Clips September 15, 2003

[Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>]

Clips September 15, 2003

ARTICLES

Sharpton protests Mich. Internet voting plan
Blogging the Recall
Britain's Barclays Bank Warns of Email Scam
Bringing Broadband Over the Mountain 
Crackdown May Send Music Traders Into Software Underground
State delays high-tech passport requirement
Feds, industry mull offshore outsourcing
IG audits FAA plans for new air traffic system 
Maryland county gets ready for Enhanced 911 service 
OPM emphasizes security training 
Commerce under pressure to clean up giant Web database 

*******************************
USA Today
Sharpton protests Mich. Internet voting plan
09/12/03

WASHINGTON (AP)  Democrat Al Sharpton is protesting a plan to allow
Internet voting in Michigan's presidential caucus and challenging rival
Howard Dean to stand with him. 
For the first time, the Michigan Democratic Party is planning to allow
party members to vote for the party's presidential nominee via the
Internet, as well as by attending the Feb. 7 caucus or mailing in a
ballot. 

Sharpton sent a letter to Dean Thursday, challenging the former Vermont
governor to oppose the Internet voting plan. Dean's campaign has focused
on building support from Web users. 

"Perhaps it is due to the fact you governed a state with virtually
no people of color living within its borders that you are unaware that
this is a racially biased proposal," Sharpton wrote. Vermont is
nearly 98% white. 

Dean spokeswoman Tricia Enright said his campaign is not involved in
Michigan's Internet voting effort, but Dean supports the concept of
Internet voting or anything else that can bring more people to the polls
"as long as it's coupled with the need to insure access to African
Americans and others when it might not be available." 

She said Dean's campaign manager would contact Sharpton's campaign to
discuss the issue. 

In a telephone interview Friday, Sharpton said the plan would give an
advantage to voters who are wealthy enough to have a computer and
Internet access and can participate from home. 

"A grandmother in a housing development is going to have to go
downstairs and walk five blocks to vote," he said. "Who do you
think is going to get more of the vote? Democracy is about equal access.
This is not equal access. It really is a high-tech poll tax."

Dean's lack of experience with minority voters is seen by some as a
weakness of his campaign, which has gained in fund raising and grabbed
the lead in many key polls. Now that Dean is the front-runner, he has
become the target of criticism from his eight primary rivals. 

Sharpton said he only wrote to the former Vermont governor and not the
other candidates because Dean said Tuesday night at a debate sponsored by
the Congressional Black Caucus that he speaks about race not only to
blacks, but to white audiences. 

"Here's where he can take a real moral stand to show that he wasn't
just using one line at the debate," Sharpton said. "Since he's
now posing as the guy who deals with race, this is his
responsibility." 

Some Michigan Democrats are challenging the plan to allow Internet voting
with the Democratic National Committee. The party allowed Internet voting
in Arizona's primary in 2000. 

Sharpton said he called Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry
McAuliffe to express his concern. McAuliffe is withholding judgment until
the party hears the challenge later this month. 
*******************************
Washington Post
Blogging the Recall
By Cynthia L. Webb
 Friday, September 12, 2003; 10:02 AM 
The California gubernatorial recall election -- the messiest and
most entertaining political news story of the year -- is providing yet
another boost for the online journal phenomenon commonly known as
"blogging." 
And with 135 candidates seeking to replace embattled Gov. Gray
Davis (D), Web logs are an essential tool for anyone who's trying to
make sense of a story that's producing serious -- and at times, farcical
-- developments on a daily, if not hourly, basis.
There are too many blogs covering the recall election in some way or
other to list all of them. But a few stand out as excellent resources for
California voters who need an online water cooler to gather around for
updates on Arnold Schwarzenegger and the rest of the pack.
One source, the offspring of a mainstream news operation, is
The California
Insider, authored by Sacramento Bee columnist
Daniel Weintraub. 
Launched last April to cover California politics in general, Weintraub is
putting all his energy into the recall, which is, after all, the biggest
political story to hit the state in decades. The opinion and perspective
that Weintraub offers as a veteran political and public affairs writer
makes this a valuable online destination. 
The blog gives Weintraub the ability to post first-person observations
that no news editor would ever let slip onto a printed page. Here's an
example posted on Monday: 
"I saw my first Gray Davis town hall tonight, and if nothing else,
it was a testament to the power of the recall. There he was, the most
important man in California government, sitting awkwardly in a stiff
plastic chair on a riser in front of 35 African-American residents,
activists and business owners from South Los Angeles who would never have
had this chance if not for the recall. The meeting was held in a small,
stuffy conference room in the corner of the Baldwin Hills shopping mall.
... Glamorous it was not. ... First question: Now that you've bought off
the Latino vote with the driver's license bill, what are you going to
give us in exchange for our support? Davis handled the evening well, ...
But he ducked many of the questions, lectured a bit too much even he
praised the power of listening, and still seemed uncomfortable in these
environs. So much so that afterward when I approached him he greeted me
quite warmly, like a long-lost friend, when, given our relationship, we
have been anything but. Any port in a storm."
Unlike most of the traditional coverage, Weintraub also appears to have a
knack for finding some off-the-beaten path nuggets, such as the campaign
Web site of AskJeeves.com founder Garrett Gruener. Gruener wasn't
at last week's televised debate that featured five of the major
candidates. But that didn't stop him from participating, as Weintraub
noted in his blog that Gruener "answered the questions in real time
on his web
site. He seems to have snuck in a few phantom
questions while he was at it, as if there weren't enough asked as it was.
God bless him." 
For readers looking for a one-stop overview of all the major media
coverage of the recall, there's no better place than
Rtumble.com,
a Web site that's been around for several years and has evolved into a
sophisticated media blog. Rtumble.com is run by Jack Kavanaugh, a
former reporter who created his site in the 1990s -- the URL is shorthand
for "Rough & Tumble" -- to help other journalists
understand the complexities of Golden State politics.
A few gems on Rtumble.com: Kavanaugh links to a Los Angeles Daily News
article about Las Vegas odds favoring Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante (D) to
become the next governor if voters opt to eject Davis from office. And
Kavanaugh highlights a Sacramento Bee article about Davis appointing a
major campaign donor to a seat on the powerful University of California
Board of Regents.
The Election
Law blog isn't dedicated specifically to the
recall, but author Rick
Hasen from the Loyola Law School in Los
Angeles makes it a top topic. Mostly, Hasen offers quick links to media
coverage he finds interesting. But his background as an election law
expert provides some meat when he weighs in on specific items,
particularly legal challenges to the recall campaign. His site also has a
slew of helpful links to other blogs and related sites.
The
Condor is yet another blog authored by a
former political reporter, in this case, David Jensen, who worked for UPI
and The Sacramento Bee. Jensen, like Kavanaugh and Weintraub, provides
cutting analysis, such as his take on a recent statewide poll showing Lt.
Gov. Bustamante leading a divided field of Republican candidates:
"In the next week or two, we are going to find out whether it is
true that Republicans eat their young. The victim in this case is likely
to be State Sen. McClintock. The reason is that Monday's Field Poll shows
Arnold losing to Bustamante, 30 percent to 25 percent, with McClintock
(13 percent) in the race. With McClintock out, it is nearly a dead heat
(given the margin of error) with Arnold at 33 percent and Bustamante 31
percent."
Of note: Jensen says he writes from his sailboat docked somewhere off the
coast of Mexico.
Another popular blog, written for a major media Web site, is
kausfiles,
written by former New Republic writer Mickey Kaus and offered
through Slate.com. Kaus's blog predates the recall campaign, but
he's now devoting nearly all of his postings on it. He, like many
bloggers, is a great linker, featuring links to Weintraub's blog and a
number or other popular blogs, including
Tacitus.
Kaus's blog, written from his home base in Venice, Calif., is a
noteworthy read since he has an acerbic tongue and has no problems taking
on controversial issues, often with a snarky tone. Recent postings have
taken to task Bustamante and his ties to the Chicano student union MEChA.
He also offers readers scandalous, albeit interesting headlines that
often mention sex and other things not typically thought of as political
stories, though this could be the work of the Web site looking to draw in
more readers. It appears to be working, and Klaus's blog is hard to avoid
once discovered.
Kaus was the first in late August to post the news of Schwarzenegger's
partying ways of the 1970s, which were revealed from an old adult
magazine interview. The news was then picked up by The Smoking Gun Web
site and a mini-scandal was born. In one of his postings after the news
broke, Kaus wrote: "Meanwhile, Schwarzenegger himself has brushed it
off [here, Kaus
links to a
Reuters story on washingtonpost.com], saying 'I haven't lived my life to
be a politician.' If only Dan ('I did not know in 1969 that I would be in
this room today') Quayle had thought of that one."
You may not agree with Kaus's musings, but his blog is worth a visit for
its exhaustive links to other online sources and blogs and for the
essay-like quality to some of his postings. 
The Rest of the Best
While not exhaustive, the following is a list of
some additional recall-themed blogs. The list is designed to offer a
sampling of some of the opining that is happening on the Web related to
the California recall election. If you have a favorite blog that covers
the recall that you think is worth mentioning,
drop me a
note.
? Blog The
Recall: The online mouthpiece of
BeatTheRecall.com, the site offers links to news about the recall
campaign and a "contribution" button for readers to contribute
to anti-recall activities.
?
101-365:
This blog, which isn't much about politics at all, does have a
detailed
list of candidates running to replace Davis,
complete with some snarky commentary from site creator Chris
Heilman.
? California
Recall: The authors of this blog say they
launched it to "provide a forum to make sense of what's going on in
a very key state." The blog reads like a message board of sorts,
with postings from different readers and links to various recall news
articles. 
?
Danmitchell.org:
Blogger Dan Mitchell frequently writes about the recall, among
other political issues.
? The Likely
Story: This blog ranges over a number of
topics, with a large number of postings on the recall. 
?
Prestopundit.com:
University of California, Riverside philosophy professor Greg
Ransom's site has lots of links to news and commentary. But the best
thing about this blog is the comprehensive set of links to other
California bloggers and news sources. It's a great starting point.
? The Southern California Law
Blog: A blog focused on law, politics and
Southern California news, has a number of random news postings, but a
number of updates related to legal challenges of California's recall
election. 
?
VoteNoFirst.com:
This blog appears to be a thinly veiled (but funny) campaign tool of
William
Tsangares, a Republican candidate in the Oct.
7 recall who is clearly in the campaign as a joke. Tsangares's blog is
dedicated to getting people to vote no on the recall. The site links to a
number of documents, including a
"Recall
Arnold" petition and some daily swipes at
Schwarzenegger. One recent posting included this: "I still claim
that Arnold is the second most liberal Republican in this race, I'm the
first. You gotta love him for being pro-choice, pro-gay and anti-gun. He
can change the public perception of the Republican Party overnight."
Gubernatorial Candidate
Blogs
? Diana
Foss 
? Garrett
Gruener 
? Arianna
Huffington 
? Reva Renee
Renz 
? Georgy
Russell 
? Marc
Valdez 
? Daniel
Watts 
? Jim
Weir 
? Sharon
Davis: The wife of Gov. Davis has her own
recall blog.
Know of any other California recall candidates that have blogs up and
running? Send me a
link and I will add it to this list.
California 
Newspapers
A number of California newspapers have dedicated
a special Web page to recall coverage. While not blogs, the packaged
recall material and links offered on many news site is a helpful
clearinghouse of recall-related news. Many are updated with daily wire
service stories on the recall. A sampling of some of the collective sites
for special recall coverage:
? The Fresno
Bee 
?The Los Angeles
Times (Registration required)
? The Orange County
Register: Features a countdown ticker until
the day of the election.
? The San Diego Union
Tribune: Graphs and interactive media
features on the recall campaign.
? The San Francisco
Chronicle 
? The San Jose Mercury
News 
? The Santa Barbara News
Press 
? Political
Pulse: Not a newspaper site, but a newsletter
covering the recall and California politics.
National Newspapers and
Other Media
?
FindLaw.com
? The New York
Times (Registration required)
? The Wall Street
Journal (Subscription required)
? The Washington
Post 
*******************************
Associated Press
Britain's Barclays Bank Warns of Email Scam
Sat Sep 13, 4:04 PM ET

LONDON (Reuters) - U.K. bank Barclays Plc warned on Saturday of an email
scam that tricks its online customers into revealing their confidential
details. 

   

The bank said fraudsters had sent an email message falsely purporting to
be from Barclays, which included a link to what appeared to be the bank's
Web site. 


Customers were then prompted to enter their personal details, such as
passwords and personal identification numbers (PINs), which could be used
to withdraw cash or transfer funds to other accounts. 


"Barclays is in no way involved with this email and the Web site
does not belong to us," a Barclays spokeswoman said. "We have
now closed down five of the six Web sites and locked the sixth."


She said around 400 people had contacted the bank to say they had
received the email, which had not only been sent to Barclays' customers.


Of these, eight said they had given out their personal details, and their
accounts had now been locked. Barclays said it would cover any losses
caused by the scam. 


The spokeswoman said the bank, which has 3.5 million online customers,
did not send out emails requesting information and its security only
required two letters from people's passwords when they logged on.


Whilst the problem is being addressed, the bank said it would limit the
payments customers could make online to 500 pounds ($796.9). 


"Hopefully the limit will only be there for a couple of days,"
the spokeswoman said. 


Britain's National Hi-Tech Unit, which tackles cyber crime, has been
called in to investigate the scam. Last year the unit's head said 89
percent of U.K. businesses had been victimized by at least one incident
of cyber crime. 
*******************************
Washington Post
Bringing Broadband Over the Mountain 
Roadstar Puts Wireless Technology to the Test 
By Griff Witte
Monday, September 15, 2003; Page E01 

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael K. Powell traveled
last week to a hay-strewn barn at the end of a gravel road high above the
Virginia countryside and proclaimed he had seen the future of
broadband.

The barn, routinely used by the local children for paintball practice,
doubles as a radio receiver and retransmitter that enables residents and
businesses in western Loudoun County to get something that can be hard to
come by in rural places such as this: high-speed Internet
service.

"I'm extremely impressed," Powell said after touring the barn,
which has six discreet antennas, ranging in size from four to 18 inches,
planted firmly on its roof. "This is what we've worked so hard to
create. This is the face of things to come."

Martin Dougherty, chief executive of Roadstar Internet Inc. of Bluemont,
Va., certainly hopes so. Dougherty installed the antennas as the
centerpiece for his start-up, which aims to use wireless technology to
bring broadband service into areas where cable modems and
digital-subscriber-line (DSL) technology do not reach.

The company got off the ground in February, and after months of stuffing
fliers into mailboxes up and down back roads in the foothills of the Blue
Ridge Mountains, Roadstar now has more than 150 customers.

Last Monday the company showed off its network to Powell, FCC
Commissioner Kevin J. Martin and numerous other FCC officials, all of
whom will be watching closely to see if Roadstar can succeed.

Although broadband has become readily available in urban and suburban
areas, rural America is still trying to catch up. In sparsely populated
regions, including portions of Loudoun, there just aren't enough
customers for the cable and phone companies to justify the infrastructure
costs associated with deploying broadband.

Powell said that for that reason, wireless may be the solution or, at the
very least, another viable player in what he hopes will be a highly
competitive market.

For the Weitz family, until recently, there was hardly any competition at
all. "It's feast or famine out here," said Rick Weitz of
Bluemont, whose wife, Kathy, home-schools five out of their six children
with the aid of the Internet. "Before Roadstar it was all
famine."

Before this year, the family had a dial-up connection that slogged along,
making online learning an excruciatingly slow process. Since they signed
up for Roadstar, however, they said their connection has improved
significantly.

"When we had dial-up, you would sit there for hours. This is a lot
faster," said Caleb Weitz, 16.

For its business customers, who pay a $250 installation fee and then $99
per month, Roadstar guarantees connection speeds ranging from 128
kilobits per second (kbps) to 1.5 megabits per second (mbps) for both the
downlink and the uplink. Residential customers pay the same installation
fee, but only $59 per month. 

Dougherty said there are no guarantees for residential users, but that
speeds average around 800 kbps. By comparison, DSL and cable modem
connections typically range between several hundred kbps and 1.5 mbps for
the downlink, and up to 128 kbps for the uplink. Most dial-up modem
speeds top out at 56 kbps. To get broadband out to an area that's more
than an hour's drive from Washington, Dougherty's company uses an
unlicensed portion of the spectrum that he beams in from Equinix Inc., a
flea market of sorts for bandwidth that has a facility in Ashburn. The
signal travels 18 miles from Ashburn to a 1,200-foot crest in the Blue
Ridge Mountains, where Roadstar's receiver sits perched on the barn in
Bluemont.

 From the barn, the signal is then retransmitted down into the rustic
towns and posh subdivisions at the foot of the ridge, where Roadstar has
scattered a dozen repeater stations. Each of those stations, which can be
positioned on anything from private homes to silos, has its own antennas.
The repeater stations then pass the signal on for its last leg, into the
homes and offices of Roadstar's customers. 

Dougherty said Roadstar's service has been "rock solid,"
staying up and running even during this winter's blizzards. And at least
for now, he said, the company is profitable, though small, with only
three employees. 

But Dougherty said his company will have to grow if it is to succeed.
"In order for this to be a profitable business, you've got to deploy
in mass numbers. There's no way around it," he said.

And to do that, he said, there has to be more unlicensed spectrum
available, especially low-end spectrum that can more easily penetrate
trees and other obstacles.

"I'm using it as fast as I can," Dougherty said.
"Eventually I'm going to run out of spectrum and I'm going to have
to tell customers, 'I can't help you.' "

Powell indicated last week that he was sympathetic to Dougherty's
concern, and on Wednesday the FCC voted to propose several regulatory
amendments intended to make it easier for entrepreneurs such as Dougherty
to bring wireless broadband to rural America.

Dougherty will also need money. So far, he and his wife, Rosemary, who
serves as the company's marketing director, have funded Roadstar out of
their own pockets, with some help from investments by a customer and a
former colleague. The next round of funding, which Martin Dougherty said
he expects soon, will come from venture capitalists.

FCC officials say they do not know exactly how many rural residents are
being served by wireless broadband, but they say the number has been
increasing exponentially over the last year. "It's one of those
things that is literally growing faster than anybody could have
imagined," said Robert Pepper, the FCC's chief of policy
development. 

Although wireless is one of the few options available to many rural
residents today, the field could soon become a lot more crowded.

Arunas Slekys, vice president at Hughes Network Systems, said his company
has begun to bundle Direcway, a satellite system for deploying broadband
at speeds of around 400 kbps on the downlink and 128 kbps on the uplink,
with its popular satellite television service, DirecTV. Slekys said
Direcway has so far signed up 200,000 customers nationwide, and the
service is catching on fast in places like Loudoun. 

For cable service, Adelphia Communications spokesman Paul Jacobson said
the company has undertaken a major upgrade of its network to allow more
customers access to broadband. Jacobson said the company's cables run
past 70,000 homes in Loudoun, of which 44,500 can get high-speed Internet
today. After the improvements are completed next year, he said, all
70,000 will be eligible. 

Verizon, meanwhile, continues to offer T-1 connections for businesses
that can afford the steep price, as well as DSL in an increasing number
of areas. But Verizon is also looking at deploying wireless broadband
itself, according to spokesman Harry Mitchell. The company just completed
a test on a wireless system in Fairfax County, indicating that wireless
could be an option for the suburbs as well.

"Wireless is increasingly becoming a competitor on the broadband
front, not only in the most rural areas," Mitchell said. 

For Randy Collins, president and chief executive of the Loudoun County
Chamber of Commerce, the introduction of new broadband choices is welcome
news, especially considering that the options have historically been
"poor." 

The first few attempts to offer wireless broadband, he said, did not
offer much hope for improvement, with companies offering spotty
service.

But Collins said that with Roadstar's arrival and the introduction of
better wireless technology, he expects that things will soon begin to
change.

"Wireless is catching up with itself," Collins said. "It's
able to offer reasonably priced, high speed, reliable service. And that's
what people want."
*******************************
New York Times
September 15, 2003
Crackdown May Send Music Traders Into Software Underground
By SAUL HANSELL

Come people may well be intimidated by the 261 lawsuits that the music
industry has filed against Internet users it says are illegally sharing
songs. 

But hundreds of software developers are racing to create new systems, or
modify existing ones, to let people continue to swap music  hidden
from the prying eyes of the Recording Industry Association of America, or
from any other investigators. 

"With the R.I.A.A. trying to scare users around the world, the
developer community is pumping up to create networks which are safer and
more anonymous," said Pablo Soto, a developer in Madrid who designed
the software for two file-sharing systems, Blubster and Piolet. 

Some experts wonder if the industry's efforts will create more trouble
for it than ever. "The R.I.A.A. is breeding antibiotic-resistant
bacteria," said Clay Shirky, a software developer who teaches new
media at New York University. 

Blubster, which has an estimated quarter-million users, already uses
technology to make eavesdropping more difficult, Mr. Soto said. Its next
version will encrypt files so they can be decoded only by their intended
user.

Other systems are sending files on more circuitous Internet routes
instead of, or in addition to, using encryption. And some developers hope
to replace the current systems, which connect millions of users, with
private file-sharing networks  speakeasies that may be too small for
the industry to find. 

The developers of the new systems say there is nothing illegal about
writing software that helps people keep secrets. United States courts
have held that file-sharing software may not be banned if it has both
legitimate and illegal uses.

The Recording Industry Association of America has said that it is
unconcerned about the increasing anonymity of file sharing. The stated
purpose of its lawsuits is not to catch every hard core music pirate, but
to show millions of casual file sharers that what they are doing is
illegal.

In addition, none of the new methods offer perfect anonymity, experts
say. Yet many of the new systems are likely to make the recording
industry work harder to find file traders. 

Private file sharing stems from academic work on encryption and data
security over the last decade. One system is Freenet, introduced in 1999
by Ian Clarke. It allows people to publish files to be used by others,
with technology meant to keep the source anonymous. 

"Everyone said the Internet was an anarchistic thing through which
anyone could say anything," Mr. Clarke said. "But in reality it
is incredibly easy to monitor what is going on on the Internet. I was
interested in creating a system that would preserve anonymity."

Freenet is similar to other file-sharing services in that users make part
of their hard drives available to hold content to be downloaded by other
users. But all the files are encrypted so no one knows what files are on
a given machine. Requests to download a file are also encrypted.

Freenet has been a way to disseminate banned political tracts and has
been used by people who want to share illegal content like child
pornography. Mr. Clarke says he is willing to help people send files
illegally if he can also prevent political censorship. "I am an
absolutist on free speech," he said.

Freenet, however, is slow and hard to use, and it requires knowing a
specific file name. As a result, it has not been a viable alternative to
music-sharing services like KaZaA. Developers in Germany are creating a
program called Frost meant to make Freenet easier to use.

Another file-sharing model is for business users who want to collaborate
while protecting secrets from competitors. "The needs of businesses
and the needs of file traders are the same," Mr. Shirky said.
"I want a secure way to send you a three megabyte PowerPoint file
with no way for anyone else to see it. That is not different from an MP3
file."

Software by companies like Groove Networks creates private file networks
for specified users. Groove, which can cost $69 or more per user, is not
widely employed by music sharers. But a program called Waste is
attracting the interest of music traders who want to create
"darknets," as private file-sharing communities are known.

Waste was written by Justin Frankel, who works for the Nullsoft unit of
America Online. It was posted on Nullsoft's site one day last May and
removed the next , although not fast enough to keep copies from
circulating on the Web. (AOL's corporate cousin, Warner Music, is a
backer of the R.I.A.A.'s campaign against file sharing.) Frankel and AOL
did not return calls seeking comment.

Investigators for the music industry acknowledge that some of these
technologies may make their jobs more difficult, but they suggest that
users may not want to take advantage of them. 

"The thing about darknets is that the users show more culpability
than people who simply use peer-to-peer," said Randy Saaf, referring
to peer-to-peer sharing systems like KaZaA. Mr. Saaf is chief executive
of MediaDefender Inc., a music technology company that does work for the
record industry. "When people are found to be using them, they will
face stiffer penalties."

Meanwhile, older file-sharing services do not want to lose users to
darknets or other newcomers. Many of them are trying to add features they
say will protect privacy. Streamcast networks, the creator of Morpheus,
introduced a feature this summer that lets users relay files by way of
intermediary computers known as proxy servers  a technique that can
help obscure the path between the source of the file and the person who
downloads it.

Proxy servers and similar methods can be an effective way to hide, said
Stuart Schechter, a Harvard security researcher. But, he said, there is
nothing to stop the recording industry from creating proxy servers as
so-called honey pots to serve as decoys and gather information on users.
"The problem with any of these systems is how do you decide who to
trust," he said.
*******************************
Federal Computer Week
State delays high-tech passport requirement
BY Judi Hasson 
Sept. 15, 2003

Faced with a massive logistics problem, the State Department may postpone
the deadline for requiring 26 industrialized nations to issue
machine-readable passports for their citizens traveling to the United
States.

The machine-readable documents, mandated by the USA Patriot Act, would
allow countries whose citizens are allowed into the United States for 90
days without a visa to enter the country as long as they have a valid
passport that could be screened upon entry. 

The increased automation would cut entry time and give border agents a
chance to compare the passports with a database containing information on
potential terrorists and other criminals. Congress originally set the
deadline for 2007, but moved it up to Oct. 1 after the Sept. 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks.

Federal officials will grant countries a one-time extension that would
give them until Oct. 26, 2004. State is taking the step because some
nations have not been able to completely upgrade their passports by the
Oct. 1 deadline, even though most of them are now issuing passports with
a space on the side for computer codes, much like bar codes.

"Any country requesting this postponement must also certify that
it's making progress toward ensuring that machine-readable passports are
available to its nationals, and that it has taken appropriate measures to
protect against misuse of nonmachine readable passports," said State
spokesman Richard Boucher Sept. 8.

Members of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce applauded the department's
action, saying it would give countries the time they need, not only to
meet the machine-readable requirement, but also the deadline for
embedding chips in passports with facial recognition or fingerprint
data.

"This decision widely recognizes that reality by not forcing an
unrealistic timetable for passport requirements that would cause chaos at
our ports of entry," said Randel Johnson, a chamber vice
president.

But machine-readable passports are only one part of a strategy to control
access to the United States and screen noncitizens at land, sea and air
points of entry. About 100 countries face another deadline Oct. 26, 2004,
to introduce biometric identifiers in their passports. 

Jack Dillon, senior vice president for government solutions at Viisage
Technology Inc., which provides secure digital identification systems,
said many countries have not complied with the machine-readable
requirement because it costs money to add the components to the
documents.

Biometrics will not be available immediately on the many passports that
will not expire for nearly a decade after the 2004 deadline, Dillon said,
and this likely will add to the cost of obtaining the document.

"It's going to take 10 to 12 years before you have biometrics on
everyone's passports," he said. "It's a short-term start and a
long-term implementation."
*******************************
Federal Computer Week
Feds, industry mull offshore outsourcing
BY Michael Hardy 
Sept. 15, 2003

As American workers face mounting job losses and rising unemployment
rates, government and industry officials are struggling with the
sensitive issue of offshore outsourcing.

It may seem like a political issue as the Bush administration prepares
for an upcoming election, but federal agencies stand to be affected, too.
Lawmakers are considering new "Buy American" proposals that
would limit the ability of agencies to buy products that are not made
from primarily American components.

Federal procurement advocates generally oppose the idea. "It's
disruptive to the businesses and it doesn't make sense," said Robert
Guerra, a principal at Guerra, Kiviat, Flyzik and Associates Inc.
"When [technology] gets commoditized, it's going to get moved
offshore. It's not like it's taking jobs from Americans. Americans aren't
going to want to assemble monitors for 30 cents an hour. If we can
outsource that work and save the government money, so be
it."

American companies sometimes fire American workers and open facilities in
poorer countries where labor is cheaper and environmental and workplace
safety rules are not as strict. The lower production costs lead to lower
prices for products, but at the cost of jobs.

The cost aspect of the equation is particularly difficult to address
because no one knows how many American jobs, including those in
technology, companies have moved, said Harris Miller, president of the
Information Technology Association of America.

"I've heard estimates ranging from 10,000 to 150,000" jobs, he
said after a panel discussion that ITAA hosted recently in Washington,
D.C.

The numbers are so widely different that "it's not even a wild
guess," Miller said. "The problem is that companies aren't
talking." ITAA may commission its own study to try to quantify the
extent to which American companies use foreign labor, he said.

Costs to agencies would rise under the laws, Miller said, because
American hardware makers would not be able to rely on inexpensive
components from other countries. ITAA also opposes Buy American
rules.

"You buy a [computer], you open it up and it looks like the United
Nations in there," he said. 

"This is all customer-driven," said William Sweeney, vice
president of global government affairs at systems integrator EDS.
"We have a global economy. Work is being driven around the
world."

Drew Ladner, chief information officer at the Treasury Department, said
American workers should be trained to compete in that global economy. The
government's interest, he said, is in getting high-quality IT. 

"We need to make sure we have the best systems," Sweeney said.

The American IT industry has weathered a succession of blows, said Bruce
Mehlman, assistant secretary for technology policy at the Commerce
Department.

The flurry of spending that IT companies had been receiving to fix Year
2000 problems withered as the year came and went. The economy began to
slump, then terrorists attacked the country, the Enron and WorldCom Inc.
scandals shook the faith of investors, and the United States launched
wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, causing more economic caution at
home.

As a result, IT companies have had incentives to save costs with foreign
labor, he said. "It's a very real trend driving offshore
outsourcing," Mehlman said. "There is a lot that is yet to be
understood."

Outsourcing in general is a different matter, said George Newstrom,
Virginia's secretary of technology. Governments, especially cash-poor
state governments, have to economize, and outsourcing is one sure way to
do it. However, he said, government organizations should take care in
determining where outsourcing makes the most sense.

Newstrom said Virginia officials are still trying to figure out what part
of the $900 million they spend on IT should be outsourced two years into
Democratic Gov. Mark Warner's term. "Until we get our arms around
it, I don't know what to outsource," Newstrom said.

The state is trying to discourage companies from leaving, and especially
taking jobs out of the state and into other countries, he said. 

Newstrom argued against legislation. However, he said, government
organizations should be wary of the perception they create when they hire
companies that outsource significant amounts of work to other
countries.

"I think the political climate is very adverse for government to
say, 'We want to outsource work offshore,' " he said. "I don't
think there's a politician who could survive to the end of that sentence.
We don't even want to outsource to Maryland."
*******************************
Government Computer News
IG audits FAA plans for new air traffic system 
By Mary Mosquera 
September 15, 2003

The Transportation Department?s Inspector General began an audit this
week of the Federal Aviation Administration?s progress in its $2 billion
plan to replace its 30-year-old Host computer air traffic system.

The IG will review whether FAA has a realistic plan to provide the new En
Route Automation Modernization program on time and within budget, David
Dobbs, the associate IG for aviation audits, said in a statement Friday.

The IG will also examine cost and scheduling risks and whether the FAA
has integrated adequate computer security into the design. 

FAA intends to replace the Host computer hardware and software, including
the Host backup system, with the new en route system. Host tracks the
movement of high-altitude aircraft throughout the National Airspace
System. Because the Host software architecture is so old, it is difficult
to maintain and will not support new technologies that enhance capacity,
Dobbs said. 

Under the acquisition plan, FAA will spend $2.1 billion by 2010 to
complete the new system?s development and deployment to 27 facilities.
Progress and problems with ERAM will affect many other FAA programs,
including new communications systems and airspace redesign efforts.

?There is little room for further cost growth and schedule slips with
large FAA acquisitions,? Dobbs said. FAA needs to ensure that the new
system is properly integrated with other FAA modernization systems, keep
requirements stable and control costs, he said.
*******************************
Government Computer News
Maryland county gets ready for Enhanced 911 service 
By William Jackson 

Montgomery County, Md., is implementing Enhanced 911 in its emergency
communications system to help dispatchers and rescue personnel locate
emergency callers who use cellular phones. 

E911 is part of the county?s new Public Safety Data System, a $175
million infrastructure upgrade by Northrop Grumman Corp. 

?We have been waiting for the phone companies to define the standards for
how the data will be sent,? Montgomery County chief technology officer
Mike Knuppel said. ?It?s taken some time to develop those standards,? but
the equipment in the county?s emergency call centers should be configured
to receive the data in a couple of months. 

Before Enhanced 911, emergency call centers had no way to locate the
origin of 911 transmissions from cell phones. 

The Federal Communications Commission in 1996 adopted E911 rules
requiring carriers by April 1, 1998, to provide emergency answering
points with telephone numbers and locations of cell site or base station
where the calls originated. 

The commission soon after required carriers to be able to pinpoint a
caller?s location to within between 50 meters and 300 meters. But
carriers were slow to implement E911 and local governments even slower to
take advantage of it because of the equipment investment. 

Montgomery County included E911 in a wholesale upgrade of its emergency
communications system that began in 1997. In addition to E911, the
upgrade covers computer-aided dispatch, a mobile data communications
subsystem, a mobile message switch, vehicle-mounted mobile subscriber
equipment and 1,400 in-vehicle computers. 

The emergency communications system serves the county sheriff?s office
and police department as well as municipal police, fire and emergency
medical services. During last year?s Washington area sniper shootings,
the county distributed some of the new, 800-MHz digital radios from its
communications upgrade so that police in other jurisdictions could
participate in the manhunt. Knuppel said quite a few of the county?s
emergency calls come via cell phone, and ?the folks that are in
operations? are eager to use the enhanced service. 
*******************************
Government Computer News
09/12/03 
OPM emphasizes security training 
By Jason Miller 

The Office of Personnel Management is asking agencies to make sure
employees comply with computer security guidelines and training.

In a proposed Federal Register rule last week, OPM director Kay Coles
James proposed requiring employees to check a National Institute of
Standards and Technology site,
http://csrc.nist.gov,
for the latest information about IT security and training standards.

?These regulations afford agencies the opportunity to be immediately
aware of and come into timely compliance with changing computer security
guidelines and requisite training,? James said. ?The proposal provides
users more timely access to the most current applicable definitions and
guidelines.? 

OPM revised the regulations to require agencies to: 


Identify employees with significant security responsibilities and provide
role-specific training 


Make all employees and contractors who use IT study security awareness
materials at least annually 


Train executives in security basics as well as policy-level planning


Train program managers, CIOs and IT security personnel in security
basics, planning, system security management, lifecycle and risk
management, and contingency planning 


Give new employees IT security guidance within 60 days 


Hold refresher courses for employees based on need and IT security
changes. 

Comments are due to employ@xxxxxxx by Oct. 6. 
*******************************
Government Executive
September 12, 2003 
Commerce under pressure to clean up giant Web database 
By William New, National Journal 

A little-known global database of Web site owners has grown into a
significant worldwide cyber-crime tracking deviceand a major source of
concern to privacy advocates and foreign governments. Despite its growing
importance, the so-called "Whois" data is plagued with
inaccuracies, as well as technical, legal, and ethical problems. The
Commerce Department is facing increasing pressure to clean it
up.


As the creator of the Internet, the U.S. government remains responsible
for ensuring its stability and competitiveness. For this task, it created
a nonprofit corporation in 1998 that is growing up in its own right: the
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. ICANN, which is
based in Los Angeles, manages the domain-name system for Web site
addresses with endings such as .com, .net, and .org. It operates under a
memorandum of understanding with the Commerce Department. The agreement
expires on September 30.


To obtain a domain name, an applicant must pay a domain-name retailer, or
registrar. Registrars are required, through contracts with ICANN, to
collect personal information about the registrant, keep it up to date,
and make it public. This information, mainly contact details, is the
Whois data, and it is coming under intense scrutiny from a variety of
Internet constituencies.


Registrars are also required to offer "bulk" access to the
entire database for anyone paying up to $10,000 annually for 
it.


Many Internet users and others who benefit from the Internet are pressing
Commerce to require improvements in the Whois data as part of the renewal
of the agreement with ICANN. But last week, Commerce General Counsel
Theodore Kassinger told a House subcommittee that that would not be among
the top priorities for a likely multiyear extension of the deal. That was
not what subcommittee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, and ranking Democrat
Howard Berman of California were hoping to hear.


"Despite the demonstrated need and obligation of the Department of
Commerce, ICANN, and registrars to provide access to accurate Whois data,
there is an astonishing lack of enforcement of these contractual
terms," Smith said at the outset of the September 4 hearing of the
House Judiciary's Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual
Property, which he chairs. He said it is "inexcusable" that no
registrar has lost accreditation for failing to honor its Whois
commitments, despite widespread problems.


Also "inexcusable," Smith said, is the fact that in its
extension of its agreement with ICANN, Commerce intends to add a list of
seven "milestones" to assess ICANN's future performance, but
none deal directly with Whois, contract enforcement, or
intellectual-property protections.


Smith told National Journal that he would consider legislation to fix the
data problems if Commerce fails to act. "We're going to wait and see
if the Department of Commerce takes sufficient actions to clean up the
database and make it more useful and more reliable to everyone
involved," he said.


Despite Kassinger's comments, Smith said he hopes Commerce's new
agreement with ICANN "will contain a major enforcement component,
where contracts will be enforced and registrars or individuals may be
dropped if they do not provide accurate information in a timely
fashion." Kassinger said in the hearing that Commerce lacks the
legal authority to force registrars to comply, and that Commerce is not
ICANN's regulator.


"If Commerce is not ICANN's regulator, then who is?" countered
Susan Crawford, a professor at the Cardozo School of Law in New York
City. "ICANN's only powers extend from its [memorandum of
understanding] with the Department of Commerce."


The Whois database affects a large number of people. For instance,
network administrators need it to fix Internet problems. Law enforcement
and people targeting unsolicited e-mail, or spam, increasingly rely on
the database.


Investigators at the FBI Cyber Division use the Whois database
"almost every day," James Farnan, the division's deputy
assistant director, told the subcommittee. Farnan described how agents
used subpoenaed Whois data to find the owner of a Web site containing
child pornography. If the data is inaccurate, officers can serve a
subpoena on the registrars to obtain the real identity of the domain
owner through the credit card information used to purchase the domain
name. But not every registrar authenticates payment information, so
stolen credit cards can be used.


John LoGalbo, a trial lawyer in the Justice Department's Computer Crime
and Intellectual Property Section, told an ICANN meeting in June that
access to Whois data cuts through "layers of complexity and
delay" in international investigations. The Federal Trade Commission
has also publicly proclaimed the importance of the data.


Privacy advocates note that investigating fraud is only one use of the
database. The Electronic Privacy Information Center said in its newly
released global survey on privacy and human rights that Whois data is
available to anyone who uses the Internet, "including stalkers,
corrupt governments cracking down on dissidents, spammers, aggressive
intellectual-property lawyers, [and] police agents without legal
authority."


Alan Davidson of the Center for Democracy and Technology, in a letter
submitted to the House subcommittee for the September 4 hearing, argued
that safeguards for privacy and security are the best way to get
law-abiding people to provide accurate data.


Kathy Kleiman, a lawyer at McLeod, Watkinson and Miller in Washington and
one of the founders of ICANN's noncommercial constituency group, said
that in some countries, citizens trying to protect themselves have to
provide inaccurate information. She cited as an example a human-rights
group with a Web site that showed pictures of torture victims so families
could identify the bodies. "In the telephone world, we have unlisted
telephone numbers and even blocking to protect personal privacy,"
Kleiman said. "We need at least the same in the Internet
world."


Steve Metalitz, counsel to the Copyright Coalition on Domain Names, told
the subcommittee that accuracy and accessibility are critical to
electronic commerce and accountability on the Internet. He said that
access to data is "wildly inconsistent," and he criticized
ICANN for not doing enough to fix the database, which "remains
riddled with inaccurate data."


Benjamin Edelman of the Harvard Law School Berkman Center for Internet
and Society said that registrars and registrants need meaningful
incentives to comply with requirements, without which the Whois database
is "substantially fiction." Privacy concerns, he argued, could
be met by using third-party services.


There's no consensus on how to improve the system, but many Internet
constituents have shown preliminary interest in "tiered
access": The data would be accessible by degrees to those who need
it. Other ideas include providing notice to users when someone else views
their data, and creating "audit trails" that could reveal abuse
of the database.


Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration,
headed by newly named Administrator Michael Gallagher, chairs an
interagency group considering changes to the Whois database. The other
participants in the group are the Justice Department, the FTC, and the
Patent and Trademark Office.


ICANN also has Whois contracts with eight domain-name
registriesessentially wholesalers of domain names. Some maintain their
Whois data, and others do not. The newer registries have begun modifying
the contracts to meet new exigencies. For instance, the London-based
registry for the .name domain developed a tiered system for allowing
access to the Whois data out of fear that the registry was violating the
European Union data-privacy directive.


Most agree that the number of inaccuracies, whether the result of
outdated information or fraud, is high. There are more than 30 million
registrations in the "top-level" domains (.com, .net, and
.org), some 25 million of which are in the .com domain. About 10
percentor 3 millionof these registrations are inaccurate, according to
Edelman.


Kassinger said at the September 4 hearing that in nearly 12 months of
studying data problems, ICANN received 15,458 reports concerning 10,271
different domain names. Kassinger acknowledged that the number of reports
"may just be the tip of the iceberg." He also said that the
government shares some critics' concerns. But Commerce, he said, is
"gratified" by the commitment to Whois issues shown by the new
ICANN President and CEO Paul Twomey, and Kassinger added that new hirings
would help there.


Twomey, who took office in March, is organizing various ICANN
constituents into a new committee to discuss the Whois system. ICANN's
board has adopted a new policy requiring registrars to contact
domain-name registrants at least annually to confirm the accuracy of
their information.


In another effort, ICANN's government advisory committee is wrestling
with the variety of standards for handling personal information. For
instance, the European Union says that making Whois data public violates
its privacy law. Canada also has concerns. In addition, questions remain
as to how the 200-plus country domains, such as .fr for France, will deal
with Whois data.


ICANN expects to form the new constituents committee and to sponsor a
workshop on Whois "best practices" at its next board meeting at
the end of October. Twomey said in June that the committee's goal is to
prioritize issues and develop a work plan for addressing them. But he
stopped short of stating a goal of getting agreement on
solutions.


ICANN followers hold mixed views on whether ICANN will move quickly
enough. "It's a tremendous logjam," said one observer. "I
think we're all buckling down for a long process that will be [conducted
in] secret."
*******************************