Congress should build 911 awareness nationwide with a “National 9-1-1 Education Month,” said Rep. Anna G. Eshoo (D- Calif.). Congressional E-911 Caucus co-chairs Eshoo and Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) Thursday unveiled H.R. 537, which would designate one month each year to educating Americans about 911 services through events, ad campaigns, school presentations and parent and teacher training. The bill aims especially at children, seniors, the hearing-impaired, those with limited English and other “vulnerable populations,” said Eshoo. Its passage would reduce inappropriate 911 use and stress on the 911 system from technological change, said Gregory Rohde, executive director of the E-911 Institute. The bill is a “silver bullet” in a comprehensive E-911 approach, Eshoo said. Along with 16 House cosponsors, the bill has backing by the E-911 Institute, National Emergency Number Association, National Association of State 9-1-1 Administrators, Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials, CTIA, 9-11 for Kids and Comcare. Those groups have adopted resolutions designating April for the 911 campaign.
Sports programming disputes are erupting this summer around the pay-TV industry, with Comcast fighting on two fronts and others in their own melees. The spats fit two categories. In the first, incumbent cable operators intent on keeping costs down and limiting their analog offerings do not want to carry costlier sports programming on basic tiers. And new entrant IPTV providers are having trouble simply licensing sports programming.
Despite the Internet’s huge effects, it still lacks in key areas, notably authentication, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official told a Wednesday forum marking 10 years since the Clinton-administration report, Framework for Global E-Commerce. Speakers at the Software and Information Industry Association event highlighted successes by a handful of large Internet companies and wide adoption of core Internet standards, calling broadband penetration unacceptably low. Net neutrality barely got a mention. The guidelines in the 1997 report by Ira Magaziner, then senior adviser on the Internet to President Clinton, “happened at a very early stage of the game” and set a positive tone for the Internet’s development, said moderator and BusinessWeek chief economist Michael Mandel.
Spam fighters predicted an ominous rise in “cyberwarfare” and online extortion atop familiar stock “pump and dump” and drug scams as cybercriminals shift strategies and tactics. The U.S. should lead the fight, with help from other nations from which most attacks are launched or routed, they said Wednesday at the Federal Trade Commission Spam Summit in Washington. FBI Special Agent Tom Grasso said on a separate panel that “spam is absolutely a worthy target of anybody in law enforcement.” The bureau is seeing more phishing and malicious software, not a rise in benign “spamertising” of products, he said.
Infrastructure plans the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sought, including one by its own Office of Cyber Security and Communications, are useless because DHS did not explain what it wants and why, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) told the House Homeland Security Committee in a letter Tuesday. A June 2006 DHS National Infrastructure Protection Plan told its own units and other agencies involved in communications and 16 other sectors, such as emergency services and information technology, to describe how, working with regulated industries, they would identify infrastructure assets and threats to them. Reviewing nine such plans, which DHS released May 21, GAO found they varied in detail and utility. As written, the reports will not help DHS “plan future protective measures,” said Eileen R. Larence, GAO Homeland Security and Justice Issues director. “It is also unclear how far along each sector actually is in identifying assets, setting priorities and developing activities to protect key assets.” Eight of the nine plans do not offer incentives for private-sector infrastructure owners to assess risks voluntarily; only one, water treatment, wrote up its assets in a comprehensive manner, Larence said. Among sectors notable for inadequately defining assets was communications. The DHS cybersecurity office left out the human factor, a key element in sector security, she said. For these plans and reports to be of any use, DHS should “better define its critical infrastructure information needs,” and “better explain how this information will be used to build the private sector’s trust and attract more users,” Larence said.
Infrastructure plans the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sought, including one by its own Office of Cyber Security and Communications, are useless because DHS did not explain what it wants and why, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) told the House Homeland Security Committee in a letter Tuesday. A June 2006 DHS National Infrastructure Protection Plan told its own units and other agencies involved in communications and 16 other sectors, such as emergency services and information technology, to describe how, working with regulated industries, they would identify infrastructure assets and threats to them. Reviewing nine such plans, which DHS released May 21, GAO found they varied in detail and utility. As written, the reports will not help DHS “plan future protective measures,” said Eileen R. Larence, GAO homeland security and justice issues director. “It is also unclear how far along each sector actually is in identifying assets, setting priorities and developing activities to protect key assets.” Eight of the nine plans do not offer incentives for private-sector infrastructure owners to assess risks voluntarily; only one, water treatment, wrote up its assets in a comprehensive manner, Larence said. Among sectors notable for inadequately defining assets was communications. The DHS cyber security office left out the human factor, a key element in sector security, she said. For these plans and reports to be of any use, DHS should “better define its critical infrastructure information needs,” and “better explain how this information will be used to build the private sector’s trust and attract more users,” Larence said.
Wireless carriers warned the FCC it is pushing too hard for stricter standards for E-911 location accuracy. Carriers said they would not be able to meet identification requirements using current technology if measured by public safety answering point (PSAP), as requested by the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials (APCO). The CTIA, the Rural Cellular Association, and AT&T called for a special committee to examine the feasibility of stricter E-911 location standards, in responses to a rulemaking the agency approved at its May meeting (CD June 1 p2).
The National Cyber Security Division (NCSD) at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has made “limited” progress in the four years since the White House released its National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, the DHS Inspector General said in a report made public last week. Many recommendations from the IG’s 2004 report on the NCSD “remain open,” but in some areas the unit has improved, such as in the cyber exercises it conducts with the public and private sector, the report said.
Debate on a requirement that communications service providers store data on Internet and phone traffic began Friday in the German Parliament’s lower house. The measure would adopt into national law the European Union (EU) Data Retention Directive, mandating that traffic data on all voice communications and data messages be held for six months. Some German states represented through Parliament’s upper house want longer terms, said Axel Spies, an attorney representing the German Competitive Carriers Association (VATM). Alternate telecom providers fear the German bill because it does not say how carriers and Internet service providers will be reimbursed, he said. Providers now get a lump 17 euros an hour to handle interception requests, far below cost; data retention rules will demand costly gear, infrastructure and personnel, Spies said. VATM wants the retention period to run no more than six months, he said. The directive also faces objections in Austria, European Digital Rights (EDRI) said. A spokesman for Austria’s Federal Ministry of Transport, Innovation and Technology said the government will not meet the adoption deadline the directive set due to strong response to a proposed national law, EDRI said. The 90 comments included several from the entertainment industry demanding longer retention terms, lower thresholds and access to retained data for copyright violations, EDRI said. The ministry will be diligent in processing the comments even if that brings a warning from the EU, the organization said. A “general aversion” to data retention has emerged in Austria, with resistance fairly broad, EDRI said. Labor and the Chamber of Commerce both oppose the measure, and even the federal chancellor’s office worries about constitutional violations, the organization said.
Debate on a requirement that communications service providers store data on Internet and phone traffic began Friday in the German Parliament’s lower house. The measure would adopt into national law the European Union (EU) Data Retention Directive, mandating that traffic data on all voice communications and data messages be held for six months. Some German states represented through Parliament’s upper house want longer terms, said Axel Spies, an attorney representing the German Competitive Carriers Association (VATM). Alternate telecom providers fear the German bill because it does not say how carriers and Internet service providers will be reimbursed, he said. Providers now get a lump 17 euros an hour to handle interception requests, far below cost; data retention rules will demand costly gear, infrastructure and personnel, Spies said. VATM wants the retention period to run no more than six months, he said. The directive also faces objections in Austria, European Digital Rights (EDRI) said. A spokesman for Austria’s Federal Ministry of Transport, Innovation and Technology said the government will not meet the adoption deadline the directive set due to strong response to a proposed national law, EDRI said. The 90 comments included several from the entertainment industry demanding longer retention terms, lower thresholds and access to retained data for copyright violations, EDRI said. The ministry will be diligent in processing the comments even if that brings a warning from the EU, the organization said. A “general aversion” to data retention has emerged in Austria, with resistance fairly broad, EDRI said. Labor and the Chamber of Commerce both oppose the measure, and even the federal chancellor’s office worries about constitutional violations, the organization said.