NewsScan Daily, 27 May 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 27 May 2004 ("Above The Fold")
***********************************************************
NewsScan Daily is underwritten by RLG, a world-class organization
making significant and sustained contributions to the effective
management and appropriate use of information technology. NSD is
written by John Gehl and Suzanne Douglas, [email protected].
***********************************************************

"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        U.S. Gov't Agencies Engaged in Widespread 'Data Mining'
        Will ISPs Discriminate Against Competitors?
        New Study Shows File-Sharing Continues Unabated
        Chaska, Minnesota Plans City-Wide 'Hot Spot'
        Finally, Decent Computer Displays -- If You Can Wait Till 2034

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Worth Thinking About: The Memory of War
        Cybercrime in Mayberry?

U.S. GOV'T AGENCIES ENGAGED IN WIDESPREAD 'DATA MINING'
      A survey of U.S. government agencies has uncovered widespread data 
mining activities, through more than 120 programs that collect and analyze 
large amounts of personal data such as names, e-mail addresses, Social 
Security numbers and driver's license information. The survey, conducted by 
the General Accounting Office, identified 52 federal agencies that 
routinely comb through citizens' data, and because the GAO figures exclude 
most classified projects, the extent of intrusion into personal privacy 
could be much higher. Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii), who requested the 
report, said: "I am disturbed by the high number of data mining activities 
in the federal government involving personal information. The government 
collects and uses Americans' personal information and shares it with other 
agencies to an astonishing degree, raising serious privacy concerns." An 
advisory committee to the Pentagon chaired by former FCC chairman Newton 
Minow, has recommended that federal agencies generally should be required 
to obtain court approval "before engaging in data mining with personally 
identifiable information" on U.S. citizens. It also recommended that 
agencies should, if possible, strip out all personal identifying 
information before working with such data. (New York Times 27 May 2004)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/27/national/27privacy.html

WILL ISPs DISCRIMINATE AGAINST COMPETITORS?
      High-speed Internet providers have the capability to recognize the 
data packets that traverse their systems and prioritize them, so that 
theoretically, they could reward their own customers with a little extra 
speed to the detriment of competitors routing traffic along their networks. 
Although there's no evidence that broadband providers have ever engaged in 
this kind of manipulation, a number of tech companies last year asked the 
Federal Communications Commission to consider establishing principles that 
would encourage "network neutrality." Their concerns were reignited 
recently by a controversial report issued by Yankee Group that predicted 
small, independent VoIP (Internet telephony) providers like Vonage could be 
forced out of business if broadband ISPs begin bundling VoIP service with 
their Internet access or begin slowing down Vonage customers' service in 
favor of their own subscribers. "Unless Vonage pays fees to the network 
provider, there is no reason the operator should not make the service a 
lower priority on the network," predicted the Yankee Group report. Vonage 
CEO Jeffrey Citron responded, "If that happens in this world, the value of 
the Internet would instantaneously be massively devalued." Citron says he 
hates the idea of government regulation but in this case it might be 
appropriate for regulators to spell out what constitutes a minimum level of 
broadband service. (Washington Post 27 May 2004)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58685-2004May26.html

NEW STUDY SHOWS FILE-SHARING CONTINUES UNABATED
      Contrary to reports suggesting that music file-swapping has dropped 
dramatically in the wake of recent legal action by the RIAA, a new report 
by network monitoring firm Sandvine indicates P2P activity is alive and 
well. "There's been no decline in the number of people file-sharing," says 
Sandvine's European managing director Chris Colman. According to the study, 
P2P sharing has declined slightly, from 70% of total Net traffic to 65%, in 
the U.S. and has remained steady in Europe, with file-swapping accounting 
for 70% to 80% of total Internet traffic. Because Internet usage is 
expanding in both areas, that means the total number of file-swappers is 
actually growing as well. However, the study indicates that many U.S. 
file-traders have abandoned Kazaa, once the most popular file-swapping 
site, and are now migrating to other sites such as eDonkey. Colman believes 
this trend is the result of the RIAA's focus on Kazaa users in its legal 
actions. In Europe, Kazaa usage has dropped from 70% to 20%, and in the 
U.S., from 90% to 20%. (NewScientist.com 26 May 2004)
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99995045

CHASKA, MINNESOTA PLANS CITY-WIDE 'HOT SPOT'
      Chaska, Minnesota is raising the bar on ubiquitous wireless 
connectivity -- the whole city will soon be blanketed by a Wi-Fi hot-spot 
and city officials plan to offer wireless Internet access as a municipal 
service for about $16 per month for home users. Chaska anticipates that 
about 2,000 of its 18,000 residents will take advantage of the service, 
creating a "connected community," says the city's information-systems 
manager, Bradley Mayer. The Wi-Fi network will also double as a public 
safety tool, with the local police force adapting squad cars to be Wi-Fi 
friendly. The network will be built by deploying about 200 
wireless-networking devices over a 12- to 13-square-mile area, says Mayer. 
(AP 26 May 2004)
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20040527/D82QJI701.html

FINALLY, DECENT COMPUTER DISPLAYS -- IF YOU CAN WAIT TILL 2034
      Usability expert Jakob Nielsen says that by 2034, "we'll finally get 
decent computer displays, with a resolution of about 20,000 pixels by 
10,000 pixels (as opposed to the miserly 2048 pixels by 1536 pixels on my 
current monitor)." He also says that people will have no problem coming up 
with ways to use the massive storage capability of future machines, 
predicting that "we'll use half the storage space to index all our 
information so that we can search it instantly." Of course, we'll also have 
to devote a significant amount of computer power to battling ever-bolder 
hack attacks and to enabling such things as self-healing software, which 
can root out bugs and adapt to changing environments. Computer games will 
become more engaging and less linear than today's story lines, and computer 
interaction styles will include gestures, physical interfaces and 
multidevice interfaces. "Certainly, our personal computer will remember 
anything we've ever seen or done online," says Nielsen. "A complete HDTV 
record of every waking hour of your life will consume 2% of your hard 
disk." (CNet News.com 27 May 2004)
http://news.com.com/2010-1001-5221124.html

*****

FLASH CARD
      "Nothing is more honorable than a grateful heart." (Seneca)

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: THE MEMORY OF WAR
      To honor Memorial Day, the U.S. national holiday that will take place 
on Monday, we'll cite the following passage from Senator John McCain's new 
book, "Worth the Fighting For: A Memoir":
      "I'm fascinated by documentaries chronicling the heroics of Americans 
who fought in World War II. I'm drawn to the faces of old veterans as they 
struggle on camera to describe their experiences. They often become 
emotional, and are unable to continue. Some of them had gone on to live 
lives of distinction after the war. Some lived more obscure, but no less 
honorable, lives. But as they reach the end of their days, the 
accomplishments or disappointments of their peacetime years don't seem all 
that important to any of them. The memories of personal triumphs aren't an 
adequate account of their long years. It is the memory of war they return 
to, the memory of war that gave their lives lasting meaning. They return to 
hard times, times of pain, suffering, loss, violence, and fear. They return 
to the place where they risked everything, absolutely everything, for the 
country that sent them there. And no later success ever outshone its glory, 
or later defeat taken it from them. It is still there and vivid for them at 
the moment of their last breath. How blessed they are."
      [See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/081296974X/newsscancom/ref=nosim 
for "Worth the Fighting For: A Memoir" by John McCain and Mark Salter -- or 
look for it in your favorite library. We donate all revenue from our book 
recommendations to adult literacy programs.]

CYBERCRIME IN MAYBERRY?
      Stephen Cobb, who writes NewsScan's "Safe & Sound in the Cyber Age 
columns with his wife Chey, copied us on the following letter he sent to 
the Reuters news agency:
       Dear Reuters Editors,
      I was stunned to see Reuters report that bayberries have gone digital 
and now pose a threat to law-abiding citizens. This report appeared on 
cnn.com under the headline: "Cyber-Sleuthing the Latest in High-Tech Crime 
Fighting" 
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/05/26/internet.police.reut/index.html
      The editors at Reuters obviously failed to read this one carefully. 
Consider this:
      "In the UK, home to some of Europe's most advanced bayberries 
fighting forces, just 1,000 of the country's 140,000 police officers are 
trained to handle digital evidence... Earlier this month, British police 
toiled in the reflection of their computer screens. They were hunting the 
deep recesses of a computer for traces of an increasingly popular 
bayberries weapon known as "malware" in a 7Safe training session."
      As a computer security expert and investigator I deduce that the 
first instance of the bayberries was "cybercrime" in the original and 
Reuters' spell-checker suggested a fruity alternative, which a 
poorly-trained human accepted for all instances of cybercrime, leading to 
the second serving.
      Everybody knows journalism standards are slipping, but could we 
please try to do better, or at least show some shame when such egregious 
errors occur.
      This same article included the following ridiculous quote which, 
since it clearly misrepresents what the person intended to say, should not 
have been printed in this form: "'I expect new staff to have an absolute 
minimum of computer and software forensics before they even walk in the 
door,' said Marc Kirby, detective inspector for the computer forensics 
section at Britain's National Hi-Tech Crime Unit."
      I would hate to come to expect an absolute minimum of editing from 
Reuters.
      Sincerely, Stephen Cobb, CISSP, Bayberry Expert

SUBSCRIPTION INFO FOR NEWSSCAN DAILY:
       To subscribe or unsubscribe to the text, html, or handheld versions 
of NewsScan Daily, send the appropriate subscribe or unsubscribe messages 
(i.e., with the word 'subscribe' or 'unsubscribe' in the subject line) to 
the addresses shown below:
       Text version: Send message to [email protected]
       HTML version: Send mail to [email protected]
       NewsScan-To-Go: http://www.newsscan.com/handheld/current.html

TELL YOUR FRIENDS ABOUT NEWSSCAN DAILY! Send them our little frog: 
http://www.newsscan.com/newsscan/newscup.html

***********************************************************
Please visit the site of RLG, the great organization that makes NewsScan 
Daily possible. (RLG has no influence over, nor any responsibility for, our 
editorial content.) Created in 1974 as the Research Libraries Group, RLG is 
a not-for-profit membership corporation of more than 160 universities, 
national libraries, archives, museums -- and other institutions with 
remarkable collections for research and learning. Its major initiatives are 
long-term retention of digital materials, resource sharing among member 
institutions, and improvement of researcher access to primary source 
material. RLG supplies online research resources worldwide. Visit RLG at 
http://www.rlg.org.

*********

To subscribe or unsubscribe to the TEXT version of NewsScan Daily, send an 
e-mail message to [email protected] with 'subscribe' or 'unsubscribe' 
in the subject line. To subscribe to our HTML version of NewsScan Daily, 
send mail to [email protected], with the word 'subscribe' as the 
subject. (Subscribing to the HTML version won't automatically unsubscribe 
you from the text version; please unsubscribe yourself as explained above.) 
Please note: To unsubscribe from an account to which you no longer have 
access, send mail to at [email protected].

*********

We call our news section "Above The Fold" to honor the tradition of the 
great "broadsheet" newspapers in which editors must decide which news 
stories are of such importance that they should be placed "above the fold" 
on the front page. The NewsScan Credo: Be informative, have fun, and get to 
the point! See http://www.newsscan.com/, and send us mail: John Gehl 
<[email protected]> and Suzanne Douglas <[email protected]>, or call 
770-704-7517.

*********

Get a free 6-week trial subscription to Innovation Weekly, an executive 
summary of trends, strategies and innovations in business and technology. 
Send mail to [email protected] with the word 'subscribe' in the 
subject line.

What customized news and information services do you need for your company? 
Get in touch with us at [email protected] or call 770-704-7517 to talk 
over the possibilities.

Copyright 2004. NewsScan Daily (R) is a publication of NewsScan Inc.
***********************************************************