What is this product?

Identity Engines Releases Authenticated Network Architecture

SUNNYVALE, CA--(Marketwire - July 14, 2008) - Identity Engines, a leading provider of role-based access control solutions for heterogeneous networks, today announced the Authenticated Network Architecture (ANA): the industry's first vendor-neutral best practices framework outlining how organizations can migrate from the static, IP-address based architectures of the past, to the newer identity-based controls enabled by recent standards including IEEE 802.1X.

Regulatory compliance mandates such as HIPAA, SOX, PCI, GLBA, NERC/FERC, FERPA, HSPD-12 across multiple industries have driven IT organizations to search for secure, efficient, cost-effective methods of controlling access to their network infrastructure. The ANA framework fulfills that need by leveraging latent enforcement capabilities present in most enterprise network equipment, enabling transparent role-based access across all existing infrastructure (wired, wireless, remote access).

I read the whole release three times, and I only have a vague notion of the product. First of all, what is an authenticated network? If I don't know there is a good chance that even a trade audience won't know. What is a role based access control as oppposed to other forms of access control, and does that belong in the first paragraph?

I don't want to be too censorious here, I used to send out press release like this. Nowadays I use a copy editor, and I keep rewriting the release until she understands what I am talking about. It is a good idea to have a second pair of eyes.

Preach it brother Livingston

When Your Newspaper Is Written by Interns

In honor of Bastille Day

The Tennis Court Oath

The National Assembly, considering that it has been called to establish the constitution of the realm, to bring about the regeneration of public order, and to maintain the true principles of monarchy; nothing may prevent it from continuing its deliberations in any place it is forced to establish itself; and, finally, the National Assembly exists wherever its members are gatheredhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif.

Decrees that all members of this assembly immediately take a solemn oath never to separate, and to reassemble wherever circumstances require, until the constitution of the realm is established and fixed upon solid foundations; and that said oath having been sworn, all members and each one individually confirm this unwavering resolution with his signature.

Bailly: I demand that the secretaries and I swear the oath first; which they do immediately according to the following formula:

We swear never to separate ourselves from the National Assembly, and to reassemble wherever circumstances require, until the constitution of the realm is drawn up and fixed upon solid foundations.

All the members swear the same oath between the hands of the president.

Conditional access TV goes mass market in Italy

SmarDTV to be bundled with Italian Samsung TVs

Over the past two years SmarDTV, backed by security company Kudelski, has worked closely with the major TV set manufacturers, the Italian broadcasters Mediaset, Telecom Italia Media, and Pangea, and with the DGTVi committee representing all TV broadcasters in Italy. The result of these efforts is not only the SmarCAM Italia product, but also a set of implementation guidelines, an interoperability partner program, and a broadcaster certification process.

Very cool.

The cardinal rule of rumor-debunking

When you're fighting a lie, don't repeat it.

Reader response to newspaper layoffs

'News & Observer' Subscriber Sues Paper -- Over Cutbacks

NEW YORK In a move that was probably inevitable amid the ongoing wave of newspaper staff cuts, a subscriber to The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C., is suing the paper -- for cutting its staff and issue size.

Keith Hempstead, a Durham lawyer and former reporter for the Fayetteville (N.C.) Observer, filed the suit last month in Wake Superior Court, the N&O reported. "He says he renewed his subscription in May just before the paper announced on June 16 the layoffs of 70 staff members and cuts in news pages," the paper added. "The paper, he says, is now not worth what he signed up for and therefore the cuts breached the paper's contract with him....

I'm not sure product quality case law supports this.

Great moments in rank hypocrisy

Bush Looks to His (Secret) Legacy

George W. Bush, who has expanded his power to access the e-mails and other electronic communications of Americans, is resisting congressional demands that White House e-mails be saved for later research by historians.

SNCR call for nominations

Each year the Society for New Communications Research presents the prestigious SNCR Excellence in New Communications Awards.

These awards honor corporations, governmental and nonprofit organizations, educational institutions, media outlets, and individuals who are innovating the use of social media, ICT, mobile media, online communities and virtual worlds and collaborative technologies in the areas of business, media, and professional communications, including advertising, marketing, public relations and corporate communications, as well as entertainment, education, politics, and social initiatives.Awards are granted in six divisions: Corporate, Government, Media, Nonprofit/NGO, Academic, and Technology Innovation (for New Communications and Social Media Technology Vendors), and in seven categories: Online Reputation Management; Behind the Firewall; Blogger Relations; External Communications & Communities; New Media Creation; Collaboration & Co-creation; and Mobile Media.

iPhone applications sales

Before the App Store “Opens”, it has already made Apple $55,000

Tucked away on the iPhone 2.0 version of Apple’s Application Store is a counter for the number of times that each application has been purchased . When this information is combined with an application’s price, and the uniform 30% that Apple pockets on each download, it is possible to know how much Apple is making from the App Store. As of 4PM (PST), that number hovers around $55,000.

If you are interested in becoming an iPhone devloper, About Objects, Inc. offers training.

Selling to the Federal Government

Mark Amtower is offering another one of his terrific conferences

Government Marketing Best Practices 2008 returns to the Tower Club
Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Where: Tower Club, 8000 Towers Crescent Drive, Vienna, VA, 17th floor
When: Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Time: 7:30 AM- 11:00 AM - Continental breakfast served
Investment: $195, includes workbook, 2 bonus CDs (Amtower on PR and a
second bonus CD tba)

Join Mark Amtower, the "Godfather of Government Marketing" in the first
session of Government Marketing Best Practices in over a year!

This is an entirely new presentation and will include the GMBP Web 2.0 Marketing Tactics.

Stay tuned for more info!

To Reserve Your Seat Today, click here now!

Everything is dead

We are told that the press release is dead, email is dead, voice mail is dead, and today brings us another edition of advertising is dead.

There is one, and only one way, to guarantee visibility in the publications you want with the visual presentation you want. Buy the media real estate. Advertising remains the best way to get your company before the public.

PR is everything from how you answer the phone, to the associations you join, to customer service, to your relations with the press. PR stands for public relations, it has to do with your company's relationship to the public. It is not a substitute for marketing and advertising. Incidentally, the press really don't like it when you send advertising copy under the guise of a press release, they want you to buy advertising. It's how they stay in business.

In honor of the Glorious Fourth

The Declaration of Independence

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

The 56 signatures on the Declaration appear in the positions indicated:

Column 1
Georgia:
Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton

Column 2
North Carolina:
William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton

Column 3
Massachusetts:
John Hancock
Maryland:
Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton

Column 4
Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Franklin
John Morton
George Clymer
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson
George Ross
Delaware:
Caesar Rodney
George Read
Thomas McKean

Column 5
New York:
William Floyd
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark

Column 6
New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple
Massachusetts:
Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott
New Hampshire:
Matthew Thornton

The coming boom market in crisis communications, reputation repair, e-discovery, litigation support, and criminal defense

IMF finally knocks on Uncle Sam's door

Der Spiegel wrote that the IMF had "informed" Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke of plans that would have been unheard of in the past: a general examination of the US financial system. The IMF's board of directors has ruled that a so-called Financial Sector Assessment Program is to be carried out in the US.

This, Der Spiegel wrote, "is nothing less than an X-ray of the entire US financial system", adding that "no Fed chief in US history has been forced to submit to the kind of humiliation that Ben Bernanke is facing".

Obviously it is not just Bernanke and the Federal Reserve that is on the line, the entire American financial sector will be sucked into the coming investigations.

Redefining keywords

The Way You Say It Says It All: Using the 'Right' Keywords can Catapult a Run-of-the-Mill Story to Major Multi-Outlet Coverage, Experts Say

Strategic word selection can catapult an announcement about a study, a product or a "breakthrough" onto the evening news instead of to its usual destination — the spam folder or circular file. "PR people want to invest time in things that are going to get picked up, so they try to put something to the 'who cares?' and 'so what?' test," says Kate Robins, a longtime public relations consultant. "If you say something is first, most, fastest, tallest — that's likely to get attention. If you can use the words like 'money,' 'fat,' 'cancer' or 'sex,' you're likely to get some ink in the general audience media," she said, the International Herald Tribune reports.

In the age of Google News Alerts it is necessary to reexamine what constitutes a keyword. We want our stories to be picked up by editors; but even more, we want our stories to be picked up by readers.

Everywhere I go people tell me that they get most of their technology news from email newsletters and Google News Alerts. If you have right keywords in your relesase, they will read it whether it is on PR Newswire or The Washington Post. Google News Alerts draws no distinction.

What are these key words? Not "breakthrough", or "safe," "easy" "secret," "trick" or any sort of buzz word. The keywords you need have to do with subject matter, such as Sarbanes Oxely, Sox, Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), electronically stored information (ESI), or whatever keywords or phrases are relevant to your audience. Nobody is stetting up a search on "breakthough" and using the word sex is a good way to land in the spam filter.

Bad news for hacks is bad news for flacks

Baltimore Sun Cutting 100 Jobs

BALTIMORE, MD (July 1, 2008) – The Baltimore Sun will cut 100 jobs by August to reduce costs, the publisher told employees, reducing the workforce through voluntary buy-outs, layoffs, attrition, and closing job positions that have been left open.

The majority of the cuts are expected to come from the newsroom.
It will be harder than ever to place stories.

It is going to be harder than ever to place stories.

Bad economy for Venture Capital

A Cringing Quarter for Venture Capitalists

The National Venture Capital Association, the industry’s trade group, largely blamed a weak economy for the trouble its members are having finding profitable exits. But it said the government is to blame too, particularly for the dearth of initial public offerings. Were it not for excessive regulation in the form of Sarbanes-Oxley, it would cost less for companies to go public and there would be more offerings, the industry group said.

I don't think that there is any possibility of changing Sarbanes-Oxley in the present political environment.

On Canada Day

Let's hear it for a country with a functioning health care system.

Potomac Tech Culture

East Coast Blogging quotes a Zach Goldfarb's account a NVTC event and a social media event. Goldfarb was struck by the fact that there was no overlap of attendees of the two events.

Since they were held on the same night at the same time, it is a little difficult to see how anyone could attend both events, unless you were a reporter whose business it was to cover both events.

East Coast Blogging makes this very improbable assertion:

As I have stated before, government contracting does not lend itself to a lot of innovation.

Huh?
The US Government? The government whose Census Dept. funded the development of the original Univac computer? The Government whose ARAPA net was the forerunner of the Internet? The government with a long history of funding the most advanced technology? The government who funded a revolution?

Government contracting is a unique world of long sales cycles for fast changing technology, low profit margins, and an improbable mix of the most outdated and most advanced technology.

Introduction to e-discovery

What every IT manager should know about e-discovery

The key to surviving e-discovery requests is preparation based on knowledge of what is expected, what is considered reasonable, when asked to locate and provide electronically stored information.

This article is a good choice for those just learning about e-discovery. We are headed into litigious times, so now is a good time to learn about litigation support issues.

Federal Reserve credibility meltdown

Barclays warns of a financial storm as Federal Reserve's credibility crumbles

US central bank accused of unleashing an inflation shock that will rock financial markets, reports Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Barclays Capital has advised clients to batten down the hatches for a worldwide financial storm, warning that the US Federal Reserve has allowed the inflation genie out of the bottle and let its credibility fall "below zero".

A bad sign. A very bad sign.

New to me local tech blog

DC Startup Blog

Added to the Tech on the Potomac RSS reader.

iPhone open to independent developers

Apple To Developers: We Want Your Apps

In the email sent to developers, Apple tells them to download the 8th version of the SDK, which was recently made available. This new version provides developers with the tools they need to finalize their applications and test them. It also directs them to a special portal that provides detailed instructions on how the submission process works, how to maximize exposure, and other vitals.

Training for iPhone development is available locally though About Objects.

Enterprise search, a non-existential endevor

Mark Hall alerts us to a new study coming out from AIIM on enterprise search. It seems that because companies store data in so many places, or "silos" as we say in IT, it is necessary to use multiple search engines to find anything. Ideally, companies should build content management systems that would eliminate, or at least reduce silos.

The coming storm of litigation may speed up this process.

Note - Hall points to Carl Frappaolo's interesting Taking AIIM blog.

Great name for an electronic evidence blog

Ride the lightning

Hosted email and the fourth amendment

It seems that email hosted by a third party is considered private, even if the business pays for the service.

Something to think about before outsourcing your business communications.

Software to manage legal "holds"

Is Preservation in E-Discovery Overrated?

One thing is statistically certain with that number of custodians: the legal hold will not be followed to perfection. If I were more mathematically inclined I’d say it could be reduced to a formula along these lines:

Legal hold compliance *decreases* exponentially as you multiply:

* The number of custodians
* The length of time the legal hold is in effect
* The types and volumes of potential ESI that may be relevant
* The presence of individuals who don’t want data to be preserved due to their own perceived errors/foibles/omissions

The answer, in my mind, doesn’t lie in a better mouse trap to manage the vagaries of the legal hold process. No, the best way to take the risk out of the legal hold process is to move very rapidly from preservation to collection.

This is going to be closely litigated as more and more security contractors are dragged into court, one way or another.

The coming boom in e-discovery

Sub-Prime Scandal Focuses Attention on E-Discovery

E-discovery is firmly in the spotlight following the arrest of two former Bear Stearns fund managers yesterday for alleged securities fraud.

The two former execs, Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin, were taken into custody for their alleged roles in the collapse of two hedge funds which triggered the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Media reports suggest that an email allegedly sent by Cioffi to Tannin may be the smoking gun in the case, underlining the growing importance of e-discovery.

It is not just the sub-prime crisis. The last eight years have been a season of abuse of power both in the public and private sector. Major advances of technology will be financed by the coming investigations.

Edit -
Archiving and the Limitations of E-Discovery

2010 census in jepordy

Census Damage Control

Preparations for the 2010 census are a shambles.

Committees in the House have been holding hearings to vet the problems and monitor progress. But with each hearing, it becomes more obvious that prospects for a robust census are unlikely to improve considerably unless and until the next president brings in new leaders. They are needed at the Commerce Department, which includes the Census Bureau, and at the bureau itself, which — like so many federal agencies — has been mismanaged and demoralized during the Bush years. ...

This is a very serious matter. In addition to redistricting, the numbers produced by the census department are used by businesses for a wide variety of planning purposes.

Demands for public safety are perhaps louder now and that may argue for better background checks. But what is not debatable is that a decision to fingerprint should have been made years ago, and budgeted for accordingly, in term of money and time.

Huh? Why do we need to fingerprint federal workers? This isn't security theater so much as fear theater, and we need to get rid of it.

Online advertising and online communications

Major Brands Are Slow to Move Their Sponsorship to the Web

Although the University of Phoenix continues to shell out a large sum of money on selling itself -- it spent more on advertising last year than it did for faculty compensation, according to its annual report -- Wrubel is focused on changing how its story is presented.

Like other companies marketing online, the University of Phoenix is considering and adopting new Web advertising strategies, some of which blur the line between advertising and programming.

Being everywhere on the Web, after all, is not the same as being understood or valued.

Wrubel wants to encourage faculty members to have blogs so that when a person searches on a given subject, the results might lead them to the University of Phoenix. He speculates that the company could produce reality-TV "webisodes" involving people going back to school -- a way to find and engage the target audience.

Employee blogging is the most obvious way to build an online presence and influence search results. It is going to take a while for that to sink in.

Assessing the Gilbane report on social media

Gilbane Dishes on Social Media in the Enterprise in New Report

Maybe the most disappointing part of the report is that small companies were not surveyed for the report. While it does make sense that larger organizations do have a great need for collaboration and information sharing, smaller organizations may take more risks and do more innovative things with social media technologies because they are able to implement faster and make changes faster than larger organizations. We may be missing some important aspects of social media use in business by not hearing from this group.

It is hard to dismiss the thought that small companies were not surveyed because small companies are not prospects for Gilbane's services.

As in so many other things, small companies are leading the way in adoption of social media.

Great moments in national security

Exclusive: New batch of terror files left on train

Secret government documents detailing the UK's policies towards fighting global terrorist funding, drugs trafficking and money laundering have been found on a London-bound train and handed to 'The Independent on Sunday'.

The government papers, left on a train destined for Waterloo station, on Wednesday, contain criticism of countries such as Iran that are signed up to the global Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an inter-governmental body created to combat financial crime and the financing of terrorism.

Obviously our British friends are behind the times. In America it would have been a laptop with 40 gigabytes worth of secret documents.

Case study in combatting online smears

US elections: Barack Obama recruits team to tackle web smears

Barack Obama is recruiting senior staff to a new unit which will combat virulent rumour campaigns on the internet that threaten to cost him votes in the presidential election against John McCain.

The unit is part of a huge expansion of Obama's campaign team as he shifts from the Democratic nomination race to the campaign for November's election.

I think we will all be watching this very carefully. Sooner or later, we will all have to respond to this sort of thing.

Edit -
Fight the Smears
Fighting lies and rumors on the Web: Obama provides a clinic for PR pros

e-discovery comes to ning

Yes, there is an e-discovery group on ning, a sure sign of the times.

Destruction of evidence

Detainee-Trial Evidence Was Allegedly Destroyed

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico, June 8 -- The Pentagon urged interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to destroy handwritten notes in case they were called to testify about potentially harsh treatment of detainees, a military defense lawyer said Sunday.

Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler, the attorney for Toronto-born Omar Khadr, said the instructions were included in a 2003 operations manual shown to him by prosecutors. He said they suggest that the United States deliberately thwarted evidence that could help terrorism suspects defend themselves at trial.

Are we do understand that not only was someone dumb enough to put destruction of evidence in writing, but that they included it in a manual?

We are going to spend decades investigating the misconduct of the present administration. Expect major advances in evidence recovery, e-discovery, litigation support, along with precdent setting rulings.

It is a great time to be in legal and criminal justice technology.

The cost of lies

Richard Clarke: 'Someone should have to pay' for Bush administration lies

"Prominent Democrats said today that impeachment was not a remedy to this," Olbermann continued. "Is there some other kind of remedy?"

"There may be some sort of truth and reconciliation commission process," Clarke said, referring to the system used in South Africa to expose and resolve the atrocities of the apartheid era. "If you come forward and admit that you were in error ... then you are forgiven. Otherwise, you are censured in some way."

"I just don't think we can let these people back into polite society," continued Clarke, "and give them seats on university boards and corporate boards and just pretend that nothing ever happened, when there are 4000 American dead and 25,000 Americans grievously wounded. ... Someone should have to pay in some way for the decisions that they made to mislead the American people."

War Crimes is going to become a specialty within crisis communications and reputation repair. Corporations will recover, but individual careers will be wrecked, some justly, some unjustly.

Stalker marketing

Leaked Report: ISP Secretly Added Spy Code To Web Sessions, Crashing Browsers

An internal British Telecom report on a secret trial of an ISP eavesdropping and advertising technology found that the system crashed some unsuspecting users' browsers, and a small percentage of the 18,000 broadband customers under surveillance believed they'd been infected with adware.

Few people detected Phorm in BT's secret trials

Congress urged to investigate ISPs over user tracking

Clearly Internet service providers are going to learn the hard way that their customers are not chattel and may not be treated as such.

Privacy protection is going to be the next killer ap. Your more clueful venture capitalist is already looking around for entrepreneurs with solutions to this problem.

They doth protest too much

PRSA Sounds Off on CBS Commentary: Analyst Says McClellan Lied Because He's in PR, Where 'Misinformation' is the Guiding Standard

CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen took some ugly shots at the PR profession with his commentary on "CBS Sunday Morning" this weekend about Scott McClellan's new book: "There is nothing funny about this past week's revelations that former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan lied to the American people about certain vital policy decisions within the Bush Administration… But in every tragic drama comes a moment of comedic Zen. And in L'Affair McClellan, that has come from the public relations community, where some now wonder whether the former flack violated the 'ethics' of his craft. Apparently, an industry the very essence of which is to try to convince people that a turkey is really an eagle has a rule that condemns lying."

He continues: "The Public Relations Society of America states: 'We adhere to the highest standards of accuracy and truth in advancing the interests of those we represent…' This clause strikes me as if the Burglars Association of America had as its creed 'Thou Shalt Not Steal.' Show me a PR person who is 'accurate' and 'truthful,' and I'll show you a PR person who is unemployed.

"The reason companies or governments hire oodles of PR people is because PR people are trained to be slickly untruthful or half–truthful. Misinformation and disinformation are the coin of the realm, and it has nothing to do with being a Democrat or a Republican," Cohen asserted.

PRSA chairman and CEO Jeffrey Julin fired back at Cohen and CBS in a letter this week, claiming Cohen unfairly challenged the integrity of the industry.

So what was PRSA saying in 2003, when it might have made a difference?

Victoria Clarke Named 'PR Professional of the Year' By PRSA; Former Department of Defense Spokesperson to Speak At Society's Int'l Conference.

The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) has named former Department of Defense spokesperson and current CNN political analyst Victoria Clarke as the Society's 2003 "PR Professional of the Year." Clarke will receive the award on Monday, October 27 at the Society's 2003 International Conference in New Orleans.

PRSA's Public Relations Professional of the Year Award honors the very best public relations work for...

I want to ask Jeffrey Julin and the entire executive board if they are proud of the award the gave to Clarke for her role in deceiving our country into war. This is one of the reasons I let my membership in PRSA lapse. We should have called Clarke out on her lies, not rewarded them.

The fact is that our industry played a hideous role in the events that led up to the disastrous Iraq war and we have yet to come to grips with it.

When the sock comes off the sock puppet

Is my IP address showing?

Clerical error exposes Google as anonymous eBay critic
The Australian competition watchdog has accidentally revealed Google as the anonymous source of a submission that is highly critical of eBay's proposal to force its users onto the PayPal payments system.

If a company adopts a business practice that unfairly penalizes your company, just say so. Don't use sock puppets, it is just plain embarrassing, especially if you are a technology company.

The coming boom market in crisis commiunications and corporate reputation repair

Ex-LPL adviser charged with fraud, theft

Financial services provider CIT is taking strong exception to a Moody’s downgrade that caused its share price to plunge more than 4%.

Struggling banks give FDIC ‘heartburn’

I also predict a seller's market in e-discovery and evidence recovery.

The other Alice Marshall

fuzzco

We’ve recently launched AliceMarshall.com, the site and accompanying newsroom of a sophisticated PR firm in New York City. The main site showcases the firm’s clientèle giving interesting and thoughtful descriptions to go along with “Go Ask Alice”- a special feature offering insider tips to the savvy traveler/consumer.

Go ask Alice; I wish I had thought of that.

Social media as collaboration

Chris Dorobek

I think blogs are part of of the collaborative landscape because they start a conversation -- a conversation among many different parties in a transparent way that can be transformative. My general take with blogs is that they are simply a step in this process. I don't think they are an end in and of themselves, but...they are a step. Frankly, I'm not sure they will be around in five or 10 years, but they are an important part in transforming the way we share information. After all, blogs are the great leveler. And I'll go back to Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz's point -- suddenly, one can share information across a much broader platform -- very easily. Anybody and everybody can be a publisher. And blogs are transparent. You share the same information with your boss, with your employees, with your partners, with your competitors, with your overseers. It is a big step is the notion that all of us are smarter then any one of us. And, for government, it is an enormous step in transparency, communication and openness.

Blogs can also start a conversation. With any luck, blogs can generate comments -- wisdom of the crowds.

I think business and civil service blogosphere will continue to grow. Social media will become, is becoming, a subset of PR and marketing, and will be so common we will take it for granted. Personal blogs may start to drift away. It is difficult to keep something up if you are not paid for it.

Why there aren't more women in technology

Because every time a woman rises to a position of prominence, however minor, a bunch of mean kids begin to harass her, and those who could take action do nothing. It is a shame, are real shame.

New to me legal tech blogs

Litigation Support Industry: Business News and Information Blog: Business information about the litigation support and electronic discovery industry. Including acquisitions & mergers, funding news, significant business successes, new alliances, product announcements and relative links. Please feel free to forward news worthy information to Brad Jenkins

The eDiscovery Paradigm Shift: The rapid increase in the volume of Electronically Stored Information (ESI) has dramatically changed the fabric of the litigation lifecyle and caused a subsequent paradigm shift in eDiscovery and Computer Forensics. This Blog is dediciated to providing a forum to discuss all of the evolving best practices and new technologies that are emerging in an effort to support this new paradigm.


Florida E-Discovery: The state of electronic discovery in Florida.

New to me data recovery blog

Platter Chatter, from CBL Data Recovery Technologies

Chris Dorobek at the Social Media Club

Chris Dorobek spoke at the Social Media Club last night about the use of social media by federal agencies He said that while adoption is slow, and the civil service is doubly risk averse in an election year, some agencies were moving forward.

Dorobek said it was better to talk about collaborations tools rather than social media. The more I think about this, the more I think he is correct. Social media, social networking, Web 2.0, are scary terms. Collaboration is a familiar term in government circles, and it really the point of social media. Rather than trying to explain that social media is a good thing because it promotes collaboration, it would be better to talk about collaboration tools.

Edit -
Dorobek has his own take on the event.
East Coast Blogging has the video.

Calling all Windows IT Pros: what would you do about the White House email?

Windows IT Pro has an excellent overview of the controversy surrounding the White House email system, filled with links for those who have only just joined the story. They conclude the article with an appeal to their readers:

At Windows IT Pro, we publish articles and information about products regularly for systems administrators concerned about staying compliant with a myriad of laws concerning email retention. Exchange administrators: What are your thoughts on the White House's archiving process? Do you have any advice for how they could do better? We want to hear from you!

I will be interested to see what they get. I am not persuaded that we are dealing with a technical problem, but I look forward to reading about the technical solutions.

Edit -
CatabBlog has some thoughts about the case.

e-discovery blogs and wikis

Via E-Evidence Information Center:

BLOGS

Windows Incident Response
Harlan Carvey

int for(ensic) {blog}
Andreas Schuster

Computer Forensics Blog
Jamie Morris

Computer Forensics/E-Discovery Tips/Tricks and Information
Mark McKinnon

Computer Forensics, Malware Analysis & Digital Investigations
Lance Mueller

Forensic Incident Response
Hogfly

Didier Stevens on Forensics
UserAssist Research

8 bits Forensishc [in Dutch]
Use Google Translate to view

A Day in the Life of an Information Security Investigator
Chief

Oracle Forensics
Paul M. Wright

Computer Forensics and Incident Response
Bill

Forensic Pagefile
Not much yet; hopefully...

Forensic Computing
Mike Murr

Ride the Lightninng
Sharon Nelson

http://geschonneck.com
Alexander Geschonneck

Forensic.Secure.Net
Mariusz Burdach

MySecured.com Blog
Marwan Al-Zarouni and Salvatore Fiorillo

Volatility - Volatile memory analysis research
AAron Walters

World of Replicants
Bill Ethridge

A Geek Raised by Wolves
Jesse Kornblum

Andrew Hay’s Blog
Check out the 'Suggested Blog Reading'

e-Discovery Team
Ralph Posey

Electronic Discovery and Evidence
Michael Arkfield

Cyb3rCrim3
Susan Brenner

Network Observations/Security Forensics
Network Instruments

WIKIS

Forensics Wiki
Created by Simson Garfinkel

Computer forensics
From Wikipedia

Sanderson Forensics/Digital-Detective
Registration Required

[Computer] Forensics
From SecuriWiki

New to me local legal tech blog

EDD Blog Online, An insiders look into the ever evolving landscape of legal discovery to include but not limited to computer forensics, electronic discovery, email archiving, online review and proactive management.

Added to the Tech on the Potomac RSS reader.

How to place an opinion piece in the newspaper

Yesterday I went to a very interesting workshop put on by the Federal Communicators Network and sponsored by the local chapter of the IABC.

My main take is that while it is difficult to place a piece in the Washington Post, WSJ, and the LA Times, the NYT is invitation only. It seems you are better advised to try for an editorial briefing, or cultivating a relationship with a syndicated columnist.

Interestingly enough, editors are not very interested in hearing form parties to high profile litigation. They would rather hear from policy experts who can examine the larger issues involved. Clearly it pays to cultivate your relationships with think tanks and academics. So much of public relations has nothing to do with media relations.

A state of wealth destruction

That is how George Soros characterized our economy in his interview on the NewsHour. Judging from the interview, Soros shares my view that regulations exist for a reason and that regulatory authorities need to be willing to act. In particular, they need to enforce margin requirements in the early stages of a bubble.

Soros has a new book out, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means. It sounds promising. His book, Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror, is well worth reading.

How to persuade corporate management to fund an electronic records management system

Bill Neale, of IBM Enterprise Content Management, presented to NCC-AIIM May Meeting. Neale is on the AIIM board of directors and represents AIIM at the International Standards Organization.

Neale opened with some general observations about records and the virtues of an automated records management system. He spoke about the risk of keeping records you don’t need as well as failing to comply with records management laws (probably not necessary for a Washington audience, here in the land of investigation, litigation, and e-discovery).

According to Cohasset Associates, 90% of records are born electronically. Obviously, as much as possible, it is preferable to keep them in electronic format, rather than on paper.

65% of all of an enterprise’s information is subject to records retention requirements. 50% of records are retained longer than legally required. Neale pointed out that what is retained is legally “discoverable,” which is why it is wise to destroy records once the legal requirement for their preservation has expired. The NCC AIIM audience understood this instantly, because so many of its members work as government contractors.

Neale observed that in order to achieve compliance, an enterprise has to establish controls, reports, and a documentation process. Once procedures have been established, the enterprise must be able to prove compliance. Keep in mind that records management is a continuing process; systems must be acquired with the thought of future migrations in mind. Will the software be available? Are the storage media appropriate for long term records?

I asked about open source systems, where the buyer would have the source code, and whether this was an important consideration in purchasing a records management system. Neale agreed that access to the source code was a consideration in acquiring a system.

He gave a list of the different kinds of required compliance:
Sarbanes Oxley (Sox)
Turnbull
Tabaksblat/a>
Basel II
CFR 21 Part 11
The Patriot Act
The Freedom of Information Act
Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act
HIPAA
Operational Risk Management

Neale pointed out that a good automated records management system would record the metadata in a manner that would be invisible to end users. A document’s metadata tags would be automatically attached without special effort by the end user. Metadata would enable businesses to monitor and analyze business processes.

He reminded the audience of the obvious; good policies are not enough. Policies must be communicated through good training and properly enforced.

Manual systems are unsatisfactory, because business workers make mistakes, so that information is not captured and cannot be audited. There is also a significant loss of worker productivity. Neale emphasized that records managers making a business case for an automated system need to include these costs when they go to management.

Neale reviewed the results of an ARMA study on the return on investment of an automated system:

• compliance
• the relationship between collaboration, document management, and electronic records
• the relationship between message archiving and electronic records
• the role of electronic records in Web Content Management implementations
• collaboration between records management, IT, legal, and business professionals

He emphasized that records appear across the enterprise: statements, asset management, loan documents, and other kinds of transaction documents. For meeting the demands of tracking an ever increasing volume of documents, Neale observed that automation was the obvious, cost effective, choice. Records managers need to emphasize the negative and the positive, the risk of litigation, and the positive of improved business intelligence. In his presentation, Neale spoke only of the possible civil liabilities and loss of corporate reputation. I will add the obvious, in some cases, failure to comply carries criminal penalties. Your corporation will pay a hefty fine, but if you are a CEO, CFO, or here in Washington, an agency director, you could be looking at jail time. Something to keep in mind.

An automated records system can create a workflow from a single metadata tag. For example, the date tag could create a report for records destruction five, seven, or ten years hence, depending upon your state and the legal requirements for records retention. Almost all records should be destroyed. A few, such as articles of incorporation, must be kept for the life of the enterprise, but most should be destroyed. Storage costs money; destroying expired records saves money.

Neale reviewed a series of slides that documented the soaring cost of manual records management as the number of employees and the number of records generated grows.

Don't touch my Mac

A burglary victim helped police catch suspected thieves by logging on to her Mac remotely and snapping photos with its Webcam.

Remote access and a Webcam helped police catch two people suspected of stealing a laptop.

Thieves stole a Westchester, N.Y., woman's laptop and then accessed the Internet with the stolen computer, according to a report in The Journal News. A friend of the victim was online and noticed that it appeared the victim was logged onto the Internet. The friend called the victim to ask if that was the case. The victim, an Apple Store employee, was not online.

She logged on to her computer remotely using the Back to My Mac program. She discovered that someone was shopping online with her computer, police said. She activated the Webcam and waited for the suspects to appear in front of the monitor. The victim snapped photos of the suspects and turned them over to the White Plains Police Department.

Of course simple masking tape over the camera lense would defeat this, but still.

The humble press release, alive and well

The Evolution of the Press Release

Over the course of the last several months, BusinessWire and PRNewswire have consistently ranked in the top 100 sources for news in Techmeme's Leaderboard.

And, according to a recent Outsell study, over 51% of IT professionals reported that they get their news from press releases in Yahoo and Google news over trade journals.

Maybe the boring press release isn't so boring, maybe editors should take a second look.

Because sometimes bad press happens

eWeek’s Channel Insider blog -

The news release in question came from a company called PressReleasePros.com, which is pitching a way of using Search Engine Optimization (SEO) "to bury negative blog postings" about a client's company. So if your company has been the object of ridicule by a blogger, or perhaps deserved criticism, the brain trust at PressReleasePros.com is presumably going to show you how to prevent people from finding those blog entries.

Sometimes you get bad press and negative posts. Sometimes it is because your company messed up and deserved it; sometimes it’s because someone has an ax to grind. In either case it is possible to improve the results, and putting out press releases on one of the established wire services is PART of the solution.

The first rule of social media is to make friends before you need them. That is why I encourage employee blogging. The collective power of your employee’s blogs will give you a cushion when bad news breaks.

You should also encourage your subcontractors to blog and link to their blogs from your corporate site. That will create a constellation within blogosphere that revolves around your company.

When bad news breaks you should begin by addressing the basics of corporate reputation repair: acknowledge the problem and address the public's legitimate concern, and take corrective action. Without the basics, nothing else will work.

Having addressed the basic issue, putting out favorable press releases on wire services will give your search results a bump. Don’t instruct your employee bloggers to link to those press releases (that will just make their blogs boring and no one will read them) but make sure your employees know about them.

Employees should be encouraged to use social tagging sites such as del.icio.us to tag positive news stories (stories running in actual news publications rather than press releases on wire services) in order to give them a bump. The purpose of this is not merely to increase the visibility of such stories to search engines, but also to give a bump in page views for the reporter and publication concerned. Publications will be more likely to write about your company if they know they can attract additional reader traffic.

Linking federal IT professionals

Federal Information Management alerts us to the establishment of the LinkedIN Federal IT Group and eGov Community.

Public Relations and the Fourth Amendment

Fourth Amendment

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Internet Archive founder breaks gag order, detailing FBI's secret demand for user's personal information and the resulting lawsuit challenging the subpoena

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has withdrawn a secret demand that the Internet Archive, an online library, provide the agency with a user's personal information after the Web site challenged the records request in court.

The FBI sent a national security letter, or NSL, to the Internet Archive in November and included a gag order barring site founder Brewster Kahle from talking to anyone other than his lawyers about the request. Kahle, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit to challenge the subpoena, arguing that the NSL program is unconstitutional, and the FBI withdrew the NSL on April 22.

The settlement between the FBI and the Internet Archive allowed Kahle to break the gag order, a standard part of an NSL request. The Internet Archive's challenge of the NSL is only the third case that the ACLU is aware of in which an NSL has been challenged in court, said Melissa Goodman an attorney for the civil liberties group's National Security Project.

Resisting a request for information from the federal government is an extremely serious matter. In general I would advise against it in the strongest possible terms. However, there comes a time when it is painfully obvious that the government is abusing its power. Others, more gifted that I, will speak to the political, constitutional, and moral, aspects, of this case. I will confine myself to the PR of such resistance. By this act, the Internet Archive has established itself as the faithful keeper of information and its proper use. It's conduct stands in stark contrast to the shameful conduct of Telecommunications companies.

Peabody and Sherman would be proud.

Great moments in asset tracking

US State Department loses a lot of laptops

It has surfaced that the US State Department can't account for up to about 1,000 laptops, perhaps as many as 400 of which belonged to the department's Anti-Terrorism Assistance Program. ...

Internal auditors found that the department lost track of US$30 million worth of computer equipment, "the vast majority of which... perhaps as much as 99 percent," were laptops, according to one official.

So what are the procedures on asset tracking at the State Department?

Streamlining Java EE Development

Northern Virginia Java Users Group Meeting, May 14, 2008

If you've ever had to sit through a five minute build/deploy cycle to test a one-line code change, or wait several days for a schema change before you could move forward with new development, here are some techniques for streamlining Java EE development you're sure to appreciate. This presentation will show how to leverage design patterns and some of the built-in capabilities of modern IDEs to help eliminate annoying delays while improving the flexibility and testability of your application.

Speaker:

Jonathan Lehr is President of About Objects, Inc., a Reston, Virginia firm that specializes in Java EE, Alfresco ECM, and Cocoa training and consulting. He is the coauthor of two books on J2EE web frameworks, Jakarta Pitfalls (Wiley), and Mastering JavaServer Faces (Wiley), and has been a speaker at ApacheCon and No Fluff Just Stuff. Jonathan is also the founder and lead architect of the Semblance Project (https://semblance.dev.java.net ) which houses the StrutsLive framework as well as a number of other useful Java EE components. StrutsLive has been used by consulting companies such as Booz Allen Hamilton, Sapient Corp., and MarketLive to develop major, production B2B and B2C websites, including http://www.theshoppingchannel.com , http://www.enbridge.com, http://www.armaniexchange.com, and many others.

Location:

Freddie Mac
Permanent Home Office (PHO I)
8200 Jones Branch Drive
McLean, VA 22102-3110

Electronic Communications Preservation Act

Bill targets messy e-records

A bill introduced by House Democrats would preserve e-mail messages whose loss could create gaps in the country’s historical record and leave agencies vulnerable to legal actions, some policy observers say.

The legislation introduced last month would require federal agencies to preserve electronic communications in an electronic format and put the National Archives and Records Administration in charge of overseeing compliance.

Putting NARA in charge of records administration is the key to preventing the fox from guarding the hen house.

Joe TechBlogReader

CMS Wire has an interesting analysis on who reads tech blogs. It mirrors the results of my own informal and very unscientific poll. Of the tiny sample who responded, 30% said they don't read any blogs. Of those who read blogs, the most popular ones, in descending order, were:
Slashdot
Tech Crunch
Joel on Software
Java Ranch
Scobleizer
Read/Write Web
Boing Boing
Jeff Atwood
Scott Hanselman
InfoQ
The Server Side
Sramana Mitra on Strategy
WebbAlert
Geeking with Greg
SiliconAlley not sure of the URL
Presto Vivace
raibledesigns.com
Altima not sure of the URL
arstechnica

Business you should never bid on

FBI raids special counsel's office

Investigators say Bloch is suspected of hiring an outside company to scrub his computer amid a federal investigation of alleged misconduct in his office.

He hired an outside company because there isn't a civil servant in the entire federal government dumb enough to go to jail for Bloch. The private company which did this has a name, I have no doubt we will be learning its name in the near future.

This is a great time to be in e-discovery and records management, because the investigations into this maladministration will produce business for years to come.

It is also a good time to be a government IT reporter, because one else will have the unique combination of knowledge or politics, the civil service, and technology that will make it possible to tell these stories. Entire careers are going to be made out of this.

Edit -

The Legal Times and Project on Government Oversight comment.

Edit ii
FireDogLake: The Bloch Raid: A Mafia Turf War?

Three cheers for William Dizard III

No source, no story.

Dept. of Transportation

Welcome to blogosphere, Fast Lane, The Official Blog of the Secretary of Tranporation.

Added to Tech on the Potomac

Via our good friends at FCW.

When is a start up ready for publicity?

Judging from this Information Week feature, when it has some early customers.

Mysteries of RSS

I have put my collection of local tech, PR, and marketing blogs Blogdigger and Technorati. Both feeds are supposed to have most recent posts float to the top. So why are there different results?

Tech on the Potomac Blogdigger edition

Tech on the Potomac Technorati edition

Why do they currently have different posts floating to the top? And why are some blogs favored over others? Clearly it has something to do with their RSS feeds; but what?

For my process improvement readers

The Agile Edge

An intense, one day Agile education event that will provide attendees a world class framework for breakthrough performance and organizational transformation.
May 22nd in McLean, Virginia

In honor of today's gorgeous weather

Beethoven's Spring Sonta

Local .Net and SQL user groups

.net DEvHammer

Are you looking for a .NET or SQL Server User Group? I'm hoping to make your task a little easier by adding a handy user group map to my blog. If you go to the homepage of my blog, and look in the section entitled "My Stuff," you'll find a new widget containing a Virtual Earth map of the active .NET and SQL Server user groups in the Mid-Atlantic area (if I missed yours, don't fret, just drop me a note, and I'll add you). If you click on the Expand link, it'll enlarge the map for better readability. You can also see the map in a larger size here.

National Contract Management Association in denial

Contractors are here to stay By Florence Olsen

When presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) declared in 2007 that she would eliminate 500,000 federal contractors if elected president, some policy experts said she couldn't’t do it. One of those experts was Steven Schooner, senior associate dean of academic affairs and associate professor of law at George Washington University.

Whether the federal government relies too much on contractors is an interesting — but irrelevant — philosophical, public policy and moral question, Schooner said in an interview.

Putting aside the merits of Clinton's proposal, the fact that she has made it is evidence that federal contractors in general, and security contractors in particular, have become so unpopular with the public that there are votes to be had by attacking them. When your community has sunk to political whipping boy status, it is time to rethink your approach to the world. Something isn't working.

Schooner's casual and condescending dismissal of Clinton's proposal is a study in hubris. What politicians can do politicians can undo. Clearly the National Contract Management Association thought it was in their interest to not just release Schooner's statement, but promote it.

The National Contract Management Association needs to recognize the public outrage of the documented incidents of contractor misconduct and acknowledge that their might be very good reason for such outrage. Their members might begin with a Google search on their company's name and see what turns up. That first page of results, that is what the online world thinks of you. If you don't like it you need to take action. Patronizing statements from tenured university professors will only make things worse in the present environment.

Lurita Doan resigns from GSA

Lurita Doan resigns as GSA administrator

What took so long? Too many other scandals distracting the White House?

Excellent advice from BL Ochman

BL Ochman

be nice to bloggers when they call you, even if you don't know who they are. better yet, google their name while on the phone

There is no such thing as an unimportant person. If you make a practice of being nice, you won't have to make a special effort when you deal with a big short, be they media or otherwise.

After your front operation is exposed

DoD Suspends Military 'Media Analysts' Program

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon has suspended a public affairs program that has come under fire for using retired military "media analysts" as surrogates to get out its messages on the Iraq war, a spokesman confirmed April 28.

Let's hope the program will end, rather than be "re-branded."

Of course, in a country where a defense contractor owns a news network, I am not sure how much difference this makes.

Edit-
It has got to be embarrassing to be caught in something like this.

Local venture funding

Venture Funding Rises 13.9% in Region

Venture capitalists invested $264.6 million in the Washington area in the first three months of 2008, up 13.9 percent from the comparable period a year earlier, according to a MoneyTree report from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association. The report was based on data from Thomson Reuters.

"In spite of strong headwinds, the venture market is still pretty robust," said Don Rainey, a general partner with Vienna-based Grotech Ventures, a venture capital firm. "It is doing well locally."

May it be a sign of things to come.

The problem with people search

Paul Taylor of the Financial Times

Imagine my surprise (and dismay) when I found my photograph, taken at a technology conference, alongside stories about a man of the same name, born in the same Liverpool suburb, who had been sent to prison for a racially motivated murder.

The unfortunate juxtaposition, which came to light as I was testing a new “people search” service called Spock (www.spock.com), was quickly remedied, but it underscores the importance of monitoring one’s online identity or digital persona – particularly if your name is not unusual.

People search companies need to do a better job of avoiding mistaken matches.

Taylor's article goes on to discuss some handy tools:
Intelius
Abika
LinkedIn
Plaxo
Wink
ZoomInfo

Cofusing economic power with political authority

When Young Teachers Go Wild on the Web

It's almost like Googling someone: Log on to Facebook. Join the Washington, D.C., network. Search the Web site for your favorite school system. And then watch the public profiles of 20-something teachers unfurl like gift wrap on the screen, revealing a sense of humor that can be overtly sarcastic or unintentionally unprofessional -- or both.

Unless an employee's online activities involve the employer, a hands off policy is the most prudent course of action. If an employer has a policy of firing workers for online activity, then it could be argued that they are liable for the online activity for those they did not fire. An employer with a hands off policy for off-site activities is in a strong position to deny any liability.

In a free society employers do not have the right to limit an employee's speach. If this changes we would no longer be a free society. That would be a shame, a real shame.

note - as to the gender attitudes contained in the article, well, it is no mystery why The Washington Post has difficulty attracting female readers.

The energy sector, PR and economic indicators

New Global Research Shows Exxon–Mobil Ranks Low on Transparency — Revenue Leader is Most 'Secretive' of Oil and Gas Companies

The world's largest energy group, Exxon–Mobil, is as secretive as its Russian and Chinese rivals, new research has suggested. Transparency International evaluated the reporting practices of 42 oil and gas firms including payments made to resource–rich countries. Exxon was the least transparent along with China's CNOOC and Russia's Lukoil. Transparency International, which targets corruption, is a global network across more than 90 countries. It said the lack of transparency can cause corruption and hurt the poor, BBC News reports.

In response to the report, Exxon says it was committed to honest and ethical behavour and opposed corruption. The firm said it, along with other members of the International Association of Oil & Gas Producers, disagreed with the report's methodology.

The report ranked BP, the UK's largest firm, as "medium" for revenue transparency. Anglo–Dutch firm Shell was classed as "high" for transparency along with Brazilian firm Petrobras.

It's never a good thing when your firm's lack of transparency is compared to that of the Russians and Chinese.


Big oil boosts buy-backs in absence of new investments

Rising nationalism, insufficient talent and scarce supplies are limiting investment opportunities for the world's major oil companies, leading them to increase share buybacks, said Jim Mulva, chief executive of ConocoPhillips. ...

... "One could argue that companies spending this amount of money buying back stocks are slowly liquidating themselves," said Robin West, chairman of PFC Energy, the consultancy.

At a time of record gas prices, this is not reassuring.

The Peak Oil Crisis: The Case for 2008

It is conventional wisdom for most of the people following the peak oil story that we still have a few years to go before the real troubles begin. Some say 2011, others 2015 or later, but in general, among those calculating the depletion vs. new supply balance most have been talking about troubles starting in years rather than months.

Let’s ponder for a second the meaning of “peak oil.” Ever since the concept was invented some 50 years ago, peak oil has meant the point in time when world oil production increases to a level that never again will be reached. For most of us, however, peak oil will not be a point on a government chart, but will be the day when we drive up to a gas station and find the tanks empty, restrictions on how much we can buy, or more likely a price that makes us realize our lifestyles are going to change. We can no longer afford to use our cars in the manner that we have been doing all our lives.

In recent weeks there have been developments suggesting that the troubles associated with peak oil may be coming faster than many realize.

Time to find some new energy experts.

Washington Post/ Washington Business Journal

I am in the preliminary process of analyzing my reader survey of favorite sources on tech news. The good news for The Washington Post is that they are a favorite source of technology news, only CNET had an equal number of respondents. The bad news for the Washington Business Journal is that not a single respondent named them, even though it was a prompted response.

The Washington Business Journal concentrates too much on venture capital and merger and acquisition and too little on technology itself to attract readers. The subscription wall is also a huge barrier for a technology audience. With all of the IT trade press offering free access, it is a little difficult to persuade techies to pay for a subscription.

Business practices and computer security

Jeremy Kirk interviews Bruce Schnier

So what do you think is the biggest threat right now

Schneier: Crime.

So how do you fix it? It's expensive to investigate, it's cross-jurisdictional.

Schneier: It might not be fixable. A lot of [the solution] is going to be making the things that criminals are going after harder to get. You're not going to stop the criminals. But in the United States, it's really easy to get a credit card in someone else's name. The credit card companies like it that way. So a lot of it is looking at how the criminals are attacking things and making it harder to attack them. The brokerage companies want it to be easy for you to log on and make trades. Make it harder, and the businesses don't like that.

They're afraid they're going to drive away customers.

Schneier: Of course. If I strip search you before you go into the bank, you might change branches. In the U.S., the government doesn't have the balls to require stuff like [stronger authentication]. You've got to make the banks responsible for losses. The brokerage company has to [reimburse] me if I didn't make the trade. Period. End of sentence.

That's how you fix it. Because then, my brokerage is going to start buying security, otherwise they won't. The basic rule of security: You make the entity in the best position to mitigate the risk, responsible for the risk. Make them responsible. They'll figure it out. That's how capitalism works.

I had a similar take on spam and the issuance of merchant accounts:

Nothing in this writer’s research has explained why VISA, Mastercard, et al, tolerate spammers. Without credit cards spamming would not be possible. So why do these companies traffic with such operators? We need to make this a customer relations issue.

Senate hearing on Net Neutality

The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is having a hearing on the Future of the Internet. I am following the proceedings on Twitter.

Edit -
CNet reports on the morning's proceedings. EWeek says that FCC Chair Martin accused Comcast of widespread throttling. IP Democracy has a similar account. Save the Internet focuses on the testimony of representatives of the Writers Guild. Technology Liberation Front dismisses the Writers Guild representatives as celebrities.

New to me local tech blog

powdermonkey - Grinding together ideas, technology and information

added to the Tech on the Potomac RSS reader.

Online advertising: standards needed

Measurement: 'Further Than Nowhere, Less Than Somewhere'

The lack of a standard is a big problem. It's creating confusion and an aversion to spending. According to Booz Allen Hamilton, 98% of media executives say this deficiency is inhibiting marketers from spending more on digital.

(Via Steve Rubel.)

I am glad to know that they industry is aware of the problem and at least moving towards a solution. If writers are to be paid, online advertising needs to expand. Advertisers need to have some from of reliable measurement and there needs to be an end to sleazy practices.

Why you need a PR pro to pitch your stories

Because bloggers and journalists are real prima donnas about how they get their pitches. If you don't pitch it exactly the way they want it, into the trash bin, real or cyber, with your story.

Now small businesses and start ups, the ones most likely to have actual news, don't have time to keep up with everyone's personal preferences. That is why they need a PR agency with experience with traditional and new media. But from a reader's point of view it isn't very edifying and if I were a technology reporter I would repress the urge to explain how to kiss up to me and the necessity of doing so.

Insulting the public, ripping off advertisers

When Monetizing ISP Traffic Goes Horribly Wrong

In seeking to further monetize Web site traffic on their networks, a number of major Internet service providers may be inadvertently exposing their customers to a greater risk of online attack from identity thieves, according to research released today.

Many ISPs have already adopted the controversial practice of serving advertisements when a customer tries to browse to a Web site that does not exist. But a growing number of providers also are serving ad-filled pages when customers request a subdomain of a Web site that does not exist, such as something.example.com. This practice, which experts say potentially introduces new copyright violation claims, also potentially introduces security threats when ISPs outsource the ad-serving process to third parties.

Paying per click sounds like a great bargain until you start to consider all the negative associations that can arise from your company's name placed in negative context. When you lose control of ad placement, you lose control of your marketing message. The same companies who are adamant that their advertisement not appear opposite of a negative story about them or a positive story about the competitor, or their competitor's ad, are perfectly happy to buy paid search advertising that may place their company's name in the most appalling context. Sometimes a bargain is no bargain.

Coin operated experts

Lawrence Lessig coins a brilliant phrase in talking about the coin operated experts which are so plentiful in our nation's capitol during his testimony to the FCC on the subject of net neutrality.

Clue to Lessig: e2e may be a cute logo for end-to-end, but take it from a professional communicator, it is just one more buzzword that confuses the public, and confusion is what the opponents of net neutrality are counting on.

The Washington Post and Arts Technica report on the day's proceedings. Strangely Silicon Valley Watcher is silent, as is Tech Crunch.