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Telecom
FCC Still Deliberating Over AT&T, BellSouth Deal
by David Hatch
FCC negotiations over the AT&T, BellSouth merger remained fluid at deadline, with a Friday vote on the $80 billion transaction considered a 50-50 shot, according to sources.
While the commissioners are said to have made some progress, discussions are continuing over several key items. These include possible divestitures of wireless spectrum, thresholds for special access rates to the company's networks for high-volume business customers, and the scope of regulations governing the new company's provision of high-speed Internet service.
Other key issues under discussion involve the availability of stand-alone broadband service and build-out requirements for the merged entity's broadband network. Last month, the agency twice postponed votes on the deal to give regulators more time to deliberate.
"We are interested in expeditious FCC approval," AT&T spokesman Mike Balmoris said in an e-mail response to questions about the deal. "To that end, we have offered a number of conditions that directly benefit consumers and are unmatched by any other communications provider in a merger proceeding."
"We have not talked to the FCC, so we have nothing to tell you," BellSouth spokesman Bill McCloskey said.
Meanwhile, multiple sources said AT&T is signaling that if the FCC does not approve its merger with BellSouth on Friday, it may press for the inclusion of Republican Commissioner Robert McDowell. He has been acting as if recused because of his background as a former executive with Comptel, an association that represents Bell company competitors.
If McDowell participates, Martin would have a 3-2 GOP majority over the agency's Democratic members, though it is unclear exactly how McDowell might vote.
"If Mr. McDowell became involved in the proceeding, we are confident he would be an impartial commissioner," Balmoris added in his e-mail.
Without McDowell, there are two Republicans and two Democrats left to negotiate, giving the Democrats more leverage in the deliberations. Martin, who initially backed the deal with no conditions, appears to have the support of GOP regulator Deborah Taylor Tate.
That means Martin needs to align with at least one Democrat to win passage Friday. But at deadline, an industry source opposed to the merger said it appears that AT&T may not be prepared to accept concessions beyond those it previously recommended to the FCC.
In a Friday letter, AT&T urged the agency to reject all requests by its critics and competitors for additional concessions. Democratic regulators Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps are believed to view AT&T's conditions as insufficient.
On Wednesday, 26 House Democrats sent a letter to the FCC praising AT&T for its commitments to win approval of the deal. They also urged expeditious action by the agency. Signatories included California Reps. Joe Baca, Jane Harman, Doris Matsui and Loretta Sanchez, as well as Reps. Gene Green and Charles Gonzalez of Texas, Daniel Lipinski of Illinois, and Bart Stupak of Michigan.
"We represent hundreds of thousands of constituents who will benefit from expanded access to ubiquitous and affordable broadband technologies in our congressional districts," they wrote.
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Security
Leader Seeks Stronger Voice In Data-Sharing Strategy
by Andrew Noyes
The departing chairman of a global advisory committee on information sharing warned members Thursday to make their voices heard when details of a long-awaited, U.S. government-led strategy on data swapping finally are released.
"Don't kid yourself," said Kenneth Bouche, an Illinois State Police colonel and chairman of the Global Justice Information Sharing Initiative, during the committee's meeting. "We're sitting at the kids' table at Thanksgiving" when it comes to involvement in the forthcoming national information-sharing strategy.
The strategy is being led by the office of the national intelligence director. The initiative that Bouche heads, which is administered by the office of justice programs at the Justice Department, is comprised of more than 30 independent organizations within the law enforcement, judicial and correctional communities.
Bouche said he has been advocating for a system like the national strategy for three years, but few details about the program have been released to date. "You'll need to look at these directives when they come out," he advised the group, whose stakeholders must articulate "what's a good idea, what won't work [and] what stinks."
Bouche said his group, which has a relatively low profile among government advisory committees, will "really have to take a stand here." It will need to create guidance documents to advise federal partners in the strategy once the details are made available, he said.
Bouche, whose successor was to be elected later in the biannual meeting, was careful not to minimize the importance of the "bits and pieces" of strategic plans he has previewed. "I'm pretty excited about what I've seen. They will set some really great direction," he said, "but [the strategy] may not address your needs."
He was visibly frustrated by the delay in the strategy's implementation.
The National Consortium for Justice Information and Statistics, known by the acronym SEARCH, as well as the National Association of State Chief Information Officers, will have important roles when the strategy is made public, Bouche said. The groups will need to start "scenario building" to help stakeholders "understand how different players interact with the system."
"This needs to be an item on your next agenda," Bouche said. He added that the strategy also needs to be a top priority for the Criminal Intelligence Coordinating Council, which is composed of members from law enforcement agencies at all levels of government.
In April 2006, Bouche's group noted that the strategy involves more than "a simple rewrite" of the national plan for sharing intelligence on crime, which was unveiled by former Attorney General John Ashcroft in May 2004, with considerable input from the committee.
The group said pursuit of an information-sharing strategy "involves leveraging existing systems and networks" and identifying best practices to answer questions such as: What types of information do the systems have, and with whom do they communicate and share information?
ODNI Deputy Program Manager Sue Reingold said Bouche has been a "persistent, important voice" representing state and local stakeholders. She said the NISS "should be released shortly" and will include a "framework for information sharing between federal, state and local partners" advocated by Global.
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Cyber Security
Agencies Close To Satisfying Cyber-Security Law
by Heather Greenfield
The White House Office of Management and Budget predicts that the percentage of federal systems complying with a 2004 law requiring agencies to identify cyber risks and develop ways to combat them will be up next year.
Karen Evans, OMB's administrator of e-government and information technology, told a cyber-security conference Thursday that early numbers based on reports submitted Oct. 1 show that 88 percent of systems will meet certification and accreditation. That is up from 85 percent last year. "That's good, but my goal is 90 percent, and my overall goal is 100 percent," Evans said.
She said the number of systems with tested contingency plans is expected to be 78 percent, compared with 60 percent in 2005.
The guidelines included in the Federal Information Security Management Act require agencies to analyze their applications, assess risk, and identify ways to combat that risk. Evans said those steps alone do not mean systems are secure.
She said it is often more telling when inspectors general assign ratings to see how agencies manage weaknesses, as new vulnerabilities emerge.
Evans said the number of agencies in which inspectors general are identifying remediation is expected to go from 17 in 2005 to 19 this year. She said the numbers released Thursday at the conference organized by the Information Technology Association of America could change when the report is released in March.
Meanwhile, since the theft earlier this year of a laptop computer with personal data about veterans, chief information officers now must report security problems to the Homeland Security Department within an hour of learning of them. "As of Sept. 30, we've had 338 separate instances involving secure information," Evans said.
The computer was stolen from the home of a Veterans Affairs Department employee, but Evans said OMB does not believe it can solve the problem by prohibiting federal employees from taking data out of the office. Instead, agencies need to examine who has access to sensitive data and what is the risk, she said.
Keith Johnson, a vice president of Liquid Machines, agreed saying locking down data altogether hurts productivity. "We need collaboration," Johnson said.
On another front, Evans said agencies have started issuing the new identification cards that will be used for access to federal buildings and databases, as required by a 2004 presidential directive. "Most card-reading systems are not compatible with the cards that have been issued," Evans said in response to a question from a contractor at the conference.
Evans said agencies decide what systems to buy to read the cards. She said some already have card readers, but there is no date set to have them in place. She said it may not make sense for each agency to buy a card reader because there often are several agencies within one federal building, although some may require higher levels of security.
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Intellectual Property
Software Group Sues Two EBay Users For Piracy
by Andrew Noyes
Suspected peddlers of pirated software on the Internet auction site eBay were smacked with lawsuits Thursday by a major high-tech trade group. The Software and Information Industry Association plans on filing more complaints as additional sellers are identified.
The suits, filed in federal court in California, involve illegitimate McAfee software sold through eBay auctions in January. The action comes six months after the launch of an SIIA litigation program that monitors sites like eBay to find and help prosecute sellers of pirated goods.
In the complaint, SIIA alleged that illegal copies of the McAfee Internet Security Suite 2006 Version 8.0 and VirusScan 9.0 were sold by two defendants -- Edwin Flores and Diana Katz -- and at least 10 other individuals. The exact number of people involved has not been determined because several employees or colleagues may have helped in the selling.
SIIA alleges that Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Flores operates at eBay under the name "thecrip06." Katz, believed to be a resident of Manalapan, N.J., reportedly does business under the usernames "estimable3" and "Computing Ltd."
Estimable3, identified as an eBay "power seller," markets other programs, including Internet security and antivirus products from Kaspersky and Panda Software. It is unclear whether those products were pirated. The user also sold non-technology products like hand creams, cosmetics and wind chimes.
Kaspersky and Panda are not SIIA members, so SIIA's suit does not deal with those products, said Keith Kupferschmid, vice president of SIIA's anti-piracy division.
An eBay profile for Computing Ltd. could not be found, and a dossier for thecrip06 stated that the seller is "no longer a registered user." Estimable3 and thecrip06 both received positive feedback from their eBay buyers.
"Pirated software sales through online auction sites [are] a growing problem that hurts both business and consumers and threatens the credibility and viability of online auctions," Kupferschmid said.
McAfee anti-piracy chief Peter Beruk added that the lawsuits put eBay sellers on notice that "the industry will not tolerate unauthorized sales of software."
SIIA will file five more lawsuits in the next week or two against eBay users who sold pirated McAfee and Symantec products, Kupferschmid said in an interview. The association will start litigating on behalf of Adobe and other members later in the month.
The trade group also criticized eBay verified rights-owner program, which removes illegitimate auctions, for not adequately remedying the situation. EBay "hasn't been terribly responsive to our attempts to urge them to proactively combat the problem," Kupferschmid said. Therefore, SIIA's current investigations are targeted at eBay sellers.
While the group's legal actions are focused solely on users, Kupferschmid would not rule out the notion of holding the auction site liable for facilitating piracy in future suits. "There certainly may come a time when we feel there is no choice but to take action against eBay," he said.
EBay spokesman Hani Durzy said, "In the ongoing battle between brand owners and those who would look to infringe upon their rights, we stand firmly with the brand owners." He also said eBay's VeRO program "goes above and beyond what is legally required" and "has worked very effectively."
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E-Government
Student Competition Eyes Better E-Voting System
by Michael Martinez
Students from all over the globe soon will have an opportunity to compete against each other to build reliable, accurate election systems over the next several months.
The VoComp Competition, which officially launched Thursday, will pit teams of students from universities in the United States and abroad in a global competition to develop state-of-the-art election systems ready for use in real-life environments. The sponsor is the National Science Foundation, and the winning team will receive $10,000 from Election Systems & Software, one of the makers of current e-voting technology in the United States.
At a news conference, competition organizer Alan Sherman, a professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, said he hopes the event encourages students to develop innovative solutions to make elections fair, accurate and accessible to voters. "I believe strongly that competitions inspire people to perform at their best," Sherman said.
A joint team from UMBC and George Washington University already has entered the competition, along with teams from Rice and Stanford universities. International teams from Newcastle University in the United Kingdom and Wroclaw University in Poland also have entered the fray.
The systems submitted will be judged based on integrity, privacy, accessibility and transparency. User-friendliness of the technology and the quality of technical presentation also are part of the evaluation criteria.
The teams will have to test their systems on campus elections and mock elections next spring, and submit papers on them in June. A final round of competition for five teams will occur at a conference next July in Portland, Ore. Judges will include representatives from Microsoft, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Before the news conference, a team of students led by DigiCash founder David Chaum showed off their Punchscan system, an optical-scan system that allows voters to retain portions of their paper ballots as receipts and implements mandatory post-election audits.
The VoComp team of students from GWU, UMBC and the University of Ottawa developed the Punchscan system, which Chaum boasted was capable of ensuring complete transparency in the electoral process. The system, which will be entered into the VoComp competition, employs "bingo-style" ballots that are later scanned and tabulated.
Chaum said he is particularly excited that the students behind Punchscan will have an opportunity to participate in VoComp. He said the competition represents an olive branch between the academic community and e-voting manufacturers, which he said have developed a strained relationship during the past several years.
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Budget
Appropriators Tighten Defense, Security Spending
by Chris Strohm
Congressional appropriators are beginning to tighten the budget screws on runaway Defense Department spending and Homeland Security Department programs that are not showing results, according to an analysis released Thursday by an industry consulting firm.
Reston, Va.-based Input, which helps companies understand government spending, said the recently enacted fiscal 2007 budgets for those departments show that appropriators increasingly are turning a wary eye toward Defense supplemental funding requests and Homeland Security programs that are not producing.
Input analyst James Krouse said the budgets show that Congress will continue to provide significant funding where needed to support critical missions, but lawmakers are trying to slow spending in areas that do not have sound budget justifications.
In the fiscal 2007 Defense budget, for example, appropriators provided more overall funding than the White House requested, with the apparent intent that doing so will begin to end the department's practice of requesting additional funds each year, Krouse said.
"They baked in a larger percentage of money with the understanding that at some point supplementals will cease," he said. "What we see is almost a cap in supplemental funding coming. That's not what we've seen in the last two or three years."
The department, however, is still expected to ask for at least one more supplemental in fiscal 2007, Krouse added. Although Defense spending ended up close to the administration's original request, increased congressional oversight and budget pressures are likely to continue through the next budget cycle, according to Input.
Budget pressure also is increasing on Homeland Security, although for somewhat different reasons. According to Input's analysis, the department's budget provides significant funding to support border operations, including response and detection capabilities.
"These three areas were highlighted by Congress as most critical for homeland security needs and were funded accordingly," Krouse said. But he added that "Congress is turning up the heat on cost justifications, performance results and the expected results of high-risk [department] information technology programs."
Kraus noted that Homeland Security is a new department that has been reorganized internally since its creation three years ago. But he said patience from appropriators appears to be wearing thin.
Krouse said, for example, that appropriators told him during interviews that they are concerned the department is not getting the best results when it comes to spending on grants to emergency responders, including for systems to help them communicate across jurisdictions.
"A lot has been appropriated, but not a lot has been accomplished," he said. "What, as far as a return in investment, are we showing for Homeland Security to date?"
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Today's Feature:
State Roundup
Optical-scan voting machines deployed in several Connecticut counties for use in next week's election are susceptible to hackers, according to a report released Monday by researchers at the University of Connecticut.
Every Thursday, read the State Roundup by Michael Martinez
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E-briefs
Crime: The Justice Department nabbed 1,659 fugitive sex offenders in a week-long nationally coordinated round-up, officials said Thursday. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said the operation, led by the U.S. Marshals Service, resulted in the largest number ever of sex offenders captured in a single law enforcement sweep. More than 900 of the fugitives were wanted on charges of failing to register as a sex offender. The effort received a major boost from the enactment of H.R. 4472, which directs federal resources to rounding up sexual predators and helping state and local governments catch convicted individuals who failed to register in communities where they live, the department said. President Bush signed the bill in July.
Politics: A new study on political Web logs found that regular readers are more likely to be male, affluent, well-educated and liberal. The Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet at George Washington University received 7,863 responses to its online survey of voters. Forty percent said they had seen a political blog, but just 9 percent read them daily. Some 75 percent of daily political blog readers are male, and 41 percent are 35-54 years old. When it comes to party affiliation, 25 percent identified themselves as strong Democrats and 13 percent as strong Republicans. Independents account for 21 percent of daily political blog readers. Thirty-two percent described themselves as strong liberals, while 13 percent were strong conservatives. As for why they turned to blogs daily, 92 percent said blogs cover stories that the mainstream media is missing.
Privacy: A high-tech watchdog group last month quietly launched an initiative that focuses on domestic violence. Guilherme Roschke, a fellow at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, will head the project over the next two years. Victims often share much of their private lives with abusers and are especially vulnerable to privacy invasions, EPIC said. Weak data protection and snooping technologies can be exploited by abusers, officials said. "What are normal privacy risks faced by us all become matters of life and death in the domestic violence and stalking context," EPIC said. The new project will provide legal assistance to domestic-violence practitioners. EPIC will pay particular attention to the use of surveillance technologies such as secretly installed computer software and wiretaps, as well as safeguarding of data in government and court records and the protection of confidential records in the hands of domestic-violence service providers.
Intellectual Property: The performing rights organization SoundExchange is stepping up its outreach efforts to the music industry as a Dec. 15 registration deadline nears for those owed royalties on certain digital performances. In the past 45 days, the group has registered 913 artists and 196 record labels that could have lost royalties from their works on digital music services that were transmitted between 1996 and 2000. New registrations cut by 15 percent the number of artists and labels that appeared on SoundExchange's original unpaid artists and labels list, officials said. In September, the group published a roster of nearly 9,000 performers who had not registered to receive royalty payments. The group has doled out more than $53 million in digital royalties to more than 25,000 artists and labels since 2001.
Telecom: The National Cable and Telecommunications Association Tuesday urged the Commerce Department and the FCC to waive a requirement that cable set-top boxes be reengineered to accommodate insertable cable security cards. The new rules ban the integration of security features -- such as program descrambling -- into the boxes, making it easier for customers to switch cable providers. The restrictions, which take effect July 1, are designed to spur a robust marketplace for the units. But in a letter, NCTA President and CEO Kyle McSlarrow warned that the new requirements will cost consumers an extra $2 to $3 per month. NCTA and Verizon are seeking a waiver until newer technology is available that allows customers to download security technology to their cable boxes, or at least until Dec. 31, 2009, whichever comes first. In the alternative, NCTA has proposed that a federal subsidy program designed to help consumers purchase DTV converter boxes be expanded to subsidize cable boxes.
Business: Microsoft and Novell are entering a partnership to boost the Linux computer-operating system, an "open source" rival to Microsoft's proprietary Windows software. The Wall Street Journal reports that under the partnership, Microsoft will offer sales support of Suse Linux, a version of the operating system made by Novell. The companies also have agreed to develop technologies that will enable users to run both Suse Linux and Windows on their computers. The companies are expected to announce the goals of the agreement at a press conference Thursday in San Francisco.
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Editor in Chief -- Louis Peck, 202-739-8481
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