CONTENTS
[1] Newsletter Highlights
[2] Commerce Dept. Gets an Earful on Proposed Export Rule Changes
[3] Is the U.S. Research Environment Hostile to Foreigners?
[4] Turing Award Lecture Focuses on Internet’s Impact
[5] Pressure Building in States Against Real ID Act
[6] California Legislature Kills RFID Restrictions
[7] USACM Looks Back at FY2005
[8] Events in September
[9] About USACM
[An archive of all previous editions of Washington Update is available here.]
[1] NEWSLETTER HIGHLIGHTS
Below are highlights of the top stories for August (typically a slow month in Washington, D.C.); there’s more detail on each below, as well as on our weblog at http://www.acm.org/usacm:
* The Department of Commerce receives a flood of largely negative feedback on its proposed restrictions on foreign nationals doing research in the U.S., as universities, researchers, scientists, medical organizations, technology associations, and others weigh in.
* A Chinese researcher is prevented from presenting her important research at a U.S. cryptography conference (research detailing a successful attack on the widely used SHA-1 hash) due to delays in visa processing.
* Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf deliver their Turing Award lecture: “Assessing the Internet: Lessons Learned, Strategies for Evolution, and Future Possibilities.”
* A recent meeting of state officials from the National Conference of State Legislatures demonstrated growing unease among states over the costs of implementing the Real ID Act.
* A California Assembly committee kills a bill intended to prevent the state from using RFID technology in certain state IDs and require significant security measures for using the technology for other ID purposes.
* USACM releases its FY2005 annual report detailing the committee’s policy activities for the year.
[2] COMMERCE DEPT. GETS AN EARFUL ON PROPOSED EXPORT RULE CHANGES
At around 84 megabytes, the PDF file containing the largely negative response to the Department of Commerce Bureau of Industry and Security’s (BIS’s) recent advanced notice of proposed rulemaking regarding proposed changes to U.S. deemed export regulations is one hefty document – available at
The file contains the comments of over 300 respondents – universities, researchers, scientists, medical organizations, technology associations (including USACM), and even the government of Canada – most of whom found the prospect of the proposed policy changes an unpleasant one; for example, some of the highlights:
* “QUALCOMM recommends that BIS continue its current policy and not adopt the … proposed place of birth rule, since to do so would cause absurd results in some cases, and impose significant burdens and risks on companies like QUALCOMM with little tangible effect on national security…” [Page 1083]
* “As long as 55 percent of the master’s degrees and 66 percent of the PhDs in electrical engineering at U.S. schools are awarded to foreign nationals, [Texas Instruments (TI)] will, by necessity, need to hire some foreign engineers. These individuals are among the most talented from their native countries. In addition, U.S. companies and taxpayers have already invested in them through support for university-based research. It is counterproductive to restrict these highly educated engineers from adding to TI’s competitive advantage…” [Page 829]
* “I [Dr. Helen Quinn] am a Professor of Physics at Stanford University and the Past President of the American Physical Society … While it is the intent of this rule to make the United States more secure, I submit that it will in fact do just the reverse. Both the security of the US and its economic viability are built on the technical capabilities of its industry, which in turn is built on the research capabilities of its Universities. In order to be at the forefront of science in the modern world Universities must be open to a steady flow of international collaborators and students through their laboratories. If we were to cut off this flow we would quickly become a backwater and soon lose our superiority …” [Page 1017]
* “[The American Association of Universities (AAU)] questions the fundamental premise of the Commerce OIG recommendations that equipment “used” in the conduct of fundamental research on university campuses should not be covered under the fundamental research exception. We believe that this notion is misguided and reflects a lack of understanding of how research and education are conducted in a campus environment. Moreover, it fails to recognize the inseparable nature of the tools used to conduct fundamental research and the research itself. We are concerned that, if implemented as proposed, the OIG recommendations would significantly damage university-based research and education – and actually harm our national and economic security – in an attempt to address unquantified and unidentified security risks …” [Page 956]
To read USACM’s comments on the proposal, see
http://www.acm.org/usacm/weblog/index.php?p=291
[3] IS THE U.S. RESEARCH ENVIRONMENT HOSTILE TO FOREIGNERS?
A Chinese cryptographer was recently unable to present an important paper detailing her research on SHA-1 at the Crypto 2005 conference, which took place in Santa Barbara, California. The New York Times reported that Xiaoyun Wang “was scheduled to explain her discovery in a keynote address” at the conference. However, a “stand-in had to take her place, because she was not able to enter the country” due to a delay in processing her visa. The article goes on to suggest that lengthy delays in visa processing are common, especially for research involving sensitive or highly technical fields.
Taking into account such frequent visa delays and problems and other constraints on foreign researchers, such as current U.S. deemed export control policies (and the changes that have been proposed to those policies lately – see item [2] above), it is easy to understand the computing research community’s growing concern about what is perceived as an increasingly hostile research environment in the U.S. for foreign researchers – researchers who play a key role in U.S.-based research and innovation.
The Times article is available at
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/17/business/worldbusiness/17code.html
Security expert Bruce Schneier also had a thoughtful post about the incident on his weblog:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/08/chinese_cryptog.html
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[4] TURING AWARD LECTURE FOCUSES ON INTERNET’S IMPACT
Vinton Cerf and Bob Kahn gave a lecture titled “Assessing the Internet: Lessons Learned, Strategies for Evolution, and Future Possibilities.” The Turing Lecture provides a forum for learning what lessons emerged from award winners’ research, what strategies they propose for evolving the technology, and what possibilities lie ahead for future applications.
The storied team of Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn received ACM’s latest Turing Award for their work developing TCP/IP – the networking language of the Internet. The award is ACM’s highest and is considered by many to be the Nobel Prize of Computing.
The lecture is available as an archived webcast (RealPlayer required) at
http://beansidhe.isc-net.upenn.edu:8080/ramgen/seas/Turing.rm
[5] PRESSURE BUILDING IN STATES AGAINST REAL ID ACT
Some state lawmakers, who gathered this month for a meeting of the National Conference of State Legislatures, are getting anxious about the impending implementation of the Real ID Act. The crux of the issue for state lawmakers is just who should pay the act’s costs. A recent Seattle Post-Intelligencer article showed just how nervous and concerned state officials are getting:
“[State leaders at the meeting] railed against their federal counterparts for usurping their authority on issues ranging from education to homeland security – but leaving the states saddled with the bills […]
“The federal government has shifted at least $51 billion in costs over the past two years to state and local governments, according to a report the group released Tuesday. A new federal mandate for a national identification card, something NCSL officials estimate could cost states $13 billion as they scramble to restructure motor vehicle offices, was chief among the state lawmakers’ complaints. The Real ID Act passed in June in an $82 billion military spending bill. It requires states, by 2008, to verify whether license applicants are U.S. citizens or legal residents of the United States.
The Congressional Budget Office has estimated the law will cost states $100 million to implement over the next five years […]”
The full article is available at
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/236891_statepower17.html
The fight over the Real ID Act, then, despite all the troubling technical and privacy issues that we and others have pointed out may all come down to a fight between states and the federal government over unfunded (or underfunded) mandates and states’ discretion in how to manage their own resources.
[6] CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE KILLS RFID RESTRICTIONS
The California Assembly’s Appropriations Committee was the scene for the latest battle over radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. The committee decided not to take up S.B. 682, Senator Joe Simitian’s “Identity Information Protection Act,” effectively killing it for this legislative session. The bill had two main purposes:
1. Prohibit the inclusion of “contactless integrated circuit” devices or other devices that use “radio waves to broadcast personal information to be read remotely” (i.e., RFID technology) in state-issued driver’s licenses, student ID cards (K-12), healthcare and other benefit cards, and public library cards.
2. Require significant security measures with respect to the use of RFID technology in all other state-issued ID cards, including provisions for strong encryption, authentication measures, and shielding devices.
Complete information about the bill is available at
http://info.sen.ca.gov/cgi-bin/postquery?bill_number=sb_682&sess=CUR&house=B&site=sen
The bill also had provisions requiring notice of certain things for IDs that do employ RFID technology, such as the fact that a given ID contains an RFID device, countermeasures (e.g., shielding) that an individual may use for greater protection, the location of all readers intended to be used by the authority that issued the ID, and specifics on just what information is being collected or stored when the RFID device is being read or accessed.
Privacy advocates and industry groups went head to head over the merits of this legislation. Privacy groups generally favored the restrictions in the bill arguing they were necessary to protect individual’s privacy, while industry representatives warned against inhibiting the technology’s development by passing hasty legislation at such a crucial time. More information about what happened to the bill is also available in a recent CNET News.com article at
http://news.com.com/California+shelves+RFID+ban/2100-1028_3-5843867.html
[7] USACM LOOKS BACK AT FY2005
USACM released its annual report for fiscal year 2005 in early August. The report chronicles the committee’s work over the past year, including highlights ranging from our activities aimed at educating policymakers about the Induce Act, to ACM’s e-voting statement, to leadership changes at USACM and at ACM’s D.C. public policy office, and on to more recent items like our formal comments on the Department of Commerce’s proposal regarding deemed export controls.
The full report is available from
http://www.acm.org/usacm/weblog/index.php?p=306
[8] EVENTS IN SEPTEMBER
September 6: Congress returns from its August recess.
September 8-9: DHS Privacy Office public workshop: “Privacy and Technology: Government Use of Commercial Data for Homeland Security,” Washington, D.C.
http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/interapp/editorial/editorial_0699.xml
September 11-13: 5th Annual Future of Music Policy Summit, Washington D.C.
http://www.futureofmusic.org/events/summit05
September 30: Deadline for submitting comments on Election Assistance Commission’s Voting Systems Guidelines
http://www.eac.gov/news_062705.asp
[9] ABOUT USACM
USACM is the U.S. Public Policy Committee of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). ACM is widely recognized as 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. ACM hosts the computing industry’s leading Digital Library and Guide to Computing Literature, and serves its 80,000 global members and the computing profession with journals and magazines, conferences, workshops, electronic forums, and its Career Resource Centre and Professional Development Centre. For more information about USACM and ACM, see
http://www.acm.org/usacm/about.html
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