Clips September 12, 2002

[Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>]

Clips September 12, 2002

ARTICLES

DOD seeks homeland position
Printed Web Info OK for Inmates
Terror Czar: The War Is Digital
Spam Hits Some Anti-Spammers, Who Think They Have a Culprit
Supercomputing helped save lives in Pentagon attack
Better communications could have saved lives, homeland official says
Homeland security officials eye new goods, TSA contract
Interagency report details Bush IT research priorities
GAO to study impact of H-1B program on hiring
Sept. 11: A year later, online privacy and security still weak
China Blocks Web Search Engines
Ten Choices Critical to the Internet's Success
Customers blame spam on filched lists
Digital Rights Outlook: Squishy
The hidden data in your driver's license

***********************
Federal Computer Week
DOD seeks homeland position

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is requesting that Congress authorize a 
new assistant secretary position focused on homeland defense.

Rumsfeld sent a letter this week to Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of 
the Armed Services Committee, requesting congressional approval for the 
establishment of an assistant secretary of Defense for homeland defense, 
according to Rosanne Hynes, technical director in the DOD's Office of the 
Special Assistant for Homeland Security.

"This is something that has been discussed for quite some time," and the 
Bush administration has talked to lawmakers about it, Hynes told FCW after 
participating in a Sept. 10 panel at the Homeland Security and National 
Defense Symposium in Atlantic City, N.J.

DOD is actively involved in establishing the Homeland Security Department, 
including its information technology requirements, Hynes said, which has 
included frequent meetings with Steve Cooper, senior director of 
information integration and chief information officer for the Office of 
Homeland Security.

DOD is looking for opportunities to use its investment in technologies to 
aid the proposed department, particularly in the areas of intelligence 
sharing, border security and emergency response, she said.

"The DOD is not pushing any particular technology solutions," Hynes said. 
"We're letting them know what's available and the [agency] decides what 
they need."

The symposium sponsors are the Army's Communications-Electronics Command, 
the Association of the U.S. Army's Fort Monmouth, N.J., chapter, the 
Association of Old Crows' Garden State chapter, and the Armed Forces 
Communications and Electronics Association's Fort Monmouth chapter.
***************************
Wired News
Printed Web Info OK for Inmates
By Julia Scheeres
September 12, 2002

A U.S. District Court in San Francisco has struck down a California prison 
policy that bars inmates from receiving material printed from the Internet.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California sued the state on 
behalf of Pelican Bay prisoner Frank Clement, who claimed that the policy 
violated his First Amendment rights.

Clement brought the case against the California Department of Corrections 
after he was prohibited from using an Internet pen pal service that allows 
inmates to post personal ads online and receive correspondence via snail mail.

California prisoners don't have direct Internet access.

A CDC spokesman said that the regulation was implemented after prison 
mailrooms were flooded with letters containing printouts of Web pages and 
e-mail messages. The volume of mail created a burden on prison staff 
screening inmate correspondence. He also claimed that anonymous e-mail 
created a security risk because it was less traceable than U.S. mail and 
could contain "coded correspondence" used to plan crimes outside the prison.

The court ruled that there wasn't enough evidence to support the CDC's 
allegations, and entered a permanent injunction to stop the state from 
applying the regulation.

"A prisoner's constitutional right to receive information by incoming mail 
is undisputed," U.S. District Court Judge Claudia Wilken wrote in her Sept. 
9 decision. The ruling affects eight prisons that had adopted the policy.

Wilken said prison regulations can only impinge on this right if there is a 
"valid, rational connection" between the policy and a legitimate security 
interest, and that the CDC failed to make that connection.

She added: "There are, in short, recognized rehabilitative benefits to 
permitting prisoners to receive educational reading material and maintain 
contact with the world outside the prison gates."

The ACLU of Northern California hailed the ruling as a victory for free 
speech.

"It's a tremendously significant decision," said ACLU staff attorney Ann 
Brick, who represented Clement. "A lot of information that is valuable to 
prisoners can only be found online."

Many advocacy groups, such as Stop Prisoner Rape, are Internet based, and 
inmates have no way of accessing the information unless someone prints it 
out and sends it to them, she said.

In a related case, the ACLU is suing the Arizona Department of Corrections 
on First Amendment grounds for a policy that bans inmates from publishing 
information online, such as pen pal requests or personal Web pages.
*************************
Wired News
Terror Czar: The War Is Digital
By John Gartner

PHILADELPHIA -- Invading Iraq or silencing Syria won't put an end to 
terrorism, but according to an influential retired U.S. Army general, 
figuring out how to effectively disrupt the communications of extremist 
factions could.

Speaking to an audience of security professionals on Wednesday, Barry 
McCaffrey, a security expert who advises Congress, said that winning 
against Saddam Hussein will be relatively easy. Protecting civil rights 
while battling terror will be harder.

McCaffrey, a highly decorated combat veteran, told attendees at the 
American Society for Industrial Security (ASIS) annual conference that the 
government's ability to protect the country is "only is good as the 
technology that backs it up."

McCaffrey said the United States' technologically advanced military could 
oust Hussein in three weeks, and a battle is inevitable. But removing 
dictators only goes so far, McCaffrey said, because most radicals aren't 
fighting for a country but an ideology.

Intercepting communications between the international pockets of zealots is 
a more significant weapon in battling terror, he said.

However, the government's initial attempts at monitoring e-mail and other 
electronic communications has only succeeded in "terrorizing law 
enforcement," McCaffrey said.

The government's current snooping system -- known as Carnivore -- makes it 
too easy to "enable the reading of all e-mails with only a warrant," 
McCaffrey said. This indiscriminate access makes it difficult for local law 
enforcement to find useful evidence in a sea of data.

Still, McCaffrey said the "electronic intercept of communications and 
satellite surveillance systems are a huge lever in battling the threat" of 
terrorism. He expects that "technology will be a big part of controlling 
who comes into the U.S."

But the general cautioned against creating a police state in which spying 
on citizens goes unchecked.

"We have to devise security methods that protect the Bill of Rights and 
allow free movement of individuals."

McCaffrey said the new Office of Homeland Security should be responsible 
for coordinating all government agencies' electronic sniffing efforts.

Kelly J. Kuchta, a cybersecurity expert who is chairman of ASIS' 
information technology security council, said private security firms have 
become more willing to work with law enforcement since Sept. 11, 2001. He 
said more companies are sharing information about cyberattacks with the FBI 
as part of InfraGard, a cooperative program between the public and private 
sectors.

While there has not been a significant terrorist attack on the U.S. 
technology backbone so far, Kuchta said security professionals are on the 
lookout. They worry that a virtual attack could coincide with another 
real-world one.

At 8:46 a.m., McCaffrey paused during his speech for a moment of silence to 
honor the victims of last year's terrorist attacks, including the 35 
security professionals who perished at the World Trade Center.

McCaffrey said the United States is in a "permanent state of threat," and 
needs to work as part of an international effort to fight the poverty that 
contributes to radical belief systems.

"We need to give them something to live for, instead of a cause to die for."
****************************
New York Times
September 12, 2002
Spam Hits Some Anti-Spammers, Who Think They Have a Culprit
By MATT RICHTEL

Tens of thousands of readers of e-mail newsletters have recently been 
inundated with unsolicited overtures from pornography Web sites and 
get-rich-quick schemes, the newsletter publishers say, and they are blaming 
the company that manages and distributes the newsletters for them.

Particularly galling to some of the publishers is that the newsletters they 
send out are about ways to use e-mail to market responsibly and about the 
dangers of sending unsolicited e-mail, known as spam.

The publishers are blaming a company called SparkLIST.com, which offers 
services they use to distribute their e-mail newsletters. The reason for 
the accusation is that the spam has been sent to private, otherwise 
undisclosed e-mail addresses that are used only to receive the publishers' 
newsletters.

"The 10,000 people using our newsletter are now getting porno spam, and 
they think it's coming from me," said Andy Sernovitz, who runs GasPedal 
Ventures, a New York company that consults on using e-mail as a marketing 
tool. "I am freaking out."

Publishers are asking whether the database at SparkLIST, which is operated 
from Green Bay, Wis., has been broken into by hackers or otherwise compromised.

But there is no proof that the database has been breached, according to 
Lyris Technologies, a maker of software for anti-spam and e-mail marketing 
software; Lyris acquired SparkLIST in August. Steven Brown, the chief 
operating officer for Lyris, based in Berkeley, Calif., said the spammers 
might not have stolen the database at all but might instead have acquired 
the addresses some other way.

For instance, he said, they may be using computer programs that randomly 
generate e-mail addresses that, coincidentally, include addresses that 
belong to recipients of the newsletters. "We're trying to figure out where 
this has come from," Mr. Brown said.

Mr. Brown said he had referred the matter to private investigators to track 
down the origin of the spam.

Mr. Sernovitz and other customers of SparkLIST, which says it sends out 750 
million e-mail messages on behalf of clients each month, say they are not 
sure what happened to SparkLIST's database, but they speculate that it has 
been broken into by hackers or that the data has been stolen by an employee.

The flood of unsolicited messages to recipients of the newsletters, which 
have hundreds of thousands of readers, comes at a time when the amount of 
unsolicited e-mail is already exploding. The Radicati Group, a market 
research group in Palo Alto, Calif., estimated earlier this year that 32 
percent of the 7.3 billion e-mail messages sent each day were unsolicited 
commercial messages.

But the issue takes on added significance in the case of SparkLIST because 
a handful of SparkLIST's clients are among the best-known publishers and 
consultants who preach the responsible use of e-mail for marketing. Mr. 
Sernovitz, for instance, started the Association of Interactive Marketing, 
an early anti-spam organization.

Other publishers who say their e-mail addresses have been compromised 
include Anne Holland, who publishes a newsletter called MarketingSherpa, 
and Ralph Wilson, whose newsletters include Web Marketing Today and Doctor 
Ebiz.

Mr. Wilson said he relied on SparkLIST to send out five different 
newsletters to about 200,000 recipients. He recently sent an e-mail message 
to his clients saying, "We are all victims of vicious spammers."

"Can you imagine?" said Ms. Holland, who uses SparkLIST.com to send five 
separate newsletters to about 100,000 people. "We're the ones who send out 
newsletters about how to send out permission-based e-mails, and how to 
market responsibly."

Mr. Brown of Lyris said the company had received complaints from only five 
customers.

Mr. Sernovitz and Ms. Holland said the company was playing down the problem.

Ms. Holland has reported the matter to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. 
She said she knew of some 20 other SparkLIST customers, including one 
public media company, whose newsletter recipients have been receiving spam.

Mr. Sernovitz said SparkLIST's chief executive, Chris Knight, had told him 
that there were dozens of companies whose e-mail databases had been 
compromised. Mr. Knight declined to comment.

The issue has ignited a minor debate among the people who write and work as 
consultants in the field of e-mail-based marketing.

Ms. Holland, for instance, said that companies that act as Web hosts, like 
SparkLIST, had a responsibility to protect their databases of e-mail 
addresses from being broken into, in the same way that financial companies 
must encrypt credit card information.

"We didn't know there was a problem with security that could affect us," 
she said. "What we've learned is that most lists are in danger today."
****************************
Government Computer News
Supercomputing helped save lives in Pentagon attack
By Dawn S. Onley

When terrorists crashed a jetliner into the Pentagon last year, 125 people 
in the building were killed. More would have lost their lives if part of 
the building hadn't been recently renovated with reinforced steel beams and 
blast-resistant windows, according to an Army official.

The Army Corps of Engineers simulates bombings and uses supercomputers to 
model the effects bombs would have on different structures, said Dennis Van 
Derlaske, who works in the Office of Assistant Secretary of the Army for 
Acquisition, Logistics and Technology. Part of the modeling included 
testing more than 100 window designs using supercomputers, Derlaske said. 
The windows installed cost $10,000 apiece.

Derlaske spoke yesterday during a discussion at the Homeland Security and 
National Defense Symposium in Atlantic City, N.J.

The Corps of Engineers now uses supercomputers for analysis of the Sept. 11 
attack on the Pentagon, to see which structures held up and which toppled 
under the impact.

"The Army successes were due to technology just put in place to enhance 
protection, recovery and retaliation," Derlaske said.
************************
Government Computer News
Better communications could have saved lives, homeland official says
By Dawn S. Onley

The lack of an interoperable communications system for first responders 
could have led to the deaths of several hundred firefighters trying to save 
lives on Sept. 11, an Office of Homeland Security executive said today at 
the Homeland Security and National Defense Symposium in Atlantic City, N.J.

Charles E. Cape, special assistant for wireless technology to the CIO of 
Homeland Security and special assistant to President Bush, said New York 
City police officials knew the World Trade Center towers could tumble at 
any moment, but they could not get the information to 300-plus firefighters 
in time.

"A lot of interoperability issues arise from job protection issues where 
everyone says we have to have our own radio systems, and we don't need to 
talk to any one else," Cape said.

During those first frantic hours Sept. 11, Cape said, "police knew the 
buildings were going to collapse, but they could not communicate with the 
firefighters."

Having communications systems that are interoperable helps federal, state 
and local officials plan operations in a more organized manner and, 
ultimately, can save lives, agreed Don Eddington, chief of the Center for 
Information Technology Integration at the Defense Information Systems Agency.

Eddington said local and state authorities weren't the only agencies 
struggling with jammed phone lines or broken phones in New York. The 
Defense Department had a tough time getting information to first and second 
responders as well, he said.

"DOD couldn't talk to state officials, state officials couldn't talk to 
city officials," Eddington said.
***************************
Government Computer News
Touch-screen voting machines don't solve Florida problems

By Trudy Walsh
GCN Staff

It was déjà vu all over again. In a scenario reminiscent of the November 
2000 elections, confusion and equipment malfunctions in Florida's primary 
yesterday prompted Gov. Jeb Bush to keep the state's polling places open 
two hours beyond their regularly scheduled closing times.

Bush said he was issuing the order because of "substantial delays in the 
opening of certain polling places in Broward and Miami-Dade counties." Bush 
also attributed the delays to the "major technological and procedural 
changes" mandated by the revision of the state's election code.

The state had spent what Bush called a significant sum of money on new 
voting machines and training.

Bruce Eldridge, assistant supervisor of technical services for the Broward 
County Elections Office, did not see the delays as purely a result of 
voting machinery gone awry. "Technology is not the answer," Eldridge said. 
"Elections are a people-oriented process. I think the technology failed us 
in several instances, but the major problems were human factors."

"I don't know yet the exact incidence of equipment failure," Eldridge said. 
"Once our tech teams have been out to the precincts to evaluate the 
failures, I'll have an answer."

Part of the problem was that some poll workers did not show up for duty, 
Eldridge said.

"You know how the stock market has what they call a 'triple witching hour,' 
where many events happen at once? Well, that's what happened this year in 
Florida," he said. Yesterday was the first statewide use of new election 
rules and procedures, new equipment, and new precincts. "We were really 
being stretched," he said.

Broward County used iVotronic touch-screen voting machines from Election 
Systems and Software Inc. of Omaha, Neb. The company's Web site says the 
equipment makes "election day operations and voting easy and straightforward."
*************************
Government Executive
Homeland security officials eye new goods, TSA contract
By Shane Harris
sharris@xxxxxxxxxxx

The agencies that would move into the proposed Homeland Security Department 
are anticipating an information technology spending spree, and they've got 
their eyes on tools to improve border security, analyze data about 
terrorism and coordinate emergency responses to terrorist attacks, 
according to a senior official at the Office of Homeland Security.


Speaking at a luncheon Tuesday in Northern Virginia, Jim Flyzik, the former 
Treasury Department chief information officer now assigned to the Office of 
Homeland Security, told technology executives from dozens of federal 
contractors that the new department would become a major consumer of 
information technology goods and services. It would mean a boom in business 
for technology companies, he said.


At the top of agencies' purchasing lists, Flyzik said, would be 
technologies that directly enhance the mission of the proposed department, 
which covers border security, countermeasures to weapons of mass 
destruction, coordination of emergency responders and the analysis of 
intelligence. Software to "mine," or sift through and analyze data, and 
route it to the agencies that could best use it will be among the top 
purchases, he said. Also, equipment to verify identity, such as biometric 
readers that scan fingerprints or retinas, will be in demand since they'll 
play a key role in increased security efforts, Flyzik said.


In a videotaped message, Vance Hitch, the Justice Department CIO, said 
security agencies would deploy biometrics technologies on an 
"unprecedented" scale. The Justice Department's Immigration and 
Naturalization Service, which protects U.S. borders, would be moved into 
the new department. The FBI would not be moved, though officials there have 
said the bureau and the Homeland Security Department would work 
hand-in-hand. FBI Director Robert Mueller has said the bureau wants to buy 
new data mining and analysis technologies.


Flyzik said security agencies also would buy collaboration software to let 
them share information electronically; computer applications that create 
maps and three-dimensional models to better coordinate emergency responses; 
simulation and computerized modeling programs to help predict attacks; and 
wireless communications devices to let police, fire and other emergency 
response workers talk with one another simultaneously, something they 
couldn't do last Sept. 11 after the attacks on the World Trade Center and 
the Pentagon.


While homeland security will drive the government's biggest technology 
spending plan in five years, Flyzik noted that the money hasn't arrived 
just yet. The president's fiscal 2003 budget, which Congress hasn't passed, 
calls for approximately $52 billion in IT spending, an increase of more 
than 15 percent over the previous year.


While some firms profited from government purchases made with emergency 
supplemental funds immediately after last year's attacks, most companies 
have spent the time since then setting up homeland security sales and 
marketing divisions to reap the bounty of next year's budget. At the same 
time, the Office of Management and Budget is trying to consolidate 
overlapping technology projects in the security agencies, which could lead 
to some existing contracts being shut down, Flyzik said.


Now that agencies have identified some of what they want to buy, they'll 
have to find a way to buy it. There have been few new procurements for 
homeland security-related technology in the past year, but the biggest of 
them all has caught the attention of security agencies. The Transportation 
Security Administration last month awarded $245 million in work to Unisys 
Corp. under a contract to create a telecommunications and technology 
infrastructure managed by the private sector. More than $1 billion could 
eventually be awarded under that contract, called the Information 
Technology Managed Services program, which Flyzik endorsed as an effective 
way to farm out government work to private corporations.


The TSA contract lets vendors develop plans for meeting the agency's goals, 
rather than asking the agency to come up with a list of requirements that 
companies then fulfill. Acquisition Solutions Inc., a consulting firm in 
Chantilly, Va., developed the concept for TSA. The firm's executives are 
pushing the method as an overall acquisition strategy for the Homeland 
Security Department. Flyzik said that the TSA contract could serve as a 
model for the department when it buys technology goods and services.


"The TSA vehicle?is the way to do things," Flyzik said.
*****************************
Government Executive
Interagency report details Bush IT research priorities
By William New, National Journal's Technology Daily

A new interagency report details the Bush administration's fiscal 2003 
budget priorities for the research and development program of long-term 
networking and information technology. The report shows an emphasis on 
high-end computing and software development next year.

"This program has been in progress for over 10 years and continues to be 
strongly supported by Congress and the current administration" said Cita 
Furlani, director of the National Coordination Office for Information 
Technology R&D. "It's really a big benefit to the nation because each 
agency leverages the other agencies' resources and we get the best bang for 
the taxpayers' buck."

The program coordinates IT R&D efforts for more than a dozen agencies and 
offices, such as the National Science Foundation and offices in the 
Commerce, Energy and Defense departments, with the goal of leveraging 
resources. John Marburger, director of the White House Office of Science 
and Technology Policy, headed the task force that prepared the report. The 
so-called "Blue Book" is required annually under the 1991 High-Performance 
Computing Act.

This year's report focuses on the importance of IT R&D to homeland 
security. As demonstrated by the use of prototype robots helping in the 
World Trade Centers recovery to computer networks protecting critical 
infrastructure, IT R&D is playing an increasingly vital role in security 
efforts, the report says.

The administration has requested an increase for the overall program from 
$1.83 billion in fiscal 2002 to $1.89 billion in fiscal 2003. The biggest 
proposed increases among the agencies are for the National Institutes of 
Health, from $295 million to $327 million, and the National Aeronautics and 
Space Administration, from $181 million to $213 million. The Defense 
Advanced Research Projects Agency would receive a boost from $218 million 
to $223 million.


The report analyzes seven categories of IT R&D spending for 12 agencies and 
offices. The biggest proposed increases would be for: high-end computing 
infrastructure and applications, from $516.5 million to $547.1 million; 
high-end computing R&D, from $272.4 million to $299.4 million; software 
design and productivity, from $182.1 million to $196.7 million; and 
social/economic/workforce, from $84.9 million to $91.4 million. Human 
computer interaction and information management would see a slight 
increase, from $308.1 million to $309.2 million.

Decreases were proposed for the remaining two areas. Funding for 
large-scale networking would drop from $333.5 million to $317 million, and 
investments in high-confidence software and systems would fall from $132.2 
million to $128.2 million.

The report may aid Congress as it begins the final stages of the fiscal 
2003 appropriations process, congressional sources said.

"I think what this report shows is the NITRD program is successful, 
important and it's working," House Science Committee spokeswoman Heidi 
Tringe said. "I think it really demonstrates that all the research in this 
age relies on IT, from life sciences to weather forecasting. Research in 
any of those areas is not going to reach its potential without R&D."
****************************
Computerworld
GAO to study impact of H-1B program on hiring
By PATRICK THIBODEAU
SEPTEMBER 11, 2002

WASHINGTON -- There's no shortage of anecdotal reports from U.S. workers 
that the H-1B visa program is costing Americans jobs. But proving it has 
been elusive because companies don't disclose whom they hire or lay off.
That's a problem facing the U.S. General Accounting Office as it embarks on 
a study to answer a question posed by two Democrats on the U.S. House 
Science Committee: Do companies show a preference for retaining H-1B 
workers, and if so, why?

The GAO study, due out sometime next year, is expected to arrive during a 
congressional debate on whether the cap on the controversial program should 
be allowed to shrink from 195,000, its level for the past two fiscal years, 
to 65,000 after the next fiscal year ends on Sept. 30, 2003.

The H-1B program is a contentious issue in the technology community. 
Critics charge that in many cases, foreign workers are hired because of 
their willingness to work for lower wages and fewer benefits. Industry 
groups counter that the U.S. doesn't supply enough workers with technical 
skills to meet demand. H-1B employees, hired for certain technical skills, 
can work in the U.S. for six years through the visa program, and possibly 
longer under some exceptions.

The value of the upcoming report will rest on the strength of its data. But 
GAO officials haven't determined how to research the H-1B program's impact, 
and agency officials are now planning to meet with House Science Committee 
staff members to discuss a research methodology, according to agency and 
congressional staff members.

The plan is already drawing criticism from one H-1B advocate. Harris 
Miller, who heads the Information Technology Association of America in 
Arlington, Va., said he believes that the latest H-1B usage data is proof 
enough that the program isn't being abused.

The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service recently reported that it 
granted 60,500 H-1B visas in the nine-month period that ended June 30, 
representing a 54% drop from the same period last year.

"The numbers speak for themselves," said Miller. The downturn shows that 
H-1B's critics are wrong about the visa program serving as a supply of 
cheap labor, he said.

"If they [the H-1B opponents] were right, which they are not, there would 
just be as many H-1Bs today as a year ago," said Miller. Given the pressure 
on companies to cut payroll, he said, wouldn't they use "more H-1Bs rather 
than less H-1Bs during an economic downturn?"

But George McClure, who heads the career policy committee of the Institute 
of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc., points to rising unemployment 
numbers for computer and electronics engineers, along with reports from 
IEEE members who say they have lost jobs to H-1B workers.

"We've got lots of unemployed members ... who can do the jobs that they are 
bringing in H-1Bs for," said McClure. He said he has heard from engineers 
who were instructed to train H-1B visa holders and were then laid off.

But McClure said he doesn't know how the GAO can accurately assess the 
situation, other than to talk to affected workers and hear their stories.

"If the concern is with unemployment, then they ought to be talking to some 
of the people who are unemployed," said McClure.

U.S. Reps. James Barcia and Lynn Rivers, both Michigan Democrats and House 
Science Committee members, requested the GAO study a year ago. The GAO 
divided their request into two parts, starting with a study on the 
effectiveness of a training program that has been funded through H-1B fees. 
That report is due in a matter of weeks.

The H-1B training program, which has collected $138 million fees paid by 
employers who sponsor H-1B visa holders, has been called "ineffective" by 
the Bush administration because it isn't providing training that would 
lessen demand for H-1B workers.

These visa holders typically have bachelor's and, in many cases, advanced 
degrees. But a lot of the training programs are being used to prepare 
workers for low-tech jobs such as installing cable, the administration said.

The Bush administration's position was determined before anyone had 
evaluated the training program, said one congressional staff member 
familiar with the GAO study. That study may yet find some value in the 
program, he said.
***************************
Computerworld
Sept. 11: A year later, online privacy and security still weak
By Andrew Brandt, PC World
SEPTEMBER 11, 2002

A year after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, average Americans are subject 
to more surveillance when they go online, and their Internet-connected PCs 
may not be any safer from intruders, some experts say.
On the other hand, some of the laws that opponents and privacy advocates 
claimed would compromise privacy were quashed. For example, Congress 
rejected measures restricting the distribution of encryption software and 
implementing federal identification cards.

And while passage of the Patriot Act has reduced privacy expectations, 
early reports don't indicate that the U.S. government is abusing its new 
powers to eavesdrop on its citizens' online conversations.

Then again, said Jennifer Granick, director of Stanford University's Center 
for Internet and Society, "it's too soon for horror stories."

There is little debate, even from vociferous privacy advocates, that online 
investigations are an important part of the war on terror. Yet there 
remains plenty of concern that an overzealous online hunt for al-Qaeda 
threatens the privacy rights of law-abiding Americans.

"The idea that the average citizen doesn't need privacy is really 
antithetical to the American way of life," Granick said. "One isn't really 
free if one is always watched."

But ordinary Americans are being watched more carefully -- in more public 
places, by more people -- than they were 12 months ago. In the year since 
the attacks on New York and the Pentagon, "there's a renewed interest in 
new surveillance technologies, even when it's not required," said Lee Tien, 
a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. For example, 
biometric security is drawing increased interest. But "biometrics is at the 
end of the security continuum that is the most damaging to privacy," Tien 
said, adding that he worries that the technology is "not ready for prime 
time in a high-security environment."

"Privacy has taken some body blows," Tien said. But data-gathering alone 
won't bring greater security unless investigators properly evaluate and 
share the information, he said.

Cybersecurity plan raises questions

Peter Swire, a law professor at Ohio State University who was chief 
counselor for privacy issues in the Clinton administration, has concerns 
about the Bush administration's proposed cybersecurity program. "There are 
early reports [that say] they will collect large amounts of traffic data, 
such as who calls whom, what's in your e-mail and where you surf," Swire said.

The Bush administration has declined to comment on the proposal until its 
scheduled release later this month. Congress is expected to continue work 
on its Cyber Security Enhancement Act, as well.

The concern isn't limited to advisers who worked for Clinton. Conservative 
think tanks, which traditionally tend to favor Republican administrations, 
are also edgy about increased surveillance.

"We have lost a lot with the government's ability to sift through e-mail" 
under the Patriot Act, said Clyde Wayne Crews Jr., the Cato Institute's 
director of technology policy.

"Ordinary individuals can get caught in that net if it's cast too widely," 
Crews said. Still, he noted, "two key areas of interest -- encryption and 
privacy -- have gone pretty much in the tech community's favor. We retained 
the use of encryption, and we don't have a national ID card."

And while the Department of Justice doesn't take privacy concerns lightly, 
it also said the Patriot Act doesn't damage civil rights.

"I don't view security vs. privacy as a zero-sum game," said Christopher 
Painter, deputy chief of the Justice Department's Computer Crime and 
Intellectual Property Section. "You don't have to choose one over the 
other, and I don't think they're necessarily in conflict."

Security still a problem

Overall, computer security hasn't improved much in the past year. The 
continued nuisance of persistent worms and viruses such as Klez is 
punctuated with almost-weekly news alerts about dangerous network security 
vulnerabilities involving Microsoft Windows and its applications.

So far this year, Microsoft Corp. has issued 50 security bulletin warnings 
about vulnerabilities in its applications and operating systems. These 
bulletins, intended for systems administrators and security professionals, 
give details for fixing serious security-related flaws. Microsoft issued 
only 60 such alerts in all of 2001. Because Microsoft's products are so 
widely used, its security problems are everyone's problem, Tien said.

"Security is an easy thing to do badly," Tien said. "The problems in this 
one product [Windows] cause problems across an entire industry. Real 
security doesn't have these kinds of cascading interdependencies between 
systems."

Even though Microsoft and other companies are becoming more diligent about 
quickly patching security holes, the sheer volume of announcements about 
flaws is reaching a fever pitch. The problem now is keeping up with the 
flood, Crews said.

"You've got sysadmins who don't have firewalls in place; you've got 
sysadmins running servers without downloading the latest security patches," 
Crews said. "These problems don't come from terrorists."

Nevertheless, the Justice Department's Painter believes that the Internet 
may actually be safer overall, although not necessarily thanks to the laws 
passed after Sept. 11. Painter said people are simply paying more attention 
to keeping their PCs secure.

Protecting cyberspace requires guarding both physical and virtual assets, 
Crews said. "The Internet is different from every other kind of critical 
infrastructure we want to protect," he said. "You can keep bad guys off the 
property if you're protecting a building, but you can't keep people off the 
Internet."

He also worries about the U.S. government leading the effort. "If we depend 
on the government to protect cyberspace, we may be disappointed. Its 
networks are notoriously insecure," Crews said.

The biggest danger is terrorist hackers coordinating a cyberattack with an 
attack against a physical target, Crews said. That scenario has been 
considered by government and private-industry security experts.

"Imagine if hackers had taken down the air traffic control system [at the 
same time as the Sept. 11 attacks]. Key sectors would be taken down in 
conjunction with a 'meatspace' [real-world] attack," Crews said.

Better response to cyberattacks

Painter argues that computer security is better today. He cites 
more-stringent federal law enforcement efforts and an invigorated 
industry-FBI computer crime-fighting partnership called InfraGard.

"There's a stronger law enforcement response [to computer crime]," Painter 
said. "Our sections have grown in manpower, and the Secret Service and 
other federal law enforcement agencies are taking these kinds of cases more 
seriously."

But the threat of coordinated attacks isn't the only cause for concern. 
Privacy advocates caution against granting wide powers, especially 
involving surveillance, without also imposing oversight.

"Most of us do our job better if we're held accountable for how we do it," 
Swire said. "Any suspected attack on any computer on the Internet now 
constitutes an emergency" under the Patriot Act. Government can trace first 
and ask questions later, he said.

The legal standards required to justify some kinds of surveillance are 
lower in the post-Sept. 11 world. For instance, the Patriot Act leaves 
e-mail less protected from surveillance than a phone call.

"You might say this pay phone I'm standing at right now might be used 
anonymously [by a terrorist]," said Tien, "but that doesn't mean you should 
monitor all pay phones. 'It might happen' is a recipe to do away with civil 
liberties entirely."
*************************
Washington Post
China Blocks Web Search Engines
Country Fears Doors To Commerce Also Open Weak Spots

By Peter S. Goodman and Mike Musgrove
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, September 12, 2002; Page E01


SHANGHAI, Sept. 12 (Thursday) -- China's government has begun blocking 
access in recent days to two widely used Internet search engines, Google 
and AltaVista, intensifying its effort to control the flow of information 
while at the same time embracing the profit-making potential of the global 
computer network.

This morning Google's site was again accessible, with no explanation. But 
some content linked to the site remained blocked -- for example, Tibetan 
independence sites. AltaVista also still appeared to be blocked.

China's broadening censorship highlights the central tension underlying its 
transition from a closed and centrally planned economy to one where market 
forces hold sway: The Communist Party remains committed to maintaining its 
monopolistic grip on political power by controlling what Chinese people see 
and read, but it also wants private investors to take over the state's role 
as the engine of economic growth. That requires that investors be given 
free access to information and modern communications.

China's government has sought to serve these conflicting aims by allowing 
the Internet to spread while filtering out content it views as a threat. 
The government began blocking Google early this month and AltaVista this week.

More than 45 million Chinese use the Internet. The government often blocks 
access to Western news sites such as the New York Times, The Washington 
Post and the British Broadcasting Corp. But China traditionally has not 
interfered with search engines, the most widely used tools for finding 
information on the Web.

Recently, however, the government discovered that the search sites amount 
to a gap in its armor. China's Internet users have been able to link 
through Google to sites operated by the Falun Gong religious group, which 
the government has banned as a cult, as well as those run by advocates for 
Tibetan independence. Google is a particularly effective bridge to such 
content because it has an excellent Chinese-language search capacity.

At a news conference last week in Beijing, an official with China's 
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Kong Quan, declined to comment specifically on 
the Google case, but he acknowledged that the government is concerned about 
"harmful things on the Internet" and said that "this information should not 
be allowed to pass freely."

A Google Inc. spokesman said the company was notified by its users that its 
site was being blocked. "We are currently working with Chinese authorities 
to resolve this issue," Google said in a statement.

AltaVista Co. spokeswoman Joanne Hartzell said the company is not sure its 
site is being blocked. "We haven't received any official notification from 
the Chinese government," she said. AltaVista has contacted the Chinese 
consulate in San Francisco but has not heard back. The company has been 
directing users in China to an alternate address for its search service, 
Raging.com, which is still accessible.

According to sources with knowledge of the decision, China's leaders opted 
to block Google indefinitely after discovering that a search using the name 
of China's president, Jiang Zemin, yields a trove of articles from 
Chinese-language newspapers in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Australia and the United 
States that are not allowed to circulate here. Many of the articles explore 
the intrigue surrounding the upcoming national Congress of the Communist 
Party, at which Jiang is expected to begin the process of turning power 
over to a new generation of leadership.

"The amount of information that was available via Google was shocking to 
the leadership," one source said.

Though China has thus far proven adept at courting investment and opening 
its economy while still maintaining strictures on information, its move 
against search engines has heightened the conflict. Some analysts say it 
could hurt China as a climate for investment. Barring access to certain 
news sites inconveniences some people, but news can still be found 
elsewhere. Google, on the other hand, is widely hailed as irreplaceable, by 
far the best means of taming the Internet's gusher of data.

"China is putting itself at a competitive disadvantage," said Joel T. 
Kotkin, a global technology expert at Pepperdine University's Davenport 
Institute for Public Policy. He noted that China is increasingly 
encouraging a returning diaspora of Western-educated citizens to build new, 
innovative businesses that can replace China's failing state enterprises -- 
people such as David Y. Chen.

Chen, 34, was born in China and has studied and worked in Australia, the 
United States, Hong Kong and Taiwan. He is the president of Harcourt Cos., 
a Shanghai-based holding company that has invested about $20 million in 
telecommunications, software and Internet ventures here over the past two 
years. Chen complained that the lack of access to Google is impeding his 
ability to find new investments.

"This kind of thing should not happen," he said. "Information is so 
important in today's business. We believe in China's economic growth, and 
that's why we're still here, but it's very important for us to be able to 
access good information."

When China started blocking Google, typing in the site's address generally 
produced an error message, as if the page did not exist. Last weekend, 
China's censors implemented a new technique: Those seeking Google's page 
were diverted -- "hijacked," in the parlance of the World Wide Web -- to 
different search sites based in China.

In Beijing and Shanghai, some Google seekers have been diverted to a search 
site run by Beijing University, which posted a message denying 
responsibility. Others were taken to Baidu.com, a Chinese-language Google 
competitor backed by International Data Group, the American-based media giant.

The hijacking has fueled speculation that traditional concerns about 
banning sensitive material are being creatively employed as a lever in a 
modern-day competition for market share. The extra traffic on the Chinese 
search engines will boost ad revenue. Baidu's marketing director, Bi Sheng, 
said traffic to his site has increased noticeably, though he said the 
company has no knowledge of how the redirection from Google occurred.

But most analysts think the search engine blocking is simply a case of 
China's leaders asserting their grip. "The Chinese government is really 
insecure about letting people use infrastructure that they don't control," 
said Will Foster of Arizona State University, an expert on Chinese Internet 
use.

"Basically, they want Chinese people to use Chinese search engines instead 
of Google," he said. "The party has decided that the Internet is the path 
to prosperity -- it just needs to be safeguarded. They're trying to 
basically make people feel that the government is watching, to make sure 
that people don't use the Net for discourse that involves criticizing the 
government."

China's control over the flow of information owes much to the unique 
architecture of its computer networks. The Internet is a global web of 
interlinked computers that swap information, but China's government has 
limited the places where its networks can link to those in other countries. 
Only nine such networks are allowed to connect via satellite and undersea 
cables to the computer systems of the rest of the planet. The rest of 
China's Internet service providers are dependent on buying wholesale links 
from one of these giants.

Sixty to 80 percent of China's Internet traffic is carried by just one of 
these large players: ChinaNet, which is operated by the state telephone 
company, China Telecom. When China's content minders want to shut down 
access to something, they can easily use one of these major choke points. 
They simply program the routers -- which function something like railroad 
switches -- to reject data from certain sites.

"They are as capable of flipping a switch and turning off those sites as 
you are capable of flipping a switch on your Windows desktop and shutting 
off a program," said Ben Edelman, a Harvard University law student who has 
designed a program to tell which sites are being blocked in China.

In the past two years, China's methods of combating unwanted content have 
grown markedly more sophisticated, experts say. Much like Carnivore, the 
controversial FBI program that sifts through millions of e-mails to search 
for key words, China has been implementing new programs that can block 
articles that mention "Tibet" or "Falun Gong" but allow access to the rest 
of the site that holds them. The government appeared to use that approach 
to Google's site this morning. Such programs also can monitor e-mail.

Experts say these systems employ routers made by Cisco Systems Inc. and a 
range of software, some purchased off the shelf from major Western 
companies and some developed here.

"While it may be our equipment, there's a range of functions on how it can 
be implemented, and that's up to the customer," said Cisco spokeswoman 
Melissa Kendrick. "The products that Cisco Systems sells in China are the 
same that Cisco sells worldwide." She added that none of the company's 
products is built or designed specifically for the Chinese government, nor 
is Cisco the lone supplier.

China also has used the appeal of its potentially enormous market to 
persuade Western companies to censor their own content in exchange for the 
government's blessing to operate here.

Yahoo Inc. built its brand name by portraying itself as a liberating force. 
In an address at the National Press Club in April 2000, Yahoo co-founder 
Jerry Yang referred to China as "a governmental system that is very 
incongruent to the Internet," while offering hopes that expanding trade 
would allow "the best benefits of the Internet" to take root. This year, in 
March, Yahoo's affiliate in China signed an agreement to voluntarily block 
access to certain sites.

AltaVista chief executive James Barnett said his company is unlikely to 
follow that route.

"There's a business issue here, but there's a much more important and 
broader issue as well," he said. "Censorship just flies in the face of 
everything we're about as a company. We're about open access to information."
*******************************
News Factor
Ten Choices Critical to the Internet's Success

How did technologists, government officials and a host of other early 
players turn something with no obvious business model into a system that 
has become so intrinsic to the new century? A series of decisions proved 
critical - choices that helped turn data transport into a commodity 
business and put the power in users' hands, not in the centralized 
telecommunications companies' controlling grasp. [Full Story 
http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/19382.html]
****************************
News.com
Customers blame spam on filched lists
By Troy Wolverton
September 11, 2002, 4:22 PM PT

E-mail management company Lyris Technologies on Wednesday said it is 
investigating spam complaints that may involve hundreds of thousands of 
compromised customer e-mail addresses.
At least three current and former Lyris customers this week complained that 
recipients of their e-mail newsletters have been receiving spam. 
MarketingSherpa.com, a publisher of online marketing newsletters, suspects 
that all eight of its mailing lists have been compromised, said Anne 
Holland, the company's founder. More than 20 other publishers, who combined 
have more than 2 million e-mail addresses on their lists, have also 
contacted Holland saying their Lyris-hosted lists have been compromised.

"We contacted Lyris immediately," Holland said. "Anytime you get a spam 
complaint from readers, you have to take it very seriously. It could kill 
your entire company."


About five of the 1,000 customers who have their distribution lists hosted 
by Lyris have contacted the company with spam concerns, said Steven Brown, 
the company's chief of operations. The company has hired Word to the Wise, 
an outside consulting firm, to investigate the matter, Brown said. So far 
the company has no evidence that the lists on its servers have been 
compromised.

"We're trying to be as responsive as we can," Brown said. "We try to take 
this stuff pretty seriously."

Word to the Wise is sorting through the data it has, including the spam 
messages that have been forwarded by Lyris customers, said Laura Atkins, 
the company's chief executive officer. So far, the company doesn't know 
whether the spam was the result of a compromise of Lyris' servers, Atkins 
said. Atkins said she expected to have some initial conclusions by early 
next week.

"There's no clear picture as to what it is. It's hard to tell," Atkins 
said. "We are head-down investigating as fast as we can."

Security vulnerabilities on the Web are not a new thing. A hack at 
Amazon.com-owned Bibliofind last year compromised nearly 100,000 customer 
records, including credit card numbers. A security breach at Egghead 
temporarily exposed the records of 3.7 million of its customer records in 
late 2000.

But hackers targeting servers just for their mailing lists is a novelty, 
said Jason Catlett, president of Junkbusters. Spammers can buy millions of 
e-mail addresses on a CD, although many of them are stale or wrong, he 
said. Additionally, much spam is sent through attacks where spammers send 
e-mail to a number of similarly spelled addresses at a particular domain, 
hoping their message will reach a good address, Catlett said.

But mailing lists with good addresses of a targeted audience are a valuable 
item.

"In the envelope world of marketing, lists are routinely stolen by 
employees that are moving to another company," Catlett said. "I don't have 
any evidence that that happened in this case, but it's happened in the 
offline world, and it wouldn't be implausible if it happened online."

Lyris is investigating whether a disgruntled employee stole its lists, 
Brown said. Lyris bought rival SparkList.com last month and hired only 
three of SparkList's 20 to 25 employees, he said.

"That's always a touchy issue," Brown said. "The fact of the matter is that 
one business bought another, and some people were brought along and some 
people weren't."

The customers who talked with CNET News.com said their lists formerly had 
been hosted by SparkList.

Canning spam
Spam, or unsolicited e-mail, has been overwhelming the servers and in-boxes 
of many Net users, forcing some companies and organizations to take drastic 
measures to block it. Last month, Yahoo found its stores site blacklisted 
by Mail Abuse Prevention System, an organization whose lists of suspected 
spammers are used by other companies to block Web or e-mail access.

Holland and Andy Sernovitz, a former customer of SparkList and chief 
executive officer of e-mail marketing firm GasPedal ventures, said they 
became aware that their lists had been compromised in early August. Both 
received e-mail from people on their mailing lists saying that they had 
received spam. Both said they had not sold their mailing lists.

Both Holland and Sernovitz, whose mailing list has some 10,000 subscribers, 
said they were frustrated by how Lyris responded to their reports of the 
compromise. The company didn't start trying to address the issue until the 
last several days, Holland said.

"I do understand they've been extremely busy with the merger," she said. 
"But did they take this as seriously as they should have? No."

Lyris first started receiving reports of spam being sent to recipients of 
its hosted mailing list in early August, Brown said. The company hired Word 
to the Wise "a couple days ago," he said.

Still, Brown said that it was unclear from the messages sent by the 
company's clients that there really was a problem, especially considering 
how few of its customers had reported spam.

"The information we've been given is pretty spotty," he said.

Still, Lyris should have come forward immediately and acknowledged the 
problem, Sernovitz said.

"Every time a high-tech company tries to hide, they always get busted," he 
said. "The longer they hide it, the worse it gets. People understand if you 
get hacked. The question is how do you respond."

Ralph Wilson publishes four e-business newsletters. He suspects the two 
mailing lists that are hosted by Lyris were compromised. He warned his 
subscribers to that effect in an e-mail message earlier this month.

Wilson declined to talk about his conversations with Lyris about the 
compromise. But he said that his subscribers thus far had received few spam 
messages as a result.

"I'm not saying that I'm not concerned about it," Wilson said. "I'm very 
concerned about it. But at this point, I don't think people are receiving 
huge amounts of spam as a result. That makes me feel good so far."
***************************
Wired News
Digital Rights Outlook: Squishy
By Brad King

Media companies are singing a new song that could be called "Get Squishy 
With It."

The long-running debate over how much digital rights management is too much 
has changed. Now it's about just how much copy protection files should 
include, and media companies believe they have the answer: squishy security.

"We need interoperable DRM products that allow people to never feel the 
walls (of security)," said Ted Cohen, vice president of new media at EMI, 
one of the five major music labels.

It's not a new idea, but it's starting to resonate with Congress. At a 
recent government hearing, Philip Bond, undersecretary of commerce for 
technology, opened the debate by saying that he wanted a world with "a 
consistent and reliable and predictable level of legitimate copyright 
protection."

That's a frightening turn for consumer advocates and technologists who 
argue that DRM fundamentally alters the way people use their computers, 
televisions and stereos.

It's the word "legitimate" that bugs consumer advocates because nobody is 
quite sure what that means. They argue that fair use rights -- which allow 
people to listen to a copy of a CD in their car, for example -- have eroded 
in the quest for security, even the squishy kind.

"Those who aren't for überprotection are being labeled as pro-piracy," said 
Robin Gross, staff counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The concern has basis. Judges determine fair use case by case, but 
technology companies are being asked to develop DRM systems that determine 
ahead of time what people can and can't do with files. In many cases, there 
are no precedents for DRM companies to draw from.

"Technology implementers can only do what they are told to do, and 
technology can only do what it's programmed to do, and right now, they are 
defining a perverted version of the law, because that is all they can do," 
said John Erickson, systems program manager at Hewlett-Packard's research lab.

With no firm guidelines, technology companies have started looking for more 
squishy security measures.

The latest idea comes from Thomson Multimedia. It's a Super MP3 file with 
better sound quality. Next year, it will get a video component as well, 
allowing entertainment companies to encode a song along with a video, album 
cover, lyrics and other information.

The twist: The Super MP3 will come with a tracking signature -- a digital 
fingerprint -- that will identify the PC that made it.

"People will pay for better MP3s," said Henry Linde, Thomson Multimedia's 
vice president of new media business. "If the MP3 file that Brad King 
encodes shows up on a system, we will know where it comes from. We call it 
lightweight DRM, but it won't prevent you from doing anything."

It's radically different from Microsoft's solution, which comes with 
proactive restrictions.

The DRM debate has been contentious. Entertainment companies claim they've 
been losing their shirts, while technology companies say the restrictions 
prohibit them from creating new products.

Music and movies are flying across file-trading networks, available on 
demand for millions of Internet users worldwide. Napster brought the debate 
to the masses. The five major record labels sued Napster, which had 70 
million users at the time. The Recording Industry Association of America 
claims $4 billion in losses, and the Motion Picture Association of America 
claims it's lost $3 billion -- though it doesn't quantify physical versus 
digital piracy.

Such figures are suspect, however, because they guess at potential losses, 
which haven't always held up to further scrutiny.

When the FBI cracked down on hackers in 1990 for snatching and posting a 
confidential technical 911 phone manual, the prosecutors put a price tag of 
$79,449 on the document, according to Bruce Sterling's account in The 
Hacker Crackdown. The figure was based on labor, hardware and software costs.

Defense lawyers countered that AT&T sold a similar document to the general 
public for $13.

It's true that millions of people are sharing files through networks like 
Kazaa and Gnutella and instant messenger programs like AOL Instant 
Messenger and Yahoo Messenger. But it's impossible to put an accurate 
dollar figure on how much -- or even if -- it's costing the entertainment 
business.

It's the staggeringly quick adoption of technology, and the speed with 
which it's improving, that has media companies searching for answers -- 
even squishy ones.

"As technology makes things easier to do, the concepts we grew up with -- 
sharing a tape with a friend, making a mixed tape -- turned from sharing an 
LP with a friend into plugging in an iPod and downloading 1,000 songs in 
eight minutes," said Cohen. "That may have to change."
******************************
Reuters Internet Reports
Internet Becomes Global Shrine to Sept 11 Dead
Wed Sep 11, 3:48 PM ET
By Reshma Kapadia and Bernhard Warner

NEW YORK/LONDON (Reuters) - The Internet became a globe-spanning memorial 
Wednesday, with condolences, poems, reflections, artwork and photos pouring 
onto the World Wide Web to commemorate the first anniversary of the Sept. 
11 attacks that killed more than 3,000 people in the United States.

In every conceivable online forum, Net users paid tribute to firefighters 
and police officers. They prayed for the victims' families. They reflected 
on the prospects of world peace. They shared their memories, hopes and fears.

"Our spirit unites us. Our hope makes us strong," read a message from a 
Turkish man on one of the scores of discussion boards dedicated to 
reflections on the meaning of the day one year after hijacked commercial 
airliners slammed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon ( news - web 
sites) and a Pennsylvania field.

Similarly poignant messages filtered in from the Far East to Manhattan's 
Lower East Side.

As the tragedy unfolded a year ago, millions took to the Net to express 
their grief and anger. The outpouring of emotion in those first numbing 
hours seemed almost to give the medium a heart.

One year later, individuals and businesses turned to the Net to do what it 
does best -- connect people from all over the world instantaneously.

Close to 30,000 sites dedicated to the event were created between Sept. 11 
and Dec. 1, according to Pew Internet & American Life Project.

One site trying to preserve the digital history of the attacks is 
http://www.911digitalarchive.org, a project run by the American Social 
History Project and the Center for Media and Learning at the City of 
University New York.

"Sept. 11 was the first fully digital event in world history," said Fritz 
Umbrach, a historian at City University of New York working on the project.

"If historians are going to fully understand the public response to 9-11, 
we need to collect this new digital material, especially as the personal 
computer becomes the primary communication method for the U.S.

"About 100 million people sent e-mail in days and weeks after attacks," he 
continued. "It's the best record of people's immediate response." 
Wednesday, the commercial aspect of the medium was muted.

Amazon.com, the world's largest online retailer, did a makeover of its home 
page, displaying artwork and poems taken from the book, "Messages to Ground 
Zero: Children Respond to September 11, 2001," instead of offering the 
latest in DVDs, books and music.

The page featured sketches from New York area students depicting candles, 
upraised hands, and construction crews tending to Ground Zero in lower 
Manhattan, site of the World Trade Center's twin towers, which collapsed 
after the hijackers crashed their seized planes into them.

At the bottom of the page there is a scanned-in letter from a schoolgirl, 
Cadence.

"Dear Fireman," reads the letter dated Sept. 17. "My name is Cadence. I'm 
missing an uncle. please find him. His name is Gonja. His family misses him 
... he was the Best uncle in the world. I feel like crying."

Proceeds from the book will go to the Fund for the Public Schools, NYC. 
Donations are earmarked specifically to benefit children who lost a parent 
in the September 11 tragedy or were forced to evacuate their schools.

Web portals ( news - web sites) Yahoo.com and Lycos.com shaded their home 
pages, which attract millions of users every day, in gray and black, 
respectively, and donated space normally dedicated to top-paying 
advertisers to the cause.

On the top of Yahoo.com, where it typically promotes the latest movies and 
music, Yahoo asked visitors to create and share a memorial tile. Thousands 
had been posted from all over the world.

"Ignorance and intolerance perpetuate hate," wrote one user from the 
Netherlands, accompanying his words with an image of the Earth with "peace" 
spelled out in multiple languages.

This being the Web, where the anonymity of message posting makes it a 
popular forum to express dissent, a number of users continued to air their 
criticisms of the handling of the Middle East crisis and a possible 
U.S.-led invasion on Iraq.

"Bush will give us war whether we want it or not," one posting on the 
discussion group alt.politics read.

Others chose to point out that a series of security alerts had been issued 
for the day, commenting that this would become an increasingly common 
occurrence.

But a large majority have joined a Spanish user in sending a message of hope.

"Just a wish of Peace for all the victims, Victims of attacks in the US, of 
attacks in Asia, Palestine or any other land where violent people try to 
destroy Peace and Love. We are all the same and all we come from God. Peace."
*****************************
CNN Online
The hidden data in your driver's license
ID cards go smart with encoded personal information
September 8, 2002 Posted: 8:00 AM EDT (1200 GMT)

CNN) -- It seems not too long ago that the highest tech device that a 
bouncer may have had was a flashlight to check out a driver's license. But 
these days, more and more bars and night clubs, convenience stores and 
liquor stores are using high-tech ID scanners in order to look at the 
information that's actually embedded in many driver's licenses.

With the technology, the data that is encoded in the license itself can be 
compared to information on the front that could actually be faked or 
forged. It makes it easier to check for underage drinkers or smokers and 
even helps law enforcement.

But not every state has the same standard for licenses. There is no 
national standard in terms of how the information is encoded, the different 
types of information that's encoded in the license itself, and the ways in 
which it can be read by different ID scanners.

There are various ID scanners available but they all work in much the same 
way. Bar codes or magnetic strips are read for information and then sent to 
a screen that displays name, address and various other information about 
the person. It also tells whether alcohol and tobacco sales are permitted 
to that person, based on age. Alerts about the person could also show up, a 
helpful tool for law enforcement.

Public eyes on private data?
Critics cite privacy issues with these ID scanners, particularly because 
the machines are capable of storing the information that is read.

The companies that make them -- both InteleCheck and Logix -- say that 
there are restrictions in place for whether or not the bar owners or store 
owners can actually read this information. They can be set so that only 
bits of information come up, not everything that's on the license.

As well, there are different laws according to states of what can actually 
be used, or encoded or read. The privacy advocates are concerned, for 
example, about marketing. They say personal information can be tracked and 
marketing can be directed at specific audiences based on individual's actions.

The potential for even greater use of these scanners has increased with the 
war against terrorism. They could possibly be used in airports and used as 
a security screening device, for instance, to verify the authenticity of 
the license.
****************************


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