Technology Archives

President Obama's European trip this week began in the United Kingdom and while there, he focused some attention on science and technology issues of global interest.

In a joint press conference, United Kingdom Prime Minister David Cameron and Obama both spoke on a key collaboration initiative between the two nations: Science education. Obama spoke in generalities, but called science education "critical to our future prosperity" and said that the U.S. and U.K could continue to emphasize "investments in education, science, technology, infrastructure -- things that help our economies grow"

Interestingly, Obama was asked about the extradition case of Gary McKinnon. McKinnon, a Scottish hacker accused of breaking into 97 NASA and Defense networks, is alleged to have deleted several critical files from government operating systems. Obama said McKinnon "is now in the hands of the British legal system," though Cameron said the U.K must follow "the proper processes and make sure this case is dealt with in the proper way."

During an historic speech to Parliament, Obama also mentioned the changing landscape of the 21st Century, including business and scientific innovation and discovery.

That gives nations like the United States and the United Kingdom an inherent advantage. For from Newton and Darwin to Edison and Einstein, from Alan Turing to Steve Jobs, we have led the world in our commitment to science and cutting-edge research, the discovery of new medicines and technologies. We educate our citizens and train our workers in the best colleges and universities on Earth. But to maintain this advantage in a world that's more competitive than ever, we will have to redouble our investments in science and engineering, and renew our national commitments to educating our workforces.

Obama also emphasized the importance of free thought and rights in a digital age, with the caveat that security from cybercrime is a shared responsibility for developed nations like those in the NATO alliance.

Indeed, our efforts in this young century have led us to a new concept for NATO that will give us the capabilities needed to meet new threats -- threats like terrorism and piracy, cyber attacks and ballistic missiles. But a revitalized NATO will continue to hew to that original vision of its founders, allowing us to rally collective action for the defense of our people, while building upon the broader belief of Roosevelt and Churchill that all nations have both rights and responsibilities, and all nations share a common interest in an international architecture that maintains the peace.

Besides emphasizing broad cooperation between the United Kingdom and the United States, Obama also appears to be promoting greater collaboration on science and technology issues.

The State Department announced Friday that a computer error had forced it to invalidate the results of this year's visa lottery.

Under the lottery program, up to 55,000 visas are awarded annually based on a random drawing from entries over a month-long period by people from countries with historically low rates of immigration to the United States. The results of this year's lottery were posted last week, but David Donahue, deputy assistant secretary of state for visa services, said in a video posted on the State Department's website that they were not valid because a computer glitch had resulted in a selection of names that was not random.

"Although we received large number of entries every day during the 30-day registration period, the computer programming error caused more than 90 percent of the selectees to come from the first two days of the registration period," Donahue said.

The State Department's official statement on the error said, "We have no evidence that this problem was caused by any intentional act. No unauthorized party accessed data related" to the visa program.

The department will conduct a new selection process based on all of the names originally submitted, and expects to post results on about July 15.

Here's Donahue's video message:

(Hat tip: Ed O'Keefe, Washington Post)

The need for public safety agencies to have interoperable radios is well-documented. But for Customs and Border Protection, their legacy communications infrastructure is so antiquated that in some cases they are buying parts through the online auction site eBay.

That's according to John Santo, executive director of the CBP's wireless systems program office, part of the Homeland Security Department. Santo was discussing interoperability at a forum sponsored by the Federal Communications Commission Friday.

Nonetheless, he said having been in law enforcement for more than 30 years, he is "really encouraged by the momentum that's growing around" have interoperability standards.

The feds are getting tough with online crime. On Thursday, agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested one Texan for pirating broadcasts of live sporting events and announced the sentencing of another in a software piracy conspiracy.

Bryan McCarthy, 32, of Deer Park, Texas, allegedly operated channelsurfing.net, which he used to streamline live, copyrighted sporting events over the Internet. The site was seized by federal authorities on Feb. 1. According to the criminal complaint the site was an online portal for pirated sports events from the National Football League, National Basketball Association, and National Hockey League, among others. The website also contained links to various live television channels.

McCarthy, who has been charged with one count of criminal infringement of a copyright, made $90,000 in profits from online merchants advertising on the site, according to an ICE press release. The site had 1.3 million hits since being shut down. If convicted, McCarthy faces a maximum of five years in prison.

"Brian McCarthy allegedly sought to profit by intercepting and then streaming live sporting events, hiding behind the anonymity of the internet to make a quick buck through what is little more than high-tech thievery," said Preet Bhara, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, in a prepared statement. "This arrest sends a clear message that this office, working with its partners at HSI, will vigorously protect valuable intellectual property rights through arrests and domain name seizures."

Also Thursday, David Fein, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut, said 46-year-old Michael Uszakow, who went by the alias "iced," was sentenced to two years of probation and ordered to pay a fine of $2,000 for his involvement in an underground online community that used the Internet to engage in large-scale distribution of copyrighted software, video games, movies, music files and other protected material.

Participants in the "warez scene" worked as "crackers" to break the digital copyright protections of material while others distributed the software to file storage sites on the Internet. According to Fein, Uszakow uploaded and downloaded thousands of files from the warez server known as Nite Ranger Hideout.

At George Washington University Tuesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used a major policy speech to announce support for Internet freedom across the world. The diplomatic agency will provide $25 million to help promote online activism worldwide, she said. Clinton cited freedoms and cyberfreedoms, such as "expression, assembly and association" in the speech.

"The United States supports this freedom for people everywhere," Clinton said, "And we have called on other nations to do the same."

Citing American "commitment to protecting civil liberties and human rights," Clinton praised the Internet as a foundation for free expression, calling it the world's "town square, classroom, marketplace, coffee house and nightclub." In addition to the funding, Clinton said the State Department will continue daily work monitoring Internet freedom worldwide, and will launch Twitter feeds in Chinese, Russian and Hindi. The department started an Arabic twitter feed earlier this month and already has Spanish, French and Farsi feeds.

Clinton's remarks come as Internet- and social media-based protests and revolutions are generating global attention. The recent protests in Egypt, as well as the 2009 Iranian elections, have been cited as key points in the evolution of the Internet and social media. Clinton noted that in Egypt, the attempt by the former government of outsted dictator Hosni Mubarak to shut down the country's international Internet connections was ultimately unsuccessful in silencing the protesters.

The State Department's Office of eDiplomacy hosted a conference Friday that sought to connect technology innovators with those interested in "diplomacy and development to enable 21st century statecraft." More than 300 people from federal agencies and the private sector attended Tech@State, held at the agency's Harry S. Truman Building in Washington. The focus was on open source software.

A few noteworthy items from the conference:

Chief Technology Officer of the United States Aneesh Chopra said all federal agencies now have Congressional authority to pursue prize-based challenges, such as those for developing new applications. "No general counsel can stand in the way of our movement [on] this philosophy," he said.

The White House is considering imposing some type of consistency standard for .gov websites, said White House New Media Director Macon Phillips. The administration wants to interject a little more rhyme and reason to the sites, Phillips said.

State will continue to consider open source technology where it makes the most sense, said Chief Information Officer Susan Swart. Specifically, the agency will look at internal applications that can be hosted using open-source software, she said.

Next week, the Health and Human Services Department will launch a HealthData.gov community on the U.S.'s open data site data.gov. It will be a one-stop resource for health data innovation, said Chief Technology Officer Todd Park. Part of the site will serve as a virtual apps expo, where Park expects people to find problems with the data the agency puts out, as HHS simply does not have enough manpower to check all of it.

Perhaps the best quote of the day came from Park, who said HHS wants to provide developers with the raw data and let them take the lead in creating the software and tools to use it. The agency wants to be a "data sugar daddy," he said to laughter.

When Dee Dee Myers became President Clinton's press secretary in 1993, there were 50 websites worldwide. By the time Dana Perino left her job as press secretary for President Bush in 2009, there were over 20 billion websites worldwide, said Frank Sesno, director of George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs. Sesno moderated a panel discussion with four former press secretaries sponsored by the university Monday evening.

The panel took place as President Obama's current press secretary, Robert Gibbs, wraps up his term. His last day is Friday when Jay Carney will take over the office.

Thanks to the Internet, people all over the country now have a say in what's happening, said Perino. The Wyoming native noted that while her grandfather can't get the New York Times delivered to his ranch, he can stay informed.

Yet, all this connectivity presents a challenge for the White House. For example, when a plane crashed in Long Island, N.Y., two months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Ari Fleischer, President Bush's press secretary from 2001 to 2003 took nearly five hours to brief the press, making sure to get all the facts correct.

"I made enemies in the press [that day]," he said, noting that the continuous news cycle amplified speculation over the cause of the crash at a time when terrorism was foremost in many peoples' minds -- without any word from the White House.

Perino admitted that she resisted social media at first, but now she has nearly 30,000 followers on her Twitter page. By comparison, Gibbs on his official page has just under 147,000 followers.

You can now become a fan of the Government Printing Office on Facebook.

On Friday, the federal government's printer launched a Facebook page "in an effort to continue to use social media as way of increasing transparency and engage with the public on the workings of [GPO]," the agency said in a news release.

Spokesman Gary Somerset said GPO recognizes that social media is how the world is increasingly communicating. "We already have YouTube and Twitter accounts and Facebook is another extension of the social media circle," he wrote in an e-mail. "These efforts complement GPO's longstanding use of digital systems to inform the public."

GPO plans to post announcements, press releases, agency job listings, photos and videos on its Facebook page. As of Monday afternoon, the agency had nearly 200 followers, with numbers rapidly increasing.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is in the market for a new supercomputer to replace one in Camp Springs, Md., when NOAA's contract expires Sept. 30.

In a solicitation posted on Fed Biz Opps, the Commerce Department agency said the existing system was last upgraded in 2008.

The existing system eventually will be prone to failures and lack sufficient data capacity, said NOAA Chief Information Officer Joe Klimavicz. Historically, the agency must triple processing power every three years.

NOAA expects to award a five-year base contract, with a three-year option period, in October.The transition to the new system will take about a year, Klimavicz said.

The U.S. Cyber Challenge, a division of the non-profit Center for Internet Security, launched an online competition Monday to identify 10,000 "cyber warriors" among high school students with the skills to pursue advanced education and job opportunities in cybersecurity.

The nationwide competition was chartered to identify young Americans with the aptitude to become cyber leaders in government, the military and the private sector. Those who do well may receive scholarships, internships and other opportunities.

The competition combines tutorials with a series of timed quizzes in three critical areas: networking, operating systems and system administration. The curriculum and contest were developed by The SANS Institute, a computer security training company.

"We must act now to develop a competent workforce that can support the needs of securing our cyber networks, which is quickly becoming a national priority," said Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I., co-chair of the House Cyber Security Caucus. "I hope this challenge will grow into a national model for inspiring and harnessing our young cyber talent."