Clips October 22, 2003

[Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>]

Clips October 22,
2003

ARTICLES

Tech panel sees IT jobs returning to U.S.
Govt cash for anti-terrorism system
Georgia Won't Join Anti-Terror Database 
Net lifeline for African doctors
Cell phone makers connect for recycling program
The Privacy Lawyer: Patriotism, Compliance, And Confidentiality
Suit filed over violent video game 
 Shooting allegedly linked to ?Grand Theft Auto? 
 

*******************************
Tech panel sees IT jobs returning to U.S.
Last modified: October 21, 2003, 7:20 PM PDT
By Alorie Gilbert 
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

SAN FRANCISCO--The loss of U.S. jobs due to a shift of information
technology work overseas maybe be painful for American workers now, but
the discomfort is temporary, according to a panel of information
technology executives gathered here Tuesday. 

Executives from Borland Software, BearingPoint and Infosys, and an
official from the U.S. Department of Commerce expressed confidence that
U.S. companies will eventually reinvest money saved from farming out IT
tasks to foreign workers and expand operations at home. That, in turn,
will lead to American job growth down the road, the panelists agreed.

"We need to keep an eye on long-term growth and not take a
short-term protectionist approach," said Chris Israel, deputy
assistant secretary for technology policy at the Commerce Department,
explaining why the Bush administration opposes tariffs and other policies
that would discourage the outsourcing trend. 

And because the aging baby boomer generation is nearing retirement, the
United States may be headed for another work-force shortage, said William
Miller, professor emeritus at Stanford University and chairman of
Borland. In the meantime, displaced IT workers should get training and be
willing to relocate to find new jobs, he said. 

"People have to be prepared to move," Miller said. "That
will be one of the requirements of the work force in the future; people
must be willing to move where the jobs are." 

Although the panelists defended the merits of offshore outsourcing, they
acknowledged some problems. One is whether foreign companies and workers
can be trusted with intellectual property and other sensitive information
handed over to them by U.S. clients. Companies in India generally operate
under strict confidentiality rules, said Harris Miller, president of the
Information Technology Association of America, the trade group that
organized Tuesday's panel. But in China, where intellectual property
disputes have been more common, it's a bigger concern, he said. 

Another question is whether American workers will keep pace in the global
market for IT skills, especially at their relatively premium wages.
Stanford's Miller noted that technology and science graduate programs at
the country's most prestigious universities are increasingly populated by
foreign-born students. 

Others acknowledged that, taken too far, the push to move work offshore
could backfire by bumping up unemployment and thereby sapping domestic
demand. "There's no simple answer," to such quandaries, ITAA's
Miller said. 

In addition, the call for investing in the education of America's work
force and the need for job training and other welfare programs for
displaced workers come as federal, state and local governments face huge
budget deficits and are forced to trim such programs. "I think it
makes it more difficult," Stanford's Miller said. "That does
hurt us."
*******************************
Australian IT
Govt cash for anti-terrorism system
Patrick Walters
OCTOBER 22, 2003  
 
AUSTRALIA and the US are to contribute $10 million to a new security fund
to be run by the ASEAN Development Bank to help build counter-terrorism
capabilities among APEC's developing economies.

John Howard said yesterday the focus of the new fund would be on port
security measures together with steps to combat money-laundering and
financing of terrorism. 
"The creation of the fund demonstrates the importance that APEC
economies attach to working together to respond to the challenge posed by
terrorism," the Prime Minister said. 

Mr Howard said the Bangkok summit had backed two Australian
counter-terrorism initiatives - the adoption of advanced passenger
information (API) systems and the development of a regional movement
alert system. 

The API technology will enable the real time exchange of information on
intending travellers between departure and destination ports. 

Mr Howard said that Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the US, Japan and
Thailand were now committed to implementing API systems. 

"In the coming year we will be providing assistance to seven other
economies who will examine the feasibility of implementing these
systems." 

Mr Howard said a regional movement alert system would be explored by APEC
leaders. This would enable travellers to be checked against pooled
records of people of concern, including terrorists and criminals, and
against lost, stolen and fraudulent travel documentation. 

Australia and the US will work together on policy and technical issues in
developing the system, reporting back to APEC leaders at next year's
leaders meeting in Santiago, Chile. 

Mr Howard said Australia also would provide assistance for ASEAN
economies to develop port security plans to help them meet their
obligations under APEC's secure regional trade initiatives. 

APEC leaders also agreed to strengthen national controls on shoulder-held
ground-to-air missiles that have been identified as a significant threat
to international aviation. 

APEC states have agreed to take national action to regulate production,
transfer and brokering of missiles as well as banning transfers to
non-state end-users. 

Mr Howard said APEC's energy security initiative endorsed at Bangkok
would include commitments in areas such as oil data collection, sea lane
security, as well as adoption of energy emergency response plans.

"These will be important for ensuring energy security in our
region," Mr Howard said.
*******************************
Associated Press
Georgia Won't Join Anti-Terror Database 
Tue Oct 21, 7:33 PM ET

ATLANTA - Amid cost and privacy concerns, state officials backed away
from an anti-terrorism database that officials initially considered
joining  a decision that makes Georgia the sixth state to abandon
the Matrix project. 

   

The move also casts doubt on the future of a database that tracks
personal details of all citizens, not just those accused of a crime.


"I have held serious concerns about the privacy issues involved with
this project all along, and have decided it is in the best interest of
the people of Georgia that our state have no further participation,"
Gov. Sonny Perdue said in a statement Tuesday. 


Perdue's decision not to join the database came a day after the state
attorney general said it would be illegal for Georgia to release its
driver's license records to the private company putting the database
together. 


Matrix, controlled by Seisint Inc., was billed as a speedy way for law
enforcement agencies to find records. 


Seisint representatives declined comment Tuesday, referring calls to the
Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which oversees the database.


Department spokeswoman Kristen Perezluha defended the project.
"Whereas before investigators would have to spend days and days
digging up all this stuff, now it'll be in one place," she said.
"It's a great tool, period." 


But privacy rights advocates questioned the sweeping database, noting
that it would contain credit histories, marriages and divorces, even
fingerprints and Social Security (news - web sites) numbers. 


Former state Rep. Bob Barr, an outspoken critic of the Matrix, lauded
Georgia's decision, calling the database part of a "constant erosion
of our individual right to privacy." 


Other states that have pulled out are Kentucky, Oregon, Louisiana,
Alabama and South Carolina. That leaves the project with just seven
members  Florida, Connecticut, Michigan, New York, Ohio,
Pennsylvania and Utah. 


Perezluha said there was no fiscal penalty for the states that have opted
out. 
*******************************
The Oregonian
OHSU system could sniff out early warnings from ER data 
10/20/03
PATRICK O'NEILL 

Computer analysis of hospital diagnoses may help detect new diseases, new
outbreaks or bioterrorism, Dr. Jon Jui says 

Not everybody agrees that this system -- or others that fall under the
rubric of "syndromic surveillance" -- is a good idea. Some
public health officials fear such systems will generate too many false
alarms, forcing them to waste time chasing phantom outbreaks. 

Yet others, including the federal Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, which is financing Jui's experiment, find promise in mining
emergency room data. 

In the past five years, the OHSU Hospital emergency department computer
system has gathered information on the diagnoses of 230,000 patients. The
computerized information has helped paint a picture of the normal run of
disease seen by doctors there. Using that information, Jui said, the
computer system can automatically recognize above-normal incidence of
disease. 

Jui said a key element of the OHSU system is that it reports the
physician's diagnosis rather than the patient's initial complaint.

Under normal circumstances, he said, a triage nurse will ask, "What
can I do for you?" The patient might say, "I'm short of
breath." 

"That is a nebulous complaint," Jui said. "What we're
doing is using the diagnosis at the end of the evaluation, saying, 'This
patient has pneumonia or a heart attack or meningitis.' " 

As far as Jui knows, OHSU is the only research site using diagnoses
rather than complaints as the primary way of describing illnesses. Jui
thinks this method cuts out a lot of "chaff," increasing
precision in reporting. 

Linking Portland hospitals He estimates that in 11/2 years, a system will
be in place that will permit most major hospitals in the Portland area to
participate in computer-aided surveillance. He said Providence St.
Vincent Medical Center is already involved in the study. 

Because of privacy concerns, information that could identify a specific
patient is taken out of the data sent to public health officials.

Portland isn't the only place with a quest for automated disease
surveillance. 

Dr. Daniel Sosin, director of public health surveillance at the CDC, said
dozens of centers around the nation are working to develop disease
early-warning systems. 

"This is still an innovative approach," Sosin said. "It
has not been established to the point where we're confident that the
benefits are clear and the costs have been clearly articulated."

In theory, he said, such systems could give public health authorities a
head start in corralling such puzzling new diseases as SARS, severe acute
respiratory syndrome. 

Flagged a meningitis outbreak Traditionally, public health officials have
relied on alert physicians to notify them about patients with contagious
illnesses. Even with computer-enhanced surveillance, Sosin said,
physician awareness will remain crucial. 

But computer tracking in emergency departments could theoretically detect
patterns of disease that might escape individual doctors. 

Christopher Bangs, an OHSU instructor in emergency medicine and a
co-principal investigator on the project, and Jui said the system proved
its capability in July. The system had been tuned to sniff out West Nile
virus, which has been found in birds and mosquitoes in all of the
contiguous United States except Oregon. 

One Monday in July, Bangs arrived at work to news that the system had
found numerous cases of viral meningitis, one of the conditions that can
be caused by West Nile. The system eventually found 26 cases of viral
meningitis, but not West Nile virus. A mapping system designed by Bangs
found a cluster of cases in the Hillsboro area. 

Public health officials had already learned of the outbreak through
private physicians. But the fact that the computer system independently
nailed the cluster brought Bangs and Jui great satisfaction. 

Skeptics rely on physicians Still, some in public health wonder whether
syndromic surveillance will pan out. 

Dr. Paul Cieslak, manager of communicable disease programs for the Oregon
Department of Human Services, said he's skeptical. 

"The problem, of course, is that often the diagnoses you can make in
an emergency department aren't very specific," he said. "And it
takes a couple of days for the laboratory results to come in."

The key element of public health surveillance will likely remain
physicians for some time, he said. However, he said, "It's
interesting that they did flag this increase in aseptic (viral)
meningitis." 

Cieslak's sentiments were echoed by Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive
director of the American Public Health Association. "If you have
unlimited resources, you can do everything," Benjamin said.
"But with limited resources, the concern is that it's too
expensive." 

Benjamin doesn't want anything to detract from the role of the physician
in tracking public health problems. 

Because most Americans go to a doctor's office for their care, any system
based in an emergency department will miss substantial numbers of cases,
he said. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates that
86 percent of Americans have health insurance and a regular doctor.
"A lot of these diseases report in the private physician's
office," he said. 

"Lifestyle" indicators But the promise of computerized data is
irresistible. 

Sosin, an organizer of the second National Syndromic Surveillance
Conference, scheduled this week in New York, said other sites are
experimenting with ways to identify disease outbreaks in their early
stages. 

In addition to emergency room data, he said, there are experiments with
"lifestyle" indicators. People behave differently when they're
sick, he said. "Maybe we go to the store and get chicken soup or buy
various (over-the-counter) preparations." Computer systems might be
adapted to capture a wide variety of helpful nonmedical information that
could indicate whether people are feeling sick. 

As for the public health controversy, OHSU's Bangs is philosophical.

"Controversy," he said, "is part of the normal scientific
process." 

Patrick O'Neill; 503-221-8233; poneill@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
*******************************
BBC Online
Net lifeline for African doctors
Wednesday, 22 October, 2003, 07:50 GMT 08:50 UK

Doctors in East Africa have been given access to thousands of online
medical papers thanks to a unique project with the University of Toronto.

They can now read up to date medical literature and over 20,000 journals.

The project is called Ptolemy after the ancient ruler of Alexandria,
whose dream was to collect a library of all the worlds' literature.

"One of the great strength of Ptolemy is it's small and
inexpensive," said Dr Massey Beveridge of Toronto University.

Net access 

The Canadian surgeon started the project after working in Africa and it
is already producing results. 

"The surgeons themselves are terribly appreciative; 60% of those
involved in the project say information they have received through
Ptolemy has changed their practice," he told the BBC programme, Go
Digital. 

"The cost of having a few hundred affiliates in Africa is negligible
for the university library. Any other university could do the same
thing," he said. 

"But there's a great dearth of internet access in Africa. However
while the population in general may not have much access, the surgeons
do. 

"We can use this to bring them the information they need, after all
that's what the internet was designed for in the first place,"
explained Dr Beveridge. 

Doctors in East Africa using the resources of Ptolemy speak highly about
the project. 

Dr Mohamed Labib, one of only two urologists in Zambia, plans to use the
online library to train more specialists. 

"Next year we will start a post-graduate course in urology,
dependent on Ptolemy," said Dr Labib, who is based at the university
teaching hospital in the Zambian capital, Lusaka. 

"These trainee doctors will have access to research and clinical
materials through the project. Before this I never imagined we could
start a master's degree course here." 

Both doctors see African research feeding back into this database of
medical knowledge. 

"I'm looking for joint research with a multi-centre approach,"
explained Dr Labib, "Africa, Canada and the UK, all looking at the
same medical problem, combining results." 
*******************************
 USA Today
Cell phone makers connect for recycling program
By Michelle Kessler, USA TODAY

LAS VEGAS  The cell phone industry on Wednesday is expected to
announce its biggest recycling initiative  a move environmentalists
say is an inadequate response to a growing problem.

AT&T Wireless, Motorola, Nokia, Sprint, Verizon Wireless and a
handful of others have signed up for the program, "Wireless: The New
Recyclable."

Cell phones aren't yet big landfill cloggers because they're small and a
relatively new technology. 

Most people stash old phones in a drawer, says Jo-Anne Basile, vice
president of the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association,
which is behind the plan.

But they're poised to become a growing e-waste problem  just as
personal computers have. 

More than 400 million cell phones are sold every year, vs. about 100
million PCs. 

But like PCs, they contain hazardous materials that, if released in a
landfill, could contaminate surrounding soil and groundwater. Some of
those include lead, lithium ion and cadmium. 

The initiative asks cell phone companies to pledge to promote recycling
and use recycled products in phones and packaging. 

It requires new cell phones certified by the CTIA to meet some recycling
regulations.

It brings together information about company recycling efforts on a Web
site,
www.recyclewirelessphones.com.
That makes it easier for consumers to figure out how to get rid of
phones.

But some environmentalists say that's not enough. "You get a lot of
nice words without much enforcement," says Ted Smith of the Silicon
Valley Toxics Coalition. 

Another problem, Smith says, is getting the word to consumers. The CTIA
has an outreach program, but no budget for it. That's one reason the
program won't meet environmentalists' goal of one recycled cell phone for
every one sold, Smith says. 

The CTIA effort might also prevent more expensive government recycling
regulations.

Some states, including California, have regulations on how computers can
be disposed of. It's expensive to recycle most electronics, which must
first be dismantled.

That's one reason tech companies don't want government-mandated
recycling. cell phones cost several dollars to recycle, depending on the
size and type of phone.

Basile says the program "is a really good first
effort."

*******************************
Information Week
The Privacy Lawyer: Patriotism, Compliance, And Confidentiality
Oct. 20, 2003
By Parry Aftab

Is it unpatriotic to demand a court order before turning over information
under the Patriot Act, Parry Aftab asks?

Thought you understood privacy and data-sharing laws? Think again. The
Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required
to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 (the law known under the
acronym Patriot Act) has changed most other privacy laws and what
businesses must do when the government comes calling. Some laws were
expressly amended and others practically superseded. But it's very
confusing either way. And if you make a mistake, the consequences can be
serious. 

Section 215 of the Patriot Act amends the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act of 1978 which authorizes the federal government to
request (and obtain) any "tangible things (including books, records,
papers, documents, and other items) for an investigation to protect
against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence
activities." 

For the complete story, see:
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=15306232

*******************************
MSNBC Online
Suit filed over violent video game 
Shooting allegedly linked to ?Grand Theft Auto? 
ASSOCIATED PRESS 

KNOXVILLE, Tenn., Oct. 22  A $246 million lawsuit was filed against
the designer, marketer and a retailer of the video game series ?Grand
Theft Auto? by the families of two people shot by teenagers apparently
inspired by the game.

      THE SUIT CLAIMS marketer Sony Computer
Entertainment America Inc., designers Take-Two Interactive Software and
Rockstar Games, and Wal-Mart, are liable for $46 million in compensatory
damages and $200 million in punitive damages.
       Aaron Hamel, 45, a registered nurse,
was killed and Kimberly Bede, 19, of Moneta, Va., was seriously wounded
when their cars were hit June 25 by .22-caliber bullets as they passed
through the Great Smoky Mountains.
       Stepbrothers William Buckner, 16,
and Joshua Buckner, 14, of Newport, were sentenced in August to an
indefinite term in state custody after pleading guilty in juvenile court
to reckless homicide, endangerment and assault.
       The boys told investigators they got
the rifles from a locked room in their home and decided to randomly shoot
at tractor-trailer rigs, just like in the video game ?Grand Theft Auto
III.?
       In a suit filed Monday in Cocke
County Circuit Court on behalf of the victims, Miami lawyer Jack Thompson
and local lawyer Richard Talley alleged the game ?inspires and trains
players to shoot at vehicles and persons.?
      ?These kids simply decided to take the
thrill of that game out to Interstate 40 and started pointing at cars,?
Thompson said in a telephone interview Tuesday.
       Thompson, who said he sent letters
to Sony and Wal-Mart to drop the game before the shootings, said, ?It?s
not like this is coming out of the blue, they chose to ignore this
danger.?
       San Mateo, Calif.-based Sony and
Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart did not return calls for comment
Tuesday. The lawsuit alleges the retail giant sold the game to the
Buckners about a year before the shootings.
       Douglas Lowenstein, president of the
industry Entertainment Software Association, called the shootings ?an
unspeakable tragedy? but said blaming a game played by millions for the
boys? actions was ?misguided and counterproductive.?
       ?There is no credible evidence that
violent games lead to violent behavior,? he said. ?While video games may
provide a simple excuse for the teenagers involved in this incident,
responsibility for violent acts belongs to those who commit them.?
       Thompson has made similar claims in
the past and lost, notably a $33 million lawsuit against video game
makers stemming from the 1997 school shooting near Paducah, Ky., by a
14-year-old boy.
       The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals ruled in the case last year that it was ?simply to far a leap
from shooting characters on a video screen to shooting people in a
classroom.?
*******************************