Clips December 8, 2003

[Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>]

Clips December 8, 2003

ARTICLES

Talks Seek Global Internet Ground Rules 
Nations Chafe at U.S. Influence Over Internet
Japan Police Thwart Internet File-Sharing 
Rights groups urge US to pressure China's Premier Wen on jailed
dissidents
Homeland Security defends privacy review of visitor tracking system 
Edwards calls on Bush to return funds from Diebold exec
E-GOV: A year in review
DHS moves into the FAST lane along Mexican border 
Defense official defends idea of data mining
*******************************
Associated Press
Talks Seek Global Internet Ground Rules 
Sun Dec 7, 5:26 PM ET
By JONATHAN FOWLER, Associated Press Writer 

GENEVA - Negotiators from 192 countries have narrowed differences on
setting the global ground rules for expanding use of the Internet, but
remain undecided on whether rich nations should help their poor
counterparts pay for the increase. 

   

Two days of closed-door talks, which continued into the early hours
Sunday, have resolved most of the key issues to be tackled at a U.N.
summit on information technology which starts Wednesday, said Marc
Furrer, the Swiss official who brokered the discussions. 


"Unfortunately, we didn't settle everything, but one has to be
realistic. We're probably at 98 percent," said Furrer, director of
Switzerland's Federal Office of Communications. Negotiators will meet
again Tuesday, on the eve of the three-day World Summit on the
Information Society, he told reporters. 


The negotiators, meeting for the fifth round of talks already this year,
have been trying to draft documents for the nearly 60 heads of state or
government expected in Geneva. 


French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin and Cuban President Fidel
Castro (news - web sites) are among some of the leaders who plan to
attend. Many of the leaders will be coming from developing countries.


The key stumbling block remains whether and how richer nations should
subsidize growth of the Internet in poorer countries. 


African countries support the creation of a special "digital
solidarity fund" to pay for extending the Internet into remote
villages, but European nations, the United States and Japan have been
wary, saying existing development aid money could be used instead.


"Some countries want to set this up now, others say they don't want
to have anything to do with it," said Furrer, without identifying
them. "It's clear we need resources, but we should first check
whether there are already resources, because some exist but are not
used." 


On Tuesday, negotiators will focus on wording saying a further study is
needed before any fund is created, said Furrer. "If the idea is good
the fund will happen, if it's not good it won't happen." 


Furrer said the talks had resolved two other key differences: whether
news media freedoms should be protected and whether and how governments
should regulate the Internet. 


During earlier rounds, media and human rights organizations said they
were worried that a draft of the final declaration to be issued at the
close of the summit made little reference to freedom of _expression_.


Countries  including China  which have clamped down on both
regular and Internet media have been anxious to restrict references to
press freedom in the declaration, campaigners and officials close to the
talks said. 


However, Furrer said, negotiators have agreed to include wording
maintaining the commitment to press freedom enshrined in the United
Nations (news - web sites)' Universal Declaration of Human Rights.


"It's always a compromise," said Furrer. "However, as a
former journalist, I can stand behind the wording. Countries that uphold
the idea of a free media can live with it." 


Countries have been divided over whether to exercise more national
control over the Internet. Some developing nations have said they would
like a U.N. body to regulate the Internet, but industrialized countries
reject international agencies playing a significant control. 


After the latest talks, "the political will was quite clear  we
don't want a big change on Internet governance," Furrer said.


Key decisions about controlling the Internet's core systems remain with
the U.S. government and a private, U.S.-based organization of technical
and business experts known as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names
and Number, or ICANN (news - web sites). 

   



Some countries, particularly newcomers to the Internet which are afraid
they could be ignored, seek a greater role for non-U.S. governments,
perhaps through a treaty-based international organization. 

Rather than tackle the issue in Geneva, negotiators have agreed to ask
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) to set up a group to
study new ways to run the Internet, with its proposals to be presented at
another information summit in Tunisia in 2005. 

ICANN president Paul Twomey praised the outcome, saying such a working
group was more likely than the government-dominated summit to reflect the
positions of business and civic leaders. 

But Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa in Canada,
said a greater role for government is inevitable. The discussions over
the next two years, he said, would be over whether that role remains
within ICANN or goes to "some other acronym." 

The declaration also calls on governments to work more closely together
to improve Internet security and find ways to deal with spam, or junk
e-mail.
*******************************
New York Times
December 8, 2003
Nations Chafe at U.S. Influence Over Internet
By JENNIFER L. SCHENKER
International Herald Tribune

PARIS, Dec. 7 - Paul Twomey, the president of the Internet's
semi-official governing body, Icann, learned Friday night what it feels
like to be an outsider. 

Mr. Twomey, who had flown 20 hours from Vietnam to Geneva to observe a
preparatory meeting for this week's United Nations' conference on
Internet issues, ended up being escorted from the meeting room by guards.
The officials running the meeting had suddenly decided to exclude outside
observers. 

Mr. Twomey's ejection may underscore the resentment of many members of
the international community over the way the Internet is run and over
United States ownership of many important Internet resources. Although
Mr. Twomey is Australian, Icann - the Internet Corporation for Assigned
Names and Numbers - is a powerful nonprofit group established by the
United States government in 1998 to oversee various technical
coordination issues for the global network.

Icann and the United States government are expected to come under heavy
fire at the conference, which begins Wednesday in Geneva and will be one
of the largest gatherings of high-level government officials, business
leaders and nonprofit organizations to discuss the Internet's future. An
important point of debate will be whether the Internet should be overseen
by the United Nations instead of American groups like Icann.

"I am not amused," Mr. Twomey said via a cellphone outside the
conference room Friday evening after he was barred from the planning
meeting. "At Icann, anybody can attend meetings, appeal decisions or
go to ombudsmen. And here I am outside a U.N. meeting room where
diplomats - most of whom know little about the technical aspects - are
deciding in a closed forum how 750 million people should reach the
Internet." Mr. Twomey said that others were also kept out, including
members of the news media and anyone who was not a government
official.

Although more than 60 nations will be represented in Geneva by their
leaders, only a handful of industrial nations are sending theirs.
President Bush will not attend, although other United States officials
are scheduled to participate. 

During the conference, an expected 5,000 representatives from
intragovernmental, business and nonprofit organizations, will try to
create an action plan for the next phase of the Internet. They are set to
tackle thorny questions like how to close the so-called digital divide
separating the rich and the poor; how to supervise the Internet; and how
to deal with issues like spam and pornography on the Web.

Because the Internet first took root in the United States, it may be
understandable that American interests have tended to prevail. The
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for example, still has more
Internet addresses than all of China, according to Lee McKnight, an
associate professor at Syracuse University and an M.I.T. research
affiliate. 

By 2007, though, more than 50 percent of Web users will be Chinese,
according to some forecasts.

"The world should be grateful to Uncle Sam for creating the
Internet," said Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, a Jordanian businessman who is
vice chairman of the United Nations' Information and Communication
Technology Task Force. But, he said, it is time for the rest of the world
to have a larger voice in Internet governance.

To that end, all countries participating in the conference agreed early
Sunday that a working group should be formed under the auspices of the
United Nations to examine Internet governance, including whether more
formal oversight of Icann by governments or intragovernmental agencies is
necessary, said Markus Kummer, the Swiss Foreign Ministry's Internet
envoy and the leader of the conference's working group on Internet
governance.

Mr. Abu-Ghazaleh, who is also chairman of an important International
Chamber of Commerce committee, said he planned to present a proposal for
a new, more international management of Icann at a private meeting
Tuesday. That meeting is to include leaders from six African, five Middle
Eastern, four European and two Asian countries as well as Kofi Annan. the
United Nations Secretary General, and Erkki Liikanen, the European
commissioner charged with overseeing information technology issues.

Conspicuously absent from the invitation list are representatives of
Icann and the United States government. But some well-known Internet
figures, including Nicholas Negroponte, Esther Dyson and Tim Berners-Lee,
are expected to attend the meeting Tuesday. So are senior executives from
a variety of multinational companies, including America Online,
Microsoft, Boeing, Siemens, Alcatel and Vodafone.

At the heart of the discussions will be what role government and
intragovernmental agencies should play.

"The U.S. government position is that the Internet is coordinated
and led by the private sector and should be private sector led," a
State Department spokesman said last week. "But we are committed to
assuring that Icann remains balanced amongst all
stakeholders."

Mr. Abu-Ghazaleh, though, said he planned to propose that Icann be placed
under the umbrella of a United Nations communications task force that
gives equal status to government, private sector and nongovernmental
organizations.

Under his plan, the United States would have permanent presidency of an
Icann oversight committee. Other permanent members would include the
International Telecommunication Union, a United Nations agency; the
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development; the World
Intellectual Property Organization; and the International Chamber of
Commerce. Each continent would have one representative on the committee,
elected by the countries from the continent they represent. 

Under the Abu-Ghazaleh proposal, Icann would continue to be based in the
United States and governed by United States law, and the same people who
do the technical work would continue in that role.

Icann's Mr. Twomey said he saw no reason to change the current set-up,
pointing out that nearly 100 governments are already represented on
Icann's advisory committee. He said Icann planned to open regional
offices in Europe, Africa, Latin America and Asia in 2004.

Icann's role is limited to technical matters like the format of Internet
addresses, Mr. Twomey said. "If governments think they can really
find a place to discuss spam and child porn and e-commerce, we would
probably welcome it," he said. "These things are not in our
charter - it is not what we do. So we want to assure everyone involved
that we are not standing in the way."

But, he said, when it comes to the technical underpinnings of the
Internet, Icann should be allowed to continue its work, Mr. Twomey said.
"It is not broken, so why fix it?"
*******************************
Australian IT
EU presses for spam laws
Elsa Wenzel
DECEMBER 08, 2003  
 
THE European Union has asked nine member nations that have failed to
adopt a privacy law intended to help the fight against unwanted email to
describe how they intend to comply with the law.

Belgium, Germany, Greece, Finland, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands,
Portugal, and Sweden must provide the explanation within two months of
face possible court action. The law went into effect October 31. 
The law aims to reduce internet fraud and protect legitimate businesses
by banning companies from sending unsolicited email, plucking personal
data from web sites or pinpointing the locations of satellite-linked
mobile phone users. 

The EU hopes to eradicate unwanted email, which makes up half of internet
traffic, according to the European Commission. However, the legislation
stops short of describing how nations can purge and punish senders, who
easily cloak their identities on the internet. 

Anyone with an email address and an urge to peddle wares online can buy
cheap software to send messages to millions of people in a matter of
days. 

Six countries - Austria, Britain, Denmark, Ireland, Italy and Spain -
have taken steps to adopt the EU law. 

"It is urgent that member states adopt a consistent legislative
approach to such issues," said Erkki Liikanen, Commissioner for
Enterprise and the Information Society. "This will strengthen
consumer confidence in e-commerce and electronic services."
*******************************
Associated Press
Japan Police Thwart Internet File-Sharing 
Fri Dec 5, 2:13 PM ET
By KENJI HALL, Associated Press Writer 

TOKYO - In a rare police crackdown on Internet file-sharing, two Japanese
men were arrested for allegedly disseminating movies and games with
software that claimed to protect users' identities. 

The arrests  only the second such case in Japan  could signal
an entertainment industry-encouraged shift here toward harsh penalties
for anyone caught trading copyright material online. 

Software that allows anonymous file sharing gained attention this year as
the U.S. recording industry shifted from trying to shut down the creators
and promoters of file-sharing software to suing the users. 

The Japanese case demonstrates how difficult it can be to stay anonymous
on the Internet. 

The two suspects, a 41-year-old man who runs a business and an unemployed
19-year-old, were detained Nov. 27 for alleged copyright violations using
a "peer-to-peer" program called Winny that is available on the
Internet for free. The program allows users to trade files without
revealing their Internet Protocol address, the Internet's equivalent of a
phone number. 

Kyoto police spokesman Yukinori Kumamoto didn't say how police identified
the suspects. 

Winny is partly based on Freenet (news - web sites), a freely distributed
program intended to bypass Internet censorship by anonymizing its users.

Freenet's creator, Ian Clarke, said the two Japanese men were apparently
caught because they used a messaging function in Winny that was not
anonymous. 

"In general, nobody should trust any (file-sharing) system which
claims to protect anonymity unless its design has been independently
reviewed," Clarke said. 

The Japanese police investigation coincided with a criminal complaint
filed by video game maker Nintendo (news - web sites) Co., game developer
Hudson Soft and the Japanese and International Motion Picture Copyright
Association, he said. 

The 41-year-old man posted two movies  including the Academy
Award-winner "A Beautiful Mind"  on the Net, while the
19-year-old released Nintendo's "Super Mario Advance" and other
video games, Kumamoto said. 

Both confessed but neither has been charged with a crime, he added.

Police also searched the home of a Japanese software developer suspected
of creating Winny, but refused to provide details. 

A recent survey by Japan's Association of Copyright for Computer Software
estimates there were about a quarter of a million Winny users in this
country as of September. 

The software industry group began lobbying police to rein in copyright
infringers two years ago, when Winny surfaced following the first-ever
arrests of suspected file-swappers here.
*******************************
Associated France Press
Rights groups urge US to pressure China's Premier Wen on jailed
dissidents
Mon Dec 8, 6:37 AM ET

BEIJING (AFP) - Human rights groups urged the United States to pressure
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao over China's rights violations and dissident
arrests as another Internet writer was jailed for posting essays online
demanding freedom.

Yan Jun, 32, was sentenced to two years in prison on a charge of
"inciting subversion" by the Xian Intermediate People's Court
in northern China's Shaanxi province, his mother Dai Yuzhen told AFP.

"The court took no more than 20 minutes," Dai said by
telephone, adding that family members and Yan could not understand the
decision. 

"Just because he wrote a few essays, he's going to jail? I can't
make sense of it," Dai said. 

Yan told the court he planned to appeal. The court refused to comment.

The sentencing Monday came just hours after Wen landed in the United
States for an official visit in which China's rights violations,
especially its recent arrests of cyber-dissidents, are expected to be
raised. 

The Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy on
Monday urged US President George W. Bush (news - web sites) to use the
visit to step-up pressure on China to improve its rights record.

"We call on Bush to pressure Wen Jiabao to open up the Internet,
allow religious freedom and allow workers to set up independent
unions," the Center's director Frank Lu said in a statement.

Meanwhile, the wives and mothers of four jailed Internet dissidents
handed an open letter to the US embassy in Beijing addressed to Bush's
wife Laura, appealing for her to pressure China to release their husbands
and sons. 

The women called on the American first lady to help seek the release of
Yang Zili, Xu Wei, Jin Haike and Zhang Honghai, who were sentenced to
between eight and 10 years jail in May for posting on the Internet essays
urging political reform. 

"They were appealing to Laura Bush as a mother and a wife who should
better understand what happens when a family is broken up and children
lose their father and mothers lose their sons," Lu, at the
information center, said. 

Wen is also expected to face demands for the release of well-known
dissident Yang Jianli, a US resident on a Chinese blacklist who was
detained in April last year after he travelled to China on a friend's
passport in an attempt to observe ongoing labor unrest. 

Yang was tried in August but is still awaiting a verdict on charges
including espionage. 

Eight senators have sent a letter to Bush urging him to raise Yang's case
while a group of 32 Congressmen sent a letter to Wen through the Chinese
embassy in Washington expressing concern about Yang's detention.

Key people with whom Wen will be meeting have vowed to raise the case,
said Jared Genser, an official at Freedom Now, a US-based group pushing
for the dissidents' release. 

Yan is the latest of several cyber-dissidents jailed since Wen and a new
generation of Chinese leaders took over almost a year ago. 

The middle school teacher was arrested in April after posting five essays
online, including one that called for a reassessment of the bloody June
4, 1989, crackdown on student demonstrators in Tiananmen Square.

Yan told his lawyer that jail guards had ordered inmates to beat him. He
was seen with a broken nose during his October trial. 

He became famous in 1998 when he was among four dissidents arrested in
Xian when former US president Bill Clinton (news - web sites) visited the
city. The dissidents were released two days later. 
*******************************
Government Executive
December 5, 2003 
Homeland Security defends privacy review of visitor tracking system 
By Chris Strohm 
cstrohm@xxxxxxxxxxx

A Homeland Security Department official on Friday deflected an accusation
that the department violated the law by failing to assess how a new
immigration tracking system would impact personal privacy.

The department is not only complying with the law, but doing more than it
is legally required to do, said DHS Chief Privacy Officer Nuala O'Connor
Kelly. 

On Thursday, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., sent Homeland Security
Secretary Tom Ridge a letter saying the department violated the law by
failing to complete a privacy impact assessment before developing and
purchasing new technology for the U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status
Indicator Technology (US VISIT) project, which is slated to be up and
running at 115 airports on Jan. 5. 

"The E-Government Act of 2002 requires federal agencies to conduct
and publish privacy impact assessments (PIAs) before developing or
procuring information technology that will collect or store personal
information electronically," wrote Lieberman, who is the ranking
member of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. "It has come to
my attention that in the past year the Department of Homeland Security
has developed and procured new biometric technologies for the US VISIT
system without having completed a PIA, as required by law."

Kelly said Lieberman misunderstood the current status of the program. She
said Homeland Security is not developing or purchasing any new technology
or equipment for the first phase of the VISIT project, which goes into
effect Jan. 5. Instead, the department is using existing technology, some
of which dates back to 1994. 


"We didn't violate the law," she said. 

O'Connor Kelly said a draft PIA is under review and will be approved and
made public by the end of the year. She said she wants the PIA done
before the first phase of the project begins, even though the department
is not legally required to have it. She added that the PIA will be
updated for the next phases of the project and as new technology and
equipment is procured. 

In his letter, Lieberman acknowledged that DHS has a draft PIA, but said
it is his understanding that the department developed new biometric
systems soon after it unveiled plans for VISIT last April, and new
equipment for the system has been purchased and sent to airports around
the country. 

Lieberman urged DHS to complete the privacy assessment for VISIT as soon
as possible, and comply with the privacy law in all future information
technology projects. However, he stopped short of calling for a halt to
the VISIT program. 


"We are not calling for an end or abatement of the program," a
committee spokeswoman said Friday. "It's an important security
measure but there is also a law that needs to be complied with."

The new system will collect fingerprints and photographs from millions of
visitors entering and exiting the United States every year. Such
biometric identifiers will be used to verify visitors' identities and
compare them to lists of suspected or known terrorists. DHS released a
request for proposals last week to find a lead contractor for the
program, which could be worth up to $10 billion.


Federal law requires an automated entry and exit system be implemented at
airports and seaports by the end of this month. Additionally, the system
must be implemented at the 50 most highly trafficked land ports of entry
by December 2004, and all ports of entry by December 2005. 


On Nov. 24, House Government Reform Committee Chairman Tom Davis, R-Va.,
asked Ridge and Secretary of State Colin Powell to provide information on
the US VISIT project, specifically about coordination efforts and access
to information compiled through the system. 
*******************************
USA Today
Edwards calls on Bush to return funds from Diebold exec
By Will Lester, Associated Press
Posted 12/5/2003 8:33 PM

WASHINGTON  Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards is
calling on President Bush to return more than $100,000 donated to his
campaign by a major manufacturer of voting machines, saying the
relationship could damage confidence in elections. 
Edwards, a senator from North Carolina, criticized the contributions by
Walden O'Dell, head of Diebold Election Systems in a speech prepared for
delivery Saturday to Florida Democrats at their annual meeting in Lake
Buena Vista. 

And he took a swipe at the touch screen voting machines made by Diebold,
which some computer experts have questioned as lacking adequate security.
Diebold officials have defended the security of their voting machines.

"We now have touch screen voting machines that some people think are
just as bad as a butterfly ballot," Edwards said, referring to the
confusing ballots that became notorious in the botched Florida election
in 2000. 

"What makes this worse is that one of George W. Bush's fund-raising
Pioneers said he wanted to help Ohio 'deliver' its electoral votes to
George Bush," Edwards said. 

Edwards said that "people who make voting machines need to be real
careful when they talk about delivering elections." 

According to the New York Times, O'Dell wrote a letter to Republican
contributors in August that said "I am committed to helping Ohio
deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." 

Terry Holt, a spokesman for the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign said he
had no comment on Edwards' remarks. 
*******************************
Federal Computer Week
E-GOV: A year in review
Government officials and observers report on the progress made under the
E-Gov Act of 2002
BY Sara Michael 
Dec. 8, 2003

One year ago this month, President Bush signed into law the E-Government
Act of 2002, which Congress and administration officials hailed as a
turning point for government operations. 

The act provides agencies with a laundry list of technology guidelines
and mandates intended to ease the transition of paper-based information
and services to the Internet, opening up a new channel through which the
public can interact with government.

As the one-year anniversary approaches, observers are questioning the
impact of the law. For many, it simply conveys the message that
e-government is a priority. For others, the law should  or at least
could  help shape e-government now and in the future.

Several areas have received intense focus. As the act requires, agency
officials are filing regular reports to the Office of Management and
Budget that assess their progress on ensuring the privacy and security of
their data and systems. And OMB has created a permanent e-government
position.

But privacy and security were already near the top of the Bush
administration's agenda, and a de facto e-government leader was already
in place. 

The law touched on nearly every aspect of technology management. It
defined measurements of e-government success and expectations for action.
It solidified legislative concepts and activities, attaching funding and
deadlines to actions and outlining priorities. It also required the
development of some key e-government applications.

The progress agencies make in lesser-known areas can serve as a useful
gauge for measuring the act's overall impact. Here's a look at five such
provisions, with a snapshot of the success agencies have had and the work
still to be done. 

Web site guidance 

Synopsis: Talking the talk, but a long walk to walk

One of the underpinnings of e-government is the Internet itself. One goal
of the E-Government Act is to develop some rules of the road that every
agency must follow.

After the act has been in effect for two years, OMB officials are
expected to release guidance for agency Web sites to ensure they include
information about the agency, its strategic plan, tools to gather data
and security measures to protect information. OMB, accordingly, has
established an Interagency Committee on Government Information.

The committee is expected to conduct studies on the accessibility and
preservation of government information, and make recommendations. The
group has begun work and is focused on the deadline, OMB officials
said.

"Basically, under the committee, we have a working group led by the
Office of Citizen Services in [the General Services Administration] that
is bringing together people from across the federal government to provide
recommendations to OMB on this issue," an OMB official said.
"There are so many people across government with roles in this. We
really felt the need to gather an interagency group to do
this."

However, a staff member for Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) on the Senate
Governmental Affairs Committee said the interagency committee has been
established only on paper and there have been no meetings. Beyond Web
site guidance, the group is charged with defining standards for
categorizing government information and establishing schedules for
implementing the standards.

"That committee is going to have a lot to do," the staffer
said. "We're not just talking about government information already
on the Internet. We're talking about information stored in any form and
how that information can be made electronically searchable. That's very
complicated when you think about how much government information there
is, and you need interoperability standards on how it would be
retrieved."

System interoperability 

Synopsis: Focused on architecture, fuzzy on funding

An even more ambitious provision aims to solve agencies' perpetual lack
of interoperable information systems. Although the legislation mandates
that a study be performed within three years of the act's implementation
to determine agencies' progress toward that integration, the real effort
has taken the form of the federal enterprise architecture.

The architecture presents a framework for system development through five
models. OMB has released versions of the performance, business, services
and technical reference models, and will continue to revise them. The
final and most complicated component  the data reference model 
is in its final pre- release stages. 

Agencies are required to link IT projects in the budget process to the
federal architecture, which then allows OMB officials to help coordinate
and integrate IT programs governmentwide.

In essence, this architecture work fits right into the language of the
law, OMB officials said. The reference models "are in large part
creating standards for interoperability," an official said. "So
it made perfect sense to link this requirement up with the federal
enterprise architecture."

It's not technology that stands in the way of interoperability, said
Roger Baker, former chief information officer at the Commerce Department.
Instead, it's cultural barriers that impede information and process
sharing among agencies.

The act, he said, falls short in addressing interoperability, because
funding has not been authorized to provide incentives for
sharing.

"Interoperability is not a technology issue," Baker said.
"It would be very, very straightforward to make the systems
interoperable. The only people who want that are the technologists. There
is a reason why the 40 [terrorist] watch lists exist, and it has nothing
to do with technology."

Bruce McConnell, president of McConnell International LLC and former
chief of information policy and technology at OMB, echoed those funding
concerns, particularly regarding the federal enterprise architecture.
This seems to be a common problem with e-government, he said, and the
Bush administration has not been effective in convincing Congress to
spend the money.

"My contention is they have not educated, reached out effectively to
the appropriations committees," he said. "The fact that stuff
has been authorized but not appropriated shows they haven't done their
homework. The job's only half done."


R&D repository 

Synopsis: Good start but looking for closure

Another example of a job half done is the creation of a database on
federal research and development funding. According to the law, the
database should include details about each funding award, such as the
dates of the opportunity and the total funds attached to the
project.

The law was based on work already under way at the National Science
Foundation and the Defense Department, OMB officials said, and the
interagency committee will expand those efforts.

The process is much like Grants.gov, a Web portal for information on
federal grants available governmentwide, launched in October. Similarly,
OMB would establish a policy framework for agencies, setting the standard
for what information to post, officials said.

"R&D is just a different slice," one OMB official said.
"All of those opportunities are available and viewable to the public
in terms of what they are doing, who's doing it and how much money there
is."

Committee members are looking for ways to expand NSF's Research and
Development in the United States (RADIUS) system. Developed by Rand
Corp., a nonprofit research institute, the system supports the White
House Office of Science and Technology Policy. It is the first
comprehensive database that allows users to search for information on the
more than $75 billion in annual federal R&D funds, according to
Rand.

Despite authorizations in the act for $2 million each fiscal year through
2005, no money has been appropriated.

"They are looking for ways to refine the current system to comply
with the act," said David Marin, a spokesman for Rep. Tom Davis
(R-Va.), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee and one of the
E-Government Act's authors. "The act authorizes appropriations for
the development, maintenance and operation of the repository, but the
funding has yet to be appropriated. That disappoints us."

Lieberman's staff member agreed that the NSF project needs funding, but
said it's ready to be implemented today. "The existing RADIUS system
is fully operational, and could be made publicly available immediately at
essentially no additional cost," he said. "OMB may not yet
understand how easy that is. They just need a modest dedicated funding
stream, equivalent to past expenditures, to get it done."


Courthouse Web sites 

Synopsis: Ahead of the curve before the race began

The law recommends each court establish and maintain a Web site with
information on its location, rules or general orders, access to docket
information of each case and written court opinions . The Web sites
should be up and running within two years of the act's
implementation.

However, the act didn't bring a sweeping transformation to the way the
judicial branch does business, according to Karen Redmond, a spokeswoman
for the U.S. Courts. "That's because many of the requirements of the
E-Government Act already have been met by the federal courts," she
said.

Almost all courts of appeals, district courts and bankruptcy courts have
Web sites, and several courts have exceeded the mandates, Redmond said.
For example, in the middle district of North Carolina, the court's
calendar, updated hourly during the workday, can be accessed
online.

The act also requires access to electronic documents and written
opinions, an effort the judiciary started a couple of years ago with
creation of the Case Management/Electronic Case Files systems.

The systems now hold more than 14 million documents, Redmond said, and
the number of courts using them increases each month. 

Davis is pleased with the courts' progress, but said there is room for
improvements.

"Some Web sites have search engines," Marin said.
"However, the Court Administration and Case Management Committee of
the Judicial Conference is working on overcoming logistical challenges to
improving Web site search ability and establishing uniform search engines
across federal court Web sites. We'll need to keep a close eye on
that."


Online tutorial 

Synopsis: Less a question of progress than process

Although many provisions of the E-Government Act come with hard and fast
deadlines, others are tougher to pin down. 

One often overlooked section of the act recommends that OMB officials
work with the Education Department and the Institute of Museum and
Library Services (IMLS), an independent organization, to develop a
Web-based tutorial for accessing government services and information
online. As envisioned by the law's authors, the tutorial would be
available at community technology centers and libraries
nationwide.

The act authorized $2 million each for fiscal 2003 and 2004, but
officials are relying on existing resources, the official said. The
tutorial does not have a deadline attached to it, and the official called
it an ongoing process.

OMB has asked IMLS to take the lead on this project. Mamie Bittner, the
institute's director of public and legislative affairs, said it is
partnering with Education and state and local libraries on this effort,
but a spokesman for Education said IMLS has volunteered to spearhead the
effort for the agency.

Nonetheless, Bittner said institute officials would be expanding on
similar work under way at the agency, such as a tutorial developed for
grant seekers. 

"An initial meeting has occurred to frame this effort," she
said of the tutorial suggested in the act. "The group will develop a
guide for use by community technology centers, public libraries and
citizens to help them access government services online."
*******************************
Government Computer News
12/08/03 
DHS moves into the FAST lane along Mexican border 
By Joab Jackson 

The Homeland Security Department is expanding its trusted-vehicle program
to Mexican ports. 

The program uses wireless radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags
to identify and speed border crossing for trucks and drivers that the
department has registered as secure. 

The department has been using the Free and Secure Trade program, or FAST,
at five Canadian port crossings. Homeland Security secretary Tom Ridge
last week announced the plan to expand it to Mexican ports. 

FAST establishes dedicated lanes at border crossings for trucks
registered through the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism
program, an initiative for freight carriers and suppliers to implement
security plans and volunteer operational information. 

Texas? El Paso border port opened FAST lanes Sept. 27. An additional six
ports will be opened by Jan. 31: at Brownsville, Hidalgo and Laredo in
Texas; at Calexico and Otay Mesa in California; and at Nogales, Ariz.

The opening follows a successful implementation of FAST program at
U.S.-Canada crossings. The U.S.-Canada FAST border pointsBlaine, Wash.;
Buffalo and Champlain, N.Y.; Detroit; and Port Huron, Mich.have been
operational since September of last year. A total of 27 traffic lanes
have been equipped so that nearly 70 percent of freight traffic with
Canada can use the system. 

When a registered truck rolls into one of these border points, a reader
identifies the vehicle from its RFID tag. The driver also presents an
identification card, which can be read by either a stationary or handheld
reader. 

ITS Services Inc. of Springfield, Va., the systems integrator for FAST,
has a contract to wirelessly equip 65 U.S.-Mexican lanes, said Jill
Thompson, group vice president for ITS Services. ITS Services equipped
the Canadian ports for $1.2 million and will equip the Mexican ports
under the original contract, bringing its value to $5.7 million.

For the original contract, ITS Services used RFID tag printers from the
DataCard Group of Minnetonka, Minn., for printing ID cards for truck
drivers. TransCore of Beaverton, Ore., provided the windshield sticker
tags, blank ID cards and inspection booth reader equipment. Intermec
Technologies Corp. of Everett, Wash., provided the handheld readers.

?I anticipate the same degree of success with FAST on the Mexican border
as we've seen on the Canadian border,? Ridge said in a statement.
*******************************
Government Executive
December 2, 2003 
Defense official defends idea of data mining
By Chloe Albanesius, National Journal's Technology Daily 

Public misconceptions of privacy and civil liberties issues surrounding
the Defense Department's Terrorism Information Awareness (TIA) program
led to its demise, a Defense official said on Tuesday.

The end of TIA, which called for "mining" commercial databases
for information on potential terrorists, was the result of "lots of
distortions and misunderstandings," Robert Popp, a special assistant
to the director for strategic matters at the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency, said at an event sponsored by the Potomac
Institute.

Popp said TIA researchers were pursuing the project under two agendas:
operational, and research and development. The operational aspect called
for DARPA to provide R&D groups with different technologies in order
to "tie many different agencies together," Popp said. And on
the research front, DARPA asked whether "there may be other data in
the information space that may be useful for the government to exploit in
its counter terrorism." 

"Terrorist acts must involve people ... and plans and activities ...
that will leave an information signature," he said. DARPA was
"extremely public" in detailing its TIA work, Popp added, but
that allowed the project to be "distorted in the public."

Asked how he might have handled the situation differently, he said,
"When the first onslaught of distortions occurred, we would've been
much more public ... to clear the record ... in respect to the public and
to Congress." 

In place of TIA, perhaps there is a "need for a specific
intelligence agency to go after terrorists" with a limited charter,
said Kim Taipale, executive director for the Center for Advanced Studies
in Science and Technology Policy. 

"We have a long way to go on this," said Dan Gallington, a
senior research fellow at the Potomac Institute. He called for specific
congressional oversight committees to handle the situation. 

"The goal is security with privacy," Taipale added.
"[That] does not mean balancing security and privacy but maximizing
the set of results you want within those constraints." 

"It's best solved by using guiding principles, not ... rigged
structure or rules that pre-determine where you're trying to get
to," he said. "Security and privacy are not dichotomous rivals
to be traded one for another in a zero-sum game; they are dual
objectives, each to be maximized within certain constraints."

Taipale said, "Technology is not the solution" but only a
"tool to allocate resources." 

"In a society that is increasingly digitized, technology creates
privacy problems," Taipale said. The problem, therefore, he said, is
not controversial programs like data mining, but how to respond to the
digitized society. 

"We really face two inevitable futures," Taipale said.
"Develop technologies that are built to provide privacy-protecting
mechanisms [or] rely solely on legal mechanisms ... to control the use of
technologies."

Taipale said specific tech implementations should be subject to
congressional oversight, administrative procedures and judicial review.
"It's the classic needle-in-the-haystack problem, [but] even worse,
the needles themselves appear innocuous in isolation," he 
said.
*******************************
Washington Post
Scrubbing Away the Stain of
Spam 
By Cynthia L. Webb
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Monday, December 8, 2003; 9:49 AM 
As e-mail becomes an ever more indispensable tool for
companies and consumers, the scourge of spam continues to grow
exponentially. The junk e-mail problem has evolved into such a stain on
Internet communications that the nation's largest Internet service
providers and technology companies are devoting unprecedented resources
to try to stop it.
Yahoo! Inc. is the latest company to wade deeper into the melee,
following tech titans like Microsoft, America Online and
EarthLink. 
While Yahoo and top ISPs have already been working
together
to squelch spam, Yahoo on Friday detailed its own plan, which includes an
assault on messages that adopt e-mail header information to make it look
like an e-mail has come from someone else (This, as the techies know, is
called "spoofing."). The so-called DomainKeys software, which
the company "hopes to launch in 2004, will be made available freely
to the developers of the Web's major open-source e-mail software and
systems," Reuters said.
The wire service explained how the spam scrubber would work: "Under
Yahoo's new architecture, a system sending an e-mail message would embed
a secure, private key in a message header. The receiving system would
check the Internet's Domain Name System for the public key registered to
the sending domain. If the public key is able to decrypt the private key
embedded in the message, then the e-mail is considered authentic and can
be delivered. If not, then the message is assumed not to be an authentic
one from the sender and is blocked," Reuters said. Brad
Garlinghouse, vice president for communication products at Yahoo,
told the wire service: "If we can get only a small percentage of the
industry to buy in, we think it can have a dent."
Garlinghouse had a different estimate for IDG News Service, which
reported him as saying that DomainKeys will require "widespread
adoption" from industry to be effective. The IDG article said that
"legitimate organization that doesn't use DomainKeys will be unable
to embed the private-key validation in its outgoing messages, leading
these messages to fail the validation test at recipient systems that do
use DomainKeys. ... This is a big challenge for DomainKeys' success, said
Jonathan Gaw, an IDC analyst. 'They'll have to convince a lot of
people to cooperate with them,' he said. 'It's going to take a lot of
effort on Yahoo's part to get everybody on board.' Achieving that type of
consensus from people who run mail servers around the world will be
difficult, especially at companies that may fail to see what value this
has for them, he said." 
?
Reuters via USA
Today: Yahoo Proposes New Internet Anti-Spam
Structure 
?
IDG News
Service: Yahoo Pitching Antispam Initiative to
Industry 
Spam Law Enforcement = Nightmare
As Yahoo ramps up its private push, governments worldwide grapple
with legislation to stem the tide of junk mail.
The European Union passed a law, which went live Oct. 31, to ban
spam, but it has already hit roadblocks. The EU "has
asked nine
member nations that have failed to adopt a privacy law intended to help
the fight against unwanted email to describe how they intend to comply
with the law. Belgium, Germany, Greece,
Finland, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands,
Portugal, and Sweden must provide the explanation within
two months of face possible court action," The Associated Press said
on Friday. "The law aims to reduce internet fraud and protect
legitimate businesses by banning companies from sending unsolicited
email, plucking personal data from web sites or pinpointing the locations
of satellite-linked mobile phone users," the article reported.
Erkki Liikanen, commissioner for enterprise and the information
society, told The AP: "It is urgent that member states adopt a
consistent legislative approach to such issues," Liikanen said.
"This will strengthen consumer confidence in e-commerce and
electronic services." 
?
The Associated
Press via Australian IT: EU Presses For Spam
Laws 
?
EU's spam law,
included in regulatory framework for e-communications
infrastructure 
The EU's anti-spam law has a U.S. cousin. But like
the EU's effort, the federal Can
Spam Act of 2003 could be too good to be true.
Trying to actually enforce anti-spam legislation could spell the death of
various spam-fighting efforts. "Eradicating spam is a top priority
for the American government too. The Can Spam Act made comfortable
progress through Congress this week, the first piece of federal
legislation to attempt to reduce the amount of unsolicited electronic
garbage passing over the internet. Opinion is divided as to how effective
the new law will be. But if it works at all, it will also help to improve
internet security. Spam is often the transmitter of computer
viruses," The Economist wrote on Nov. 27. 
?
The Economist:
Fighting The Worms of Mass Destruction (Article is from Nov.
27) 
The Seattle Times columnist Charles Bermant
noted on Saturday that the anti-spam law is slated to be "pushed
through the sausage machine that is our federal government this
week." More from the article: "The bill, due for consideration
when Congress tackles this session's home stretch, is often criticized as
more of a public-relations move than an effective way to get rid of the
scourge. There are those who suggest the bill is all style and no
substance, that it is only a cynical play for voter support. Consider the
numbers: The House voted 392-5 in favor of the bill and sent it to
the Senate, which made some revisions and passed it back to the
house with a 97-0 vote. (One of the first calls I'll make when they come
back into session is to the five House holdouts and the Senate absentees,
to see what they were thinking)," he wrote. "Reading the bill
can make your head hurt. Not because it is necessarily wrong or
misguided, but in general, it really doesn't have a chance to make a
difference. Spammers are sly monsters who can turn on a technology dime.
Take a requirement for senders to include a working opt-out feature. The
trouble here is that most people believe replying to spam causes it to
multiply -- and who knows how spammers will try to deal with it. Still,
it might work if the government manages to prosecute the most egregious
offenders. 
?
The Seattle
Times: 'Lip Service Bill' Against Spam May Alter Perceptions At
Least 
Research firm Gartner last week issued a
report on
the legislation. The skinny? Researchers there don't think the law will
control the spam problem for companies and could instead make it worse.
"Enterprises should not expect federal legislation to solve their
inbound spam filtering problem. CANSPAM will likely not change spammer
behavior. However, it will cause increased scrutiny of all e-mail.
Enterprise spam protection lies in good e-mail management processes and
the judicious use of spamfiltering technology," Gartner wrote.
*******************************