; 2:42 PM 

WASHINGTON - Regulators filed fraud charges Monday against a 20-year-old Kentucky man who allegedly scammed money from would-be investors by creating a Web site for a fictitious federal agency.

The Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit, filed in U.S. District court in Tennessee, charged K.C. Smith with raising $102,554 through bogus Web sites and about 9 million unsolicited e-mail messages. Smith even used the SEC's own seal to convince investors the scheme was legitimate, according to the lawsuit.

Smith, of Oak Grove, Ky., didn't admit to or deny the allegations, but agreed to a settlement requiring him to return $107,510 of gains and interest, and barring him from future violations.

Regulators allege that between May 2002 and February 2003, Smith ran a Web site for Kryer Financial, a bogus investment company offering double-digit monthly returns said to be insured by the "United States Deposit Insurance Corporation," another entity he invented.

Smith created a Web site for the USDIC featuring the SEC's official seal and claimed investments with Kryer Financial were fully insured against loss, the SEC said. The SEC said none of the money Smith raised was invested and none of it was insured. Instead, regulators said Smith used the money to pay his living expenses.

To conceal his identity, Smith allegedly called potential investors on disposable cellular telephones, accessed the Internet through stolen accounts and collected funds through confidential online payment services.

"He took more efforts to evade detection of anyone we've ever sued," said John Reed Stark, head of the SEC's Internet enforcement program, in Washington, D.C. To date, the group has charged about 1,200 companies and individuals with online stock fraud.

The suit is the first to allege an investment scheme that used the SEC's own seal.

In a second alleged scheme, known as the Maryland Investment Club, the SEC said Smith offered high-yield international tax-free investments, which he claimed were guaranteed by the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation for up to $60,000.

Smith isn't represented by a lawyer and didn't immediately return a phone call to his home.
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USA Today
Spam thrives despite effort to screen it out
By Jon Swartz and Paul Davidson

Stephen Smith can't escape spam. The junk e-mails, about 300 a day, show up on his home PC. His work PC. His cell phone. Smith, 31, has set up at least six e-mail accounts to outrun spammers.

He has tried spam-fighting software. He and his wife, expecting their first child, are already talking about how they'll protect her from pornographic spam. 

They "are relentless," says Smith, the e-mail administrator for a diet supplements firm in Phoenix .

Smith isn't the only one who wants to slam spam. A backlash against unsolicited commercial e-mail is reaching a crescendo.

Corporate spending against spam is skyrocketing. The Internet companies that deliver e-mail to tens of millions have started attacking spammers in more aggressive ways. A flurry of legislation is in the works. Virginia recently passed the nation's harshest anti-spam law.

And consumers are increasingly quitting e-mail services or turning off cell phones to escape spam.

But though spam may be curbed, it will be a long, tough fight, experts say. Spammers routinely change tactics and locations, making them hard to stop. Many make the valid claim that spam is a legitimate marketing tool  so legislating what's spam and what's free speech is hard. And spammers are extending their reach, from PCs to instant messaging to cell phones.

"Get over it: Spam is here to stay," says Doug Wood, a lawyer specializing in online advertising.

More than 2 trillion pieces of junk e-mail are expected to flood the Internet in 2003  100 times the amount of mail delivered by the U.S. Postal Service last year.

As almost everyone with a computer knows, spam comes in the form of ads for sexually explicit products, mortgage rates and Nigerian charities, straining consumer and corporate e-mail services.

Spam got so bad last year at law firm Allen Matkins in Los Angeles that employees turned off wireless devices. "It muted the purpose of carrying a device," says Frank Gillman, director of technology.

"It's an epidemic," says Vance Nakamoto, vice president of operations at Terra Lycos, an Internet service provider, or ISP.

How they find you 

How do spammers find you? Their robots scour chat rooms, newsgroups and other Web sites for e-mail addresses.

They use computers to randomly guess at addresses within a domain, such as aol.com, until they hit on valid ones. And they buy lists: up to 1 million e-mail addresses for only $25.

America Online, Yahoo and Microsoft won't say how much they spend on spam defenses. But BellSouth's Internet service provider group says it shells out $3 to $5 a year per customer to combat spam. Larger companies with corporate networks typically spend $1 to $2 per user each month to combat spam, technology managers say. For Cypress Semiconductor, with 3,000 e-mail users, that adds up to about $33,500 a year, with discounts  plus $69,000 more in software.

One of the latest spam tactics is dubbed spoofing. That's where a spammer usurps the name of a legitimate business, for instance, to give the impression that it sent the e-mail. Companies have few options but to sue the spoofers, a time-consuming process because the spammers are difficult to track down.

Fighting on several fronts 

Spam "is becoming as big a problem as computer viruses and worms," says Dennis Bell, director of technical operations at Cypress in San Jose, Calif. "What gets you is the sheer volume and its interference with people's work."

It's no surprise, then, that a spam-slamming nation is fighting on several fronts to put a lid on junk e-mail via:

?Technology.Anti-spam technology usually comes in the form of software filters, which employ different techniques to weed out unwanted e-mail.

There are blacklists, which eliminate messages originating from a list of spam addresses. Heuristic models look for patterns in the e-mail's body and header that indicate spam. Some solutions use voting systems where users decide what qualifies as spam. Other systems reject e-mail with suspicious sender addresses and subject headers.

Brightmail, the biggest anti-spam software company, runs a "probe network" made up of more than 1 million e-mail addresses culled from businesses and ISPs. Whenever large numbers of mailboxes at a company receive similar messages, for example, the cyberequivalent of a fingerprint of those messages is sent to Brightmail, where technicians check it out. Brightmail experts in March uncovered 6.7 million "spam attacks," each containing thousands to millions of messages.

Spam "has forced us to buy five times as much hardware as we had two years ago," says Alexis Rosen, CEO of Panix. The New York-based ISP, with 5,000 subscribers, estimates spam-related costs will reduce his company's net income 12% to 15% this year.

EarthLink, the nation's third-largest Internet service provider with 5 million subscribers, this month is testing a "permission-based" system, which is optional to users. After someone sends an e-mail to an EarthLink subscriber, the sender gets back a message asking him to verify his identity. If he does, the e-mail goes through. If not, it is blocked. The system would recognize future messages from the same sender, so friends, for example, don't have to keep verifying their identities.

?Quitting or switching ISPs. Some consumers, disgusted with the constant influx of spam, are taking their business elsewhere.

A recent CNN/USA TODAY/Gallup poll found 13% of 448 e-mail users who said they got a lot of spam quit an e-mail service because of spam in the past year. An additional 24% considered quitting.

Phillip Harris, 42, of Fayetteville, N.C., is so fed up with spam on AOL, the biggest ISP and spam magnet, that he's leaving the service after six years to join a broadband service. About 40 of his 45 or so daily e-mails are spam, many pitching sexual products that his two young sons see. "It's really getting out of hand," he says.

?Legal onslaughts. AOL  which blocks almost 2.4 billion spam e-mails a day, or about 80% of its inbound mail  last month filed lawsuits against more than a dozen spammers, saying they violated its anti-bulk e-mail policy. It was AOL's biggest crackdown ever on spam, based on the volume generated by the defendants. EarthLink and Microsoft have also stepped up legal action against alleged spammers.

The Virginia law signed April 29 makes it a felony to send large volumes of spam with fraudulent return addresses to e-mail servers based in the state. It's punishable by up to five years in prison, and authorities can seize profits and computer equipment connected with the spamming.

 From SPAM to spam 

It started 25 years ago with the first official spam sent by Digital Equipment marketing manager Gary Thuerk. He sent a mass mailing of 397 e-mails pitching technology on the Internet's predecessor, Arpanet.

"There was negative reaction," he says, chuckling. "But, on the other hand, a number of people contacted us for information."

When millions of Americans went online in the mid-1990s, the mass mailings mushroomed. Annoyed tech geeks dubbed it spam.

Their inspiration?

A Monty Python skit about a restaurant that serves only processed meat. In the sketch, a group of Vikings loudly sing, "Spam, spam, spam, spam," drowning out other conversations in the same manner e-mail spam disrupts online communication.

Hormel Foods, which has made canned meat called SPAM since 1937  and whom Monty Python parodied  good-naturedly says it does not object to the use of the word "spam" as long as its product is distinguished as SPAM, in uppercase letters.

After the growth of spam has been the growth of anti-spam tools. But anti-spammers compare junk e-mailers with spray-resistant insects: Once you curb them with one solution, another, stronger strain surfaces. "It's a technology war. They tweak this, we tweak that," says e-mail marketer Laura Betterly, who sends 2 million to 4 million e-mails a day.

If filters block e-mail including telltale words such as "free" or "sex," spammers take those words out. They insert numbers and letters randomly to disguise phrases such as "free home mortgage"  a classic spam.

To avoid the impression that they're cold-spamming, they use such phrases as "hey there" so victims think they know the sender.

To further elude filters, they're constantly forging their return e-mail or routing addresses and bouncing their messages off unsuspecting computers.

Spam "will always be a problem because it is cheap and effective," says analyst Sonia Arrison of think tank Pacific Research Institute.

Betterly, 42, launched her e-mail marketing business in her Dunedin, Fla., kitchen for just $15,000 in August and broke even within three months. She rejects the "spammer" label, saying she obtains lists of customers who have opted to receive products.

Hawking computers, software and other products for her small-business clients, it costs well under a penny to send an e-mail.

"Who can afford print, billboards or being on TV?" she asks.

Banning spam 

Consumer advocates say only a ban on spam will curb it.

That's because most consumers don't read opt-out provisions when they buy online goods and services, says Jason Catlett, president of Junkbusters. That makes their e-mail addresses vulnerable to marketers. What's more, U.S. laws won't be enforceable against the growing onslaught of spam from abroad, experts say. Then there's the task of defining spam. What one person might call spam, another might consider good information. Even at a recent Federal Trade Commission "spam summit," few could agree on what spam is.

Most company anti-spam filters catch 50% to 80% of spam, experts say. If filters get tighter, say to flag sex-related words, some legitimate e-mail could be deleted. "You could unwittingly kill e-mail about the Virgin Islands," says Brightmail CEO Enrique Salem. "Then you have a situation where employees are being deprived of e-mail they want. It's a delicate balance."
*******************************
MSNBC
U.S. sets up database on Iraqi foes   
Fingerprints, other biometric data stored in digital catalog

May 9   U.S. interrogators in Iraq are building a digital catalog of prisoners of war and loyalists of Saddam Hussein?s Baath Party, scanning and saving their fingerprints and other body characteristics in databases.

      THE DATA BANKS, controlled by the FBI, CIA, Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies, are being used to investigate suspicious foreigners entering the United States, as well as to trace suspects in future terrorist attacks.
       The move also reflects the U.S. government?s desire to keep tabs on Iraqi fighters after releasing them when the Iraq war is declared ended.
       ?We do this passive collection when we go in, because these guys will scatter over time,? said Thomas Barnett, a professor at the Naval War College who advises the Office of the Secretary of Defense. ?When you have the opportunity to tag them, you tag them before you release them to the wild.?
       
HOW THE SYSTEM WORKS
       While officials at U.S. Central Command refused to confirm the process, developers of the technology and some U.S. officials provided The Associated Press with details.
       One of the tools, the Biometrics Automated Toolset, or BAT, is cataloging Iraqis for ?several classified databases? shared among intelligence, law enforcement and border control agencies, said Lt. Col. Kathy De Bolt, deputy director of the Army Intelligence Center at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., where the BAT was developed.
       The idea is to use the rugged laptop and its attached scanners to ?register? Iraqi prisoners, then alert law enforcers when one tries to enter the country.
       ?If you were at the FBI, wouldn?t you want to know if someone were a Baath official and he did some bad things, and then he puts in a visa application to come to the United States?? De Bolt said.
       ?Although they might not be a terrorist now, they might have some anti-American feeling,? she said. ?They might be a terrorist in the future.?
       
SOME VOICE SKEPTICISM

       Some doubt the value of such a database. Since the U.S. government never showed a clear link between Saddam?s regime and the Sept. 11 terror attacks, a compendium of Iraqis is probably of little use in homeland security, said Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief.
       ?The people we were fighting were by and large conscripts. They?re not a pool of future terrorist operatives,? Cannistraro said.
       Only the more ?interesting? of the 3,500 current Iraqi prisoners  down from a peak total of 7,000  will find themselves in a U.S. database of terror suspects, De Bolt said.
       U.S. military and intelligence officials started building the biometric dossiers in Afghanistan, taking digital scans of the fingerprints, irises and voices of Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners, including those jailed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
       U.S. Special Forces continue to use the BAT in Afghanistan to spot-check detainees? features against those in an FBI database, De Bolt said.

MATCHING UP CHARACTERISTICS
       Biometrics  the measuring of physical human features  ensure that a person, once registered, can be identified later, even if his or her identity documents or facial characteristics change. The process involves capturing and matching unique whorls on a fingerprint, vibrations of a vocal cord or patterns in an iris  considered the most reliable.
       Stored in a central database, the biometric files get searched for a match each time they?re queried by, say, an immigration inspector at Miami International Airport or an FBI agent poring over a crime scene.

      ?Let?s say you pick up some documents in Buffalo, N.Y., and you lift a few fingerprints. You can scan them through the system. Let?s say they match an (Iraqi) detainee. You know who handled (the documents),? a U.S. intelligence official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. ?That?s already happening.?
       U.S. Military Police in Iraq use another biometric scanner  developed by Florida-based Cross Match Technologies  to capture and transmit fingerprints to the FBI?s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, said Adam Rosefsky, a company executive who handles government sales.
       The FBI manages the data for the military and the Department of Homeland Security, said FBI special agent John Iannarelli in Washington, D.C. If it finds a match with a terrorist suspect, the FBI notifies Central Command, Iannarelli and Rosefsky said.
       Army MPs used Cross Match to vet the backgrounds of the ?Free Iraqi Forces,? several dozen lightly armed Iraqi exiles the Pentagon organized to guide U.S. invasion forces, said Sgt. Dean Young of the 76th Military Police Battalion, Fort Bliss, Texas.
       ?We needed to see that we didn?t have anybody embedding with us and then committing some kind of terrorist act,? Young said.
       
HOMEFRONT SECURITY
       Access to the cataloged Iraqis also is given to the State Department and Homeland Security border officials, officials at both agencies said.
       Homeland Security?s Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement seeks matches of suspicious foreigners at the borders and during mandatory registration of men from 25 predominantly Muslim countries.
       Such data led to the arrests of about eight terrorist suspects in recent months, a bureau official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
       For now, biometrics are of little use to the State Department, which isn?t equipped to gather fingerprint or iris scans from visa applicants  or check them against those in databases, said Stuart Patt of the department?s Bureau of Consular Affairs.
       The State Department is required to have the capability by 2004, Patt said.
       For the Pentagon, biometrics may be key to finding a new kind of enemy that roams across borders.
       ?We?re increasingly fighting wars against individuals, so you have to track individuals,? Barnett said. ?They?re not going to be wearing uniforms. They mingle.?
*******************************
Wired News
Flexible E-Paper on Its Way  
11:54 AM May. 07, 2003 PT

In a step toward electronic newspapers and wearable computer screens, scientists have created an ultra-thin screen that can be bent, twisted and even rolled up and still display crisp text. 

The material, only as thick as three human hairs, displays black text on a whitish-gray background with a resolution similar to that of a typical laptop computer screen.

The screen is so flexible it can be rolled into a cylinder about a half-inch wide without losing its image quality. 

Although it's not quite the dream of single-sheet, electronic newspapers or books that can display hundreds of pages of text, its creators said it's the first flexible computer screen of its kind. 

"I think it's a major step forward. We have cleared a big obstacle in electronic paper development," said Yu Chen, a research scientist with E Ink of Cambridge, Massachusetts. 

E Ink is one of several companies working to develop electronic "paper" for e-newspapers and e-books, and other possible applications -- even clothing with computer screens sewn into it. 

The new screen is described in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. 

Aris Silzars, the past president of the San Jose, California-based Society for Information Display, said one of the technology's first applications could be something like an electronic tablet lawyers could use in place of bulky laptops. 

But Silzars said the best uses of the new screen, which E Ink is still developing, may not be evident. "It's very hard to predict where this thing may go," he said. 

Chen and his co-workers made the 3-inch-wide display screen flexible by developing a stainless steel foil topped with a thin layer of circuits that control an overlying film of electronic ink. 

The "ink," developed in 1997 by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientist, contains tiny capsules with black and white particles with opposing electrical charges floating in a clear fluid. 

When a negative voltage is run through circuits behind these capsules, the positive white particles move to the capsule's top. A positive current does the same to the negative black particles. 

The human eye blends these resulting patterns of black- or white-topped capsules into text displayed in a traditional column. 

Currently, information and power is fed to the screen through a wired hookup. But Chen's team is working on a self-contained system that could receive data through a wireless connection. 

They also hope to boost the speed at which the screen switches to a new "page" of text, from the current quarter of a second to at least 10 times as fast, so it can display video. 

Another goal is making the screen display a full range of colors. 

Robert Wisnieff, senior manager of IBM's Advanced Display Technology Laboratory in Yorktown Heights, New York, said E Ink's flexible screen is something many futurists believe is crucial to making electronic screens part of every day life. 

He envisions such lightweight, thin screens being used for a credit card that could display the available balance or recent purchases. 

Another possible use is a jacket with a screen sewn into its sleeve to allow its wearer to read e-mail while on the run, check stock prices or access maps in an unfamiliar city. 

"This is a peek at the future," Wisnieff said.
*******************************


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Welcome to the May 12, 2003 edition of ACM TechNews,
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ACM TechNews
Volume 5, Number 494
Date: May 12, 2003

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


"Open Source Lobby Struggles in EU Patent Debate"
"Feds Seek Broader Surveillance Power"
"Pumps, Not Fans, May Cool Tomorrow's Computers"
"PCs Have Become Just Like Appliances: Both Are Too Complex"
"Etch a Site as Easy as Pie"
"Social Climbers"
"Light Show Makes 3D Camera"
"Digital Maps Tell the Time"
"Chinese Lab Hopes to Commercialize Sign-Language Recognition Platform"
"Cobol Enters the 21st Century"
"The State of OS X"
"Computer Systems Going on the Road"
"Is That a Computer Chip in Your Carpet?"
"Product Activation Gains Ground"
"On the Tube"
"Sleuthing Out Data"
"Tech: Where the Action Is"
"Scale-Free Networks"


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

"Open Source Lobby Struggles in EU Patent Debate"
Open-source and free software advocates held a conference in
Brussels on May 8 to protest against a Europe-wide software
patent protection directive drafted by the European Commission
that the European Parliament will vote on in early June ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0512m.html#item1

"Feds Seek Broader Surveillance Power"
The U.S. Senate voted 98-4 to approve the lone-wolf bill, also
known as the "Moussaoui Fix," on May 8.  Under the bill, which
was introduced by Sens. John Kyl (R-Ariz.) and Charles Schumer
(D-N.Y.), the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) would ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0512m.html#item2

"Pumps, Not Fans, May Cool Tomorrow's Computers"
Analysts expect the amount of heat produced by computer chips in
PCs to quadruple within three years, and one possible solution is
a "pump-less" fluid-cooling system devised by Issam Mudawar and
Swaraj Mukherjee of Purdue University.  The chip is attached to a ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0512m.html#item3

"PCs Have Become Just Like Appliances: Both Are Too Complex"
Consumers are complaining about how complex PCs are, and wishing
that the devices were as easy to use as home appliances, writes
Lee Gomes.  Unfortunately, Gomes observes that appliances are
becoming harder to use, while PC difficulty has not decreased ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0512m.html#item4

"Etch a Site as Easy as Pie"
A research team at the University of California at Berkeley last
month released Denim, a software sketching tool that enables
designers to build interactive Web sites.  "We're trying to
replicate the way designers have traditionally worked in the ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0512m.html#item5

"Social Climbers"
Social software was a hot topic at the O'Reilly Emerging
Technologies conference (ETCon) in April; presenters discussed
the increasing importance and usability of social software, which
allows many-to-many communication in addition to one-to-one ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0512m.html#item6

"Light Show Makes 3D Camera"
University of Kentucky researchers say they have a new technique
that can capture 3D video data with just one camera.  While
existing 3D camera setups require arrays of cameras, the new
system uses patterns of light to gauge the depth of recorded
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0512m.html#item7

"Digital Maps Tell the Time"
Scientists at MIT's Media Labs Europe in Dublin, Ireland, are
trying to incorporate a feature into digital maps that gauges
time.  Users could know whether they have enough time to walk to
the park during lunch, for instance.  Based on walking speed and ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0512m.html#item8

"Chinese Lab Hopes to Commercialize Sign-Language Recognition Platform"
The Institute of Computing Technology (ICT) in China has
developed a software platform that can translate spoken and
written Chinese and other languages into sign language via a
virtual character that hearing-impaired users would read ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0512m.html#item9

"Cobol Enters the 21st Century"
Cobol has been modified with new object-oriented features that
will make it easier for companies to integrate Cobol-based
applications with other systems.  Although some observers believe
it will take some time for Cobol programmers to learn the ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0512m.html#item10

"The State of OS X"
Apple is winning over Macintosh fans with each new release of the
OS X operating system.  Little changes have made a huge
difference in improving the speed of the OS X operating system in
three major releases since its introduction in 2001.  Apple's OS ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0512m.html#item11

"Computer Systems Going on the Road"
Telematics startup Truman Mobile says the hardware is now
available for a reliable on-board PC that can sync with a home
wireless network, play people's MP3 collections, and read email,
news, and driving directions aloud.  So far only three customers ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0512m.html#item12

"Is That a Computer Chip in Your Carpet?"
Infineon Technologies has developed a chip sensor network that is
woven into industrial fabrics.  The technology is useful for
monitoring movement or structural integrity in buildings when
embedded in the carpet or in textiles wrapped around support ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0512m.html#item13

"Product Activation Gains Ground"
Product activation technology for fighting piracy is now being
used in more and more software, including Symantec's Norton
AntiVirus 2003 program.  Symantec is currently testing the
technology in downloadable editions of the application, and could ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0512m.html#item14

"On the Tube"
Nantero has developed a prototype memory chip based on carbon
nanotubes that could allow manufacturers to reach the Holy Grail
of fast "non-volatile" memories that retain information even in
the absence of a power source.  The chip consists of billions of ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0512m.html#item15

"Sleuthing Out Data"
Companies can increase worker productivity and lower costs
through categorization software that makes it easier for users to
find necessary information.  The software automatically assigns
data into categories and subcategories that are arranged in a ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0512m.html#item16

"Tech: Where the Action Is"
The tech downturn has not stifled innovation, and companies
reaping profits despite the slump are those that offer software
and services that chiefly benefit end users rather than
investors.  Declining hardware sales and prices are good news for ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0512m.html#item17

"Scale-Free Networks"
A wide array of complex systems--cellular metabolism, social
networks, and the World Wide Web, to name a few--have a shared
network architecture featuring a small number of nodes connected
to a vast number of other nodes; some nodes can support a ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0512m.html#item18


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Subject:      ACM TechNews - Wednesday, May 7, 2003
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Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber:

Welcome to the May 7, 2003 edition of ACM TechNews,
providing timely information for IT professionals three times a
week.  For instructions on how to unsubscribe from this
service, please see below.

ACM's MemberNet is now online. For the latest on ACM
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Remember to check out our hot new online essay and opinion
magazine, Ubiquity, at http://www.acm.org/ubiquity

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ACM TechNews
Volume 5, Number 492
Date: May 7, 2003

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

"U.S.-Singapore Trade Pact Echoes DMCA"
"Tech Hiring to Remain Stagnant, Studies Say"
"Data Mining Proponents Defend Technology"
"Study: Working Women Face Technology Gender Gap"
"Program Lets P2P Users Roam Free"
"Chips Could Crunch at Light Speed"
"UMBC Event Encourages Girls to Excel in Science"
"Eyes on the Spies"
"Will Nanotech Save the World, or Destroy It? Experts Can't Say"
"Why Free Software Is God's Gift to India"
"A New Technology, Now That New Is Old"
"Linux Desktop Myths Exploded"
"Offshore Coding Work Raises Security Concerns"
"Radio ID Chips to Come With Kill Switch"
"Social Software"
"Minding Your Business"
"The Minister of Net Defense"
"Patents Go Global"

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

"U.S.-Singapore Trade Pact Echoes DMCA"
The U.S.-Singapore Free Trade Agreement (FTA)--the first such
agreement between the United States and an Asian nation--carries
provisions similar to the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act
(DMCA), in that they ban the unauthorized circumvention of ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0507w.html#item1

"Tech Hiring to Remain Stagnant, Studies Say"
Hiring managers polled by the Information Technology Association
of America (ITAA) announced that they expect to swell their
workforce by less than 500,000 this year, compared to the 1.1
million new jobs they planned to create last year, according to a ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0507w.html#item2

"Data Mining Proponents Defend Technology"
Federal agency heads reported to Congress on new data mining
systems that critics say will unnecessarily sacrifice personal
privacy.  In hearings before the House subcommittee on technology
and information policy, Transportation Security Administration ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0507w.html#item3

"Study: Working Women Face Technology Gender Gap"
A technology gender gap is barring women from competing for
high-paying positions, especially those that carry
family-friendly benefits such as flexible schedules,
telecommuting, and job sharing, according to a  report the ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0507w.html#item4

"Program Lets P2P Users Roam Free"
Peer-to-peer file traders now have a new weapon to defend
themselves against music labels trying to spy and crack down on
their activities:  PeerGuardian, a free software application that
gives traders a personal firewall that blocks the IP addresses of ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0507w.html#item5

"Chips Could Crunch at Light Speed"
IBM nanotechnology research shows carbon nanotubes can emit light
in addition to conducting electricity.  The discovery promises
more powerful computer chips and communications equipment.  IBM
manager of nanometer-scale science Phaedron Avouris says the ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0507w.html#item6

"UMBC Event Encourages Girls to Excel in Science"
The University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMBC) yesterday hosted
Computer Mania Day, an event intended to demonstrate how
entertaining computer science can be for girls, as well as
address the low enrollment of girls in IT studies.  Former ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0507w.html#item7

"Eyes on the Spies"
U.S. sites vulnerable to terrorist attacks number in the hundreds
of thousands, and protecting them all from spies or saboteurs
would require a new security force.  U.S. HomeGuard, conceived by
Walker Digital's Jay Walker, founder of Priceline, is designed to ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0507w.html#item8

"Will Nanotech Save the World, or Destroy It? Experts Can't Say"
Nanotechnology has moved from the realm of science fiction toward
industrial feasibility over the past 20 years, but while
investors eagerly inject venture capital into the research and
development of nanotech products, scientists such as Foresight ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0507w.html#item9

"Why Free Software Is God's Gift to India"
In his address at GNUnify 2003, IndLinux co-founder Venkatesh
Hariharan declared that India's adoption of free software, in the
form of the GNU/Linux operating system, will open up new
opportunities for cultural, political, and economic freedom.  He ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0507w.html#item10

"A New Technology, Now That New Is Old"
Irving Wladawsky-Berger of IBM contends that the tech industry
has entered "the post-technology era" in which the focus has
shifted from the technology itself to what people and businesses
can do with that technology; paralleling this trend is a transfer ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0507w.html#item11

"Linux Desktop Myths Exploded"
Linux on the desktop offers companies some advantages depending
on the particular business situation, but a recent Gartner study
debunks many of the myths about Linux benefits.  Gartner analyst
Michael Silver says he is not against the open-source operating ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0507w.html#item12

"Offshore Coding Work Raises Security Concerns"
IT professionals attending last week's Techno-Security Conference
expressed concerned about the security risks of U.S. companies
outsourcing software development and other essential IT services
to countries where labor is cheaper.  Attendees were especially ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0507w.html#item13

"Radio ID Chips to Come With Kill Switch"
Philips Semiconductor, Matrics, Alien Technology, and other
manufacturers are expected to debut radio frequency
identification (RFID) tags outfitted with kill switches this
summer, according to an announcement from the Auto ID Center last ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0507w.html#item14

"Social Software"
Social software is likely to be the basis of the next great IT
innovation; in the realm of social software, the interaction is
not between humans and computers but between the group and the
computer.  This poses three distinct problems, and a software ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0507w.html#item15

"Minding Your Business"
Researchers such as Queen's University's Roel Vertegaal are
developing hardware and software designed to mitigate information
overload without restricting users' access to data; Microsoft
Research's Eric Horvitz expects these projects to yield digital ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0507w.html#item16

"The Minister of Net Defense"
Howard Schmidt, only the second person to have held the post of
White House cybersecurity chief, recently talked about
cybersecurity measures in an interview with Wired Magazine.  He
said that a major cyber attack is likely to be highly planned ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0507w.html#item17

"Patents Go Global"
There are 120 national patent systems worldwide, each with its
own criteria, translation requirements, and filing fees, and
failing to satisfy most or all of them could endanger a patent's
eligibility.  Such a task can be prohibitively expensive for ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0507w.html#item18


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Subject:      ACM TechNews - Wednesday, May 14, 2003
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Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber:

Welcome to the May 14, 2003 edition of ACM TechNews,
providing timely information for IT professionals three times a
week.  For instructions on how to unsubscribe from this
service, please see below.

ACM's MemberNet is now online. For the latest on ACM
activities, member benefits, and industry issues,
visit http://www.acm.org/membernet

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

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ACM TechNews
Volume 5, Number 495
Date: May 14, 2003

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

"Draft of Bill on Mass E-Mail Is Called Weak"
"Taking Aim at Denial-of-Service Attacks"
"Nanotech Gets Down to Business"
"Setting a Standard for Wireless Security"
"Faster Computer Techniques for Google"
"Xerox Runs This Up the (Telephone) Pole: MEMS for Magical 'Last
 Mile'"
"Video Devices Benefit the Deaf"
"Fizzer Worm Bubbles Over"
"The Games Robots Play"
"Aftermath of War"
"Invention International"
"Intel Prototype Transforms Notebook"
"'Simple, Cheap Technology' Holds Huge Promise"
"New Virtual Reality Array Allows Immersive Experience Without
 the Disorienting 3-D Goggles"
"Moving Up the Stack"
"The Really, Really Messy Wi-Fi Revolution"
"Reality Bytes"
"Dawn of the Superworm"

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

"Draft of Bill on Mass E-Mail Is Called Weak"
A draft of a federal anti-spam bill sponsored by Reps. W.J.
Tauzin (R-La.) and F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) is causing
consternation among consumer groups and anti-spam advocates, who
argue that all the measure will do is replace fraudulent spammers ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0514w.html#item1

"Taking Aim at Denial-of-Service Attacks"
Carnegie Mellon University graduate students Abraham Yaar and
XiaoFeng Wang presented two proposals at the IEEE Symposium on
Security and Privacy on Monday that could act as effective
deterrents against denial-of-service attacks by tweaking network ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0514w.html#item2

"Nanotech Gets Down to Business"
Venture capitalists, big-money firms, and the U.S. government are
all putting resources into nanotechnology, as evidenced by this
year's NanoBusiness Conference in New York.  Participants are
excited by actual deployments of nanotechnology and reports by ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0514w.html#item3

"Setting a Standard for Wireless Security"
The Presence and Availability Management (PAM) Forum and the
Parlay Group announced their intention to merge on May 13 so that
they can develop wireless security standards together.  The
organizations issued a press release stating that their merger ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0514w.html#item4

"Faster Computer Techniques for Google"
Stanford University, the same academic institution that hosted
research leading to the popular Google search engine, has yielded
three methods that could collectively boost the speed of Google's
Web page rankings by up to a factor of five.  The techniques, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0514w.html#item5

"Xerox Runs This Up the (Telephone) Pole: MEMS for Magical 'Last
 Mile'"
Xerox has developed a prototype "last-mile" technology that may
make the dream of cheap, rapid on-demand video and Internet
services for the home and enterprise a reality.  The device, a
microelectromechanical system (MEMS) switch incorporated into a...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0514w.html#item6

"Video Devices Benefit the Deaf"
The are strong indications that wireless Internet is taking off
among the 20 million hearing-impaired Americans in the United
States, rather than leaving them behind.  Sales of T-Mobile's
wireless service using Danger in Motion's SideKick text-messaging ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0514w.html#item7

"Fizzer Worm Bubbles Over"
The "Fizzer" worm that first emerged on May 8 is a mass-mailing
worm that propagates by multiple means and attacks machines that
run Microsoft's Windows operating system, according to McAfee,
which updated Fizzer's risk profile on Monday from "low" to ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0514w.html#item8

"The Games Robots Play"
Academic institutions contribute research to artificial
intelligence that is put through its paces at RoboCup, an annual
event in which robots compete in soccer games.  The RoboCup
American Open, hosted by Carnegie Mellon University, featured ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0514w.html#item9

"Aftermath of War"
The fight against terrorists and the recent war in Iraq
demonstrate how the Internet today affects war, political
expression, and the media.  The ability of embedded reporters was
greatly enhanced through the Internet and some, such as Kevin ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0514w.html#item10

"Invention International"
Former U.S. Patent Office commissioner and founder of the
International Intellectual Property Institute (IIPI) Bruce Lehman
says he established IIPI as a resource that people in developing
countries could use to learn how to leverage patent, trademark, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0514w.html#item11

"Intel Prototype Transforms Notebook"
Intel's Florence is a prototype notebook computer that can easily
switch between a tablet PC and a portable entertainment or
messaging console.  Designer Nick Oakley says the hinged,
double-jointed device was inspired by "a two-way restaurant ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0514w.html#item12

"'Simple, Cheap Technology' Holds Huge Promise"
Researchers reported significant advancements in the field of
microfluidics with the announcement of a silicone rubber device
that can transport a consistent stream of fluid despite pressure
fluctuation.  Such a device, which has no moving parts, could ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0514w.html#item13

"New Virtual Reality Array Allows Immersive Experience Without
 the Disorienting 3-D Goggles"
The University of Pennsylvania is using a new system called
LiveActor to allow users to interact in a virtual reality setting
without 3-D glasses.  LiveActor works by combining an optical
motion capture tool with a stereo projection system.  Users' ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0514w.html#item14

"Moving Up the Stack"
Mainframes, PCs, minicomputers, and servers are transitioning to
grid computing, in keeping with Gordon Bell's tenet that the
prevalent IT platform changes every decade or so.  The increasing
complexity and heterogeneity of computing, as demonstrated by the ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0514w.html#item15

"The Really, Really Messy Wi-Fi Revolution"
Low-cost, wireless broadband Internet access (Wi-Fi) is being
touted as a revolutionary technology that will transform the way
people use computers, but the Wi-Fi market is currently fraught
with anarchy as Wi-Fi providers large and small fight over ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0514w.html#item16

"Reality Bytes"
"Mirror Worlds" author David Gelernter's prediction that
increased computing power and complexity would help bring about
the online equivalent of cities is coming closer to reality.  For
example, participants in Web-based multiplayer games are ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0514w.html#item17

"Dawn of the Superworm"
The Slammer worm--also known as Sapphire or SQL Hell-- was
launched on Jan. 25, causing Internet service disruptions, flight
cancellations, and malfunctioning ATMs.  But experts warn that
the worm could have been experimental, similar to the Nimda and ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0514w.html#item18


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