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TOP STORIES FOR FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2006 Report Says Outsourcing Fears Exaggerated McAfee Auditor Loses Employee Data Spammer Sentenced for Stealing Personal Data Wi-Fi Health Concerns Lead to Freeze Professor Canned for Online Postings REPORT SAYS OUTSOURCING FEARS EXAGGERATED A new report from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) argues that fears of a wholesale migration of high-tech jobs away from the United States are not supported by the data so far. Representing a year's work by a study group, the report predicts continued offshoring of 2 to 3 percent of IT jobs each year for the next decade, but it notes that the number of high-tech jobs continues to grow and already exceeds the number at the height of the dot-com boom. Although the report acknowledges losses to lower-wage markets and notes that the marketplace for technology is tightening, "the notion that information technology jobs are disappearing is just nonsense," according to Moshe Vardi, computer scientist at Rice University and cochair of the study group. David Patterson, president of the ACM and computer science professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said that exaggerated fears of outsourcing have hurt the U.S. market by discouraging college students from pursuing careers in IT, which, in turn, will lead to fewer qualified members of the U.S. IT workforce. New York Times, 23 February 2006 (registration req'd) http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/23/technology/23outsource.html MCAFEE AUDITOR LOSES EMPLOYEE DATA Deloitte and Touche, the external auditor of computer-security firm McAfee, has lost a CD containing unencrypted data on more than 9,000 McAfee employees. The CD was left in a seat pocket on an airliner on December 15, though the loss was not reported to Deloitte officials until January 8, and it took until January 30 to determine what was on the disk. A spokesperson for McAfee, Siobhan MacDermott, said auditors commonly have access to the kind of data that was on the CD and that the decision not to encrypt the data was Deloitte's. MacDermott said, "We have policies in place to prevent this from happening" and noted that McAfee and Deloitte are working to prevent such a loss from happening again. Ken McEldowney, executive director of Consumer Action, expressed dismay at the news. "How hard would it be to encrypt the data?" he said. "How hard would it be to make sure important information like that is not on CDs that are not under tight control by the company?" San Jose Mercury News, 24 February 2006 http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/13952271.htm SPAMMER SENTENCED FOR STEALING PERSONAL DATA A federal judge in Arkansas has sentenced a well-known spammer to eight years in prison for illegally accessing and downloading more than one billion records from data broker Acxiom. Prosecutors alleged that in 2003, Scott Levine stole a password file from Acxiom, which claims to have the world's largest database of consumer information. Levine then used those passwords to download other sensitive information. Levine operated Snipermail.com, an e-mail operation that was repeatedly accused of sending spam and claiming that it was doing so with "opt in" authorization from recipients. Although there was no evidence that Levine used the information he stole from Acxiom for identity theft, a federal jury found Levine guilty in August of 2005 of unauthorized access to a computer connected to the Internet. Levine was also fined $12,300 and may be forced to pay restitution. ZDNet, 22 February 2006 http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-6042290.html WI-FI HEALTH CONCERNS LEAD TO FREEZE The president of Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, has forbidden expansion of the institution's very limited wireless network due to health concerns over the technology. According to Fred Gilbert, "The jury is still out on the impact that electromagnetic forces have on human physiology." Gilbert said that while he is president, the policy would stay in place. Gilbert pointed to other sources of electromagnetic forces as possibly being a factor in human cancers. The decision has riled the students of Lakehead as well as Canadian health officials. Adam Krupper, president of the Lakehead student union, said, "Considering this is a university known for its great use of technology, it's kind of bad that we can't get Wi-Fi." Robert Bradley, director of consumer and clinical radiation protection at Canada's federal health department, dismissed Gilbert's concerns, saying, "If you look at the body of science, we're confident that there is no demonstrable health effect or effects from wireless technology." Yahoo, 23 February 2006 http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060223/tc_nm/life_canada_internet_dc PROFESSOR CANNED FOR ONLINE POSTINGS A tenured professor at the University of Saskatchewan has been fired for posting derogatory comments on RateMyProfessors.com about other faculty at the university. Stephen Berman was accused of using the Web site to criticize other faculty over a seven-month period in 2002 and 2003. Although the comments were made anonymously, presumably by students, some of the targeted faculty suspected that Berman was involved. A member of the university's IT staff determined that some of the 80 postings in question had been made from Berman's office. Berman, who was on the school's math faculty for 30 years, later admitted making the postings and sent a letter of apology to his department. Nevertheless, Peter MacKinnon, the university's president, recommended that Berman be fired, a decision supported by an independent arbitration committee. The committee found that Berman had sufficiently violated the conditions of his employment to terminate him despite his having tenure. "In a university context," said the committee, "it is quite simply intolerable for a senior professor to pretend to be a student in order to anonymously attack his colleagues." Chronicle of Higher Education, 24 February 2006 (sub. req'd) http://chronicle.com/daily/2006/02/2006022403t.htm ***************************************************** EDUPAGE INFORMATION To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your settings, or access the Edupage archive, visit http://www.educause.edu/Edupage/639 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] ***************************************************** OTHER EDUCAUSE RESOURCES The EDUCAUSE Resource Center is a repository for information concerning use and management of IT in higher education. 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