Clips March 24, 2003

[Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>]

Clips March 24, 2003


ARTICLES

U.S. Steps Up Secret Surveillance 
Junk fax ruling may help antispam effort 
Stores Selling Drugs From Canada Thrive
Feds To Test Bioterror Alerts On PDAs
Cyber Cafe Law Is Gutted
Campus network security the subject of new study
Former World Leaders Preserve Power on the Web
AARP's New Hangout: KaZaA, Web's Mosh Pit
Info seekers, hackers besiege government sites 


*******************************
Washington Post
U.S. Steps Up Secret Surveillance 
FBI, Justice Dept. Increase Use of Wiretaps, Records Searches 
By Dan Eggen and Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Monday, March 24, 2003; Page A01 

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Justice Department and FBI have dramatically increased the use of two little-known powers that allow authorities to tap telephones, seize bank and telephone records and obtain other information in counterterrorism investigations with no immediate court oversight, according to officials and newly disclosed documents.

The FBI, for example, has issued scores of "national security letters" that require businesses to turn over electronic records about finances, telephone calls, e-mail and other personal information, according to officials and documents. The letters, a type of administrative subpoena, may be issued independently by FBI field offices and are not subject to judicial review unless a case comes to court, officials said.

Attorney General John D. Ashcroft has also personally signed more than 170 "emergency foreign intelligence warrants," three times the number authorized in the preceding 23 years, according to recent congressional testimony.

Federal law allows the attorney general to issue unilaterally these classified warrants for wiretaps and physical searches of suspected terrorists and other national security threats under certain circumstances. They can be enforced for 72 hours before they are subject to review and approval by the ultra-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Government officials describe both measures as crucial tools in the war on terrorism that allow authorities to act rapidly in the pursuit of potential threats without the delays that can result from seeking a judge's signature. Authorities also stress that the tactics are perfectly legal.

But some civil liberties and privacy advocates say they are troubled by the increasing use of the tactics, primarily because there is little or no oversight by courts or other outside parties. In both cases, the target of the investigation never has to be informed that the government has obtained his personal records or put him under surveillance.

"When this kind of power is used in the regular criminal justice system, there are some built-in checks and balances," said David Sobel, general counsel of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), which is suing the Justice Department for information about its secretive anti-terrorism strategies. "The intelligence context provides no such protection. That's the main problem with these kinds of secretive procedures."

The use of national security letters has been accelerated in part because Congress made it easier to use and apply them. The USA Patriot Act, a package of sweeping anti-terrorism legislation passed after the Sept. 11 attacks, loosened the standard for targeting individuals by national security letters and allowed FBI field offices, rather than a senior official at headquarters, to issue them, officials said.

The records that can be obtained through the letters include telephone logs, e-mail logs, certain financial and bank records and credit reports, a Justice official said.

The Patriot Act also significantly increased the amount of intelligence information that can be shared with criminal prosecutors and federal grand juries, giving authorities new powers in the war on terrorism. National security letters can be used as part of criminal investigations and preliminary inquiries involving terrorism and espionage, according to officials and internal FBI guidelines on the letters.

According to documents given to EPIC and the American Civil Liberties Union as part of their lawsuit, the FBI has issued enough national security letters since October 2001 to fill more than five pages of logs. There is no way to determine exactly how many times the documents have been employed because the logs were almost entirely blacked out, according to a copy provided to The Washington Post by the ACLU.

The Justice Department and FBI refuse to provide summary data about how often the letters are used. Several lawmakers have proposed legislation that would require the department to provide that kind of data.

"In our view, the public is entitled to these statistics," said Jameel Jaffer, staff attorney for the ACLU's national legal department. "We have no idea how those are being used."

FBI spokesman John Iannarelli said "it's safe to say that anybody who is going to conduct a terrorism investigation is probably going to use them at some point. . . . It's a way to expedite information, and there's nothing that needs expediting more than a terrorism investigation."

But a November 2001 memorandum prepared by FBI attorneys warned that the letters "must be used judiciously" to avoid angering Congress, which will reconsider Patriot provisions in 2005. "The greater availability of NSLs does not mean they should be used in every case," the memo says.

Beryl A. Howell, former general counsel to Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and a specialist in surveillance law, described national security letters as "an unchecked, secret power that makes it invisible to public scrutiny and difficult even for congressional oversight." Howell now is a managing director and general counsel at Stroz Friedberg LLC, a computer forensic firm in the District. 

Under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the government has the power to obtain secret warrants for telephone wiretaps, electronic monitoring and physical searches in counterterrorism and espionage cases. The Justice Department has expanded its use of such warrants since a favorable FISA court ruling last year, which determined that the Patriot Act gave federal officials broad new authority to obtain them.

The warrants, cloaked in secrecy and largely ignored by the public for years, have become a central issue in the ongoing debate over missteps before the Sept. 11 attacks. The FBI has come under sharp criticism from lawmakers who say FBI officials misread the FISA statute in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, the alleged terror conspirator who was in custody before the attacks. No warrant was sought in the Moussaoui case, and his computer and other belongings were not searched until after the attacks.

Even less well known are provisions that allow the attorney general to authorize these secret warrants on his own in emergency situations. The department then has 72 hours from the time a search or wiretap is launched to obtain approval from the FISA court, whose proceedings and findings are closed to the public.

Officials said that Ashcroft can use his emergency power when he believes there is no time to wait for the FISA court to approve a warrant. There are no additional restrictions on emergency warrants, other than the rules that apply to all FISA applications, officials said.

Ashcroft told lawmakers earlier this month that Justice made more than 1,000 applications for warrants to the secret court in 2002, including more than 170 in the emergency category. In the previous 23 years, only 47 emergency FISA warrants were issued.

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, in similar testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, said, "We can often establish electronic surveillance within hours of establishing probable cause that an individual is an appropriate FISA subject."

"We have made full and very productive use of the emergency FISA process," Mueller said.

Sobel and other civil liberties advocates say they are troubled by the aggressive use of emergency FISAs because it leaves the initial decision up to the attorney general and allows clandestine searches and surveillance for up to three days before any court review.
*******************************
CNET News.com
Junk fax ruling may help antispam effort 
By Declan McCullagh 
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
March 21, 2003, 5:06 PM PT


WASHINGTON--A federal appeals court said Friday that a law restricting junk faxes was constitutional, setting a precedent that favors legal attempts to restrict unsolicited e-mail. 
The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court's ruling, concluding that a 1991 federal law banning unsolicited fax advertising did not violate the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of expression. 

Congress's goal of "restricting unsolicited fax advertisements in order to prevent the cost shifting and interference such unwanted advertising places on the recipient" was reasonable, a three-judge panel ruled. 


The decision could be important in the growing legal tussles over spam. 

If the lower court's year-old decision had been upheld, it would have showed that at least one federal appeals court took a dim view of the approach used by some antispam laws. A junk fax typically costs the recipient more and is more intrusive than a single piece of junk e-mail, and receiving a fax ties up a phone line. 

The appeals panel also stressed that the law reasonably tried to combat the "cost-shifting" that happens when unsolicited faxes consume a recipient's ink, toner, and paper--an economic argument that mirrors that made against bulk unsolicited e-mail. 

Foes of spam point out that it forces companies to spend money on filters, buy larger hard drives to store incoming e-mail and lease fatter connections to handle the deluge. 

Ray Everett-Church, a privacy consultant at ePrivacyGroup.com and a board member of the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email, applauded the decision. 

"It certainly reinforces the argument that many have made for a long time, which is that federal regulations banning unsolicited e-mail could be held constitutional," Everett-Church said. "The cost involved in shifting the advertising cost from sender to recipient is a substantial government interest--a regulation restricting unsolicited advertising could be enacted constitutionally." 

The federal law at issue in this case, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), bans using "any telephone facsimile machine, computer, or other device to send an unsolicited advertisement to a telephone facsimile machine." 

The case arose out of a lawsuit brought by the State of Missouri against American Blast Fax and Fax.com, which charge clients to send unsolicited advertisements to potential customers. The two companies argued the TCPA was unconstitutional because of a 1980 Supreme Court ruling that extended limited First Amendment protections to commercial speech. 

Many states have enacted antispam laws, but the U.S. Congress never has. Even if state antispam laws are acceptable under the First Amendment, some courts have said they may run afoul of the U.S. Constitution's Commerce Clause, which gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce. 

A spokesman for Fax.com could not be reached for comment. A representative said the company shut down early on Friday because of the U.S. war against Iraq. 
*******************************
Los Angeles Times
Stores Selling Drugs From Canada Thrive
FDA says businesses that help those uneasy with making purchases on Internet are illegal.
By Jeff Gottlieb
March 24, 2003

Grace Hickman heard about it from her Leisure World lawn bowling club: There's a store nearby where prescription medicine can be had at cut-rate prices.

Grace takes 10 pills a day, and her husband, Gerard, a retired restaurant owner, takes three. Their costs were so high that three months ago Grace stopped taking the pill to lower her cholesterol.

Some of their friends in the Laguna Woods retirement community buy medicine on bus trips to Mexico, but not the Hickmans, who worry about quality. As for finding better deals on the Internet, they can't tell the difference between a hard drive and a line drive.

So they went to Rx of Canada in Laguna Hills, one of a growing number of stores around the nation that help customers who are more comfortable in a store than on the Web buy drugs inexpensively from Canada.

FDA officials say the stores are illegal. Business owners say they're providing seniors a way to reduce their drug bills. On Friday, the FDA faxed a letter to an Arkansas affiliate of Rx of Canada, warning that it had 15 days to close or face legal action.

Rx of Canada's Laguna Hills store is the seventh branch -- offering discounts of 20% to 80% below U.S. prices -- it has opened within two months. It is surrounded by 18,000 seniors living in Leisure World. Three weeks earlier, the company, owned by professional soccer player Joe-Max Moore, opened a store in La Mesa in San Diego County. Five more are scheduled to open today, in Woodland Hills, Colorado, Florida and Oklahoma, with still more to come.

Just as ambitious is Earle Turow, a former clothing manufacturer who owns Discount Drugs of Canada in Delray Beach, Fla. He said he has signed deals to open 40 franchises next week, 40 the week after and an additional 100 in three months, including one in Palm Springs.

The emergence of such stores is the latest way for consumers to sidestep the high cost of prescription medicines -- especially seniors, who use the most drugs and often lack insurance to pay for them.

"This is a growing phenomenon," said David Certner, director of federal affairs for the AARP. "It will continue to grow, and from what we hear, exponentially. It's partly a sign of the desperation of people trying to afford prescription drugs."

The Canadian government caps drug prices, and a weak Canadian dollar also helps keep costs lower for Americans.

There are no official figures on how much Americans spend on Canadian drugs. But Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) estimates that it is nearly $700 million, a fraction of the overall U.S. market. Sanders has sponsored legislation to lower drug prices and has helped residents of his state travel to Canada to buy medicine.

In October, UnitedHealth Group Inc., which insures nearly 100,000 people through AARP, agreed to reimburse clients for prescriptions filled abroad.

The federal Food and Drug Administration says that in all but a few cases it's illegal to bring in prescription drugs from other countries and that there's no guarantee the drugs are the same as those sold in the United States, even if they are manufactured by the same company. There are problems with counterfeiting and improper handling and storage of the medicine, according to the FDA.

No Charges

No one has been charged with importing prescription drugs from Canada, FDA officials say. The letter to the Arkansas store suggests that could change.

Last month, an FDA legal analysis widely circulated in the pharmaceutical and health insurance industry "put everybody on notice," said one FDA official. "If these storefronts don't cease and desist, they will be at risk of action from the FDA."

Some states, such as Oklahoma and Florida, have made noises about closing the storefront operations, but none has taken action. Patricia Harris, executive director of the California Board of Pharmacy, said that the agency is studying the issue but that the FDA appears to have jurisdiction.

Drug makers and pharmacies, whose profits could suffer if the practice grows, also are concerned. British pharmaceuticals giant GlaxoSmithKline has stopped supplying Canadian pharmacies that sell to Americans.

Carl Moore, who operates Rx of Canada for his son, said lawyers have assured them they are operating legally. "Go find me customers who are unhappy with Canadian drugs," he said. "The only people mad at us are pharmacy boards and drug companies."

Owners of stores like Rx of Canada say they function as middlemen, agents who place orders with Canadian pharmacies. They don't deal with habit-forming drugs or those needing refrigeration.

Drugs Come in Mail

Rx customers must bring in their prescriptions and fill out a three-page medical history. That information is faxed to a Canadian pharmacy, which then mails the drugs to the customers in 14 to 21 days. Each order includes a $15 mailing fee, no matter how many drugs the customer buys.

Rx makes its money from commissions the pharmacies pay. Carl Moore wouldn't be specific, but said his company charges more than the 5% to 8% commission of most businesses that arrange Canadian drug sales.

"I get asked daily why are drugs so cheap in Canada," Carl Moore said. "A better question is why are drugs so expensive in the U.S.?"

That's the question that brought Joe-Max Moore into the business. Moore, 32, attended Mission Viejo High in Orange County and was a two-time All American striker at UCLA. He made his first appearance for the U.S. national team in 1992 and plays for the New England Revolution in Major League Soccer.

His mother, diagnosed with breast cancer about two years ago, was prescribed Tamoxifen, which she had to pay for. Joe-Max checked the Internet and discovered how much cheaper the Canadian version costs.

The cancer drug is one of the most dramatic examples of the price differences. RX sells a three-month supply for $45.37, while a local drug store chain charges $398.59, Carl Moore said.

Angry, Joe-Max and his father started a Web site, which got little business. In January, they opened their first store in Tulsa, Okla., where Carl Moore lives. They opened another in Lowell, Ark., in early February, followed by three stores in Florida and the two in California.

"I would be lying if I didn't say I was doing this for business interests," Joe-Max Moore said. "But it also makes me feel good to be able to help people who are having to make decisions on whether to pay their rent or their prescription bills."

Carl Moore said pressure from the pharmaceutical companies has pushed the FDA to act, and he vowed they would stay in business. "Somebody's got to lead this fight, and if we're those chosen ones, so be it."

Rx's Laguna Hills store is run by Howard Meek, Joe-Max's uncle. It is a spare operation, with four desks and decorated with fake plants.

Pam Moffett came into the store to find out how much it would cost to buy the cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor. Moffett, who looks younger than her 61 years, had spent hours on the Internet but couldn't find a better deal. Then, while shopping near the Laguna Hills storefront, the RX sign caught her eye.

Moffett is a registered nurse, but she is self-employed and has no drug coverage. She discovered that if she bought Lipitor from Canada, she would save $156 a year. "That's enough for me to consider," she said.

The Hickmans also walked into the Laguna Hills store for the first time -- to buy Plavix, 80-year-old Gerard's anti-clotting drug. They ordered a 90-day supply for $187.27, well below the $300 it would cost through their HMO. It offered one solution for their substantial drug costs. Gerard had another. He pulled a lottery ticket from his shirt pocket.

"I hit this, and I won't have to worry about it," he said.
*******************************
Information Week
Feds To Test Bioterror Alerts On PDAs
Fri Mar 21, 6:14 PM ET

Chris Murphy, InformationWeek 

The federal government is looking for tools to communicate more quickly with doctors and other frontline clinicians in the event of a biological attack. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (news - web sites) said Friday it will test a system that uses PDAs to send emergency information about biological agents. It will use the privately run eProcates network to send test messages to up to 700,000 clinicians, including 250,000 physicians, to evaluate how and when they download urgent information and whether they find it useful. 


The pilot is the first approved under a Health and Human Services (news - web sites) initiative begun last year to look at private-sector health efforts to see if they can improve bioterrorism preparedness or public health overall. The program is run by the Council on Private Sector Initiatives to Improve the Security, Safety, and Quality of Health Care. 


The test message will contain a memo about the highest-level threat of biological agents, including anthrax, botulism, plague, smallpox, tularemia, and viral fevers such as Ebola (news - web sites). It will include Web links for additional information on diagnosis and treatment of people exposed to biological agents; the information can be saved on a PDA for future reference. 
*******************************
Los Angeles Times
Cyber Cafe Law Is Gutted
By Seema Mehta
Times Staff Writer

March 22, 2003

An Orange County Superior Court judge voided most of Garden Grove's cyber cafe law Friday, saying the city failed to show why it required these businesses to take precautions such as videotaping clients, hiring extra security guards and barring minors during school hours.

Judge Dennis Choate also raised 1st Amendment concerns about limiting public access to the Internet, although that was not his justification.

"The court finds that the ordinance ... remains seriously and fatally flawed," he wrote.

Garden Grove city officials will discuss in closed session at Tuesday's council meeting whether to appeal the decision.

Councilman Mark Leyes, who backed a stricter version of the ordinance than the one challenged in court, said the judge erred.

"The judge is overreaching in his ruling -- he's getting into legislating," Leyes said. "We need to go over the details of this.... I'm of the mind that we ought to appeal it."

Cafe operator Seok Jun Choi, who challenged the ordinance, couldn't be reached for comment Friday.

Efforts to reach attorneys for him and the city were unsuccessful.

The city first passed its law in January 2002, after several crimes at cyber cafes in Garden Grove and elsewhere in Orange County.

The ordinance required cafes to log all customers, limit business hours, videotape the premises and hold those tapes for 72 hours in case the police needed them, among other mandates.

Facing lawsuits from cafe operators, the city amended the law in November. Several requirements were left intact, but some provisions, such as business hours, were loosened. Choi sued anyway.

Among the provisions struck down Friday were:

* The permit process that allows city officials to add requirements for individual cafes.

* Requiring security guards, which Choate called "an undue burden ... given the facts presented to this court."

* Mandating videotaping.

Choate left intact the city's authority to set business hours and curfews for minors.

Leyes said the revised ordinance was diluted too much already.

"The thinking was, 'If we gave in a little bit and compromised, we would get something,' " he said.

Instead, the judge "took out probably the most effective provisions of the ordinance," Leyes said.

"I'm not willing to compromise when it comes to the safety of our children and families."
*******************************
USA Today
Campus network security the subject of new study
March 21, 2003

TUCSON (AP) - A $100,000 study will aim to bolster the security of computer networks at Arizona universities, as experts say the schools are targeted daily by hackers. 

The study, commissioned by the Arizona Board of Regents, should be finished by August. The University of Arizona, Arizona State University and Northern Arizona University maintain internal security measures, but this is the first time all three are joining in an outside examination. 

Security concerns related to hacking, copyright violations and e-mail spam force Arizona State University and the University of Arizona to annually spend an estimated $400,000 each, officials with the two schools said. 

The regents authorized the assessment March 7, only a few days after authorities discovered hackers had seized more than 50,000 Social Security numbers from a database at the University of Texas at Austin. It was one of the largest cases of identity theft known to hit a campus network. 

"Security has become critical to all of us. You see more and more of the incidents like what happened" at Austin, said William Lewis, ASU's information technology vice provost. 

"We are literally under attack seven days a week," he said. 

While some attacks come from within the campuses, Lewis said most are the work of people on the outside - students from other schools, hackers and international interests. 

The University of Arizona network connects more than 30,000 computers, making it the largest non-Defense Department system in Southern Arizona. Many of its computers are in public-access areas such as libraries. 

The University of Arizona averages 200,000 hits a day from people trying to find vulnerabilities, estimates Edward Frohling, the university's principal network systems analyst. 

Most of the attempted breaches that have been tracked involved people trying to access hard drives that they could use to attack a third party, or to stash and store copyrighted material. 

While some perpetrators turn out to be 13-year-old hackers, Frohling said computer systems in the private and public sectors are under increased attack from terrorists and industrial spies looking to tap into high-end research and criminals searching for personal information. 

"Identity theft is probably the No. 1 growing industry for organized crime," he said. 
*******************************
Associated Press
Former World Leaders Preserve Power on the Web
Sun Mar 23, 4:22 PM ET

By Duncan Martell 

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - As political leaders on the world stage willingly or reluctantly leave the spotlight, they're finding a place in the broad wings of the Web to preserve their legacy. 

Indeed, the distinction of being the "first president of the Internet age" belongs to Democrat Bill Clinton (news - web sites), who left office after serving two terms. In addition to providing television commentary, narrating at a symphony concert, and delivering speeches in venues across the globe, Clinton has launched his own Web site and virtual library linked closely to the William J. Clinton Presidential Center, now under construction in Little Rock, Arkansas. 


As the Internet keeps expanding in size, scope and accessibility, having their own sites can help erstwhile leaders to maintain a powerful virtual presence, promote their views, their books and, in some cases, even their consulting services. 


"Since President Clinton (news - web sites) had the honor of being the first president of the Internet age, this site will function as the first truly virtual Presidential Library," notes the home page of the Clinton Presidential Center (http://www.clintonpresidentialcenter.com). 


The site says it eventually will house "the world's most comprehensive digital collection of archival materials on U.S. domestic issues, foreign relations and political events from the past decade." 


Within sections marked "Legacy," "Foundation," "Library," and "Donate," there is ample opportunity for the content to grow as Clinton, 54, is the youngest former U.S. president since Theodore Roosevelt, who was 51 when he left office nearly a century ago. 


An Internet search for Al Gore (news - web sites) does not yield -- among the top 20 results -- an official site for the former U.S. vice president. The top result is a Web site, http://www.algore04.com, which describes itself as the "completely and totally unofficial, 100 percent grassroots, all volunteer effort to re-elect Al Gore in 2004." 


Clinton's predecessor, George Herbert Walker Bush, the father of current President Bush (news - web sites), has not been as active as Clinton since leaving the White House, but he also has a healthy online presence. 


Next to an image of the 41st U.S. President and First Lady Barbara Bush, an introductory paragraph notes that visitors to the site (http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/) can access "original artifacts, film, photographs, documents, music, sound effects, and interactive video and computerization." 


The proliferation of online presidential sites is not only confined to the United States. The historic accomplishments of former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev, whose reforms contributed to an end to the Cold War, can be found at http://www.mikhailgorbachev.org. 


In addition to tributes marking his 71st birthday, the site says that Gorbachev's digital presidential library will "soon be open to the public via the Internet and will serve as the multi-media hub" for his archives, current projects, activities, and future efforts. 


Even though Baroness Margaret Thatcher has not held the post of Prime Minister of Great Britain for 13 years, she has remained active and vocal in international politics. Her comprehensive Web site (http://www.margaretthatcher.org) attests to that. 


The streamlined site offers a detailed biography of the native of Grantham, a small town in England, and includes a photo of her cradling a calf, taken early in her political career. The home page describes the Margaret Thatcher Foundation as "the largest contemporary history site of its kind." 


The archive section contains 240 documents, including memoirs and a briefing from former Secretary of State George Shultz to former U.S. President Ronald Reagan (news - web sites). Many of the items are from the Reagan presidential library. (The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library can be found at http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/. His official site is http://www.ronaldreagan.com.) 


To be sure, as more heads of state leave government and build their archives, the amount of information available online about their tenures, policies and achievements, is only certain to grow.
*******************************
New York Times
March 24, 2003
AARP's New Hangout: KaZaA, Web's Mosh Pit
By CHRIS NELSON

The computer literacy gap between children and their grandparents may be narrowing. In fact, older people now spend so much time online that the AARP, the association for middle-age and older adults, has begun advertising on KaZaA Media Desktop, software used by millions of teenagers and young adults to swap songs online.

One advertisement links the desktop users to an article on "death with dignity" from the AARP magazine.

The typical KaZaA user tends to be young, high school or college age, and on the lookout for the latest hot tune - hardly the audience mulling the pros and cons of assisted suicide. But AARP members are joining that Web crowd and they might well be interested in end-of-life issues, even as they are swapping MP3's.

"These people are not just surfing on grandparents' sites," said Nicole Mansdorf, an account director with itraffic, the agency that created the AARP banner. "They're trading music. They're chatting. They're using instant messenger." 

Kelly Larabee, a KaZaA spokeswoman, said there were no statistics about the age of the users of the program, which is distributed by Sharman Networks, with headquarters in Australia. The ad was placed through Premium Network on a bevy of ad-supported software programs. KaZaA users might see the AARP spot, which is in light rotation, a few times a week, Ms. Mansdorf said.

Since the demise of Napster, KaZaA has become the most popular file-sharing program. It links users anonymously, allowing them to trade music, videos, pictures, software and other types of computer files. KaZaA has been downloaded more than 200 million times, according to Sharman. 

But KaZaA has also attracted considerable opposition. The Recording Industry Association of America, a trade group representing the major music labels, says that programs like KaZaA aid music piracy, contributing to a decline in CD sales. Earlier this month, the General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, issued a report that said child pornography was easily accessible through KaZaA.

Controversies aside, KaZaA offers an arena to reach potential members, said Rick Bowers, the AARP's director of new- product development and digital media. "We try to be conservative, but at the same time we try to be on the cutting edge whenever possible," he said.  

*******************************
Government Computer News
Leadership selected for new cybersecurity panel 
By William Jackson 

Leaders have been named for the new House Homeland Security subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Science and Research and Development. 

Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) will chair the subcommittee and the ranking minority member is Rep. Zoe Lofgren (R-Calif.) 

Thornberry also is a member of the Armed Services, Budget and Resources committees. 

The Homeland Security Committee was formed to coordinate all House oversight of the Homeland Security Department and has legislative jurisdiction over the 2002 act creating the department. It is chaired by Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Calif.) 

The Cybersecurity, Science and R&D subcommittee will oversee "security of computer, telecommunications, information technology, industrial control, electric infrastructure and data systems, including science, research and development; protection of government and private networks and computer systems from domestic and foreign attack; prevention of injury and civilian populations and physical infrastructure caused by cyberattack, and relevant oversight," according to Cox's office. 
*******************************
Government Computer News
Info seekers, hackers besiege government sites 
By Susan M. Menke and William Jackson 

War protesters and hackers are assaulting .gov and .mil Websites "in digital retaliation" for the war in Iraq in record numbers, according to the security firm mi2G Ltd. of London. 

"We have noticed more activity in the last 36 hours than we have ever seen. It's record-breaking," company chairman D.K. Matai said. 

Presidential cybersecurity adviser Howard Schmidt said today the attacks are not unexpected under these circumstances. 

"Headline issues bring out people who want to attack systems," he said. Some are political hacktivists expressing a point of view, some may be looking for sensitive data, and some activity is routine and not related to current events. 

The attempts so far have been mostly against Web servers running Linux rather than Sun Solaris or other Unix operating systems, Matai said. The company since June has been tracking a group calling itself Unix Security Guards, based in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, Matai said. 

"They've focused completely on Linux in the last 24 hours," he said. 

The server for the White House site has so far not been compromised, Schmidt said. One reason is probably that the White House site is a single server, while there are thousands of other .gov and .mil servers that can be hit. The White House does get thousands of scans a day. Security efforts for the site include shutting down unused services and doing port filtering. 

Schmidt was vice chairman of the President's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board until it was dissolved Feb. 28. He said his exact status is up in the air, and it has not been decided whether he will remain in the White House as part of a new critical infrastructure protection council or move to the Homeland Security Department. 

Legitimate traffic has also had an impact on Web sites. Attackers and anxious citizens have tried to visit military Web servers so often in the last two days that the home page of Army.mil at one point took more than a minute to download over high-speed lines, according to Internet consultancy Keynote Systems Inc. of San Mateo, Calif. 

Downloads also dragged at the Marines Corps site, USMC.mil, and to a lesser extent at Defenselink.mil, AF.mil and Navy.mil. 

Eric Siegel, Keynote's principal consultant, said frustrated information seekers were largely responsible for the slowdowns. 

"What's probably going on with the Army site is bandwidth problems," Siegel said. "They don't have a fat enough pipe" for heavy public use, and streaming audio programs through the SoldiersRadioLive's Apple QuickTime player could account for additional slowdown, he said. 

"It has taken commercial sites until now to figure out that test tools give radically different results from the live Web," Siegel said. "People go to a site, wait, say 'the hell with it' and go somewhere else. But the Web load continues when viewers abandon their sessions. The server can't recover its resources" until connections time out. 

Keynote has assessed several U.S. government sites since the start of invasion of Iraq by coalition forces. It found that sites of the Energy, Justice and State departments, Senate, White House and other federal agencies "are not showing notable problems." 

War protest sites had much lengthier download times, however, as did foreign sites such as AlJazeera.net and the Jerusalem Post, at JPost.com.
*******************************