Clips November 17, 2003

[Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>]

Clips November 17,
2003

ARTICLES

Court rules in favor of ICANN
Couple seek $4.4 million from agents for computer damage
In Utah, Public Works Project in Digital
Pickpockets turn to technology
DHS requiring more container screening
Number portability brings both opportunities and warnings 
Government funds 108 fast computersbut not the speediest 
Rich and Poor States Split Before Internet Summit 
Thumbs pay at some stores
Southern drawls just don't get recognized by phone system
Brazil Gives Nod to Open Source  
Quantum physics enters crypto realm 

*******************************
CNET News.com
Court rules in favor of ICANN
Last modified: November 14, 2003, 4:25 PM PST
By Jim Hu 
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

A federal judge has denied a preliminary injunction filed against the
organization that oversees Internet domain names and addresses. 

In a ruling released Thursday, a federal court in Los Angeles dismissed
charges filed by two domain name registrars that alleged the Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) had engaged in
anticompetitive practices. The charges were filed after ICANN said it
would hand over the management of expired domain names ending in .com and
.net, called the Wait-Listing Service, to online security company
VeriSign. The plaintiffs claimed that ICANN breached its obligations
because many other parties had objected to its proposal. 

The court ruled, however, that the wait-list change would not harm
competition or the public trust. 

"Accordingly, it appears that the implementation of WLS has the
potential to benefit registries, registrars who do not currently offer
wait-listing services, and most importantly the public," the ruling
read. 

ICANN's decision to hand over the WLS to VeriSign launched a debate that
expanded beyond the court room. In June, two members of the House of
Representatives introduced a bill to block the move. 

VeriSign, which has a government-granted monopoly as the main database
administrator for .com and .net domain names and addresses, recently has
been sparring with ICANN over the company's controversial "Site
Finder" service, which snared traffic to nonexistent Internet sites
and forwarded it to VeriSign's own servers. The service is now at least
temporarily on hold.
*******************************
USA Today
Couple seek $4.4 million from agents for computer damage
By Michael Virtanen, Associated Press
Posted 11/14/2003 8:15 PM

ALBANY, N.Y.  A former upstate New York couple whose business
computers were seized by federal agents have sued for $4.4 million,
arguing that their hardware, software and entire business were trashed
when investigators went after the wrong man three years ago. 
The suit was put on hold last week in U.S. District Court while
government lawyers appeal the ruling that upheld the couple's right to
sue individual agents involved. 

"We moved to dismiss based upon a statute which essentially says
once the action against the government is dismissed, that that is a
complete bar to the action against the agents," said Assistant U.S.
Attorney Charles Roberts in Syracuse. "The solicitor general has
approved this office taking an appeal." 

Judge David Hurd ruled in March that while the Federal Tort Claims Act
permits civil suits for property damage or injury from government
employee negligence, it excludes property detained by Customs or other
law enforcement officers. 

But in August, Hurd ruled the couple's separate suit against individual
agents could proceed. They claim the computers were intentionally
destroyed in violation of their Fifth Amendment rights to due process.

"They were put out of business when their software and hard drive
computer equipment were taken by the FBI and Customs," said attorney
Kenneth Sissel. Federal officials also rejected their request for data
investigators copied off the computers, he said. 

"They lost their home. They lost everything," Sissel said.
"They're living in Florida now." 

Agents with a search warrant seized computers on June 8, 2000, from
Ferncliff Associates in Mohawk, 70 miles west of Albany, owned by Susan
Hallock. Investigators suspected her husband Richard Hallock was involved
with Internet child pornography. 

The computers were returned six months later. Hallock was never charged.

According to Sissel, Hallock's identity was stolen after making legal
Internet credit card purchases, then used to establish a pornographic Web
site. 

"He never will be charged," Sissel said. "He's the victim
first of identity theft and then of being mugged by the government."

The Hallocks, who licensed proprietary software for business management,
claimed four of nine computer systems were damaged beyond repair, with
data wiped out on five hard disk drives. They filed an administrative
claim for damages with the U.S. Treasury, Justice Department, Customs
Service, Marshals Service and Postal Service for $3.2 million. 

After no action was taken on the claim, they sued last year and amended
the complaint for more money. 

Roberts said he couldn't comment on the handling of the original claim or
whether there was any ongoing criminal investigation. 

A call to the Treasury Department was not immediately returned. 

Lee Pugh, chief counsel for the Albany division of the FBI that includes
Mohawk, didn't know if his agency was involved in the case three years
ago but said the FBI routinely pays for property damaged during
investigations. Claims are evaluated then paid, or rejection letters
explain why not, he said. 

"We try to do what's right," Pugh said, noting he can approve
up to $25,000 for certain claims, but beyond that they are handled by
headquarters. "That would seem very very unusual that a claim would
be made for $4 million for destroyed property. That would be something
that would probably end up in court."
*******************************
New York Times
November 17, 2003
In Utah, Public Works Project in Digital
By MATT RICHTEL

SALT LAKE CITY - When it comes to the Internet, residents of Utah are
taking matters into their own hands.

In a 21st-century twist on Roosevelt-era public works projects, Salt Lake
City and 17 other Utah cities are planning to build the largest
ultrahigh-speed digital network in the country. 

Construction on the project is scheduled to start next spring - if the
cities can raise the money to pull it off. The network would be capable
of delivering data over the Internet to homes and businesses at speeds
100 times faster than current commercial residential offerings. It would
also offer digital television and telephone services through the
Internet. 

With a $470 million price tag, the project is considered one of the most
ambitious efforts in the world to deploy fiber optic cables, which carry
data in bursts of light over glass fibers. Though it has not received
much attention outside the area, the project has raised questions here
about the role of government, particularly from telecommunications
companies, which are starting to complain about the prospect of competing
against a publicly sponsored digital network.

The cities involved argue that reliable access to high-speed data is so
important to their goals of improving education and advancing economic
growth that the project should be seen as no more controversial than the
traditional public role in building roads, bridges, sewers and schools -
as well as electric power systems, which are often municipally owned in
the Western United States.

Data infrastructure "is not a nicety,'' said Paul T. Morris,
executive director for the project, which he has named Utopia, a stylized
acronym for the Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency.
"It's an essential economic growth issue," he added. "The
best network in the U.S. will be in Utah - not in New York, not in
Chicago, not in Los Angeles."

Its advocates say that Utopia will give participating cities a leg up in
attracting sophisticated companies and highly educated, technology-minded
individuals. The network is expected to be available to 723,000 residents
in 248,000 households and 34,500 businesses. Prices would vary
considerably depending on the service, though basic high-speed Internet
access is expected to cost about $28 a month.

But private sector competitors and taxpayer groups assert that the cities
and their residents face a high level of financial risk for a network
that may far exceed their needs. Telephone and cable companies nationwide
are scrambling to build networks relying on less expensive, less advanced
technology that they argue will be perfectly adequate for many years to
come.

Jerry Fenn, the president of the Utah division of Qwest, the regional
telephone company here that provides its own high-speed Internet access,
said there were few uses yet for the network Utopia plans to
deliver.

The speeds to be provided "are way more than what most consumers
need in their home," Mr. Fenn said, adding, "Why provide a
Rolls-Royce when a Chevrolet will do?"

The notion of building extensive fiber optic networks may raise painful
memories for many investors. During the latter half of the 1990's,
several telecommunications companies lost billions of dollars when they
laid fiber across the country - and under the ocean - in anticipation of
huge demands that failed to materialize. 

But the Utopia project, which has been in the works for 18 months, is
different. It is an attempt to complete a direct fiber optic connection
to the home - an ambition that collapsed in the telecommunications bust.
And its advocates argue that the best way to advance digital technology
is for a public entity to build a common fiber optic connection as a
utility for all potential users rather than relying on the competition
among private rivals that helped foster the over-investment debacle at
the turn of the century. 

The Utopia effort, while by far the largest to date, is not the first
attempt by municipalities to build an Internet infrastructure. In the
spirit of power utilities, a small but growing number of local
governments are investing in high-speed networks that far exceed current
commercial speeds. But the efforts so far have tended to be in rural
areas. 

As of October, only 180,300 homes had direct access to fiber optic lines;
64,700 were actually connected, according to Render, Vanderslice &
Associates, a market research firm in Tulsa, Okla. 

"This is a very powerful test case," said Sharon Gillett, a
research associate at M.I.T.'s center for technology, policy and
industrial development. "If Utopia succeeds, it will be the first
really large-scale deployment of fiber to the home in the United
States."

Most people still reach the Internet from their homes through dial-up
connections over copper telephone lines, typically limited to delivering
data at 56.6 kilobits per second. That speed works well for things like
e-mail messages, but it can be frustrating when using graphics-rich Web
pages or downloading music and other larger files. 

To upgrade dial-up speeds, telephone companies modify their phone lines
to offer a technology called digital subscriber line, or D.S.L., which
creates a direct connection to the Internet at speeds that vary from 256
kilobits a second to one megabit or so, sometimes more. 

Cable companies like Comcast and Cox have been even more aggressive,
adapting their systems to deliver Internet services at speeds usually
roughly twice as fast as D.S.L. Prices vary, but consumers can pay $30 to
$60 a month for high-speed access, whether through cable or telephone
lines.

Utah's competitive landscape is similar to those in other states.
Comcast's broadband service is available to 80 percent of its residents,
and should be available to 90 percent by the end of the year. The company
is spending about $350 million to increase the capability to as much as
three megabits per second. 

For its part, Qwest, the regional telephone company, said D.S.L. service
was available in about 60 percent of homes in the region. It is spending
$100 million to upgrade its systems in 14 states.

But those delivery systems, as well as the higher-speed direct
connections that are commonly used to hook up businesses to the Internet,
pale before fiber optic lines. Depending on the kind of equipment used,
fiber can deliver data at speeds of 100 megabits a second - even as much
as 1,000 megabits under some circumstances - enabling the lines to be
used simultaneously to send voice, video, Internet and other data
traffic.

As of yet, there are few demands for such capabilities. But Mr. Morris,
of Utopia, predicted that it would not be long before promising new
applications emerged. For instance, televisions need 6 megabits a second
to deliver DVD-quality images over the Internet, and 18 megabits to
deliver HDTV. He is counting on residents in the Utopia service area to
turn soon to video-on-demand, online video games, Internet and telephone
service, all of which consume bandwidth.

The applications are not all here today, Mr. Morris said, but when they
are, "you get to 95 megabits pretty quickly." He added:
"We built a network that we don't have to change."

The project originated in 2002 after a similar effort by Provo, 35 miles
south of Salt Lake City, hit a stumbling block. Provo built a fiber optic
network, but it ran into a buzz saw of complaints from private
telecommunications companies, notably AT&T Broadband. 

The Utah Legislature agreed with AT&T. Following the lead of several
other states, it passed a bill making it difficult for government
entities to create Internet utilities that sell service directly to
consumers. But lawmakers here left the door open for communities to build
wholesale networks, which would be required to lease space on the fiber
optic lines to companies to provide retail digital services. Following
this model, 18 cities created Utopia, vowing to go ahead if they could
make the case that the fees paid by consumers and businesses would repay
the cost of building the system. 

The costs are substantial. Mr. Morris said Utopia would spend about
$1,100 a home to run the fiber network by each house in the 18 cities
involved, and an additional $1,400 for each home that decided to be
connected. 

An economic study by DynamicCity in Lindon, Utah, predicted that 40
percent of consumers and residents would sign up after two years. The
project was likely to generate enough revenue by its seventh year to
cover all expenses, the study estimated. 

Mr. Morris said Utopia was arranging financing from a New York investment
bank. He said that the cities would be asked to guarantee a portion of
the loan Utopia acquires from the investment bank, but that the amount
was still being negotiated.

Such a guarantee, while not providing a subsidy in the form of tax-exempt
financing, substantially increases the creditworthiness of Utopia,
dropping the interest rate to the 6 percent range from as high as 12
percent, Mr. Morris said. But it also puts those cities at risk should
the project fail to meet expectations.

Mr. Morris said he expected to secure the financial commitment this
month, paving the way for construction to begin next spring or summer.

Some local watchdog groups oppose the venture. Mike Jerman, vice
president of the Utah Taxpayers Association, said the government should
not be involved in such a fast-changing business. He said that without
the taxpayer backstop, Wall Street would be reluctant to give its
support. "They were looking at a 12 percent interest rate,'' he
said. "That's worse than a corporate junk bond. It's an indication
of how much confidence investors have in the project."

Mr. Morris acknowledged the challenge but insisted that Utopia was a
golden opportunity to put together a real business to fulfill a genuine
public purpose. "This is a major public works project, but it's not
like in the era of F.D.R.," he said. "It's not a subsidy. We
have a business plan."
*******************************
BBC Online
Pickpockets turn to technology
Dot.life - Where tech and life collide, every Monday 
By Mark Ward 
BBC News Online technology correspondent  

We all know that the type of mobile phone that you own says a lot about
you. In some circles having anything but the latest gadget can send all
the wrong signals to your peers. 

But if you are not careful your handset could be revealing much more
about you than you would like, such as your entire address book. And you
may know nothing about it. 

Security experts are warning that the Bluetooth short-range radio
technology can leave people vulnerable to the hi-tech equivalent of
pickpockets. 

In laboratory tests researchers have managed to steal information
including address books and images from handsets by exploiting
shortcomings in Bluetooth security. 

Radio risk 

The technology, named after 10th Century king who united Denmark and
Norway, is supposed to bring devices together and make it easy to swap
data between gadgets, be they handsets, printers, PCs, headsets, MP3
players or robot dogs. 

Now more than a million Bluetooth equipped devices are being produced
every week. 

Some people use Bluetooth to do away with the need for wires to connect
their handset to a headset. Others are discovering the delights of
"bluejacking" which involves sending an anonymous message to
another Bluetooth-equipped phone. 

But Adam Laurie of security firm AL Digital is worried that
vulnerabilities in Bluetooth might be put to more malicious ends.

Mr Laurie got interested in Bluetooth when he bought a headset for his
mobile phone.

"I was concerned about the security of my data so I investigated and
was not pleased at what I found," he said. 

Drawing on the work of other security researchers, he created programs
that run on a laptop which scan for Bluetooth handsets and exploit two
vulnerabilities to suck down data from phones. 

Ordinarily swapping anything more than minimal data between phones should
be impossible unless the phones are "paired" and their
respective owners have agreed a passcode. 

"What we found was that we can take it one step further and bypass
the pairing requirement and go straight for some of the contacts on the
telephone," he said. 

This vulnerability has been found on the SonyEricsson T68i and T610
phones and the Nokia 6310 and 7650 handsets. 

Security lapse 

Mr Laurie has dubbed the practice of scanning for vulnerable phones
"bluestumbling" after a popular program that many hackers have
used to find wi-fi networks. 

On bluestumbling expeditions to London Mr Laurie said he had found lots
of devices that were vulnerable to attack. 

He said he was now talking to manufacturers about fixing the
vulnerabilities he has discovered. 

"At the moment there are no tools out there and no details as to how
it is done," he said, "but it will happen, someone will work
out how to do it in the coming weeks." 

Other security experts such as Ollie Whitehouse from @stake and Bruce
Potter from Network Solutions have written about problems in Bluetooth,
some of which have been fixed in new releases of the core software.

Anders Edlund, spokesman for the Bluetooth organisation that oversees the
technology, pointed out that the new vulnerabilities have yet to be
publicly verified and saw no reason to worry. 

"I think the built-in security on Bluetooth is pretty good," he
said. "It has been discussed in the security group and it does not
seem like they are too worried about it." 

Nick Hunn, from Bluetooth chip maker TDK, said there were probably better
ways of getting data from a phone. 

If you wanted information from someone's handset you would probably try
and nick it rather than do it electronically," he said.
*******************************
Federal Computer Week
DHS requiring more container screening
BY Judi Hasson 
Nov. 17, 2003

Homeland Security Department officials intend to more than double the
number of foreign ports where containers are prescreened before departing
for the United States, one of several changes that will impact maritime
security.

Although 19 megaports worldwide have agreed to inspect U.S.-bound
containers before they are shipped, another 28 ports will take part in
the Container Security Initiative (CSI) by this time next year to bring
the total to 47 international ports.

"There is no question that CSI has been among the most effective
initiatives we have undertaken to shore up security at our borders,"
said Douglas Browning, deputy commissioner for DHS' Bureau of Customs and
Border Protection, at the Oct. 30 U.S. Maritime Security Expo in New
York.

Although DHS officials have been implementing new security rules in
several stages, they issued a final rule Oct. 22 that outlined what the
shipping industry must do to comply with the crackdown on maritime
security. The biggest change requires ships to carry an automatic
identification system in U.S. waters.

The final regulations take effect July 1, 2004, but shippers are already
scrambling because of the stiff penalty they could face for failing to
comply.

The Coast Guard also will be able to shut down ports that do not
construct a lighted, secured perimeter, make contingency plans for
maritime security alerts and meet other requirements.

"With 95 percent of our nation's overseas cargo carried by ship,
maritime security is critical to ensuring our nation's homeland and
economic security," DHS Secretary Tom Ridge said. "These final
rules?strengthen and bring consistency to both our nationwide maritime
security program and our ability to deter homeland security
threats."

In addition, under another maritime program, the Customs-Trade
Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT), more than 4,000 companies have
agreed to improve the security of their shipments and supply chain,
Browning said. Participants get a fast lane for their products through
U.S. land and sea borders.

DHS officials plan to expand C-TPAT to include foreign manufacturers and
shippers next year, Browning said.

Richard Biter, deputy director of the Office of Intermodalism at the
Transportation Department, said the federal government is still relying
on the shipping industry to police itself in exchange for fast trade
lines.

These additional security measures will not come cheaply. Michael
Conners, a principal at Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. in McLean, Va., told the
maritime conference that U.S. consumers will end up paying more for
imported goods.

"There is no question the maritime industry cannot bear the burden,
and it must be borne by the consumer," Conners said.
*******************************
Government Computer News
11/17/03 
Number portability brings both opportunities and warnings 
By William Jackson 

The government?s telephone services overseer thinks number portability,
which initially becomes available next week, will be more beneficial than
problematic. 

?Both the public and private sectors will benefit from number
portability,? said John Johnson, assistant commissioner for service
development at the Federal Technology Service, which manages major
telecommunications contracts for the government. 

Beginning Nov. 24, telephone customers in the nation?s largest 100
markets will be able to take their phone numbers with them when they
change carriers. Six months later number portability will be available
throughout the country. 

The new Federal Communications Commission rule applies to switches from
landline to cellular accounts, as well as switches between cellular
carriers. 

The new rules could help reduce the administrative burden of tracking and
managing thousands of phone numbers, Johnson said. Managing calling
cards, billing and correspondence all could be simplified, he said.
?There are a lot of potential benefits.? 

But along with these benefits come warnings of potential problems for
those who switch carriers. 

?You?ll be able to start up your account with a new carrier very easily,
but will the old one stop billing?? asked Roger Oustecky, vice president
and CIO of MSS*Group Inc. of Castle Rock, Colo. ?Phone companies are very
good about starting billing but not so good about stopping it.? 

The result could be double billing. Oustecky also predicts an increase in
billing errors and a decline in the quality of customer service as
service reps have to deal with unfamiliar phone numbers. The telephone
industry?s billing systems were not designed to operate in the current
competitive environment, and a large number of changes in accounts could
create problems, he said. 

MSS*Group makes its money from managing telephone billing for large
enterprises. Oustecky said the typical organization overspends by about
10 percent on its phone billsenough that his company guarantees that
savings from its service will at least cover the cost of its fixed fee.

Johnson acknowledged that the change could create some problems but said
he does not expect any major headaches. 

?Like any new initiative, there will be some issues associated with it,?
he said. ?But I?m not aware of any showstoppers.? 

Verizon Wireless of Bedminster, N.J., the nation?s largest cellular
carrier, offered some tips for customers who want to switch service
providers and keep their numbers. 

?Don?t cancel the current service before switching,? the company advised.
?The number must be active to switch.? Be aware of early termination fees
in your current contract, and be prepared if things don?t go as smoothly
as you hope. ?Have an alternate contact number for emergencies in case
the port takes longer than anticipated.?
*******************************
Government Computer News
11/17/03 
Government funds 108 fast computersbut not the speediest 
By Patricia Daukantas 

Federal supercomputing experts are gathering for a conference in Phoenix
this week amid concerns that another country still has the world?s
fastest computer. 

The U.S. government owns 94 supercomputers and clustered systems on the
new Top 500 list of fast systems, released yesterday at the start of the
SC2003 conference in Arizona. The Earth Simulator in Japan held on to the
No. 1 spot for the third consecutive Top 500 list, with a benchmarked
speed of nearly 36 trillion operations per second. 

Among the 94 U.S. government systems are 22 that are listed as
government-owned without specifying the agency. Another 14 supercomputers
on the new list are located at research centers that receive large
federal grants. 

Organizers of SC2003 have scheduled several discussions on U.S.
supercomputing programs and policies. 

ASCI Q, a classified Hewlett-Packard AlphaServer system at the Energy
Department?s Los Alamos National Laboratory, is still the U.S.
government?s fastest system at No. 2 on the list. With 8,192 1.25-GHz
Alpha processors, it scored nearly 13.9 TFLOPS on the benchmark used for
the Top 500 rankings. 

A self-made cluster of Apple G5 computers at Virginia Polytechnic
Institute made its debut in the number-three slot, with 10.3 TFLOPS, and
a Linux cluster at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications in
Illinois held the fourth spot with 9.8 TFLOPS. 

Systems located at Energy Department labsPacific Northwest National
Laboratory, Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratoryfilled out the rest of the top 10.

The sites that receive extensive federal funding and made the list
include NCSA, the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, the National Center
for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, the Arctic Region Supercomputing
Center in Alaska, the San Diego Supercomputing Center and the Maui
High-Performance Computing Center in Hawaii. 

Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the University of
Tennessee and the University of Mannheim, Germany, issue the Top 500 list
twice a year.
*******************************
Washington Post
Rich and Poor States Split Before Internet Summit 
By Richard Waddington
Reuters
Saturday, November 15, 2003; 9:10 AM 

GENEVA - Developed and developing nations were wide apart Saturday on
managing the Internet and closing the digital divide between rich and
poor at the end of what was meant as a final meeting before a world
summit.

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), to be held in Geneva
December 10-12, was first proposed in 1998 at the height of the Internet
boom, but two years of preparatory negotiations have failed to resolve
many of the outstanding issues.

"There are still challenges. The differences have not been
resolved," said one United Nations official after a week of talks
ended late Friday.

A further previously unscheduled session has been called for December 5-6
in a bid to clear the way for 60 heads of state and government, including
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre
Raffarin, to agree a declaration of principles and a plan of
action.

Initially conceived as a way to help poorer countries to make better use
of the Internet, and through it perhaps leap- frog some stages to
economic development, the summit has since broadened to embrace many
facets of the information society, including questions of press freedom
and Net management.

Some developing states such as Brazil and India would like to see greater
national or even supranational involvement in administering the Net,
while many rich states are happy to see it left to the private
sector.

"Developing countries will argue generally that governments do need
to be involved, that it cannot simply be the private sector, and the
private sector in some industrialized countries, to take the lead in how
the Internet is governed," said Pierre Gagne, executive secretary of
the WSIS organising secretariat.

In a world where half the population has never made a telephone call,
there is also the question of how to finance investment in infrastructure
and training needed to speed the spread of telecommunications' services
and the Internet.

Many poorer states are pressing for the creation of a special
"digital divide" fund, but richer countries remain to be
convinced of the need, conference sources said.

"No decision will be taken on the establishment of a fund, but I
think that there will be agreement to establish a mechanism that will
come up with specific recommendations on what to do," added
Gagne.

Other issues include how to handle pornography and spam -- unsolicited
mail through the Net.

The summit, being held under the auspices of the United Nations, is the
first of two. A second will be held in Tunis in 2005.
*******************************
USA Today
Thumbs pay at some stores
By Michelle Kessler USA TODAY
November 16, 2003

A pet store in Herndon, Va., will sell puppies for cash, credit,
check  or your thumbprint.
Customers at Fox Mill Pets can pay for the doggy in the window by placing
a thumb on a fingerprint scanner at the register.

The scanner is connected to a computer, which analyzes the print. Because
thumbprints are unique, the computer can match the print to a customer
and deduct the price of the puppy from that customer's checking account.

Count this as one of the first retail applications of biometric
technology, which uses physical characteristics to identify
people.

Biometric devices such as fingerprint readers, retinal scanners and
facial recognition systems are often part of high-tech security  in
life and in science fiction. But until recently, biometrics has been
considered too expensive and cumbersome for everyday use. 

Trials, such as Fox Mill Pets' partnership with biometrics firm BioPay,
may prove otherwise. Eleven Food 4 Less stores in the Midwest and three
Kroger grocery stores in Texas are trying fingerprint scanners, as are
other shops.

Advocates say the technology will improve customer service. Even though
customers are usually asked to provide a second form of ID, the
thumbprint reader can be a minute faster than writing a check, biometric
companies say. And by making it easier to deduct money from a bank
account, it can reduce credit card transactions, for which stores usually
pay a fee. 

"It improves productivity, reduces operating costs, improves cash
flow and lowers fraud," says Ron Smith, CEO of Biometric Access,
which makes fingerprint systems similar to the one at Fox Mill Pets.
"It puts the 'express' in 'express lane.' " Pay By Touch is
another player in the market.

Privacy, data concerns

Meta Group analyst Earl Perkins estimates the biometric market to be less
than $400 million, excluding law enforcement. Retail systems are a sliver
of that, he says. And those in use are far from the slick, omnipresent ID
readers seen in Tom Cruise's Minority Report. 

For most systems, customers must sign up, which takes about five minutes.
They usually must provide their name, phone number and checking account
or credit card information, and a fingerprint. The information is stored
in a database. The next time customers buy something, the computer
compares their print with ones in the database to find a match.

Biometric companies say they can and do keep data confidential and that
their systems are safe. Yet, there are concerns regarding biometrics,
including:

?Accuracy. At best, fingerprint scanners are about 98% accurate, Meta's
Perkins says. Some people have fingerprints that scanners can't read, and
the way the computer analyzes them is not perfect. A system might refuse
a legitimate customer  or let an impostor buy goods on someone
else's account, Perkins says.

?Security. Biometric systems store huge amounts of personal data. Some
systems record the data on a computer inside the store. Others record it
on computers at the biometric company's headquarters. Critics say data
will always be at risk. "All it takes is one good breach," says
Will Doherty of online advocacy group Electronic Frontier
Foundation.

Benefits grow 

Still, retailers are seeing benefits. Southern California grocery chain
Cardenas Market used to lose $500,000 a year on check-cashing fraud, says
Steve Vallance, general manager. Although it required customers to
produce paper identification and a thumbprint using ink pad and paper,
prints were often too smudged to be valuable.

Last November, Cardenas put biometric fingerprint scanners in its nine
stores. Fraud has fallen to fewer than 1% of the half-million checks the
stores cash in a year. Vallance says that's worth the cost, which is
usually about $175 for equipment and $75 a month in fees.
"Biometrics is one way to really identify the customer you're
dealing with," he says.
*******************************
USA Today
Southern drawls just don't get recognized by phone system
November 16, 2003

SHREVEPORT, La. (AP)  Southern drawls have thwarted voice
recognition equipment used by the Shreveport Police Department to route
non-emergency calls. 
A switchover to a lower-tech, touch-tone system  in which callers
hear a voice recording they can respond to by pressing a different number
for each division  is scheduled for Monday, said spokeswoman Kaycee
Hargrave. 

The voice-recognition system asked people to name the person or
department they wanted. More often than not, the system just didn't
understand, and they wound up at the wrong place, said Capt. John Dunn,
who oversees police communications. 

"In Louisiana, we have a problem with Southern drawl and what I call
lazy mouth. Because of that, the system often doesn't recognize what
(callers) say," he said. 

Interim Chief Mike Campbell knows all too well how frustrating the voice
recognition system can be. 

"I can count on one hand when I have been transferred to where I've
wanted to go, and I know the system. I can imagine how frustrating it
would be for a citizen," he said.
*******************************
Wired News
Brazil Gives Nod to Open Source  
Associated Press
10:07 AM Nov. 16, 2003 PT

BRASILIA, Brazil -- If he is to make good on his promise to improve life
for the tens of millions of Brazilians who live in dire poverty,
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva knows that one key challenge is to
bridge a massive technology gap. And if that means shunning Microsoft
software in South America's largest country, then so be it. 

Silva's top technology officer wants to transform the land of samba and
Carnival into a tech-savvy nation where everyone from schoolchildren to
government bureaucrats uses open-source software instead of costly
Windows products.

Such a policy makes eminent sense for a developing country where a mere
10 percent of the 170 million people have computers at home and where the
debt-laden government is the nation's biggest computer buyer, says Sergio
Amadeu, the open-source enthusiast appointed to head Brazil's National
Information Technology Institute by Silva after the president took office
this year. 

Paying software licensing fees to companies like Microsoft is simply
"unsustainable economically" when applications that run on the
open-source Linux operating system are much cheaper, Amadeu said. Under
his guidance, Silva's administration is encouraging all sectors of
government to move toward open-source programs, whose basic code is
public and freely available. 

"We have some islands in the federal government using open-source,
but we want to create a continent," said Amadeu, a former economics
professor who gained fame before joining Silva's team by launching a
network of free computer centers in Brazil's largest city, Sao Paulo.

Amadeu, who uses a Linux laptop in his office in an annex of Silva's
presidential palace, authored the book "Digital Exclusion: Misery in
the Information Era," which argues that the gap between the needy
and the wealthy will only deepen unless the poor have easy access to the
technology that the rich have at their fingertips, especially in
developing countries like Brazil. 

Only two small government agencies in Brasilia -- Amadeu's department and
the government-run news agency -- have so far shifted from Microsoft
operating systems to open-source. But Brazil recently signed a letter of
intent with IBM to help boost government use of such platforms as Linux.

Amadeu says he's even talking to election officials about using
open-source software in the country's more than 400,000 electronic voting
machines, about 20 percent of which run on a Windows variant. 

Although Amadeu insists the government has no plans to mandate
open-source software use, Microsoft is worried and is lobbying to prevent
the policy from becoming law. 

"We still think free choice is best for companies, the individuals
and the government," said Luiz Moncau, Microsoft's marketing
director in Brazil. "There is the risk of creating a technology
island in Brazil supported by law." 

Any move away from Windows use by Brazil's government would clearly hurt
Microsoft in its biggest South American market. The company got between 6
percent and 10 percent of its $318 million in revenues from the
government for the fiscal year that ended in June, Moncau said. 

Slashing Microsoft's bottom line would likely not disturb Silva, a former
union leader whose most prominent initiative seeks to end hunger by
providing poor families with $18 per month to buy food. 

Open-source represents a small share of the global software market, but
governments around the world have begun turning to it for various
reasons, not least of them a sense of not wanting to be beholden to
Microsoft. 

Federal agencies in major powers including France, Germany, China and the
United States have adopted Linux for servers. Cost is a factor, although
many network administrators consider Linux more stable and less
susceptible to viruses and hacker attacks. 

And while other developing countries such as India are farther along than
Brazil in promoting use of open-source systems, Brazil is poised to
become a role model for other Latin American countries aiming to cut
their computer costs, said Vania Curiati, IBM's software director in
Brazil. 

As it does in other developing countries including Peru, where the
company has faced an open-source challenge, Microsoft donates software to
Brazilian non-profit organizations and schools. 

In the private sector, many Brazilian businesses are already either using
or testing Linux in some capacity, Curiati said. IBM last year helped one
of Brazil's largest fast food chains, Habib's, install a Linux system
that lets customers order by phone for home delivery within 28 minutes.

Microsoft's Moncau plays down predictions by Brazilian open-source
supporters that government efforts to increase Linux use could create
jobs and turn the country into a technology exporter. Open-source
software could actually be more expensive than Windows programs when
service costs are factored in, he said. 

But try telling that to the tens of thousands of Brazilians who regularly
visit the 86 free Telecentro free computer centers in Sao Paulo, a
sprawling city of 18 million. All the centers' computers use open-source
software, and the Telecentros cater to working class Brazilians without
the means to buy computers. They learn how to send e-mail, write resumes
and cruise the Web. 

Waiting his turn for a terminal while bouncing his toddler on his lap,
Francisco de Assis said his monthly salary of $200 makes owning a
computer impossible. The 31-year-old security guard considers the
government's plight to be similar. 

"If this was a rich country, it wouldn't matter and we could buy
Microsoft products, but we're a developing country and Linux is just a
lot more accessible, so we're heading toward a Linux
generation."
*******************************
MSNBC Online
Quantum physics enters crypto realm 
Can devices guarantee ?unbreakable? secret codes?

NEW YORK, Nov. 17   Code-makers could be on the verge of
winning their ancient arms race with code-breakers. After 20 years of
research, an encryption process is emerging that is considered
unbreakable because it employs the mind-blowing laws of quantum
physics.
       THIS MONTH, a small startup called
MagiQ Technologies Inc. began selling what appears to be the first
commercially available system that uses individual photons to transfer
the numeric keys that are widely used to encode and read secret
documents.
       Photons, discrete particles of
energy, are so sensitive that if anyone tries to spy on their travel from
one point to another, their behavior will change, tipping off the sender
and recipient and invalidating the stolen code.
       ?There are really no ways around
cracking this code,? said Lov Grover, a quantum computing researcher at
Bell Laboratories who is not involved with MagiQ.
       Called Navajo  a nod to the
American Indian code specialists of World War II  MagiQ?s system
consists of 19-inch black boxes that generate and read the signals over a
fiber-optic line.
       MagiQ (pronounced ?magic,? with the
?Q? for ?quantum?) expects that with a cost of $50,000 to $100,000,
Navajo will appeal to banks, insurers, government agencies,
pharmaceutical companies and other organizations that transmit sensitive
information.
       ?We think this is going to have a
huge, positive impact on the world,? said Bob Gelfond, MagiQ?s founder
and chief executive.
       Encryption schemes commonly used now
are considered safe, though they theoretically could be broken
someday.
       But even before that day arrives,
Gelfond believes quantum encryption is superior in one important way. In
some super-high-security settings, people sharing passwords and other
information must have the same key, a massive string of digits used to
encode data. Sometimes the keys will be transferred by imperfect
means  via courier or special software. They are not changed very
often and can be susceptible to interception.
       ?Even if you have the perfect
encryption algorithm, if someone gets your key, you?re in trouble,?
Gelfond said.
       The Navajo system not only transmits
the keys on snoop-proof photons, it also changes them 10 times a second.
?Even if somebody could get a copy of the key, it wouldn?t do them any
good,? Gelfond said.
       Of course, unbreakable codes would
neutralize the ability of intelligence agents to intercept and read
messages. That would necessitate greater reliance on human
intelligence.
       So does the world?s foremost
code-making and code-breaking organization, the U.S. National Security
Agency, worry about the spread of quantum encryption? Better yet, is the
NSA using the technology itself? Like most things about the NSA, those
answers remain secret.
       
SELLING SECRECY
       MagiQ is seeking the government?s
approval to sell Navajo boxes overseas. Gelfond hopes officials have
realized  after trying and failing to restrict encryption exports in
the 1990s  that there?s little point in trying to ?put the genie
back in the bottle? once encryption methods have been invented. After
all, he said, researchers in China are known to have experimented with
quantum encryption.
       At least one other company,
Switzerland-based id Quantique SA, has produced a system similar to
Navajo, though that remains in pilot phase.
      Meanwhile, other organizations are
exploring different ways of using subatomic particles as code carriers.
QinetiQ, the commercial arm of Britain?s defense research agency, and the
national lab in Los Alamos, N.M., have experimented with transmitting
quantum keys through the air rather than over fiber-optic lines.
       Researchers at IBM Corp., where
quantum encryption was first demonstrated in the 1980s, are exploring
ways to shrink quantum systems so they can plug more efficiently into
existing computing and communications networks.
       In any incarnation, quantum
encryption employs one of the defining discoveries of physics:
Heisenberg?s Uncertainty Principle, which says subatomic particles exist
in multiple possible states at once, however hard as that may be to
imagine, until something interacts with them.
       When one Navajo box sends out a code
key, it imparts certain measurable characteristics to photons that travel
through the fiber-optic line. When the second Navajo box measures those
characteristics, that mere act throws off other characteristics  but
the Navajo boxes confer with each other after the transmission is
complete and sort it all out. The boxes can be up to 70 miles (112
kilometers) apart, after which additional boxes are needed as
relays.
       ?It?s intriguing,? said James
Capuano, operations director for NEON Communications Inc., a
Massachusetts-based telecom carrier that has tested Navajo boxes on its
network and now is exploring whether its customers would pay extra to use
them. ?It?s a very simple product to deploy.?
       It?s also just the first step on a
deeper quest to use quantum physics.
       
QUANTUM FUTURE
       Within a few decades, scientists
hope to use the multiple possible states and interactions of subatomic
particles as replacements for the binary 0s and 1s used in computing
today. A quantum computer, if it comes to pass, would be able to perform
several complex calculations simultaneously, making it exponentially more
powerful than today?s supercomputers.
       Researchers have performed simple
calculations with a few particles but are a long way from being able to
replicate that in a large quantum soup in a controllable and consistent
manner.
       In the 1990s, landmark research by
Peter Shor of AT&T Labs showed that quantum computers would be
powerful enough to crack any code in use today  except ones
generated through quantum cryptography.
       So at long last, code writers might
be done fighting to stay ahead of code breakers.
       ?We?ll stop this race,? said
Grégoire Ribordy, a founder of id Quantique. ?We?d like to have a system
that?s forever secure.?
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