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walktalker · 10-10-01, 02:36 PM

Snoop Bill Heads to Final Vote
A high-stakes showdown over the future of U.S. eavesdropping law is taking place behind closed doors on Capitol Hill. With scant time remaining before possible votes in the House and the Senate as early as Wednesday, the Bush administration is lobbying for permanent surveillance ability over the objections of top legislators. The biggest sticking point: an expiration date of December 2003 that the House Judiciary committee unanimously slapped on some of the additional Internet spying and wiretapping sections last week. An aide to Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan), the top Democrat on the committee, said Tuesday that the "administration does not want the Judiciary bill to go to the floor for a vote."
http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,47442,00.html

Why Anthrax Vaccine Is Scarce
The vaccine against anthrax is in the hands of a single company that is running out of money, hasn't gained FDA approval for the vaccine or its manufacturing facilities and hasn't produced a single dose of the vaccine since it took over production in 1998. The entire United States is relying on BioPort, of Lansing, Michigan, to produce the anthrax vaccine, for which demand has spiked since Sept. 11. The company has supplied the military with only half a million doses out of 14 million promised, leaving even front-line military personnel unprotected in the event of a bio-terrorism attack.
http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,47410,00.html

Mad Rush on Web for Anthrax Drug
Amid growing fears of a biological attack, Americans are rushing online to snap up supplies of the only antibiotic recommended by the FDA for treatment of exposure to anthrax bacteria. Orders for ciprofloxacin, or Cipro, skyrocketed in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center and reports that several people were exposed to anthrax in Florida, Internet drugstores said. VirtualMedicalGroup.com, an online firm that provides both prescription and pharmaceutical services, started offering Cipro to customers at the end of September, and the site has been processing about 100 orders a day ever since, said CEO Tania Malik.
http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,47429,00.html

The Hunt for Osama in October
With U.S. warplanes now free to roam over Afghanistan, the stage is set for powerful satellites and reconnaissance aircraft to pursue Osama bin Laden in a high-tech manhunt from the skies. The array of equipment at the allies' disposal sounds as though it comes from a James Bond novel: planes that stay in the air for days, sensors that can track humans in caves, satellites that take pictures from space. The United States and its ally Britain have an impressive choice of surveillance technology that provide a detailed picture of the hostile Afghan terrain, military experts say.
http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,47471,00.html

Freelance Victory Blurs Picture
Finding the intersection between decades-old copyright law and where it applies in the digital world remains far off the map in the wake of a critical Supreme Court decision on Tuesday. In the year's second significant victory for freelancers versus digital publishers, the court refused to take up a lower court ruling that said National Geographic should have paid freelance photographer Jerry Greenberg for republishing his works in a 30-disc CD-ROM set without his permission.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,47430,00.html

EU Says MS Obstructed Probe
The European Commission has told Microsoft the company obstructed the EU executive's investigation of its practices, a source familiar with the case said on Wednesday. The allegations against the Seattle-based software giant, reported in The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, were contained in the formal statement of objections sent to the company in August. A sanitized version of the document, with market-sensitive data deleted, was distributed outside the commission about 10 days ago. The document accused Microsoft of having sought to obstruct the investigation by misleading those looking into the situation, according to the source.
http://www.wired.com/news/antitrust/...,47448,00.html

House Hears Cyberwar Fears
Computer experts want Congress to imagine a terrorist assault that combines the massive destruction of Sept. 11 with a simultaneous cyber-attack. In testimony prepared for a House hearing Wednesday, a witness raised chilling "what if" scenarios as experts called for a crash research effort to protect critical computer systems. "What if the terrorists were also able to impact our communications system, thus hampering the rescue and recovery efforts?" asked Terry Benzel, a vice president of Network Associates in Santa Clara, California.
http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,47467,00.html

Spies in sky guide strikes -- Unmanned planes inform without risk
Small robotic aircraft may help the U.S. military to identify targets and assess damage in the Afghan war. Ten years after they were extensively deployed in the Gulf War, robotic aircraft with video camera "eyes" have found a secure niche in U.S. military engagements. Known as "unmanned aerial vehicles" (UAVs), their primary role is surveillance: They prowl over enemy terrain and transmit what they "see" back to their ground operators, who remotely guide them with joysticks.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...0/MN127267.DTL

War on Terrorism Could Clog Military's Space Airwaves
The effort to track down Osama bin Laden and rid the world of terrorism could be bogged down by clogged pipes on the military's satellite-based information superhighway as the ground forces rely more heavily than ever on their ability to phone home for instructions. Though one military analyst said operation Enduring Freedom would have to escalate out of control for such a scenario to take place, the search for bin Laden may already have spurred the Department of Defense to shift orbiting eyeballs away from Iraq and could force the military to purchase satellite time from private companies. It wouldn't be the first time.
http://www.space.com/news/military_clogged_011008.html

The "other" DMCA
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act -- a revision to U.S. copyright laws -- has taken a real beating recently, thanks in large part to a high-profile case against a sympathetic computer programmer branded as a criminal hacker. Despite this case, the DMCA is, at least in part, a useful law that benefits e-commerce. The problem is that the DMCA is a very lengthy law and many press accounts and Netizens have focused lately on only one portion of it, thereby tarnishing the whole law as a legal mistake. The DMCA has been in the news because it is at the center of the U.S. government's criminal case against Dmitry Sklyarov of Elcomsoft, a company that produces a program known as the "Advanced eBook Processor."
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1276-210...html?tag=bt_bh

Have cell phone, will roam -- worldwide
Bell Labs researchers say they've jumped a significant hurdle in the continuing development of cell phone technology: allowing a caller to use the same phone anywhere in the world. So-called global roaming is virtually impossible today because wireless carriers use different types of phone networks that can't communicate with one another and require their own specially made phones. Business people traveling overseas often carry different cell phones because carriers on each continent use different networks. Satellite phones offer service closest to global access, but they're more expensive than cell phones -- sometimes three times as much -- and the phones themselves only work on their own network of satellites.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Freedoms Curtailed in Defense of Liberty
Responding to the threats facing America's free democratic system, White House officials called upon Americans to stop exercising their democratic freedoms Monday. "In this time of national crisis, a time when our most cherished freedoms are threatened, all Americans — not just outspoken talk-show hosts like Bill Maher — must watch what they say," White House press secretary Ari Fleischer told reporters. "Now more than ever, if we want to protect democracy for future generations, it is vital that nobody speak out about the issues of the day." "We must all do our patriotic duty to protect our country's great ideals," Fleischer continued, "and we have to be careful about what opinions we express if we are to defend our Constitution, a sacred document behind which all Americans must stand united as one."
http://www.theonion.com/onion3736/fr...curtailed.html

German TV Show Contends Bank Hack Assignment Not Wrong
Members of the news team of a popular German high-tech TV show have openly admitted that they asked hackers to break into the computers of one of Germany's largest banks. Bernd Leptihn, news head of the TV show Technical Adviser (Ratgeber Technik), told Newsbytes, "We didn't do anything wrong. I don't think the hackers did anything wrong. I didn't do anything wrong." Leptihn was responding to comments made Friday by a spokesman from HypoVereinsbank, who told Newsbytes that the bank was considering legal action against Technical Adviser and the hackers. But before the bank makes a decision, it must first determine whether the hackers acted on their own, or acted only after consultation with Technical Adviser, which is produced in Hamburg.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/171013.html

Sites Scramble To Fix Web Portal Security Bug
A security flaw in a popular Web portal system could enable attackers to completely compromise a site and is actively being exploited by Web page defacers, security experts warned. The bug in all current versions of PHP-Nuke allows unauthorized users to copy files to and from the server hosting the program, according to an advisory from a hacking group known as TWLC. A search at Google.com revealed that approximately 131,000 Web sites use PHP-Nuke, a free, open-source software program that runs on Linux as well as Windows and other operating system platforms.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/171006.html

Microsoft Tosses $51Mil To P2P Firm Groove Networks
Software giant Microsoft Corp. has backed almost all of a $54 million round of financing by Groove Networks, the maker of peer-to-peer software for business co-founded by Ray Ozzie of Lotus Notes fame. Microsoft's $51 investment will give the Redmond, Wash., company a minority stake in Groove, whose software combines the group collaboration concepts behind Notes with the virtual-network links that can be created by peer-to-peer (P2P) technology. However, while P2P often is associated with potentially illegal file-swapping activities via services such as Napster, Gnutella or Morpheus, Ozzie's Groove targets businesses that need secure networks for collaboration among small groups.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/170996.html

As Spammers Get Clever, ISPs Work To Outfox Them
Spam is now responsible for up to 30 percent of company e-mail, pan-European Internet carrier Easynet says. The sheer volume and techniques used by spammers has forced the Internet service provider to move to new technologies to counter the problem. Spam is a slang name for the electronic equivalent of postal junk mail, which tends to annoy e-mail users by its sheer volume. Justin Fielder, the Easynet's head of product marketing, told Newsbytes that, where spammers used e-mail databases previously, they are now using rotating first names, surnames and initials to ensure that at least some of their spam mail reaches the recipient.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/170998.html

Kabul pounded in heavy strike
U.S. warplanes pounded cities in Afghanistan for a fourth straight night Wednesday, as U.S. defense sources said the Pentagon has decided to use 5,000-pound “bunker buster” bombs on underground Taliban sites. Pentagon strategists were also weighing plans to deploy U.S. special forces inside Afghanistan — both to track down extremist Osama bin Laden’s network and to help Afghan opposition forces fighting the Taliban.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/627086.asp

More news later on

10-10-01, 02:36 PM	#2
walktalker The local newspaper man Join Date: Aug 2000 Location: Montreal Posts: 2,036	Snoop Bill Heads to Final Vote A high-stakes showdown over the future of U.S. eavesdropping law is taking place behind closed doors on Capitol Hill. With scant time remaining before possible votes in the House and the Senate as early as Wednesday, the Bush administration is lobbying for permanent surveillance ability over the objections of top legislators. The biggest sticking point: an expiration date of December 2003 that the House Judiciary committee unanimously slapped on some of the additional Internet spying and wiretapping sections last week. An aide to Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan), the top Democrat on the committee, said Tuesday that the "administration does not want the Judiciary bill to go to the floor for a vote." http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,47442,00.html Why Anthrax Vaccine Is Scarce The vaccine against anthrax is in the hands of a single company that is running out of money, hasn't gained FDA approval for the vaccine or its manufacturing facilities and hasn't produced a single dose of the vaccine since it took over production in 1998. The entire United States is relying on BioPort, of Lansing, Michigan, to produce the anthrax vaccine, for which demand has spiked since Sept. 11. The company has supplied the military with only half a million doses out of 14 million promised, leaving even front-line military personnel unprotected in the event of a bio-terrorism attack. http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,47410,00.html Mad Rush on Web for Anthrax Drug Amid growing fears of a biological attack, Americans are rushing online to snap up supplies of the only antibiotic recommended by the FDA for treatment of exposure to anthrax bacteria. Orders for ciprofloxacin, or Cipro, skyrocketed in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center and reports that several people were exposed to anthrax in Florida, Internet drugstores said. VirtualMedicalGroup.com, an online firm that provides both prescription and pharmaceutical services, started offering Cipro to customers at the end of September, and the site has been processing about 100 orders a day ever since, said CEO Tania Malik. http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,47429,00.html The Hunt for Osama in October With U.S. warplanes now free to roam over Afghanistan, the stage is set for powerful satellites and reconnaissance aircraft to pursue Osama bin Laden in a high-tech manhunt from the skies. The array of equipment at the allies' disposal sounds as though it comes from a James Bond novel: planes that stay in the air for days, sensors that can track humans in caves, satellites that take pictures from space. The United States and its ally Britain have an impressive choice of surveillance technology that provide a detailed picture of the hostile Afghan terrain, military experts say. http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,47471,00.html Freelance Victory Blurs Picture Finding the intersection between decades-old copyright law and where it applies in the digital world remains far off the map in the wake of a critical Supreme Court decision on Tuesday. In the year's second significant victory for freelancers versus digital publishers, the court refused to take up a lower court ruling that said National Geographic should have paid freelance photographer Jerry Greenberg for republishing his works in a 30-disc CD-ROM set without his permission. http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,47430,00.html EU Says MS Obstructed Probe The European Commission has told Microsoft the company obstructed the EU executive's investigation of its practices, a source familiar with the case said on Wednesday. The allegations against the Seattle-based software giant, reported in The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, were contained in the formal statement of objections sent to the company in August. A sanitized version of the document, with market-sensitive data deleted, was distributed outside the commission about 10 days ago. The document accused Microsoft of having sought to obstruct the investigation by misleading those looking into the situation, according to the source. http://www.wired.com/news/antitrust/...,47448,00.html House Hears Cyberwar Fears Computer experts want Congress to imagine a terrorist assault that combines the massive destruction of Sept. 11 with a simultaneous cyber-attack. In testimony prepared for a House hearing Wednesday, a witness raised chilling "what if" scenarios as experts called for a crash research effort to protect critical computer systems. "What if the terrorists were also able to impact our communications system, thus hampering the rescue and recovery efforts?" asked Terry Benzel, a vice president of Network Associates in Santa Clara, California. http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,47467,00.html Spies in sky guide strikes -- Unmanned planes inform without risk Small robotic aircraft may help the U.S. military to identify targets and assess damage in the Afghan war. Ten years after they were extensively deployed in the Gulf War, robotic aircraft with video camera "eyes" have found a secure niche in U.S. military engagements. Known as "unmanned aerial vehicles" (UAVs), their primary role is surveillance: They prowl over enemy terrain and transmit what they "see" back to their ground operators, who remotely guide them with joysticks. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...0/MN127267.DTL War on Terrorism Could Clog Military's Space Airwaves The effort to track down Osama bin Laden and rid the world of terrorism could be bogged down by clogged pipes on the military's satellite-based information superhighway as the ground forces rely more heavily than ever on their ability to phone home for instructions. Though one military analyst said operation Enduring Freedom would have to escalate out of control for such a scenario to take place, the search for bin Laden may already have spurred the Department of Defense to shift orbiting eyeballs away from Iraq and could force the military to purchase satellite time from private companies. It wouldn't be the first time. http://www.space.com/news/military_clogged_011008.html The "other" DMCA The Digital Millennium Copyright Act -- a revision to U.S. copyright laws -- has taken a real beating recently, thanks in large part to a high-profile case against a sympathetic computer programmer branded as a criminal hacker. Despite this case, the DMCA is, at least in part, a useful law that benefits e-commerce. The problem is that the DMCA is a very lengthy law and many press accounts and Netizens have focused lately on only one portion of it, thereby tarnishing the whole law as a legal mistake. The DMCA has been in the news because it is at the center of the U.S. government's criminal case against Dmitry Sklyarov of Elcomsoft, a company that produces a program known as the "Advanced eBook Processor." http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1276-210...html?tag=bt_bh Have cell phone, will roam -- worldwide Bell Labs researchers say they've jumped a significant hurdle in the continuing development of cell phone technology: allowing a caller to use the same phone anywhere in the world. So-called global roaming is virtually impossible today because wireless carriers use different types of phone networks that can't communicate with one another and require their own specially made phones. Business people traveling overseas often carry different cell phones because carriers on each continent use different networks. Satellite phones offer service closest to global access, but they're more expensive than cell phones -- sometimes three times as much -- and the phones themselves only work on their own network of satellites. http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02 Freedoms Curtailed in Defense of Liberty Responding to the threats facing America's free democratic system, White House officials called upon Americans to stop exercising their democratic freedoms Monday. "In this time of national crisis, a time when our most cherished freedoms are threatened, all Americans — not just outspoken talk-show hosts like Bill Maher — must watch what they say," White House press secretary Ari Fleischer told reporters. "Now more than ever, if we want to protect democracy for future generations, it is vital that nobody speak out about the issues of the day." "We must all do our patriotic duty to protect our country's great ideals," Fleischer continued, "and we have to be careful about what opinions we express if we are to defend our Constitution, a sacred document behind which all Americans must stand united as one." http://www.theonion.com/onion3736/fr...curtailed.html German TV Show Contends Bank Hack Assignment Not Wrong Members of the news team of a popular German high-tech TV show have openly admitted that they asked hackers to break into the computers of one of Germany's largest banks. Bernd Leptihn, news head of the TV show Technical Adviser (Ratgeber Technik), told Newsbytes, "We didn't do anything wrong. I don't think the hackers did anything wrong. I didn't do anything wrong." Leptihn was responding to comments made Friday by a spokesman from HypoVereinsbank, who told Newsbytes that the bank was considering legal action against Technical Adviser and the hackers. But before the bank makes a decision, it must first determine whether the hackers acted on their own, or acted only after consultation with Technical Adviser, which is produced in Hamburg. http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/171013.html Sites Scramble To Fix Web Portal Security Bug A security flaw in a popular Web portal system could enable attackers to completely compromise a site and is actively being exploited by Web page defacers, security experts warned. The bug in all current versions of PHP-Nuke allows unauthorized users to copy files to and from the server hosting the program, according to an advisory from a hacking group known as TWLC. A search at Google.com revealed that approximately 131,000 Web sites use PHP-Nuke, a free, open-source software program that runs on Linux as well as Windows and other operating system platforms. http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/171006.html Microsoft Tosses $51Mil To P2P Firm Groove Networks Software giant Microsoft Corp. has backed almost all of a $54 million round of financing by Groove Networks, the maker of peer-to-peer software for business co-founded by Ray Ozzie of Lotus Notes fame. Microsoft's $51 investment will give the Redmond, Wash., company a minority stake in Groove, whose software combines the group collaboration concepts behind Notes with the virtual-network links that can be created by peer-to-peer (P2P) technology. However, while P2P often is associated with potentially illegal file-swapping activities via services such as Napster, Gnutella or Morpheus, Ozzie's Groove targets businesses that need secure networks for collaboration among small groups. http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/170996.html As Spammers Get Clever, ISPs Work To Outfox Them Spam is now responsible for up to 30 percent of company e-mail, pan-European Internet carrier Easynet says. The sheer volume and techniques used by spammers has forced the Internet service provider to move to new technologies to counter the problem. Spam is a slang name for the electronic equivalent of postal junk mail, which tends to annoy e-mail users by its sheer volume. Justin Fielder, the Easynet's head of product marketing, told Newsbytes that, where spammers used e-mail databases previously, they are now using rotating first names, surnames and initials to ensure that at least some of their spam mail reaches the recipient. http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/170998.html Kabul pounded in heavy strike U.S. warplanes pounded cities in Afghanistan for a fourth straight night Wednesday, as U.S. defense sources said the Pentagon has decided to use 5,000-pound “bunker buster” bombs on underground Taliban sites. Pentagon strategists were also weighing plans to deploy U.S. special forces inside Afghanistan — both to track down extremist Osama bin Laden’s network and to help Afghan opposition forces fighting the Taliban. http://www.msnbc.com/news/627086.asp More news later on __________________ This post was sponsored by Netcoco, who wants cookies, cookies, cookies and, you guessed it, more cookies