NewsScan Daily, 1 July 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 1 July 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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NewsScan Daily is underwritten by RLG, a world-class organization making
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"  
       Court Rules E-Mail Eavesdropping Okay
       Liar Liar Pants on Fire (As Judged by Software)
       Microsoft Searching for Search Market Space
       Chamber of Commerce Touts Benefits of Offshoring
       Sony Challenges Apple With Hard-Drive Music Player
       Comcast Sees Convergence in Your Future

FEATURES        
       Flash Card
       Worth Thinking About: Boredom
       Safe & Sound in the Cyberage: When Things Go Wrong

COURT RULES E-MAIL EAVESDROPPING OKAY
    In a surprise decision, a federal appeals court has ruled that it was
acceptable for a company that offered e-mail service to peruse messages sent
by its subscribers. The case stems from 1998 when it was discovered that
Interloc, a now-defunct literary clearinghouse, surreptitiously copied
messages sent to its subscribers by rival Amazon in order to "develop a list
of books, learn about competitors and attain a commercial advantage." An
Interloc executive was later indicted on an illegal wiretapping charge, but
yesterday's ruling upheld a federal judge's dismissal of that charge on the
grounds that the e-mails were copied while in "electronic storage" (during
the process of being routed through a network of servers to recipients). The
Wiretap Act prohibits unauthorized eavesdropping on messages that are not
stored -- such as a real-time telephone conversation -- but does not afford
the same protection to stored messages. In a dissenting opinion, Appeals
Court Judge Kermit Lipez wrote that the ruling unravels "decades of practice
and precedent regarding the scope of the Wiretap Act" and essentially
renders the act "irrelevant to the protection of wire and electronic
privacy."  In a concurring statement, the Electronic Frontier Foundation
said that yesterday's ruling "dealt a grave blow to the privacy of Internet
communications." (AP 30 Jun 2004)
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20040701/D83HMB0O0.html

LIAR LIAR PANTS ON FIRE (AS JUDGED BY SOFTWARE)
     Voice-based lie-detector tests using voice stress analysis have become
increasingly popular with law enforcement agencies, telemarketing companies,
matchmakers, and claims adjusters, even though critics charge that the
technology is unreliable and invasive of privacy. Defending the industry
against such charges, David Watson of V Worldwide Inc. says that each of a
person's various motivations for lying has its own physiological
manifestations (each being a "self-defense mechanism of the body coming from
a completely different place"). But David T. Lykken, an emeritus professor
of psychology at the University of Minnesota, says: "It is implausible to
imagine that the only times that your body shows increased arousal when you
answer a question is when you're being deceptive." Future uses for the
technology will include algorithms for use by airport screeners, political
analysts, and lovers. (Mad Love, an offering already available, is "a
cellular service which allows you to find out if the person you're speaking
with is attracted to you"). New York Times 1 Jul 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/01/technology/circuits/01voic.html

MICROSOFT SEARCHING FOR SEARCH MARKET SPACE
     Microsoft is releasing the first pilot version of its new Internet
search technology and plans to have a final version ready for release within
a year. "We are going to deliver the best search service. It is a momentous
day," says a company executive, who also calls attention to Microsoft's
redesigned search site, www.search.msn.com. Andy Beal of search engine
marketing firm WebSourced Inc. is enthusiastic: "This is a huge announcement
for the search engine industry as a whole. Microsoft finally getting
involved with search is going to send shock waves through the entire
industry. Google has already seen the competition Yahoo is putting up. With
Microsoft and their billions of dollars entering the arena, Google is going
to be fighting attacks from two sides." (Washington Post 30 Jun 2004)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19062-2004Jun30.html

CHAMBER OF COMMERCE TOUTS BENEFITS OF Offshoring
     U.S. Chamber of Commerce president and chief executive Thomas Donohue
is urging American companies to send work overseas as a way to boost
national competitiveness, and he's scornful of labor leaders and politicians
who want to limit or ban offshoring of government contracts. "Without fail,
businesses go where they want and where they can earn money -- investment is
fungible. We're not going to create more jobs by building barriers." While
admitting that "one job sent overseas, if it happens to be my job, is one
too many," Donoghue insists that the overall benefits of offshoring jobs
outweigh the cost. One management consultant who heard Donoghue's talk
yesterday at the Commonwealth Club of California said: "In theory, it's
promoting change so that the quality of jobs that remain in the United
States remains higher than elsewhere. But the pace of change is fast, and
trying to stay a step ahead is difficult. It almost comes down to luck,
being in the right career at the right time." (AP/San Jose Mercury News 30
Jun 2004)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/9051372.htm

SONY CHALLENGES APPLE WITH HARD-DRIVE MUSIC PLAYER
     Sony Electronics will launch two hard-drive music players this fall in
a direct challenge to Apple's popular iPod device and iTunes music store.
The Sony players will come in 20GB and 40GB models, designed to work with
Sony's Connect music download service. Sony's belated entry into the hotly
contested digital music market surprised some analysts, who note that Sony
historically has played a leadership role in the portable music player
business: "The industry has been waiting for them to come out with jukebox
devices," says IDC analyst Susan Kevorkian. Apple launched its iTunes music
store and iPod devices in April 2003. (CNet News.com 30 Jun 2004)
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-5253866.html </2100-1040_3-5253866.htm>

COMCAST SEES CONVERGENCE IN YOUR FUTURE
     Stephen Burke, president of Comcast Cable, predicts: "The television
industry is going to change more in the next five years than it has in the
last 20." Comcast says it's now ready to roll out next-generation services
that require abundant bandwidth and two-way communications. These include:
video e-mail services; video-on-demand (VOD) programming that goes far
beyond movies; an Internet portal-like screen that subscribers can call up
on their PC, TV or phone to access voicemail, e-mail and faxes; and
extensive offerings of high-definition local TV station broadcasts. "We have
a vision for the company to not be a commodity provider," says Comcast CEO
Brian Roberts.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2004-06-30-comcast_x.htm

*****  

FLASH CARD
     "The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way
that will allow a solution." (Bertrand Russell)

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: BOREDOM
     The novelist and philosopher Walker Percy wondered:
     "Why is it that no other species but man gets bored? Under the
circumstances in which a man gets bored, a dog goes to sleep.
     "Thought Experiment: Imagine that you are a member of a tour visiting
Greece. The group goes to the Parthenon. It is a bore. Few people even
bother to look -- it looked better in the brochure. So people take half a
look, mostly take pictures, remark on the serious erosion by acid rain. You
are puzzled. Why should one of the glories and fonts of Western
civilization, viewed under pleasant conditions -- good weather, good hotel
room, good food, good guide -- be a bore?
     "Now imagine under what set of circumstances a viewing of the Parthenon
would not be a bore. For example, you are a NATO colonel defending Greece
against a Soviet assault. You are in a bunker in downtown Athens, binoculars
propped on sandbags. It is dawn. A medium-range missile attack is under way.
Half a million Greeks are dead. Two missiles bracket the Parthenon. The next
will surely be a hit. Between columns of smoke, a ray of golden light
catches the portico.
     "Are you bored? Can you see the Parthenon?
     "Explain."
                                ***
     [See http://tinyurl.com/yvgvx for his essays "Message in a Bottle" or
http://tinyurl.com/yqvg5 for his "Signposts in a Strange Land" -- or look
for them in your favorite library. Note: We donate all revenue from our book
recommendations to adult literacy programs.]

SAFE & SOUND IN THE CYBERAGE: WHEN THINGS GO WRONG
                  [by Stephen Cobb and Chey Cobb]
                                ***
     What mental image does "computer security" conjure up? Some people
picture locked doors, guarded offices, maybe even "geeks with guns." You
might imagine knitted brows on concerned faces, lit by the glow of computer
monitors as elusive hackers are tracked across the global Internet. But just
as police work is seldom about shoot-outs and car chases, computer security
is often about boring stuff like policies and reports. And security can be
as much about preparing to recover from problems as preventing them.
     Over the years, many companies have developed plans to deal with a
variety of different incidents, from computer failures to natural disasters,
power outages to adverse publicity. Unfortunately, we have observed that
these plans are often created by different departments, and different
incidents are addressed in different plans. In other words, they are not
coordinated, which can lead to costly duplication, of both time and
expenditure. 
     Few people know more about this than our good friend Michael Miora, who
specializes in incident management planning. Michael defines incident
management planning as "the critical process of recognizing events that will
adversely affect your business, reacting appropriately to those events, and
then responding to quickly resume normal operations."
     The idea is that when something goes wrong, people need to know what to
do about it in order to minimize the impact. Incident management addresses
the problem of disparate contingency plans by making sure all such efforts
are coordinated, bringing together the different elements in one overriding
project plan that not only enhances protection, but also increases
cost-effectiveness and provides a much better Return on Investment (ROI)
than a compartmentalized and uncoordinated, piecemeal approach.
     Take a simple example like an unexpected power outage at an office or
factory. What happens if nobody knows whose job it is to call the power
company? Here are two possible outcomes:
     * Everyone makes the assumption that somebody else is making the call,
so no call is made; or,
     * A lot of people use their initiative and make the call themselves,
jamming the phone lines so none of the calls get through.
     In both scenarios, a lack of clear understanding about who is supposed
to do what means that the recovery process is unnecessarily delayed. If
proper procedures had been clearly established, the power company would be
contacted as soon as possible, minimizing the length of time the office or
factory is without power, thereby reducing the incident's financial impact
on the company.
     This is true regardless of the type of incident. Consider an
unannounced raid on your office by an FBI anti-terrorism squad--less likely
than a power outage perhaps, but not impossible to imagine these days. If
the local press turns up and starts asking questions you will fare much
better if employees know that the only person allowed to speak to reporters
is the CEO. A good Incident Management Plan enables your company to respond
efficiently to a wide range of events that have the potential to harm the
organization, even those that are unexpected.
     But where do you get such a plan? One approach is to hire an expert.
However, that can be expensive, particularly for smaller companies. Or what
if you are a branch office of a larger company? Your Incident Management
Plan needs to be specific to your office, your staff, and your systems; it
is not something that head office can easily cook up and send you via
Federal Express. Contemplating this problem led Michael Miora to come up
with a product called IMCD, literally a CD that contains everything you need
to create a comprehensive Incident Management Plan (you can check out a
demonstration version at http://www.contingenz.com/imcd.htm).
     The CD contains three parts. First is a basic course in incident
management, complete with narration and suitable for all employees. There
are also narrated instructions on how to prepare for the second part, which
is the inputting of information about your organization, its business
functions, employees, clients, systems, backup procedures, and so forth.
Included in part two is a calculation of the relative criticality of
different business functions so that, in the third part of IMCD, where you
print out your customized Incident Management Plan, you get an expert
analysis of which systems and functions need to be given priority during an
incident.
     The value of such a plan is not just the money it can save your company
should an incident occur. Computer security has moved up the corporate
agenda to the point where companies are now demanding assurances from their
suppliers that they have all the bases covered. The very first sale of IMCD
was to a small company about to land a contract to supply services to a much
larger company, a company that, as a matter of policy, requires all
suppliers to provide a copy of their incident management plans, before they
do business.
     In all likelihood, every company, large and small, will face a
significant incident of some sort within the next three years. Sensible
incident management planning will lessen the impact of that incident on the
corporate brand, image and revenues. With IMCD, even small companies, or the
branch offices of large companies, can apply the knowledge and skills of
incident management experts without the cost of hiring one.
     [Chey Cobb, CISSP, the author of "Cryptography for Dummies" and
"Network Security for Dummies," is a former senior technical security
advisor to the NRO. She can be emailed as chey at aug dot com. Stephen Cobb,
CISSP, is the author of "Privacy for Business" and can be emailed as scobb
at cobb dot com. Disclaimer: Stephen's brother, Mike Cobb, helped create the
IMCD product.]
     
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