Civil Liberties
ACLU Sues Over Government's 'No Fly' List
     The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued on behalf of seven plaintiffs who allege that the federal "no fly" list violates airline passengers' rights to due process and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. The group sued in federal district court in Seattle, requesting that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) admit that the list violates constitutional rights and that the agency develop a system that does not discriminate against innocent passengers. Maintained by TSA, the no-fly list contains the names of suspected terrorists. Since its inception, however, the list has caused confusion among people who have the same names as terrorist suspects, and some innocent passengers have had trouble getting their names removed.

Budget
Coast Guard Plan For Modernization Veers Off Course
     A 20-year, multibillion-dollar program to overhaul the Coast Guard's traditional assets is sailing off the charted course, a government official told Congress. "We estimate that to return the program to its original 20-year completion schedule will cost about $2.2 billion more than the Coast Guard estimated when the program was implemented in 2002," said Margaret Wrightson, director of homeland security and justice issues for the General Accounting Office. She made the comments during a Senate Commerce subcommittee hearing on the Coast Guard's fiscal 2005 budget. In prepared testimony, Wrightson said fiscal 2004 funding and the fiscal 2005 request would give the beleaguered Deepwater acquisition program an extra $46 million over four years. The program seeks to develop an integrated system of ships, aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles, and computer and surveillance logistics, among other things.

E-Government
Tax Agency Blasted For Slow Pace Of Computer Upgrades
     Efforts by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to modernize its computer system have "woefully under performed," the chairman of a Senate Appropriations subcommittee said. "Schedule slippages and cost overruns have been epidemic," said Alabama Republican Richard Shelby, chairman of the spending subcommittee that oversees the IRS. The agency's business-systems modernization (BSM) plan is in its sixth year of a 15-year upgrade. "I am very concerned that BSM is becoming the 21st-century version of the tax-systems modernization program, which was the IRS' prior modernization effort that was abandoned [after] two years and $4 billion in federal tax dollars," Shelby said. "That effort was a complete loss." But IRS Commissioner Mark Everson said his agency is aware of the problem and is holding contractors accountable "in a way that's fairly [unusual] for the government."

Budget
Watchdog Roots Out Plenty Of 'Pork' In Annual Study
     Citizens Against Government Waste released its annual report on "pork-barrel spending," and while technology-related projects were not separately tabulated, a detailed look at the report shows a strong technology component to it. The biggest technology earmark cited by the report was $60 million for the Homeland Security Fellowship Program. "These awards are intended for students interested in pursuing the basic science and technology innovations that can be applied to the department's mission," the report's authors wrote, "but could become a slush fund in the future for politicians' pet projects." The 630 projects cited in the Congressional Pig Book Summary totaled $3.1 billion; they are a select sample of the 10,656 projects totaling $22.9 billion within the fiscal 2004 budget, according to the group.

Cyber Security
Lawmaker-Led Working Group Details Recommendations
     A corporate working group spearheaded by a House lawmaker released recommendations to increase the nation's cyber-security efforts. The Corporate Information Security Working Group (CISWG), led by Florida Republican Adam Putnam, suggested various security initiatives, such as legislation to ensure that federal departments incorporate information security into technology investments and market-based incentives for corporations to adopt cyber-security guidelines. The recommendations "contain innovative and creative approaches, utilizing a variety of tools to achieve a private-sector-driven, market-based approach to addressing corporate information security in every sector," Putnam said in a statement. The 25-member group, which includes senior leaders from companies, academia and institutions, suggested that Congress define information security as a component that "must be evaluated" in information technology investments for federal agencies.

Intellectual Property
Hollywood Gives Mixed Reviews Of Anti-Piracy Technologies
     Hollywood approved a new anti-piracy technology from Hewlett-Packard and Philips Electronics but rejected similar technological proposals from Microsoft, RealNetworks, Thomson and TiVo. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) sanctioned the HP and Philips technology, dubbed "Vidi," in filings at the FCC on its "broadcast flag" proceeding. Tuesday was the deadline for comments on the 13 anti-piracy technologies submitted to the agency for approval. According to material supplied by HP and Philips in their filings, Vidi is designed to prevent consumers from making unencrypted copies of video programming onto recordable digital videodiscs. Broadcasters would tag their digital TV transmissions with the flag, which would signal the computers and other devices using Vidi to encrypt recorded DVDs.

Lobbying
Nextel's Bid For Spectrum Swap Sparks Last-Minute Lobbying
     A lobbying battle about how to reduce interference between cellular telephones and emergency radios is expanding in a last-minute attempt to delay an FCC move to rearrange spectrum. The battle pits Nextel Communications, which over two years has crafted "consensus plan" with public-safety officials, against competitors AT&T, Cingular Wireless and Verizon Communications. Organizations representing police chiefs and fire chiefs and the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials are taking the lead on the public-safety side. They hope the FCC will approve the plan at its April 15 meeting. The Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association has opposed the plan on the grounds that Nextel would reap a windfall from swapping spectrum. In a forum at the New America Foundation, officials representing Cingular and the National Taxpayers Union joined with the think tank's spectrum analysts to criticize the proposal.

Domains
Spam Dominates Complaints About Database Of Domains
     The international body that oversees the Internet-addressing system has published its first report on problems surrounding contact information for registrations of domain names. Meeting a March 31 deadline, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) published a report on a mechanism created at InterNIC.net to record complaints regarding the "Whois" system for registering contact information on domains. Over the 18 months from September 2002 to February 2004, the system received 24,148 confirmed Whois complaints. Of those, 20 percent, or well more than 4,000, cited unsolicited commercial e-mail, or spam, in the text. Of the complaints, 82 percent referred to the .com domain, which has the majority of all domains. The .net and .org domains accounted for 13 percent and 5 percent of all reports.