NewsScan Daily, 20 June 2003 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 20 June 2003 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
       7-Eleven Wants To Be Your Bank
       Senate Tries Again to Legislate Against Spam
       Do Cell Phones Fly Well?
       Falwell Wins in Battle Over Sites Using His Name
       E-Filers May Get Extra Two Weeks Next Year

FEATURES
       Flash Card
       Pass It Along!
       The Return of Fermat's Last Theorem
       Worth Thinking About: How to Form a Democracy
       Safe & Sound in the Cyber Age

7-ELEVEN WANTS TO BE YOUR BANK
Convenience retailer 7-Eleven will be equipping about 3,500 of its stores
with "vcom" (for "virtual commerce") kiosks that offer check-cashing and
other financial services. The company will receive 10% of the value of
personal checks, and will require customers to register for the service.
7-Eleven executive Jay Giesen says, "During focus groups we conducted last
year, customers told us they wanted to cash their paychecks and pay their
bills at the same time. 7-Eleven created Vcom to provide customers
around-the-clock access to products and services not traditionally found in
convenient locations." Industry consultant Morris Reid says that fees range
from 5% to 25% for businesses offering check cashing services, and explains
that, by "answering a market demand," 7-Eleven will be able to "capture
lucrative fees and get people into their store where they can then up-sell
other products and services. I think you will see other non-traditional
companies, particularly retailers, make these services available." (San Jose
Mercury News 20 Jun 2003)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/6131717.htm

SENATE TRIES AGAIN TO LEGISLATE AGAINST SPAMMERS
The Senate Commerce Committee has unanimously approved a bill that would
make it illegal for any person or company to use fraudulent or deceptive
return e-mail address, false e-mail headers, or false and misleading subject
lines. The bill, if passed into law, will also require that all e-mail
marketing messages label those messages as advertisements, provide the
sender's physical address, and offer a way for recipients to decline to
receive any further messages from the marketer who sent them. (New York
Times 20 Jun 2003) 
http://partners.nytimes.com/2003/06/20/technology/20SPAM.html

DO CELL PHONES FLY WELL?
The Federal Aviation Administration and the Air Transport Association have
commissioned a new study to determine whether cell phones and other wireless
communications devices on commercial flights do or do not interfere with
navigational equipment. The head of the organization that will be doing the
study says, "There's potential of interference from these devices, but no
one has ever been able to corroborate that when you turn the electronic
gizmo on, it will cause an airplane failure." (Washington Post 20 Jun 2003)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14290-2003Jun19.html

FALWELL WINS IN BATTLE OVER SITES USING HIS NAME
The Rev. Jerry Falwell has won his battle with an Illinois man who created
parody Web sites using Falwell's name. Falwell had lodged a previous
complaint about the sites with the World Intellectual Property Organization
(WIPO), but WIPO ruled against him. Recently he learned that his own
organization had trademarked the name Jerry Falwell several years ago when
he was doing a television talk show. When that became known, the Illinois
man decided to surrender the site names to Falwell, rather than face a
lawsuit. (AP/Atlanta Journal-Constitution 19 Jun 2003)
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/0603/20falwell.html

E-FILERS MAY GET EXTRA TWO WEEKS NEXT YEAR
To encourage tax payers to save the government money by filing their taxes
electronically, the House of Representatives has passed a bill that would
extend the deadline to April 30th for those who pay their taxes
electronically. The Senate will have to pass a similar bill if the measure
is to become law. (AP/Los Angeles Times 20 Jun 2003)
http://shorl.com/dugretegresustu

*****

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     "If you are going through hell, keep going." (Winston Churchill)

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##THE RETURN OF FERMAT'S LAST THEOREM
     A number of NewsScan Daily subscribers have suggested that we provide
this addendum telling "the rest of the story" about Fermat's Last Theorem,
and NewsScan friend Richard McCoy has called our attention to a 1997 PBS
broadcast in the NOVA series entitled "The Proof -- Solving Fermat: Andrew
Wiles." See http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/proof/wiles.html,  which has the
following to say: 
     "Andrew Wiles devoted much of his entire career to proving Fermat's
Last Theorem, the world's most famous mathematical problem. In 1993, he made
front-page headlines when he announced a proof of the problem, but this was
not the end of the story; an error in his calculation jeopardized his life's
work. Andrew Wiles spoke to NOVA and described how he came to terms with the
mistake, and eventually went on to achieve his life's ambition. Wiles
finally proved Fermat's Last Theorem in 1995."
     As a footnote, we should note that Wiles used 20th century mathematical
techniques that could not have been known by Fermat in the 17th century. And
so, whatever proof Fermat referred to in his marginalia, it was hardly
likely to be  the one offered by 20th century mathematician Wiles. Fermat's
own proof is therefore still a mystery awaiting solution using only math
techniques available in the 17th century. (Of course, to say this is in no
way meant meant to take away from Andrew Wiles's outstanding achievement!)

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: HOW TO FORM A DEMOCRACY
     Historian Bernard Bailyn comments on the creativity of America's
Founding Fathers as shapers of the new democracy:
     "The Founders of the American nation were one of the most creative
groups in modern history. Some among them, especially in recent years, have
been condemned for their failures and weaknesses -- for their racism,
sexism, compromises, and violations of principle. And indeed moral judgments
are as necessary in assessing the lives of these people as of any others.
But we are privileged to know and to benefit from the outcome of their
efforts, which they could only hopefully imagine, and ignore their main
concern: which was the possibility, indeed the probability, that their
creative enterprise -- not to recast the social order but to transform the
political system -- would fail: would collapse into chaos or autocracy.
Again and again they were warned of the folly of defying the received
traditions, the sheer unlikelihood that they, obscure people on the outer
borderlands of European civilization, knew better than the established
authorities that ruled them; that they could successfully create something
freer, ultimately more enduring than what was then known in the centers of
metropolitan life.
     "Since we inherit and build on their achievements, we now know what the
established world of the eighteenth century flatly denied but which they
broke through convention to propose -- that absolute power need not be
indivisible but can be shared among states within a state and among branches
of government, and that the sharing of power and the balancing of forces can
create not anarchy but freedom.
     "We know for certain what they could only experimentally and
prayerfully propose -- that formal, written constitutions, upheld by
judicial bodies, can effectively constrain the tyrannies of both executive
force and populist majorities.
     "We know, because they had the imagination to perceive it, that there
is a sense, mysterious as it may be, in which human rights can be seen to
exist independent of privileges, gifts, and donations of the powerful, and
that these rights can somehow be defined and protected by the force of law.
     "We casually assume, because they were somehow able to imagine, that
the exercise of power is no natural birthright but must be a gift of those
who are subject to it."
                              ***
See http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0375413774/newsscancom/ref=nosim
for Bernard Bailyn's "To Begin The World Anew: The Genius and Ambiguities of
the American Founders" -- or look for it in your favorite library. (We
donate all revenue from our book recommendations to adult literacy
programs.)

SAFE & SOUND IN THE CYBER AGE
     In this issue, our security columnists Chey and Stephen Cobb give us
Part II of "You Say TIA, I Say Genoa":
     In our last column we promised to explain why we think the U.S.
government¹s Terrorist Information Awareness program (also known as Genoa)
will do little to improve national security and may actually decrease
individual security (see Newsscan May 30, 2003).
     Just to refresh memories, a recent edition of The National Law Journal
described TIA as ³a five-year project to develop and integrate computer
technologies that will sift through public and private databases to find
patterns and associations that suggest terrorist activity. The databases
would include financial, medical, communications and biometric
(fingerprints, gait, iris) data. The technologies would be used by
intelligence, counterintelligence, law enforcement and homeland security
agencies.²
     The problem, as we see it, is that, no matter how much data it pulls,
TIA simply won't work. It is akin to examining all the leaves on the all
trees in a national park to determine which one will fall next. Consider all
the data and computer power currently in the hands of the NSA. Worldwide,
they have acres and acres of the world¹s most powerful computers collecting,
collating, indexing, and disseminating raw data. As much of the data as
possible is machine-crunched for pattern analysis, but much of the work is
left for human review. The NSA had tons of data on Bin Laden and Al Qaeda,
but no one ever saw a pattern for 9/11. If the NSA and all their gazillions
of processors plus a lot of very experienced analysts can't see these
patterns, how can we expect a new and unproven TIA/Genoa processor to find
patterns?
     Why can¹t the NSA, CIA, FBI, MI6, Mossad, TIA, or any other
intelligence gathering entity find patterns for future terrorist acts?
Terrorists do not and will not fit patterns! Do the unexpected is rule
number two in the terrorist play book, right after create terror. Why did
the attacks of 9/11 succeed? Because nobody had done that before. In the
past, whenever hijackers had taken over a plane they exhibited a will to
live. Acquiescence was a reasonable response. 9/11 changed that. Forget Air
Marshals and armed pilots, anyone who stands up and makes a fuss on a plane
today is going to get flattened by sheer numbers of heroic passengers.
     There is every reason to think the next big attack will be every bit as
innovative as 9/11. As much as some people would like to think otherwise,
terrorists are not stupid. Terrorists are intelligent, organized, and
passionate about their causes. They are extremely adaptable to changing
situations. Human intelligence and infiltration is the only way to discover
terrorist plans, not sifting through acres of haystacks of bits and bytes.
Congressman Porter Goss, Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence recently stated that we spend to much money on spying
"machines" and too little in creating more James Bonds. We wholeheartedly
agree with him.
     So, why should we spend millions of dollars continuing to build and
staff a system that will not and cannot achieve its intended purpose, while
potentially creating huge security holes into secret government networks?
Not only is it a information security nightmare, TIA has the potential to
create complicated human rights abuses when faulty algorithms identify
innocent individuals as potential terrorists. You know how hard it is to
keep your credit reports correct and free from erroneous information. How
the heck are you going to defend yourself against errors in a secret
government database?
     Sadly, the rights of individuals are being eroded by our country's
knee-jerk reaction to acts of terrorism. For once in our history as a
nation, we are faced with a problem that will not be controlled by the sheer
determination for which we are famous. We Americans are control freaks. It's
hard for us to realize, much less admit, that this time there are no
one-step solutions. But throwing a ton of money into technological
gee-wizardry is not going to save us from a fanatic who is determined to
plant a bomb at the local shopping mall. At a time when our country needs to
be spending money on job creation and health care, we don't have the luxury
of funding an unproven system such as TIA. With the same money, we could
hire and train a heck of a lot of spies to infiltrate terrorist
organizations, one of the few anti-terror tactics that has a track record of
results. 
     In our eagerness to find solutions to terrorism on our soil, we have
already acquiesced while PATRIOT I and PATRIOT II became reality, the
negative implications of which for personal privacy have yet to be fully
grasped. Can we afford to let TIA progress any further?
     [Chey Cobb, CISSP, the author of ³Network Security for Dummies,² is an
independent consultant (www.cheycobb.com) and a former senior technical
security advisor to the NRO. She can be emailed as chey at patriot.net.
Stephen Cobb, CISSP, developed computer programs to audit oil companies in
the early eighties. More recently, he helped develop SpamSquelcher to stop
spam. He can be emailed as scobb at eprivacygroup.com.]


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