Clips June 2, 2003

[Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>]

Clips June 2, 2003

ARTICLES

FCC Set to Vote on Easing Media Ownership Rules 
Europe pushes to keep net free
Internet Battle Raises Questions About the First Amendment
Lieberman offers plan to stop migration of chip production
Overseas tech jobs proliferate 
States try digital watermarking 
Report says proposed passenger-screening system flawed and invasive 
The gray area around green PCs
Offering Prizes for Legal File Sharing
BYU Student Group Returns Web Awards 
In Computing, Weighing Sheer Power Against Vast Pools of Data
Paper-Based Notaries Pushed Into Technology Age
Counteracting the Internet Rumor
OMB: Ask industry for a helping hand
Congress urged to eye privacy
Scrutiny required [TIA CAPPS]
Intelligence, law enforcement collaboration plans face varied obstacles
HSD official obtained Ph.D. from diploma mill 
New border security system raises cost-benefit concerns 
Homeland Security CIO pushes to consolidate IT procurement 

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Washington Post
FCC Set to Vote on Easing Media Ownership Rules 
By Frank Ahrens
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 2, 2003; Page A06 


An ideologically fractured Federal Communications Commission plans to vote along party lines today to relax or eliminate some key media ownership rules, allowing a newspaper to own a television station in the same city and broadcast networks to buy more stations at the national and local levels.

FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell is set to join fellow Republican commissioners Kathleen Q. Abernathy and Kevin J. Martin in approving the changes, sources said over the weekend, while Democrats Jonathan S. Adelstein and Michael J. Copps said they plan to vote against the changes.

The vote has engendered public opposition by lawmakers, consumer and advocacy groups and unaligned citizens who fear that further media consolidation will make it more difficult for those with minority viewpoints to get their message out. On Friday, the FCC's voice- and e-mail systems were temporarily shut down by a deluge of public comments. The agency has received more than 500,000 e-mails and postcards opposing the changes.

Powell, who called the controversy "one of the toughest things I've ever faced," has said the current rules fail to take into account the growing influence of Internet and paid television programming, and have been broadly questioned by the courts. Five of the agency's most recent media rules have been thrown out by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington.

Powell said in an interview yesterday: "If I did exactly what I am being urged to do," which is to let the current rules stand, "the result would be disastrous," meaning the rules would be tossed out by the court, leading to an unpoliced environment of unfettered consolidation.

Few issues are likely to define Powell's six-year tenure at the regulatory agency like the outcome of today's vote, FCC commissioners and industry members said.

For better or worse, the proposed regulations are to be known as the "Powell Rules."

"I have had to make peace with myself, to know with every fiber of my being and intellect and faith with the law that this is the right answer, at least in the short term," Powell said. "Though it's not the popular answer." 

Others think the answer is both unpopular and wrong.

"I'm glad they won't be remembered as the Copps rules," said Copps, who has opposed Powell's attempts to relax media ownership rules at nearly every turn. "They will take the media and the country into very perilous waters. I think we are damaging localism, diversity and competition, making it harder for alternative viewpoints and information to see the light of day."

FCC staff members have recommended lifting the 28-year-old ban prohibiting a newspaper from owning a television station or radio station in the same city, except in the smallest cities. The staff also favors relaxing older rules on television station ownership, allowing broadcast networks and other companies to buy more stations at the national and local levels. The staff members have recommended tightening radio ownership rules that led to widespread consolidation in recent years.

No issue has so deeply divided the commission along partisan lines in some time, say former FCC officials and industry lawyers. So deep is the divide, Democrats Adelstein and Copps plan to vote to sweep away certain rules, such as the rule prohibiting one major network from buying another, to maintain a clean ideological split, Adelstein said over the weekend.

Each side has accused the other of politicizing the process and being intransigent. "This thing has gotten very rough; unnecessarily rough," Powell said. "I would be naive and probably wrong to suggest that it's only business and tomorrow we'll go back to business. Some things [fellow commissioners] have said have crossed the line of civility and respectful discourse."

Copps and Adelstein suggested several edits to the proposed rules changes, such as requiring merged media properties to spell out what public service programming they would produce and holding them accountable. Their modifications were rejected by the Republican majority, which said the suggestions came late in the process and were based on flimsy legal justification.

"A proposal has to be something more than a paragraph in an e-mail seven days before the vote," Powell said. "That's just cynical." Of his chief antagonist, Powell said that despite repeated invitations to Copps, "I met with him only once in six months to discuss the substance of the rules he cares so passionately about."

Groups as ideologically discordant as the National Rifle Association and the National Organization for Women have aligned against the rules changes, saying further consolidation will put more power in the hands of a few media giants, such as Walt Disney Co., which owns ABC, and NewsCorp, which owns cable television's Fox News Channel and Fox TV network.

The rules changes come at a time when the public is increasingly distrustful of the media. A Gallup poll for CNN and USA Today reported last week that 36 percent of those surveyed believe the news organizations get the facts right.

Powell has been painted by opponents as the great deregulator, acting to clear the way for a wave of media consolidation some fear will follow today's vote.

Powell said he is following congressional mandates, which require a biennial review of the FCC's ownership rules, and the courts. The new rules recognize that the media industry has changed with the rise of the Internet and cable and satellite television services, and that traditional media companies need greater operational flexibility if they are to continue to provide free, over-the-air programming of the kind long offered on networks such as ABC and CBS. Powell said consolidation can even be good for local news, in that big companies can bring more resources and sophistication to coverage.

In pushing changes, Powell staffers say the former antitrust lawyer with the Justice Department has done something no chairman before him has done: Replaced the one-size-fits-all ownership rules with a flexible, legally sound architecture for deciding if the agency should approve media mergers.

The commission split is personified by its two poles -- Powell and Copps. Copps, a former history professor and longtime chief of staff for Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.), is a skilled political infighter with a disarming, avuncular manner. He has sought widespread public input, traveling to forums around the country. For him, the issue has been one of free speech, learning the intricacies of local media markets and opposing the Republican majority.

Powell had hoped to woo Adelstein -- the newest commissioner, sworn in in December -- but Adelstein eventually aligned with Copps in opposition. In recent speeches, Adelstein has amplified his anti-deregulation rhetoric. "He's been out-Coppsing Copps," a media industry lawyer said.

"This rule went farther than it had to to satisfy the needs of the court and Congress," Adelstein writes in a dissenting statement he plans to read at today's vote. "This is filled with gratuitous deregulation. It will be reviled by historians. Media experts, academicians, consumer groups and activists will rip it apart and find it riddled with contradictions, flawed assumptions and biased thinking."
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Australian IT
Europe pushes to keep net free
JUNE 02, 2003  

GOVERNMENTS should refrain from censoring information transmitted via the internet, a pan-European grouping of nations said.

The Council of Europe also called on countries to promote ease of access for all their citizens to the internet, and to ensure that service providers were not systematically held responsible for material transmitted over their servers without their knowledge. 
In a "Declaration on Freedom of Communication on the internet," the grouping's Council of ministers laid down seven principles aimed at guaranteeing the right to free information, as enshrined in Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. 

Nations were asked: 

Not to subject content on the internet to restrictions which go further than those applied to other information media 

To encourage self-regulation or co-regulation regarding content disseminated on the internet 

To refrain from using general blocking or filtering techniques to deny information access to the public, although filters aimed at barring vulnerable groups such as children from certain content were acceptable 

To seek to remove barriers that deny internet access, or the creation and running of internet web sites, to certain sectors of their populations 

To refrain from setting up registering schemes which constitute a barrier to the provision of services via the internet 

Ensure limited liability for service providers, who should not be obliged to monitor all content flowing through their servers 

Guarantee the freedom of anonymity, by respecting the will of users of the internet not to disclose their identities. 

On this last point, the statement added: "This does not prevent member states from taking measures and co-operating in order to trace those responsible for criminal acts." 

The Council of Europe, which has its headquarters in the eastern French city of Strasbourg, brings together 45 European countries. 

Agence France-Presse
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New York Times
June 2, 2003
Internet Battle Raises Questions About the First Amendment
By ADAM LIPTAK

The beauty queen and the cad both have Web sites. 

Katy Johnson, who was Miss Vermont in 1999 and again in 2001, uses her site to promote what she calls her "platform of character education."
"She is founder of Say Nay Today and the Sobriety Society," the site says, "and her article `ABC's of Abstinence' was featured in Teen magazine."

Tucker Max's site promotes something like the opposite of character education. It contains a form through which women can apply for a date with him, pictures of his former girlfriends and reports on what Mr. Max calls his "belligerence and debauchery." 

Until a Florida judge issued an unusual order last month, Mr. Max's site also contained a long account of his relationship with Ms. Johnson, whom he portrayed, according to court papers, as vapid, promiscuous and an unlikely candidate for membership in the Sobriety Society. 

The order, entered by Judge Diana Lewis of Circuit Court in West Palm Beach, forbids Mr. Max to write about Ms. Johnson. It has alarmed experts in First Amendment law, who say that such orders prohibiting future publication, prior restraints, are essentially unknown in American law. Moreover, they say, claims like Ms. Johnson's, for invasion of privacy, have almost never been considered enough to justify prior restraints.

Ms. Johnson's lawsuit also highlights some shifting legal distinctions in the Internet era, between private matters and public ones and between speech and property. 

Judge Lewis ruled on May 6, before Mr. Max was notified of the suit and without holding a hearing. She told Mr. Max that he could not use "Katy" on his site. Nor could he use Ms. Johnson's last name, full name or the words "Miss Vermont." 

The judge also prohibited Mr. Max from "disclosing any stories, facts or information, notwithstanding its truth, about any intimate or sexual acts engaged in by" Ms. Johnson. That prohibition is not limited to his Web site. Finally, Judge Lewis ordered Mr. Max to sever the virtual remains of his relationship with Ms. Johnson. He is no longer allowed to link to her Web site.

The page of Mr. Max's site that used to contain his rambling memoir now has only a reference to the court order. 

Ms. Johnson did not respond to telephone and e-mail messages seeking comment. In her lawsuit, Ms. Johnson maintained that Mr. Max had invaded her privacy by publishing accurate information about her and had used her name and picture for commercial purposes. 

Her lawyer, Michael I. Santucci of Fort Lauderdale, declined to be interviewed. He has asked Judge Lewis to seal the court file in the case, a request on which she has not yet ruled, and to prohibit Mr. Max from talking about the suit, a request she has rejected.

Mr. Santucci did provide a copy of a news release he issued after the order was issued. 

"This victory should send a clear message to all parasitic smut peddlers who live off the good names of others," he said in the release, which also noted that Ms. Johnson "emphatically denies the story contained on Tucker Max's Web site."

Mr. Santucci did not respond to an e-mail message asking whether his issuing a news release was at odds with his request to seal the court file on privacy grounds. 

John C. Carey, a lawyer at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan in Miami, recently agreed to represent Mr. Max. Mr. Carey said he would soon ask Judge Lewis to withdraw her order and dismiss the case.

"Katy Johnson holds herself out publicly, for her own commercial gain, as a champion of abstinence and a woman of virtue," Mr. Carey said. "The public has a legitimate interest in knowing whether or not her own behavior is consistent with the virtuous image that she publicly seeks to promote."

Through his lawyer and his publicity agent, Mr. Max declined to be interviewed.

Ms. Johnson's site is www.katyjohnson .com. Mr. Max's is www.tuckermax.com. Both Ms. Johnson and Mr. Max sell T-shirts and the books they have written on their sites. Ms. Johnson's book is "True Beauty: A Sunny Face Means a Happy Heart." Mr. Max's is "The Definitive Book of Pick-Up Lines."

That the sites are also used to make money should make no difference in whether Mr. Max may be forbidden to write about Ms. Johnson, said Gregg D. Thomas, an expert in First Amendment law at Holland & Knight in Tampa, Fla. 

"This is clearly a suppression of free speech," Mr. Thomas said of Judge Lewis's order.

Prior restraints based on invasion of privacy are unusual. 

"It has happened perishingly rarely," said Diane L. Zimmerman, a law professor at New York University and an expert in First Amendment and privacy law. "When it has happened it has generated enormous controversy." 

Professor Zimmerman noted the example of "Titicut Follies," a documentary about patients in a mental hospital that was banned on privacy grounds in 1969 by Massachusetts's highest court. A judge lifted the ban in 1991.

The prohibition on linking to Ms. Johnson's site is "kooky," said Susan P. Crawford, who teaches Internet law at Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University.

"To block the ability to link," Professor Crawford said, "is in effect to say her site is her own private property." 

While a prior restraint may not be warranted, legal experts said, Ms. Johnson's invasion-of-privacy claim, so long as it seeks only money, may be justified. 

But that, too, raises difficult issues, Professor Zimmerman said.

"If you're telling people they can't talk about something like this," she said of Mr. Max's memoir, "you're also telling them they can't talk about their own lives."
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Mercury News
Lieberman offers plan to stop migration of chip production
By Therese Poletti

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, one of several contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, is offering a set of recommendations to the Bush administration to prevent further migration of semiconductor manufacturing to Asian countries.

In a white paper to be released today, Lieberman asserts the shift in manufacturing to Asia represents a threat to national security. ``Informed elements of the intelligence community . . . have made clear that relying on integrated circuits fabricated outside the U.S. (e.g. in China, Taiwan and Singapore) is not an acceptable security option.''

Lieberman, who was in Silicon Valley last week gaining support of technology leaders such as venture capitalist John Doerr and Handspring Chief Executive Donna Dubinksy, is sending the white paper to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, with a request that the department respond with a plan of action.

While the chip industry has been gradually migrating much of its manufacturing out of the United States for years, this trend has become more pronounced during the current industry recession, with companies forming joint ventures in Europe, Asia and domestically, or farming out manufacturing to independent chip ``foundries'' in Taiwan and China.

Research and development is also on the decline. The defense department's funding of microelectronics research through DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) has declined since 1999, and is expected to decline further, he said.

``Intelligence agencies will need to be first adopters of the most advanced integrated circuits,'' Lieberman said in his report.

Lieberman suggested that the United States adopt several measures that will ensure it has the first access to the most advanced semiconductor design and manufacturing.

Some of these proposals include enforcing General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade rules with China, which offers rebates to customers who buy Chinese-made chips. Lieberman also encourages more cooperative investments in chip plants by American companies, tax incentives for companies to invest in building plants in the United States, incentives to increase the number of American science and engineering graduates and more federal funds for technology research and development.

The Semiconductor Industry Association, which worked with Lieberman on his report, declined to comment on it. A few semiconductor industry executives noted that the industry has been a global one for many years.

``We are expanding where our customer base is,'' said Jeff Weir, a spokesman for National Semiconductor in Santa Clara, a maker of analog chips used in everything from communications satellites to automobiles. National is building an assembly and test plant in China and it has plants in Malaysia and Singapore. It also uses TSMC, a foundry in Taiwan, to make its chips.
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San Francisco Gate
Overseas tech jobs proliferate 
More Silicon Valley companies find cheaper labor in other countries

First of two stories on companies shifting business operations overseas . 

Forget the technology crash. For Atul Vashistha, it's still 1999. 

At NeoIT, Vashistha's San Ramon consulting company, sales are rising at a dizzying 150 percent annual pace in the teeth of a tech depression. NeoIT is growing so fast because it is in the thick of one of Silicon Valley's hottest trends -- the movement of technology operations offshore, usually to developing countries where salaries are dirt cheap. 

NeoIT advises companies on how to relocate a wide range of computer-based tasks -- everything from managing data networks to billing customers and processing payments. Last year, the company served as an intermediary in deals worth $275 million. This year, it surpassed that figure in March. 

"The offshore business is absolutely booming," Vashistha said. 

As recession-battered U.S. companies have searched harder for ways to save money, the trickle of technology projects leaving Silicon Valley for the developing world has turned into a veritable flood. 

The trend is radically changing the Bay Area's technology sector. Silicon Valley is preserving its place as the command center of the global tech business. But the region's role as a software workshop is diminishing. 

The research firm Forrester estimates that 3.3 million service-sector jobs will leave the United States for countries such as India, Russia, China and the Philippines by 2015, including about 473,000 positions in the computer industry. 

"It's no longer economic to do low-end software development in Silicon Valley," said AnnaLee Saxenian, a professor of regional planning at UC Berkeley who has studied Silicon Valley's development. 

The valley will continue to grow, she said. But "we will not see employment growth on the scale we saw in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s." 

Virtually every major player in the valley, including Intel, Hewlett- Packard, Oracle and PeopleSoft, is rapidly expanding research, design and support activities overseas, even in some cases as they pare back U.S. operations. Smaller firms are following suit, usually by hiring technology vendors such as India's Wipro or Tata Consultancy Services. 


BANDWAGON EFFECT
"Offshore is going mainstream," said Frances Karamouzis, an analyst with Gartner, a Connecticut technology research firm. "Companies are jumping on the bandwagon." 

In India, the country that is the biggest beneficiary of the offshore technology explosion, sales of software and services to foreign customers have grown from a few million dollars in the early 1990s to $13 billion in the 12 months ended in March, according to India's National Association of Software and Service Companies. 

Meanwhile, China is making substantial investments in its software industry with an eye to siphoning off some of that business. And, because English is spoken widely there, the Philippines is getting a growing share of the technical support and call center business India has become known for. 

For the United States, most experts expect job losses will be limited. But a few take a more extreme view. 

Marc Hebert is executive vice president of Sierra Atlantic, a Fremont outsourcing firm that carries out software development and support projects in India for U.S. corporations. 

"Within a few years, half of all Silicon Valley software companies will be maintaining 80 percent of their technical staffs offshore," he said. "The top 20 percent of software technicians will continue to provide that function based here in the valley, while the other 80 percent who support and maintain software will see their functions exported," he said. 


LOOKING AT THE BOTTOM LINE
It's no mystery what's driving the migration. Companies that move technology functions overseas stand to save a bundle. 

In Silicon Valley, salary and benefits for a programmer with a few years' experience run about $75 to $80 per hour. A third-party provider in the United States charges about $125 per hour for the same service, according to Karamouzis. 

Leading Indian firms, such as Wipro, ask only $20 to $25 per hour, she said. 

And second-tier Indian companies can be found that will do the work for as little as $15. 

Still, the offshore trend is no longer just a cost story. The computer- science skills that can be found in places such as India, China and Russia are becoming world class. 

Cadence Design Systems, the San Jose maker of software for designing semiconductors, has carried out research and development in India since the late 1980s. 

"The early move for us to India was primarily driven by cost motivations," said Chief Executive Officer Raymond Bingham. "We could find very qualified engineers at a quarter of the cost. But the view was that they were not as productive as what you could find in the West." 

Now, he noted, software engineers in India and China "are just as productive and significantly less expensive." 


WINNERS AND LOSERS
The offshore trend is sparking a debate that has been heard over and over in the age of globalization: Who wins and who loses as technology work moves to the developing world? And do the economies of the United States and the Bay Area stand to gain or suffer? 

For years, groups representing tech workers have fought hard to limit visas for foreign employees in the United States. Now they are belatedly concluding that the shift of operations offshore represents a greater threat. 

"As companies decide to invest in overseas operations, fewer jobs are created here," said Marcus Courtney, president of Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, a Seattle tech-sector labor group. "Moving America's best- paying, high-skilled jobs overseas strictly due to labor costs poses a serious economic threat to American workers." 

But defenders of the practice argue that in a global economy, work will inevitably go to places where it can be performed most cheaply. That strengthens U.S. businesses, they say, fueling domestic as well as foreign expansion. 

"It's not a zero-sum game that, because there is growth in other parts of the world, we have to stop growing here," said UC Berkeley's Saxenian. "U.S. companies are benefiting from the fact they can outsource. And the valley can continue to flourish to the extent that you see innovations emerging." 

Those who watch Silicon Valley's ebbs and flows note that the tech sector has lived through such transformations before. 

During the 1970s and 1980s, for example, most computer and semiconductor manufacturing operations fled the United States for places such as Taiwan and Southeast Asia. Yet the Bay Area's influence as a tech center continued to grow as factory jobs were replaced by engineering, marketing and management positions. 

"What's happening today is very analogous to what happened in manufacturing, " said Chris Brahm, a vice president in the San Francisco office of the consulting firm Bain & Co. 

This time, though, the jobs that are going away are the high-paying white- collar positions that have long made this region a computer programmer's mecca. 

Software engineers who perform relatively low-level tasks, such as maintenance of older applications, "are going to have to figure out what to do with the rest of their lives," said Forrester analyst John McCarthy. 


EXPANSION SPEEDS UP
One thing that is clear is that the financial pressures created by the recession have prompted a big acceleration in the flow of technology jobs offshore. In India, big U.S. tech companies are rapidly expanding existing operations. 

Oracle, which opened its first Indian development center in 1994, now carries out 14 different functions, including software development and support, 

at six sites in that country. The Redwood City maker of business software expects to increase its Indian staff from about 3,000 to 4,000 by the end of the year. 

The company is increasing its presence overseas to build round-the-clock operations in many time zones, Oracle spokesman Dave Samson said. Cost savings are secondary, he insisted. 

Gartner says it has not been able to find any examples of companies that have successfully built 24-hour operations on specific projects by coordinating offshore and U.S. development teams. 

Pleasanton's PeopleSoft, which has seven software laboratories in North America, is building its eighth in Bangalore, India, and plans to employ 300 people there. 

Cadence is expanding its support center in Noida, India, from 400 to 650 employees by 2006. Growth in India and China "will be significantly higher" than in the United States, Bingham said. 

It's not easy to link offshore growth with specific jobs losses in the United States. For example, both Oracle and PeopleSoft say offshore expansion is not coming at the expense of U.S. employees. 

"I'm not planning on moving jobs from here to India," said Ram Gupta, PeopleSoft's executive vice president for products and technology. 


STAFFING FORMULA
 From time to time, though, offshore moves are overt enough or companies are candid enough to make the connection clear. 

Bank of America, for example, has set up the Global Delivery Center, a central office for managing offshore technology work performed by three vendors. For example, it has farmed out maintenance of a proprietary commercial credit card software system through the center. 

The bank uses a staffing formula of 80 percent internal employees and 20 percent offshore workers for many software maintenance and development projects. That will reduce jobs in the bank's 21,000-member technology and operations division by between 1,000 and 1,100 in the next few years, spokeswoman Lisa Gagnon said. 

WatchMark, a Seattle-area company that makes software for wireless networks, 

has seen revenue fall during the telecommunications industry's slump. Earlier this year, it fired 60 employees, most of them members of a product-testing group whose jobs disappeared when the company hired an Indian outsourcing firm to do their work. 

"This was done at the end of the day for bottom-line reasons," said WatchMark spokeswoman Heather Knox. "We have good cash reserves, and we want to be around as long as possible." 


'FAD MENTALITY'
Despite the current rush overseas, experts say moving technology operations offshore frequently doesn't make sense. 

"There's just a fad mentality now," said University of Southern California business school Professor Ravi Kumar. 

"Companies aren't thinking through whether long term this is going to be a viable business strategy. It's not easy communicating and coordinating with people of other cultures and other places." 

In particular, sensitive software-development projects depend on close interaction among colleagues. "You need to be able to go down the hall at the spur of the moment and say, 'Hey, aren't we making a mistake here?' " said UC Davis computer scientist Norman Matloff. 

When the dust settles, experts say, it's likely that routine maintenance and testing will be prime candidates for movement offshore, while advanced development work will typically be done close to home. . 

In Monday Business: The unprecedented level of outsourcing of technology work to distant lands has provoked a groundswell of anger among stereotypically mild-mannered techies.
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Federal Computer Week
States try digital watermarking 
BY Brian Robinson 
May 30, 2003

Vermont and New Jersey are the first states to consider using digital watermarking to secure driver's licenses -- something that's become a matter of urgency in the wake of a nationwide explosion of identity theft.

Both states are using digital watermarking provided by Digimarc ID Systems LLC, which supplies secure identification solutions to 33 states. 

"The Vermont license is not very secure right now, which is one of the reasons we are doing an upgrade," said Valerie Cyr, a project manager for the Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles. "Watermarking would be provided as a form of authentication that could be used by us, law enforcement and even retailers."

Security elements that many states are considering include biometrics, multicolor ultraviolet printing and smart cards. Digital watermarking would provide one of these security "layers."

Watermarking embeds unique codes into parts of a document that can be scanned by a reader to authenticate them. One code can verify that the photograph on a license belongs with the card, for example. Other codes can be tied directly to other elements on the face of the card, such as the date, which could be used to check for such things as under-21 violations on altered IDs.

"It's a covert feature that would be very hard to counterfeit," said Reed Stager, vice president of global licensing for Digimarc ID Systems, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Digimarc Corp. "It can also be used to authenticate licenses that move across state boundaries."

In particular, the ability to incorporate new security features into licenses without affecting their design "is getting good, positive response," he said.

Vermont, which announced its interest in digital watermarking earlier this month, expects to implement its driver's license upgrade toward year's end, and will decide then whether to implement digital watermarking, Cyr said.

New Jersey made its announcement in April, and officials there plan to begin upgrading the security of the state's licenses in July.

Robinson is a freelance journalist based in Portland, Ore. He can be reached at hullite@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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Government Executive
May 30, 2003 
Report says proposed passenger-screening system flawed and invasive 
By Tanya N. Ballard
tballard@xxxxxxxxxxx 

Though Transportation Security Administration officials continue to assure critics that its proposed airline passenger-screening system is not invasive, a report released Thursday claims the system will unnecessarily infringe on privacy rights. 


Under the current Computer-Assisted Passenger Pre-screening (CAPP) program, information flags passenger behavior associated with terrorists, such as paying cash, buying a one-way ticket, and making reservations at the last minute. CAPPS II, the program?s second phase, would make the information more widely available to airport security personnel, and use data-mining techniques to probe a variety of private and government databases to produce information about people who pose potential security threats. Critics of the planned system argue that gathering and sharing information about passengers is an invasion of privacy rights and civil liberties. 


In a study released by the Los Angeles-based Reason Public Policy Institute, a think tank, researchers Robert Poole Jr. and George Passantino contend that the proposed CAPPS system should be scrapped. ?TSA?s proposed CAPPS-II would create a massive, intrusive database on the personal and financial details of air travelers,? the report said. ?The current CAPPS is inadequate, but the currently proposed CAPPS II attempts to do too much, raising serious privacy concerns by probing the details of passengers? lives and circumstances.


But Nuala O'Connor Kelly, the Homeland Security Department?s chief privacy officer, defended the system earlier this month during an interview with National Journal. ?CAPPS II is not the creation of a vast database of personally identifiable material. It is actually a system, not a database at all,? she said. The passenger-screening system verifies information on travelers, including name, address and phone number, by culling data from private and government databases.


?The best thing and the worst thing I can say about this system is that it is not a database, and so the potential for misuse is almost nil,? Kelly told National Journal. ?I can't imagine, if [personal data] doesn't last more than five seconds, what the risks are.? She said that the final model for CAPPS II is still under discussion. 


The report from the Reason Institute recommended that officials seek a risk-based solution to air security concerns, separating passengers and their luggage into three categories: low-, medium- and high-risk. Using this framework, airport screeners could focus their attention on medium- and high-risk passengers and luggage, eliminate the ?hassle factor? for other passengers and cut security costs for the government and the airline industry.


?Minutes spent scrutinizing the lowest-risk passengers are minutes that could be applied to higher risk passengers, to greater effect,? the report said. 


To be classified as a ?low-risk passenger? travelers would agree to extensive background checks and join a registered traveler program. These travelers would then be allowed to access security checkpoints more quickly. 


?Such a system raises no privacy concerns, because it is voluntary,? the report said. ?It could be operated as an adjunct to individual airlines? frequent flyer programs.?


Poole and Passantino urged lawmakers and government leaders to use caution in developing and implementing aviation security plans. According to the report, ?increased investment in intelligence and law enforcement would be significantly more cost-effective than the many billions now being devoted just to the commercial air passenger sector.? 
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Mercury News
The gray area around green PCs
CRITICS QUESTION MANUFACTURERS' ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERN
By Dean Takahashi
Mercury News

The electronics industry is paying more attention to the environmental friendliness of its products. But environmentalists worry that the concern is just ``green washing,'' or lip service with minimal environmental benefits, meant to spur sales to green-conscious consumers.

In the past decade, companies have made products that cause less environmental harm or use less energy. But the environmentalists want them to look beyond profit motives when it comes to deciding whether to implement environmentally friendly changes to their product lines.

A greener printer being researched at Hewlett-Packard is a case in point. A team of 30 volunteers at HP created a prototype for a printer with a biodegradable plastic case. HP has no plans to begin selling the printer, but it has drawn high praise from within the company.

``This is an example of innovative thinking that goes on at HP,'' said Walt Rosenberg, vice president for corporate social responsibility at HP. ``There is a whole network of employees who have tremendous passion around these issues.''

Chief Executive Carly Fiorina saw the prototype and praised it as an example of how HP is ``designing for the environment'' in a recent speech. Fiorina has said HP's concern for the environment will ultimately be a competitive advantage over its rivals. But some environmentalists are harder to please.

``HP pays better lip service than other companies,'' said James Burgett, executive director of the Alameda County Computer Resource Center in Oakland, which provides recycled computers to low-income people. ``But they are in the business of selling computers. They encourage people to upgrade often. Sure, they can design a biodegradable printer. That encourages a throw-away mentality among consumers.''

Burgett would prefer that HP create a quality printer that lasts a long time and can be easily recycled for others to use.

But HP researchers believe there's value in creating a printer with a case that degrades in landfill conditions within three months. A biodegradable product would at least eliminate the need to incinerate plastics that aren't recyclable, a practice that has drawn criticism from As You Sow, a San Francisco non-profit that urges companies to be socially responsible.

And plastics are a big part of the waste stream and they cost a lot to transfer to recycling or landfill sites, says Mike Priparian, member of the state of California's Integrated Waste Management Board, the agency responsible for state landfills.

Product designers acknowledge that there are trade-offs to environmental design and therefore they have to look at the environmental impact of making a change on a product's entire life cycle and its effect on the supply chain, says Donald Brown, director of environmental affairs at Dell.

Jones Oliver, a researcher at HP's Corvallis, Ore., site who headed the biodegradable-printer design, said HP's prototype used a type of plastic based on corn starch that falls apart much more easily than standard petroleum-based plastics. The metal engine for the printer can be taken to HP's recycling facilities in Roseville and crunched into pieces that can be resold on the secondary metals market.

In the works for a year

HP declined to say why it hasn't begun making the biodegradable printer, which has been under design for about a year. Some observers wonder whether or not biodegradable plastic is cheap enough or strong enough to replace oil-based plastic.

The design effort is part of a larger initiative at HP, where a team of dozens of ``product stewards'' led by John Birkit works with HP's product designers to deliver greener products.

In general, computer makers have redesigned computers so that they are smaller, use less energy and use snap-on cases instead of metal screws. They have removed most plastic foam stuffing from product boxes and replaced them with paper-based stuffing.

``HP has the high end on recycling. But as much as these companies want to promote environmental values, unless they can sell it as good for business, it doesn't go anywhere,'' said Ted Smith, executive director of the Silicon Valley Toxics Group in San Jose. ``Old-fashioned green washing is just another money-making scheme.''

Burgett, the Alameda computer-recycling advocate, would also like to see HP create inks that aren't toxic or don't involve the use of toxic chemicals in their creation. HP officials say they have looked at soy ink but have yet to deploy it. They currently use water-based inks.

But HP notes that it has gone to great expense on environmental projects, particularly in its recycling program that started with laser-jet cartridges in 1992 and has expanded to inkjet cartridges and computers. It has set up a system that makes it easy to recycle toner cartridges by making consumers aware that they can get a postage-paid package for returning the cartridge.

In 2002, HP recycled 10 million laser-printer cartridges, and it has set up a facility in Nashville, Tenn., to recycle inkjet cartridges. HP doesn't turn a profit on the recycling program but undertakes it anyway, the company says.

But there are limits to how much HP will spend. HP is happy to recycle its products, but the company still believes that the cost of shipping products to recycling centers should be handled largely by local governments or consumers.

Other computer makers are also increasingly paying attention to environmental issues. Sony has a Walkman music player on sale in Japan that uses corn starch-based plastic. It also has a family of ``eco-friendly'' products on display at Sony's Metreon entertainment complex in San Francisco. And in the United States it is using recycled plastic in its Wega line of television sets as well as dozens of other products.

Dell has come under fire for using prison labor to break apart recycled computers, but the company defends its practices, saying there are social benefits to putting prisoners to work and that the break-down process is safe.

Consumers start to care

``Consumers haven't cared about environmental issues when buying a computer until the last year or so,'' said Tim Bajarin, analyst at Creative Strategies International in Campbell. ``Now it's been in the advertising and it has gotten mindshare through the recycling issue.''

So far, only 11 percent of obsolete computers are being recycled, according to the National Safety Council. Some 63 million computers are expected to be retired in 2005, the council predicts.

Recycling is gaining momentum as an issue with increased awareness that throwing electronic products in the trash creates toxic hazards, particularly because devices like computer monitors contain hazards like mercury, cadmium and bromine. State Sen. Byron Sher, D-San Jose, has sponsored a bill (SB 20) to require computer makers to recycle their products for free. That bill is expected to come up for a vote this summer.

And stringent environmental regulations are going into effect in Europe in 2005 and 2006. The European Union will put the burden of recycling electronic products on computer makers. And the union is requiring them to eliminate harmful materials like lead solder. HP is working with the rest of the industry to come up with solutions but doesn't have the answers yet.

It isn't clear if Europe's regulations will take hold in California or the rest of the United States, but computer makers are bracing to deal with them.

``Consumers will eventually drive this,'' says Smith at the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. ``It's like how Detroit objected when fuel-efficient cars came out.''

Sadly, says Doug Smith, director of corporate affairs at Sony, ``We haven't seen evidence that consumers care a whole lot about environmental issues.''
*******************************
Los Angeles Times
Offering Prizes for Legal File Sharing
Altnet tries strategy to attract entertainment and software firms to Kazaa-based service.
By Jon Healey
Times Staff Writer

June 2, 2003

The Kazaa file-sharing network attracted tens of millions of fans  and angered record labels and Hollywood studios  by enabling users to copy songs, movies and other digital files from one another's computers for free.

Now, one of Kazaa's partners is trying a novel strategy to reduce piracy and win over the labels and studios: paying users to share files authorized for distribution.

The incentive program is being launched Wednesday by Altnet, which uses Kazaa's peer-to-peer network to distribute songs, games, movie clips and other files authorized by copyright owners. Unlike most of the material available through Kazaa, Altnet's files are protected by electronic locks that control how files are opened and used.

The "peer points" program offers $250,000 worth of prizes each month to people who transmit the most files to other Kazaa users. But the only files that earn points are the Altnet ones, not the pirated wares that dominate the network.

The move is a bid by Altnet, a unit of Woodland Hills-based Brilliant Digital Entertainment Inc., to attract more entertainment and software companies to its fledgling service.

The first reaction from the Recording Industry Assn. of America, however, was guarded.

"We think it's great when there are systems out there that respect an artist's choice over whether or not to distribute their music for free," said Matt Oppenheim, the RIAA's senior vice president of business and legal affairs. "While Altnet does it some of the time, the [Kazaa] system by and large doesn't do it, and that's a problem."

Altnet has been shunned by the major record companies and Hollywood studios because of its association with Kazaa, which the companies are suing for copyright infringement. Meanwhile, video game publishers, independent record labels and other copyright owners are using Altnet to deliver about 20 million files per month, making it the largest distributor of content protected by Microsoft Corp.'s anti-piracy technology, according to Altnet Chief Executive Kevin Bermeister.

In a peer-to-peer system like Kazaa, a user can act as both consumer and distributor. User Smith, for example, is a consumer when she downloads a copy of Madonna's "American Life" music video from another Kazaa user. And she's a distributor when she puts the video in a shared folder and another Kazaa user downloads it from her.

She's also a pirate, in the judgment of several federal courts, unless she's copying and distributing files with the copyright holder's permission. And that's where Altnet comes in.

When someone searches for "American Life" on Kazaa, the program produces a list of links to files called "American Life" on other users' computers, with Altnet's authorized files at the top of the list. If Madonna had a deal with Altnet to distribute a pay-per-view version of the "American Life" video, links to that video would appear first, followed in all probability by links to unauthorized, free versions of the video and the song.

Altnet's new prizes give users like Smith incentive to take unauthorized files out of the folders they share on Kazaa and replace them with Altnet files, thus increasing their chance of collecting points. Because they don't need to open or use files to collect points, users don't care whether the files they share carry a price tag. They simply want to distribute as much authorized content as they can.

By trying to drive unauthorized files out of the folders that Kazaa users share over the Internet, Altnet's program pursues the same anti-piracy goal as the Recording Industry Assn. of America. The difference is that the RIAA has been using a stick, while Altnet is offering carrots.

Analyst P.J. McNealy of GartnerG2, a technology research and consulting firm, said the points program may be based on a flawed assumption: that the files Altnet wants to provide are compelling.

Beyond that, McNealy said, Kazaa attracted a huge audience by enabling people to copy other people's intellectual property for free, without restriction. "Instead of preventing the uploading of unauthorized materials, they're turning a blind eye to it," he said.

Bermeister disagreed, saying both Altnet and Kazaa want the program to change the behavior of Kazaa users. The goal is to shift behavior so dramatically that by the end of next year, most of the downloads on Kazaa are authorized copies. 

But he acknowledged that the shift will happen only if the major entertainment companies support Altnet's efforts, "and that's a very, very, very big 'if.' "

Several entertainment-industry executives have said they're intrigued by Altnet but are reluctant to support it while the lawsuit is pending against the company distributing Kazaa's software, Sharman Networks. Based in the South Pacific tax haven of Vanuatu, Sharman has countersued the labels and studios for allegedly colluding to withhold music and movies from its partner Altnet.

Just under 50% of Altnet is owned by Joltid, a privately held company whose principal owners launched Kazaa. After the entertainment companies sued them for copyright infringement, however, they sold Kazaa to Sharman Networks.

The points program relies on software that Kazaa plans to include in a new version of its program, which is slated to be released in a preliminary form Wednesday. The software will enable Altnet to distribute files to non-Kazaa users through the MySearch.com site, expanding Altnet's reach to an estimated 75 million users, Bermeister said.
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Associated Press
BYU Student Group Returns Web Awards 
Sat May 31, 3:08 PM ET

PROVO, Utah - Brigham Young University's student news organization has given up two national awards for Web page design because the two students who crafted the page copied material from another Web site. 

   

This spring, the BYU site NewsNet won first place among colleges for Web page design in a contest sponsored by the University of Missouri chapter of the Society of Newspaper Design. The site also won a second place for best college newspaper online in a contest sponsored by the trade publication Editor & Publisher. 


NewsNet officials were alerted that their Web site strongly resembled that of Builder.com  a site that provides instruction on how to build Internet sites  by a BYU student in late April. 


The undergraduate students who designed the site used Builder.com's graphics, table definitions and a similar color palette, Jim Kelly, NewsNet's general manager, said Friday. NewsNet verified that the students copied from the site after contacting them. 


Officials initially had decided to keep the Editor & Publisher award because it was based on content, rather than design, Kelly said. They reconsidered after learning Thursday that NewsNet also won the design award, he said. 


"What the students did is wrong, and we apologize to the two contest sponsors and the owners of Builder.com," Kelly said. 


The names of the students who designed the site were not released. One graduated this spring. 
*******************************
Government Computer News
05/30/03 
Study finds technical errors in government sites 
By Patricia Daukantas 

A survey of 41 federal Web sites found that 68 percent will present some sort of bug within the first 15 minutes of a visit, according to the Business Internet Group of San Francisco. 

Most glitches were application server and Web server errors such as blank pages, embedded content errors and the 500 internal server error, the survey found. 

Diane Smith, the group?s research director, said she selected the sites because they are used in the Keynote Government Internet Performance Index from Keynote Systems Inc. of San Mateo, Calif. The index includes sites of 10 Cabinet departments, the White House, both houses of Congress and several large agencies. 

Smith said she visited each Web site for up to 15 minutes and explored as if she were unfamiliar with the agency. She stopped exploring at the first error, even if the 15 minutes were not yet up. The average length of her visits was 9 minutes, 41 seconds, but only 4 minutes, 49 seconds on the 28 sites that had errors. 

Twenty-five of the buggy sites had blank pages and internal server errors. Smith said she found three other sites with data errors, such as a wrong page link or bad data returned from a database query. 

None of the bugs related to overall site performance or availability, and they would not show up on monitoring applications designed to measure uptime, she said. 

To record her keystrokes and mouse clicks, Smith used a client application called IntegriTea Capture from TeaLeaf Technology Inc. of San Francisco, which sponsored the study.
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New York Times
June 2, 2003
In Computing, Weighing Sheer Power Against Vast Pools of Data
By JOHN MARKOFF

SAN FRANCISCO, June 1  For almost two decades the federal government has heavily underwritten elaborate centers to house the world's fastest supercomputers. The policy has been based on the assumption that only government money could ensure that the nation's research scientists had the computing power they needed to pursue projects like simulating the flow of air around a jet airplane wing, mimicking the way proteins are folded inside cells or modeling the global climate.

But now two leading American computer researchers are challenging that policy. They argue that federal money would be better spent directly on the scientific research teams that are the largest users of supercomputers, by shifting the financing to vast data-storage systems instead of building ultrafast computers.

Innovation in data-storage technology is now significantly outpacing progress in computer processing power, they say, heralding a new era where vast pools of digital data are becoming the most crucial element in scientific research.

The researchers, Gordon Bell and Jim Gray, scientists at Microsoft's Bay Area Research Center, presented the argument last month in a meeting of the National Research Council's Computer Science and Telecommunications Board at Stanford University.

"Gordon and I have been arguing that today's supercomputer centers will become superdata centers in the future," said Dr. Gray, an expert in large databases who has been working with some of the the nation's leading astronomers to build a powerful computer-based telescope.

The policy challenge spelled out by the Microsoft researchers comes as a quiet national policy debate over the future of supercomputing is taking place among experts in scientific, industrial and military computing.

In February the National Science Foundation Advisory Panel on Cyberinfrastructure issued a report calling on the nation to spend more than $1 billion annually to modernize its high-performance computing capabilities.

Separately, a study completed last year by a group of military agencies was released in April. Titled "Report on High Performance Computing for National Security," it calls for spending $180 million to $390 million annually for five years to modernize supercomputing for a variety of military applications.

Computer scientists added that the construction of the Japanese Earth Simulator, which is now ranked as the world's fastest supercomputer, has touched off alarm in some parts of the United States government, with some officials advocating even more resources for the nation's three national supercomputer centers, located in Pittsburgh, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and at the University of California at San Diego.

Whatever decisions the government makes could have vast implications for computing.

The decision in 1985 to build a group of what were then five supercomputer centers linked together by a 56-kilobit-per-second computer network was a big impetus for development of the modern high-speed Internet, said Larry Smarr, an astrophysicist who is director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology.

He said that Dr. Bell and Dr. Gray were correct about the data-centric technology trend and that increasingly the role of the nation's supercomputer centers would shift in the direction of being vast archives. Rapidly increasing network speeds would make it possible to increasingly distribute computing tasks.

Central to the Bell-Gray argument is the vast amount of data now being created by a new class of scientific instruments that integrate sensors and high-speed computers.

While the first generation of supercomputing involved simulating physical processes with relatively small data sets, the tremendous increase in data storage technology has led to a renaissance in experimental science, Dr. Gray said.

The nation should forget about financing the world's fastest computers, he said, and instead turn the nation's attention back toward science.

"The core of our argument is to give money back to the sciences and let them do the planning," he said.

Dr. Gray and Dr. Bell, a legendary computer designer who oversaw the national supercomputer centers for two years during the 1980's as a director for the National Science Foundation, call their current approach to computing "information centric" and "community centric." By rewriting existing scientific programs, they say, researchers will be able to get powerful computing from inexpensive clusters of personal computers that are running the free Linux software operating system. Many scientists are now adapting their work to these parallel computing systems, known as Beowulfs, which make it possible to cobble together tremendous computing power at low cost.

"The supercomputer vendors are adamant that I am wrong," Dr. Bell said. "But the Beowulf is a Volkswagen and these people are selling trucks."

The Bell-Gray proposal has been greeted with skepticism from the supercomputer centers and in some cases from scientists, too.

"I believe the dramatic increase in data the scientific community is producing will lead to the increasing importance of the scientific computing centers," said Horst D. Simon, a mathematician who is the director of the National Energy Research Scientific Computer Center in Berkeley, Calif.

He said that scientific research projects were turning increasingly to his computing center to take advantage of its professional management and technical support for managing their experiments' data.

Some other computer scientists say that Dr. Bell and Dr. Gray have correctly identified a fundamental technology trend, but that they are wrong in stating that the United States no longer needs to focus on developing the most powerful computers.

"Beowulf clusters are an attractive alternative," said Daniel A. Reed, director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "However, we still need a national-scale capability at the very high end."

A number of other scientists said they believed that Dr. Bell and Dr. Gray were overstating the power of the inexpensive Beowulf computing clusters.

"I'm not sure I agree with them on which is the cheap commodity computer and which is the specialized system," said Eric Bloch, a physicist at the Washington Advisory Group, a Washington-based science and consulting group, who is a former director of the National Science Foundation.

He said that supercomputer centers were still vital because they integrated systems that could be made available to scientific communities that might use the world's fastest computer if it were available.
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Reuters
Paper-Based Notaries Pushed Into Technology Age
Sun Jun 1, 2:37 PM ET

By Sinead Carew 

NEW YORK (Reuters) - After centuries of relying on paper, ink quills, and more recently, rubber stamps to verify people's identities, U.S. notaries public are being dragged kicking and screaming into the modern, high-tech era. 

   

A group leading 200,000 of the country's 4.5 million notaries recently unveiled an electronic signature, thumbprint and photograph kit that could make their jobs easier. 


Notaries, also called trusted witnesses, check the identity of people signing documents such as contracts, loans and wills, then give their stamp of approval and record the event in a paper-based journal. The new kit could record the clients' thumbprint, signature and photograph in an electronic system. 


But some notaries are unhappy about moving away from paper journals that they simply lock in a safe for security. Others say people would have privacy concerns about thumbprints. 


"The way we do it is perfect ... This would mess up everything," said Barbara Citty, a California notary who has verified about 4,000 signatures in the last eight years. 


"I don't think computers are safe enough, and now that everybody's figured out how to get inside people's computers it's less safe than it ever was," Citty added. 


Notaries need more than paper journals to keep track of the 1 billion signatures they verify annually for everything from loans and house deeds to wills, argued Milt Valera, president of the National Notary Association, the biggest U.S. group. 


Amid growing concerns about identity theft, fraud and terrorism, Valera says security is deeply important. The electronic kit adds more protection as notaries must place their thumb on a sensor to access their own records, he said. 


The biometric technology behind the thumbprint feature is improving, but electronic equipment, like paper, is still fallible, according to Gartner Inc. analyst Victor Wheatman. 


"Fraud could happen either way. We're still trusting notaries to do their job -- to be honest and to identify with a minimum amount of doubt who is signing," Wheatman said. 


He referred to one case where a jelly-like thumbprint mold fooled one biometric sensor and another where people were able to blow on a sensor to create the print of the last user. 


NOTABLE RESISTANCE 


Citty would only buy the new system, which will cost about $398, if forced to by California law, which is stricter than every other state in the country, she said. 


U.S notaries, which were under the control of the Anglican church authorities before the American Revolution, are now governed by state authorities with widely different rules. 


"The laws in many states are very archaic, and as a result the processes of notarization in many situations are left essentially to the whims of the notary," Valera said, adding that he did not use the word "whim" loosely. 


The thumbprint and photographic record would help identify a client in subsequent signings but the notary has no way of double checking if a particular name and thumbprint fits at a first transaction. 


There are no immediate plans to allow notaries to double-check clients' thumbprints using records outside of their own, Valera said, but added that the current system fits in with all existing state laws while it is not required by any law. 

   



Some notaries are more enthusiastic about technology than Citty, but still have concerns. 

Brenda Lyons, a Dayton, Ohio, notary who has often notarized financial documents in clients' homes, believes a laptop computer would be more convenient than reams of paper. 

"Currently everything is on paper. I certainly would like to do everything on computer," Lyons said. 

But she predicted that while some people would be comfortable providing picture identification to notaries, they would balk at the notion of placing their thumbprint on file. 

"We're not required to fingerprint, so I'm not currently doing that. It's not something people are open to," she said. 

Notaries only hand over a record to law enforcers who have a subpoena, Valera said, adding that thumbprints are legally required for most signings. 

Since notaries earn as little as 50 cents for a signing in some states and a maximum of $10 in others, cost is also an issue. But Lyons, who charges a maximum of $2 per notarization, said she would be willing to pay the $398 price for the kit. 

But mobile notaries like Lyons can also charge for travel expenses, making the job more financially viable, Valera said. 

Cranston, Rhode Island, notary Anthony Donohue already copies paper records onto a computer disk he locks in a safe. 

He might upgrade if the security and the price was right but would prefer an electronic device that could guarantee an ID such as a drivers license was authentic. 

"I don't deal with immigration, but after 9/11 there were a lot of notaries that were angry with themselves," he said. 
*******************************
New York Times
June 2, 2003
Counteracting the Internet Rumor
By SHERRI DAY

After receiving an e-mail message one evening in April, Clara Miller thought her love affair with Starbucks was over.

According to the e-mail message, titled "Starbucks vs. Israel," the Starbucks Corporation was closing all its stores in Israel in May. The note did not include information about why the company had decided to pull out of Israel, but its tone suggested a nefarious intent. Some people assumed that Starbucks was joining an Arab boycott of American businesses in Israel, while others thought the company had decided to abandon its business in the country for fear of terrorist attacks.

The e-mail message also called for action, asking readers to stop patronizing Starbucks, to e-mail or phone the company to complain and to pass the note on to "everyone you can."

For Mrs. Miller, 39, a private investment manager who lives in Greenwich, Conn., the e-mail message meant the immediate end of almost daily runs to Starbucks for a tall decaf caramel macchiato or a Frappuccino.

"I was determined that I was not going back to Starbucks," said Mrs. Miller, who said she believed the e-mail message because it came from a person she considered to be a reputable source. That day she forwarded the message to about 30 of her cyberbuddies.

But Mrs. Miller's boycott lasted only one day because the implication of the e-mail message was not true. Starbucks had said it was pulling out of Israel because it was dissolving its ties with a partner in the country and because of an economic downturn in the area. 

Starbucks, a company that has fast become a battle-scarred veteran of Internet rumor wars, was facing an increasingly common problem: the Internet rumor that would not go away.

By mounting a campaign in which the company sought to discreetly disseminate the correct information to interested parties while taking care to avoid spreading the rumor to the masses, Starbucks was able to counteract an e-mail message that could have sparked widespread protests and hurt its business.

Members of Starbucks' customer relations team fielded calls and e-mail messages from concerned customers and supplied them with information about why the company had decided to leave Israel. Howard Schultz, the company's chairman, began making calls to Jewish leaders in the United States and Israel to explain the company's decision and its plans to return to the country at some point.

The rumor was particularly troubling for Mr. Schultz, a Jewish American who has long been supportive of Jewish organizations and causes in the United States and in Israel.

"At the time, we underestimated the reaction we would get" to the original announcement, said Mr. Schultz, who has steered Starbucks through several Internet rumors, including a summer 2002 Internet hoax in which counterfeit coupons for products were distributed. The company knew it would return to Israel, he said, "and we thought that was implicit in how we communicated it." Mr. Schultz admitted that the initial communication on its decision to leave Israel "was not as strong as it should have been."

Perhaps the most effective of the company's weapons used to combat the rumor, experts said, came from the Anti-Defamation League, which lent support. Starbucks, which is based in Seattle, did not place any messages refuting the rumor on its Web site. But the Anti-Defamation League contacted the company to investigate the matter and later circulated the company's message to interested parties on its Web site and in telephone calls. The organization said it was confident that the Starbucks move was "purely a business decision."

While the Internet campaign tarnished  if only momentarily  the company's reputation, officials at Starbucks said that the company had not seen a decline in sales since the e-mail message began circulating.

Other companies have not been as fortunate as Starbucks. The feminine hygiene industry played down an Internet rumor that claimed that tampon manufacturers had included chemicals in their products that caused women to need a greater supply of them. That rumor is still circulating. Kentucky Fried Chicken, which is owned by Yum Brands Inc., became the subject of an Internet rumor when it shortened its name to KFC. The rumor, which the company says is "ridiculous," claimed that the company changed its name because it was serving mutated birds without beaks or feet instead of healthy chickens. The Procter & Gamble Company is still fighting the rumor, which originated in the late 1970's but grew with the advent of the Internet, that linked the company to Satanism.

According to a 2001 study conducted at Wake Forest University, only 3 of 24 Fortune 500 companies that have recently been the subjects of Internet rumors or hoaxes handled the rumors in a responsible manner.

"If you think about what these people do conventionally to try to get along with the public and you think about what they do in the cyberworld, they do so much less," said John T. Llewellyn, an associate professor of communication at Wake Forest University and an urban legends expert. "If they handled sales with the same care they handled Internet rumors, they wouldn't be companies very long."

Communication experts said that companies should handle Internet rumors by responding quickly to the accusations with information on their Web sites, select the wording of responses carefully and seek an objective party to verify that the rumors are not true. But often companies falter, out of fear or simple disregard for the effect that far-fetched rumors can have on their customers.

"If you remain silent and hope it blows over, people take silence as guilt," said Mary Frances Luce, who teaches marketing at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. "If you're too aggressive about addressing this in a very public forum, what you can do is publicize the rumor and also you can strengthen the association in people's minds with the rumor."

Professor Luce added, "There's a fine line in being too loud about it or not loud enough."

Mrs. Miller has learned her lesson about spreading Internet rumors. After she sent out the message, she received several e-mail responses that the call to boycott Starbucks had been misguided. When she realized that she had distributed incorrect information, she sent out another mass e-mail message to her online circle that included the statement from the Anti-Defamation League. And she returned to Starbucks.

But that did not completely solve the trail of misinformation. Earlier this month, people were still getting e-mail messages calling for a boycott of Starbucks. Others are hearing about the rumor the old-fashioned way.

"There may have been other people that I made a comment to, but forgot about it," Mrs. Miller said. The ones that are on my e-mail are easy to track. But there's still the fact that when you get misinformation there is leakage into other areas that are hard to correct afterwards."
*******************************
Federal Computer Week
OMB: Ask industry for a helping hand
BY Diane Frank 
June 2, 2003

 From the start, the Office of Management and Budget turned to industry for help in developing information technology business cases. Although agencies are finally beginning to take advantage of that resource, the process still needs some tweaking, experts said.

Private sector companies are familiar with their own processes, not the one set out by OMB, pointed out Howard Stern, senior vice president at Federal Sources Inc., a market research firm in McLean, Va.

FSI, with McConnell International LLC, hosts a series of seminars for industry members who are looking to work with agencies. Translating the requirements from OMB's Circular A-11 investment guidance into terms that industry will understand is a large part of that education.

One of the most significant problems agencies are still having with their business cases is the examination of true alternatives, according to OMB. Industry can help agencies conduct market research to determine whether there is not only better technology, but also a better way to perform the service, said Bill McVay, former deputy branch chief for IT and policy in OMB's Office of E-Government and IT.

"Our smartest solutions and answers are going to come from a partnership between the federal government and private industry," McVay said. "There is a lot of knowledge sharing that needs to happen."

In order for industry to help agencies, companies are going to have to learn exactly what agencies' missions are, which means looking beyond the traditional viewpoint in which a single contract is the only concern, said Bruce McConnell, president of McConnell International and former chief of information policy and technology at OMB.

But companies will have to be even more careful than usual about the appearance of conflict of interest, possibly even to the point of not bidding on contracts for a program for which the company helped write a business case, Stern said.
*******************************
Federal Computer Week
Group proposes CAPPS II alternative
BY Sara Michael 
June 2, 2003

The creation of a two-tiered passenger screening and registered traveler program could serve as an alternative to the controversial computer system that combs databases to assess the risk posed by individual airline passengers, according to a report issued last week.

The Reason Public Policy Institute, a Los Angeles-based think tank, proposed a risk-based alternative to the Transportation Security Administration's Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (CAPPS) II. The group's system would check each traveler's information against terrorist watch lists and airline databases and separate travelers into two groups based on risk. 

Under the proposal, frequent travelers could become registered travelers and breeze through checkpoints by opting for extensive background checks, including employment and credit history. High-risk travelers would have their boarding passes electronically flagged and receive extra scrutiny, although they would wait in the same lines as ordinary travelers.

"It hopefully would be a middle ground for most Americans," said Robert Poole, founder and transportation studies director at the Reason Foundation and the report's author. "This information is already available to airlines so it's not poking around in people's lives."

TSA officials have discussed the registered traveler option as a future extension of the CAPPS II program. Frequent travelers would be given identification cards with biometric data, such as iris scans or face geometry, which would be confirmed before boarding. Medium-risk travelers  which would include most passengers  and high-risk travelers would be screened in the same lines.

The idea is that the system would minimize hassles for frequent travelers, while resources could be focused where risk is greater.

Poole said his group is challenging the idea that all passengers should be treated equally. "That's a very nice idea, but in fact, to do that, it inconveniences everyone and it wastes resources," he said.

Mihir Kshirsagar, policy analyst for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the system increases the chances of identity theft. "The first thing a terrorist would do is get a registered traveler status," he said. "If you have someone with a trusted identity, that identity becomes that much more valuable."

Robert Levy, senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute, said terrorists may be able to create a registered traveler card or bribe officials for cards. "These guys are not stupid, the terrorists," he said. "They are quite capable of entering one of these programs and getting one of these cards."

Kshirsagar cautioned that if the system makes travel easier, it increases the chances it may be expanded to other forms of transportation or security clearances. For example, a grocery store owner or club manager may only want patrons with the identity card to enter after a certain time at night, Kshirsagar said.

Although the initial security clearance is voluntary, there could be mounting pressures on travelers to offer personal information as they see fellow travelers zipping through lines, Kshirsagar said. "You're almost forced to do it. If you don't want to be hassled, you'll give it up to get that card," he said.

Similarly, if few travelers opt for background checks, officials may increase the scrutiny at security checks as a way to persuade more participants to register, Levy said. Security officials "will make the alternative repugnant," he said. "Everyone will be strip-searched at the airport. That would certainly become an incentive to enroll in the program."

However, Levy called the idea a "decent alternative, given the environment we're operating in."

Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee's Aviation Subcommittee, was one of two lawmakers given a review of the report. "This report raises the same concerns that many of us in Congress have been discussing for more than a year," he said in a written statement. But when reached later, his spokesman, Gary Burns, said Mica believes "the CAPPS II program is much better than the registered traveler program."

***

Israeli model

The Reason Public Policy Institute's proposed system for airport security resembles Israel's trusted traveler program, which has been in place at Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv since 1996. Any Israeli citizen can apply for a membership, which includes a background check, an in-person interview and an annual fee of about $25, according to a report issued by the institute in May. Travelers then have their hand geometry measured and encoded into an identity card.

The Israeli system, developed by EDS, allows passengers to breeze through security checkpoints. In 2001, about 15 percent of the airport's passengers were members of the program, according to the report.
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Federal Computer Week
Congress urged to eye privacy
TIA, CAPPS II get lawmaker focus
BY Sara Michael 
June 2, 2003

Privacy and legal experts said last month that Congress should keep a close and critical eye on two systems designed to identify and track terrorist activity.

Privacy advocates have led the opposition to the Transportation Security Administration's Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (CAPPS) II and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Terrorism Information Awareness (TIA) system. In a second hearing before a subcommittee of the House Government Reform Committee, experts told lawmakers the systems' scope should be limited.

"It's not whether [TIA] will work. The real question is what if it does work," said Paul Rosenzweig, senior legal research fellow for the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation. "What will you be doing to examine if it is being used appropriately or inappropriately?"

Rosenzweig said Congress should have unfettered access to information about the system, even if it must happen in a classified environment. He said TIA should require congressional authorization, have built-in penalties for abuse and be constantly reviewed.

However, Rosenzweig criticized an amendment to the fiscal 2003 spending bill that restricted TIA's development; the amendment was introduced by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). "The right answer is not for Congress to adopt a blanket prohibition," Rosenzweig said in written testimony for the House Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and the Census Subcommittee. "Rather, Congress should commit to doing the hard work of digging into the details of the TIA and examining its operation against the background of existing laws and the existing terrorist threats at home and abroad."

Barry Steinhardt, director of the Program on Technology and Liberty at the American Civil Liberties Union, said details about TIA and CAPPS II have changed substantially since the programs were introduced, but they still are "massive systems of surveillance."

"Congress has the right and duty to ask some hard questions of the [Bush] administration," he told lawmakers.

Rosenzweig noted that the changes in the systems are examples of how congressional oversight can be effective. "I see the natural product of the development of an idea...that ultimately gets refined as it's subject to public scrutiny," he said.

John Cohen, co-founder, president and chief executive officer of marketing firm PSComm LLC, recommended that Congress take an interest in how state and local agencies are using the federal funding granted for homeland security. Rather than be reactive, as they were forced to do after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, state and local entities should invest in information-sharing tools that focus on prevention, he said.

Cohen argued that state and local officials are on the front lines of combating terrorism and should be linked to federal systems that collect, analyze and disseminate terrorist data. With this link comes federal oversight, he said.

"These efforts should include establishing aggressive oversight of law enforcement and homeland security- related activities," Cohen testified. 

"As we expand the universe of information available to law enforcement," he said, "we also expand the potential for abuse. I am hopeful that Congress...will continue to fulfill [its] oversight responsibility."
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Federal Computer Week
Scrutiny required
Editorial
June 2, 2003

Defense Department officials are saying everything that privacy advocates want to hear about the newly renamed Terrorism Information Awareness program.

They promise that agencies will be required to conduct legal reviews before using the system, which would scour databases run by airlines, financial institutions and schools for leads on potential terrorists.

And they promise that the system will include audit tools to track users who access the system and security technology to protect against unauthorized access. And they say search tools will be tested for accuracy.

Maybe those assurances are enough for congressional leaders, who had asked for more information about how the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency would protect the privacy of American citizens before funding the controversial project. 

But despite those assurances, the danger remains that the privacy safeguards could be no more than a sleight of hand, much like the name change announced late last month. Maybe some people will feel better about a program that promises "terrorism" rather than "total" information awareness, but they shouldn't.

The technology that makes TIA so tantalizing  that makes it possible to identify telling links among disparate bits of data stored in different databases  also makes it incredibly dangerous. The system would be designed to find terrorists, but it would do so by sorting through records in which everyone, at some level, is suspect.

The Bush administration should be every bit as concerned about the risks as Congress and the privacy watchdogs are. The tension between civil liberties and civil order require that this government police itself as carefully as it polices the country at large. When the government fails in one direction or the other, trouble always ensues.

DOD officials, of course, promise to provide the oversight needed to protect civil liberties. But that is not enough. If this program moves forward, it should be scrutinized every bit as intensely as the data it is designed to mine.
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Federal Computer Week
Learning to share
Intelligence, law enforcement collaboration plans face varied obstacles
BY Paul Korzeniowski 
June 2, 2003

A dramatic shift is taking place in the federal intelligence community. Historically, those agencies thought that keeping investigative information and systems hidden from sight, even from one another, was the most effective way to fight crime or keep an eye on the nation's enemies. Various legal and technical barriers contributed to the long-standing divide, not to mention the occasional turf battle.

Now, with unprecedented security threats making coordinated intelligence and law enforcement operations more important than ever, those departments are working with one another, as well as with state and local agencies, to improve the flow of security-related data.

Four initiatives are under way to open up government agencies' internal networks so data can move more freely from employee to employee (see "Web of intelligence data expands"). The CIA is responsible for Intelink, the FBI for Law Enforcement Online (LEO), the State Department for OpenNet and the Justice Department for the Regional Information Sharing Systems (RISS) network.

While these networks now enable hundreds of thousands of government users to access classified and unclassified information, a great deal of work remains to be done before all of the data needed during an investigation is available via a few keystrokes.

The remaining tasks have less to do with daunting technical challenges and more to do with getting greater interagency coordination, amendments to current laws, new agency procedures and changes in employees' outlooks.

The ultimate goal is to connect different intelligence networks and outfit users with Web-based interfaces so they can easily find and examine pertinent information.

The easy flow of information should cut the time officers need to piece together snippets of data and locate criminals. Ideally, a police officer would know a person apprehended in a theft had had his visa revoked. Also, any changes would be available to all users immediately so that, for example, a state trooper would know that a motorist stopped for a speeding ticket one afternoon was wanted by the FBI for a murder committed that morning.

The desire for better integration among law agencies' systems is not new and these networks have been in place for years  for decades, in a few cases. However, a number of factors have made integration efforts more noticeable.

Changes Made, More Needed 

The evolution of technology and the acceptance of standard protocols, such as IP and virtual private networks, have made it simpler for agencies to exchange information securely using widely available networks. But more importantly, there has been a growing recognition that different government groups need to share information. Historically, officers in one jurisdiction often did not know that data that could assist them in an investigation was available in another department's system.

Recent events forced government agencies to look at ways of easing information transfers. "We knew that information sharing was necessary for years, but the events on [Sept. 11, 2001] drove the point home emphatically," said Angelo Fiumara, deputy director, RISS Office of Information Technology.

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, it became clear that better information exchanges were needed not only among federal government agencies  such as the FBI and the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (now the Bureau of Citizen and Immigration Services)  but also at the state and municipal levels at which police, firefighters and EMTs responded to the attacks.

Although the four network integration initiatives had been under way before Sept. 11, 2001, they had been having some problems attracting attention and funding. The terrorist attacks changed that.

"Since [Sept. 11], Congress and the administration have made funding the different integration projects a top priority," said James Holmes, director of the office of eDiplomacy at the State Department.

With the attention and funding have come the nitty-gritty logistics, such as how to connect the different groups.

First, the intelligence groups have classified information with very specific limits on access: Top Secret is data limited to select officials in agencies such as the CIA and FBI; Sensitive is information of a military nature and is handled by the Defense Department; Policy designates data intended for people who develop the policies that outline who should have access to what; and then there is unclassified data. These classifications can be programmed into agency systems to control user access to records.

The agencies must define the network and system interfaces to move data from place to place. There had been some talk initially about setting up a grandiose set of proprietary interfaces that would link systems in a one-to-one style of connections, but that was shelved because such connections would have been too complex and too expensive to develop and maintain.

Instead, the government is focusing on using existing industry standards such as Secure Sockets Layer, X.509 digital certificates, public-key infrastructures, Standard Generalized Markup Language and Web browsers. The idea is to provide pointers to data locations rather than extracts of the data itself. 

That means that individual agencies would be responsible for providing authorized users with access to specific data on their systems, rather than supplying their data, or exporting it, to a system maintained elsewhere.

Sharing Private Information 

A big challenge stems from designing policies about what personal information should be shared and which users can access it.

The U.S. Constitution affords citizens with basic protections, such as a right to privacy, so agencies have to be extremely careful about safeguarding information. Who should be granted access to sensitive data  from police chiefs or patrol officers at the local level to FBI agents or regional directors at the federal  is an ongoing debate in the law enforcement field.

For instance, the State Department is now struggling with how much information can be shared about immigrants in the United States. "The current statute [221.F of the Immigration and Naturalization Act] is written so visa data is confidential unless a person is already subject to a criminal or visa violation," said a spokesperson for the agency.

Some of the issues have already been addressed. For example, the government is now collecting potentially sensitive information from private organizations, such as electric companies, airlines and chemical factories.

"Corporations were concerned that if they made their vulnerabilities known, someone could use the Freedom of Information Act to gain that data and damage their public image," said Ron Dick, director of information assurance strategic initiatives at Computer Sciences Corp., based in El Segundo, Calif.

In response to this concern, Congress included a provision in the USA Patriot Act that exempts critical infrastructure information from FOIA requests.

Although law enforcement communications face many challenges, most observers think a great deal of progress has been made. "The communications among different law enforcement groups have been rapidly improving," said State's Holmes. "It's not perfect yet, but it is much better than it was a few years ago."

Korzeniowski is a freelance writer in Sudbury, Mass., who specializes in IT issues. He can be reached at paulkorzen@xxxxxxxx 

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Secure access to information 

Participating agencies: The agencies with the primary responsibility for designing and maintaining the links are the CIA, the FBI, and the State and Justice departments. A large number of other federal agencies, including elements of the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Homeland Security and Treasury, as well as agencies such as the National Security Council and the Peace Corps, make some of their information available to others. In addition, approximately 35,000 state and municipal law enforcement agencies can view the information. 

Nature of information exchange: The various agencies have put a wide range of data about law enforcement matters on file. The information includes unclassified data, such as the contact information for a city's police department, to highly sensitive data, such as an organized crime boss' complete profile. 

IT solution: The network connections are based largely on a series of standard IP protocols, such as Secure Sockets Layer, X.509 digital certificates, public-key infrastructure and Standard Generalized Markup Language. The federal government has added to these standards where necessary to ensure that the proper level of security is given to confidential and public documents. 

Cost: The costs are spread across the participating agencies.
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Government Computer News
05/30/03 
HSD official obtained Ph.D. from diploma mill 
By Patience Wait and Wilson P. Dizard III 
Post Newsweek Tech Media

A high-ranking career official in the Homeland Security Department apparently obtained her doctorate from a Wyoming diploma mill. 

Laura L. Callahan, now senior director in the office of department CIO Steven Cooper, states on her professional biography that she ?holds a Ph.D. in Computer Information Systems from Hamilton University.? Callahan, who is also president of the Association for Federal IRM and a member of the CIO Council, is commonly called by the title ?Dr.? 

Callahan?s resume says she began her civil service career in 1984. Before joining HSD, she was deputy CIO at the Labor Department. 

Hamilton University, according to an Internet search, is located in Evanston, Wyo. It is affiliated with and supported by Faith in the Order of Nature Fellowship Church, also in Evanston. The state of Wyoming does not license Hamilton because it claims a religious exemption. Oregon has identified Hamilton University as a diploma mill unaccredited by any organization recognized by the U.S. Department of Education. 

Callahan, at post time Friday night, could not be reached for comment after repeated calls to her office. Michelle Petrovich, a department spokeswoman, said late Friday afternoon, ?We have no reason at this time not to believe Laura Callahan?s credentials, and we will look into the matter.? 

Diploma mills and their potential for fraud were the subject of an inquiry by the General Accounting Office at the request of Sen. Susan M. Collins (R-Maine), who now chairs the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. In a November 2002 report, GAO described how it purchased bachelor?s and master?s degrees in Collins? name from Degrees-R-Us of Las Vegas. It referred the matter to the Federal Trade Commission. 

Andrew O?Connell of GAO?s Office of Special Investigations said of any government employee who purchases a fake diploma, ?There?s no doubt in our mind that it?s a scam on the government.? 

A search of accredited institutions turned up four colleges and universities with the name Hamilton, in addition to Hamilton University: Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y.; Hamilton College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Hamilton Technical College in Davenport, Iowa; and Suwannee-Hamilton Technical Center in Live Oak, Fla. None of the four awards doctoral degrees. 

In its printed materials, Hamilton University lists the National Park Service among organizations that employ its degree-holders, or that reimbursed employees who obtained Hamilton degrees. 

Hamilton?s material said it provides degrees to individuals who state that their life and work experiences give them qualifications comparable to those of persons who complete academic courses and theses or dissertations to obtain degrees. The bulk of communications between Hamilton and its customers is via e-mails, faxes and postal mail. Calls to Hamilton go to a voice-mail system. 

?They bought an old motel and took it apart and furnished it with stucco. It?s very nice,? said Connie Morris, executive assistant at the Evanston, Wyo., Chamber of Commerce. ?They are members of the Chamber. They have two or three employees.? 

The Oregon Office of Degree Authorization quotes Webster?s Third New International Dictionary on the definition of a diploma mill: An institution of higher education operating without supervision of a state or professional agency and granting diplomas which are either fraudulent or because of the lack of proper standards worthless. 

According to a spokesman for the Office of Personnel Management, the penalties for providing false or misleading information, including submitting false academic credentials, include termination or other serious disciplinary actions. 

?There is no regulation that addresses diploma mills. You are talking about falsification of academic credentials,? the OPM spokesman said. 

Lawrence Lorber, a partner with the Washington law firm Proskauer Rose LLP who specializes in labor and employment law, spoke with a reporter about circumstances matching Callahan?s claim to a Ph.D., though he specifically asked not to be told of the person or federal departments involved. 

?There is something called resume fraud, which this would be considered,? Lorber said. ?It?s what it sounds likenot the embellishment, but a fraudulent addition that indicates a job or degree.? 

It is the accreditation of the programor lack thereofthat becomes important, Lorber said. ?By listing it [on your resume] you are creating the presumption that it?s from an accredited, recognized institution.? 

Hamilton University?s enrollment application and enrollment invitation spell out the simple requirements for students who wish to obtain a Ph.D. 


$3,600, payable up front by bank draft or personal check only. Hamilton does not accept credit cards. 


Completing one course at home on ?personal, business and professional ethics.? Hamilton provides the course workbook, and the student must complete the open-book examination that is included. The school?s materials state the course and test require an average of five to eight hours to complete. 


Writing one paper relevant to the area in which the Ph.D. is being sought. The minimum length for the paper is 2,000 words, or roughly four pages, and will ?be referred to as a dissertation,? the materials say. 

In return, Hamilton promises to deliver ?an official diploma in a leather bound holder? of the highest possible quality and carry[ing] the official raised seal of the university.? The organization promises that the ?diplomas granted by Hamilton University do not reflect how the degree requirements were met (traditionally or externally).? 

Because prospective employers often want to verify a candidate?s education, Hamilton also promises to provide verification of degrees, once the person provides authorization to release the information. 

In this case, for instance, when asked via e-mail to verify Callahan?s Ph.D., the registrar?s office of Hamilton University replied, ?All requests for degree verification must be made in writing and must be accompanied by an authorization signed by the graduate.? 

But Hamilton promises that when it provides transcripts, they will look like real transcripts, even providing numbers, titles and grades for courses the student did not take, because their requirement was waived due to life or work experience. The transcripts will not say the courses were waived, and the grade average shown for an entire transcript will be based on the grades for the at-home test and the dissertation. 

A person identifying himself as Dr. R.G. Marn, faculty adviser, said the institution?s privacy policies prevented it from releasing records. He declined to comment on whether Hamilton University is a diploma mill.
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Government Executive
May 30, 2003 
New border security system raises cost-benefit concerns 
By Siobhan Gorman, National Journal 

A mammoth border-security program is the next big thingat least the next big planned thingon the horizon at the Department of Homeland Security. Dubbed U.S. VISIT, the program will attempt to track the arrival and departure of those foreign visitors who are required to have visas. But actually accomplishing that deceptively simple-sounding task will almost certainly be far more difficult and expensive than the Bush administration has let on. And the security payoff may be minimal.


How much safer will U.S. VISIT make the nation? "Truthfully, probably not a whole lot safer," says former Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner James Ziglar, who left office last December before his agency was broken in two and folded into the new department. "If the idea is that this is going to stop terrorists from coming into the country, it's not going to accomplish thatalthough it may have some beneficial deterrent effect," he predicts.


Short for U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indication Technology, U.S. VISIT will involve taking visitors' fingerprints and photographs and checking that information and their names against a computerized list of known terrorists and lawbreakers. The program will also give the department a way to know which foreign visitors have overstayed the terms of their visas. (Visitors from 27 countries are not required to have visas; they will not be tracked.)


Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge has promised that the U.S. VISIT system will be up and running at every U.S. airport and seaport by the end of 2003 and at the 50 busiest border crossings by the end of 2004. According to department sources, Ridge is frustrated that his department doesn't have much to show for its work thus far, and so he has zeroed in on making U.S. VISIT a tangible accomplishment.


Already, U.S. VISIT is running so far behind that Ridge's deadline might be impossible to meet. A tug-of-war between competing factions within the department has slowed the initiative. The program is supposed to be run by the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is headed by Michael Garcia and is responsible for enforcing immigration laws. But Robert Bonner, who oversees the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection and thus is responsible for policing the nation's borders, has been lobbying Congress to shift the program to his division. Also slowing the project is what insiders describe as "turmoil" inside Garcia's shop. Garcia is a former federal prosecutor whose hard-nosed approach has upset many of his service-oriented underlings.


As Ridge presses to get U.S. VISIT on track, he's likely to run low on cashfast. Ridge is planning to spend $380 million on the program this year and hopes to secure $480 million for 2004. And he recently told a Senate panel that he thinks this money is sufficient. But when Ziglar, who spent two decades on Wall Street, tallied the cost of launching a fully functioning entry-exit tracking system, he came up with a price tag of $10 billion and an implementation time frame of three to four years.


The undersecretary for border and transportation security, Asa Hutchinson, said last week that a functioning U.S. VISIT program could have drawn the government's attention to two of the 19 hijackers in the 9/11 attacks because one, Hani Hanjour, didn't show up for school, and another, Mohamed Atta, had stayed beyond the limits of his visa on a previous occasion. But Ziglar fears that terrorists will easily be able to evade U.S. VISIT's security net. "If they're clever, we're not going to know that they're bad guys," he says. "The chances are that they're going to live within the terms of their visa, and they're going to still do their damage while they're in compliance with the law." What U.S. VISIT will improve, Ziglar continues, is the enforcement of immigration laws. (When Congress first mandated an entry-exit tracking system in 1996, the measure was intended to stem the tide of illegal immigration. That system was never fully funded.)


Once U.S. VISIT begins checking visitors against the department's list of known bad guys, the project's usefulness will depend in large measure on the quality and comprehensiveness of that list. The quality controls on the data being fed into federal information banks, especially those at border-control agencies, have been notoriously poor. Studies, for example, repeatedly criticized the accuracy and timeliness of the databases used by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. As recently as February, a report by the Justice Department's inspector general noted, "The INS has serious and continuing problems with data reliability."


Calling the INS's data "a major problem over many years," a former inspector general of the Justice Department, Michael Bromwich, said in a recent interview, "Data quality is the key to having any system like this work properly.... If the quality of inputs [is] lousy, the quality of outputs is unreliable."


The General Accounting Office noted recently that nine federal agencies have compiled a total of 12 watch lists of known or suspected terrorists and other criminalsa network that it branded "overly complex, unnecessarily inefficient, and potentially ineffective."


And fingerprints might not be much more helpful to the U.S. VISIT program than names will be. According to Hutchinson, a foreigner being tracked will be asked to supply two fingerprints at a border checkpoint before being sent on his or her way. The fingerprint database that U.S. VISIT will be able to tap into instantly was designed to ensnare illegal immigrants already wanted by authorities. To instead run fingerprints through the FBI's vast database of criminal and terrorist suspects would take hours, not moments. Besides, some criminals on the FBI's list could slip through the U.S. VISIT system anyway, because U.S. VISIT will use only two fingerprints while the FBI uses a 10-print system.


U.S. VISIT will face a number of practical implementation issues as well. Currently, there's nothing to prevent a foreign visitor from officially checking out of this country but then never actually boarding a plane. The U.S. VISIT system will have to find a way to ensure that foreigners are held in a secure location so they cannot slip away after going through the exit system.


At the land borders, the department can create an exit system in one of two ways. It can build new facilities, which will involve acquiring land, creating more car lanes, hiring more people, and installing new equipment. And these border crossings would need two linesone to leave the United States and the other to, say, enter Canada. "You've doubled the problem at the border," Ziglar says.


The other option is to cajole Mexico and Canada into doing the exit controls for usperhaps even pay them to do that. But one Canadian official warns, "Our computer system is not designed to talk to [the U.S.] computer system."


Once the Department of Homeland Security learns which foreign visitors have failed to depart on time, it will face the problem of locating them. (At the moment, some 3.2 million foreigners are in this country on expired visas.) Hutchinson recently announced the establishment of an Office of Compliance, which will coordinate information on who has stayed too long with tips about where enforcement officers might be able to find them.


Also, visa violators won't be allowed back in at a later time. However, former INS General Counsel David Martin contends, "Compiling a list doesn't do much." If the Homeland Security Department is serious about enforcing immigration laws, he says, it should start by tracking down known violators. In December 2001, the INS launched a program to round up 314,000 foreigners who had fled from deportation orders. Some 2,200 have been found and deported. The foreign-student tracking program that began in January has identified more than 2,000 who did not show up for school. But the department has not tallied how many have been apprehended.


Immigration officials have a less-than-stellar record when it comes to finding lawbreakers, and it's not clear how the new compliance team would change that. A recent Justice Department inspector general's report found that the INS was able to kick out just 13 percent of foreigners who had not been detained after being issued final deportation orders. The INS successfully deported just 6 percent of those undetained foreigners who came from countries declared to be state sponsors of terrorism. And a recent GAO study found the INS's procedures inadequate for tracking down foreign U.S. residents who might have knowledge helpful to terrorism investigations.


Still, says Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, U.S. VISIT is a step toward making the nation safer. "It's one tool in what needs to be a whole tool kit," he said. "What is the point of any particular security measure? It's not to create a hermetic seal. It's to make it increasingly difficult for bad guys to get into the country and increase the chances that one or two members of a large conspiracy will get tripped up."


The question is what the U.S. VISIT program will add to the nation's anti-terrorism toolbox. Would government time and money be better spent on first building a master watch list? The Office of Management and Budget may soon help answer that question. OMB's administrator for regulatory affairs, John Graham, says that his agency is reviewing the spending plan for the U.S. VISIT program and has asked the department to provide benefit and cost information.


Yet even if the entry-exit tracking system works perfectly, it will do nothing to stop terrorists from entering illegally. And terrorists can hardly be expected to be concerned with such niceties as obeying U.S. immigration laws. 
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Government Executive
May 30, 2003 
Homeland Security CIO pushes to consolidate IT procurement 
By Mathew Honan, National Journal's Technology Daily 

SANTA CLARA, Calif.The Homeland Security Department's chief information officer on Friday outlined the department's new procurement needs for information technology.

Speaking via videoconference to people at an Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) briefing here, Steven Cooper noted that procurement processes that had been separate for the different agencies that now comprise Homeland Security soon will fall under the auspices of the department. He sketched the overall IT structure for the department and touched on how that structure will affect procurement for both government agencies and private companies. 

In recent months, Cooper repeatedly has voiced the need for Homeland Security to integrate the existing systems of its 22 agencies to better manage the flow of data among federal, state and local agencies. He repeated that theme on Friday, stressing the need for greater consolidation, particularly as it relates to procurement.

"Rather than addressing application-specific types of work and procurement, what if we reached out and used the groupings at large program areas," Cooper said. "The [department] aims to reach out and group those procurement procedures. In order for us to move very rapidly to one [department], we're not going to get there in the time frame that we need to get there if we continue business as usual." 

To that end, Cooper said his IT leadership team has been meeting weekly since last August, assessing and documenting technology solutions for all of the agencies and reclassifying each according to one of three categories: mission-space assets, enterprise solutions and infrastructure.

Cooper defined mission-space assets as those that are used only in the original boundaries of the agencies that comprise the department's five directorates. Enterprise solutions are technology applications that cross agency boundariesincluding everything from financial management tools and e-government initiatives to Microsoft Office software and e-mail. And infrastructure encompasses the department's entire network across all agencies. 

"Previously, alerts and warnings were restricted to [agencies]," Cooper said, noting that they are now being repositioned department-wide. "Many things that were once thought of solely in the mission space of one agency or bureau are in fact enterprise solutions." He also announced that the department will treat its infrastructure "as a single, integrated environment."

Cooper noted that the new policy will impact suppliers to specific agencies within the department and that there will be private-sector "winners and losers" in the transition. However, he noted that consolidation procedures will result in many new opportunities for technology vendors and encouraged vendors to contact his department with solutions and ideas. 

Secure Computing CEO John McNulty, a speaker at the event, noted the difficulty and opportunities that lay ahead for department and industry. "The task that Steve Cooper is undertaking I think of as the Manhattan Project that will never end," he said in reference to the research that led to the making of the first atomic bombs. "This challenge that is homeland security must be addressed by technology."
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