ACM Washington Update Vol. 8.11 (November 30, 2004)

ACM Washington Update Vol. 8.11 (November 30, 2004)

CONTENTS

[1] Election Over, Concerns with E-Voting Linger
[2] Congress Increases NIST Labs Funding for FY 2005
[3] FCC Claims Jurisdiction over VoIP Regulation
[4] TSA to Test New System with U.S. Airline Passenger Data
[5] U.N. Working Group on Internet Governance Meets
[6] Upcoming Events
[7] About USACM

[1] ELECTION OVER, CONCERNS WITH E-VOTING LINGER

The November 2004 general election has come and gone, but not without stirring concerns over e-voting systems. While the consenus seems to be that most e-voting machines performed adequately in the election, numerous precincts suffered breakdowns of their e-voting machines, others had problems with getting the machines to boot up, and still others reportedly had problems with machines displaying the wrong selections after voters had made their choices. Other problems included an error in Ohio that resulted in nearly 4000 phantom votes in preliminary results and a situation in North Carolina where over 4000 votes were lost in a mix-up involving memory capacity. For more details regarding some of these concerns, see the CNET News.com article at http://news.com.com/E-voting+faces+new+scrutiny/2100-1028_3-5465309.html. Also see VerifiedVoting.org at http://www.verifiedvoting.org/, which is tracking problems and coverage of electronic voting following the election.

Meanwhile, a team of University of California, Berkeley, researchers is pointing toward other irregularities associated with electronic voting. Among other things, the researchers suggest that electronic voting machines may have awarded 130,000 excess votes or more to President Bush in Florida. A summary of their working paper is available at http://ucdata.berkeley.edu/new_web/VOTE2004/election04_Sum.pdf.

More recently, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) clarified its position on studying voting irregularities from the 2004 election, stating that GAO is "not authorized to engage in enforcement efforts relating to specific allegations of voting irregularities." Lately there have been calls -- most notably from several members of Congress -- for the GAO to undertake an investigation of the 2004 election. However, in the statement Comptroller General David Walker points out that GAO plans to continue its "ongoing and planned work relating to systemic election issues, involving reviews of voter registration processes, provisional voting, and voting technologies." Walker's full statement is available at http://www.gao.gov/electionresults.pdf. Also looking into e-voting at the moment is the National Academies Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, which has formed a Committee on Electronic Voting -- more information about the committee and its work, as well as links to several white papers submitted in response to a recent call for papers, can be found at http://cstb.org/project_evoting.html.

Earlier this year, ACM issued a statement recommending that all e-voting systems embody careful engineering, strong safeguards, and rigorous testing in both their design and operation, and, further, that all such systems enable voters to inspect a physical record of their vote to verify that it has been accurately cast. The complete statement is available online at http://www.acm.org/usacm/weblog/index.php?p=73.

[2] CONGRESS INCREASES NIST LABS FUNDING FOR FY 2005

The FY 2005 omnibus spending bill approved by Congress in late November's lame-duck session included $379 million for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Laboratories, amounting to an increase of over $47 million from 2004 (a year which saw a substantial cut in the agency's budget). Current work underway at the NIST labs will have profound effects on, among other things, the nation's cybersecurity (many Federal agencies rely on NIST's expertise and recommendations) and e-voting technologies and standards.

In October, USACM and the Computing Research Association (CRA) sent a joint letter to Congressional appropriators in support of increased funding for NIST's labs, citing the importance of NIST's work to the technology community and the country. The USACM/CRA letter is available at http://www.acm.org/usacm/weblog/index.php?p=110, while more information regarding NIST's overall budget situation is available from a recent Federal Computer Week article at http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2004/1122/web-nist-11-24-04.asp.

[3] FCC CLAIMS JURISDICTION OVER VOIP REGULATION

Early in November, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) claimed jursidiction over Internet telephony services such as "voice over Internet Protocol" (or VoIP) by declaring that such services are not subject to traditional state public utility regulation. In the ruling, the commission voted to exempt Vonage (a VoIP service provider) from Minnesota telephone taxes and certification standards and extended the decision to similar types of VoIP services. The ruling has been welcomed by the VoIP industry as an aid to growth and innovation. The FCC news release is available (PDF) at http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-254112A1.pdf.

In other related news, the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) recently filed a detailed set of comments on behalf of a diverse group of companies, trade associations, and public interest groups in opposition to the FCC's plan to extend the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (CALEA) to the Internet. While agreeing that law enforcement access to Internet communications is important, the comments argued that extending CALEA to cover such things as VoIP services is an unjustied and counterproductive approach to addressing the concerns of law enforcement agencies and that the "harm done to innovation and technology development" could be "far reaching." The coalition's full statement can be found (PDF) at http://www.cdt.org/digi_tele/20041108intpubint.pdf.

[4] TSA TO TEST NEW SYSTEM WITH U.S. AIRLINE PASSENGER DATA

In a November 15th directive, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) ordered all U.S. airlines to provide a month's worth of passenger data (data from June 2004, to be precise) for use in testing TSA's new "Secure Flight" passenger screening system. Secure Flight is the successor to TSA's earlier Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (CAPPS) II system that was cancelled earlier this year over privacy concerns. The Secure Flight testing involves using data contained in "passenger name records" (or PNRs) to evaluate the system's performance. PNRs can contain information such as passenger name, addresses, phone numbers, intinerary, meal requests, and credit card numbers. For more information, see the recent article in Wired News at http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,65822,00.html, as well as one in Federal Computer Week at http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2004/1122/web-secure-11-22-04.asp.

In other privacy news, the U.S. Department of State is moving ahead with plans to begin incorporating radio frequency identification (RFID) tags in U.S. passports in an attempt to make the documents more secure and more difficult to forge. However, a number of technologists and privacy advocates have expressed concerns about the ramifications of the change. The ACLU, for example, has recently issued a white paper charging that the U.S. has ignored warnings about security and privacy, as well as international concerns, in pushing for the new passports. The white paper and other related documents are available at http://www.aclu.org/passports. Additional information regarding the passports and privacy concerns can be found in a recent NY Times article at http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/26/politics/26passport.html.

Meanwhile, five civil liberties groups, including the ACLU, ALA, EFF, EPIC, and the Center for National Security Studies, have filed a "friend of the court" brief in connection with United States v. Councilman, the recent and controversial ruling that email providers do not violate federal wiretap laws by opening their customers' emails. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit voted in October to rehear the case. The brief is available (PDF) at http://www.epic.org/privacy/councilman/kerr_amicus.pdf.

[5] U.N. WORKING GROUP ON INTERNET GOVERNANCE MEETS

The United Nations Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) met at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, in late November in a round of consultations open to all governments and stakeholders. The WGIG is tasked with making recommendations on Internet governance to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in 2005. With its next meeting scheduled for February 2005 in Geneva, the WGIG is expected to submit a final report to the U.N. Secretary-General in July 2005. The recommendations will be considered at the Tunis phase of WSIS in November 2005. More information regarding the WGIG is available at http://www.un-wgig.org/, while information about the WSIS is available at http://www.itu.int/wsis/.

In other international news, the European Commission recently released a communication regarding the challenges that a European Information Society strategy up to 2010 needs to address. The communication focuses on the need to increase research and investment in information and communication technologies (ICTs) and to promote their adoption. Both a press release and the communication are available from http://europa.eu.int/information_society/eeurope/2005/index_en.htm.

[6] UPCOMING EVENTS

* December 9-10 - The National Academies Computer Science and Telecommunications Board holds a meeting of its Committee on Electronic Voting. For more information, see http://cstb.org/project_evoting.html.

* December 12-15 - The Association for Information Systems holds it 2004 International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2004) in Washington, D.C. More information is available at http://www.icis2004.org/.

* December 15-16 - The Federal Trade Commission will hold a workshop to examine peer-to-peer (P2P) technology. The workshop will address how P2P file-sharing works, the current and future applications of the technology, risks posed to consumers using file-sharing software programs and how to avoid and reduce them, and competition issues raised by P2P file-sharing technology (e.g., its effect on the economy and copyright holders). For more information, visit http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/workshops/filesharing/index.htm.

* December 18 - Organized jointly by SZABIST, ACM, and IEEE, the National Conference on Emerging Technologies (NCET-2004) will be held on December 18, 2004, at the Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology (SZABIST) in Karachi, Pakistan. Complete information is available at http://www.szabist.edu.pk/NCET2004/.

[7] ABOUT USACM

USACM is the U.S. Public Policy Committee of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). ACM is the premier organization for computing professionals, delivering resources that advance the computing and IT disciplines, enable professional development, and promote policies and research that benefit society. USACM serves as the focal point for ACM's interactions with U.S. government organizations and the science and technology policy community. For more information about USACM, see http://www.acm.org/usacm/about.html.

BACK ISSUES
For earlier editions of the ACM Washington Update, see: http://www.acm.org/usacm/update/.

SUBSCRIBE/UNSUBSCRIBE
To subscribe to ACM's Washington Update newsletter, send an e-mail to listserv@acm.org with "subscribe WASHINGTON-UPDATE [First Name] [Last Name]" (no quotes) in the body of the message. To unsubcribe, simply include the "SIGNOFF WASHINGTON-UPDATE" command in an email to listserv@acm.org.

QUESTIONS/COMMENTS
Should you have questions, comments, or suggestions regarding this newsletter, public policy issues, or USACM activities, please contact the ACM's Washington, D.C., Office of Public Policy by email at usacm_dc@acm.org or by calling 202-659-9711.