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TOP STORIES FOR MONDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2002 Group Calls for National Warning System Authorities Crack Identity-Theft Racket Feds Create Data-Gathering Research Group AND Copyright Crackdown at U.S. Naval Academy Web Application Aims to Identify Epidemics Semiconductor Industry Lowers Expectations for Growth GROUP CALLS FOR NATIONAL WARNING SYSTEM The Partnership for Public Warning, a group of experts from organizations including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the American Red Cross, will issue a report calling on the federal government to establish a national warning system. According to the report, the nation's current systems are ineffective, and a new system should address a wide range of public emergencies including cyberattacks. The group said that a new warning system could use technologies including cell phones, telephones, televisions, radio, and computers to disseminate information quickly. New York Times, 24 November 2002 (registration req'd) http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/25/national/25WARN.html AUTHORITIES CRACK IDENTITY-THEFT RACKET Three men face charges in the largest ever identity-theft case in U.S. history. Philip Cummings, Linus Baptiste, and Hakeem Mohammed have been charged in federal court with stealing more than 15,000 credit reports, giving the men access to bank accounts, credit card numbers, and other details that allowed them to assume others' identities. Initial estimates suggest that more than 30,000 people were victimized, and the early tally for losses is $2.7 million and growing. Authorities said the trio had been involved in this activity for the past three years. Associated Press, 25 November 2002 (registration req'd) http://www.nandotimes.com/nation/story/645331p-4868443c.html FEDS CREATE DATA-GATHERING RESEARCH GROUP The U.S. Department of Defense has created the Information Awareness Office (IAO) and appointed John Poindexter as its head. The new office, part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), aims to develop systems that collect and share information on a huge scale to combat terrorist threats. The IAO covers 13 programs, including Total Information Awareness, and Evidence Extraction and Link Discovery. According to DARPA, the new office will work to develop technological capabilities for the collaboration and sharing of information across agency boundaries; real-time learning, pattern matching, and anomalous pattern detection; and foreign-language machine translation and speech recognition. ComputerWorld, 25 November 2002 http://www.idg.net/ic_966736_1794_9-10000.html AND ***************************************************** COPYRIGHT CRACKDOWN AT U.S. NAVAL ACADEMY Late last week officials at the U.S. Naval Academy seized approximately 100 student computers suspected of improperly having copyrighted material on them. Several weeks ago, several groups representing media, including the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America, sent a letter to colleges and universities asking that the institutions take measures to restrict copyright infringement, said to be rampant on college campuses. At the Naval Academy, all students are issued computers when they enter the institution. If found guilty of copyright violations, students could face a range of punishments, including court martial. CNET, 25 November 2002 http://news.com.com/2100-1023-971130.html WEB APPLICATION AIMS TO IDENTIFY EPIDEMICS A new Web-based application created by Alan Zelicoff of Sandia National Labs aims to collect information from doctors around the world in an effort to identify outbreaks of disease much faster than current methods. According to Zelicoff, a former physician who is now a researcher, disease reporting today is a slow, inefficient process of disjointed efforts that "is exquisitely designed to fail." Zelicoff designed the Rapid Syndrome Validation Project (RSVP) to coordinate data about reported symptoms, even before diagnosis, and to correlate those data geographically. With RSVP, doctors enter information about patients' symptoms using a touch screen. The application then reports those symptoms, without any personal information about patients' identities, and seeks to identify patterns. Sixteen hospitals in New Mexico and Texas recently installed RSVP, and Zelicoff hopes it will be expanded to become a worldwide system. Wired News, 25 November 2002 http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,56546,00.html SEMICONDUCTOR INDUSTRY LOWERS EXPECTATIONS FOR GROWTH The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) predicted that growth in the industry would fall to between 8 and 10 percent annually. For many industries, an annual growth rate in this range would be good news, but the semiconductor industry has seen an average of 16.5 percent growth for many years. The forecast was given by W.J. "Jerry" Sanders III, chairman of Advanced Micro Devices, at the SIA annual dinner this month. Sanders said that the industry has grown too large to support past rates of expansion. Many observers expect significant consolidation in the industry and an increase in so-called fabless development, in which a company designs chips but contracts out all of the production to other companies. NewsFactor Network, 22 November 2002 http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/20070.html ***************************************************** EDUPAGE INFORMATION To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change your settings, visit http://www.educause.edu/pub/edupage/edupage.html Or, you can subscribe or unsubscribe by sending e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To SUBSCRIBE, in the body of the message type: SUBSCRIBE Edupage YourFirstName YourLastName To UNSUBSCRIBE, in the body of the message type: SIGNOFF Edupage If you have subscription problems, send e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For past issues of Edupage or information about translations of Edupage into other languages, visit http://www.educause.edu/pub/edupage/edupage.html ***************************************************** OTHER EDUCAUSE PUBLICATIONS EDUCAUSE publishes periodicals, including "EDUCAUSE Quarterly" and "EDUCAUSE Review," books, and other materials dealing with the impacts and implications of information technology in higher education. 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