“Congress has cut the budget for the National Science Foundation, an engine for research in science and technology, just two years after endorsing a plan to double the amount given to the agency.

[…] Representative Vernon J. Ehlers, Republican of Michigan, said the cut was “extremely short-sighted” and showed “dangerous disregard for our nation’s future.”

“I am astonished that we would make this decision at a time when other nations continue to surpass our students in math and science and consistently increase their funding of basic research,” said Mr. Ehlers, a former physics professor who is chairman of a technology subcommittee. “The National Science Foundation supports technological innovation that is crucial to the sustained economic prosperity that America has enjoyed for several decades […]”

SOURCE: NY Times

Peter Harsha has written an excellent “roundup” of FY 2005 Federal appropriations following Congress’ recent work on the omnibus bill, including the following update on funding for the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST’s) labs:

Note: See the recent letter that CRA and USACM sent to Congressional appropriators regarding funding for NIST.

“The government has shortchanged basic research into cybersecurity and should at least quadruple the money available for civilian research, the President’s IT Advisory Committee says.

The government plays a key role in supplying the intellectual capital to improve the security of IT systems, said F. Thomas Leighton, chairman of the PITAC subcommittee on cybersecurity.

“The government has largely failed in this regard,” he said […]”

SOURCE: GCN

“[…] Marybeth Peters, the U.S. register of copyrights, told a conference here [in Chicago] that the so-called Induce Act would not be part of the slew of legislation–including key spending measures–that Congress is expected to vote on before leaving for next week’s Thanksgiving holiday.

“I don’t think you’ll ever see database protection,” said Peters, who has been involved in closed-door negotiations this fall over copyright legislation […]

Peters also said that an unrelated huge copyright bill, called the Intellectual Property Protection Act (IPPA), had even odds of being enacted before Congress left town […]”

SOURCE: CNET News.com

“Electronic voting machines in Florida may have awarded George W. Bush up to 260,000 more votes than he should have received, according to statistical analysis conducted by University of California, Berkeley graduate students and a professor, who released a study on Thursday.

[…] Their aim in releasing the report, the researchers said, was not to attack the results of the 2004 election in Florida, where Bush won by 350,000 votes, but to prompt election officials and the public to examine the e-voting systems and address the fact that there is no way to conduct a meaningful recount on the paperless machines […]”

SOURCE: Wired News

Note: See ACM’s recent statement on e-voting systems.

Ed Felten has made a copy of his Princeton President’s Lecture, Rip, Mix, Burn, Sue: Technology, Politics, and the Fight to Control Digital Media, available from his Freedom To Tinker web site. The lecture lasts about an hour and serves as a “layperson’s introduction to the technology/copyright wars.”

“To tackle increasingly complex issues, U.S. policy-makers should ensure that both the presidential appointment process for senior science and technology posts and the process of appointing experts to federal S&T advisory committees operate more quickly and transparently, says a new report from the National Academies.

Immediately after each general election, the president or president-elect should name a confidential “assistant to the president for science and technology” to provide advice in the event of a crisis and to help quickly identify strong candidates for crucial S&T appointments. Authorities also should make certain that appointments to advisory committees are not politicized or used to promote foregone conclusions. Scientists, engineers, and health professionals should be appointed to federal advisory committees based on their expertise and integrity. They should not be asked for information that would have no bearing on the scientific or technical expertise they would provide during committee discussions – such as political party affiliation, voting record, or personal positions on particular issues, the report says […]”

SOURCE: The National Academies

“Several lobbying camps from different industries and ideologies are joining forces to fight an overhaul of copyright law, which they say would radically shift in favor of Hollywood and the record companies and which Congress might try to push through during a lame-duck session that begins this week.

The Senate might vote on HR2391, the Intellectual Property Protection Act, a comprehensive bill that opponents charge could make many users of peer-to-peer networks, digital-music players and other products criminally liable for copyright infringement. The bill would also undo centuries of “fair use” – the principle that gives Americans the right to use small samples of the works of others without having to ask permission or pay […]”

SOURCE: Wired News

Related note: click here (and here) for information on USACM’s recent engagement in the debate surrounding copyright protection, potential threats to technological innovation, and the Induce Act.

“A new [Oregon] program for information technology workers is aimed at helping companies from call centers to wood product mills.

The program, called the Oregon Training Network and backed by Gov. Ted Kulongoski and the Software Association of Oregon, is developing classes to be offered in Oregon to information technology workers throughout the state.

The idea is to offer high-quality, accessible, affordable technology training to Oregon workers, wiping out the expensive travel costs paid by employers to send workers to out-of-state tech training hubs, like Silicon Valley.

The governor’s office is using $225,250 in federal work force training dollars as seed money to launch the program. But when it starts offering classes next year, the program should become financially self-sustaining, organizers say […]”

SOURCE: USA Today

“The Food and Drug Administration and several major drug makers are expected to announce initiatives today that will put tiny radio antennas on the labels of millions of medicine bottles to combat counterfeiting and fraud.

Among the medicines that will soon be tagged are Viagra, one of the most counterfeited drugs in the world, and OxyContin, a pain-control narcotic that has become one of the most abused medicines in the United States. The tagged bottles - for now, only the large ones from which druggists get the pills to fill prescriptions - will start going to distributors this week, officials said […]”

SOURCE: NY Times [free reg. req.]

“National Institute of Standards and Technology officials have issued a draft standard for electronically verifying the identities of federal employees and contractors.

NIST officials worked quickly to develop the draft standard in response to Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12, issued Aug. 27. NIST officials released the draft standard Nov. 8 […]”

SOURCE: FCW

Note: NIST is also taking public comments on the matter; for more information, click here.

“The Federal Communications Commission seized regulatory control over Internet-based telephone services on Tuesday by issuing an order that sharply limited the role of state regulators.

In a unanimous ruling, the commission said that Minnesota could not impose regulations on these services. That included a requirement that one of the leading companies in the field, Vonage, must offer to all Internet phone customers emergency 911 service similar to that offered by the traditional phone companies […]”

SOURCE: NY Times [free reg. req.]

“Homeland Security Department officials announced the first 50 land ports of entry to take part in the U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology program.

US-VISIT workers use biometrics such as digital, inkless fingerprint scans and digital photographs to determine if a person applying for entry to the United States is the same person to whom State Department officials issued a visa. The biometric and biographic data is also checked against terrorist watch lists […]”

SOURCE: FCW

“A panel of leading computer scientists warned in a report [more info here] issued on Monday that unless the federal government significantly increased support for advanced research on supercomputing, the United States would be unable to retain its lead on that technological front.

The panel of scientists, which was convened by the National Research Council, warned of a looming imbalance between hardware and software technology in high-performance computing […]”

SOURCE: NY Times [free reg. req.]

Roy Want has an informative article in October’s Queue:

And Simson Garfinkel has written an interesting piece for MIT’s Technology Review:

Peter Harsha over at CRA has a good post about last week’s PITAC meeting:

USACM Chair Eugene Spafford is a PITAC member, as is ACM President David Patterson.

CSTB is forming a committee to investigate the technical and policy dimensions of large-scale government use of information fusion and data mining and have issued a call for nominations:

More information about the project and the call for nominations is available here.

“THE South Australian Government has promised to review the access of US outsourcer EDS to information on citizens in the wake of a Canadian government report finding a “reasonable possibility” of unathorised disclosure by US outsourcers to US government agencies.

A spokesman for Administrative Services Minister Michael Wright, who oversees the EDS whole-of-government outsourcing contract, said the the Government was “taking the issue seriously".

The Canadian report [full text (PDF) here] finds the US anti-terrorist law, the Patriot Act, could allow US agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation to access personal data stored by US contractors overseas […]”

SOURCE: AustralianIT

NOTE: More information is also available here.

“Four members of the California state assembly are pressuring the state’s Department of Social Services (DSS) to immediately improve its attempts to notify 1.4 million state residents that their personal information may have been stolen by hackers in August.

In a letter Wednesday to Kim Belshe, secretary of the state’s Health and Human Services Agency, which oversees the DSS, the lawmakers were critical of the department’s decision to “only issue a media advisory about the ‘unauthorized access.’ ” The media advisory “is not the most effective way to communicate with the workers and affected elderly and disabled clients,” the letter stated.

Instead, the legislators wrote, “we believe it is imperative and well worth the cost to individually inform every affected party so each client and worker can personally check and see if they have been a victim of identify theft.”

Under a California privacy law that went into effect last year, businesses and public agencies are required to inform individuals when their names – in combination with either their Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers or credit/debit card numbers with personal identification numbers – have been accessed by an unauthorized person […]”

SOURCE: ComputerWorld

A panel of experts convened by the AAAS on election technology and administration warned in a report recently that “the American system of voting is broadly vulnerable to error and abuse, and called for a crash-course of study and reform to make results more reliable and to promote better access by voters, especially those who have historically encountered serious impediments to exercising their right to vote […]”

SOURCE: AAAS

Peter Harsha (CRA) is pointing us toward a new e-voting weblog:

Also be sure to see ACM’s recent statement on e-voting systems.

“The National Security Agency’s top information security official disclosed plans this week for a government-funded research center devoted to improving the security of commercial software, calling the initiative a modern-day Manhattan Project.

Comparing the proposed high-assurance software initiative to the famous atomic bomb research project of the 1940s, NSA’s director for information assurance, Daniel Wolf, said the research would focus on tools and techniques for writing secure software and detecting malicious code hidden in software […]”

SOURCE: FCW