Message-Id: <55206A473154D011924D0020AFF7ACB56A6468@mail1.oulan.ou.edu>
Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 08:52:50 -0600
From: "Swisher, Bob" <bswisher@ou.edu>
To: "'it-fyi@listserv.ou.edu'" <it-fyi@listserv.ou.edu>
Subject: Edupage, 1 March 1998
> ************************************************************
> Edupage, 1 March 1998. Edupage, a summary of news about information
> technology, is provided three times a week as a service by Educom, a
> Washington, D.C.-based consortium of leading colleges and universities
> seeking to transform education through the use of information
> technology.
> ************************************************************
>
> TOP STORIES
> New Interagency Center To Protect Networks
> Culprits Of Pentagon Computer Break-Ins Caught
> Federal Gov't To Spend $50-Million On Digital Libraries
> European Privacy Rules Will Challenge U.S. Practices
>
> ALSO
> AOL Teams Up To Wire Europe
> FTC Conducts Internet Privacy Survey
> Working To Solve The Information Gap
> IRS Likely To Fall Short Of Y2K Fix
> Newton Falls To Earth
>
> NEW INTERAGENCY CENTER TO PROTECT NETWORKS
> Computer experts from the U.S. Defense and Justice Departments and the
> Secret Service are combining their efforts to fight electronic
> break-ins and sabotage of the nation's telephone systems, electric
> utilities and digital networks. Attorney General Janet Reno unveiled
> the new National Infrastructure Protection Center, which also will
> work closely with private-sector technicians, on Friday. An FBI
> survey last year found that businesses had lost more than $100 million
> due to computer-based sabotage and fraud. (Wall Street Journal 27 Feb
> 98)
>
> CULPRITS OF PENTAGON COMPUTER BREAK-INS CAUGHT
> The vandals responsible for hacking their way into 11 military
> computer systems and a number of university and federal research
> facilities (including Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Brookhaven
> National Laboratories, UC-Berkeley and the MIT fusion labs) have been
> identified as two Northern California teenage boys and some friends.
> On the advice of FBI agents, the Internet service provider used by the
> boys continued to allow their break-ins while their activities were
> surreptitiously monitored: "We decided to take a little risk. We let
> them play for a little while. We gave them enough rope and let them
> hang themselves." (Washington Post 28 Feb 98)
>
> FEDERAL GOV'T TO SPEND $50-MILLION ON DIGITAL LIBRARIES
> The U.S. government plans to spend $50 million over four or five years
> as part of its new Digital Library 2 project. The original Digital
> Library project started in 1994 with about half that amount of
> funding. The leader of the University of Illinois' digital library
> project notes that online technology is developing so rapidly, that
> proposals will have to "sound very grand and flaky" in order not to
> become obsolete before the five years is up. Federal agencies
> involved in the Digital Library 2 project include the National Science
> Foundation, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Library
> of Congress, NASA, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the
> National Library of Medicine. (Chronicle of Higher Education 27 Feb
> 98)
>
> EUROPEAN PRIVACY RULES WILL CHALLENGE U.S. PRACTICES
> The European Union Data Protection Directive, which takes effect
> October 1998, will force U.S. companies doing business in Europe to
> change the way they handle routine data collection procedures. For
> instance, companies will need to get consent from their European
> employees before including them in corporate e-mail or phone
> directories, and in extreme cases, it may become illegal to carry a
> laptop computer containing a database with personal information on
> Europeans to the U.S. or other countries that are deemed to lack
> "adequate" guarantees of privacy protection. The directive mandates
> that any personal data obtained by a company may be used only for the
> purposes for which it was collected unless consent is granted by the
> consumer for broader usage. If the data is misused in any way,
> governments will be able to seek injunctions, fines, and even criminal
> sanctions, and the individuals affected may sue for damages. (CIO
> Enterprise 15 Feb 98
>
> ============================================
>
> AOL TEAMS UP TO WIRE EUROPE
> America Online is forming alliances with French telecommunications
> company Cegetel and French cable firm Canal Plus SA to work with AOL
> and partner Bertelsmann AG in targeting the European Internet market.
> The alliance will give AOL a more solid position in France, where its
> major competitor is the giant France Telecom SA. "Beating the
> telecoms is the issue for AOL," says a Dataquest analyst, "but it
> could prove near impossible." Under the new arrangement, AOL will have
> 200,000 subscribers in France, almost twice as many as France Telecom.
> (Wall Street Journal 27 Feb 98)
>
> FTC CONDUCTS INTERNET PRIVACY SURVEY
> The Federal Trade Commission is surveying 1,200 commercial Web sites
> to determine their policies for disclosing, collecting and using
> personal information; in a separate effort, the Commission is
> investigating whether sites are honoring their stated policies. The
> FTC can bring legal action against companies that fail to follow their
> posted policies. (New York Times 28 Feb 98)
>
> WORKING TO SOLVE THE INFORMATION GAP
> An increasing number of publications have been pointing out the
> growing disparity between the information-rich and information-poor.
> A good example is the new book by Fred T. Hofstetter ("Internet
> Literacy"), a guide to using the Internet; Hofstetter says: "Because
> the Net cannot see racial differences, age, sex, or physical
> handicaps, it doesn't discriminate. Except, perhaps, against the
> unconnected, because in an information society, to be cut off from the
> Internet is to be disenfranchised." ("Internet Literacy," Irwin
> McGraw-Hill)
>
> IRS LIKELY TO FALL SHORT OF Y2K FIX
> The Internal Revenue Service says its mainframe hardware and software
> probably will be Year 2000-compliant, but it hasn't developed a fix
> for its desktop PCs yet. Of the agency's 88,000 computer programs,
> 13,000 have been retired, and 40,000 have been fixed, leaving 35,000
> scheduled to be upgraded by January 1999. A large percentage of the
> agency's mainframes are being
> replaced as part of the effort, but that still leaves about 1,000
> mid-size computers and 130,000 PCs to bring into compliance. An
> anonymous congressional source says the picture is still pretty bleak,
> noting that IRS refund checks come from the Treasury, where "none of
> the mission-critical systems have been fixed yet." (TechWeb 27 Feb
> 98)
>
> NEWTON FALLS TO EARTH
> Saying it wants to focus all its efforts on extending the Macintosh
> operating system, Apple is giving up on its Newton handheld computer,
> as well as the eMate laptop computer that had been designed with the
> education market in mind. Although the Newton had to suffer such
> indignities as lampoons in the Doonesbury cartoon strip, it is
> credited with leading the way for a number of today's handheld devices
> based on Microsoft's Windows CE software. Referring to 3Com and other
> companies that manufacture such products, industry analyst Ira
> Machefsky says: "All of these guys benefited from Apple's mistakes."
> (San Jose Mercury News 27 Feb 98)
>
> Edupage is written by John Gehl (gehl@educom.edu) and Suzanne Douglas
> (douglas@educom.edu). Telephone: 770-590-1017
>
> Technical support for distributing Edupage is provided by Information
> Technology Services at the University of North Carolina at Chapel
> Hill.
>
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