Clips June 13, 2003

[Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>]

Clips June 13, 2003

ARTICLES

SMS spam to be canned
Teen Sentenced for Eglin, Sandia Hacking
Ports to Get $27 Million to Tighten Security
Defense research agency sharpens tech edge
Judge OKs camera tickets
High Tech High Takes Shape in Van Nuys
Standards Group Gives Go-Ahead to Faster Wi-Fi
After Iraq debut, handhelds get another test 
802.11g wins final approval 
Reservists learn routers at Fort Meade 
Senate confirms Johnson as OMB deputy 
DISA tests D.C. area antiterror service
Agencies must intensify wireless security efforts, consultant says 

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Australian IT
SMS spam to be canned
Kate Mackenzie
JUNE 13, 2003  
 
PHONE companies which allow SMS spam messages to be sent across their networks face fines of up to $10 million under a new industry code.

The Australian Communications Authority registered the Short Message Service (SMS) Issues Industry Code today - almost three years after the introduction of intercarrier messaging saw carriers and other companies begin using promotion text messages. 
The code requires carriers and service providers to only send bulk SMS messages to users who have "opted in", and to allow them to "opt out" of receiving the messages. 

The code was developed by the Australian Communications Industry Forum and the Consumer Telecommunications Network. 

Telecommunications carriers and service providers who do not abide by ACA codes can be directed to do so, and under the Telecommunications Act, breaches can be the subject of action in the Federal Court. Fines for breaching the Act can be as high as $10 million. 

Marketing companies are under no compulsion to join, but the ACA said carriers and service providers would be compelled to ensure their customers also followed the rules of the code. 

ACA telecommunications licensing group manager Paul White said the terms of the code, which are stricter than any existing rules on unsolicited email, were developed with support of Senator Alston - who in turn said SMS spam had been the subject of a 2001 election promise. 

"The advantage here is we believe most (SMS spam) is locally generated," Mr White said. 

"We believe MMS will also be a growth area, provides more opportunities for enhanced marketing opportunities." 

The Australian Direct Marketing Association is also developing its own code of conduct on wireless marketing practices.
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Associated Press
Teen Sentenced for Eglin, Sandia Hacking 
Thu Jun 12, 9:30 PM ET

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - An 18-year-old hacker who breached computers at Sandia National Laboratories and posted an anti-Israeli message on the Eglin Air Force Base Web site was sentenced Thursday to a year and a day in federal prison. 

Adil Yahya Zakaria Shakour also was ordered to pay $88,253 in restitution, and his computer use was restricted during the three years he will spend under supervised release after his prison term. 

Shakour, a Pakistani national who lives in Los Angeles, pleaded guilty in March to computer and credit card fraud charges. 


Shakour penetrated the Florida air base's computer server repeatedly in April and May 2002, altering the Web page to denounce the Israeli advance into Palestine. 


Damage to the air base computer system was estimated at $75,000, while more than $2,700 in damage was done to the Sandia Laboratories Web site in Livermore. 


Shakour also hacked two other computer systems, including Mathews, N.C.-based Cheaptaxforms.com, where he obtained credit card information and bought more than $7,000 worth of items.
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Los Angeles Times
Ports to Get $27 Million to Tighten Security
By Eric Malnic
June 13, 2003

The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach will receive more than $27 million in federal grants to beef up security at the nation's busiest harbor complex, federal officials announced Thursday.

The grants, which will be spent on new patrol boats, improved surveillance equipment and new command centers, go at least part way toward addressing what some local officials have said is a shortage of funding for measures to guard against terrorism.

More than 40% of the nation's shipping moves through the ports, and some officials, including Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), have been lobbying Washington since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks for money to protect the harbors.

Until Thursday, the complex had received only about $5.8 million since the attacks for improving fencing, cameras, communications and other on-site security systems, harbor officials said.

However, the two ports also have received money from the federal government under Operation Safe Commerce, a program designed to ensure that products can travel "through the supply chain" from overseas manufacturers to retailers in the United States without tampering, said William Ellis, the director of security for the Port of Long Beach.

The new grants from the Transportation Security Administration are part of about $170 million in federal funding for the nation's major harbors, announced in New Jersey by Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. 

The money, available immediately, will go to both governmental entities and private companies. It will come from two grants. 

Under the first, totaling about $18 million for the two-port complex, the city of Long Beach and the Port of Long Beach will get the largest share, about $10 million. The Los Angeles Harbor Department will get about $800,000 and the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority will get about $1.4 million. 

The remainder will go to six private shipping companies: Trans Pacific Container Service Corp., Pacific Harbor Line Inc., Vopak Terminal Los Angeles Inc., West Basin Container Terminal Inc. and Seaside Transportation Services, all in the Port of Los Angeles, and Total Terminals International Pier T in the Port of Long Beach.

Under the second grant, the complex will divide about $9 million more. The federal government did not release individual figures, but Ellis said it appeared likely that the two ports would divide the money about equally, with funds going to both government agencies and private firms.

The parallel Operation Safe Commerce program will bring together ports, private businesses and federal, state and local officials to promote technology to monitor the security of cargo containers, Ridge said. The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach; Seattle and Tacoma, Wash.; and the Port Authority of New York/New Jersey are participating in the program.

Under a related Homeland Security program known as the Container Security Initiative, efforts are being made to identify, target and search overseas cargo bound for the United States. Ridge said that advance information is being used to identify containers that might contain weapons and other dangerous cargo before they are shipped.

He said that radiation detectors, X-ray type imaging equipment and other sophisticated screening devices are being used to examine such containers before they are loaded onto ships, and that the containers are being modified to show if they've been tampered with after screening.

"Let me be clear," Ridge said Thursday. "This is not just a response to terrorism. We believe it's a deterrent."
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Seattle Post Intelligencer
Defense research agency sharpens tech edge
DARPA funds pioneering work for military, science
By BENJAMIN PIMENTEL
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

IBM scientist Hans Coufal hopes to figure out one day what he called the "holy grail of data storage" -- finding a cheap and efficient way to store information using lasers and holograms.

It's a technology that could revolutionize the way businesses operate. But so far, the dream has been elusive -- scientists have been working on it since the 1960s, pouring tens of millions of dollars into research.

But Coufal's team at IBM's Almaden Research Center in California gave it another shot a few years ago with the help of a federal agency that's known for chasing wild and risky ideas and turning them into viable technologies.

For the past 45 years, DARPA -- the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency -- has pursued a unique mandate: to explore ideas still in the realm of the imagination. 

The agency organizes and funds pioneering research projects geared to building a stronger military and to breaking new ground in science and technology. It's a role that has become more prominent as the struggling technology industry searches for new ideas and the federal government focuses more on defense and security.

"DARPA is one of the most adventurous government agencies," said Coufal, who's been with the IBM research center for more than 20 years. "By taking these large risks, they take the opportunity to discover what nobody expected."

The Arlington, Va., agency is best known as the obscure research organization that built the foundation of the Internet. More recently, DARPA has gained public attention and notoriety for helping the government come up with a system to analyze data as a way to root out terrorist threats.

To technology firms -- particularly the research labs of Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Oracle -- DARPA is a trailblazer whose work has had tremendous impact, not just on defense, but also on the technology industry. For example, the Internet and the global positioning system, once restricted military technologies that have become part of everyday life, emerged largely through DARPA's work.

"DARPA is looking at technologies that are over the horizon," said Steven Aftergood, senior research analyst at the Federation of American Scientists, a policy advocacy group in Washington. "It is not today or tomorrow (that it focuses on), but the day after tomorrow."

At HP Labs, scientist Regina Ragan is working on a molecular electronics project -- partially funded by DARPA -- that hopes to put 100 billion computer logic and memory devices on a single, square-centimeter chip.

"It's basically a new frontier," said Ragan, who is experimenting with atoms in an effort to build smaller circuits. "That's fascinating, not knowing all the answers and trying to figure it out for yourself. You can't just run to a textbook or a colleague. We're basically exploring this territory ourselves."

Sun Microsystems' first product, the computer workstation, was developed with funding from DARPA. Recently, the company also got a grant to build a more powerful and productive supercomputer. Formed in 1958, DARPA -- formerly known as ARPA -- was created in reaction to the launch of Sputnik, which the U.S. defense establishment feared was a sign of the growing technological power of the Soviet Union.

"Our mission is to maintain the technological superiority of the U.S. military and prevent technological surprise from harming our national security," DARPA director Tony Tether testified in March before the U.S. Congressional subcommittee on terrorism, unconventional threats and capabilities. 

The agency, which has an annual budget of about $3 billion, is run by program managers who are considered experts in their fields. The managers also take on pioneering research projects. The agency's Web site says: "The best DARPA program managers have always been freewheeling zealots in pursuit of their goals."

"Many times, they come to DARPA because they have ideas and they can't accomplish it where they are currently," spokeswoman Jan Walker said.

In the past 40 years, the agency has helped develop military technologies such as the M-16 rifle, unmanned combat planes and a translation device that helped U.S. troops communicate with civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In his testimony, Tether cited ongoing DARPA research that many would find wild and unconventional -- such as figuring out "how insects run over rough terrain, geckos climb walls, flies avoid capture and how an octopus hides."

"Imagine if our soldiers and equipment could use some of these same techniques," he said.

Coufal said DARPA "enables companies to take on research challenges that we couldn't take on our own because (they are) too large."

He pointed to the company's work on holographic data storage that also involves Stanford University. DARPA shouldered half of the project's roughly $32 million tab. Once a DARPA research project is completed, participating companies are free to exploit the new technology for commercial gain.

"Then it's off to the races," Coufal said.


DARPA'S TECHNOLOGY


Internet: It built the ARPAnet in the 1960s and the computer network served as the model for the Internet.


GPS: DARPA helped in the initial research in the late 1950s and the 1960s that led to the creation of the Global Positioning System. 


M-16 rifle: The agency began a project in the 1960s to modify the Colt AR-15 rifle, leading to the development of the M-16.


Stealth aircraft: In the 1970s, DARPA built the prototypes for the B-2 Stealth Bomber and the F-117 tactical fighter.


Unmanned combat vehicles: Since the 1970s, DARPA has helped build prototypes for both unmanned aircraft and ground vehicles for use in combat.


Terrorist information awareness: Currently, DARPA is developing data-mining technology to come up with a system that can be used to sort through an enormous amount of data.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle research
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Washington Times
Judge OKs camera tickets
By Matthew Cella

    A D.C. Superior Court judge ruled yesterday that the District's red-light and photo-radar cameras are constitutional and the benefits to public safety justify their use, despite complaints the cameras violate the civil rights of vehicle owners. 

    "Although cameras operated by the government are a concern regarding privacy issues, those concerns are outweighed by the legitimate concern for safety on our public streets," Judge Melvin Wright stated in his opinion. 

    The judgment came in response to a class-action lawsuit filed against the city in D.C. Superior Court last summer by lawyers Thomas Ruffin Jr. and Horace L. Bradshaw Jr. The two litigators argued that the traffic-camera system violates constitutional rights to due process by assuming that vehicle owners are liable for a violation until they can prove they weren't driving at the time of the violation. 

    Both lawyers expressed disappointment with the judge's decision. 

    "You're liable when you walk into the hearing, and the judge didn't address that in any way, shape, or form," Mr. Bradshaw said. 

    Mr. Bradshaw and Mr. Ruffin were representing Emelike Agomo, a Howard University student, and Auto Ward Inc., a cab-leasing company, that between them had received hundreds of dollars in photo-radar and red-light-camera tickets. The plaintiffs said a D.C. law holding them responsible for tickets involving their cars violated their rights, since they weren't driving when the cars were ticketed. 

    Under the city's automated-enforcement system, tickets are issued to car owners based on photographs of the rear license plates as vehicles speed past a radar camera or run red lights at intersections. Motorists who receive tickets have the right to either pay the fines or request hearings through the mail. 

    Mr. Bradshaw and Mr. Ruffin were seeking to represent the entire "class of automobile owners" ticketed since the red-light camera program began July 31, 1999, and since the photo-radar program started Aug. 6, 2001. 

    A lawyer for the city argued the lawsuit was baseless and theoretical, and that the two plaintiffs had never been denied due process for any of their violations. 

    "The difficulty here is that the plaintiffs were complaining about a general principal, but they didn't provide anything that showed their clients didn't get the procedural rights they were entitled to," said Edward P. Tapstich, a lawyer with the D.C. Office of the Corporation Counsel. 

    Judge Wright agreed that the plaintiffs had ample opportunities to challenge the tickets, and said there is precedent for vehicle owners being cited while not operating a car that received a citation. He said vehicle owners in the District are ultimately responsible for parking tickets, for abandoned cars and for negligent use of vehicles that have been loaned to others. 

    Judge Wright said plaintiffs' arguments that the cameras were primarily a revenue-generating tool for the D.C. government were "without legal support." 

    "Nothing could be further from the truth," Judge Wright said. "If you stop at a red light, the camera is not going to catch you. ... The fact that a high number of tickets are issued indicates there's a huge problem with traffic enforcement in the District." 

    Kevin Morison, director of corporate communications for the Metropolitan Police Department, acknowledged the problem with traffic enforcement and said he was "pleased" with the outcome. 

    "This is a good day for the law-abiding motorists, pedestrians and bicyclists in the District of Columbia," he said. Mr. Morison said department statistics show automated enforcement is slowing down drivers while not pulling officers from patrols of city streets. 

    According to the Metropolitan Police Department's Web site, www.mpdc.dc.gov, since the District began using the red-light cameras in August 1999, it has collected $21,640,820 in fines from 372,378 tickets issued at 39 locations. Since speed cameras were put into use in August 2001, more than 561,000 tickets were mailed, approximately 390,000 were paid, and the city collected close to $29 million in fines. 

    Mr. Bradshaw and Mr. Ruffin vowed to continue fighting the automated-enforcement system, but could not say whether they would bring another case before the court or appeal Judge Wright's ruling. 

    "We're not going to stop because I think we're right," Mr. Bradshaw said. "We've done our best and we intend to keep going." 
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Los Angeles Times
High Tech High Takes Shape in Van Nuys
By Hilda Muñoz
Times Staff Writer

June 13, 2003

Construction of a futuristic charter high school, where every student will have a laptop computer, a wireless printer and a connection to the Internet, is underway on the campus of Birmingham High School in Van Nuys.

High Tech High-Los Angeles is a joint effort of the Los Angeles Unified School District and a private foundation headed by former L.A. Unified board member Roberta Weintraub. Fifty-five freshmen began classes at High Tech High in September in bungalows on the Birmingham campus.

"It's pretty exciting, I tell you," said Weintraub, who began work on the project three years ago. "I'm sorry I didn't have a place like this to go to." 

Completion of the $15-million facility is expected next May. Funding came from the school district, state and federal agencies and donations from private foundations and corporations, Weintraub said.

High Tech High emphasizes math, science and engineering. In each class, students use laptop computers.

"We really wanted all kids of all backgrounds to have access to the most qualified curriculum that they could find," said Marsha Rybin, assistant principal at Birmingham High and director of High Tech High.

Rybin said students learn quicker when they put the information to use. "You learn what you learn because you need it for your project," she said. 

In the new facility, solar panels donated by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power will provide some energy. Skylights that open and close will provide natural lighting when possible and lights will be controlled by sensors.

"Not only will this school be up-to-date, it will also be environmentally sound," Weintraub said.

Weintraub said she was inspired to help create the high-tech school after noticing that many students lacked the knowledge to function in the technological real world. 

"I thought of all the people I know who work in offices," she said. "I don't think I knew one person who could work without computers. These are tools that are out there and that are not being currently used [by students]. We need to take advantage of what's out there."
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Reuters
Standards Group Gives Go-Ahead to Faster Wi-Fi
Thu Jun 12, 6:34 PM ET
By Sinead Carew 

NEW YORK (Reuters) - An international technical group on Thursday gave its stamp of approval to wireless (news - web sites) technology that can transmit data two to five times faster than existing short-range network gear known as "Wi-Fi."


Approval from The Institute of Electrical Electronics Engineers, a technology industry standards-setting body, could encourage business to use gear based on the new standard called 802.11g, analysts said. 


"This approval will accelerate the process," said W.R. Hambrecht analyst Satya Chillara, who expects that 2003 Wi-Fi sales will top the previous three years altogether. 


But consumers have already bought more than 6 million products based on "g" this year and businesses will begin buying it next year, "when technology budgets are freed up," according to Chillara. 


The new standard works with gear based on the existing Wi-Fi standard, called 802.11b, and runs at theoretical speeds of up to 54 megabits, or millions of bits per second, compared with "b"'s 11 megabits per second theoretical speed. 


But in some cases "g" gear, which has a shorter range than "b," reaches just double the older technology's speed, Gartner Inc. analyst Kenneth Dulaney said. 


Dulaney also pointed out that it makes less sense for offices, which have already installed the older technology, to upgrade to "g" unless they overhaul the entire network, since mixed connections would only support the slower speeds. 


Separately, Texas Instruments Inc., a supplier of network computer chips used to build wireless computing gear, said that with the IEEE approval, it had begun on Thursday to ship chips based on the "g" standard to its customers. 


But companies such as Intersil Corp. (Nasdaq:ISIL - news), Broadcom Corp. (Nasdaq:BRCM - news) and privately owned Atheros, which specialize in Wi-Fi, have already sold chips for products based on the new standard. This puts them well ahead of Texas Instruments and chip leader Intel Corp. (Nasdaq:INTC - news), which only began selling products based on the older standards earlier this year, Chillara said. 


"They're definitely behind," said Chillara referring to Intel and Texas Instruments. 


Intel stock closed up 25 cents, or 1.14 percent, at $22.14 in Thursday trading on the Nasdaq, where Intersil finished down 1 cent at $24.55 and Broadcom ended the day up 35 cents at $26.77. (Additional reporting by Eric Auchard)
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Government Computer News
06/12/03 
After Iraq debut, handhelds get another test 
By Vandana Sinha 

This summer, the Army will continue testing ruggedized wireless devices that some soldiers used in Iraq to stay connected. 

In August, the First Brigade of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment will experiment with 40 handhelds computers and 10 notebook PCs, each with Global Positioning System and communications software, at Fort Bragg, N.C. 

The Commanders Digital Assistant works across a wireless LAN under the IEEE 802.11b standard. The network connections have a 300-meter radius, which stretches even further across military radios that act as relay devices. Soldiers can also use the wireless devices as radio themselves, employing voice over IP. 

General Dynamics C4 Systems Inc. of Taunton, Mass., a business unit of General Dynamics Corp., provided the Army with the Commander Digital Assistant devices and software. 

In Iraq, the Second Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division relied on the devices to find allied forces on a GPS map and to send status reports via text messages, said Maj. Brian Cummings, an assistant product manager at the Army?s Program Executive Office, Soldier. 

?With problems on the battlefield, 80 percent of it is: ?Where are you, where are my leaders, and what do my leaders want me to do?? ? Cummings said. ?This tool answers those three questions.? 

The follow-up tests this summer will put into practice some of the form and battery changes that soldiers suggested from Iraqand, Cummings said, ultimately tell the Army whether this technology should be deployed to soldiers throughout the service. ?We?ll learn a lot this summer.?
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Government Computer News
06/13/03 
802.11g wins final approval 
By John Breeden II 

The Standards Board Review Committee of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers this week approved the 802.11g standard for wireless communication. An estimated 6 million users already have 802.11g devices on networks. 

The theoretical top rate for 802.11g is 54 Mbps, compared with 11 Mbps for the earlier 802.11b standard, making possible demanding applications such as streaming videoconferences. There is an important disadvantage to 11g, however: Its signals don?t travel quite as far as 802.11b signals. In GCN Lab tests, 11g products normally became ineffective around 60 feet to 80 feet from the access point in an office environment, whereas some 11b products could reach beyond 120 feet. 

The IEEE required that 11g signals, traveling in the 2.45-GHz band with orthogonal frequency division multiplexing, must be compatible with 11b signals, which use complementary code keying modulation. Lab tests indicated that on mixed networks, the connection automatically reverts to the lower speed. So agencies that already use 11b networking can get the benefits of 11g only by setting up different speed zones that don?t overlap, or by disabling 11b on certain clients. It would make little sense to upgrade to 11g and then hold it down to the speed of older devices. IEEE officials said they now are looking toward a next-generation wireless standard, 802.11n, which theoretically could deliver 100 Mbps to 300 Mbps. Most users probably wouldn?t notice a jump from 11g if 11n delivers 100 Mbps, but the higher rate could compete with Category 5 wired networks.
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Government Computer News
06/13/03 
Reservists learn routers at Fort Meade 
By Dawn S. Onley 

Next Tuesday, the 311th Theater Signal Command, an Army Reserve unit at Fort Meade, Md., will mark its one-year anniversary by graduating its first two classes of students from Cisco Networking Academy. 

Twenty-five reservists will receive certificates from the only Cisco Systems Inc. certified training facility in the Army Reserve, said Maj. Gen. George F. Bowman, the commanding general. ?They have the capability to manage networks,? Bowman said. 

The academy at Fort Meade is an extension of the Fort Gordon Regional Cisco Office, said Sgt. Diane Benjamin, who trains at the academy. 

The active-duty Cisco training course usually runs about eight weeks. But reservists have to fit in the free classes between their full-time civilian jobs, so they generally take the courses part-time on evenings and weekends over six months. 

The 12-credit course is transferable to many colleges and universities, officials said. 

The Signal Corps already trains switch operators, radio operators and cable installers, said 1st Lt. Shawn Herron, a network systems engineer at the command. But what reservists needed most was training in how to operate routers, Herron said. With the Cisco certificates, they can configure routers at strategic and tactical sites, he said. 

Maj. Bernard L. Smith, the Cisco Academy program manager, said the site is currently testing IP videoconferencinga capability the command wants but can?t use over standard phone systems. 

IP videoconferencing ?will ride over the data network,? Smith said. ?There is an extensive cost savings.?
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Government Computer News
Senate confirms Johnson as OMB deputy 
By Jason Miller 

The Senate this week confirmed Clay Johnson as deputy director for management in the Office of Management and Budget. OMB had been without any confirmed top leadership for a few days after director Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. resigned June 6. 

Daniels? replacement, Josh Bolten, is awaiting confirmation. 

Johnson takes over for Mark Everson, who became IRS commissioner in May. Johnson formerly served as President Bush?s assistant for presidential personnel and will chair the President?s Management Council and other interagency groups that oversee executive branch management. 

One of his main responsibilities will be to implement the President?s Management Agenda. In a memo last month, Johnson asked agencies to set goals for getting to green on the agenda scorecard by July 2004. 

?The PMA is at a special point of development and growth,? Johnson said last week at an e-government conference. ?There is a tremendous foundation laid, a method to this madness if you will.? 

Johnson holds a bachelor?s degree from Yale University and a master?s from Massachusetts Institute of Technology?s Sloan School of Management.
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Government Computer News
06/13/03 

Info sharing tools licensed for intelligence users 

By William Jackson 
GCN Staff

In-Q-Tel, the CIA?s technology investment incubator, has expanded a licensing agreement with one of its client companies to make a collaboration application available to all U.S. intelligence analysts. 

The deal with Tacit Knowledge Systems Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif., includes the company?s off-the-shelf ActiveNet product, as well as technology developed to government requirements. Although In-Q-Tel originally invested in a core product called ESP, ActiveNet is ?of particular interest and undeniable value to a wide range of government customers,? In-Q-Tel chief executive officer Gilman Louie said. 

The CIA in 1999 set up In-Q-Tel as a private, nonprofit enterprise to speed development of commercial products for the intelligence community. In-Q-Tel makes direct investments in companies, brings companies together with venture capitalists, licenses products for government use and ensures that products meet specific government needs. It has invested $1 million to $3 million in each of more than 20 companies. 

The Tacit arrangement is ?pretty similar to most of our deals,? said Kim Cook, director of technology assessment. 

In-Q-Tel originally invested about $11 million in ESP, which discovers business activity and identifies communities of interest. The goal was to acquire application programming interfaces to other applications, and Tacit?s commercially packaged ActiveNet product, which was based on ESP and had a user interface, was not of interest at the time. 

?They made that product much more functional for our agency customers,? Cook said. When demand for ActiveNet grew, In-Q-Tel expanded its licensing agreement with Tacit. 

ActiveNet learns about peoples? activities within an organization by analyzing the flow of information and identifies people who are working on related information. It brokers network connections between users on related projects, monitoring third-party collaboration tools. It manages the shared data internally without needing an outside hub.
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Government Computer News
06/13/03 
DISA tests D.C. area antiterror service 
By Dawn S. Onley 

The Defense Information Systems Agency and a group of contractors are setting up a Washington-area pilot to integrate federal, state and local law enforcement groups to deal with terrorist threats. 

The pilot will run for 18 months beginning late this summer, said Glenn Cooper, assistant technical director for DISA?s Homeland Security Command and Control Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration. IBM Corp. and Mitre Corp. of Bedford, Mass., are assisting DISA on the project. 

Starting with 16 area military sites and some state and local organizations, the service will encompass 40 to 60 organizations by early 2005, officials said. It will use secure command and control terminals developed by DISA at all locations. 

The terminals come in several versions, Cooper said. One type has three 18-inch, flat-panel displays connected to a Dell Computer Corp. workstation with 1G of RAM. Another is a reconfigured desktop computer. A third is a miniature version of the three-panel display. 

?Which one any given organization has depends on the characterization and needs of that organization,? Cooper said. 

The service will incorporate chemical and biological analysis and response software and the Defense Collaboration Tool Setgovernment software built on standard Microsoft Corp. products such as NetMeetingplus chat and whiteboarding, he said.
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Government Computer News
06/12/03 
Agencies must intensify wireless security efforts, consultant says 
By Vandana Sinha 

Securing wireless networks remains a challenge for agencies that have to fit security into their business cases but must work under policies that lag behind the rapid advance of technology, a federal-sector consultant said today. 

?Technology is the simple part,? said Howard Stern, senior vice president of FSI of McLean, Va. ?It?s all the other stuff around the technology,? from setting business practices to educating users, ?that?s the hard part.? 

Mobile devices can perform an ever-increasing number of functions, including tracking assets, protecting the homeland and communicating instantly, Stern said, so agencies more than ever need sound policies on wireless security. 

?As we move into wireless applications, security becomes even more important than it did in landline operations,? he said, speaking at a wireless security forum sponsored by Hewlett-Packard Co. in Washington. 

With that in mind, agencies must score at least a 4 out of 5 in security on the Office of Management and Budget e-government scorecards, ?or you won?t get funded even if you get a five on everything else,? he said. 

Agencies must build security into their entire wireless packages, Stern said, from the behind-the-scenes network infrastructure to the device itself to the software it runs. Otherwise, he said, the defense remains ineffective.
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Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber:

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ACM TechNews
Volume 5, Number 505
Date: June 9, 2003

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Top Stories for Monday, June 9, 2003:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html

"Homeland Security to Oversee Cybersecurity"
"Supercomputer Center Pushes the Storage Envelope"
"For Linux's Torvalds Software Is Improved With Little Fanfare"
"Pick a Language, Any Language"
"Fighting for a New Net Copyright Deal"
"Math Wiz Claims Piracy Solution"
"New Tool for Big Brother or Terrorist Spotter?"
"Artful Displays Track Data"
"Recycling Law Boosts High-Tech Transfer"
"Jobs Squeeze for Indian Workers"
"Quantum Cryptography Stretches 100 Kilometres"
"Security Officials Urge More Research Into Supercomputing"
"Antiterrorism Measures Under Scrutiny"
"IT Losing Steam?"
"Cyber Corps' Failing Grades"
"Cyber Alert: Portrait of an Ex-Hacker"
"Uncharted Territory"
"Computers That Speak Your Language"

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

"Homeland Security to Oversee Cybersecurity"
The task of boosting the defenses of the U.S. government's
computer networks has been transferred from the White House to
the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) National Cyber
Security Division, a branch of the DHS Information Analysis and ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0609m.html#item1

"Supercomputer Center Pushes the Storage Envelope"
Computer researchers at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign are building out a huge storage area network
(SAN) that will link a 256-machine Linux cluster to 110 TB in
virtual hard disk storage.  National Center for Supercomputing ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0609m.html#item2

"For Linux's Torvalds Software Is Improved With Little Fanfare"
When Linux developers roll out an upgrade, such as the
forthcoming Linux 2.6, there is little hype, which is in keeping
with the open-source software community's credo of releasing the
software freely to the public and letting the added features ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0609m.html#item3

"Pick a Language, Any Language"
Teams of researchers at the University of Maryland, Johns Hopkins
University, and elsewhere have been given a month to devise an
information system that can translate between English and another
language selected at random, as part of a Defense Advanced ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0609m.html#item4

"Fighting for a New Net Copyright Deal"
Privacy and intellectual property advocate Lawrence Lessig says a
new legislative effort has been launched after the Supreme Court
refused to change a critical copyright policy.  Lessig says
established copyright holders such as the movie and music ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0609m.html#item5

"Math Wiz Claims Piracy Solution"
Millionaire mathematician and musician Hank Risan struck back
when Internet users started illegally copying songs off his
Museum of Musical Instruments Web site by forming a research
venture, Music Public Broadcasting, that claims to have developed ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0609m.html#item6

"New Tool for Big Brother or Terrorist Spotter?"
The federal counterterrorism Technical Support Working Group has
awarded University of California, San Diego, researchers $600,000
to work on automated video systems that can identify possible
terrorist activity in crowds.  The camera array system would scan ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0609m.html#item7

"Artful Displays Track Data"
Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have developed an
aesthetically pleasing data display designed to minimize
distraction.  The InfoCanvas system displays data as moveable,
abstract components within an electronic painting of a desert, a ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0609m.html#item8

"Recycling Law Boosts High-Tech Transfer"
The United Kingdom will enact the European Union's Waste
Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive in 2008,
making electronics manufacturers responsible for recycling 70
percent of their discarded products as well as designing more ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0609m.html#item9

"Jobs Squeeze for Indian Workers"
India is currently the offshore tech support outsourcer of choice
for U.S. companies, but Forrester Research speculates that
preeminence could shift over the next 10 years as American firms
look to nations where IT labor is even cheaper.  IBM, Boeing, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0609m.html#item10

"Quantum Cryptography Stretches 100 Kilometres"
Up to now, it has been impractical to transmit quantum-encrypted
data over a conventional fiber-optic line 100 kilometers long
because the random noise picked up by a photon detector on either
end is too high, giving rise to frequent failures in ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0609m.html#item11

"Security Officials Urge More Research Into Supercomputing"
George Cotter of the National Security Agency's Office of
Corporate Assessments told people gathered at an Army
High-Performance Computing Research Center luncheon on Wednesday
that a larger supercomputing investment is necessary if the U.S. ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0609m.html#item12

"Antiterrorism Measures Under Scrutiny"
Two congressional hearings were recently held relating to two
reports, one on the Justice Department's handling of the USA
PATRIOT Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA),
and the other on the Total Information Awareness program, now ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0609m.html#item13

"IT Losing Steam?"
Technology has lost its luster with many corporate buyers because
it no longer yields strategic advantages, argues Harvard Business
Review editor-at-large Nicholas Carr.  His article compares IT to
the railroad industry in the late 1800s, which eventually ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0609m.html#item14

"Cyber Corps' Failing Grades"
Government officials are revamping Cyber Corps, a program
designed to recruit information security graduates into federal
agencies.  The government pays tuition and a stipend for Cyber
Corps students, who in return participate in a summer internship ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0609m.html#item15

"Cyber Alert: Portrait of an Ex-Hacker"
Convicted hacker Kevin Mitnick, now head of his own computer
security consultancy, provides a view into the motivations and
methods of hackers.  "Condor," as Mitnick was known in hacker
circles, says he was not out to steal money or destroy property, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0609m.html#item16

"Uncharted Territory"
A truly autonomous robot must be capable of extracting a picture
of its surroundings and using the map as a tool to navigate, a
methodology known as simultaneous location and mapping (SLAM).
Today the majority of autonomous vehicles use dead reckoning, in ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0609m.html#item17

"Computers That Speak Your Language"
Firms such as Nuance Communications and SpeechWorks are making a
splash with interactive voice response software that allows
automated call centers to more smoothly interact with customers,
but this is only the first step in the rollout of ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0609m.html#item18


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