Clips May 27, 2003

[Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>]

Clips May 27, 2003

ARTICLES

CBS Backs Down on Threat to Pull Digital TV Lineup
Army, MIT Unveil Futuristic Soldier Center
Security spending forecast: $6B
Pirated Movies, Software Swamp Pakistan Markets
U.S. Gov't to Get Cybersecurity Chief
Navy tracks patients with radio wristbands 
EPA System That Checks Pollution Called Obsolete
Is a Wi-Fi Bubble Building?
The first 100 days - The Homeland Security Department
Entry/exit system takes shape 
The problem-solver - Charles McQueary
DOD: Terrorist system will protect privacy
HHS center put to test by terrorist exercise
Agriculture uses GPS to pinpoint easements 
OPM promotes telework through new guide 
Panel presses Ridge on cybersecurity, information analysis 


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Reuters
CBS Backs Down on Threat to Pull Digital TV Lineup
Thu May 22, 9:40 PM ET
By Jeremy Pelofsky 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Viacom Inc.'s CBS television network on Thursday backed down from a threat to pull its digital 2003-2004 lineup unless federal regulators adopted a mechanism to protect shows from being pirated by this summer. 
   

The Federal Communications Commission (news - web sites) has been pushing the television industry, content providers and consumer electronics makers to speed up the transition to higher-quality digital signals and recently asked if the agency should adopt a so-called broadcast flag to protect programs from piracy. 

Viacom warned the FCC (news - web sites) in December that the network would pull its digital offerings, which include the popular college basketball tournament and favorite shows like CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (news - Y! TV), unless the broadcast flag was adopted and enforced. 

"CBS will reconsider its deadline and continue to provide a full schedule of high definition entertainment and sports programming to our viewers this upcoming television season," the network said in a statement. 

Rep. Billy Tauzin, chairman of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Rep. Fred Upton who chairs the panels communications and Internet subcommittee, had earlier on Thursday written to urge the network to reconsider the threat. 

We are "hopeful that the FCC will work to complete the broadcast flag proceeding by this fall, and certainly no later than the end of this calendar year," they said in a letter. 

The flag would allow consumers to record broadcasts for personal use but prevent sharing perfect digital copies of the shows over the Internet. 

Tauzin plans to introduce a bill in the next two months to address issues complicating the transition to digital, including requiring broadcasters to transmit digital signals by 2006 and end their analog broadcasts by the end of that year. 

FCC Chairman Michael Powell (news) also on Wednesday sent letters to the networks, television stations, cable operators, satellite television service providers and consumer electronics makers seeking an update on their efforts to move the digital transition forward. 

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Reuters
Army, MIT Unveil Futuristic Soldier Center
Thu May 22, 5:39 PM ET

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (Reuters) - If you ask the U.S. Army's chief scientist what the future American soldier may look like, he points to the science fiction body armor depicted in the "Predator" movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. 


Mock futuristic warriors took center stage on Thursday at the debut of The Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies. Last year, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (news - web sites) won a $50 million Army contract to form a center that develops combat gear using materials the size of atoms. 


The idea is to develop high-tech gear that would allow soldiers to become partially invisible, leap over walls, and treat their own wounds on the battlefield. 


"If you want to visualize the impact of nanotechnology, think about" the movie "Predator," U.S. Army Chief Scientist Michael Andrews told Reuters. "It's about the ability to have a uniform that protects you totally against your environment." 


Instead of bulky bullet-proof vests made of Kevlar, ISN scientists envision uniforms lined with a slurry of fluids that respond to magnetic fields, creating an armor system that can go from flexible to stiff during combat. 


"This predator, until he took his uniform off, he was the meanest SOB in the world," Andrews said. "Nobody could kill him. That suit is science fiction, but it portrays what might be possible." 


MIT and the U.S. Army are joined by several U.S. corporations in a scientific collaboration motivated by patriotism, intellectual curiosity and capitalism. 


DuPont Co. (NYSE:DD - news), for example, will explore creating light-weight uniforms that change colors on command to camouflage soldiers in changing environments. Other ideas include weaving radio communication materials directly into a uniform's fabric or creating a fuel cell the size of a transistor radio. 


Standard soldier gear typically weighs up to 120 pounds. The goal is to cut that weight by more than half. 


"Within five years we will see the first inklings of what might give us probably increased ballistic protection," Andrews said.
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Federal Computer Week
Security spending forecast: $6B
BY Michael Hardy 
May 22, 2003

By 2008, the federal government will spend almost $6 billion annually on information security, an increase of about 43 percent over 2003's $4.2 billion, according to a new report from research firm Input.

The predicted increases reflect a "more normal" rate of growth than the spending spikes that came in the wake of Sept. 11, said Payton Smith, the firm's manager of federal market analysis. However, he noted that agencies still face challenges in implementing systems and so will continue to contract with vendors.

The report attributes the drive for information security investment to strong oversight from Congress and the Office of Management and Budget. The new Homeland Security Department is also serving as a coordination point for governmentwide security initiatives, the report concludes.

The prediction generally parallels a similar forecast about information technology spending in general that Input issued in April. Input's Federal IT Market Forecast predicts that overall IT spending will rise from $45.4 billion to $68.2 billion from 2003 through 2008.
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Federal Computer Week
IT, culture challenge homeland community
BY Dan Caterinicchia 
May 22, 2003

In dealing with homeland security  with a community that ranges from the president's Cabinet to the first firefighter at the scene of a disaster  ensuring that the myriad systems involved can communicate with one another is a monumental challenge.

Information technology is helping to bridge some of the gaps, but interoperability and cultural issues remain, according to a panel of experts speaking May 21 at an urban intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance conference sponsored by Defense Week in Washington, D.C.

"There are a bewildering array of legacy system out there, and they're not going away," said Matt Walton III, vice chairman and founder of E Team Inc., whose collaborative incident management software was used in this month's TopOff 2 exercise, which simulated terrorist attacks on Seattle and Chicago.

A related obstacle is how the various government agencies can take advantage of emerging tools so that anyone with the proper security clearance can access the information they need when they need it, Walton said, adding that this represents both a challenge and a great opportunity for industry.

Mark Zimmerman, program manager for the Disaster Management E-Gov Initiative in the Homeland Security Department (DHS), said the horizontal fusion challenge is ensuring that County A can talk to County B, even if they're using different systems. But there's also the vertical integration of the federal, state and local participants.

The initiative, which includes the DisasterHelp.gov portal for emergency preparedness and response information, is being designed to connect more than 4 million members of the first responder community  firefighters, police officers and emergency medical technicians  pulling together systems, simplifying services and eliminating duplication. 

"There will be no exclusions," Zimmerman said. "The responder is our customer."

The panelists agreed that cultural and information-sharing issues also remain challenges. 

"The basic community is IT-averse," Zimmerman said, referring to small-town law enforcement forces and other local first responders. He added that his program is focused on the "have nots" and lauded the work of the Emergency Management Extensible Markup Language Consortium, which is working to create standards to help first responders and others communicate and exchange information during emergencies. 

The consortium of private- and public-sector organizations, university groups and nonprofit agencies expects to submit the first specification to the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards by year's end, said Walton, who leads the executive committee. XML eases the exchange of information by tagging data so disparate applications and systems can recognize it.
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New York Times
May 23, 2003
Technology Briefing: Internet .eu Domain Management

EUROPEAN PANEL CHOOSES DOMAIN NAME REGISTRY A European identity in cyberspace came a step closer yesterday when the European Commission selected Eurid, a Belgian-led consortium to act as registry for the .eu top-level domain name. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or Icann, has given the go-ahead for .eu Web and e-mail addresses, which could start appearing toward the end of this year, the commission said. Eurid, a nonprofit organization, will appoint private companies to act as registrars, which will allocate .eu addresses.    Paul Meller (NYT)
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Reuters
Pirated Movies, Software Swamp Pakistan Markets
Sat May 24, 7:23 AM ET
By Amir Zia 

KARACHI, Pakistan (Reuters) - A shabbily dressed hawker squabbles with a teen-ager over the price of a latest Microsoft Windows program in Pakistan's biggest city Karachi. 
   

The deal is closed at 40 rupees -- about $0.70. 

Saad Hasan has just bought a pirated copy of Windows XP (news - web sites), which is more readily available in Pakistan than the licensed product which retails at 5,800 rupees ($100). 

"Who can afford the original?" he said as he ran his fingers over row after row of CDs piled on the rickety push cart. "It would have cost me thousands of rupees. I can't afford that." 

Another cart is stacked with Hollywood blockbusters and Indian "Bollywood" movies, all selling at less than a dollar. 

The Washington-based International Intellectual Property Alliance ranked Pakistan one of the world's largest producers of pirated CDs and other optical discs for export in both 2001 and 2002. 

It said piracy of movies and music cost the industry around $72 million in Pakistan in 2002 and $71 million the year before. 

Now it wants Pakistan placed on the priority watchlist and has urged withdrawal of trade privileges on its exports to the United States if the government fails to tackle the problem. 

Pakistan says it has upgraded legislation to comply with international agreements. The Commerce Ministry says it plans to set up an Intellectual Property Rights Organisation to improve enforcement. 

"Raids are conducted against violators and offenders are also being prosecuted," it said in a written response to queries. "The illegal, offending material is being confiscated and in some cases being publicly destroyed." 

Despite this claim, pirated products remain on open sale in virtually every market in the country. 

NINETY PERCENT OF SOFTWARE PIRATED 

Industry officials say a powerful mafia engaged in producing and selling pirated articles has effectively blocked half-hearted police efforts to crack down on the business. 

According to Microsoft country manager Jawwad Rehman, more than 90 percent of the software and movies sold in Pakistan are pirated. 

"We give heavy discounts to education institutions and students, but there are no buyers," he said. "They can get the pirated programs much cheaper." 

Licensed Microsoft Office programs cost 22,500 rupees ($390), while the discounted rates are around 9,000 rupees ($155). The pirated program on three CDs costs as little as 75 rupees ($1.30). 

The 12-story Rainbow Center in Saddar, the heart of Karachi, is Pakistan's biggest center for pirated movies and software with more than 200 shops. 

Mohammed Omar, president of the Rainbow Video Cassette Dealers Association, said the market was providing a service for the poor. 

"We are providing them with entertainment and knowledge. We cannot afford to sell copyright products as people cannot afford to buy." 

Tariq Rangoonwala, who runs Pulse Global, a company which markets English-language movies under license for home entertainment, said piracy had all but killed his business. 

"We started well in 1995, but now our sales are, I would say, non-existent," he said 

Legitimate dealers are pushing the government to implement anti-piracy laws, but with little success. 

"Laws are there to fight the problem," Rehman said. "The only issue is their implementation."
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Los Angeles Times
Disney Is Thinking Inside the Box
Attempting to bypass the middlemen, the entertainment giant will test a service that beams movies into homes.
By Jon Healey
Times Staff Writer

May 27, 2003

For nearly 50 years, Walt Disney Co. has been entertaining the public for free on television. 

Now, in a new twist on old technology, the company plans to use local TV airwaves to entertain the public for a fee.

Disney is poised to offer movies "on demand" in three cities this fall, with a national rollout slated to start next year.

For a few dollars per flick, customers with special set-top boxes attached to their TVs will be able to start, pause, rewind and replay movies as if they were on tape or DVD.

This sort of on-demand service is widely viewed as the future of home entertainment, and other major Hollywood studios are well ahead of Disney on that front. 

But though Disney's competitors have lined up behind the services on cable TV or the Web, Disney is spending an undisclosed amount of money to develop its own service, called MovieBeam.

It's a risky strategy, and analysts are pessimistic about the prospects. Not only does Disney face stiff competition from cable operators, it has to convince consumers to add yet another set-top box to the pile around their TV sets.

"If the idea is to just get this off the road and target some sort of niche, there's some chance," said analyst Adi Kishore of Yankee Group, a research firm. "If they're looking for a mass-market product, I don't see any way they can get that."

If it succeeds, though, Disney will have cut out the biggest middlemen in home entertainment  cable operators and video rental stores. 

That's important to Disney Chairman Michael Eisner, who has publicly called for the company to establish direct pipelines to the consumer, Kishore said.

A profitable MovieBeam also would give Disney's local TV stations a new revenue stream. That money could help defray the millions of dollars the company is spending to convert its broadcasts from analog to digital, as mandated by the Federal Communications Commission.

Many television-industry executives and analysts agree that on-demand technologies will revolutionize TV by giving viewers much more control over what they watch. 

But there are many different ways to deliver an on-demand service, and the industry is trying to figure out which ones will win public support. 

Some, such as the personal video recorders from TiVo Inc., store programs in a viewer's home. Others create central libraries of programs that users can view on demand, through either their cable TV system or the Internet. And some rely on personal computers. Still others use sophisticated set-top boxes.

The MovieBeam service will rely on a dedicated set-top box with a huge hard drive that stores about 100 DVD-quality movies. The box will enable users to view as many of the movies as they wish, and Disney will bill customers only for the ones they watch.

Every week, MovieBeam will replace 10 to 12 of the movies on the box, meaning that the entire contents should be refreshed in two to three months. The updates will be performed wirelessly through local TV channels, using technology supplied by Dotcast Inc. of Mountain View, Calif.

Douglas B. Evans, Dotcast's president, said the technology can insert digital movies, games and other files into an analog or digital TV broadcast without interfering with the TV picture. With transmission speeds up to 4.5 million bits of data per second on an analog channel, the technology can load a movie in DVD quality onto a set-top box in about 40 minutes, Evans said.

Consumers who want the MovieBeam service will go to as-yet undisclosed retailers to pick up a MovieBeam set-top box, which already will be fully loaded with movies from a number of studios. Disney plans to charge a monthly rental fee for the box and a fee for each movie viewed. 

No prices have been disclosed, but they are expected to be in line with what cable operators charge for their equipment and on-demand movies. Rental fees for digital boxes are typically $3 to $6 a month, and new video-on-demand movies tend to cost about $4.

Disney is expected to offer parents two ways to control what their kids do with the service: They can lock out movies based on their ratings and they can set monthly spending limits. 

Eisner announced the MovieBeam initiative at the National Assn. of Broadcasters' convention in Las Vegas last month and provided the outlines for the service. Since then, though, the company has declined to provide many details about the service, Disney's investment in it or the business model.

According to Disney, MovieBeam will have its first public tryout this fall in Salt Lake City and two other, undisclosed cities. The service will transmit movies through ABC stations  10 of which Disney owns  and Public Broadcasting System outlets, using their analog channels because they work better with indoor antennas. The service could easily be moved to the stations' digital channels, if needed, people familiar with the technology said.

The service is one of the first to be built around over-the-air data broadcasting, or "datacasting," a field that has drawn considerable hype and investment but little deployment. One of the pioneers in the field, Geocast Network Systems Inc. of Menlo Park, Calif., went out of business two years ago despite raising almost $80 million from investors.

Another datacasting pioneer, IBlast Inc. of Beverly Hills, hasn't moved beyond the trial stage with its video-on-demand and video game-delivery services.

"Disney's trial is very exciting for us. We think it validates the business," IBlast Chief Executive Michael Lambert said. 

But IBlast's technology is designed to work with set-top boxes already in consumers' homes, and Disney's isn't. "The problem is getting that box into the home," said Jim Penhune, a broadband analyst for Strategy Analytics.

Even if Disney can convince consumers to install another box, "the idea that the other studios are going to be all excited about jumping onto a platform that's run by Disney is pretty beyond belief," said analyst Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research, a technology research and consulting firm. 

He added, "I don't really think that Paramount and Warner are ready to say, 'We're sick of the middlemen at Blockbuster What we really need to do is go to another middleman that's run by Disney.' "

Disney is negotiating with all the major studios. In addition to whatever financial incentives Disney may offer, it also can promise anti-piracy techniques that are better than those on Internet-based systems and at least as good as those on cable networks.

With the top cable operators pushing video-on-demand aggressively, though, Bernoff questioned whether there was much need for MovieBeam.

Existing systems can give consumers the same ability to start, pause, rewind and replay as MovieBeam will  plus a larger number of titles.

The main thing missing from most cable operators' on-demand services is Disney's movies. That's because Disney has licensed its films only to the video-on-demand service at Time Warner Cable, a division of AOL Time Warner Inc.

Analyst David Card of Jupiter Research, a technology consulting firm, said there are a lot of strikes against Disney and MovieBeam. "I'm really surprised," he said, "that they're doing any work on this."
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Associated Press
U.S. Gov't to Get Cybersecurity Chief 
Sat May 24, 9:20 PM ET
By TED BRIDIS, AP Technology Writer 

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration plans to appoint a new cybersecurity chief for the government inside the Homeland Security Department, replacing a position once held by a special adviser to the president. Industry leaders worry the new post won't be powerful enough. 


The move reflects an effort to appease frustrated technology executives over what they consider a lack of White House attention to hackers, cyberterror and other Internet threats. Officials have outlined their intentions privately in recent weeks to lawmakers, technology executives and lobbyists. 


The new position, expected to be announced formally within two weeks, is drawing early criticism over its placement deep inside the agency's organizational chart. The nation's new cyberchief will be at least three steps beneath Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. 


In Washington, where a bureaucrat's authority and budget depend largely on proximity to power, some experts fear that could be a serious handicap. 


"It won't work. It's not a senior enough position," said Richard Clarke, Bush's top cyberspace adviser until he retired this year after nearly three decades with the government. Clarke's deputy, Howard Schmidt, resigned last month and accepted a job as chief information security officer for eBay Inc. 


"While it's not optimal having someone technically that low in the pecking order, it's much better than the current situation," said Harris Miller, head of the Information Technology Association of America, a leading industry trade group. He said success at that level of Washington's bureaucracy is "not mission impossible, it's just a difficult mission." 


The plan is consistent with Ridge's unease over elevating cyberconcerns above the security of airports, buildings, bridges and pipelines. The agency currently lumps both those issues under its Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection unit, one of four directorates in Homeland Security. 


"It's pretty difficult for many businesses and many economic assets in this country to segregate the cyber side from the physical side because how that company operates, how that community operates, is interdependent," Ridge told lawmakers at a hearing this week. 


The new cyberchief also will be responsible for carrying out the dozens of recommendations in the administration's "National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace," a set of proposals put together under Clarke just before his departure. 


That plan, completed in February, is drawing criticism because it emphasizes voluntary measures to improve computer security for home users, corporations, universities and government agencies. 


"I don't think we have a plan," said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (news, bio, voting record) of California, the senior Democrat on the Homeland Security subcommittee on cybersecurity. "If we just take a look at that strategy, we're not going to end up with the solutions we need. There's a sense among the committee that there needs to be a little more meat." 


The government privately acknowledges many of those criticisms. In a previously undisclosed internal memorandum to Commerce Secretary Don Evans, the head of the agency's Bureau of Industry and Security described complaints from technology executives after meeting with them in September in California. 


The executives felt the government's plan was "not sufficiently strong because many of the key recommendations had been `watered down' and were not `mandatory,'" Undersecretary Kenneth Juster wrote. His organization at the time included the U.S. Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office, which has moved to Homeland Security. The Associated Press obtained a copy of Juster's memo under the Freedom of Information Act. 


Officials are still looking for candidates for the new position, which will be announced within the next two weeks. Clarke, now a private consultant, cautioned that the administration will have a difficult time convincing a prestigious cybersecurity expert to take the job. Some others predicted that won't be a problem. 


"Most folks if asked to do this would jump at the opportunity," said Sunil Misra, chief security adviser at Unisys Corp. 
___ 
On the Net: Homeland Security: http://www.dhs.gov 

Information Technology Association: http://www.itaa.org 
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Government Computer News
05/23/03 
Navy tracks patients with radio wristbands 
By Dawn S. Onley 

The Navy is using radio frequency identification tags to track the status and location of hundreds of wounded soldiers and airmen, prisoners of war and refugees in Iraq as they receive treatment at the Fleet Hospital Pensacola, a mobile medical facility based in Florida. 

Developed by ScenPro Inc. of Richardson, Texas, the Tactical Medical Coordination System lets Navy medical workers in Iraq use wristbands that emit a radio signal to identify patients. 

Hospital staff members use the ID system to update patients? status, location and medical history, according to a ScenPro press release. 

?When the Fleet Hospital Pensacola came to us at the Naval Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory looking for a system that would help streamline administration, patient ID and tracking while engaged in Iraq, we knew that TacMedCS would be a most effective solution,? said Michael Stiney, the company?s program manager for development of TacMedCS. 

Each patient at the hospital receives a radio frequency ID Smart Band, manufactured by Precision Dynamics Corp. of San Fernando, Calif., on which basic identifying information is stored. 

Medical personnel use handheld radio frequency readers from A.C.C. Systems Inc. of Glen Head, N.Y., to read the unique ID number and create a digital record of treatment that travels with the patient as he or she is moved throughout the facility. 

The system uses a wireless LAN through which information is transferred to an electronic data management system.
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Los Angeles Times
EPA System That Checks Pollution Called Obsolete
 From Associated Press
May 27, 2003

WASHINGTON  The computer system used by the Environmental Protection Agency to monitor water pollution is incomplete, obsolete and difficult to use, the agency's internal watchdog said.

In a report dated May 20, the Office of Inspector General criticized the agency for devoting insufficient funds to upgrade the Permit Compliance System, or PCS. 

"It is essential that this system, used by EPA and many states to administer permits for water discharges and ensure enforcement, be modernized," it said. 

"However, the modernization program is facing a large cost escalation and a consequent funding shortfall and slippage in time frames." 

PCS is a data system that tracks the issuing of permits, permit limits, self-monitoring, and enforcement and inspection activities for more than 64,000 facilities regulated under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System.
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Business Week
Is a Wi-Fi Bubble Building?
As one of tech's few growth areas, it's luring startups and VC cash -- in a familiar pattern. First to feel a pop may be consumer outfits 


A year ago, Sean Marzola was the CEO of one of Silicon Valley's hottest Wi-Fi startups. Embedded Wireless Devices in Pleasanton, Calif., had set out to design chips for Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity) access points -- "hot spots" -- that permit wireless Internet access within a radius of 300 feet. But about 18 weeks before EWD's first product could start being manufactured, investors pulled the plug. Last August, EWD quietly closed its doors, leaving Marzola an entrepreneur without a home. http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/may2003/tc20030522_7618_tc119.htm
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Federal Computer Week
The first 100 days
The Homeland Security Department's initial work reveals how much remains to be done
BY Judi Hasson 
May 26, 2003

At the Homeland Security Department, the clock is always running.

June 8 will mark the 100th day since DHS officially opened for business March 1. It has been 21 months since the terrorist attacks that spurred the creation of the department, and the recent bombings in Saudi Arabia and Morocco are reminders that more attacks are possible anywhere  even here in the United States  and at any time.

The first 100 days  the time frame often used to measure the success of a new political organization  were tough ones for the new department. The expectations were remarkably high, and so was the pressure to accomplish a seemingly impossible task. If you ask experts if this country is any safer than it was 100 days ago, the answer is typically "no."

"The mission of the Department of Homeland Security is really a mission with no end," DHS Secretary Tom Ridge told a luncheon gathering at the National Press Club April 29. "And knowing our foes as we do now, the demise of hatred and the threat it carries for this nation is unlikely."

Technology, of course, is expected to play a major role in homeland security, enabling the department's various agencies to collect, analyze and share information that could help anticipate or respond to an attack. But if you ask how much progress the agency has made toward realizing those goals, the answer is not necessarily encouraging.

Ridge acknowledged that information technology integration is "a monstrous task," and some observers are quick to point out that the department has little to show for its work so far. 

Robert David Steele, an author and former intelligence officer, points out that there are at least 30 separate intelligence systems and no money to connect them to one another or make them interoperable. "There is nothing in the president's homeland security program that makes America safer," he said.

Still, department officials and observers say that work is under way  both inside DHS and between the department and its partners  that will pay off in the future. Work is being done in fits and starts, they say, but that is to be expected.

"It's hard to glue all these pieces together  it normally takes a long time," said James Lewis, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "The difficulty in the federal government is that it still takes time to get a management team in place. In some ways, we're still at the start."

Work in Progress 

People inside the department dispute the assessment that they have little to show for their work. 

Patrick Schambach, chief information officer at the Transportation Security Administration, said DHS officials are working through three phases: discovering what tools they have, planning how to use them and implementing them. 

Schambach said DHS officials are still in the discovery phase, figuring out exactly what tools they have in their arsenal. "It's a very complex picture. It's going to be a challenge," he said.

This work includes creating an inventory of all the information systems being used in the department and deciding which should stay and which should go. 

The systems inventory, to be completed next month, is the first step toward an enterprise architecture plan that will be unveiled in September. That has not been an easy task. The inventory has already tallied more than 2,000 applications, most of them in stand-alone systems inherited from the 22 agencies that were folded into DHS.

Most of the work to integrate the department has fallen on the shoulders of CIO Steve Cooper, an industry executive who decided to seek a job with the government after witnessing the attack on the World Trade Center from a ship in New York Harbor while he was attending a conference.

"Once we have formulated our 'to be' architecture, we can develop the migration strategy needed to move from where we are today to where we want to be as a department," Cooper told the House Government Reform Committee May 8.

In the meantime, DHS officials have set up key business systems, including departmentwide e-mail and directory services, to link the department's various agencies. 

Yet some experts say that in the rush to create a department, officials may be focusing on the bureaucracy rather than the safety and security of the United States in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"So far we haven't paid any big price for the slowness," said I.M. "Mac" Destler, public policy professor at the University of Maryland. "So far, nothing horrendous has happened within its jurisdiction." 

Of particular concern are several key systems intended to track the arrival and departure of every foreigner who visits the United States.

As part of an entry/exit system, officials had hoped to be able to photograph and fingerprint all foreign visitors when they arrive at major ports and airports by the end of this year. DHS officials expect to have the system in place at airports and seaports, but they said earlier this year they would miss the 2005 deadline for land entry points.

With the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), DHS aims to register all foreign students studying in the country to ensure that they do not stay beyond their allotted time.

However, the system has run into numerous snags since it was installed earlier this year. Colleges and universities have misplaced data and some of it has been irretrievably lost. There aren't enough inspectors to look over the applications, and there's no procedure to identify sham schools.

Earlier this month, DHS folded SEVIS and the entry/exit system into one program: the U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indication Technology system. 

Other border systems are proving just as daunting, although some progress has been made. Officials at the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection face the monumental challenge of inspecting millions of container cargo shipments each year.

To tighten border controls, the bureau has already launched a plan to inspect some container cargoes before they leave a foreign port and to obtain an electronic manifest of what's on a ship 24 hours before it arrives in the United States.

The idea is to identify shipments that could be a cause for concern and focus on those. For example, a ship from Norway that lists bananas would be flagged because bananas are not grown in Scandinavia. 

"The separation of 'high risk' from 'no risk' is critical because searching 100 percent of the cargo and people that enter the United States would unnecessarily cripple the flow of legitimate trade and travel to the United States," said Robert Bonner, the bureau's commissioner.

Meanwhile, the United States and Canada have signed an agreement to inspect rail cargo crossing the border and collect advance electronic manifest information before shipments come into the United States.

George Weise, a former commissioner of the Customs Service who is now vice president of global trade compliance at Vastera Inc., a global technology solutions company that handles compliance issues, said the coordination is improving the policing of the border, but "there's no way to have a fail-safe border. It will never be completely fail-safe."

Connecting the Dots 

The dual concept of knowledge management and cross-agency collaboration underlies many of the department's initiatives and remains one of its major challenges.

For instance, DHS is linking existing networks among the federal, state and local law enforcement communities. State and local users of the Regional Information Sharing Systems now have access to sensitive but unclassified data held by the FBI through the Law Enforcement Online network.

Federal and state law enforcement agencies also can tap into a State Department database of 34 million visa applications with pictures of applicants.

In addition, DHS officials will soon announce how they intend to fix one of their most troubling problems  consolidating multiple watch lists to share information among law enforcement agencies, Cooper told Federal Computer Week.

Although two Sept. 11 hijackers living in San Diego were on watch lists, the CIA and FBI did not share information that could have prevented them from carrying out their attacks, which was just one of many holes in the U.S. security system discovered after Sept. 11.

"Databases used for law enforcement, immigration, intelligence, public health surveillance and emergency management have not been integrated in ways that allow us to?'connect the dots,'" Cooper told the House Government Reform Committee. "To secure the homeland better, we must link the vast amounts of knowledge residing within each government agency while ensuring adequate privacy."

Plagued by technical problems and criticized by civil liberties groups, the systems are still in their infancy. Officials are working through the bugs and conducting pilot projects for what they hope will be a seamless integration for the future.

One system of high interest to both DHS officials and privacy watchdogs is TSA's Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System II. CAPPS II would comb public databases for any information that suggests ticketed airline passengers could pose a security risk.

"CAPPS II has the most potential to improve security and customer service," TSA Administrator James Loy testified May 6 before the House Government Reform Committee's Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and the Census Subcommittee. 

The proposed system has drawn fire from privacy advocates, who question how the risk would be determined and said officials failed to clearly outline the project. The plans for the project have changed since its inception, and TSA officials have said they are working closely with privacy groups. Nevertheless, there are major questions about it.

"I'm all in favor of finding ways to be smarter about aviation security and to target aviation security resources more efficiently," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said recently. "But a system that seeks out information on every air traveler or anyone who poses a possible risk to U.S. security and then uses that information to assign a possible threat 'score' to each one raises some very serious privacy questions."


A Long To-Do List 

But the work goes on. In the next six months, DHS will have an enterprise architecture that will help officials integrate their systems. Congress is expected to appropriate more money for homeland security. State and local government systems will be more closely linked to the federal department.

Wireless emergency systems will become integrated across the country. Remote video cameras that can detect even the slightest anomaly will be placed across the U.S./Canadian border. Automatic alert systems for emergency responders will be put in place.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other public health organizations will implement computerized systems that can detect the spread of a bioterrorism agent or even the spread of a rare disease such as severe acute respiratory syndrome.

But the American psyche may never be the same no matter how much technology is embedded into our safety systems.

"We can't really say with any certainty that we are safer than we were," said David Ropeik, director of risk communication at the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis.

"Certainly a great deal has been done to enhance security," he said. "But we still don't know so much.? Who are the specific terrorists who may strike, where will they attack, when, with what kinds of weapons? Without knowing these factors, nothing certain can be said about our relative level of safety."

Ridge, for one, is optimistic that one day the terrorist alert system will be lowered to green  the lowest level on its scale. Even so, he said, the United States will never lower its defenses.

"Regardless of even if we get to the lowest level, we're going to have to remain vigilant," he said. "We're going to have to remain on guard, and the institutions that we're setting up will have to still perform effectively and efficiently."
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Federal Computer Week
Entry/exit system takes shape
BY Jennifer Jones 
May 26, 2003

A Homeland Security Department official last week provided more details on how the agency will begin rolling out its massive, biometric-enabled "smart border" initiative, known as the U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indication Technology (U.S. VISIT) system.

By January 2004, foreign visitors flying into the nation's major airports or arriving at the largest seaports must have biometric identifiers  fingerprint technology and photographs  attached to their visas, said Asa Hutchinson, undersecretary for border and transportation security at DHS. Officials originally had targeted October 2004 as the start date for using biometrics in entry/exit immigration systems.

To build the first installment of U.S. VISIT, DHS will use the almost $400 million in fiscal 2003 funds that Congress earmarked specifically for including biometrics in the visa issuance process.

Biometric-enabled visas will be generated at major U.S. points of entry for the roughly 23 million visitors arriving from countries that do not have visa waiver status, according to Hutchinson. These visitors will have their travel documents scanned and will be fingerprinted and photographed to create the new visas.

Further, their names and fingerprint information will be checked against watch lists to search for terrorist connections, criminal violations or past visa violations. Likewise, when these travelers exit the country, U.S. VISIT will once again verify their identity.

"Currently, there is no way to know when, or even if, our visitors leave, but under U.S. VISIT, that will change," Hutchinson said. "U.S. VISIT will not be a static system, but a dynamic one, able to track changes in immigration status and make updates and adjustments accordingly." 

Hutchinson also announced during a speech last week at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., that DHS will establish a new Office of Compliance within its Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The new office will scour U.S. VISIT information for visa violations and analyze that data in order to pass along information about suspects to field enforcement units. Hutchinson said that law enforcement in some cases also would have access to U.S. VISIT information, but for limited purposes only. "Let me assure you: Our department's privacy officer, Nuala O'Connor Kelly, will closely monitor the effort to safeguard information from misuse," he said.

As DHS moves beyond this accelerated first phase of implementation, officials want to offload to overseas consular offices much of the process of generating the biometric- enabled visas. The department also will incorporate existing systems such as the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System.

In the coming months, DHS will issue a request for proposals for the design and construction of the comprehensive U.S. VISIT system. Within 60 days, the department will hold a meeting with industry representatives to discuss the proposals.

"In the fall, we will be looking for a large-scale integrator to help us define the future vision of U.S. VISIT," said Jim Williams, former director of the Internal Revenue Service's procurement division, who will oversee the U.S. VISIT system.

Until the contract is in place, DHS will rely on four existing contracts to build initial capabilities.

Jones is a freelance writer based in Vienna, Va.
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Federal Computer Week
The problem-solver
Charles McQueary puts his engineering know-how to work for homeland security
BY Judi Hasson 
May 26, 2003

Charles McQueary looks at life through the prism of an engineer. Every problem has an answer, he says  even the most difficult ones.

And it's a good thing that McQueary, a former executive at General Dynamics Advanced Technology Systems and Bell Laboratories, is an optimist  because he's embarking on the toughest job of his long career.

As undersecretary for the Homeland Security Department's Science and Technology Directorate, he must identify and develop technologies to fight terrorism and manage the millions of dollars tapped for research and development (R&D).

"We're still working on the plan," he said in an interview from his sparsely decorated office, into which he had recently moved. "It will take quite a bit of time to understand what capacities exist."

But McQueary, who has a doctorate in engineering mechanics, is moving at warp speed to make it happen. Not a day goes by when he isn't talking to people in the sciences and building bridges with private industry and the academic community to find new ideas. He's not interested in the latest gadgets and gizmos a company may have. He's seeking bigger and broader solutions to problems that may still be unidentified.

McQueary likens his task to putting a man on the moon  a government/private-sector partnership that made history in 1969 when astronaut Neil Armstrong declared, "The Eagle has landed." 

These days, McQueary is often on the road talking about what he hopes to accomplish. He recently attended a seminar sponsored by four prestigious Pennsylvania universities  Carnegie Mellon, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania State University  that are working together to develop technologies to fight terrorism.

At an April meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, McQueary told the gathering that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks "didn't make us more vulnerable, but made us more aware of our vulnerabilities."

Testifying before Congress last month, he said, "The most important mission for the Science and Technology Directorate is to develop and deploy cutting-edge technologies and new capabilities so that the dedicated men and women who serve to secure our homeland can perform their jobs more effectively and efficiently  they are my customers."

So, if Joe Q. Contractor has a good idea, how does he get it in front of McQueary?

"Well, Joe has already called," McQueary replied.

But not to worry, there are other ways to get his attention. The Science and Technology Directorate recently launched a Web site that includes an e-mail address (science.technology@xxxxxxx) for vendors to submit their ideas. The messages are sent to the right deputy, and sometimes McQueary himself responds. 

Some of them are "top-notch ideas. Others, we're simply not interested in," McQueary said.

But he is more than just a booster for scientific initiatives. With a proposed budget of more than $800 million for R&D in fiscal 2004, McQueary is in charge of developing the strategies and policies to use the money efficiently to detect deadly attacks before they happen.

His top priority is bioterrorism because a small amount of material can cause great damage, he said.

Challenge is nothing new for McQueary, a retired defense industry executive who cut his teeth in the telecommunications world and led efforts to lay thousands of miles of fiber-optic cables for both military and commercial use as a director for Bell Labs.

For many years, it was highly classified work in difficult-to-accomplish programs. But now people use fiber optics in everyday life, and the Defense Department uses it as an integral part of its communications network, he said.

In 1997, McQueary became president of General Dynamics Advanced Technology Systems. He thought it would be his last job, but then Sept. 11 spurred the urgency to throw up a protective screen around the United States. Since then, he has been tapped to harness the nation's know-how and encourage R&D.

McQueary promised at his Senate confirmation hearing that he would work closely with other federal agencies, not to mention state and local governments, to create a "disciplined and efficient systems engineering process that delivers the appropriate homeland security capabilities as efficiently as possible, when and where they are needed." 

The business world is happy he is there. Ralph Wyndrum, who worked with McQueary at Bell Labs and is vice president for technology policy at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, said McQueary has excellent management skills.

"He is an exquisitely good manager, really talented," Wyndrum said. "His breadth of knowledge is considerable  engineering, physics, all the things he will need for his new job."
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Federal Computer Week
DOD: Terrorist system will protect privacy
Civil rights groups still have doubts over system's future role
BY Sara Michael 
May 26, 2003

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency pledged last week that it would protect Americans' privacy when developing a controversial system to track terrorist activity, but privacy advocates questioned if the agency's plans would be adequate.

In a report submitted to Congress, DARPA officials outlined steps in the agency's development of its Total Information Awareness program taken to alleviate criticism that the system would jeopardize Americans' privacy  such as changing the system's name to the Terrorism Information Awareness network.

TIA would access databases run by airlines, financial and educational institutions, and other groups to find patterns that might identify terrorist activity. DARPA, which is part of the Defense Department, also plans to study the use of biometric technology to scan people's facial features, movements, behavior and even the way they walk in order to identify suspected terrorists.

Concerned the system would delve too much into people's private lives, Congress temporarily blocked the development of the system in February until DARPA reported on the measures the agency is taking to protect privacy. 

In the report, DARPA officials said they would comply with laws governing intelligence activities and protecting constitutional rights. The system would use only foreign intelligence and counterintelligence information legally obtained and usable by the government under the law. The system would also use information from artificial data generated to model behavior patterns. Further, as part of its TIA research, DARPA will develop new technologies that ensure privacy. 

"Safeguarding privacy and the civil liberties of Americans is a bedrock principle," the report stated. DOD "intends to make it a central element in [its] management and oversight of the TIA program."

According to the report, TIA is a group of programs that integrates technologies and databases to better detect and identify potential terrorists. However, DARPA stressed that TIA is still in the research stage and privacy concerns will continue to be taken into account. DOD has created an oversight board composed of senior agency and intelligence representatives and chaired by the undersecretary of Defense for acquisition, technology and logistics. 

"The protection of privacy and civil liberties is an integral and paramount goal in the development of counterterrorism technologies and in their implementation," the report stated.

Jay Stanley, spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the greatest failure of the report was ignoring the future implications of such a system. Once deployed, the system could be expanded beyond terrorism to investigate criminals or minor offenses, he said.

"They're sugar-coating it and making it as palatable as possible, but once we swallow it, it will corrode our privacy protections," Stanley said. 

Privacy advocates also criticized DARPA's decision to change the program's name, calling it a public relations campaign to ease privacy concerns. "It seems to me they view this as a public relations problem, an image problem, so they've tried to change those things," said Mihir Kshirsagar, a policy analyst for the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "But the American public is very concerned about the substance of the program. That's going to show through."

"The name change doesn't change the issues that prompted Sen. Wyden to propose the amendment in the first place," said Carol Guthrie, spokeswoman for Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the senator who first proposed to halt the funding of TIA until further review. "Sen. Wyden believes it's essential that Congress retain oversight."

"This name created in some minds the impression that TIA was a system to be used for developing dossiers on U.S. citizens," according to the DARPA report. "That is not [DOD's] intent in pursuing this program."

***

TIA safeguards 

Officials at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency pledged last week to take privacy concerns into account in the development of the renamed Terrorism Information Awareness system. For TIA to be deemed ready for deployment, according to a DARPA report, several factors must be addressed:

* Search tools must be tested for accuracy and efficiency.

* Safeguards, such as audit tools, should be built into the system to track who accesses private information and to keep that information confidential.

* Proper security to protect against hackers and other unauthorized users must be installed.

* Agencies that want to access TIA must first conduct a legal review to determine if their use of the system is appropriate.

* Before TIA will be deployed at an agency, that office must develop effective oversight of its designated users.
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Federal Computer Week
HHS center put to test by terrorist exercise
BY Sara Michael 
May 26, 2003

 From a sixth-floor converted conference room laden with communication technologies, the Department of Heath and Human Services monitored and responded to fictitious terrorist attacks earlier this month in Chicago and Seattle.

As first responders and health professionals rushed to the scenes of a mock biological attack and dirty bomb explosion, HHS officials stayed connected from the command center in the department's headquarters in Washington, D.C.

The exercise, known as TopOff 2 (Top Officials 2), began May 12 and included the departments of Homeland Security and State working with federal, state, local and Canadian officials. The drill is intended to analyze the response to a terrorist attack.

The command center, which has been operating since last December, allows officials to trace the numbers of people who have died, the number of available hospital beds, the attack's effects and the resources deployed. Officials from several federal, state and local agencies, as well as first responders and health officials, were all connected though databases and videoconferencing.

HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson called it "one of the most remarkable command centers in the country. We're open 24 hours a day, seven days a week."

Indeed, the recent drill was just an expanded version of day-to-day operations at the command center, said Brent Guffey, senior systems engineer at HHS.

"We use [the center] every day. This is just another day for us," he said.

In the command center, plasma-screen televisions lined the walls, capable of broadcasting the feed from thousands of television stations nation- and worldwide. 

Officials from HHS and the Food and Drug and Administration, men- tal health officials, and even an in-house meteorologist sat at rows of desks equipped with computers and telephones.

Nearly a dozen screens projected maps, scenario data and teleconferences with officials from Seattle, Chicago, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

One screen projected a model of a possible chlorine release at Reagan National Airport, showing which direction the wind might take the cloud and what the chlorine content in the air of neighboring buildings could be. Meanwhile, CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding was being wired, along with officials in Chicago and Seattle, into a teleconference with Thompson.

The command center also allows HHS officials to track diseases, such as the West Nile virus and severe acute respiratory syndrome, and follow storms using weather and mapping capabilities.

"This technology has been extremely effective," Thompson said.
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Government Computer News
05/27/03 
Agriculture uses GPS to pinpoint easements 
By Vandana Sinha 

A Texas field office of the Agriculture Department is producing computer images of land easements via Global Positioning System technology. The office embeds the images into software that automates land agreements between USDA and landowners. 

In a January pilot, field biologists from USDA?s Natural Resources Conservation Service in Texas shuttled along the borders of area easements, towing advanced GPS devices to record land dimensions down to 1/100th of an acre. They tapped a T1 connection through a satellite dish hitched to a truck. 

The biologists then uploaded the images to TerraServer, a 3T spatial repository of high-resolution Geological Survey aerial imagery and topographic maps, at terraserver.microsoft.com. 

Starting three weeks ago, NRCS began pulling the images from TerraServer into its Program Contracts System, or ProTracts. The in-house system uses geospatial Web services that USDA employees developed. 

ProTracts lets users complete and store 700 types of landowner contract forms online. It links to all the images, from satellite to street level, of the land areas described in each contract. 

?It?s how it all bonds together,? said Steve Ekblad, project manager of NRCS? Information Technology Center. ?I can find exactly where an easement is.? Access to the integrated system will spread to 2,600 conservation offices nationwide next year. 

Ekblad said, however, that USDA managers are evaluating the cost-effectiveness of lugging along a satellite dish for high-speed Internet connections.
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Government Computer News
05/23/03 
OPM promotes telework through new guide 
By Jason Miller 

The Office of Personnel Management earlier this month released a guide for federal managers on how to plan, implement and operate a telework program. 

The guide, which was supposed to be released last November, follows OPM?s latest report on agency telework progress, which found about 5 percent of all federal workers telecommute and that management resistance remains a barrier. 

?Managers and supervisors who aggressively encourage the use of telework for the right employees and the right situations will contribute to the overall performance of the federal government,? said Kay Coles James, OPM director. ?This publication provides guidance to managers and supervisors to assist them in those tasks.? 

OPM advises managers to form a telework planning committee composed of human resources, employee relations, labor relations, IT, management and other agency officials, and to establish written telecommuting policies. The policies may include program objectives, processes to telework and a description of the benefits. 

The guide recommends establishing a training plan and a way to evaluate the productivity, operating costs, employee morale, recruitment and retention of the telework program. It also gives agencies best practices to determine if an employee is a candidate to telecommute and how to measure a teleworker?s performance. 

The guide, offers a sample telework assessment checklist, a telework agreement document and a supervisor?s evaluation form.
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Government Executive
May 22, 2003 
Panel presses Ridge on cybersecurity, information analysis 
By William New, National Journal's Technology Daily 

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge on Wednesday was peppered with questions from some members of the House Homeland Security Committee seeking information on getting more federal money to their districts. But several lawmakers also pressed Ridge on cybersecurity plans and the department's relationship with the new Terrorist Threat Information Center housed at the CIA. 

In the conclusion of a two-part hearing before the committee, Ridge said that analysts at the information analysis and infrastructure protection directorate would not have access to all of the intelligence community's raw data, but that directorate analysts housed at the threat center would have that access. He also said information could derive from various agencies of the Homeland Security Department and be sent to the threat center. 

Rep. James Langevin, D-R.I., raised concern about whether the new department is meeting its statutory requirement to analyze all of the government's intelligence data. 

Ridge also said future terrorist exercises like one last week would include cyber attacks, though he said there are enough real cyber attacks occurring to make it unnecessary to try to simulate them. He repeated that cybersecurity and physical security are so interdependent that it is impossible to focus just on cyber security. 

Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, chairman of the Cybersecurity, Science, Research and Development Subcommittee, said Wednesday's hearing with Science and Technology Undersecretary Charles McQueary was the first in a series of hearings his subcommittee will hold on cyber security and on science and technology. He plans to question experts from academia, think tanks, industry and government in the future, he said. 

Ridge repeatedly urged states to develop homeland security plans that specify how they intend to spend federal dollars. He reiterated that the formula for granting aid must be reworked. "We're going to have a challenge politically and otherwise to change that formula," he said. 

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., said that under the current formula, Wyoming would get more per capita than California. "The backbone of the Internet in Silicon Valley is probably more of a target of al Qaeda than the beautiful vistas of Wyoming," she said. 

Ridge called on states and localities to delay purchases of emergency-response technologies until some guidance can be issued on making systems interoperable. The purchase of non-networked systems may be "great for vendors," Ridge said, but does not solve the communication problems of "first responders" to emergencies. He said he has heard from states and localities that communications equipment is their top priority. 

Ridge said he and Secretary of State Colin Powell have met twice to discuss biometric technologies for immigration procedures, as the two departments are working toward an understanding on the issue. And Ridge said his department has resolved most of the technological problems in a database for tracking foreign students in the United States and will proceed with the program despite complaints. 

He also said a group, including the science and technology directorate, is "seriously looking at" the use of unmanned aerial vehicles along the borders. 
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