CONTENTS

[1] ACM Job Migration Task Force Meets in D.C.
[2] U.S. Supreme Court to Consider P2P Case
[3] Intelligence Reform Legislation Becomes Law
[4] European Union Policy Developments
[5] Upcoming Events
[6] About USACM

[An archive of all previous editions of Washington Update is available here.]
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CSTB’s Committee on Radio Frequency Identification Technologies recently issued its report of a workshop that explored RFID technology and related technical and policy issues. The report summarizes discussions by panelists and participants at the workshop.

SOURCE: CSTB

“Federal officials are developing government-wide identification card standards for federal employees and contractors to prevent terrorists, criminals and other unauthorized people from getting into government buildings and computer systems.

The effort, known as the Personal Identity Verification Project, stems from a homeland security-related presidential directive and is being managed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a Commerce Department agency with offices in Gaithersburg.

[…] The new generation of ID cards must be able to digitally store biometric data such as facial photographs and fingerprint images, bear contact and contactless interfaces, and allow the encryption of data that can be used to electronically verify the user’s identity, according to NIST draft standards […]”

SOURCE: Washington Post [free reg. req.]

Note: click here to view USACM’s policy guidance regarding national IDs.

” For years, the music and film industries have fought a Sisyphean battle against piracy. Companies estimate that online thieves download 2.6 billion illegal music files and some 12 million movies every month, costing them millions of dollars a year. On Dec. 10 the media bigs landed a rare win: The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review a lower court’s decision against the studios in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. (MGM ) v. Grokster Ltd. The studio’s complaint has a high-profile list of backers, from the Dixie Chicks to Major League Baseball to the attorneys general of 41 states. If the court overturns the ruling, it could shift an unsteady balance between technology and creativity that has nurtured two decades of innovation in consumer electronics […]”

SOURCE: Business Week

ACM’s Job Migration Task Force held a meeting earlier this month in Washington, D.C. Among others, the Task Force heard presentations from representatives of the Institute for International Economics, the Cato Institute, the Economic Policy Institute, and the U.S. General Accountability Office (GAO).

The group, co-chaired by Moshe Y. Vardi (Rice University) and Frank Mayadas (Alfred P. Sloan Foundation), was created to examine global job migration trends resulting from outsourcing and offshoring of IT jobs. It includes representatives from North America, Europe, India, China, Japan, and Israel. The task force expects to release the results of its study in the second half of 2005.

For more information, see the ACM Membernet article announcing the task force’s launch.

“The Supreme Court agreed yesterday to hear the entertainment industry’s case against two Internet-based file-sharing services through which millions of people swap music and movies online, a decision that sets up a potentially decisive digital-age battle over copyright-infringement rules.

The court said it would rule on an appeal by movie and record companies, headed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, that say they should be able to sue the file-sharing services, Grokster Ltd. and StreamCast Networks Inc., because their customers copy and trade copyrighted material online without paying for it.

[…] The case is MGM Studios v. Grokster, No. 04-480. Oral argument is set for March, and a decision is expected by July.”

SOURCE: Washington Post [free reg. req.]

“Cyber Security Industry Alliance (CSIA), the only CEO-led public policy and advocacy group exclusively focused on cyber security policy, today called on federal agencies and the Bush administration to strengthen the cyber infrastructure and protect end users from cyber attacks. CSIA urges the White House to ensure federal agencies follow through on the President’s National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace by acting on 12 important recommendations identified by the cyber security industry and adopting a concrete agenda to further protect the nation against cyber threats.

[…] The 12 steps outlined by CSIA represent concrete actions the Federal government can take that will raise the profile of cyber security, promote information sharing, threat analysis and contingency planning, as well as boost efforts in research and development, and security education […]”

SOURCE: CSIA (PDF)

“A study by Berkeley grad students and a professor showing anomalies with electronic-voting machines in Florida has been debunked by numerous academics who say the students used a faulty equation to reach their results and should never have released the study before getting it peer-reviewed.

The study, released three weeks ago [covered here] by seven graduate students from the University of California, Berkeley’s Quantitative Methods Research Team and sociology professor Michael Hout, presented analysis showing a discrepancy in the number of votes Bush received in counties that used touch-screen voting machines versus counties that used other types of voting equipment.

But Bruce McCullogh, a decisions science professor at Drexel University in Philadelphia, and Binghamton University economics professor Florenz Plassmann released an analysis (.pdf) of the Berkeley report criticizing the results […]”

SOURCE: Wired News

“The passage of the US Free Trade Agreement enabling legislation has been thrown into doubt after [Australia’s] government agreed to an 11th hour review of key concerns outlined by the Internet Industry Association (IIA).

[…] While the purpose of the legislation was to “harmonise” Australian copyright law with that of the US, the IIA believes the bill to be put parliament this week is far more strict than US law.

[…] The enabling legislation must be passed by the parliament this week if it is to meet the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement scheduled start date of January 1 […]”

SOURCE: AustralianIT

“The pork-stuffed omnibus spending bill that Congress rushed to passage without reading largely remains a $388 billion national secret.

[…] Nowhere is this more graphic than in the shocking cut that Congress levied on the National Science Foundation, the research dynamo that does so much to feed the nation’s economic growth through breakthrough advances in science and technology. Its budget will be $105 million less than last year’s, even as lawmakers spared an estimated $15.8 billion for a record 11,772 pet projects […]”

SOURCE: NY Times

“In an eyebrow-raising forecast, Gartner Inc. researchers said they believe that as many as 50% of the IT operational jobs in the U.S. could disappear over the next two decades because of improvements in data center technologies.

Donna Scott, a Gartner analyst, said IT workers face a situation similar to that in the manufacturing field, which has lost jobs over the past several decades as automation has improved. Similarly, standardization of IT infrastructure, applications and processes will lead to productivity improvements and a major shift in skill needs, she said […]”

SOURCE: Computerworld

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

[An archive of all previous editions of Washington Update is available here.]
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