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RAIN: Holiday Update 12/20/01 Part 1



There are 11 stories in this posting.


Federal Computer Week 12/19/01
Congress e-mail volume soars
http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2001/1217/web-email-12-19-01.asp

by William Matthews
The public's increasing use of e-mail plus anthrax anxiety pushed the volume of e-mail going to Congress up by 50 percent during 2001, according to the Congressional Management Foundation.
House and Senate offices received about 120 million e-mail messages this year, up from 80 million in 2000, according to a survey by the foundation and the Congress Online Project.



Federal Computer Week 12/20/01
Interior missing online training
http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2001/1217/web-int-12-20-01.asp

by Graeme Browning
Interior Department employees have lost valuable training time because of a temporary restraining order in a long-running court case that disconnected most of the agency's computers from the Internet this month, the Interior official in charge of training said Dec. 18.



New York Times 12/20/01
Bush gives secrecy power to public health secretary
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/20/politics/20SECR.html

by Alison Mitchell
Washington, Dec. 19 - President Bush has granted the secretary of health and human services the power to classify information as secret, a step that shows how the battle against terrorism is drawing domestic agencies into the national security apparatus.



New York Times 12/20/01
Judge sides with Democrats, Unions
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-FEC-Democrats.html

AP
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal judge cited the privacy of Democratic candidates and possible damage to the party in barring the release of documents that show how Democrats let unions control campaign activities in return for large donations.



GovExec.com 12/19/01
Nation unprepared for cyber war, experts say
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/1201/121901j1.htm

by Joshua Dean
The United States is unprepared to defend itself against a serious cyber attack, according to a senior official at the National Security Agency.
Speaking Tuesday at a homeland security conference in Washington sponsored by Market*Access International Inc., Michael Jacobs, the NSA's director of information assurance, painted a grim picture of a nation made increasingly vulnerable by its reliance on high technology.



Minneapolis Star-Tribune 11/08/01
A computer mistake, and medical records hit the Internet
http://www2.startribune.com/stOnLine/cgi-bin/article?thisStory=85281206


by Maura Lerner and Josephine Marcotty
Facing an extraordinary breach of confidentiality, psychologists at the University of Minnesota started calling 20 sets of parents Wednesday to explain how their children's names and psychological evaluations could have ended up on the Internet.



Frankfort Times 12/19/01
Antique County records dumped
http://www.ftimes.com/insidenews.asp?ID=4525

by Sheila Ahern
County officials discovered this morning why cleaning gained its popularity during the spring and not when temperatures dip close to the 30s.
Boxes of old county records, ranging from tax duplicates and warrant receipts to school records, were pulled from the old state highway garage near the Clinton County fairgrounds today. Most were destined for the landfill. County officers peered into boxes to decide what to keep and what to pitch.



Newsbytes 12/20/01
California expands online access to court records
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/173148.html

by Brian Krebs
California's Judicial Council voted Wednesday to allow online public access to court documents in most civil cases, while restricting remote access to criminal records and other cases likely to contain sensitive personal information.



Chicago Tribune 12/20/01
Smart logs make it tough for hackers to cover their tracks
http://www.chicagotribune.com/technology/chi-011220securityblanket.story?coll=chi%2Dtechnology%2Dhed

by Weston Nicolls
When tragedy strikes a commercial airliner, authorities rush to determine how and why the crash happened.
Their most important tools are often the "black boxes" (they're actually orange) that record and preserve flight data records and cockpit conversations. The boxes, which can survive almost any crash, provide a history of what was happening in the aircraft before it went down.



Richmond Times Dispatch 12/20/01
Crime reports on the Internet
http://www.timesdispatch.com/vametro/MGB6LKVWFVC.html

AP
ARLINGTON - The Arlington County Police Department began allowing residents to fill out criminal incident reports over the Internet this week.
With the click of a mouse, victims of less serious crimes can fill out a police report on the Web instead of telephoning it in or waiting to speak to an officer in person.



New York Times 12/20/01
E-mail cards often come with a personal touch
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/20/technology/circuits/20GREE.html

by James Barron
Every Christmas card that Montgomery Taylor is sending this year shows him standing in front of the tree in Rockefeller Center - a friend with a digital camera snapped the picture. Every card carries a handwritten note - "Hope your holidays are wonderful," he told a couple he had seen at a party the night before.
And every card is delivered by e-mail.




Peter A. Kurilecz CRM, CA
pakurilecz@aol.com
Richmond, Va