Clips June 25, 2002

[Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>]

Clips June 25, 2002

ARTICLES

Sun Says Regulators Look at Layoff Bias Claim
Report: U.S. Vulnerable to Attack
Universities Expand Their Anti-Cyberterrorism Research
OMB moves forward with e-gov architecture
Egyptians Flock to New Net Plan
Internet Name Body Set for Landmark Vote This Week
Online Giants Offer Kid-Friendly Web Surfing
Microsoft planning ambitious data security feature
Arrest in ID Theft Scheme
Paying up for a spam seal of approval
Ariz. company floats idea for rural wireless

******************
Reuters
Sun Says Regulators Look at Layoff Bias Claim
Mon Jun 24, 8:27 PM ET

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Computer maker Sun Microsystems Inc. said on 
Monday the U.S. government was looking into claims by a former employee 
that Sun had discriminated against U.S. citizens in favor of foreign 
workers on temporary visas when it cut jobs late last year.

Sun, which makes high-end computers that manage corporate and Internet 
computers, had not considered visa status when making the roughly 3,900 job 
cuts announced last year, spokeswoman Diane Carlini said.

The investigation by federal authorities followed a complaint by former Sun 
engineer Guy Santiglia, who was laid off in November after four months on 
the job, Carlini said.

Santiglia alleged that Sun favored foreign workers holding long-term H-1B 
visas to save money, she said.

Neither Santiglia nor the Department of Justice ( news - web sites) 
responded to requests for comment. The Department of Labor declined to 
comment.

The U.S. Congress in 2000 temporarily raised the cap for H-1B visas, 
offered to specialized workers, to 195,000 for 2001-2003 in a controversial 
move hailed by Silicon Valley, which is desperate for engineers.

Sun said less than 5 percent of its employees were such visa holders, 
recruited to fill crucial positions when U.S. candidates were scarce. Sun 
last year began layoffs of 9 percent of its work force.

"We feel we have nothing to hide," said Carlini. The U.S. Justice and Labor 
departments were looking into the matter to determine whether to launch a 
formal hearing, as required by law, she said.

Carlini said the visa program was effective for Sun in attracting crucial 
technical talent but that foreign workers were costly to support. She 
declined to provide a comparison for U.S. and foreign workers' salaries.

"The salary is not based on employee status," she said. "The H-1Bs are 
generally much more expensive than U.S. nationals," she said. "It is an 
ongoing trail of paperwork."

"We use the program to fill critical jobs. We are looking for skills to 
stay competitive, and if we find that employee and they require an H-1B 
visa program, then we are set up to take care of that."

Santiglia had first made the claim of unfair treatment in an e-mail to 
Chief Executive Scott McNealy and had since often come to the Sun campus in 
Santa Clara, she said.
********************
Washington Post
Report: U.S. Vulnerable to Attack
Scientists Urge New Terrorism Research
By Guy Gugliotta

A team of the nation's leading scientists called yesterday for a 
comprehensive rethinking of the nation's anti-terrorism infrastructure, 
underscoring the need to quickly bring existing technologies into use, 
accelerate new research and create a Homeland Security Institute to 
evaluate counterterrorism strategies.

"The structure of federal agencies is . . . to a large extent the result of 
[the] distinction between the responsibility for national security and the 
responsibility for domestic policy," the report said. "Given this 
compartmentalization, the federal government is not appropriately organized 
to carry out a [science and technology] agenda for countering catastrophic 
terrorism."

The report by the National Research Council gave a long list of 
shortcomings in scientific preparedness, including lack of coordination in 
research on nuclear or "dirty bomb" threats and "enormous vulnerabilities" 
in the ability of the public health system to defend against biological 
warfare.

The report detailed challenges in developing vaccines for airborne 
pathogens, creating better sensors and filters for dangerous chemicals, 
building a system to counter sabotage of the nation's food supply, finding 
better methods to fend off attacks on nuclear reactors, the electrical 
power grid and communications systems, and developing "defense in depth" 
for airport and other transportation security.

Throughout the report, the researchers lamented a lack of coordination 
among federal agencies and the absence of a "coherent overall strategy" to 
"harness the strengths of the U.S. science and engineering communities, and 
direct them most appropriately toward critical goals, both short-term and 
long."

"Research performed but not exploited, and technologies invented but not 
manufactured and deployed, do not help the nation protect itself," the 
report said.

The National Research Council is the operating arm of three private, 
nonprofit organizations of the nation's most prominent scientists and 
engineers. The council developed the report, "Making the Nation Safer: The 
Role of Science and Technology in Countering Terrorism," using its own funds.

Richard D. Klausner, co-chair of the committee that wrote the report, said 
the intent of the 120 scientists who participated was "not to criticize the 
government," but "to say that the current structure of government was not 
optimized to deal with terrorism."

But in studying counterterrorism preparedness across agencies, the panel 
found that "many of the required technologies" showed up repeatedly, which 
is not surprising in government, said Harvard's Lewis Branscombe, an expert 
in science and public policy and the report's co-chair. "We saw the need 
for an approach that wasn't going to get trapped in a bunch of independent 
stovepipes that don't relate to one another."

The report proposed creation of an independent, nonprofit Homeland Security 
Institute to function as a think tank, analyzing and testing the 
effectiveness of counterterrorism technologies for the White House Office 
of Homeland Security or a future cabinet department.

"It would be a group of highly trained people in appropriate disciplines to 
evaluate threats, test what's deployed and look at the real world to see 
what's actually going on," Branscombe said. "You make a technological 
analysis to determine the vulnerability you're trying to address and decide 
why the technology is or is not working."

Although the report wasn't scheduled for official release until today, 
early briefings on Capitol Hill elicited a favorable reception from House 
Science Committee Chairman Sherwood L. Boehlert (R-N.Y.).

"I like what I see. It says we have to have a coordinated [research and 
development] strategy," Boehlert said. "It says we have to have somebody in 
charge, and I'm enamored with the idea of the institute. A lot of what I'm 
reading falls under the heading of common sense."

Despite the big-picture proposals, Branscombe said the meat of the report 
was in recommendations for change in several "domains," which included 
nuclear security, communications and transportation.

Many shortcomings in the report were being addressed. The Department of 
Health and Human Services has asked hospital systems to assess their 
ability to cope with large numbers of casualties from an act of biological 
warfare. Many cities and states are using federal funds to build mechanisms 
so law enforcement and emergency responders can share information in a 
timely fashion.

But the report also identified emerging needs for agencies. It noted that 
the new Transportation Security Administration had taken on the task of 
improving airport security, but suggested it needed "a systematic approach" 
and a research and planning office so it would not be making decisions 
haphazardly.

"Agencies like TSA have much less experience interacting with the science 
community," Branscombe said. "These non-science agencies have to develop 
the ability to identify technological needs and develop relationships with 
the technologists who can fulfill them."
***************************
Chronicle of Higher Education
Universities Expand Their Anti-Cyberterrorism Research
By FLORENCE OLSEN

Carnegie Mellon University has created a multidisciplinary research center 
to develop new technologies for combating cyberterrorism. The new Center 
for Computer and Communications Security is one of several recently founded 
university research centers in the nation for studying how to protect 
information stored on computers and computer networks.

The research at Carnegie Mellon will focus on more than just computers, 
says Pradeep K. Khosla, a professor of engineering and robotics at the 
university who is director of the new center. Researchers also will study 
ways to deploy surveillance robots that can communicate information across 
the Internet and yet be immune to attack, he says. For example, teams of 
tiny mobile and stationary robots with embedded sensors might be programmed 
to collect visual and sensory information, and then to notify authorities 
if something is amiss.

While much of the financing for such research comes from the U.S. Defense 
Department, banks and insurance companies also have a keen interest in 
securing electronic information, according to Mr. Khosla.

"Universities are beginning to see that there is a void here that they may 
fill," says Thomas Talleur, a managing director at KPMG LLP, who 
specializes in computer security. "With the influx of homeland security 
money, educational institutions are now looking for people who can draw in 
the money and build the programs ... that will enhance the financial 
position of the university" and meet the needs of its students, he says.

Mr. Khosla says the new research center at Carnegie Mellon is different 
from other such centers because of its relationship with CERT -- the 
Computer Emergency Response Team, which the Defense Department sponsors at 
the university to coordinate system managers' responses to Internet 
security breaches nationwide. The group's researchers also study Internet 
security vulnerabilities and publish security alerts.

Several CERT researchers are part of the new computer-security center, as 
are faculty members from Carnegie Mellon's departments of computer science, 
electrical and computer engineering, and engineering and public policy.

In the past couple of years, other centers for research on information 
security have opened at Dartmouth College and the Johns Hopkins University. 
The Dartmouth program focuses on potential threats to key information 
systems and electronic communications in the United States, and on ways the 
nation can respond and recover if its infrastructure is attacked. The 
interdisciplinary program at Johns Hopkins focuses on ways to protect the 
confidentiality of private electronic data and to secure business 
transactions on the Internet.

Carnegie Mellon researchers will study how to make fiber-optic and wireless 
networks more secure and how to build more secure disk drives, network 
cards, and processors for computers. "Any device that has input/output 
[functions], we want to put a security perimeter around it," Mr. Khosla 
says. "Think of this computer or any system as a castle. As you breach the 
first wall, there's an inner wall," he says, then another, and another.

Along with serving a need for more research and knowledge in those areas, 
Mr. Khosla says that colleges also must create more degree programs for 
teaching people how to protect electronic information. Beginning in the 
fall, he says, Carnegie Mellon will offer a two-year master's-degree 
program in information networking in collaboration with the Athens 
Information Technology Institute, in Greece. He says 30 students have 
enrolled in the program, which includes courses on information security.
*************************
Government Computer News
OMB moves forward with e-gov architecture
By Jason Miller

The Office of Management and Budget by October expects to issue the first 
complete version of an enterprise architecture for its 24 e-government 
projects.

Bob Haycock, new manager for OMB's federal enterprise architecture 
initiative, said today that drafts of business, technical and application 
capability reference models likely would be done by the fiscal year's end. 
He spoke at an Oracle Corp. Government Executive Forum in Washington.

"Each model is more specific or granular," said Haycock, who is on a 90-day 
detail at OMB from the Interior Department's Bureau of Reclamation. "The 
technology will underpin the business process instead of the other way 
around."

Haycock, who officially took over for Debra Stouffer June 17, said OMB is 
putting the finishing touches on the second version of the business 
reference model, which it expects to release in mid-July. Stouffer finished 
the first version and in April sent it to agencies for comment.

Based on the responses, OMB simplified the model by combining some of the 
more than 30 functions and 100 subfunctions that the model uses to outline 
agencies' missions along lines of business.

The technical and application capability models are in the beginning stages 
of development, he said.

Haycock also said OMB later this week will assign what it calls solution 
architects to some e-government projects.

"The solution architect is someone who understands the broader implications 
of the technology and project as it relates to all 24 projects," Haycock 
said. "Their role is to facilitate the project, not oversee it."

He would not name the projects being assigned architects but indicated it 
would be projects nearer completion.
*************************
Wired News
Egyptians Flock to New Net Plan
By Mats A. Palmgren

CAIRO -- Egyptians are spending more time on the Internet since the 
Internet became free -- free of subscription fees that is, because users 
are still paying the nominal cost of 20 cents per hour for their Internet 
calls.

That's good news for the ISPs, which collect 70 percent of the call 
revenues from the phone company.

The new agreement was brokered by the Ministry of Communication and 
Information Technology (MCIT), which figured the state-owned operator, 
Telecom Egypt (TE), ought to play a part in a national drive to increase 
Egypt's online presence.

Access is vital because only one million out of 69 million Egyptian 
citizens use the Internet, and as a developing country, Egypt risks falling 
further behind as the global economy becomes increasingly knowledge-based.

"The difference will not be between the rich and poor, but between the fast 
and slow, those who are plugged in and those who are isolated," a speaker 
from the World Bank said at a conference on the theme of the digital divide 
in Cairo earlier this month.

In the old model, ISPs had a hard time making ends meet by selling monthly 
subscriptions priced at $4 for unlimited hours. Since salaries are low, on 
average $100 per month, many users were sharing one account.

Now, when users no longer take turns, traffic has increased. "We have 
doubled the number of user hours and I know several other companies did the 
same," says Khaled Bichara, CEO of Link.Net, the largest ISP.

"We call it the free Internet, but it's not free, it's the price of the 
phone call," said Ahmed Nazif, minister of the MCIT. "It gives you wider 
access possibilities because all telephone lines have Internet capability, 
just by dialing a phone number, without having to go somewhere to get a 
subscription."

Not all ISPs have enjoyed such a tremendous bump. "For the market at large 
it is definitely an increase, but the new model did not create a boom as 
many had expected," says Hossam Saleh, sales and marketing director at the 
national operator's own ISP, TE Data.

Since users can connect without registering with the ISP, it is not known 
if more Egyptians are online, "but of course there are more users also, I 
cannot believe all our old clients have doubled their time online," Bichara 
says.

The revenue-sharing model has enabled the ISPs to upgrade Egypt's Internet 
infrastructure by placing their own equipment in the operator's exchanges. 
Since the launch in January, the number of ISPs has almost doubled and is 
now 106.

Like the world's largest Arabic newspaper, Al-Ahram, which turned itself 
into Egypt's second-largest ISP by placing boxed ads with its dial-up 
number frequently on the front-page, most new ISPs don't have their own 
technology but rent access from an Internet wholesaler.

The MCIT envisions Egypt becoming an Internet hub in the Arab world, a 
market with 290 million people with a common language, religion and 
traditions, but other obstacles remain.

"Media hype might have raised awareness and increased the market, but the 
main deterrents to growth are PC penetration, lack of local content and 
computer illiteracy," says Magda Habib, marketing director at Raya Holding, 
owner of ISP Starnet.

The MCIT is already cooperating with the private sector to provide computer 
training on all levels to 100,000 students every year.

Starting this month, a joint government and private sector company will 
manufacture low-cost PCs in Egypt that can be paid for in small 
installments via the phone bill.

Revenue sharing might also fuel the production of local content, much 
needed to make more Egyptians interested in the Internet, says Saleh.

"It is the beauty of it, we can make money from both traffic to the sites 
and from the services on the sites," says Bichara.

Today, foreign news sites and chat rooms where people can meet without 
social restrictions are highly popular.

So is pornography, but "it's changing from a high percentage to a medium 
percentage of the total Web traffic," says Saleh. "The market is becoming 
more sophisticated and there's other multimedia on the Net now for those 
who just wanted to see something moving," he added.

Unlike the less-populated but richer countries Saudi Arabia and the United 
Arab Emirates, which only last year overtook Egypt as having the largest 
Arab Internet population, Egypt is not trying to restrict the Internet.

But security police are monitoring chat rooms and local sites deemed 
immoral or damaging to the state or religion have been shut down. A few 
people have been imprisoned for soliciting sex on the Net.

In most of these cases claims Saleh, it is the hosting company that made 
the report to the police, since there is a social consensus and no business 
wants to be associated with this kind of material.
**********************
Washington Post
Internet Name Body Set for Landmark Vote This Week
Reuters

LONDON, June 25The organization that oversees the Internet's vast 
domain-name system is looking to face down grass-roots protesters at its 
annual meeting in Bucharest this week as it tries to gain greater 
government-level acceptance.

Starting on Wednesday in the Romanian capital, the Internet Corporation for 
Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will chart its future, one that could 
see individual Net users getting squeezed out in favor of politicians and 
businessmen.

The focus on ICANN, which decides how domain names such as www.reuters.com 
get doled out to individuals and businesses, has grown immensely in the 
past two years as the global Internet population has grown to more than 425 
million by some estimates.

A controversial proposal floated by ICANN Chief Executive Stuart Lynn is 
due for a vote on Thursday that could end the appointment of 
representatives of technical and citizens groups to the ICANN board and 
limit board members to representatives of business and government.

Lynn has said the inclusion of politicians could give the body more 
authority with national governments and improve its ability to raise funds.

A separate, equally controversial, motion would impose a direct 25-cent tax 
on all new domain-name registrations to fund the organisation.

CAUGHT IN A TUG-OF-WAR

Grass-roots activists argue that limiting the role of private users will 
tilt an already lopsided balance of power that favors Western government 
and business interests.

"I don't think governments are needed (in the ICANN process), nor at this 
time are they organised in a manner that would make their representation 
easy," said Michael Froomkin, an outspoken ICANN critic and professor at 
the University of Miami School of Law.

"The officials who turn up to ICANN meetings are the ones who heard about 
the Internet first, not necessarily the people who make, or should make, 
Internet policy."

Politicians, particularly in Europe and South Africa, are clamouring for 
more control of the body, suggesting they would be more fit to assign 
domain names to individuals and businesses just as they did with telephone 
numbers in days gone by.

Another source of pressure on ICANN is the U.S. Congress. U.S. lawmakers, 
led by Senator Conrad Burns (R-Mont.), have promised heightened oversight 
of the organisation before it decides on whether to give ICANN full control 
of the Internet's domain-name system.

EU WEIGHS IN

One of ICANN's most vocal critics, the European Union, insists ICANN must 
remain a technical, standards-setting body and keep out of public policy 
issues regarding the Internet.

"Governments are responsible for public policy, not ICANN," the EU 
Telecommunications Council said in a recent white paper.

EU officials also said they would prefer that the U.S. Department of 
Commerce, the government body that spawned ICANN in 1998, relinquish 
control of the root-server system, a master control database of Internet 
sites that ensures Internet traffic gets to its intended destination.

The fear is that in the wrong hands the enormous database could be mined to 
determine all comings and goings on the Internet.

Although there is no evidence that this has happened, the issue has 
attracted added attention in recent months as law enforcement officials 
seek to shore up defences against feared acts of cyber-terrorism.

IN NEED OF DOT-ORG-ANISATION

The wrangling over who will run ICANN is impeding progress with other vital 
ongoing issues needed to make the Internet a truly global medium, critics say.

For years, ICANN has been grappling with how to institute official 
standards for non-Arabic numbers and non-Latin letters to enable them to be 
accessed by any type of browser. The failure to resolve the matter has 
drawn further complaints that ICANN's cumbersome bureaucracy penalises its 
under-served, non-Western constituents.

"I really think it's time to broaden the input of different stakeholders. 
It's time to include other, non-Western parts of the world in the process," 
said Maurice Wessling, director of Dutch cyber advocacy group Bits of Freedom.

Also on the agenda this week is a competitive run-off for the right to 
manage the global dot-org domains for non-commercial organisations.

Eleven companies, all from the U.S. and Europe, are vying for the lucrative 
business, which currently involves oversight of a database for more than 
2.5 million organisations.

"It is a profitable business," said Stuart Marsden, technical director of 
Unity Registry, a Zurich-based bidder.

The European applicants are confident that ICANN, wishing to suppress 
earlier criticisms that it is too U.S.-centric, will be more likely to 
award a non-U.S. business the contract.

Andrew Tsai, chief executive officer of London-based Global Name Registry, 
said the company would play up its international roots as well as its track 
record in administering the dot-name global domain.

"There is a shift at ICANN towards true global representation. That's a 
huge advantage for us," Tsai said.

ICANN is expected to award the contract at the end of August, officials said.
*********************
Washington Post
Online Giants Offer Kid-Friendly Web Surfing
By David McGuire

Three of the nation's largest Internet portals today will announce that 
they have made good on a promise to promote more kid-friendly Web surfing. 
America Online, Microsoft Corp.'s MSN service and Yahoo will report that 
they have now tagged most of their online properties with electronic labels 
designed to work with new filtering software being made available free of 
charge to the public.

The three online media giants said they have labeled about 93 percent their 
Web sites with electronic identifiers that work in conjunction with free 
Internet filtering software developed by the Internet Content Rating 
Association (ICRA).

Representatives for the companies will announce the fruits of their 
labeling efforts at a press conference in San Jose later today where ICRA 
will unveil it's free filtering tool.

Since the ICRA filter relies on Web site operators to label their sites, 
ICRA North America President Mary Lou Kenny said the participation of the 
"big three" Web portals has been invaluable.

"Since they are the most trafficked sites, anytime they show leadership in 
an effort, it encourages others to participate," Kenny said. "When the 
leaders in any segment label their sites and encourage others to do the 
same, it begins a viral effect of labeling."

In addition to AOL, MSN and Yahoo, several smaller sites -- including adult 
operators like Hustler.com -- have agreed to label their sites by ICRA 
standards.

Unlike other content filters that block sites based on criteria developed 
by filtering companies, ICRA's filter relies on content providers to 
specify what sorts of words, images and content appear on their sites.

Because Web site operators that participate in ICRA go into substantial 
detail about the nature of the content they host, users of the ICRA filter 
can be very specific about the sorts of content they wish to filter, Kenny 
said.

For instance, parents may set their filter preferences to allow their 
children to view nudity that is presented in an artistic, medical or 
educational context, but block such images when they are presented in an 
adult entertainment context, Kenny said.

Filter users can also choose to block any Web sites that don't contain ICRA 
labels.

AOL, MSN, and Yahoo agreed to adopt the ICRA labeling standards last year. 
Although the companies' agreement only applies to the Web sites they 
operate directly, Yahoo is urging the operators of sites it hosts to also 
adopt the ICRA standards, Kenny said.

Some free speech advocates have criticized the ICRA rating system, saying 
that it could pave the way to government censorship at some later date as 
more and more Web sites electronically identify the nature of the content 
they provide.

Starting Tuesday, the filter will be available for download from ICRA's Web 
site -- www.icra.org.
************************
USA Today
Microsoft planning ambitious data security feature

WASHINGTON (AP)  Microsoft has disclosed an ambitious new project to 
improve security by creating within its Windows software a virtual "vault" 
where customers would conduct electronic transactions and store sensitive 
information.

The effort, called "Palladium," would require consumers to buy new 
computers and other devices equipped with ultra-secure computer chips from 
Intel and Advanced Micro Devices  which already are involved in the 
project  or other companies.

The project's success also depends on broad consumer adoption of such 
devices, since these highly secure computers could safely exchange 
information only among themselves.

Microsoft said the technology, which stemmed from early work by its 
engineers to deliver digital movies that couldn't be pirated, won't be 
available for at least 18 months. Company officials have told other 
executives in private briefings they do not expect to see mainstream 
products for at least five years.

"We're so early in the process, we're really just drawing the road map," 
said Mario Juarez, who is running the project for Microsoft. "This won't 
happen tomorrow or next year."

The project was first reported by Newsweek, although Microsoft officials 
have discussed their efforts privately for months in meetings with 
technology and civil liberties groups in Washington and elsewhere.

Supporters said the technology, to be offered as an option in an upcoming 
version of Windows, would be able to distinguish safe software from data 
containing viruses or other malicious computer code. The technology could 
be turned on and turned off. Customers could store within this part of 
Windows personal details, such as financial or medical records, that is 
encrypted and otherwise inaccessible even from other software running on 
the computer.

"Users can be assured that your intentions are properly carried out," 
Juarez said. "No one can masquerade as you. They're not on your computer."

Microsoft's efforts are similar to those of the Trusted Computing Platform 
Alliance, an industry group also working on new hardware technology to let 
computers distinguish "trustworthy" software. IBM has already shipped new 
laptop computers featuring such security chips.

Under Palladium, Intel and AMD will redesign computer processors to include 
cryptography features. Palladium also will require changes to video and 
keyboard technologies to ensure that a customer's typed information is 
displayed without changes on the screen. That would require billions of 
dollars in new equipment upgrades by consumers, corporations and governments.

Further, since a consumer's personal information will be scrambled within a 
vault and tied to a specific computer chip, that information could not 
readily be stored elsewhere in case of disaster or if the computer fails.

Microsoft also acknowledged that it hasn't resolved sensitive issues of 
permitting access by government with a court order to a person's encrypted 
data. The FBI has indicated it rarely encounters scrambled information 
during investigations, but making such technology as ubiquitous as Windows 
could invite use by criminals or terrorists.

"We recognize that something like this needs to be done responsibly," 
Juarez said.

Microsoft's name for its efforts, Palladium, comes from the statue of 
Pallas Athena, which was believed to protect the ancient city of Troy from 
invaders. In modern parlance, a palladium is considered a guarantee of 
integrity.
***********************
Los Angeles Times
Arrest in ID Theft Scheme
By STUART SILVERSTEIN

U.S. Secret Service agents are investigating a Russian immigrant suspected 
of tampering with computers at Caltech and Pasadena City College to try to 
steal credit card numbers and other personal information.

The suspect, Dimitri Sinilnikov, 48, was arrested by campus police at 
Pasadena City College on May 24 and was to be returned to Florida. Although 
authorities have not charged him in connection with the California 
incidents, the arrest warrant cited Sinilnikov for violating his probation 
on a previous conviction in Florida on identity fraud.

Security officials at Caltech and Pasadena City College said Sinilnikov 
sought to install software in the schools' computer systems that could 
record the keystrokes made by students and other computer users on campus. 
They said the apparent aim was to record credit card numbers and possibly 
other personal information. Secret Service officials initially tipped off 
Caltech authorities May 24 that they had detected Sinilnikov through 
electronic surveillance trying to tamper with a computer. After apparently 
failing to break into the Caltech computer system, campus police said, 
Sinilnikov crossed the street to Pasadena City College and started working 
on a computer.
*************************
News.com
Paying up for a spam seal of approval
By Robert Lemos

An e-mail gateway start-up is pushing marketers to back a plan that would 
let spam recipients charge companies for unwanted messages.
San Bruno, Calif.-based IronPort Systems plans to unveil Tuesday its 
BondedSender program, aimed at giving legitimate bulk e-mail a seal of 
credibility.

Participating companies would be asked to post a cash bond with a neutral 
party against which recipients could charge a small fee if they were 
improperly targeted with e-mail. A few such recipients wouldn't make much 
difference to the bond, but thousands of charge-backs could make companies 
reconsider sending the next mailing.


"These are messages with money behind them, so you can feel confident that 
they are real mail," said Scott Weiss, CEO of IronPort. "There are a lot of 
companies that you have never heard of, which need something like this. The 
bond is the way for them to prove themselves credit worthy."

The benefit for bulk e-mail companies is more certain delivery. The program 
could make companies and home users more likely to allow bonded e-mail 
through their gateways.

In a way, it's the ultimate capitalist voting system, in which people vote 
with, in this case, the sender's pocket book.

E-mail gateways--the hardware that sits between a company and the Internet 
to route mail efficiently--would take care of tallying returned messages 
and sending charges along to be deducted from the bond.

IronPort plans to build accounting features into its flagship gateways and 
says it will offer plug-ins for the three open-source competitors: 
Sendmail, Qmail and Postfix.

Weiss suggested that any money forfeited from a bond be donated to a 
spam-prevention organization. "I think it is going to be like the Cold War: 
Once the efficacy of the method is proven, spammers won't put up a bond," 
he said.

The plan is the latest trying to solve the problem of unsolicited e-mail. 
Weiss hopes BondedSender will go a long way toward solving the problem for 
marketers of overzealous e-mail filters.

"False positives are the biggest problem with anti-spam filters," Weiss 
said. When a filter flags a legitimate e-mail message as spam, known as a 
false positive, people could miss important messages.

This sometimes happens when the message contains words that frequently 
appear in electronic mailings. In other cases, the Internet address from 
which the mail has originated is known to be used by spammers.

However, companies that send mass mailings are sometimes flagged by filter 
software as potential sources of spam, even if many of their recipients 
want to receive the mail. Weiss pointed to online third-party payment 
service PayPal as an example of a company that could get flagged by 
filtering software.

"The PayPals of the world are trying to send out legitimate messages, and 
they are being blocked," he said. "Customers are asking, 'Where is that 
receipt confirmation?'"

Other companies high on the list of possible supporters include legitimate 
pornography sites. In many cases, any e-mail from a porn site is filtered 
out, even if it's a confirmation of payment, Weiss said.

However, the idea is still germinating, and the company hasn't cemented a 
pricing plan.

"We are tuning it through our beta period, but we want (the price) to be as 
low as possible without breaking the economic model," Weiss said.
*************************
Sunspot.net
Ariz. company floats idea for rural wireless
Space Data eyes balloons for seamless coverage
Associated Press
Originally published June 23, 2002

CHANDLER, Ariz. - Space Data Corp. isn't the first company to come up with 
a pie-in-the-sky idea promising to bring seamless wireless service to rural 
America.

Some have proposed filling the coverage gaps by launching communication 
equipment on blimps, rockets and solar-powered gliders. As yet, for a slew 
of financial and technological reasons, none have proven feasible.

But Space Data says its plan to create America's first floating wireless 
network - by putting disposable transmitters on government weather balloons 
- has already undergone successful testing and is economically viable.

A trial run with text-messaging service in the Phoenix area is scheduled 
for this summer. The official launch of the messaging service would begin 
next spring in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma, extending 
nationwide by the end of next year. Cellular phone service could be added a 
year later if the company secures more funding.

For the past 60 years, the National Weather Service has launched 70 
balloons across the country twice a day to collect temperature, humidity 
and wind data. The balloons typically hover at about 100,000 feet for about 
24 hours.

Because the balloons are launched every 12 hours, there would always be at 
least one of Space Data's packages floating in the stratosphere above each 
coverage zone, assuring uninterrupted service for all rural areas in the 
continental United States, said Jerry Knoblach, Space Data's chairman and 
chief executive.

Space Data, based in a Phoenix suburb, has raised $13.5 million from 
private investors and has been discussing the idea with the weather service 
since January last year, Knoblach said.

Knoblach hopes to arrange a barter deal: In exchange for letting the 
company hitch a ride on the balloons, weather officials would use the 
satellite-based tracking system on Space Data's network to gather wind and 
other data more precisely.

"The goal is that no money actually changes hands," said Knoblach, who 
described the weather service's response as positive.

Weather service spokesman John Leslie confirmed discussions with Space Data 
have taken place but said they have not progressed to the level of 
negotiations.

If the government doesn't approve Space Data's proposal, the company will 
proceed with the endeavor by launching its own balloons, Knoblach said.

Space Data's service, known as the SkySite Network, would benefit roaming 
customers and those who live in rural areas where wireless service isn't 
available, he said.

The service would be sold to existing wireless companies who have gaps in 
their network coverage.

"We would be the carrier's carrier," Knoblach said.

While nearly everyone in the country now has access to at least one 
cellular service where they live, there are still huge swaths where there's 
no wireless signal.

Wireless carriers are not rushing to fill such gaps because there isn't 
enough business in sparsely populated areas to justify the hefty expense of 
installing and operating a wireless tower.

"This is really a poor man's satellite," Knoblach said.

As he explains how the SkySite works, he admits the idea sounds far-fetched 
at first.

Each of the weather balloons could provide service to an area of about 
100,000 square miles. The resulting overlap in coverage between balloons 
would make wireless service possible throughout the country, Knoblach said.

By contrast, the signal from a wireless tower typically covers from 100 to 
150 square miles.

The company estimates its annual operating expenses at $35 million per 
year. About half of that would go toward equipment: $300 worth for each of 
the 50,000 or so balloons that would be launched over the course of a year.
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Lillie Coney
Public Policy Coordinator
U.S. Association for Computing Machinery
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