Privacy
Defense Officials Lament Lost Data-Mining Opportunities
     Congress' decision to terminate funding for the Defense Department's Terrorist Information Awareness program has cast a pall over other, potentially useful data-mining applications, Defense officials told their Technology and Privacy Advisory Committee. One halted program involves attempts to identify suicide bombers attacking U.S. interests overseas. Deputy Defense Undersecretary Sue Payton said such restrictions were "absolutely" a significant impediment in failing to prevent recent bombings in Istanbul, Turkey. Another top official shed light on the airline-passenger profiling system that an Army contractor developed with personal data from JetBlue Airways. Using a hypothesis developed by studying the data, the project identified terrorists with 83 percent accuracy, said Thomas Killion, the Army's chief scientist and acting deputy assistant secretary for research and technology. But as a result of privacy concerns raised by the use of the data without customer consent, the Army's inspector general is investigating the matter, Killion said.

Security
Police Official Pans Grant Process For 'First Responders'
     The current formula for distributing federal grants to "first responders" to emergencies does not reserve enough for communities most likely to be hit by terrorists, a police official told a House Judiciary subcommittee. New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, who has testified several times before Congress on the issue, told lawmakers on the Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security Subcommittee that the formula spreads the money "too thin, and [it] is distributed disproportionately away from the places mostly likely to be attacked." He was among the state and federal officials to testify about efforts to revamp the grant process. House lawmakers have introduced three bills, H.R. 2512, H.R. 3158 and H.R. 3266, to change the Homeland Security Department's program from a formula based on population to one that considers threats, vulnerabilities and risks. Separately, a House Homeland Security subcommittee passed H.R. 3266, the bill authored by panel Chairman Christopher Cox, R-Calif.

Science
House Votes To Authorize About $4 Billion For Nanotech
     The House easily passed a bill that would authorize nearly $4 billion for the coordination of federal nanotechnology programs. The measure, passed by voice vote, seeks to strengthen planning and coordination among the nearly 20 agencies across government that are involved in nanotech research and development. The bill, S. 189, would create a national center for research coordination and a center to study societal and ethical implications of nanotechnology. It also would provide for outside expert advice through a broader White House science panel and require regular public input into R&D efforts. House Science Committee ranking Democrat Ralph Hall of Texas said the scope of future advances through nanotechnology, the manipulation of matter at the molecular level, is so broad that it "leaves no product untouched."

Cyber Security
Specialists See Need For New Ideas In Computer Protection
     Without new concepts and applications for computer security, networking will fail to reach its full potential, and it may collapse under the strain of unsolicited commercial e-mail and computer viruses and worms, experts warned. Computer scientists identified cyber-security problems and proposed solutions at an Association for Computing Machinery event and shared their findings and recommendations. Eugene Spafford of Purdue University said current trends have created a precarious computing environment. He said those trends include: smaller, cheaper computers within household items, cars and other devices; more devices per network; more Internet users worldwide; more data collection and storage; and the running of more critical services online. John Richardson of Intel said the speed of computer networks, combined with the number of users, the ready access to virus-writing tools and increasingly unpredictable computer attacks, has led to the release of nearly 80,000 unique viruses on the Internet.

Spectrum
Panel Debates Call For Digital Trust Fund From Auction Money
     Dedicating the proceeds of spectrum auctions toward a trust fund for digital education and technology programs would help ensure the nation's competitive edge by creating economic security and a well-educated population, proponents of the idea said. But at a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing, critics said the fund could divert money from other much-needed programs, such as security and health care. When the FCC auctions spectrum, Americans benefit from new services, but they also deserve benefits "of the dividends that can reaped by investing the money wisely," Edward Markey, D-Mass., said about his legislation to create the Digital Opportunity Investment Trust. His proposal would use 30 percent of auction proceeds to fund education programs, research in learning and information technology, and the digitization of library, museum and university collections.

Telecom
Look To Asia For Broadband Ideas, Panelists Urge
     In three years, the United States went from the world's model for adoption of high-speed Internet access to a troubled wannabe, Asia telecommunications experts said. "It is very obvious today that we are behind" in some aspects of the Internet, said Congressional Internet Caucus co-Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va. In 1999, Korea and Japan, the world's broadband leaders, "stopped following the U.S. approach in broadband because it [was] not working," said Motohiro Tsuchiya, a professor at the International University of Japan in Tokyo. Now it is the United States' turn to look east for ideas on how to break out of its policy and marketplace deadlock on broadband. Perhaps the key to Japan's success is the government's decision to make broadband uptake a priority, panelists said. The government has supported telecom carriers with ultra-low-interest financing and tax incentives since 1995, said Yasu Taniwaki at the Embassy of Japan.

E-Government
Federal Tech Spending Expected To Grow 4 Percent A Year
     Information technology spending by the federal government will continue to rise over the next five years, according to the 15th annual forecast by the Government Electronics and Information Technology Association (GEIA). The group predicts that the total federal IT budget for fiscal 2004 will be $59.3 billion, with $31.4 billion to be spent on civilian agencies. For the next five years, GEIA predicted that total federal IT spending will rise 4.1 percent annually, to $72.5 billion, by fiscal 2009. GEIA had estimated a higher growth rate of 4.8 percent last year but lowered it after considering a trend toward greater efficiency and consolidation by federal agencies, as well as the negative impact of the federal budget deficit on discretionary funding. Spending on non-defense IT projects is being driven largely by the needs of the Homeland Security Department, GEIA wrote. The civilian portion of the federal IT budget is expected to grow 3.7 percent annually, reaching $37.6 billion in fiscal 2004.