NewsScan Daily, 5 September 2003 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 5 September 2003 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        Colleges More Vigilant Against Viruses
        Recording Industry Offers Amnesty to Music-Swappers
        New Film Premieres on the Net
        Cashing In on 'Trash Traffic'
        ICANN Takes Hits From Lawmakers
        Woman Gets E-Gov Czar-Job at OMB

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Worth Thinking About: Character and Political Office
        Safe & Sound in the Cyber Age

COLLEGES MORE VIGILANT AGAINST VIRUSES
Reeling from the recent rash of computer viruses, U.S. colleges and 
universities are taking unusually aggressive steps against further 
infection by returning students. University of North Texas technicians 
report they're eradicating viruses from about 10 PCs every hour, charging 
students a mandatory $30 cleaning fee for the service. Students cited for 
infectious computers must show proof they've been fixed before they can log 
back onto the campus network. Vanderbilt University reports about 25% of 
returning students have infected computers and Oberlin College IT director 
John Bucher says his department found viruses on nine out of every 10 
Windows-based PCs owned by students. Meanwhile, some schools managed to 
avert catastrophe by filtering e-mails and using antivirus software. Duke 
University computer security officer Christopher Cramer says his school 
filtered out 2.5 million infected e-mail messages, limiting the damage to 
only a few dozen PCs, and Temple University's mandatory use of Symantec's 
antivirus software kept the infection rate down to about 400 PCs out of 
35,000 students. "If it had been 10-fold, it would have crashed the 
network," says Temple chief information security officer Ariel Silverstone. 
(AP 4 Sep 2003)
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20030904/D7TBQM200.html

RECORDING INDUSTRY OFFERS AMNESTY TO MUSIC-SWAPPERS
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is planning to tell 
people who have illegally downloaded copyrighted music from the Internet 
that they will not be prosecuted providing they admit what they've done and 
pledge to delete the songs from their computers. (The amnesty offer won't 
apply, though, to music downloaders who have already been subpoenaed for 
RIAA copyright-infringement lawsuits.) Attorney Fred von Lohmann of the 
Electronic Frontier Foundation says: "I'll be curious to see how many opt 
for this. It will be an interesting measure of how much fear the recording 
industry has managed to inject into the American public." (AP/San Jose 
Mercury News 4 Sep 2005)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/6694357.htm

NEW FILM PREMIERES ON THE NET
Simon Beaufoy, credited with writing "The Full Monty," is debuting his 
latest film, "This Is Not a Love Song," on the Internet today at the same 
time it opens in a handful of cinemas. The movie, which has been described 
as a gritty "Deliverance"-style film, cost less than $800,000 to make and 
was shot in less than two weeks, using a digital camera. "Films will soon 
be able to reach audiences in a completely new way and that by embracing 
the possibilities of the digital world, we are offering a whole new form of 
entertainment to new audiences," says Paul Trijbits, head of the New Cinema 
Fund, which is sponsoring the groundbreaking event. The film will be 
streamed and can be downloaded at www.thisisnotalovesong.com . (CNN 5 Sep 2003)
http://www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/Movies/09/05/net.premier/index.html

CASHING IN ON 'TRASH TRAFFIC'
Every day, millions of Web users make typos while keying in URLs -- a 
phenomenon referred to as "trash traffic," which resourceful companies like 
Microsoft and AOL Time Warner have figured out how to redirect to their 
advantage. When a user mistypes an address, she is usually whisked off to 
an MSN or AOL Internet search engine (complete with advertisements), which 
suggests a list of sites she might have been trying to reach. Users who 
click on one of the possibilities might be redirected to a page with 
several hyperlinks, some of them ads. But now a group of Internet 
registries, including VeriSign, is eyeing the possibilities for monetizing 
trash traffic by diverting it their own sites. Internet founding father 
Vinton Cerf says such shenanigans could be detrimental to non-Web 
applications like e-mail because the registry operators would have to 
modify their DNS servers to do things they're not designed to do. "I'm 
adamantly opposed to it," says Cerf. (Wall Street Journal 5 Sep 2003)
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1062710102434100,00.html (sub req'd)

ICANN TAKES HITS FROM LAWMAKERS
Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) is critical of ICANN (the Internet 
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) for not doing enough to stop 
scammers and child pornographers from registering under false names with 
stolen credit cards: "I'm disappointed with the failure of the marketplace 
and regulators to deal with this problem. A legislative solution seems 
necessary." And Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) agrees: "There's not a real 
seriousness of intent either by ICANN or the Department of Commerce to have 
an accurate whois database." Commerce Department General Counsel Theodore 
Kassinger says that ICANN is busy working on solving the problem. 
(Reuters/USA Today 4 Sep 2003)
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2003-09-04-net-id-checks_x.htm

WOMAN GETS E-GOV CZAR-JOB AT OMB
The U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has selected Karen Evans as 
its new associate administrator of e-government and IT. Evans has been 
current chief information officer of the Department of Energy. Government 
Computer News was enthusiastic about the appointment, noting that the new 
administrator "will take over the government's top IT post as 25 
Quicksilver e-government initiatives are nearing completion, and the next 
wave of projects are in the planning stages." She will face an immediate 
problem securing funding for e-gov projects. Internet News writes: "The 
House Appropriations Committee is calling for only $1 million in 2004 
funding for e-gov initiatives, which invests in inter-agency projects with 
government-wide applications. The Bush Administration requested $45 million 
for the program." (Washington Post 4 Sep 2003)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26204-2003Sep4.html

*****

FLASH CARD
      "The true conquests, the only ones that leave no regret, are those 
that have been wrested from ignorance." (Napoleon Bonaparte)

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: CHARACTER AND POLITICAL OFFICE
      Political pundit Robert Shogan comments on how character plays into 
how we vote for president:
      "In the past, most political scientists treated the personal 
qualities of White House contenders as superficial factors, less 
consequential than party loyalty and the importance of issues in 
determining election outcomes. But the erosion of party allegiance and the 
haziness of campaign issue debate has led scholars to put greater weight on 
the traits of individual candidates. A landmark study of voter assessments 
of presidential candidates, based on data collected by the National 
Election Studies covering nine presidential elections starting with 
Eisenhower's victory in 1952, concluded that at least five dimensions of an 
individual candidate's makeup have an important part in influencing which 
lever voters pull on election day. Besides competence, these include 
integrity, reliability, charisma, and personal characteristics, a sort of 
grab bag of miscellaneous factors such as a candidate's age, demeanor, and 
background.
      "These judgments are of course highly subjective and are made more 
so, as the study notes, because in evaluating these individual traits, 
voters draw on their own well-established conceptions about individual 
behavior and presidential performance. As Walter Lippmann pointed out in 
his celebrated 'Public Opinion,' 'We do not so much see this man and that 
sunset; rather we notice the thing is man or sunset and see chiefly what 
our mind is already full of on these subjects.'
      "The authors of the study conclude that 'people have a preexisting 
knowledge structure or scheme concerning what a president should be like, 
and judge real candidates according to how well they meet the elements of 
these schemas.' Moreover, they point out that the impact of character 
traits on the campaign is the result of a dynamic process that feeds on 
itself. 'Voters abstract from their experience of past presidents those 
features and behaviors they associate with political success, and then 
evaluate other candidates with respect to these same characteristics.' For 
their part, candidates during the campaign emphasize certain of their 
characteristics in ways intended to get favorable reaction from the voters. 
'Voters in turn respond to these campaign messages not only because they 
are relevant to their scheme for presidential candidates but also because 
these are the terms in which the political dialogue is conducted.'"
                                  ***
See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0813368723/newsscancom/ref=nosim 
for Robert Shogan's "The Double-Edged Sword: How Character Makes and Ruins 
Presidents, From Washington to Clinton" -- 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
      "Submitted for Your Inspection" by Chey and Stephen Cobb
      This week's column comes to you from a cyber-cafe in Sitka, Alaska, 
where bandwidth is at a premium, so we will again postpone our promised 
discussion of cryptography and send something shorter, about something that 
happened on our way to the last frontier.
      It took us three flights to get from Florida to Alaska. When we 
arrived in Sitka and picked up our checked bags from the conveyor belt, 
Stephen noticed that his bag had a blue plastic tag attached, acting like a 
seal between the zippers used to open the bag. The tag had a serial number 
and the letters "TSA." When we checked into the hotel and opened our bags, 
Stephen found a printed note that said: "To protect you and your fellow 
passengers, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is required by 
law to inspect all checked baggage. As part of this process, some bags are 
opened and physically inspected. Your bag was among those selected for 
physical inspection."
      The note continued: "If the TSA screener was unable to open your bag 
for inspection because it was locked, the screener may have been forced to 
break the locks on your bag. TSA sincerely regrets having to do this, and 
has taken care to reseal your bag upon completion of inspection. However, 
TSA is not liable for damage to your locks resulting from this necessary 
security precaution."
      Now this is what you call a security dilemma. Do you lock your 
checked bags to stop people stealing things out of them? Having experienced 
theft of this nature, we find the idea of not locking bags hard to accept 
(although it must be said that we generally avoid placing precious objects 
in checked bags). Is leaving them unlocked an invitation, a temptation?
      And what kind of damage is going to be done by the TSA if you really 
lock your bags tightly? We have friends who enjoy the shooting arts. What 
happens to a gun safe placed in a checked bag? Or a jewelry safe placed in 
a checked bag?
      All interesting questions, but not as troubling as the realization 
that two years after 9/11 we have all been made suspects. Is there a 
pattern of pale-skinned American citizens who are also middle-aged 
businessmen of European descent carrying out deadly terrorist attacks 
against America? Not that we have heard of. So why rifle through their 
luggage? The resources required could surely be better deployed checking 
more closely people who fit the terrorist profile.
      And what does the government risk by continuing this behavior? We 
suggest that it risks the goodwill of the citizenry, some of whom are 
already beginning to wonder if the war on terror is going to be like the 
war on drugs, a never-ending excuse for going over budget and needlessly 
interfering in innocent lives, at home and in far-flung places, annoying 
patriots and allies alike. If you doubt this, wait until your bag rolls off 
the conveyor belt bearing a blue tag and you open it to find someone has 
rifled through your things.
      Please note that, by the time this column appears we will be on a 
fishing boat in the Gulf of Alaska out of range of the Internet and unable 
to answer email until later in the month.
      [Chey Cobb, CISSP, the author of "Network Security for Dummies," 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 dot net. 
Stephen Cobb, CISSP, has been a U.S citizen since 1981, and points out 
that, unlike most citizens, he passed a test to become one. He can be 
emailed as scobb at cobb dot com.]

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