January 22, 2003 Arrests raise concerns over espionage in Silicon Valley The case of a Chinese businessman charged with illegally shipping missile guidance technology to China's military has intensified concerns about foreign espionage in Silicon Valley. Qing Chang Jiang, who will be arraigned on Thursday, is at least the fourth Chinese native indicted since October on charges involving the shipment of equipment or trade secrets to China from the nerve center of the U.S. technology industry. http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/5007346.htm - - - - - - - - Man sentenced for possession of child porn Fourth Circuit Judge Warren Johnson sent John Byron Martin, 63, Belle Fourche, to the state penitentiary for 45 days Tuesday after previously finding him guilty of 20 counts of possession of child pornography. Martin was arrested June 13 stemming from Operation Avalanche, a Texas law enforcement investigation of a child- pornography Web site. Texas authorities forwarded the names of South Dakota residents who subscribed to the site to South Dakota officials. Operation Avalanche resulted in about 20 search warrants and seven arrests in South Dakota. http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/articles/2003/01/22/news/local/news07.txt - - - - - - - - State Worker Convicted Of Downloading Child Porn At Work Authorities have arrested a 52-year-old man accused of downloading child pornography on a state-owned computer. Peter Dunn was indicted on 20 counts of sexual exploitation of children and one count of embezzlement of public property, prosecutors said Tuesday. http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/1927840/detail.html - - - - - - - - Prosecutor charged with lewd acts by using Web camera A top prosecutor in Palm Beach County was arrested Tuesday after authorities said he stripped and performed lewd acts in front of a Web camera for someone he thought was a 13-year-old girl. Assistant State Attorney Ira Karmelin was arrested in West Palm Beach and charged with soliciting sex from a minor via the Internet and transmitting harmful images to a minor, both felonies, Orange County sheriff's Capt. Bernard Presha said. http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orl-locprosecutor22012203jan22,0,1937473.story - - - - - - - - bet365 sends Avril Lavigne worm to punters Online betting firm bet365 has apologised after sending out a copy of the Avril Lavigne worm to punters on its mailing list last night. The embarrassing security breach occurred by accident during a process to decommission a Linux box formerly used by the company to run its mailing list. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/56/28979.html - - - - - - - - Cops not amused at drunken driver's smiley A man who erased his drunken-driving record from a police computer and replaced it with a winking "smiley face" graphic ended up with a suspended license and a fine when police failed to see the funny side. The 19-year-old computer whiz had been arrested for drunken driving and summoned to appear in court in Besancon, in eastern France, the French daily Liberation reported Tuesday. Finding an unmanned computer as he arrived at the police station for his hearing, the man decided to test the good humor of the court by sneaking into the database. http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/01/21/offbeat.france.smiley.reut/index.html - - - - - - - - Surveillance Plan Worries GOP Senator A senior Republican senator yesterday expressed concern that a Pentagon surveillance program could be used on U.S. citizens and may "have a chilling effect on civil liberties." In a letter to Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) alleged that the Justice Department and FBI are more extensively exploring the use of the Total Information Awareness program than they have previously acknowledged. http://online.securityfocus.com/news/2109 FBI, Defense in talks about controversial surveillance technology http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0103/012203h1.htm FBI may have aided Pentagon data project http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/01/22/data.mining.ap/index.html A monster surveillance society? http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/ericjsinrod/2003-01-22-sinrod_x.htm - - - - - - - - Officials Debating Child Porn Sentences A county prosecutor is asking lawmakers to require mandatory sentences for child pornography convictions in New Hampshire, but others say the issue deserves more study. Rockingham County Attorney Jim Reams backs the bill to require judges to sentence first-time offenders to at least a year in jail, and to five years if they have prior convictions. But Keene Police detective James McLaughlin, who specializes in catching Internet predators said the bill needs more study. http://www.thewmurchannel.com/news/1927814/detail.html - - - - - - - - Internet fraud grew in 2002, FTC says Hucksters and rip-off artists are increasingly finding a home on the Internet as online scams accounted for an increasing portion of consumer fraud complaints last year, according to U.S. figures issued Wednesday. Identity theft -- the practice of maxing out credit cards and running up bills in someone else's name -- topped a list compiled by the Federal Trade Commission, accounting for 43 percent of the 380,000 complaints logged by the agency and other consumer-protection organizations. http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/5006038.htm http://news.com.com/2100-1023-981489.html http://www.msnbc.com/news/862683.asp http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-01-22-net-fraud_x.htm http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/01/22/identity.theft.ap/index.html - - - - - - - - DOD preps security directions A forthcoming Pentagon directive will shed light on how Defense Department organizations are expected to ensure information is stored on DOD systems adequately. The Pentagon initially issued a directive last October that gave a basic framework for providing information assurance (IA). DOD Directive 8500.1, which became effective Oct. 24, 2002, calls for information assurance requirements to be identified and included in the design, acquisition, installation, operation, upgrade and replacement of all DOD information systems. http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2003/0120/web-dodia-01-22-03.asp - - - - - - - - Music piracy facing new weapons The ailing music industry is poised to make a new push to copy-proof its music CDs in hopes of slowing the raging epidemic of Internet piracy. Microsoft and Macrovision each announced new copy-protection initiatives at Midem, the record industry's biggest international conference. The new versions of locked-down discs are intended to strike a better balance between the labels' desire to keep their songs off unauthorized file- swapping services like Kazaa and consumers' expectations of flexibility and portability. http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/4996879.htm - - - - - - - - AOL shutters Web e-mail hole America Online shuttered a security hole in its Web e-mail service on Wednesday after being tipped off to the flaw, but not before "hundreds" of accounts had been compromised. Few details of the incident have emerged, but AOL spokesman Andrew Weinstein confirmed that the online giant closed the hole Wednesday morning. "We believe only a very small number of accounts--in the hundreds, not thousands--were affected," Weinstein said, adding that the company is still taking stock of the incident to pinpoint what accounts had been targeted. http://news.com.com/2100-1001-981730.html - - - - - - - - Microsoft flaw puts servers at risk Microsoft warned system administrators on Wednesday that a new flaw in its Windows 2000 and NT domain controllers could leave their networks open to attack. The vulnerability affects the Windows Locator service, software that translates network names into the addresses of actual resources, such as disks and printers, on a company's local area network. http://news.com.com/2100-1001-981745.html - - - - - - - - Homeland Security and you The "killer app" remains the computer industry's holy grail. That's geek-speak for a feature so useful that people will buy the product just to have it. It also carries the stronger marketing connotation of necessity, as in "we can't sell these gizmos without a killer app!" Without one, good technology often has to sit out the dance. Personal cryptography, one of these wallflower technologies waiting for over a decade, is now finally ready to rock. In this case, though, its killer app is not software, but the recently passed Homeland Security Act. http://news.com.com/2010-1071-981262.html - - - - - - - - Annoying Spam List: Annoying Spam If there's one thing more loathsome than getting spammed, it's getting spammed about spam. One might call it spam spam. So when a Northern California company broadcast an unsolicited mass mailing to the press on Tuesday with the subject line "ANTI-SPAM LEADER SURFCONTROL CITES TOP 10 MOST ANNOYING SPAM IN 2002," it was, well, a tad annoying. For one thing, because typing in all-caps amounts to offline shouting, it has become a favorite tactic of spam-meisters, along with misspellings and exclamation points. http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,57329,00.html - - - - - - - - Anti-Piracy vs. Privacy Two of the Internet's major policy debates intersected yesterday when a federal judge ruled that an Internet service provider must reveal the identity of a subscriber who allegedly traded music files illegally. The ruling throws the spotlight once again on the entertainment industry's all-out war against digital piracy, and it reminded everyone that new technologies bring new threats to personal privacy. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26910-2003Jan22.html *********************************************************** Search the NewsBits.net Archive at: http://www.newsbits.net/search.html *********************************************************** The source material may be copyrighted and all rights are retained by the original author/publisher. The information is provided to you for non-profit research and educational purposes. Reproduction of this text is encouraged; however copies may not be sold, and NewsBits (www.newsbits.net) should be cited as the source of the information. Copyright 2000-2003, NewsBits.net, Campbell, CA.