[no subject]

The White House on Wednesday ordered all federal agencies to scrub their Web
sites of sensitive information on weapons of mass destruction and other data
that might be used by terrorists, according to a Washington Times report.

Late Wednesday afternoon, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card sent a memo to
agency heads and executive departments ordering an "immediate re-examination"
of public documents. The officials were told to report their findings within 90
days to the Office of Homeland Security.

Agencies also must pull "sensitive but unclassified information," according to
a second memo.

That memo--written by Laura Kimberly, acting director of the Information
Security Oversight Office, and Richard Huff and Daniel Metcalfe, co-directors
of the Justice Department's Office of Information and Privacy--told agencies to
also consider "the benefits that result from the open and efficient exchange of
scientific, technical, and like information."

White House officials say the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 have forced the
administration to strike a more cautious balance between openness and secrecy.
***************
Washington POst
Big Potential From Small Things 

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- The next big thing to come out of this birthplace of
high tech could be small:

Think tiny molecular delivery devices for medicines.

Or "smart" dust that can monitor people without being detected.

Maybe supercomputers the size of grains of salt.

The mind-bending ideas seem straight out of works of science fiction, but some
out here think they may be possible in the near future as interest grows in
something called nanotechnology.

Literally the manipulation of atoms or molecules, nanotechnology is a sort of
"superscience" that encompasses everything from computing and materials science
to health care. Its goal is to figure out a way to reconfigure the tiny
particles to create things Mother Nature never imagined.

Just a few years ago, nanotechnology was on the fringe of respected science,
and skeptics still abound. But venture capital bigwigs are beginning to bet on
the science, and real research is underway at the NASA Ames Research Center
here. Even Washington is beginning to take notice after a series of
breakthroughs.

"The debate has shifted from 'Will it happen?' to 'When will it happen?' " said
Christine Peterson, president of the Foresight Institute, a research institute
dedicated to nanotechnology.

Indeed, the prestigious journal Science noted that the demonstration of a
nanoscale computer circuit by industry and academic researchers was 2001's
"breakthrough of the year," surpassing even the completion of the mapping of
the human genome.

Major high-tech corporations including IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola and
Raytheon have launched nanotechnology initiatives, but these giants by no means
have a monopoly on the research.

Steve Jurvetson, a venture capitalist with Draper Fisher Jurvetson, said his
firm has invested $40 million over the past two years in 12 upstart
nanotechnology and related ventures. Much of the funding has gone to those
working on shrinking electronics, but he's personally interested in companies
that research mechanical-biological hybrids, such as those using a
hemoglobin-like substance to make dense computer chips.

"All the great unknowns of science revolve around nanotech in many ways," said
Jurvetson, who has three pictures of atoms on a wall of his office in Redwood
City and uses words such as "magic" and "mystery" to describe the field.

The Bush administration has become so interested in the potential of the field
that it has earmarked $604 million this year for nanotechnology research and
development. That's up 43 percent from the 2001 budget. In one of the
government's biggest public displays of its faith in the technology, the
Pentagon recently announced that it would spend $50 million over the next five
years to create a new laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
to focus on creating nanotech gear for soldiers.

The research is increasingly important here in the heart of the high-tech world
because companies are reaching the limit of how small they can make silicon
chips. Without miniaturization, some say, the technology revolution could be
stalled, and next-generation devices such as "chemistry labs on chips" --
capable of instantly analyzing soil samples or rocks on other planets -- would
never be built.

For NASA, making things smaller and lighter is important because of how much it
costs to carry stuff into space.

Meyya Meyyappan, who oversees about 60 scientists on NASA's nanotech team at
the Ames Research Center, said his ultimate goal is to build what he calls a
"thinking spacecraft" -- one with enough computing power on board so it can
"make autonomous decisions so we don't need to control everything from
Houston."

That's critical for a successful manned mission to Mars. It costs $100,000 per
pound to get something there, meaning that carrying a Cray computer is out of
the question. And it's impractical to try to relay computations from Earth to
Mars because it takes the signal 20 minutes to get from one point to another,
and 20 minutes to get a response back.

"If we don't make things smaller," Meyyappan said, "we won't be able to go on
any new missions."

The recent breakthroughs in nanotechnology have also prompted worries from many
prominent scientists, such as Sun Microsystems' Bill Joy. They compare it to
atomic research in the 1950s and today's mammal-cloning efforts. They point to
nightmare scenarios such as the one in Kurt Vonnegut's 1963 novel "Cat's
Cradle." The story's scientist had discovered a way to stack up water molecules
to make ice solid at room temperature. But the molecules somehow get loose and
end up freezing the world's oceans.

NASA's Meyyappan calls this the "scary part" of the science but dismisses it as
nothing more than a "Hollywood story."

"Pretty much everything man has made since the dawn of civilization he has been
able to control," he said.
****************
Washington Post
INS Official Wants More Input From Contractors 

The Immigration and Naturalization Service might have one of the most
sophisticated and efficient systems in the world for handling its more than 25
million paper files. 

But "my job is putting our National Records Center out of business," said
assistant commissioner for IRM Scott Hastings at a breakfast presentation this
morning at FOSE 2002. 

INS has been taking its lumps lately for slow processing of information to law
enforcement agencies, such as data about the Sept. 11 terrorists. But Hastings,
bolstered by his boss, CIO George Bollinger, said systems and processes in
place at INS should result in effective automation efforts. 

"We already have an enterprise architecture plan and a capital planning
process," Hastings said. "Our challenge is maintaining the discipline of that
construct and delivering results tomorrow." 

He said two things must happen for interagency data sharing and e-government
projects to succeed. First, agency executives and industry must present a
united front to Congress to get past a stovepiped appropriations process. 

"Policy-makers listen to us individually. We need critical recommendations
jointly endorsed and put forward. We need to do this in self defense if nothing
else." 

Second, industry must get past a work-order mentality and tell an agency when
it issues poor specs. 

Bollinger said that one agencywide software release required 23 versions in the
first year because of change orders resulting from bureaus each wanting local
bells and whistles. 

"The contractor should have said, 'You haven't gotten your requirements right.'
" Bollinger said. "That's an obligation contractors have. You need to tell us
how to do it right, not just give us what we ask for." 

Hastings said that when a request for proposals is issued for INS' planned
Exit/Entry System, he hoped contractors would propose end-to-end systems, not
simply pieces of technology. 

Reported by Government Computer News, http://www.gcn.com. 
****************
Chicago Sun-Times
N.W. Side man charged as hacker 

A 19-year-old Polish national from the Northwest Side has been charged with
crippling a mid-size Canadian Internet service provider, authorities said
Wednesday.

Andrzej Maj, with help from accomplices, shut down OA Group Inc., based in
Edmonton, for most of a day in August 2000 after becoming angered at one of the
Internet firms using the service provider, authorities allege.

The assault is called a "denial of service attack," in which the Internet
service provider is flooded with requests to its servers. The servers can't
cope and shut down.

Authorities were unable to provide an estimate of how much the attack cost the
service provider.

The new charges against Maj are in addition to those made last year accusing
him of buying five diamonds over the Internet for more than $14,000 using a
stolen credit card number. 

In all, investigators found about 1,000 stolen credit card numbers on Maj's
computer, authorities said.

Maj allegedly set up a phony company to take delivery of the diamonds and then
sold some of them over the Internet through eBay.

Prosecutors say Maj admitted that the sole purpose of the firm he created was
to deal in stolen merchandise.

Not all of the customers were satisfied. Maj put up for sale at least one of
the diamonds multiple times, prosecutors allege. He would keep checks but not
ship the product to the buyers.

Maj is being held without bond as a flight risk, Assistant U.S. Attorney Barry
Miller said.

The investigation involved cooperation among FBI agents, the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police and U.S. postal inspectors.
*****************
Los Angeles Times
Five Chip Makers to Work on Semiconductors

Toshiba Corp., NEC Corp. and three other Japanese chip makers will jointly
develop technology that will shrink the size of semiconductors and boost
efficiency, part of a move to compete against foreign rivals. With the aid of
government money, Toshiba, NEC, Hitachi Ltd., Mitsubishi Electric Corp. and
Fujitsu Ltd. will work together to shrink the size of the circuitry on
semiconductors, packing more functions and information-handling capacity on
smaller pieces of silicon wafers.

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and the five companies will choose
one domestic factory to build labs and prototype-producing lines as early as
May. The ministry will spend $238 million to buy equipment for the factory but
has no intention of owning shares in the venture. Each chip maker is spending
millions to shrink circuit features on chips, a process typically requiring
huge investments in research and development.
****************
USA Today
FBI considering changes to cyber-security unit

WASHINGTON (AP)  The FBI is considering important changes to its premier
cyber-security unit, responsible for protecting the nation's most important
computer networks, but indicated Wednesday it won't dismantle the unit as some
in Congress and the Bush administration have feared.

FBI Director Robert Mueller has outlined a plan on Capitol Hill in recent weeks
to break up the $27 million-a-year National Infrastructure Protection Center,
formed in February 1998 to watch over the nation's systems controlling banking,
water, power, telecommunications and government, congressional and
administration sources said Wednesday. They added that they expected Mueller to
make a formal decision as early as next week.

The proposal affecting the unit, whose reputation has improved markedly in the
past year after a string of early embarrassments, quickly raised concerns among
some lawmakers, Bush administration officials and industry experts. They
worried that a narrow focus by the FBI on criminal investigations into computer
attacks might discourage corporations from disclosing details of threats and
attacks on their private networks.

Such a move "would destroy the fragile trust between NIPC and the private
sector, which controls 90% of the nation's critical infrastructure," Sen.
Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, wrote this week in a letter to the FBI director.
"The broken trust would, in turn, curtail, if not end, the flow of information
from the private sector to the FBI, leaving the bureau essentially blind about
threats to critical infrastructure."

But the FBI said late Wednesday it has no plans to dismantle the unit, which
Assistant FBI Director John Collingwood praised as "a vital part of the overall
cyber-effort, especially with its many ties to the private sector."

Collingwood said Mueller met with Grassley and many others to discuss the
unit's future, and said the FBI director "will have further discussions before
making any final decisions on how best to configure FBI headquarters."

The FBI director in December reorganized the bureau's headquarters, creating a
new cyber-crime division under a new executive assistant director for criminal
investigations, Bruce J. Gebhardt, whose background is mostly in organized
crime and drug cases. Counterterrorism is another division where the FBI
indicated the unit might end up.

"What is under consideration is how the FBI can best coordinate its many
cyber-functions and how we can maximize our support to NIPC," Collingwood said.

The topic was expected to come up Thursday during a Senate Judiciary Committee
oversight hearing.

Grassley, a Judiciary Committee member and one of the FBI's toughest
congressional critics, indicated that Mueller outlined the proposal in a
meeting last month. Other congressional and administration sources, speaking on
condition of anonymity, said they also have discussed the break-up proposal in
recent weeks with Mueller. Some who discussed the idea with the director said
they believed he was leaning toward breaking up the unit; others said they
thought he was only considering the idea.

Grassley cautioned Mueller: "You do not fully realize the consequences of your
proposal."

"It doesn't sound like a particularly good idea," agreed Harris Miller, head of
the Washington-based Information Technology Association of America, a trade
group. "If it's put into the criminal division, it becomes an enforcement
function, not an information exchange."

The ITAA runs an early-warning center about online threats for the nation's
technology companies. Other such centers exist in the electric,
telecommunications and financial industries.

Grassley warned Mueller that some companies participating in such privately
organized warning centers have indicated they would stop sharing details with
the FBI about online threats if the unit were dismantled.

Under the plan, it was unclear how or whether the FBI would continue to
exchange warnings with U.S. corporations about online threats. Already, that
branch of the FBI unit is physically moving out of the bureau's headquarters to
share a building near the White House with part of the Office of Homeland
Security and a little-known cyber-protection unit within the Commerce
Department.
***************
USA Today
Smaller WorldCom tops in complaints of slamming

WorldCom is the USA's No. 2 long-distance carrier, but it's No. 1 in slamming
complaints.

According to the Federal Communications Commission, WorldCom since 1997 has had
more such complaints than No. 1 AT&T and No. 3 Sprint. Slamming is when a
company switches a customer's long-distance service without permission. The FCC
notes that many complaints do not lead to discovery of wrongdoing.

But WorldCom serves only about 20% of U.S. homes and claims about 20% of U.S.
long-distance revenue, FCC data say. AT&T serves about 50% of residential
customers and claims 35% of total revenue.

"That is an eye-opening number of complaints for a company with a smaller share
of the market," Gene Kimmelman of Consumers Union says of WorldCom.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is examining WorldCom's sales and
billing practices, among other things. The SEC inquiry asks about disputed
customer bills, overbilling complaints and overbooking of sales. WorldCom
spokeswoman Claire Hassett says WorldCom is cooperating with the SEC, and,
"It's our understanding that slamming is not a central focus." WorldCom also
says its financial practices are proper.

But a 2-year-old shareholder lawsuit against WorldCom alleges sales agents
inflated revenue by signing up customers for services they didn't order.
WorldCom says the lawsuit is "without merit."

This month, WorldCom agreed to pay $8.5 million to settle a California lawsuit
filed in July 2000 alleging slamming and unfair business practices. The state
probe found evidence of slamming and cramming, which is billing for add-on
services without customer permission. It also found that some customers were
charged for services they had canceled. WorldCom didn't admit wrongdoing. As
part of the settlement, it set up more measures to track and resolve
complaints.

In June 2000, WorldCom paid the federal government $3.5 million to settle a
slamming investigation by the FCC. As part of that agreement, it also beefed up
anti-slamming tactics. WorldCom also uses independent companies to verify
orders by customers. Hassett says such steps "are among the most sweeping in
the industry."

Wall Street hasn't paid much attention to WorldCom's sales tactics. But they
could "become more of a factor than we thought," depending on the SEC inquiry,
says Credit Lyonnais analyst Rick Grubbs. "They need to speak to the integrity
of their revenues," he says.
**************
Federal Computer Week
INS details broken process
When he became commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service last
August, James Ziglar said he quickly discovered that the troubled agency
information technology systems "were big on information and small on
technology."

Among the worst of the systems was the one used to process requests for student
visas, Ziglar told a House immigration subcommittee March 19.

Paper visa applications pour into INS, where they are reviewed  a process that
can take up to a year. If approved, a notice is mailed to the student and
another goes into a box.

"Literally, a box," said Ziglar, who was called before Congress to explain INS'
latest performance disaster. On March 11, notice finally arrived at a Florida
flight school that student visas had been approved for Mohamed Atta and Marwan
Alshehhi. 

The pair died Sept. 11 when they piloted hijacked airplanes into the World
Trade Center in New York in the most serious terrorist attack against the
United States. 

INS process plodded on, as if oblivious to the worst terrorist attack in U.S.
history. When the box was full, it was shipped to London, Ky., where workers at
Affiliated Computer Services Inc., type information from the forms into a
database, scan the forms and create microfilm copies.

The electronic data and the microfilm were sent back to INS. Then the company
had six months to send the second copy of the approval notice to the school the
foreign student plans to attend. 

"I found too much reliance on manual data entry," Ziglar told the subcommittee.
"I found a lack of real-time data and a lack of readily accessible electronic
information for accurate and timely reporting."

INS was unable to interconnect its own computer systems, let along connect with
those operated by law enforcement agencies. Ziglar said he "found that
enterprise architecture was still on the drawing board."

Ziglar got little sympathy from the subcommittee. Republicans and Democrats
alike pummeled the INS.

"If the INS is unable to identify terrorists whose acts are complete," how can
anyone be confident that they can detect and deter future terrorists, asked
subcommittee chairman Rep. George Gekas (R-Pa.).

"We should be grateful this egregious error occurred with dead terrorists, not
live ones," said Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas).

"The INS is worse than useless," said Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.). "It expends
funds but produces nothing."

Ziglar said that since the attacks, he had ordered changes in some visa
procedures:

* Student visa applications are now checked against terrorist databases to
prevent issuing visas to known terrorists.

* Processing time for student visa status changes has been cut to 30 days at
two processing centers and about 60 days at two others.

* The average time it takes to process adjustment of status applications has
been cut from 30 to 13 months, Ziglar said.

* The INS plans to replace its paper student visa system with an Internet-based
administration and tracking system by Jan. 1, 2003.

INS inspectors now have computer access to some State Department visa data at
ports of entry.

****************
Federal Computer Week
Debating e-gov: curtail or proceed?

E-government's promise of an informed citizenry and "real democracy as no one
has ever imagined it" may be curtailed by new concerns over homeland security,
said Rep. Paul Kanjorski.

Fear that online information will aid terrorists is forcing e-government
advocates to reconsider the idea that putting more information online is
better, the Pennsylvania Democrat said during a March 20 discussion about the
future of e-government.

Before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, e-government supporters believed that
making more information available to all would lead to better-informed
citizenry and to better decision-making.

Now they must wonder whether disseminating information over the Internet is
helping "disarm ourselves," Kanjorski said at the discussion sponsored by Adobe
Systems Inc. In place of openness, e-government advocates must ask how much
information should be put online and who will have access to it.

"It raises the question: 'Can we move as rapidly as we had hoped'" to develop
e-government, he said.

The Bush administration is pushing forward with its e-government initiatives
nonetheless, said Norman Lorentz, the new chief technology officer at the
Office of Management and Budget.

"There has always been a dynamic tension between security and openness," he
said. In many instances, "the horse is already out of the barn. There's a lot
of stuff out there that we wish wasn't." But the administration is going
forward with 24 e-government initiatives.