Clips November 19, 2003

[Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>]

Clips November 19,
2003

ARTICLES

U.S. and Canada Sign Accord To Regulate Internet Drug Sales 
Overture cleans up its drug ad policy
Bush pushes for cybercrime treaty
Group wants phone number plan put on hold
SCO plans more Linux lawsuits
Computer upgrade causes child support delay
FAA reorganization will alter IT purchases 
Congress plans report cards on cybersecurity 
Nanotechnology R&D bills move through Congress 
Think Tank Wants Public's Help in 'Spyware' Fight 

*******************************
Washington Post
U.S. and Canada Sign Accord To Regulate Internet Drug Sales 
By DeNeen L. Brown
Wednesday, November 19, 2003; Page A23 

TORONTO, Nov. 18 -- U.S. and Canadian officials signed an agreement
Tuesday to collaborate on the regulation of Canada's Internet pharmacy
industry, which is selling millions of dollars of low-priced prescription
drugs to U.S. consumers.

Food and Drug Administration officials came to Canada to ask their
Canadian counterparts to find ways to ensure the safety of drugs sent to
the United States. "In both Canada and the United States, drugs must
be proven to be safe and effective in order to be legal," FDA
Commissioner Mark McClellan said at a news conference in Ottawa. "We
don't make any assumptions that drugs are safe. There's too much
potential for snake oil, or worse, in Americans or Canadians getting
unsafe drugs if we don't have strong regulatory protections in
place."

Under the agreement, the two countries said they would share information
about prescription drugs and attempt to work together to ensure the
quality of drugs being sold.

"We have seen lots of examples of unsafe drugs coming into the
United States from Canada, unapproved medicines, medicines that were not
stored properly, medicines dispensed in the wrong amount or without
proper physician labeling," McClellan said. "Other problems
like this have caused federal judges in the United States to declare that
there are real safety problems here and to take action to shut down some
of these operations."

Diane Gorman, the assistant health minister, said Canada was
investigating a number of cases raised by the FDA. "At this point in
time, we don't have evidence of Canadian law being broken," Gorman
said. "When we do have evidence of Canadian law being broken, we
will act accordingly."

Canada has been under increasing pressure from the Bush administration
and the U.S. pharmaceutical industry to halt the flow of drugs to the
United States from Canadian Internet pharmacies. Increasing numbers of
Americans are seeking to buy prescription drugs at cheaper prices in
Canada at a time when the high cost of drugs is being debated in
Congress. The governors of several states are exploring options for
holding down the spiraling costs of prescriptions, including the purchase
of drugs from Canada, where the government controls prescription
pricing.

"We are getting pressure," said Andy Troszok, vice president of
standards for the Canadian International Pharmacy Association, formed
last year to represent licensed Canadian pharmacies that provide
prescription drugs to Americans. "The multinational pharmacy
companies are threatening our government; if we don't shut this industry
down, the [U.S.] pharmaceutical companies will stop sending drugs to
Canada," he said.

Last week, Canada's National Association of Pharmacy Regulatory
Authorities, a group that represents provincial regulators, asked the
Canadian government to temporarily halt the sale of prescription drugs to
the United States. 

Earlier this month, Health Canada, the nation's health department, warned
that growing sales by Internet pharmacies created "the potential for
drug shortages domestically." 

"Health Canada regards this as a very serious matter due to the
inherent risk to Canadians' health," Gorman said.

Health Canada officials defended the quality of drugs sold in Canada.
"It's very clear that Canada's safety record is second to none
internationally," Gorman said. "We have a responsibility to
Canadian citizens to ensure that their drugs are safe and effective.
Similarly, the United States has a responsibility for any products that
are imported into its country to take the measures that it has within its
own legal framework."
*******************************
CNET News.com
Overture cleans up its drug ad policy
Last modified: November 18, 2003, 3:04 PM PST
By Stefanie Olsen 

Overture Services has stopped selling search-related advertising to
unlicensed online pharmacies, in response to concern about illegal drug
sales over the Internet. 

Overture, the commercial search subsidiary of Yahoo, said Tuesday that it
filtered the last of its advertisements related to online pharmacies or
pharmaceutical drug sales on Monday, and it notified advertisers over the
weekend that it would cease selling the ads. 

The move comes in response to lobbying from U.S. pharmacy trade group the
National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) and Drugstore.com, a
major Overture advertiser and one of the Net's biggest online pharmacies.
For the last nine months, NABP and Drugstore.com have been trying to wipe
out ads for prescription drugs, such as painkillers Vicodin and
OxyContin, that can be ordered freely by mail from some Web sites without
a doctor's consent. NABP held a meeting with Yahoo last Wednesday about
removing the ads. 

Overture lets advertisers bid for placement in Web search results related
to keywords, ranging from "Vicadin" to "digital
cameras." The ads appear under the heading "sponsored
listings" when surfers type in related terms. Overture partner
sites, including Microsoft's MSN Web portal and Yahoo, have displayed the
ads. 

Overture said it will ban the sale of drug-related keywords to licensed
and non-licensed pharmacies until it has employed a third party to verify
the legitimacy of drug-related advertisers, which it expects to do in the
first quarter of 2004. The company still allows ads related to addiction
recovery keyed to drug terms.

"We think legitimate online pharmacies serve an important need by
giving consumers access to drugs cost-effectively," Overture
spokeswoman Jennifer Stephens said. "However, the online environment
has become increasingly complex in this area. We thought it was best to
take the listings down until we can impose guidelines that will help
identify legitimate online pharmacies."

Stephens said that MSN, one of Overture's biggest partners, also wanted
the ads removed from its site. MSN licenses commercial search results
from Overture. 

Overture's new policy is a win for NABP and Drugstore.com in their
campaign to rid search engines of ads from rogue pharmacies. 

The two entities have contacted several sites, including search engine
provider Google, MSN and America Online, saying that they have run ads
from illegal distributors. NABP and Drugstore.com have wanted the sites
to agree not to run ads from distributors unless they are certified by
the industry. The association lists 14 certified pharmacies on its
verified Internet pharmacy practices site (VIPPS), including
Drugstore.com and Walgreen's online arm, Walgreens.com.

AOL, Yahoo and MSN, through its partnership with Overture, will now be in
accordance with their wishes. 

Google spokesman David Krane said that the company is evaluating its
pharmacy-related advertising, but it has not yet decided to make any
changes. Google's policy is to accept ads only from pharmacies that
require customers to provide appropriate evidence of authorization, such
as a doctor's prescription or consultation, before fulfilling orders. But
the company has allowed advertisements for unlicensed pharmacies.

Krane has said in the past that Google is exploring the adoption of more
stringent measures, including limiting sales of pharmaceutical ads to
VIPPs-certified companies.

The war on drugs
NABP's efforts to restrict online pharmacy ads come as concerns mount
over illegal prescription drug imports from Canadian and overseas Web
sites. Sites that sell low-cost medications with or without a
prescription have proliferated online, littering Web search results pages
and e-mail in-boxes with pitches for a range of restricted drugs,
including the male sexual aid Viagra, the antidepressant Xanax and the
sleeping pill Ambien.

Pharmaceuticals sellers served some 2 billion advertising impressions in
October, making them the second-largest group of advertisers within the
health industry on the Net, behind weight-loss marketers, according to
researcher Nielsen/NetRatings. The health market made up about 5 percent
of the total online ad sales in October, Nielsen reported.

Demand is there, too. As drug prices rise, many people are turning to
Internet stores to buy less-expensive alternatives from abroad. Analysts
say that the trade of unlicensed prescription drug sales online will be
worth between $800 million and $1 billion this year.

Regulators are beginning to crack down. Following a complaint from the
Food and Drug Administration, a federal judge in Tulsa, Okla., shuttered
Rx Depot, a Web site that sold low-cost prescription drugs from
Canada.

Overture's Stephens said that the monetary loss from removing the
drug-related listings would be insignificant, but the company is eager to
put a new third-party system in place.
*******************************
CNET News.com
Bush pushes for cybercrime treaty
Last modified: November 18, 2003, 2:15 PM PST
By Declan McCullagh 
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

President Bush has asked the U.S. Senate to ratify the first
international cybercrime treaty. 

In a letter to the Senate on Monday, Bush called the Council of Europe's
controversial treaty "an effective tool in the global effort to
combat computer-related crime" and "the only multilateral
treaty to address the problems of computer-related crime and electronic
evidence gathering." 

Even though the United States is a nonvoting member of the Council of
Europe, it has pressed hard for the cybercrime treaty as a way to
establish international criminal standards related to copyright
infringement, online fraud, child pornography and network intrusions. The
U.S. Department of Justice says the treaty will eliminate
"procedural and jurisdictional obstacles that can delay or endanger
international investigations." 

Civil libertarians have objected to the treaty ever since it became
public in early 2000, arguing that it would endanger privacy rights and
grant too much power to government investigators. So have industry groups
such as Americans for Computer Privacy and the Internet Alliance. They
raised concerns that the treaty could limit anonymity or impose vague
record-keeping requirements on U.S. Internet providers. 

"It's a treaty that goes way beyond combating cybercrime," said
Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's technology and liberty program.
"It would require nations that participate in the treaty to adopt
all sorts of intrusive surveillance measures and cooperate with other
nations, even when the act that's being investigated is not a crime in
their home country." 

So far, according to the Council of Europe, only three
countries--Albania, Croatia and Estonia--have ratified the treaty. If the
Senate approves it, the Bush administration said it believes that because
U.S. law already abides by provisions in the treaty, no further legal
changes would be necessary. 

The treaty requires each participating nation to ban the distribution of
software that is designed for the "purpose of committing"
certain computer crimes, requires Internet providers to ensure
"expeditious preservation of traffic data" upon request, and
permits real-time wiretapping of Internet service providers. It also
covers extradition for computer crimes and permits police to request that
their counterparts in other countries cooperate in conducting electronic
surveillance. 

Bush said the treaty will "help deny 'safe havens' to criminals,
including terrorists, who can cause damage to U.S. interests from abroad,
using computer systems." 


An addition to the Council of Europe's cybercrime treaty would ban
"hate speech" from the Internet, a common prohibition in
European nations that violates the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment.
The Justice Department said last year that it does not support the
optional addition but still endorses the underlying treaty. 

The addition covers "distributing, or otherwise making available,
racist and xenophobic material to the public through a computer
system." This is defined as "any written material, any image or
any other representation of ideas or theories, which advocates, promotes
or incites hatred, discrimination or violence, against any individual or
group of individuals, based on race, colour, descent or national or
ethnic origin, as well as religion." 

A mysterious second addition to the treaty discussed soon after the Sept.
11, 2001, terrorist attacks would have covered "how to identify, how
to filter, and how to trace communications between terrorists." At
the time, the Council of Europe confirmed that the proposal existed but
it did not become part of the final treaty.
*******************************
CNET News.com
Group wants phone number plan put on hold
Last modified: November 18, 2003, 8:12 PM PST
By Ben Charny 
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

A telephone industry association on Tuesday asked federal regulators to
stop telephone number portability rules from taking effect on Nov. 24.

Letting people keep old telephone numbers after switching carriers
creates an unfair competitive advantage for cell phone companies, the
United States Telecom Association (USTA) told the Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) on Monday. The FCC's rules will also cause financial
stress on rural telephone providers, the USTA added.

The USTA and telephone service provider CenturyTel gave the FCC until
Thursday to suspend the number swapping rules. If not, the USTA and
CenturyTel will ask a federal judge to intervene, according to an
association statement.

"All we ask is that (regulators) take the time to do it right and
live up to its repeated pledge that it would not implement any system
that discriminates between (land line) and wireless carriers," USTA
Chief Executive Officer Walter B. McCormick Jr. said in a
statement.

Representatives from the FCC and the cell phone trade group Cellular
Telecommunications & Internet Association could not be immediately
reached for comment.

The USTA and CenturyTel filing is the second this week by telephone
companies regarding the FCC's number portability mandate. On Monday,
BellSouth asked the FCC's permission to charge monthly fees to recover
the $38 million it spent to allow customers to keep their old telephone
numbers after switching to a cell phone provider.
*******************************
CNET News.com
SCO plans more Linux lawsuits
Last modified: November 18, 2003, 7:50 PM PST
By David Becker 
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

LAS VEGAS--Linux antagonist SCO Group vowed Tuesday to widen its legal
battle against the open-source operating system, saying it intends to sue
large-scale Linux users for copyright infringement. 

CEO Darl McBride said the company had signed an agreement with the law
firm of David Boies, already handling SCO's case against computing giant
IBM, to include Linux-related copyright cases. SCO plans to begin filing
suits within the next few months, targeting large companies that have
significant Linux installations. 

To date, SCO's legal battle has focused on alleged breaches in IBM's
contract to use the Unix code that SCO owns. IBM, one of the biggest
corporate proponents of Linux, came under attack from SCO early this year
when the software maker filed a $3 billion lawsuit accusing Big Blue of
illegally incorporating SCO-controlled Unix code into Linux software
distributed by IBM. 

The case has gone on to challenge the foundations of the Linux movement,
with SCO promising to bill Linux users and threatening legal action
against companies and individuals who don't pay licensing fees. 

SCO has since backed off the billing plan, but the company is still
serious about enforcing its copyrights, said Chris Sontag, senior vice
president in charge of SCO's legal efforts. He said lawsuits targeting
Linux users will be filed within 90 days, with initial suits targeting
1,500 companies that have significant Linux systems. 

McBride added that lawsuits likely will be preceded, and possibly
prevented, by communications offering businesses an opportunity to accord
with SCO. "We'll be communicating with users what our expectations
are," he said. 

McBride said it's appropriate to start targeting the Linux users now,
rather than wait for the IBM suit to be concluded, partly because the
copyright cases will be much less complex than the IBM dispute and should
give a much quicker judicial perspective on SCO's claims. 

"I think it'd be good for all of us to get some closure," he
said. "ISVs (independent software vendors), end-users,
customers--they all want this cleared up." 

McBride was here to deliver a speech at the Computer Digital Expo, a new
Jupitermedia event competing with the more familiar Comdex. McBride used
the speech to lay out his objections to the general public license (GPL)
that governs many open-source software releases. 

In an interview before the speech, McBride said the GPL helped create the
Linux user lawsuits that SCO is preparing by putting all legal
responsibility on the user, rather than the on companies distributing the
software. 

"The structure of the GPL pushes the problem down to the
end-user," he said. "You start out with Red Hat or IBM, but it
ends up on the end-user." 

McBride said that besides being weak on copyright protection, the GPL
runs counter to basic business principles. 

"The GPL-based products have to come to grips with the realities of
business," he said, blaming GPL products for "grinding away at
the value" of competing commercial software. "It's a tremendous
problem, and it's getting bigger." 

McBride said in his speech that SCO shouldn't get the blame for putting
the GPL at risk; however, he maintained that it was IBM's countersuit
against SCO that brought the issue to a head. "The GPL is definitely
at risk," he said. "But we're not the ones who put it there.
IBM put the GPL in the line of fire." 

He went on to predict major changes in open-source software, with market
forces favoring those who innovate for profit. "We are in a
tug-of-war between those who believe software should be free and those
who think proprietary licensing is OK," McBride said. "When you
look at what drives an economy, it's capitalist principles."
*******************************
Boston Globe
Computer upgrade causes child support delay
Single parents wait weeks for payments
By Brendan McCarthy, Globe Correspondent, 11/19/2003

Thousands of single parents in Massachusetts have been forced to wait
several weeks for child support payments this fall because of problems
with an upgrade of a state computer system at the Department of
Revenue.

The problem began last month when the state program that collects wages
from noncustodial parents and issues child-support checks shut down its
computer system for five days in order to update state records and comply
with federally mandated regulations, according to Department of Revenue
spokesman Tim Connolly.

"There was a backlog of checks that had a problem with them for one
reason or another," Connolly said. "Some people were without
checks for several weeks. But as far as the upgrade goes, we believe that
that problem is behind us."

In order to combat the backlog, the child support bureau has increased
its staff handling the requests from five to 20 employees. The department
handles some 140,000 state child-support cases.

A recorded message on the department's phones continues to warn about the
backlog, or frequently rings busy. Several parents interviewed in recent
days said they continue to have problems with the system.

"I was supposed to receive a check the first week of October,"
said Doreen Belding of Medford, who receives a monthly $472 child-support
check for her 16-year-old daughter. "Due to their financial system,
I got it a month later on Nov. 14. The system is awful. The last two
months have been hell."

For Belding, the absence of her child-support check has put a strain on
her finances. Belding says she relies on the payment to pay for
groceries, gas, electric bills, and her 16-year-old daughter's
home-schooling tutor. Belding, who has thyroid cancer and has undergone
several surgeries, receives state disability checks and pays nearly $200
a month for a state-subsidized apartment.

"This check goes toward everything," Belding said. "Once
it comes in, it's gone. It's a big deal because I almost got
evicted."

Peter Coulombe, staff attorney in the family law unit of Greater Boston
Legal Services, said a number of his clients experienced delays in
receiving their checks. But he acknowledged there could be a variety of
reasons behind the late payments.

"The department did send out a notice warning people that they would
be upgrading their computer system and that there would be a delay in a
couple weeks," Coulombe said. "When it got to be a three- or
four-week delay, I wasn't surprised."

Though the state says the problem has been solved, some Massachusetts
parents say they are checking their mailboxes for overdue child-support
checks and finding nothing.

"They fail to realize that going a month without child support puts
you behind," said Wendy Mello of New Bedford, who receives a weekly
$90 check for her daughter. "That's money that you count on for
groceries, for gas to get to work, for your child's lunch money. It puts
you behind and then you have to play catch up."

Mello said she is owed $360, four weeks of payments, from the
state.

The computer upgrade was needed to better keep records of parents and
distribute payments, according to Paul Cronin, associate deputy
commissioner for child support enforcement. Cronin said the department
tracks custodial parents and their finances. For noncustodial parents,
the office scans income information and bank accounts. "Each case is
different," Cronin said. "On any given week we process about
55,000 individual payments."

Nearly 70 percent of all state child-support payments are processed
through wage assignments, or moneys taken out of a noncustodial parent's
payroll, according to Connolly. The noncustodial parent's employer is
responsible for sending payments to the state office, which charges a
processing fee and churns out a child-support check, usually within a
48-hour period.

Brendan McCarthy can be reached at
bmccarthy@xxxxxxxxx.
*******************************
CNET News.com
Report: Net attacks increasing
Last modified: November 18, 2003, 4:48 PM PST
By Robert Lemos 
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Internet attacks are getting more numerous and menacing, network
protection company Internet Security Systems concluded in a report
released Tuesday. 

The survey found that 725 new software flaws in the third quarter of this
year, down slightly from 727 found in the second quarter. However, the
823 new worms and viruses that appeared between July 1 and September
represented a 26 percent increase from the previous three
months.

"The window of time between vulnerability disclosure and the release
of a working exploit continues to shrink, leaving enterprises with even
less time to learn about and prevent attacks," Chris Rouland, vice
president of Internet Security Systems' vulnerability research team, said
in a prepared statement.

The conclusion meshes with previous reports. Security software maker
Symantec also pointed to anecdotal evidence that the time was shrinking
between the first public mention of details of a software flaw and the
release of code exploiting the flaw. Three serious Internet
attacks--MSBlast, MSBlast.D and SoBig.F--struck in August. 

Not all experts agree, however. The Computer Emergency Response Team
(CERT) Coordination Center's latest report indicates that the number of
flaws that will appear in 2003 is likely to be smaller than in 2002.
That's a first: Between 1999 and 2002, the number of vulnerabilities
recorded by CERT roughly doubled every year.
*******************************
Associated Press
AT&T Wireless Planning Layoffs
Wall Street Journal
Wed Nov 19, 7:01 AM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - AT&T Wireless (NYSE:AWE - news) plans to lay off
more than 10 percent of its 30,000 workers over the next year and
outsource the jobs, The Wall Street Journal said on Wednesday, citing
people familiar with the situation.

The moves by the wireless (news - web sites) telephone company would come
on top of a recent announcement increasing the number of people it could
lay off because of a consolidation of facilities, the paper reported.

AT&T Wireless is discussing outsourcing arrangements with companies
that employ people in India and elsewhere overseas, the paper said.
*******************************
Government Computer News
11/19/03 
FAA reorganization will alter IT purchases 
By Sami Lais 

A shakeup in the organization of the Federal Aviation Administration
announced last week by Russell G. Chew, its new chief operating officer,
will change the way the agency handles IT acquisitions. 

The new structure will alter how FAA addresses major IT projects such as
the Standard Terminal Automation Replacement System, an initiative to
replace old air traffic monitors with modern displays that integrate
weather and traffic data on the same screen. The project has been beset
by major cost overruns and schedule delays. 

?The acquisitions will be made by the people who will be using them,?
Chew said. ?If you were going to buy a new stereo, you wouldn?t have your
neighbor buy ityou wouldn?t get what you wanted.? 

Charles Keegan, former associate administrator for research and
acquisitions, once charged with overseeing all IT purchases, now is vice
president of en route air traffic services and oceanic airspace services.
His IT focus will narrow to systems such as the Advanced Technologies and
Oceanic Procedures and the En Route Automation Replacement Modernization,
which will replace aging computer hardware and software. 

Chew also promised ?more transparency? in how the agency makes its IT
decisions. He said he anticipates getting input from all stakeholders,
including the airline industry and air traffic controllers, before making
decisions on where the agency will spend its efforts and money. 

Chew said that, over the next six to eight months, the agency will
interview all of its Washington employees, who represent the majority of
the 38,000 employees under Chew?s direction, as part of what he described
as a ?massive re-engineering of how we do business.? 

Chew reports directly to administrator Marion Blakey. In addition to
Keegan, reporting to Chew will be: 

David Johnson, terminal air traffic services
James Washington, flight advisory services 

Linda Schuessler, air traffic control systems 

Steve Zaidman, navigation services, and communication and maintenance
support to operating service units 

Steven Brown, strategic planning and operating performance for the ATO,
National Airspace System supervision 

Dennis DeGaetano, ATO policies in acquisition contracting and shared
business services. 

Blakey also announced the appointment of a new chief financial officer,
Thomas R. Bloom, former director of the Defense Finance and Accounting
Service. In addition to major changes in personnel, IT acquisitions and
organization, Blakey said FAA would change its fiscal policies to a ?true
cost accounting system.? 

Chew in June left American Airlines to head FAA?s newly created Air
Traffic Organization, which manages the nation?s air traffic control
system. He has spent the past months reviewing an analysis of the current
air traffic organization and devising the new structure.
*******************************
Government Computer News
11/19/03 
Congress plans report cards on cybersecurity 
By Jason Miller 

On the heels of Office of Management and Budget efforts over the past
year to boost cybersecurity, lawmakers are set to weigh in on agency
progress. 

The House Government Reform Subcommittee on Technology, Information
Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and the Census next month will issue
a cybersecurity report card detailing agency progress in meeting the
requirements of the Federal Information Security Management Act.

Subcommittee staff director Bob Dix, speaking today at the Enterprise
Architecture 2003 Conference sponsored by GCN and the Digital Government
Institute, said the subcommittee is picking up where former Rep. Steve
Horn left off. Horn, a Republican from California, had regularly issued
report cards on agencies? year 2000 readiness and security efforts.

?Our goal is to elevate the discussion of IT security to all executive
levels in the public and private sectors,? Dix said. ?This is not just an
IT issue.? 

As agencies collaborate more often, Dix said, IT assurance needs more
attention because it?s been overlooked for too long. 

The subcommittee has been working to focus the legislative and executive
branches on the importance of cybersecurity with a variety of hearings
over the past year. 

?Agencies have said FISMA is causing a reporting burden on them and we
hope to gain a better understanding of that from the report card,? Dix
said. 

Dix also said the subcommittee also plans to explore whether the federal
procurement process can be used to improve software security. 

?If we use the purchasing power of the federal government to insist that
developers provide more secure products, that will benefit all users in
both the public and private sectors,? he said.
*******************************
Government Computer News
11/19/03 
Nanotechnology R&D bills move through Congress 
By William Jackson 

The House and Senate have worked out differences in bills to fund and
oversee R&D in the potentially controversial field of nanotechnology.

The Senate passed its version of the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research
and Development Act on Tuesday. House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood
Boehlert (R-N.Y.) said he expected the House to pass its version of the
bill soon. 

The compromise bills are the products of negotiations between the House
Science Committee and the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and
Transportation. 

Nanotechnology is the manipulation of materials on an atomic and
molecular scale, and offers great economic potential. The National
Science Foundation has estimated it could become a $1 trillion industry
over the next 10 years. But it also presents ethical and societal
concerns because of the possible impact of tiny devices on the
environment and on human beings. 

The act would promote U.S. leadership in the development and application
of nanotechnology, and also would ensure that government has a hand in
developing and enforcing ethical standards for that research. Issues
singled out for concern include the use of nanotechnology to enhance
human intelligence and to create artificial intelligence, and the release
of nanodevices into the environment. 

The act would create a National Nanotechnology Program to coordinate
interdisciplinary research. The National Institute of Standards and
Technology would serve as a clearinghouse for R&D data and would
develop standards for research. 

The act also would authorize $3.7 billion for the program over the next
four years, divided among the Energy Department, the Environmental
Protection Agency, NASA, NIST and NSF. The lion?s share of the money
would go to NSF ($1.7 billion) and Energy ($1.4 billion). At least $10
million a year would be earmarked to fund interdisciplinary R&D
consortia. 

An American Nanotechnology Preparedness Center would be created to study
?societal, ethical, environmental, educational, legal and work force
implications of nanotechnology.?
*******************************
Washington Post
Think Tank Wants Public's Help in 'Spyware' Fight 
By Brian Krebs
Tuesday, November 18, 2003; 7:02 PM 

A Washington-based technology think tank wants Internet users to join its
crusade against invasive "spyware" programs that let their
authors eavesdrop on people's online activities.

The Center for Democracy and Technology today urged Americans to submit
details about their encounters with spyware, which often comes packaged
as an unwanted addition to popular downloads like software for trading
music files. The group said it will compile those experiences and submit
them to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) as part of its campaign to
spur the federal government to take action against businesses that do not
clearly tell people that they are opening their personal online lives to
strangers.

"We have read many stories about consumers who did not know that
these programs were on their computer and then, when they went to delete
them, found that they just wouldn't go away," said CDT Associate
Director Ari Schwartz. "We are asking computer users to tell us the
problems they have encountered and we'll test the programs ourselves and
file complaints where warranted."

Hijacking an Internet connection or intercepting online communications is
a federal crime but people often unwittingly install spyware on their
computers when they download other kinds of useful software applications
without reading the legal disclosures usually buried deep in the user
agreement, the CDT report said.

Once people find the programs on their computers, they discover that it's
almost impossible to delete them without a high level of technical
expertise.

Spyware can cause sluggish PC performance and system instability, and can
unleash a barrage of pop-up ads and unsolicited bulk e-mail, popularly
known as spam. In the most egregious cases, spyware can be extremely
invasive -- it can track what Web sites people visit and the keywords
they enter in search engines. It also can hijack their Internet
connections.

Some well known spyware programs often show up in peer-to-peer (P2P)
file-swapping software that people download to trade digital music and
video files on the Internet. P2P software often contains programs like
Bonzi Buddy and Gator, which collect data on users' surfing and shopping
habits and send it to a third party that develops profiles for targeted
pop-up ads.

In April 2002, privacy experts discovered that Kazaa -- the most popular
file-sharing software -- is bundled with a program called
"Altnet."

Sharman Networks, Kazaa's parent company, said it would use Altnet to
harness small amounts of the processing power on Kazaa users' computers
which it would then sell to other Altnet customers that need the power.
Computer users would not be compensated. Sharman said the network is not
active and that users can disable the program.

The FTC has investigated reports of spyware privacy violations but has
not found anything illegal, said spokeswoman Claudia
Bourne-Farrell.

"Allegations about spyware are troubling, and we look forward to
reviewing the CDT report," she said. "We'll continue to review
this issue and pursue law enforcement where it's
appropriate."

Several U.S. lawmakers have introduced legislation during the past two
years to control the distribution of spyware, but Congress has failed to
pass any bills.

In July, Rep. Mary Bono (R-Calif.) introduced her anti-spyware bill,
which would require companies to give more prominent notice about
programs that collect and transmit personal information.

The CDT report said Bono's bill does not distinguish between invasive
spyware programs and "adware," which displays advertising on a
computer monitor. Companies that use adware usually say so clearly, and
allow users to disable the ads by paying a small fee to license the full
version of the product.

The report says that Congress should establish privacy rights that
protect consumers from a range of online snooping.

Bono said she is willing to work with the CDT to address their concerns.
"Whether it's monitoring of consumer movements on the Web or other
forms of dubious marketing, at the end of the day the consumer needs to
know what's happening," she said.

Consumers can avoid spyware by taking the time to closely read software
privacy policies and descriptions before they download the programs.
Several Web sites, including Spywareguide.com and Spywareinfo.com,
contain detailed listings of programs widely considered to be spyware.
Several programs can erase spyware from personal computers, such as
Adaware.
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