Clips June 20, 2002

[Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>]

Clips June 20, 2002

ARTICLES

House Creates Panel (for Homeland Security Legislation)
Florida Police Bust Internet Prostitution Ring
Computer Co. Founder Pleads Guilty
Russian Mafia May Have Infiltrated Computers at Arizona State
Fears of Misuse of Encryption System Are Voiced
Music Labels Urged to Move Fast on Home Networks
The Librarian's Web Dilemma
Spammer attacks AOL Search
Taking Security Concerns Private: U.S. Appeals to IT Firms
Internet Providers Team Up to Lobby FCC
Firms Vie for Right to Operate '.org' Domain
New Security Software Gets Jump on Cyberattacks
El Paso rolling toward e-gov
Air Force lab opening info exchange
Fairfax offering electronic alerts
NMCI may be homeland model
Momentum building behind homeland
Two Army tech leaders retiring
E-Authentication RFI due this month
E-authentication team takes inventory
Troops in virtual combat (United Kingdom)
Put your mobile where your mouth is (United Kingdom)
Poor technology 'lets down' UK courts
Bush cybersecurity strategy to be a living document
Man's jailing over Web posting draws free speech advocates
China's First Genotype ID Card Comes Out in Wuhan
IT Widely Used in Chinese Military Schools
Uncle Sam to IT: Help fight cybercrime
Every dial you take


***********************
Roll Call
House Creates Panel
By Susan Crabtree

House leaders moved one step closer to creating a Department of Homeland 
Security on Wednesday but have agreed to put off tackling nettlesome 
committee turf wars until next year.
While Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Minority Leader Richard Gephardt 
(D-Mo.) hailed the bipartisan cooperation involved in Wednesday's easy 
passage of a resolution to establish an ad hoc leadership committee that 
will oversee the massive government reorganization, partisan seams were 
already beginning to show.

The panel, chaired by Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas), will consist of 
a bipartisan group of nine House leaders with a one-seat GOP majority. 
Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas), GOP Conference Chairman J.C. Watts 
(Okla.), GOP Conference Vice Chairwoman Deborah Pryce (Ohio) and GOP 
Leadership Chairman Rob Portman (Ohio) will make up one side of the 
committee. The Democratic team will include Minority Whip Nancy Pelosi 
(Calif.), Caucus Chairman Martin Frost (Texas), Caucus Vice Chairman Bob 
Menendez (N.J.) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), assistant to the Minority 
Leader.

Watts said leaders have agreed to allow the House Government Reform 
Committee and all the panels who claim jurisdiction over some aspect of the 
new department three weeks to review the issues that will arise in the 
consolidation. After that time period, the chairmen will be asked to advise 
the leadership committee on how best to proceed. But the ad hoc committee 
will also begin to meet on its own - possibly as early as next week.

Armey, however, has indicated that the new committee will not be a forum to 
settle long-term Congressional turf battles. He said a decision will be 
deferred on whether to create a standing committee to oversee the new 
department. For now, he wants to focus solely on building the legislative 
structure for the agency with the goal of completing action by Sept. 11.

"There is no need and there's, frankly, little opportunity to restructure 
our committee system this year," Armey said. "I don't think it's necessary 
to do that."

Rep. Mike Oxley (R-Ohio), chairman of the Financial Services Committee, 
wholeheartedly agreed.

"I don't think we want to look like a bunch of pygmies fighting amongst 
ourselves when [Homeland Security Director] Tom Ridge and the president are 
looking down waiting for us to get this done," he said. "We can worry about 
the jurisdictional issues next year."

Armey got a taste of the intense nature of the jurisdictional battles ahead 
at a meeting of committee chairmen Monday afternoon. During the gathering, 
several angry chairmen lobbied hard to be included on the ad hoc panel to 
no avail, according to knowledgeable GOP aides.

So far House GOP leaders are leaving their options open on just how they 
plan to address jurisdictional issues when the time comes to do so. Staying 
true to his anti-big government principles, Armey has argued against 
establishing a permanent standing committee on homeland security.

But several key GOP lawmakers who privately advocate adding an additional 
panel as the best way to solve the internal battles say no decision has 
been made on that front.

Watts said he and the rest of the bipartisan group of leaders appointed to 
the ad hoc panel are focused on getting the department up and running. 
Watts said he did not want to create "headaches" for Hastert by lobbying 
for another panel right now, but he indicated his support for adding a 
standing committee as one way for solving the looming turf wars and noted 
his credentials for serving as chairman of such a committee.

"I probably see us having a permanent committee," he said. "And we're 
probably going to have to have another appropriations [subcommittee] to 
figure out how this agency gets funded."

Later he said that he would leave any decision about who should chair such 
a committee up to Hastert, but noted that he has "put as much work into 
this issue as any other Member." Other GOPsources point to Portman as 
another leading contender to chair any potential standing committee on 
homeland security.

Hastert, meanwhile, was being inundated by requests as well while he 
engaged in a slow-motion tug-of-war with Gephardt over the past few days 
about the composition of the committee. The Speaker originally had called 
for a six-five split on the committee, with a one-seat GOP advantage. 
Gephardt argued for one less seat, realizing that it would be a political 
nightmare to be forced to select one rank-and-file Member to join the four 
top Democratic leaders on the panel. With Pelosi, Frost and Menendez all 
angling for higher elected leadership office next year, it would be even 
more difficult to include one of them without naming all three to the panel.

The decision to create a smaller ad hoc panel left no room on the GOP side 
for Rules Chairman David Dreier (R-Calif.), who many Republicans expected 
and Democrats feared would play a critical role in the process.

Even though Dreier is not an official Member of the ad hoc panel, House 
Republican leadership aides believe the Rules Committee will play a key 
role in shaping the homeland security legislation.

But Democrats are already trying to secure a commitment from House GOP 
leaders to limit the role the Rules panel will play in the process. "The 
Rules Committee is a tool to get 218 Republican votes," one Democratic aide 
warned. "If we're not at the table, it's not bipartisan."

National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Davis (Va.) was 
also disappointed about being excluded from the ad hoc panel, according to 
GOP leadership aides. Davis has his sights set on the Government Reform 
Committee gavel when he gives up the top spot on the campaign committee 
after the November elections. In the past few weeks Davis unsuccessfully 
lobbied Hastert to hand the homeland security issue over to the Government 
Reform panel.

"There's just one problem in all of that," one GOP leadership aide said. 
"It's called the November election."

Davis, however, claimed to have no hard feelings. "I support the Speaker's 
decisions about this," he said.
******************
Reuters
Florida Police Bust Internet Prostitution Ring
Wed Jun 19,10:43 AM ET

TAMPA, Fla. (Reuters) - Police in Florida said on Wednesday they had broken 
up an Internet prostitution ring that was operating in the United States, 
Britain, Canada, France and Germany.


The Tampa-based Web site, bigdoggie.net, allowed prostitutes to advertise 
and arrange dates with customers, the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office 
said in a statement. Some of the dates with adult movie star actresses cost 
as much as $17,000 a night, the sheriff's office said.

As part of the two-year investigation, detectives posted a fictitious ad on 
the Web site for "Lia Nice" using a photo of a bikini-clad female informant.

The ad, which offered the woman's services for $300 an hour, attracted 
thousands of responses and six men were arrested for solicitation. They 
agreed to cooperate in the investigation.

The sheriff's office said Charles Kelly, 51, of Tampa, Florida, and Steve 
Lipson, 39, of Boca Raton, Florida, were arrested and charged with running 
the service and 21 women in the Tampa area were arrested on prostitution 
charges.
***********************
Associated Press
Computer Co. Founder Pleads Guilty
Wed Jun 19,10:26 PM ET

DALLAS (AP) - The owner of a Richardson computer company has pleaded guilty 
to violating a federal order that prohibited him from exporting goods, the 
U.S. Attorney's Office said Wednesday.


Ihsan Elashyi, 42, pleaded guilty this week to four counts of a 39-count 
indictment returned in April, including charges of money laundering and 
wire fraud.

Elashyi founded Tetrabal Corp., which sold and exported computer and 
telecommunications equipment. Most of the customers were in the Middle East.

Elashyi previously worked for Infocom Corp., a company owned by his 
brothers, prosecutors said. Infocom was the target of a three-day search by 
a federal terrorism task force in September. An order freezing assets cited 
a $250,000 investment by the wife of a political leader of the terrorist 
group Hamas.

Federal Commerce Department ( news - web sites) officials had issued a 
temporary denial order Sept. 6 to prevent Elashyi, his company and Infocom 
from shipping goods overseas without authorization from the United States. 
The order was issued because the government said Infocom had tried to ship 
to Syria and Libya

In his plea, Elashyi admitted violating the temporary denial order by 
trying to ship computers to Saudi Arabia on Sept. 22.

Prosecutors said Elashyi negotiated the sale of 119 computers to Saudi 
Systems Inc. and accepted the company's wire transfer of $107,385 for the 
computers. Authorities said Elashyi lied to Saudi Systems, telling the 
company he could not return its money because his bank account had been 
frozen by the United States.

Prosecutors said Elashyi also admitted he used other people's names to 
obtain credit cards, which he then used for purchases and cash advances 
totaling more than $750,000.

The money laundering count involves efforts to conceal the credit card scheme.

Elashyi could face a maximum of 50 years in prison and a fine of $1.25 
million. His sentencing has been set for Sept. 9.
**********************
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Russian Mafia May Have Infiltrated Computers at Arizona State and Other 
Colleges
By ANDREA L. FOSTER

Arizona state police officers seized two desktop computers and at least 
five hard drives at Arizona State University earlier this month. The U.S. 
Secret Service has warned that someone -- possibly the Russian mafia -- 
installed software in the computers that could record users' credit-card 
numbers and other personal data. Computers at other colleges may be 
involved as well.

Lt. John S. Sutton, a spokesman for the university police department, said 
the state police had removed the equipment from three campus buildings. 
Most of the affected equipment is in kiosks that anyone on the campus can 
use, he said.

He said the Secret Service is taking the lead in investigating the case but 
is receiving help from the state police.

The Secret Service declined to comment. "We have an ongoing investigation," 
said Mark Connolly, a spokesman for the agency.

The software installed on the computers captures keystrokes as they are 
being typed and saves the data to a file, said John S. Babb, assistant vice 
provost for information technology at the university.

"There seems to be a strong connection to the Russian mafia," he added. He 
and Lieutenant Sutton declined to elaborate, saying the Secret Service had 
asked them not to discuss the case.

Mr. Babb said the Secret Service is investigating whether the intruders had 
also installed keystroke software in computers at colleges in Texas, 
California, and Florida. He said he doesn't know which colleges are part of 
the inquiry.

William E. Lewis, vice provost for information technology at Arizona State, 
posted a message Wednesday to an e-mail discussion list for university 
chief information officers. He provided details of keystroke-capturing 
programs for which the administrators should be on the lookout on their own 
computer systems.

The programs, Mr. Lewis wrote, include Starr Commander Pro, STARRCMD.EXE, 
RADMIN, and ISPYNOW. "If unauthorized installations of the above files are 
located or if log routers for authorized installs have been altered, please 
contact your local Secret Service office," Mr. Lewis wrote.

Mr. Babb said the university did not know whether the suspected criminals 
had obtained users' credit-card numbers or Social Security numbers. 
Administrators are waiting for the Secret Service to tell them what, if 
any, personal data were retrieved from the seized equipment.

The administration did not alert students about the incident after the hard 
drives were confiscated, although most now know about it since it was 
reported in the news media, said Mr. Babb.

"We wanted to warn students, but the Secret Service told us to wait."

Some students were upset that they were not notified immediately. "It's sad 
there wasn't a warning issued, but I can understand that it would 
jeopardize the investigation," said Erin Hawksworth, a junior at the 
university who reported on the investigation for the student newspaper, the 
State Press.
***********************
New York Times
Fears of Misuse of Encryption System Are Voiced
By JOHN MARKOFF

SAN FRANCISCO, June 19 - A leading European computer security and privacy 
advocate is challenging an effort by the American computer industry to 
create a standard to protect software and digital content, calling the plan 
a smoke screen by established companies to protect their existing markets.

In a paper to be presented at a technical conference in Toulouse, France, 
on Thursday, Ross Anderson, a University of Cambridge computer scientist, 
attacks the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance, an organization formed in 
October 1999 by Compaq Computer, Hewlett-Packard, I.B.M., Intel and 
Microsoft. The companies say their intent is to provide a cryptographic 
system that would ensure privacy and protect intellectual property.

The technology that the alliance has developed uses an encryption method 
intended to identify computer hardware and operating system software and 
determine that their configuration has not been altered. The companies say 
it will help detect virus invasions and provide security for commercial 
transactions like online purchases and banking.

But Dr. Anderson argues that the potential exists for the technology to be 
used in a more sinister fashion: to create a new form of censorship based 
on the ability to track and identify electronic information.

He compares the technology to a proposal by Intel in January 1999 to insert 
a distinct serial number into each of its Pentium processors, an effort 
that drew widespread consumer opposition after privacy advocates warned 
that the technology could be used for surveillance purposes. The plan was 
withdrawn.

Dr. Anderson also warns that widespread adoption of the standard from the 
alliance, known as T.C.P.A., could put large United States computer 
companies in a position to thwart competition by controlling who gets to 
use the standard and on what computer platforms.

"The T.C.P.A. appears likely to change the ecology of information goods and 
services markets so as to favor incumbents, penalize challengers and slow 
down the pace of innovation and entrepreneurship," he wrote.

Spokesmen for Intel and for Microsoft said their companies had not been 
able to review the paper and would not comment.

Dr. Anderson is a Cambridge computer scientist who is also chairman of the 
Foundation for Information Policy Research, a British Internet policy 
research group. In a telephone interview today from France, he said there 
was growing concern within the European Union that the T.C.P.A. standard 
could emerge into a competitor for so-called smart cards, used for 
authentication, which are now the basis of a significant European industry.

"This is something that has potential macroeconomic effects, and it will 
become the big new controversy over the next six months," he said.

Although encryption technologies have not been used widely in the personal 
computer industry to protect intellectual property, they have become 
standard in the video game market, where companies like Sony, Nintendo and 
Microsoft use built-in encryption to protect against piracy and to force 
software developers to pay royalties to write software for the game machines.

The T.C.P.A. standard would not directly control what software a user could 
run on a personal computer. But according to several people who have 
examined the specification, it could be used to make a catalog of software 
on a machine available for action by a third party - barring, for example, 
someone with decryption software from playing a copy-protected DVD.

That capability has touched off an internal debate within at least one 
privacy rights group in the United States. The Electronic Frontier 
Foundation has been discussing the implications of the technology this week 
and is divided on the consequences.

"On the one hand some of our board members have argued that it might 
effectively protect you from viruses," said Seth Schoen, the foundation's 
staff technologist. "On the other hand some of our board members believe 
that if any information is made available automatically to a third party 
that is a privacy issue."

Among the board members who are potential defenders of the technology is 
David Farber, a longtime computer industry technologist and a computer 
scientist at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Farber said that he had 
been on the alliance's advisory board for the last three years and more 
recently had consulted with Intel and others about technical and social 
issues related to the proposed standard.

"I was attracted to the T.C.P.A. effort due to its focus on providing 
security and privacy in a dynamic, flexible way," he said. "It should be 
capable of supporting a digital rights management regime that can be used 
to both protect intellectual property and individual privacy and the 
individual's fair use of the intellectual property."

The initiative, which would encrypt information while it was being 
processed inside the computer, would also violate European Union directives 
governing the transparency of computer data, Dr. Anderson said.

He said he was concerned as well that the advent of the standard would 
permit the pursuit of previously impossible electronic censorship 
campaigns, because the technology could make it possible to locate and 
delete specific documents on any computer connected to the Internet.

"We could have a huge swing from the current situation where the Internet 
can be used to distribute information to something at the other extreme," 
he said.

In May, with a fellow researcher, Dr. Anderson reported on a vulnerability 
in the current generation of smart cards, which are used for identity and 
financial transactions.
**********************
Reuters Internet Report
Music Labels Urged to Move Fast on Home Networks
Wed Jun 19, 1:15 PM ET
By Sue Zeidler

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - With record labels suffering a downturn due largely 
to piracy by unauthorized file-swapping on the Internet, a new report on 
Wednesday urged the industry to move quickly on the next big digital thing 
-- transferring songs from PCs to stereos.


"With each new digital technology that comes along, the music industry 
seems to take a wait-and-see approach and as a result you end up with 
situations like Napster ( news - web sites) when the industry is forced to 
be reactionary and try to stuff the genie back in the bottle," said Joe 
Laszlo, senior analyst with Jupiter Media Metrix.

"Sharing broadband connections between multiple PCs will drive early 
adoption of home networks, but music will take it mainstream," he said.

In home networking, televisions, stereos and computers are connected, 
allowing for the transfer, for example, of movies or music from one place 
to another at high speeds, and also allowing Internet connections to be 
shared.

In the new report, Jupiter Media Metrix said it expects about 23 million 
U.S. households with online connections, or one-third of the total, will 
have a PC-based home network by 2006, up from 6 million last year.

About 17 million of those homes have broadband connections, according to 
the report, which will be presented at its Plug.In Forum July 8-9 in New York.

Jupiter sees two types of home networks emerging: one based on a PC and the 
other on a TV-set-top box that would control stereos and TVs as well as 
climate in the home.

Jupiter said it was advising equipment manufacturers, recording companies 
and broadband Internet service providers to plan products based on the 
emergence of these two home networks.

He said the music industry must try to shape consumer expectations by 
designing devices that make both consumers and record companies happy.

Laszlo said products from Hewlett-Packard ( news - web sites) Co. , 
SONICblue Inc. and Simple Devices in San Mateo, California already provide 
connectivity from a PC to a stereo.

"The recording industry needs to get its house in order and make a clear 
statement like it wants to see strong digital rights management built into 
these new devices," he said.

"Our companies support technology that offers the music consumer what they 
want, where they want in a format that protects copyright," said a 
spokeswoman for the Recording industry Association of America ( news - web 
sites) (RIAA).

While Jupiter sees a strong consumer desire for a PC-based home network, it 
cited several impediments, including high cost, complex set-up and 
maintenance.

The forecast was based in part on a March 2002 random survey of 2,097 
individuals via e-mail, Jupiter said.
**********************
New York Times
The Librarian's Web Dilemma
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

GREENVILLE, it seemed, was plagued with pornography. In the 12 public 
libraries serving the city and its county in South Carolina, adults were 
looking for pornographic images online and didn't care who saw them - and, 
by some accounts, were showing the images to children passing by.

"We had parents say, `I'll never bring my child back to your library,' " 
said J. David Sudduth, chairman of the Greenville County library system's 
board. "It was a very unhealthy environment." After other measures proved 
ineffective, the board decided to spend $2,500 a month on a filtering 
service that blocks access to millions of Web pages with adult content. "It 
just took that last step for us to get the kind of environment we want for 
our library system," Mr. Sudduth said.

About 150 miles away, in the DeKalb County suburbs of Atlanta, another 
library system tried a different tactic: shame. With its computers in plain 
sight, it decided to have librarians enforce clearly posted rules against 
downloading pornography with a firm tap-on-the-shoulder approach. "Handling 
it the old-fashioned way, with people, has worked best for us," said Darro 
Willey, the library director. "It's just a common-sense approach."

But in Virginia Beach, librarians decided that privacy, not policing, was 
the most practical approach. Monitors of computers are recessed beneath the 
surface of glass-topped desks, with a plastic hood further restricting the 
view. Carolyn Caywood, a branch librarian, had concluded that urban areas 
like Virginia Beach are not "villages" where shame might work magic.

"The larger the community, the more likely you are to get people who are 
exhibitionists," upon whom embarrassment has no effect, she said.

Each library system says its approach is meeting its needs - and that, 
librarians say, is the most important lesson of the pornography wars. 
"Because libraries are so deeply rooted in their communities, librarians 
have the best read on their communities and how to approach the issues 
around Internet access," said John W. Berry, who stepped down this week as 
president of the American Library Association.

And for now, at least, the decisions will continue to be made at the local 
level. Three weeks ago, the latest Congressional effort to deal with the 
issue, the Children's Internet Protection Act, was blocked by a three-judge 
federal appellate panel in Philadelphia. While sympathetic to the goals of 
the law, which required libraries to install Web filters or risk losing 
federal funds for Internet access, the judges found the filters were too 
crude to avoid blocking unobjectionable material that library patrons have 
a right to see. The case is expected to go to the Supreme Court. Aside from 
the federal effort, a growing number of state and local governments have 
moved to require filters, a trend that librarians have joined forces to 
combat.

"Libraries have always been about giving people choices, not restricting 
them," said Maurice J. Freedman, the new president of the library 
association and director of the Westchester County library system in New York.

The federal filtering law and other government attempts to limit Internet 
access have failed so far because the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled 
that adults should not be limited to seeing only what is appropriate for 
children if there are less restrictive alternatives.

In the ruling striking down the filtering law, Edward R. Becker, chief 
judge of the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, wrote that technology 
could not yet clear that constitutional hurdle in shielding children from 
pornography. "Unfortunately, this outcome, devoutly to be wished, is not 
available in this less than best of all possible worlds," he wrote.

So with the issue back where librarians say it should be - at the local 
level - libraries face two issues: protecting children from stumbling onto 
pornography while surfing the Web and dealing with adults who seek out 
materials that are either blatantly obscene or at least inappropriate for 
children.

Libraries tread cautiously in this area. Those that appear to do too little 
risk coming under attack from anti-pornography groups and parents. Filter 
too aggressively, however, and civil libertarians are likely to sue. When 
the library board in Loudoun County in northern Virginia instituted a tough 
Internet use policy that included a filtering requirement, civil liberties 
groups sued, and in 1998 a federal judge declared the policy 
unconstitutional. The library board voted not to appeal.

In Greenville, Mr. Sudduth said, groups had also threatened to sue the 
library system if it imposed filtering, but no one actually did so after 
the filters were adopted. "We worked hard on issues of censorship and 
intellectual freedom," he said. The library system also ensured that there 
was one unfiltered machine in each library - "kind of a relief valve," he 
said, that could be used by people who had unsuccessfully tried to reach 
legitimate sites on the filtered machines and brought the issue to librarians.

"We tried to put together a very reasonable policy that balanced the First 
Amendment with protecting our community," Mr. Sudduth said.

The emerging standard for libraries - and an approach recommended in a 
recent report from the National Research Council on protecting young people 
online - is to give each user a choice of whether filters will be turned on 
or off at any machine. That option is still a bit expensive and 
technologically daunting for many libraries, but more and more are offering it.

At the regional libraries serving Fort Vancouver, Wash., the choice of 
filtered or unfiltered Internet is tied to the user's library card number, 
which is entered whenever an online session begins. Parents can specify 
whether filters must be used with their child's account or can choose not 
to allow Internet access at all, said Candace D. Morgan, the system's 
associate director. She said that the system eliminated a problem faced by 
patrons when the library has one bank of computers with filters and another 
without. "You shouldn't have to declare to the world what you're doing by 
what terminal you sit down at," she said.

But David Burt, a longtime anti-pornography campaigner and a spokesman for 
N2H2, a company whose filtering systems are used in Greenville's libraries 
and others, maintains that the Fort Vancouver solution is only a partial 
one. "It does address the biggest concern most people have, which is to 
protect their own children," he said, but "it doesn't do anything to 
address people accessing child pornography" or trying to expose others to it.

"I hate to sound self-serving here, but I think filtering is the best 
approach," Mr. Burt said. He compared unfiltered Internet access in 
libraries to "having Hustler placed next to Highlights" on the shelf. "From 
a common-sense approach, it makes more sense to deal with the pornography 
problem before it comes into the libraries," he said.

The problem with exhibitionists, said Mr. Willey in Georgia, is that the 
issue shifts from censorship to bad behavior. And while librarians debate 
whether tap-on-the-shoulder enforcement of Internet use policies is an 
invasion of the user's privacy, they all say that bad behavior predates the 
Internet by generations, whether the problem is unwanted sexual advances, 
drug abuse or consensual sex in the stacks.

"It is one of the safest public institutions, in my opinion, that you can 
find - but it is still a public institution," said Judith F. Krug, the 
director of the library association's Office for Intellectual Freedom. 
"Sometimes bad people get in, and sometimes they do bad things." When that 
happens, libraries have a range of responses, from asking the disruptive 
person to leave to calling the police.

Ms. Krug, an opponent of the tap-on-the-shoulder method, suggested that 
libraries set their browsers to return to the home page after a period of 
inactivity to prevent the viewing of an objectionable image that someone 
else has left on the screen.

Agnes Griffen, director of the Tucson-Pima Public Library in Arizona, said 
that solutions - and public perceptions - needed to take into account the 
libraries' resources and the realities of the setting.

Anti-pornography groups have tried to portray librarians as "people who 
didn't care about little children," Ms. Griffen said. But the truth, she 
said, is that librarians recognize that they can do only so much to protect 
children. "We do care about children," she said, but added that "the myth, 
the pleasant stereotype of the children's room, which we all love, isn't 
there any more."

"We're not going to be able to sit behind the child and watch what the 
child is looking at on the screen any more than we can follow them around 
while they look at the books," Ms. Griffen said. "I'm very sympathetic, but 
you can't expect the public library to do that job for you. We're here to 
help, but we can't be the monitor or the censor or the nanny for children."

The question often comes down to an issue of limited resources, she said. 
"We can barely keep our libraries open, much less hang over the back of a 
kid looking at a PC," she said.

Ms. Griffen suggested that the battle over Internet use in libraries arose 
in part from a deeper anger over broader changes in society. "Parents are 
upset because they don't have enough time anymore to do the parenting they 
wish they could do," she said. "They're unhappy about it and they take it 
out on other people."

Mr. Freedman of the Westchester County libraries said that an anguished 
mother had confronted him about her children's potential exposure to 
pornography in the library. There are no filters on the library system's 
computer network, he said, but one library, in Greenburgh, provides a 
filter on a single machine in the children's section.

" `If you have cable,' I said to her, `your kid will be exposed to all 
kinds of things,' " he said. "The parent has to take responsibility for 
what the kid does at home, at other kids' homes, at the library or on the 
street."

Ms. Krug of the library association said that in a world full of risks, the 
library should be a place where young people can seek out information - 
even information about sex - safely. "They can learn about it in the 
library," she said, "or behind the library."
********************
News.com
Spammer attacks AOL Search
By Jim Hu
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Search engines beware: Web spammers are becoming more sophisticated.
The latest case occurred Wednesday when America Online's AOL Search and its 
technology partner Inktomi began displaying thousands of search results 
that linked to a Web site based in Russia.

Web spamming, a term used to describe how sites trump legitimate search 
results with their own pages, has been going on since the birth of search 
engines. But this time, Web spammers have found a savvier technique.
Spammers copy a Web page and embed metatags into its source code with 
instructions for a search engine's robots to revisit the duplicate every 
day but withhold from caching it. The result is effective: False Web pages 
disguised as legitimate sites appear high in a search engine's rankings.

"This is one way of spamming an engine," according to an Internet 
consultant who discovered his site was mirrored but did not want his name 
used. "It's actually brilliant."

AOL and Inktomi pulled the bogus results linking to the Russian site 
Wednesday and downplayed the attack, saying the number of results was 
miniscule compare to the billions of results served every day to Web users.

"This minor incident only affected a comparatively very small number of 
available Web sites off of AOL and on the Internet," AOL spokesman Nicholas 
Graham said.

Beyond its immediate affect, the attack represents the next step in an 
evolution of the Web's greatest nuisance: spam. Internet users are all too 
familiar with junk e-mail, incessant unsolicited marketing pitches that 
flood people's in-boxes. In the same way, Web spam has become a tremendous 
headache for search engines that are constantly trying to provide people 
with the most relevant and unbiased results.

The battle has led to an arms race between spammers and search engines.

Several commercial software products have been developed to give sites the 
tools to boost their placement on search engines, such as FirstPlace 
Software's WebPosition Gold.

Well-known techniques include link spamming, in which hundreds or thousands 
of bogus sites are created that all point to the same page. Such efforts 
can fool search algorithms that count links as a measure of a site's 
relevance. Spammers may also use so-called automated queries to constantly 
check the status of their sites and test changes aimed at driving them up 
the rankings.

In a sign that the problem is growing, Google in April shut down some 100 
Comcast customers, citing violations of terms of service banning automated 
queries on its database.

"The spammers out there are constantly trying to get into search engines," 
said Vishal Makhijani, general manager for Inktomi's Web search. "Cottage 
industries have been built to help content providers to try to draw you to 
their sites."
***********************
Washington Post
ICANN, Dotted With Doubts
Role as Domain-Name Manager In Danger as Criticism Grows

By David McGuire
washingtonpost.com
Thursday, June 20, 2002; Page E06



Questions about who should control the Internet's complex global addressing 
system are mounting as the current governing body weighs whether to do away 
with plans for international elections to is board.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a 19-member 
international standards-setting body that operates under the auspices of 
the U.S. government, manages the address system.

ICANN makes decisions about who may distribute Internet addresses, how much 
domain names cost, and what addressing suffixes (.com, .net, .org, .biz, 
.info and others) are added to and removed from the system.

But while ICANN continues to make those decisions, it faces criticism from 
public interest advocates and members of Congress who complain the group 
has enacted too many key policies by fiat and has failed to includeenough 
ordinary Internet users in its decision-making.

As an example, many critics cite that ICANN once gave representatives of 
companies that were proposing new domain suffixes just three minutes each 
during a hearing to defend their ideas before the board made its choices, 
which were not subject to appeal.

The Commerce Department, which oversees ICANN, plans to decide in September 
whether to renew the agreement under which ICANN manages the domain-name 
system.

"Barring significant changes, we'll have to look at alternatives to ICANN," 
said Rep. John M. Shimkus (R-Ill.), a member of the House Energy and 
Commerce Committee.

Another Commerce Committee member, Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), was 
more blunt: "Although ICANN is supposed to be a consensus-based 
organization, the irony is that the only thing it has achieved global 
consensus on is that it is a failure."

Few dispute that ICANN needs major repairs. ICANN President M. Stuart Lynn 
said as much earlier this year.

Just weeks before ICANN was scheduled to vote on a proposal that would have 
allowed Internet users to elect several members of ICANN's board of 
directors, Lynn proposed that ICANN scrap elections altogether in favor of 
developing a faster-acting decision-making body.

Lynn has proposed a structure under which an internally selected nominating 
committee would choose much of ICANN's board. That committee would be 
charged with ensuring that all its nominees were committed to upholding the 
public interest, Lynn said. ICANN is scheduled to vote on the proposal at a 
meeting in Bucharest, Romania, later this month.

Most of ICANN's 19 board members were appointed to their posts through an 
internal nomination process. ICANN staged global elections over the 
Internet in 2000, seating five members. But Lynn worries such elections are 
too easy to corrupt by special interest groups attempting to capture board 
seats. And he said too much public process can hamper ICANN's ability to 
act expeditiously.

"Public participation is a broad and undefined term," Lynn said. "The 
reason why we are a private organization is that government organizations 
-- by their very nature -- tend to be deliberative and take a very long 
time to make decisions, whereas ICANN needs to be agile and effective."

Some public interest groups have become so exasperated with ICANN's stance 
on public involvement that they are calling on the Commerce Department to 
force ICANN to compete for the right to operate the domain-name system.

"Requiring ICANN to compete against qualified bidders will provide a strong 
incentive for ICANN to engage in a thorough housecleaning and become more 
genuinely responsive to the comments of stakeholders," the groups wrote in 
a letter to Nancy Victory, chief of the National Telecommunications and 
Information Administration, the Commerce Department agency that directly 
oversees ICANN.

The American Civil Liberties Union, Consumers Union, the Consumer 
Federation of America, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the 
Electronic Frontier Foundation all signed the letter, which was organized 
by the Washington-based Media Access Project.

The groups argued that ICANN has repeatedly refused to give the 
international public any meaningful role in Internet governance.

Testifying before a Senate Commerce Committee subcommittee earlier this 
month, Victory acknowledged many of the criticisms leveled at ICANN, but 
recommended that the group be given the opportunity to initiate its own 
reforms. She said the September deadline for renewing ICANN's agreements 
would be a good time to gauge whether the organization is moving quickly 
and in the right direction toward meaningful change.

Questioning the Process
ICANN was formed in 1998 as an alternative to U.S. hegemony over the 
Internet. Until then, the Commerce Department directly managed the system.

Although incorporated in Marina del Rey, Calif., ICANN convened an 
international board of directors intended to represent Internet 
"stakeholders" from around the world. But it has long wrestled with the 
question of how to get a broader cross-section of Internet users involved 
in decision-making -- a key tenet of the entity's agreement with the 
government.

Congress started taking a closer look at ICANN in 2001 after the 
organization approved seven new Internet domains designed to boost 
competition and ease crowding in the .com, .net and .org domains.

Responding to an ICANN request for proposals, nearly 50 organizations and 
companies from around the world plunked down nonrefundable fees of $50,000 
each as they submitted bids to operate new domains.

When ICANN rejected most of those proposals, several losing bidders took 
issue with the process ICANN used to select new suffixes. Those complaints 
sparked a contentious congressional hearing in February 2001.

At that hearing, Markey questioned ICANN Chairman Vinton G. Cerf on the 
criteria the board used to choose the seven winning bids. Markey said he 
was particularly concerned by the absence of an appeal process for losing 
bidders.

"It was a very arbitrary process with no appeals, and ultimately it's the 
antithesis of what the Internet is supposed to be, which is a democratizing 
influence on the world," Markey said.

Some say the United States should tread carefully in trying to force 
change, lest it provoke a backlash from the rest of the world.

"The expectation is that ICANN is a global organization with equal input," 
said Theresa Swinehart, ICANN's counsel for international legal affairs. If 
the U.S. government throws its weight around too much, important 
international participants in ICANN could turn their backs on the process, 
she said.

For his part, Lynn said ICANN's critics focus too much on the way the group 
does things and not enough on what it does.

"They're interested in process, not in substance," Lynn said. If ICANN 
moves in the direction of expanding and lengthening its processes, rather 
than streamlining them, "we may as well be a government organization," Lynn 
said.
***********************
Washington Post
Taking Security Concerns Private: U.S. Appeals to IT Firms
By Michael Barbaro
Page E05

It is the common cry of the federal administrator sitting across the table 
from the private entrepreneur: "I do not have the staff with the 
technological experience to do what you do."

That was how Sallie McDonald, assistant commissioner of the General 
Services Administration's Office of Information Assurance and Critical 
Infrastructure, characterized efforts to protect federal information 
technology systems and develop rapid national response mechanisms. And it 
underscores a new consensus among many top technology advisers in 
government that the only way to protect the nation's vital computer systems 
is to reach deeper into the private sector, while making federal agencies 
more accessible to innovative and little-known companies.

"Our mantra is that we do not have the answers," said Paul Kurtz, a member 
of the President's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board and the 
National Security Council. "Many of the answers lie outside the Beltway."

The federal government is now mining the IT industry to develop some of its 
most ambitious security projects, from a national early warning system to a 
comprehensive system of software to resist cyberterrorism.

"If you have a solution, you need to come to government," Kurtz told about 
150 IT representatives yesterday at a panel sponsored by TechNews.com, a 
division of washingtonpost.com.

Since Sept. 11, it has become clear that the federal government is not 
equipped to shield national technology systems on its own. So it is turning 
to, and at times pleading with, private industry to step into the breach.

That is expected to translate into higher investment in data-protection 
technology, information-sharing systems and network-integration services, 
IT marketers and executives said.

The shift to private industry for this kind of security is not entirely 
new. In 2000, President Clinton signed the Government Information Security 
Reform Act, known as GISRA, which requires agencies to integrate security 
programs into their computer networks and capital investment plans. The 
price of noncompliance is budget cuts, said Capt. J. Katharine Burton, 
assistant deputy manager of the National Communications System, a group of 
22 federal departments and agencies.

"Many agencies are afraid they will not get money and they are now doing 
things they should have been doing long before," McDonald said.

Sept. 11 accelerated the IT security imperative, and so, too, has the 
president's new emphasis on homeland security. The Bush administration has 
proposed increasing spending on IT security for fiscal 2003 to $4.2 billion 
from $2.7 billion for fiscal 2002.

IT firms from across the nation attended yesterday's panel for a few 
minutes of face time with the administrators who route lucrative federal 
contracts to government agencies. Sales director Michael Laracuente flew in 
from California to hand out business cards for Captus Networks, a New 
Jersey-based firm that develops software to protect Web pages against 
predatory Internet use.

"Everyone wants to do business with the federal government," said Keith 
Harris, founder of Virtual Universe of Gaithersburg, which wants to sell 
"virtual offices" to the government. Virtual offices would allow agencies 
to continue to operation if their offices and computer networks are 
attacked. Harris's company is two years old, and he has no government 
contracts.
************************
Washington Post
Internet Providers Team Up to Lobby FCC
BroadNet Alliance Says Agency's Plans Would Eliminate Access to Phone Networks
By Yuki Noguchi

More than 100 independent Internet service providers formed a new coalition 
earlier this week to fight what they say are unfair policies that favor the 
regional telephone giants and hurt the deployment of broadband.

The BroadNet Alliance, based in Washington, plans to lobby the Federal 
Communications Commission to abandon proposals it says would threaten its 
members' ability to provide Internet service because they would no longer 
be able to access the regional phone companies' network.

Right now, ISPs depend on their ability to buy access to regional phone 
companies' networks at wholesale rates, because it is economically 
impossible to build new phone lines into every home in the United States, 
said Maura Colleton, executive director of BroadNet. ISPs generally resell 
that network connection to customers.

Three similar proposals before the FCC would take away that access, 
according to Colleton.

Two of them would reclassify high-speed access as an information service, 
which means it would not be subject to telecom regulations, and ISPs would 
no longer be able to buy network access at wholesale rates. The third 
proposal would change existing rules that dictate which parts of the 
network regional carriers must share with their competitors -- a measure 
that could potentially have the same effect as the other two proposals.

BroadNet, which is funded by $150,000 from ISPs that include EarthLink and 
WorldCom Inc., is up against better-funded competition.

Regional phone giants such as Verizon Communications Inc. and SBC 
Communications Inc. have made great strides, both in the market and with 
regulators and Congress. They have argued that requirements to share their 
infrastructure -- especially the newer souped-up networks that deliver 
high-speed Internet access -- with upstart competitors have hurt them 
financially and discourage broader investment in networks around the country.

"Right now the rules don't work because there are disincentives to 
investment because we have to open up our networks to competitors," said 
Allison Remsen, a spokeswoman for the Washington-based U.S. Telecom 
Association, a group that represents the interests of the regional phone 
companies. "There's a lot of risk in making these investments," and the 
current rules give little incentive to competitors to build their own 
networks if they can get it at below cost, she said.

The FCC is expected to rule on these matters later this year. The final 
rules may be pushed into next year because the commission has extended its 
deadlines for public comment, because of recent court decisions challenging 
some of the commission's rules.

"These are pending items, so the commission cannot comment," said Michael 
Balmoris, a spokesman for the FCC's wire-line competition bureau.

More stories in TELECOM online at washingtonpost.com/technology.
***********************
Washington Post
Firms Vie for Right to Operate '.org' Domain
By David McGuire
Page E05

The battle for the right to operate the Internet's fifth-largest addressing 
suffix began in earnest Tuesday, as three Washington area groups joined 
others from around the world in a race to become the next operator of ".org."

Created alongside .com and .net more than a decade ago, .org is the online 
home to many of the world's political, nonprofit and philanthropic groups. 
With Internet addressing giant VeriSign Inc. slated to relinquish its hold 
on .org in December, Internet authorities are searching the globe to find a 
new home for the popular domain.

Public interest advocates are closely following that search.

The .org domain suffix "is a space that has a special role, particularly 
for noncommercial and political organizations that don't necessarily have a 
home in .com," said Alan Davidson, associate director of the Center for 
Democracy and Technology. That community wants to make sure that the next 
.org operator preserves the domain as a haven for noncommercial speech, 
Davidson said.

On Tuesday, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) 
announced that 11 companies and organizations from around the world had 
applied to operate the domain. Washington-based Internet addressing firm 
NeuStar Inc., the newly formed DotOrg Foundation, and the Reston-based 
Internet Society are the three local applicants.

ICANN, which oversees the Internet's global addressing system, will appoint 
one bidder as the new .org operator in August.

Although traditionally thought of as a home for nonprofit organizations, 
.org is, and will remain, open to all registrants. ICANN accepted bids to 
operate the domain from companies and noncommercial groups alike. ICANN 
Vice President and General Counsel Louis Touton said that while some of the 
criteria may favor noncommercial bidders, ICANN's primary goal is to find a 
secure and stable home for .org.

One of the companies seeking to operate the domain, NeuStar, already runs 
the ".biz" domain and America's sovereign ".us" suffix.

The nonprofit Internet Society is another bidder likely to garner attention 
from the noncommercial community. Founded in 1991 with the broad goal of 
fostering international cooperation and participation in Internet 
development, the society has members in 100 countries.

Rounding out the Washington area applicants is the nonprofit DotOrg 
Foundation, which was founded for the sole purpose of applying to operate 
the .org domain.

ICANN charged each applicant that submitted a .org bid a $35,000 processing 
fee.
************************
Washington Post
New Security Software Gets Jump on Cyberattacks
Joab Jackson
Wednesday, June 19, 2002; 4:45 PM

In 2001, the Federal Computer Incident Response Center was notified of 
6,683 attacks, ranging from defacing Web sites to break-ins of an agency's 
central "root" servers. In 2000, the agency that monitors malicious attacks 
on federal systems was notified of only 586; in 1999, that number was 580.

These numbers have many industry and government officials worried whether 
agencies have enough manpower to keep up with the increasing number of 
attacks on their computer systems.

Although the federal government has increased spending on information 
security - from $1 billion in 2001 to $2.7 billion in 2002, according to 
market research firm Input Inc. of Chantilly, Va. - the amount of 
information passing through government systems and the evermore complex 
nature of security threats guarantee that even these additional dollars 
will be spread thin.

Addressing this problem are software companies that have produced solutions 
that attempt to foresee threats sooner and simplify the workload for 
administrators.

"Traditionally, many of the technologies are reactive in nature. We have 
more of a proactive solution," said Dave Hammond, director of marketing at 
Okena Inc., a Waltham, Mass., firm that sells about 50 percent of its 
security software to government agencies.

Industry observers are seeing pressure on systems administrators from two 
areas: increasing network capacities and more complex threats, both of 
which strain traditional security components.

"Government agencies are requiring one gigabit networks, whereas 100 
megabits were adequate two years ago," said Randy Richmond, group manager 
within the federal network systems unit of Verizon Communications Inc., New 
York, which provides managed network services.

As network throughput grows, Richmond said, firewalls and intrusion 
detection systems struggle with an increasing number of data packets.

Add to this the changing nature of the threat. According to David von 
Vistauxx, managing director of a Silver Spring, Md.-based security 
practices coalition called the Organization for Infrastructure Security, 
agencies may be more "prepared to fight the last attack, not the current 
one," he said.

For example, a June 10 General Accounting Office report criticized the Army 
Corps of Engineers for not adequately securing its financial management 
system, even though the corps had addressed many problems called to its 
attention by an earlier GAO audit. Among the new problems identified was 
the corps' failure to correct "continuing and newly identified 
vulnerabilities," the report said.

Increasingly, security software providers are gearing their solutions 
toward anticipating future threats, ones whose methods of attack may be 
new, rather than just guarding against the kinds of attacks that have 
already occurred.

Okena, for instance, sells software called StormWatch that monitors 
computer applications to ensure they don't perform any activities outside 
their boundaries.

"We're defining policies for appropriate application behavior," Hammond said.

Network Associates Inc., Santa Clara, Calif., also has developed a 
proactive approach through the release of its McAfee ThreatScan software. 
Brian McGee, group product marketing manager for Network Associates, said 
this product is "designed to help a security administrator find 
vulnerabilities in the network that might be attacked by viruses or other 
malicious code."

"It is specifically targeted at the vulnerabilities that get exploited by 
viruses," McGee said, in contrast to virus protection software that checks 
for the presence of malicious programs themselves.

In May, NFR Security Inc., Rockville, Md., released a version of its 
intrusion management system that includes a forensic analysis tool that 
mines security data for pertinent characteristics that could be used to 
guard against future attacks.

"Security must be considered a process rather than a single technology," 
said Jack Reis, chief executive officer of NFR Security.

Advanced detection systems such as these can be valuable tools, but 
agencies need knowledgeable systems administrators who know how to use 
them, said Ira Winkler, chief security strategist for Hewlett-Packard 
Consulting, a unit of Hewlett-Packard Co., Palo Alto, Calif., during a June 
6 Washington Technology conference on information assurance. Otherwise, the 
data about possible break-ins will just go unused.

And this is where administrators need the most help, officials said.

"There's a ton of data out there. You look at those logs from intrusion 
detection systems and firewalls that are millions of lines long. No one has 
time to look through all of them," said Albert Turner Jr., a senior vice 
president for SilentRunner Inc., a subsidiary of Raytheon Co., Lexington, 
Mass.

Raytheon spun off this business unit to address the growing customer base 
for more visually oriented tools to help system administrators track 
threatening behavior. In May, the company released a new version of its 
analysis tools.

"SilentRunner's customers have the power to [expedite] network security 
decision-making efforts," said Jeff Waxman, chief executive officer of the 
company.

Also looking to lighten the administrator's load is Symantec Corp., 
Cupertino, Calif. In April, the company signed an agreement with Defense 
Information Systems Agency, which oversees the Defense Department's 
cyberinfrastructure, to supply personnel onsite to help install and manage 
Symantec's Internet security solutions.

Staff Writer Joab Jackson can be reached at jjackson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
********************
Washington Post
Citizen Tips on Terrorists: Leads or Liabilities?
Government Investigators Say Sorting Through Reports From the Public Is 
Proving Difficult

By Ariana Eunjung Cha
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 19, 2002; Page A08


The young hacker sounded frantic. He said he had been on the digital trail 
of some people he believed were involved in the Sept. 11 attacks and 
overheard them plotting a new one. This time the target would be "Brine," 
an apparent code name that seemed to refer to Salt Lake City.

It was Feb. 8, just hours before the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics.

Travis Bernard Wright, 20, a computer consultant, was on the phone with the 
FBI. He told the government agents he had broken into a private Yahoo chat 
room and intercepted messages that showed someone was preparing to launch a 
missile at the area.

America's anti-terrorism forces responded: Warnings went out to the local 
police and the Olympics organizers, radar images were scrutinized. The new 
intelligence data were forwarded to high-ranking officials in the Bush 
administration.

But the weeks passed without incident, and now irate federal officials 
contend that Wright made up the whole thing. The government charged the 
Houston man with two counts of making false statements to federal 
authorities, an accusation he denies.

His case, scheduled to go to trial Aug. 5 in U.S. District Court for 
Southern Texas, demonstrates how complicated it has become since Sept. 11 
for the government to sort through the many tips from vigilantes, 
do-gooders, tattlers and the like.

"He certainly came in with detailed information. Frankly, it was clear this 
was more than 'I heard that he said, she said' kind of thing, so we took it 
quite seriously," FBI agent Bob Doguim said.

Wright pleaded not guilty. He said the messages he discovered were genuine 
and that he made his report only because he was trying to help.

If convicted, he could be sentenced to 10 years in prison and be fined 
$500,000. He's among the first of what the government says will be dozens 
of people to be charged with making false statements to federal law 
enforcement officials in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Many of those allegedly erroneous reports were offered after the government 
urged the public to relay tips and get involved in homeland security. The 
FBI alone has received more than 435,000 calls on a telephone line it set 
up to field reports.

The FBI has since disconnected the telephone line, and some now wonder 
whether encouraging ordinary citizens to come forward on such a grand scale 
did more harm than good.

"There have been thousands of cases where tips have wasted police 
resources, sent them on wild-goose chases and caused people tremendous 
anguish," said James Alan Fox, a professor of criminal justice at 
Northeastern University in Boston. While the nation's anti-terrorism forces 
were responding to false alarms, "a real fire may have been burning out of 
control."

Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the House Intelligence 
Committee's subcommittee on terrorism and homeland security, said she would 
not want to discourage people who think they have information from coming 
forward. But she said the FBI needs better technology to sort through the 
reports.

"Enlisting the public's help to garner clues of future attacks is not only 
prudent, but necessary to ensure our homeland security. But the current 
system needs improvement," Harman said.

Representatives of both federal and local law enforcement 
teamscharacterizethe unsolicited tips that have come in as helpful and said 
it is law enforcement's duty to pursue every report, even those that are 
almost certainly the product of urban legends, rumor, hearsay or pranks.

"The primary goal is to preserve the safety of citizens and the protection 
of property. To that goal, I think the public expects us to treat every one 
of these cases as if it's real," said Abran "Abe" Martinez, an assistant 
U.S. attorney in Houston andthat region's anti-terrorism task force 
coordinator.

Nonetheless, federal and local law enforcement officials acknowledge that 
they have been rethinking their strategy. The FBI now refers tipsters to 
field offices, which are more difficult to get through to, weeding out the 
lazy pranksters. They also have begun to crack down aggressively on sources 
they believe are lying.

In addition to Wright, at least two others in Houston alone have been 
charged since January with making false reports.

WhenSol Villegas called a tip line on Dec. 18to say she had learned that a 
known terrorist was planning to contaminate a water treatment plant with 
cyanide, the FBI dispatched a team of chemists and other specialists to the 
Houston site and field agents to the suspect's home. The plot turned out to 
be fiction and the woman, who was in the United States illegally, is likely 
to be deported.

In another case, a woman told the FBI shortly after Sept. 11that her 
husband had been in contact with two of the hijackers who flew planes into 
the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Shahlah Jaffer Hussain said her 
husband received a coded e-mail message that depicted a bomb, an airplane, 
a skull, a jihad symbol and the buildings of the World Trade Center. 
Hussain later admitted that she had lied. She is scheduled to be sentenced 
next month.

Law enforcement officials said they focus their prosecution efforts on 
people who knowingly offer false leads. "I'd forgive a 5-year-old calling 
911 and saying there is a monster out there," said Kenneth Bryan, a D.C. 
police spokesman.

Travis Wright's tip came as the nation was still in a hair-trigger state, 
when even a single report by a single young man could set off a chain of 
events.

Tom Moran, Wright's lawyer, said the young man began to spend much of his 
free time after Sept. 11 searching the Internet for clues about the 
attackers. Wright, who is self-employed and has worked in systems 
administration for various businesses in Houston, including KPRC-Channel 2, 
owned by The Washington Post Co., had been reading e-mail in some online 
newsgroups when he came across something unsettling: a user who was 
celebrating the attacks.

Moran said Wright began to shadow the suspicious online correspondent, 
working up elaborate software programs to monitor the person's every move. 
He said he had traced the person's Internet connection to an address that 
belonged to an acquaintance of one of the Sept. 11 hijackers.

He told his mother, friends, co-workers and the press, including a reporter 
for The Washington Post, about his findings; all of them advised him to go 
to the authorities.

When the FBI first heard from Wright about the alleged threat to Salt Lake 
City, they were so alarmed that they invited him to their offices in Houston.

He arrived loaded down with what he said were transcripts of online 
conversations between the suspects and a technical description of the 
software program he used to spy on the apparent conspirator and some of 
those he came into contact with.

The Houston agents roused Christopher S. Merriam, a Justice Department 
lawyer in the District. Merriam spoke to Wright on the phone and asked him 
to e-mail the messages he captured on the Internet. The cryptic notes that 
Wright provided made references to missiles and were so convincing that 
government officials contacted the security detail at the Winter Olympics 
in Salt Lake City and anti-terrorism specialists around the country.

But soon the officials became suspicious. How did Wright break into chat 
rooms? Why couldn't Wright reproduce the program he said he had used to 
capture the alleged suspects' conversation? And why did Yahoo's logs show 
that the accounts of the people Wright was supposedly tracking did not 
exist at the time he allegedly captured their conversations?

The final straw came when Wright, according to law enforcement authorities 
and his attorney, failed a polygraph test.

Wright, arrested on April 3, is now free on a $100,000 bond. He is 
prohibited from accessing the Internet, and police took away his computers.

Moran said that while Wright may not have discovered a new terrorist plan, 
he was honest about what he found and had the best of intentions when he 
went to the FBI.

"The kid's a computer whiz, and he came up with a program that found 
something bad might happen," Moran said. "And, like a good citizen, he 
called the authorities."

Wright has said that he did indeed breach Yahoo's security system and that 
he wasn't able to use the software he developed to spy on other users 
because it was written for a certain chat room with certain users, all of 
which disappeared after the "Brine" conversation.

His attorney characterized the case as the type of misunderstanding that 
results from chaotic circumstances, analogous to what happened to security 
guard Richard Jewell at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.

Several news organizations reported that Jewell was suspected of setting 
off a pipe bomb; he was later cleared.

Wright's mother, Nancy, 49, said the past few weeks have been filled with 
anxiety and confusion that Jewell must have felt before his innocence 
became clear.

"Travis," she sighed, "is getting gray hairs."
************************
Washington Post
New technique promises smaller, faster chips

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - A technique that molds patterns into silicon could 
promise smaller, faster and cheaper computer chips that also are 
environmentally friendly to make, researchers say.

The process, reported in Thursday's edition of the journal Nature, involves 
embossing molten silicon with a quartz mold. The current technique involves 
etching features into a silicon wafer with a combination of light and 
caustic chemicals.

"The advantage of our approach is a feature size that can be 10 times 
smaller," said Stephen Y. Chou, the lead researcher and an electrical 
engineering professor at Princeton University.

The process, if further studies prove its validity, could help drive future 
innovation in the semiconductor industry.

For nearly 40 years, progress has been the result of squeezing more 
transistors onto chips. Intel co-founder Gordon Moore predicted in 1965 
that transistors on a given chip would double about every 18 months.

Moore's Law, as his observation is now known, has held true, though some 
believe a physical barrier will ultimately thwart further shrinkage.

One such dead end may be in manufacturing. The current process involves 
shining light through lenses and a mask onto a wafer of silicon covered 
with chemicals that react to the light. After a wash, the process is 
repeated four to 30 times until the complete chip is finished.

As transistors shrink, the equipment grows more expensive - as much as $10 
million today but expected to rise to $20 million. Light waves themselves 
might be too large to etch the smallest future transistors.

The industry is working to further extend Moore's Law by shifting to higher 
and higher frequencies of light, such as extreme ultraviolet.

"If progress falters, Moore's Law will fail and this could be disastrous 
for the semiconductor industry," said R. Fabian Pease, a Stanford 
University electrical engineering professor, in a commentary on Chou's 
research published in Nature.

Chou's technique has its roots in mechanical printing. A mold of quartz is 
etched out with features and is placed against the silicon wafer. A blast 
of laser light melts the silicon, which then takes on the features of the 
quartz mold.

Chou's team created features of about 140 nanometers but report details at 
about 10 nanometers, or billionths of a meter. By comparison, tests of the 
latest lithography techniques can create features of about 30 to 70 nanometers.

Traditional etching also can take up to 20 minutes to make a single chip. 
Chou's team could do the same in a quarter of a millionth of a second.

The technique would eliminate the need for some of the more expensive 
optical equipment used in traditional chip making.

"It's a simple physical process," he said. "It's low cost, fast and it's 
environmentally clean."

Similar techniques were tried by the semiconductor industry in the 1960s 
but were dropped because of persistent defects, Pease said.

"But in the decades since, there have been tremendous advances in managing 
defects," he said.
***********************
Federal Computer Week
El Paso rolling toward e-gov

If everything goes as planned, El Paso, Texas, will have around-the-clock 
e-government running by the end of July, a pretty big advance given that 
many city employees didn't even have Internet access a year ago.

When Jim Pulliam arrived at that time as El Paso's director of information 
technology, information technology was still pretty new to the city. The 
city Web site was not a good one, three different word processors were used 
throughout the government, files could not be sent from one incompatible 
system to another and a help desk wasn't even available to sort out 
problems, he said.

On the plus side, there was a fiber network with a huge amount of available 
bandwidth, but it wasn't being utilized and none of the city's departments 
were using the Internet.

"However, from my point of view, this turned out to be a good thing because 
I could build [the IT infrastructure] almost as new and not have to mess 
around with things that were already in place," Pulliam said.

The city has relied primarily on Computer Associates International Inc. 
technology to centralize network management throughout the government and 
build e-mail service for internal use among employees and for 
government-to-citizen connections. The company's CleverPath Portal will be 
used to provide Web-based services for citizens as well as global access 
for employees to internal government functions.

The IT construction process has moved into its third and final phase to 
install such things as network security and a PeopleSoft Inc. financial 
backend system. One of the final elements will be installation of the 
network operating center that will oversee daily management of the whole 
enterprise.

With about 65 percent of city employees now using the Web, Pulliam said the 
next thing is to move online government into the community, with access 
points in places such as libraries, senior centers and recreation centers, 
and at kiosks in hardware stores.

"The idea is to build these cybercenters so that no matter where people go 
in the city, they will be able to do city business online," he said.
*******************
Federal Computer Week
Air Force lab opening info exchange

The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) soon will use a new system that 
enables its many technology directorates to exchange business information 
with each other and submit it to headquarters with the click of a button.

The AFRL, which develops technology for information warfare tools, air and 
space vehicles, sensors, and munitions, recently completed a prototype 
project to streamline information exchange among its 10 technology 
stakeholders using an integration platform from webMethods Inc.

The purpose of this project is to demonstrate the possibility of tying 
"separate and distinct [legacy] information systems via technology that 
allows you to transfer the data automatically," said Ricardo Negron, chief 
of the AFRL's technology transfer branch.

In the prototype, Booz Allen Hamilton served as the system integrator of 
webMethods' software, enabling direct connection between the legacy systems 
of the AFRL's Directed Energy Directorate - the Defense Department's center 
of expertise for lasers and other directed energy technologies - and the 
Space Vehicles Directorate, which is the Air Force's center of excellence 
for space research and development.

The webMethods integration platform enables the AFRL to consolidate program 
information from its nine technology directorates and the Air Force Office 
of Scientific Research, and centralize data in the Programming, Planning 
and Budgeting System.

The prototype system, valued in the "hundreds of thousands" of dollars, was 
begun in February and was completed April 15, Negron said. It is being used 
with test data, but Negron said it would begin using the directorates' 
official information beginning next month.

AFRL headquarters, located at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, 
communicates the details of warfighting technology projects to the 
service's major commands and main headquarters, as well as to DOD.

Currently, each technology directorate maintains and manages project 
information in customized formats, which involves manual processes for 
translating, validating and transmitting information. For example, one 
project took two people about a month to sift through data checking for 
errors, and now, that is basically done in real-time, Negron said.

Using the webMethods software, AFRL can securely access validated data, in 
real-time, in a variety of formats from the directorates, said Len Pomata, 
president of webMethods' federal business unit. He likened the company's 
integration platform to an "information bus" that helps connect 
applications and databases.

"That's difficult to do and usually takes custom codes," which is what AFRL 
had to do in the past, Pomata said. "WebMethods' technology can connect 
those with very little effort."

Security, namely 128-bit encryption, is also built into the webMethods 
platform, an Air Force and federal government requirement, he said.

The prototype system helped to demonstrate that the data integration could 
be successful on a larger scale, Negron said. As a result, AFRL recently 
completed the request for proposals and is currently gearing up to 
implement a multimillion-dollar Enterprise Business System (EBS), which 
will link all 10 directorates nationwide.
****************
Federal Computer Week
Fairfax offering electronic alerts

A Northern Virginia city has implemented a messaging system that provides 
residents and employees with real-time electronic alerts during emergencies 
as well as offers reminders and notifications.

To subscribe to the free service, Fairfax residents must provide their 
name, address and phone numbers (www.ci.fairfax.va.us/emas) to receive a 
log-in and password. Users can then choose from 24 categories - including 
weather alerts, road closures, school closings, bid notifications and even 
dog tag reminders - and receive e-mails or text messages on cell phones or 
pagers.

Gail Bohan, the city's information technology director, said 150 people 
have already signed up for the system, which was unveiled June 11. She said 
the need for such a system was precipitated by the Sept. 11 attacks and the 
communication problems that resulted in New York City.

An example of its use could be if a snowstorm blacked out the telephone 
lines in the city, then residents and employees could be alerted through 
alternative means, she said. The system could be used to alert parents to 
early school closings or to inform motorists about traffic jams. She said 
city department heads and supervisors could use it to contact their employees.

Shortly after Sept. 11, she said Dave Balroop, director of Fairfax-based 
Advanced Software Systems Inc.'s wireless mobile commerce division, 
contacted her about the company's newly developed Electronic Message Alert 
System (eMAS). All city departments were involved in the planning process, 
said Bohan, adding that some departments are responsible for alerts to 
certain groups, while the community relations department provides most 
other alerts.

By the end of the year, the country will have 150 million cell phone users, 
Balroop said. Although most people use them for voice rather than text 
messaging, 95 percent of cell phones can send and receive text messages, he 
said.

Balroop said eMAS is device-, carrier- and geography-independent, meaning 
messages can be sent to anywhere in the country. It can work with wireless 
pocket PCs, and voice messages can be sent to landline phones if a 
municipality has that module. The system also provides an audit trail, 
tracking every message sent out and to whom, he added.

To implement the system, all a municipality needs is Internet and e-mail 
access. "If you have these two ingredients, you're set to go," Balroop 
said. The system puts "all aspects of technology into one big basket."

Balroop said several other municipalities in the Northern Virginia area are 
interested in the service as well as a few federal agencies. The initial 
cost is $34,500, with an additional cost of $14,500 to customize the 
system. There is a yearly maintenance fee of $2,500, which includes 
upgrades, he said.
***********************
Federal Computer Week
NMCI may be homeland model

The Navy's massive effort to outsource its shore-based network 
infrastructure is a concept that many agencies will use as a model, a 
former Navy captain said, and the proposed Homeland Security Department 
could be an early organization to step up to the plate.

The new department will face the yeoman task of bringing together agencies 
as well as creating a way to collect information from other agencies across 
the government, said John Higbee, a professor of program management at the 
Defense Acquisition University. Therefore, that organization will require 
communication links to extended partners.

"I think it will be the single biggest information technology initiatives 
that have come out of the federal government ever," Higbee said June 18 at 
the Fortune One Business conference in Falls Church, Va. Federal Computer 
Week is a co-sponsor of the conference.

"We need to come up with a way [to] sift through the haystack and find the 
needles," Higbee said.

Many agencies will increasingly turn toward enterprise infrastructures that 
improve security and interoperability, he said. Higbee, during his tenure 
as deputy to the deputy assistant secretary of the Navy, was a key player 
who spearheaded the Navy Marine Corps Intranet, the Navy's $6.9 billion 
initiative to create a single network for the service's more than 400,000 
shore-based seats.

Higbee acknowledged that NMCI will not be the exact model that everybody 
uses, but the overall concept - creating an enterprise infrastructure - is 
a strong trend.

"Enterprise provision of services adjusted to the needs of the organization 
is going to be more in vogue," he said. Those initiatives will not 
replicate NMCI, he said, but they will incorporate the ideas that drove the 
Navy toward that project.
**********************
Federal Computer Week
Momentum building behind homeland

Two members of Congress said June 18 that it would take years before the 
Homeland Security Department is fully operating, but with any luck, the 
money will begin flowing to enhance U.S. security in the next six months.

Reps. Tom Davis (R-Va.) and Jim Moran (D-Va.) said Congress is moving 
swiftly to approve the new agency that would be responsible for securing 
the home front. But in the meantime, lawmakers must continue to provide the 
money for agency-by-agency security systems.

"There's going to be a little hesitancy to move ahead right now. We're in a 
period where we're going to be appropriating the money, and the agencies 
are not ready to give it out," said Davis at the Fortune One Conference in 
Falls Church, Va. (Federal Computer Week is a co-sponsor of the event).

Although the urgency to secure vulnerable systems is extensive, Moran said, 
it would take at least six months to get things moving and it's "going to 
take years to get individual components working together."

And the threats persist, he said. "We're not even adequately checking the 
hold of a plane.... There are many ways you could attack the United States."

Meanwhile, President Bush's homeland security adviser, Tom Ridge, was 
presenting a hastily constructed legislative blueprint June 18 for creating 
the domestic security agency. The new agency would absorb the Secret 
Service, the Coast Guard, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and 
the Customs Service, but not the FBI or the CIA. Lawmakers vowed to hold 
prompt hearings on the legislation.
**********************
Federal Computer Week
Two Army tech leaders retiring

A pair of the Army's technology leaders will retire this summer, after 
helping to establish its knowledge management vision and the Army Knowledge 
Online (AKO) portal.

Miriam Browning, the Army's director of enterprise integration, and Col. 
Robert Coxe, the service's chief technology officer, both will retire in 
August. The duo, along with Lt. Gen. Peter Cuviello, the Army's chief 
information officer, are responsible for the ongoing evolution of the 
service's Army Knowledge Management goals, including the development of the 
AKO portal.

The Army's knowledge management goals aim to improve the management and 
availability of information throughout the service. The AKO portal provides 
Army news, distance-learning opportunities, e-mail accounts, a search 
engine and a chat room. By July, officials plan to use it for most of the 
service's internal business.

Browning has been in current position since last August. In an interview 
earlier this year, she said she was pleased with the Army's knowledge 
management progress, especially her success in garnering support from 
management and breaking down cultural obstacles, but she admitted there was 
still much to do.

"Changing the hearts and minds of the Army that the [command, control, 
communications, computers and information technology] world is in 
everyone's best interest - that's a major cultural win," Browning said. "We 
have changed the way the Army does IT."

Coxe, who took over as CTO in July 2000, said he considered retiring then, 
but decided to stay so he could pay back the Army for the 27 years of 
experiences it has given him. Helping to establish AKO, a universal Army 
tool, let him to do that, he said.

After his Aug. 22 retirement, Coxe said he would like to explore a CIO or 
CTO position with a Fortune 500 company.
*********************
Federal Computer Week
E-Authentication RFI due this month

By the end of the month, the General Services Administration will release 
its formal call to industry for ideas on how to proceed toward a single 
authentication infrastructure for all e-government services.

The GSA-led e-Authentication team plans to release a request for 
information within the next two weeks for the gateway, which is intended to 
validate users for the other e-government initiative applications, Steve 
Timchak, GSA's e-Authentication program manager, said June 18 at the 
Industry Day Conference at the Commerce Department.

The gateway would consolidate the validation of multiple levels of 
authentication, such as a password or a digital certificate, through a 
single interface.

The Bush administration's entire E-Government Strategy is built on the 
concept of eliminating redundant services and investments. The 
e-Authentication initiative is intended to be an enabler for the e-gov 
initiatives that are focused on specific services with longstanding legacy 
applications in multiple agencies.

E-Authentication also has a group of legacy applications that it must 
overcome, said Mark Forman, associate director for information technology 
and e-government at the Office of Management and Budget, which oversees the 
E-Government Strategy.

Dozens of unique, redundant authentication systems exist throughout the 
federal government, he said. Many agencies have signed contracts to stand 
up additional public-key infrastructure certificate authorities, which 
issue some of the highest levels of digital credentials, in the past few 
months, he said.

"We have e-authentication today; it's just not smartly architectured," he 
said. "There's got to be some consistency, and it has to be citizen-focused."

Beyond the gateway, the e-Authentication initiative will not lead to 
something that just sits on top of the existing, redundant solutions, 
Forman said. "We will have to retool the investments different agencies are 
making," he said.
***********************
Government Computer News
E-authentication team takes inventory
By Dipka Bhambhani

As early as next week, the General Services Administration's Office of 
Electronic Government will release a draft of its E-Authentication 
Inventory Template, a table that will list every federal agency's progress 
toward building a security architecture.

Workers developing the E-Authentication project, an effort led by GSA to 
set up a system that confirms the identities of federal systems users, will 
have access to the template.

The template will appear on GSA's Public-Key Infrastructure Steering 
Committee Web site. It will present a matrix that indexes factors such as 
agencies' policy development, and use of hardware and software.

GSA will use the template as "a basis for current technologies and 
platforms they can leverage in developing the E-Authentication gateway," 
said Rodney Miller, a research analyst in the Office of Electronic Government.

Knowing how each agency is progressing toward secure transactions will help 
GSA bring agencies' resources and expertise together on E-Authentication, 
Miller said.

So far agencies are sending GSA their progress reports via e-mail or postal 
mail. No completion date is set for the template.
************************
BBC
Troops in virtual combat

The British Army is using a specially developed version of the celebrated 
computer game Half-Life to train its troops.

With the first-person shoot-em-up soldiers can try out new weapons and new 
tactics without encountering real bullets and bombs.

The Ministry of Defence hopes the system may help reinforce some of the 
lessons learned on more traditional training exercises.

Like the popular modification, or mod, of Half-Life known as Counterstrike, 
the army version allows up to eight soldiers to go into virtual combat at 
any one time.

The troops work as a unit, moving about a simulated environment to track 
down and confront an enemy.

Similarly, a typical Counterstrike game pits two teams of four players 
against each other, with one side playing terrorists and the others the 
counter-insurgent troops.


Serious stuff

Using a mouse and keyboard, the soldiers can fire their guns, throw 
grenades and even plant plastic explosives.

According to Major Bruce Pennell, of the army's Logistics Corps, the system 
has worked well so far.

"One of the difficult things is how to measure the level of immersion," he 
said.

"It's clear to us - particularly me as a military observer - that these 
guys are really engaged in what they are doing; it is not just a game 
played across a keyboard and a mouse. They want to succeed just as they 
want to in real training."

He added: "Obviously, being killed in the virtual world isn't quite so 
serious. We don't have virtual officers writing letters to the dead 
soldiers' virtual parents, but we'd hope the games are authentic enough to 
reinforce good teaching."

Unreal doors

Chris Morris, from the technology firm QinetiQ, which is helping to develop 
the computer system, said some of the fantasy found in commercial games has 
had to be removed to drive home the consequences of making a mistake in 
real combat.

"In a standard shoot-em-up game, every time you get shot your health goes 
down by a few percent," he said. "The more that happens, the less healthy 
you become. Here, of course, one bullet and you're out of the game."

The MoD is currently evaluating the system. One possible application would 
be to allow troops to practise their missions before they went on them for 
real.

But, Major Pennell conceded, there were potential dangers in doing this.

"You would have to make sure the environment you are modelling is as 
accurate as possible. What you don't want to happen is for a soldier in a 
real situation to run around a corner to find the door that existed in the 
virtual environment, only to find in the real world the door is not there."
**************************
BBC
Put your mobile where your mouth is

Soon you could be swapping your mobile phone for a molar phone.
Royal College of Art students in London have developed a phone that fits 
inside a tooth.

The concept device picks up signals with a radio receiver and uses a tiny 
vibrating plate to convey them as sound along the jawbone to a person's ear.

The designers said the mini-molar phone could be implanted in a tooth 
during routine dental surgery.

The prototype phone is the work of graduates James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau 
and forms part of the Royal College of Art's annual summer exhibition.

Known as The Show, this exhibition shows off the best ideas of the current 
crop of RCA designers and students.

Bits and bites

Currently, the tooth phone is only a mock-up and lacks the communications 
chip to actually turn it into a functioning device.

Mr Auger said the technology to turn it into a working device already 
existed and it would be a simple matter to build the relevant chips into 
the gadget.

The designers speculate that, if the tooth phone becomes a working device, 
it could be used by stock traders to receive up-to-the-moment information 
about share prices or to help football managers communicate quickly with 
players during key matches.

However, the existing design is only supposed to help stimulate debate 
about future wearable computing devices and to help explore the social and 
cultural ramifications of in-body technology.

The tooth phone is on show at the Science Museum in London from the 21 June 
to November.

Development of the device was funded by the National Endowment for Science, 
Technology & the Arts as part of a collaboration between the Science Museum 
and the Royal College of Art.
********************
BBC
Poor technology 'lets down' UK courts

A senior judge has blamed poor technology systems for miscarriages of 
justice and delays in the British judicial system.
Lord Justice Brooke warned that the justice system is in danger of 
disintegrating if an investment of at least £500m is not made.

"Information technology systems have been lousy, leading to serious delays 
and in some cases serious miscarriages of justice," he told the technology 
news magazine Computing.

Lord Justice Brooke, who is chairman of the Judges' Standing Committee on 
IT, said the system was suffering from 15 years of neglect.

Cutting red tape

According to an Audit Commission report, problems with IT systems have cost 
the criminal justice system an estimated £80m a year.

It said that vital information held on the police national computer is 
often out of date and called for an integrated computer system to allow the 
police and the Crown Prosecution Service to communicate more effectively.

Six months ago the government set up the Criminal Justice Information 
Technology unit to implement an IT strategy across police forces, courts 
and the probation service.

Running alongside that the government is looking at reducing the amount of 
paperwork in the police force. The Home Office Policing Bureaucracy 
Taskforce is due to report in July on ways of cutting red tape.

Joining the dots

Part of its remit was to look at the part technology could play, said 
Superintendent Neil Grant-Salmon, who is on the committee.

"The police force is not joined-up in terms of information," he said.

"The personal details of a suspect can be entered in systems up to 18 times 
from arrest to going to court."

Wiltshire police force is leading the way in e-policing. It is planning to 
equip its officers with handheld computers to allow them to log in to 
information remotely.

The force is also working on joining up all the computer systems across the 
county and allowing other forces access to the information.
*********************
Computerworld
Bush cybersecurity strategy to be a living document
By DAN VERTON

Howard Schmidt, vice chairman of the president's Critical Infrastructure 
Protection Board, attended the fourth and final White House-sponsored "town 
hall meeting" on cybersecurity last night in Atlanta before the release in 
September of the next version of the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace.

During his presentation to a packed auditorium of local Atlanta security 
administrators, CIOs, educators and legal professionals, Schmidt described 
what he characterized as the unique aspects of the Bush plan. Unlike other 
government planning documents, including a previous version of the national 
cybersecurity strategy released in 2000 by the Clinton administration, the 
Bush plan "is intended to be an online version," said Schmidt.

"It's designed to be a plug-and-play type document," he said. "If we make 
mistakes, we can pull that piece out and replace it in Internet time."

In addition, the Bush strategy will be to reach beyond corporate and 
government users to include home users. Responding to questions from the 
audience, Schmidt said that home users will be able to tap into the flow of 
information about IT vulnerabilities. The document will also include 
specific sections by experts from various critical sectors of the economy, 
such as banking and finance, electric power, telecommunications and 
emergency services.

Tom Noonan, CEO of Internet Security Systems Inc. and a panel member at the 
town hall meeting, said the session lasted well beyond the two hours 
originally scheduled. He noted a "genuine, albeit skeptical, interest in 
participating in a public/private partnership."

Noonan said legal issues surrounding the Freedom of Information Act and the 
threat of inadvertent disclosure of proprietary information remains a major 
obstacle to getting most companies to work with the government. "That's a 
structural issue we have to address," said Noonan. "The law has to be 
fundamentally rethought. And that doesn't happen in Washington overnight."

"This goes beyond a department of defense issue or an FBI issue," Schmidt 
said last night. "We've seen an ever-increasing number of attacks on our 
critical infrastructure." If the national strategy is to succeed, "it will 
take the coordinated efforts of [government, military and private-sector 
companies], as well as the state and local [agencies]," he said.

Schmidt reiterated what Richard Clarke, chairman of the Critical 
Infrastructure Protection Board, has said repeatedly: that the 
administration does not plan to impose more regulations on companies to 
improve Internet security. "We believe the market will drive itself," said 
Schmidt.

Mary Guzman, senior vice president and regional e-business practice manager 
at Marsh Inc., a New York-based insurance firm, attended the meeting and 
pointed to drawbacks with the administration's approach to the industry.

"The federal government is trying very hard not to regulate anything," 
Guzman said. "They want the market to drive the process. But there are 
inherent problems with that. There still seems to be an unwillingness in 
industry to put your money where your mouth is.

"The only thing that is going to change that is when there is some pain in 
the pocketbook from liability lawsuits," she said. However, "it's hard to 
hold somebody liable for not meeting a standard when there is no standard."

Although the Bush administration is encouraging the private sector to allow 
market forces to drive better security practices, Guzman said only the 
health care and financial services industries have so far shown a 
willingness to spend more on security and purchasing cyber insurance.

"And, interestingly enough, those two industries are regulated," she said.

However, Harris Miller, president of the Arlington, Va.-based Information 
Technology Association of America, said the Defense Department is a good 
example of how an influential user can force software and hardware vendors 
to deliver more secure products.

Next month, the Pentagon will put a new policy into effect requiring all IT 
products to be tested by an independent third party for security, said 
Miller. "That will change the marketplace," he said.
*************************
CNN
Man's jailing over Web posting draws free speech advocates

SEATTLE (AP) -- Soon after moving into a retirement home, Paul Trummel 
began complaining that his neighbors fell asleep with their TVs blaring or 
flushed their toilets during quiet hours. Then he really turned up the heat 
by starting a Web site accusing tenants and staff members of housing-law 
violations and conspiracies.

The Web site landed him in jail for 3 1/2 months and made the 68-year-old 
an unlikely hero to free-speech advocates in a positively bizarre First 
Amendment case.

Trummel was locked up February 27 by Superior Court Judge James Doerty 
after refusing to remove from his Web site the phone numbers and addresses 
of Council House administrators. The judge had said that Trummel's posting 
of the information was harassment.

The judge released Trummel on Monday but gave him a new Friday deadline for 
taking down the addresses and phone numbers. Trummel said he has not 
decided whether to comply.

"This is a dangerous order from a dangerous judge," said Sandra Baron, 
executive director of the Libel Defense Resource Center in New York. "All 
he's alleged to have done is publish names and phone numbers on the 
Internet. It's not against the law to do so."

Trummel moved into the federally subsidized retirement home in 1998 and was 
evicted in April 2001 because of the dispute. Others at Council House 
consider him a crank.

Trummel, citing what he describes only as "sources," has claimed in his Web 
postings that the home's board of directors conspired to exclude blacks in 
appointing a new administrator. Trummel is white. He has also asserted that 
building administrator Steve Mitchell sympathizes with Muslim terrorists, 
has a "sexual dysfunction" -- homosexuality -- and intimidated tenants into 
testifying against Trummel in the case.

Mitchell has denied Trummel's assertions, saying: "I'm a healthy, 
37-year-old male. I can handle the stress of having him say I'm a Muslim 
terrorist sympathizer. But to a 93-year-old woman, losing sleep because of 
stress is hazardous. People are terrified of him."

Nathaniel Stahl, a 59-year-old tenant, said, "It's been horribly scary."

The Department of Housing and Urban Development found Trummel's claims 
baseless, a spokesman said.

"Factually, the case is about a mean old man who becomes angry and vicious 
when he doesn't get his own way," the judge said.

Baron, the libel expert, said that unless there are threats, it is rare for 
speech alone to be deemed harassment. She said that if Trummel has defamed 
the retirement home, it can sue him. Council House managers said they do 
not want to sue Trummel because he is broke.

Trummel claims to be a reporter and is a member of the National Writer's 
Union, though he has never been employed as a journalist.

He claims to have been director of the University Press at the University 
of Massachusetts in Boston; the school said he merely advised a 
short-lived, student-run project there. Until reminded otherwise, he also 
claims to hold two doctorates -- from the University of Washington and 
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York.

He was kicked out of a UW master's program because he did not take the 
proper courses, prompting him to barrage the faculty and staff with 
e-mails. At RPI, he was only a graduate student, and he was fired from an 
assistant professorship at Fitchburg State College in Massachusetts, the 
Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported.

As for whether he will take down the offending material, Trummel said: "I 
had an accused murderer in the cell on one side of me and an accused rapist 
on the other. I don't want to be back in that situation. But I stood my 
ground for 111 days so far on an ethical principle. This might be my swan 
song."
************************
People Daily
China's First Genotype ID Card Comes Out in Wuhan

Hubei Province's first "genotype ID card" was born recently in the Zhongnan 
(Central-south) Hospital Gene Diagnostic Center under Wuhan University. 
This ID card, which can distinguish the certificate-holder from the world's 
other 6 billion people, is so far China's first genotype ID card with 18 
genetic locus.



Hubei Province's first "genotype ID card" was born recently in the Zhongnan 
(Central-south) Hospital Gene Diagnostic Center under Wuhan University. 
This ID card, which can distinguish the certificate-holder from the world's 
other 6 billion people, is so far China's first genotype ID card with 18 
genetic locus.

This color genotype ID card, about twice the size of ordinary ID card, has 
on it data such as photo, birth date, nationality and gender. In particular 
it is marked with 18 internationally used genetic locus which are chosen 
from the long chain of human cytogenetic information carrier DNA molecules. 
In the combination of the 18 genetic locus, with the exception of one egg 
giving birth to twins, it is difficult for one to find out such a 
circumstance wherein two persons out of 10 billion people are completely 
the same.

Professor Zhou Xin, director of the genetic diagnostic center, said that 
among the world's 6 billion people, there possibly exist persons who are 
identical with you in birthday and name, similar in looks and same in 
voice, but only gene is the immutable indication representing your own 
hereditary feature.

It is reported that the genotype ID card is divided into two categories: 
infantile type and adult type. On it are the certificate-holder's photo, 
name, gender, birth date, nationality and the names of his or her parents, 
the 18 STR locus gene somatotype (includes sex gene) and blood group. 
However, the gene somatotype is not the same thing as what is currently 
called human genetic engineering, it contains only individual discerning 
function and has not much to do with the worries about disease and the 
"exposure of genetic defect". The test data for handling genotype ID card 
can be any human body's histocyte, such as blood (needing only one drop), 
hair (with ball top), skeleton, tooth, muscle and skin.

As regards the role of this kind of ID card, it is still hard for experts 
to predict, but under certain circumstances, it is the most authoritative 
basis for using it for individual discernment and parent-offspring 
identification, its rate of accuracy reaches 99.996 percent and beyond, 
obviously, it can play an irreplaceable role.

By People's Daily Online
************************
Peoples Daily
IT Widely Used in Chinese Military Schools
Information technologies have been extensively used in Chinese army and 
helped to modernize the country's armed forces, according to sources at a 
meeting in Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province.

Information technologies have been extensively used in Chinese army and 
helped to modernize the country's armed forces, according to sources at a 
meeting in Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province.

At present, over 1,000 multi-media labs have been constructed in China's 
military schools and a web site on military training isaccessible to all 
army schools.

A remote education platform has also been established for incumbent 
soldiers and officers to receive higher education without putting aside 
their army obligations.

New education methods have also been adopted in military training and help 
to educate many military professionals equipped with both modern 
information technologies and strong innovation awareness.
***********************
ZDNET
Uncle Sam to IT: Help fight cybercrime
By Lisa M. Bowman, Special to ZDNet
June 19, 2002 11:24 AM PT

SAN FRANCISCO--Hoping to appeal to a post-Sept. 11 sense of patriotism, the 
Secret Service is imploring corporate America to help it nab cybercriminals.

John Frazzini, a special agent with the Electronic Crimes Branch of the 
Secret Service, told attendees of the NETSEC 2002 conference here that an 
attack on the nation's electronic payment systems could damage faith in the 
U.S. economy.

He said companies must band together in a national neighborhood watch to 
protect the country's networks from terrorists who hope to hobble them. 
Frazzini also attacked hackers, accusing them of threatening the nation's 
faith in its networks.

"If you're a U.S. citizen and you're breaking into computer networks, not 
only are you criminal but I think you're unpatriotic," he said.

"We should be working together to address this problem," Frazzini added. 
"Law enforcement alone cannot solve this problem."

Frazzini noted that the private sector controls most of the nation's IT 
resources, making its cooperation essential in stopping Net criminals.

U.S. officials have stepped up efforts to fight cybercrime in recent 
months, including moving the Secret Service and organizations designed to 
protect national infrastructure under the auspices of a new Homeland 
Security Agency.

In addition, the terrorist attacks accelerated the development of 
Electronic Crime Task Forces in major cities across the country. The FBI 
also announced plans to assign more agents to Internet-based activities 
during its restructuring.

Tech companies have long had a strained relationship with law enforcement, 
mainly because they're sometimes placed in the awkward position of turning 
over private customer information to the police. For example, law 
enforcement began asking Internet service providers for a vastly greater 
amount of data about terrorist suspects following Sept. 11, forcing the 
companies to divert resources from their core businesses to handle the 
request load.

Corporate America also has been notoriously lax in contacting law 
enforcement following computer break-ins, partly because of a fear that a 
publicity nightmare will adversely affect their bottom line. Robert 
Rodriguez, the special agent in charge of San Francisco's field office who 
accompanied Frazzini, said a 1997 survey showed that 80 percent of 
companies failed to call the police following a cyberattack, although more 
are cooperating these days.

"The government cannot do it alone anymore," Rodriguez said. "The 
importance of partnership cannot be understated."

Some in the NETSEC audience wanted to know why they should work with law 
enforcement if it would only lead to bad publicity. But the agents assured 
attendees that the Secret Service is charged with keeping all types of 
information under wraps, including the private conversations of the U.S. 
president.

Others quibbled with the agent's comparison of a computer break-in or virus 
with the tragedy of Sept. 11. Frazzini acknowledged that "cyberterrorism is 
more economic- than violence-based." But he warned that a cyber break-in 
still could have grave consequences for U.S. citizens, either by ruining 
the economy or allowing hackers access to sensitive information that could 
threaten national security.

Frazzini played the patriotism card by including in his slide presentation 
a quote attributed to Osama bin Laden in December, roughly translated as: 
"It is very important to concentrate on hitting the U.S. economy through 
all possible means...look for key pillars of the U.S. economy. The key 
pillars of the enemy should be struck."

Frazzini then told the audience, "When you look at this slide, it should 
piss you off."

What can you do for your country that you're not already doing for your 
company? TalkBack below or e-mail us with your thoughts.
**************************
Salon.com
Every dial you take

Federal Communications Commission ordered the telecom industry to upgrade 
their systems to meet a list of FBI specifications by June 30. The upgrades 
give the FBI expanded wiretapping capabilities, including the ability to 
extract specific information about phone calls without a warrant. Full 
story http://salon.com/tech/feature/2002/06/18/wiretap/index.html
***********************


Lillie Coney
Public Policy Coordinator
U.S. Association for Computing Machinery
Suite 510
2120 L Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20037
202-478-6124
lillie.coney@xxxxxxx