News - Politics and Law

President Bush on Friday signed into law a bill that would facilitate the collection of data regarding broadband access in the United States, though most of the actions required by the law have already been accomplished by federal regulators.

The Broadband Data Act directs the Federal Communications Commission to redefine broadband, which was largely achieved earlier this year. The commission in March voted to consider 768Kbps, which is the entry-level speed offered by major DSL providers like Verizon, the low end of "basic broadband," a range that extends to under 1.5Mbps. For years, the commission had considered 200Kbps service to be "high speed."

The new law, introduced by Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, in 2007, requires Internet service providers to give the FCC more detailed reports so the FCC can identify the actual numbers of broadband connections by customer type and geographic area. The FCC adopted this measure in March as well, though the act requires the commission to use the reports to collect demographic data for geographical areas without advanced telecommunications capabilities.

A few studies are required by the new law, such as an evaluation by the Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy on the impact of broadband speed and price on small businesses. The bill also establishes a grant program for organizations to track and promote Internet usage.

A provision was also added to the bill by Congress to promote Internet safety for children. The law requires the Federal Trade Commission to establish a nationwide campaign "to increase public awareness and provide education regarding strategies to promote the safe use of the Internet by children."

The U.S. Senate is investigating allegations by two National Security Agency whistleblowers who have described widespread monitoring of innocuous telephone conversations by the Bush administration's clandestine program.

The reports fill in some details about how the NSA's program works in practice. The two whistleblowers, Adrienne Kinne and David Murfee Faulk, are former military linguists who worked for a secretive NSA operation they say routinely intercepted phone calls of U.S. military officers, American journalists, American aid workers, and others who were calling home from abroad.

The two ex-military employees came forward independently and spoke to ABC News and journalist Jim Bamford for his book on the NSA called The Shadow Factory that's due out next week.

Jay Rockefeller, the West Virginia Democrat who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee, on Thursday called the allegations "extremely disturbing" and said there would be an investigation.

If the allegations prove true, that would fly in the face of assertions by President Bush that innocent conversations would never be intercepted.

Bush said in December 2005, after The New York Times published its original article on the government's warrantless wiretapping efforts, that the NSA program would "intercept the international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations. Before we intercept these communications, the government must have information that establishes a clear link to these terrorist networks."

The NSA whistleblowers tell a different story -- including that phone sex conversations were intercepted, recorded, and passed around the office for laughs. "These were just really everyday, average, ordinary Americans who happened to be in the Middle East, in our area of intercept and happened to be making these phone calls on satellite phones," Kinne told ABC News. Faulk said that he listened in on American troops "calling home to the United States, talking to their spouses, sometimes their girlfriends, sometimes one phone call following another."

A pair of extraordinary articles (#1 and #2) published last month in the Washington Post indicate that Bush was kept ill-informed about much of the program by Vice President Cheney and the vice president's staff.

The articles, by Barton Gellman, were excerpted from his new book called Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency. They describe how Cheney's lawyer, David Addington, and the vice president himself defended the surveillance program, overruled concerns from the Justice Department about the legality of the program -- and came within a hairsbreadth of sparking a mass Justice Department resignation that would have put Richard Nixon's Saturday Night massacre to shame.

What is unclear is Sen. Rockefeller's own role in staying mum about the NSA scheme after being briefed on it. So, to one extent or another, were other Democratic politicians, including Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

Rockefeller wrote a two-page handwritten letter to Cheney on July 17, 2003 -- over a year before the NSA program became public -- saying he had "concerns" about the surveillance. But Rockefeller never did anything beyond that, such as contacting a lawyer, even though the Senate Intelligence committee is officially charged with "vigilant legislative oversight over the intelligence activities of the United States to assure that such activities are in conformity with the Constitution and laws of the United States."

That history could make Rockefeller less than enthusiastic about investigating what truly happened, as Salon's Glenn Greenwald has not so delicately suggested.

We've been down this road before
It should be no surprise that when the NSA (or any government agency) receives broad surveillance powers with scant oversight, they end up being used not to nab al-Qaida members, but to eavesdrop on phone sex conversations between a lonely G.I. and a paramour back home. Video surveillance cameras supposedly designed to let cops catch criminals are used for voyeuristic purposes too.

History echoes this point. In decades past, government agencies have subjected hundreds of thousands of law-abiding Americans to unlawful surveillance, illegal wiretaps and warrantless searches. Eleanor Roosevelt, Martin Luther King Jr., feminists, gay rights leaders, and Catholic priests were spied upon. The FBI used secret files and hidden microphones to blackmail the Kennedy brothers, sway the Supreme Court, and influence presidential elections.

One way that the United States finally put this era behind it in the mid-1970s was to have a Senate committee perform a true independent investigation. It was chaired by Democratic Sen. Frank Church and called the Church Committee. Here are some excerpts from its report:

* The intelligence community engaged in some activities which violated statutory law and the constitutional rights of American citizens.

* Legal issues were often overlooked by many of the intelligence officers who directed these operations.

* On some occasions when agency officials assume, or were told, that a program is illegal, they still permitted it to continue. They justified their conduct in some cases on the ground that the failure of "the enmemy" to play by the rules granted them the right to do likewise, and in other cases on the ground that the "national security" permitted programs that would otherwise be illegal.

* Internal recognition of the illegality or the questionable legality of many of these activities frequently led to a tightening of security rather than to their termination. Partly to avoid exposure and a public "flap," knowledge of these programs was tightly held within the agencies. Special filing procedures were used, and "cover stories" were devised.

* On occasion, intelligence agencies failed to disclose candidly their programs and practices to their own General Counsels, and to Attorneys General, Presidents. and Congress.

* When senior administration officials with a duty to control domestic intelligence activities knew, or had a basis for suspecting, that questionable activities had occurred, they often responded with silence or approval. In certain cases, they were presented with a partial description of a program but did not ask for details, thereby abdicating their responsibility. In other cases, they were fully aware of the nature of the practice and implicitly or explicitly approved it.

Sound familiar? Today, though, the senator heading the modern equivalent of that committee is on record opposing legislation to make it more difficult to snoop on Americans overseas, while endorsing retroactive immunity for telephone companies that illegally opened their networks to the NSA. Alas, Jay Rockefeller is no Frank Church.

Two former top executives from Seattle software provider Entellium were arrested on Tuesday night after allegedly inflating their company's revenues to attract investments.

(Credit: Entellium)

Former CEO Paul Thomas Johnston and former Chief Financial Officer Parrish Jones face charges in a U.S. District Court in Seattle for wire fraud.

The pair used false accounting figures to attract about $50 million in private investment from companies such as Ignition Partners, the FBI alleges. Ignition, based in Bellevue, Wash., invested $19 million in Entellium but told investigators that it would not have made the investment, had it been aware of the company's true financial status.

The government says the Entellium executives claimed that 2008 revenues reached $5.2 million, though the true figure was only $1.7 million. Additionally, investors were allegedly told that 2007 revenues reached $6.2 million, though actual revenues were $1.4 million, and 2006 revenues were said to reach nearly $4 million, though the correct figure was $582,789.

An Entellium human resources manager discovered the discrepancy in late September, while cleaning out the desk of a former vice president of sales, according to the FBI. Then on September 30, Johnston and Parrish both abruptly resigned, admitting to board members that they had misrepresented the company's revenues. The executives told the board that they had overstated revenues by about $400,000 a month since 2004.

After the two resigned, nearly all of the company's 100 employees were laid off, according to the Seattle Times.

Entellium, a customer resource management software-as-a-service provider, was founded by Johnston in 2000 in Malaysia. Its headquarters were moved to Seattle in 2003. Johnston and Parrish could face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

A number of nifty applications have popped up in response to the 2008 elections, like Google's tool to search political speeches and the Obama iPhone application. One more social-networking application is attempting to gain from the current political fever with a very speculative electoral map. For an application with only 321 active monthly users on Facebook, the myPicks U.S. Election 2008 electoral college map looks surprisingly (though certainly not completely) reasonable.

Developed by the Indian company Pramati Technologies, using the Sun Microsystems' social-application tool zembly, myPicks U.S. Election 2008 is a game that lets you "run" for office. The game, which runs on Facebook and MySpace, was developed after a strong response to myPicks Beijing 2008 on Facebook.

The myPicks Election 2008 electoral college map has Obama winning with 286 electoral votes as of October 9.

The point of the game is to accumulate points to move up in the political ranks. A player starts out as a lowly citizen with zero points but quickly earns them by participating in polls, answering trivia questions, and getting "donations" from other users of the application. It takes 2,500 points to put you in the running for school board and 10,000 makes you a candidate for mayor, but the ultimate goal is to become a presidential candidate with 1,000,000 points.

The application asks each player to give their state and to choose a campaign slogan. For the uninspired, it has a handful of generic slogans it offers up like, "Preparing for the future" and "Tomorrow is looking great." It then asks you to answer whether you will be voting for John McCain or Barack Obama, and which of the two you think will win.

The game shows what the electoral map would look like if the presidential election were held that day, based on the answers given by users of the application. Given the application's paltry following, the electoral map clearly cannot represent any sort of reality. On October 9, the application had Obama winning a solid 286 electoral votes and McCain earning 152, with 100 electoral votes left as a toss-up.

The electoral projection map from FiveThirtyEight.com has Obama winning with 346 electoral votes.

(Credit: FiveThirtyEight.com)

As it turns out, though, the map does not look too different from serious predictions being made at sites like FiveThirtyEight.com, which as of October 8 had Obama winning 346.8 electoral votes and McCain winning 191.2. Both maps have critical states like Nevada and Ohio in Obama's camp, while the traditionally Republican-voting Virginia appears as a solid Obama state on both maps.

There are, of course, some wacky outcomes on the myPicks map, such as the tie between Obama and McCain in Louisiana. Perhaps it just goes to show that Obama needs to work the Facebook crowd if he wants to win over more red states.

Business leaders discuss promoting IP protection at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday.

(Credit: Stephanie Condon/CNET)

WASHINGTON--With only five days left for President Bush to decide whether to sign into law a controversial copyright bill, business lobbyists and even the AFL-CIO are pushing for it to become law.

Most bills to expand copyright law are bipartisan--one aimed at file-swappers and prerelease movies in 2005 comes to mind--and the so-called Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act is no exception. Sens. Patrick Leahy, a Democrat, and Arlen Specter, a Republican, are the sponsors, and it enjoys the support of the Recording Industry Association of America.

But the Pro-IP Act is unusual because the Bush administration threatened a veto last month. It's been subsequently amended, and the changes are likely to assuage the administration's concerns, but the U.S. Commerce Department told CNET News that it is still reviewing the revised language.

While industries have been defensively adapting to a globalized economy and game-changing technologies, intellectual property holders are on the offense. The messages from companies like Procter & Gamble and NBC Universal are being carefully tailored to reveal the benefits of bolstering IP protections--whether it's a promise to U.S. politicians of more jobs, better products for consumers, or faster development for leaders abroad.

Industry representatives discussed how to craft those messages, and what obstacles stand in their way, on Wednesday at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's fifth annual intellectual property summit.

So far, its message to the U.S. government appears to be working. The Pro-IP Act passed unanimously in the Senate and saw bipartisan support in the House.

In the case of the entertainment industry, it is imperative to educate people about "the ramification of (IP) theft to the people who work on the sets, in makeup, even selling concessions"--not just the highly paid actors and producers, said Rick Lane, senior vice president for government affairs at News Corp.

Industries have coordinated their message with union leaders to emphasize that IP protection is, at its core, a jobs issue.

"America's workers are also being victimized by a tidal wave of counterfeiting...and digital theft...(that) threatens the well-being of the U.S. economy, endangers our citizens, and steals our jobs," John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO wrote in The Hill, a newspaper ubiquitous around the Capitol.

The message seems to be sinking in not only with congressmen but also with the presidential candidates. Wednesday's panelists see the presidential election's emphasis on green technology as a positive sign.

"That's a recognition of the role of innovation and its tie to the U.S. economy," said Rick Cotton, executive vice president and general counsel of NBC Universal. "This is not a low-cost manufacturing economy--what we have to offer is our innovation."

The need to protect and stimulate innovation is also emphasized with foreign governments, especially those like Brazil that have implemented compulsory licenses, which forces IP holders to grant a state rights to use the intellectual property in question at a set rate.

"We're actually trying to spread that gospel in lots of different countries," said Jon Soderstrom, president of the Association of University Technology Managers. "What we see is people making assertions about the flaws (of IP protection), like hindering the flow of research--none of which is true. The evidence shows it's actually promoting innovation."

Lane said the U.S. should be "using the pulpit of the presidency to explain the importance of IP to other economies."

Creating a favorable environment for IP holders involves convincing consumers as well as lawmakers that IP enforcement is worthwhile.

Encouraging consumers to veer away from bootlegged content simply requires "sending them cues," said Cotton.

NBC has had a great deal of success routing viewers of the Olympics and popular videos like SNL sketches to its own sites.

"That combination of ease of access and the desire of consumers to access content when, and how they want it," Cotton said, "have to go hand and hand, and then we see the possibility of continuing investment."

CNET's Declan McCullagh contributed to this report

WASHINGTON--The federal government is trying to find better ways to standardize and coordinate personal information about American citizens that is currently spread across thousands of databases, according to a White House official.

There are more than 3,000 programs or databases in the federal government that hold personal information--Social Security numbers, addresses, fingerprints, and so on--yet the government is only beginning to develop a plan for collecting, protecting, and using such information.

"You have a lot of duplication of data" among various agencies, said Duane Blackburn, a policy analyst in the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy. Moreover, he said, privacy controls and security measures vary from agency to agency.

At a forum here Tuesday hosted by the Information Technology Association of America, representatives from the federal government and the tech industry discussed how the government conducts identity authentication--either for federal employees or regular citizens--and how it can improve.

Blackburn helped establish an Identity Management Task Force that examined the government's current identity management architecture and how to consolidate the personal information collected.

Chartered by the National Science and Technology Council's subcommittee on biometrics and identity management, the task force released a report (PDF) in September. The report offers a set of recommendations, including possibly creating a position within the executive branch that would be responsible for coordinating identification management across all agencies.

Blackburn said the report presents "a vision--it's not a policy."

This image represents the vision of a federated 'network of networks' laid out in the Identity Management Task Force's recent report.

(Credit: Office of Science and Technology Policy)

The government's current IT architecture consists of standalone repositories, many of which duplicate what is dubbed PII, or personally identifiable information.

"As such, differences exist in the ways the same PII and other information are retained, portrayed, weighted, and valued across the total data architecture," the report says. "Further, the existence of these duplicative and nonstandard data increases opportunity for data exploitation and unauthorized access."

To address those weaknesses, the task force presented the idea of a federated "network of networks," with cross-organizational and cross-domain interoperability. The task force breaks down PII into two categories: "basic information" and application-specific data. The architecture laid out by the task force would support the basic information, but not application specific data.

An agency, such as the Defense Department, would retain application-specific data (such as a special clearance) itself and would not share it across the network. However, it could access basic information--now often duplicated across agencies--in the supported data stores using a predefined querying process.

There will always be privacy concerns when personally identifiable information is being collected, the task force acknowledges. The "basic information" about an individual would be supported by the network, conceivably accessible to any government agency.

Blackburn maintained, however, that such information would be more secure with standardized privacy stipulations and methods of access. He also reiterated that information required for specific applications would only be accessible to the relevant agencies.

"It cannot be emphasized enough that this centralized data store approach is NOT being recommended," the report says. "The applications supported by this architecture will be enormously diverse, as will the nature of the content-specific data they use and retain. At the same time, the scale of the object architecture will be global and massive, as needed to support the full range of federal government activities and enrolled participants."

To approach this vision, the task force recommends tackling a number of issues, such as standards and guidelines that would have to be in place to support a federated network, the appropriate technologies to use, and how to best coordinate interagency efforts.

Blackburn said the task force stayed away from policy prescriptions because "if you try to specify that now, you run the risk of someone trying to do it now when it's not fully thought through--you run the risk of these recommendations being politicized."

Government agencies will face a test in the development of coordinated authentication programs on October 27, when every federal employee and contractor is expected to have a government "smart card," as required by a presidential directive.

With no common authentication system within the federal government, employees currently may have four or five credentials to gain access to various buildings and may only be expected to flash those credentials at a security guard. By contrast, the smart cards will be equipped with microchips, will hold biometric data like fingerprints, and will eliminate the need for multiple credentials.

"If you don't use the cards to change the way you do business, we have all wasted a lot of effort and money to produce cards people stick in their desk," warned Mary Dixon, director of the defense manpower data center for the Defense Department.

When it comes to energy policy, both presidential candidates want carbon regulations, better efficiency, and more renewable energy. The biggest differences lie in emphasis--drilling, nuclear energy--and what role the federal government should play.

During the second presidential debate on Tuesday, Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama both cited the need for more clean, or green, technologies to reduce the country's oil consumption and address climate change.

On Monday night, a separate debate focused specifically on energy policy was hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Former CIA chief and clean-tech investor R. James Woolsey represented the McCain camp. Jason Grumet, founder of the Bipartisan Policy Center, spoke for the Obama side.

Both events provide a bit more clarity on what the candidates might do, once in office.

During the presidential debate (transcript) on Tuesday, energy was a frequent topic and tightly linked to a hoped-for economic recovery around new energy industries.

McCain once again came out strongly for rapidly expanding domestic offshore drilling and a massive build-out of nuclear power.

In response to a question about climate change, McCain touted his early commitment to the issue, plus a climate change bill he proposed with Sen. Joe Lieberman. The bill ultimately failed to become law.

"Now, how--what's--what's the best way of fixing (climate change)? Nuclear power," he said.

Later, McCain said the United States should have a more diverse set of energy sources:

"We can work on nuclear-power plants. Build a whole bunch of them, create millions of new jobs. We have to have all of the above: alternative fuels, wind, tide, solar, natural gas, clean-coal technology. All of these things we can do as Americans, and we can take on this mission, and we can overcome it."

In the Tuesday debate, Obama came out stronger on nuclear energy than he has in the past, according to FactCheck.org. He also agreed with McCain on the need for more domestic drilling but noted that the United States holds a small percentage of the world's oil reserves and that the country "can't drill our way out of the oil problem."

Obama's response to the climate change question:

"It is absolutely critical that we understand this is not just a challenge; it's an opportunity because if we create a new energy economy, we can create 5 million new jobs, easily, here in the United States. It can be an engine that drives us into the future the same way the computer was the engine for economic growth over the last couple of decades. And we can do it, but we're going to have to make an investment.

Digging one level down
Unlike the sharp attacks in the presidential and vice-presidential debates, Monday's debate on energy policy at MIT with Woolsey and Grumet was more congenial.

On the whole, Grumet cited planks from Obama's detailed energy plan, which the Illinois senator unveiled earlier this year. Woolsey spoke in broad strokes on McCain's energy plan, as well as on his criticisms of Obama's plan.

"What we have here, with some exceptions, are two responsible energy programs," Woolsey said. "Centralization and central control is a difference here."

McCain adviser James Woolsey argues a point while Obama adviser Jason Grumet listens during an MIT-hosted debate on energy policy.

(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET Networks)

Woolsey cited examples of the federal government favoring energy-related technologies, or companies in research projects, that failed.

Grumet's criticism of the McCain plan is that it lacked enough information to truly judge. He said its "drill, baby, drill" slogan is focused on the past, not the future.

Another difference is McCain's choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as vice presidential candidate. Palin has touted her experience in introducing more competition into oil and gas company operations in Alaska.

"Sen. McCain's assertion that his vice president, Gov. Palin, would be handling energy policy in this country is a profound difference because Sen. Obama would make this a personal priority," Grumet said, adding that an Obama presidency would respect the scientific process when making environmental policy.

McCain
When describing McCain's policy, Woolsey said the top item is a cap-and-trade program in which large polluters such as utilities would need to purchase pollution rights, which can be bought and sold.

McCain supports a transition to alcohol fuels such as ethanol, as well as battery-powered cars, to replace oil as the fuel for transportation. He has proposed a $300 million contest for the best electric-car battery.

He has called for the construction of 45 new nuclear plants in the next 20 years--a goal that Woolsey admitted is difficult to achieve.

Woolsey said Obama's plan is more detailed. But he said that reflects the overall philosophy of McCain, who intends to give states leeway to implement policy.

"Sen. McCain believes in general direction," he said. "It should stick to a general direction, such as cap and trade, and leave the detailed manifestations of standards and so forth--which type of renewable fuels and so on--up to local decision making."

Obama
At the federal level, Grumet said Obama supports a renewable portfolio standard, a mandate already in place in several states that would require utilities to get 10 percent of their electricity from renewable sources such as solar, wind, or geothermal by 2025.

On fuels, he said the U.S. should adopt a low-carbon standard, in which ethanol and biodiesel are measured on the total carbon emissions, from production to consumption. Corn ethanol has been criticized because its net carbon emissions are similar to gasoline, while ethanol from wood chips, grasses, or wastes is better in that regard.

Obama has proposed spending $15 billion per year for 10 years on energy programs, such as efficiency and research. This would be paid for by auctioning polluting rights in a federal cap-and-trade carbon emissions regime. Grumet also said Obama believes that scaling back subsidies to oil companies should help fund clean-energy industries.

"We have to pull these technologies forward with neutral performance standards, like a renewable portfolio standard that doesn't say how you have to make low-carbon energy. But it does say that you must make it. And we have to support those regulations with significant incentives," Grumet said.

As part of the recently passed bailout bill, subsidies for renewable energy were extended at the last minute. The law renews tax credits for solar power for eight years and for wind for one year. Also included is a tax credit for people who purchase a plug-in vehicle, an idea that both candidates had previously backed.

With just four weeks to go until Election Day, John McCain and Barack Obama met again Tuesday night in the second of three presidential debates.

The White House hopefuls covered familiar ground on topics ranging from the economy and the government's financial rescue plan to how to handle complex foreign policy hot spots, including Pakistan, Iraq, and Iran.

On the tech front, not much was said in the debate, which followed a town-hall format, though McCain suggested that he has considered former eBay CEO Meg Whitman as a potential Secretary of the Treasury. Whitman got second billing, though--McCain first named Warren Buffett as a fine choice for that office. Obama allowed that he likes Buffett's economic savvy, too.

For a recap and analysis of Tuesday's debate, check out the Debate Webcast presented here from Katie Couric and the CBS News political team. (It was originally presented immediately after the event.) The CBS Webcast features questions submitted from Web users before and during the debate.

A 20-year-old college student suspected of hacking into one of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's e-mail accounts was indicted Tuesday, a district court has announced.

David Kernell, a University of Tennessee student and son of Democratic Tennessee state representative Mike Kernell, turned himself into federal authorities and will be arraigned Wednesday before Judge C. Clifford Shirley in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee.

The indictment, unsealed Wednesday, charges that on September 16 Kernell intentionally accessed the vice presidential candidate's Yahoo e-mail account without authorization. According to the charges, Kernell is the individual responsible for posting screenshots of the account's content to a public Web site. He allegedly gained access to Palin's account by answering a set of security questions and changing the password. He then allegedly posted the new password online, enabling others to access the account.

Kernell faces a maximum of five years in prison if convicted, along with a $250,000 fine and a three-year term of supervised release. The case is being investigated by the FBI's Anchorage and Knoxville field offices. No trial date is scheduled yet.

WASHINGTON--Is the idea of widespread biometric data collection still too spooky to win over the American public?

At some level, it's already becoming commonplace: California and some other states demand fingerprints from driver's license holders. The Verified Identity Pass program includes iris scans, as does the U.K's border control system. And prisoners have their blood forcibly drawn for a DNA sample.

But more widespread use of biometrics, especially by the government, raises substantial privacy concerns that may alarm many Americans and prove difficult to resolve, panelists at a conference here said Tuesday.

"How would I transact business, if I knew someone was following me everywhere and watching me?" asked Scott Hastings, president of the IT consulting firm Deep Water Point, who previously worked in the federal government for 23 years. "We need to grab hold of that and decide how that's going to modify our behavior."

Hastings sat on a panel at a forum on identity management hosted by the Information Technology Association of America.

"Will there be underground transactions? Will it affect our economy?" he asked. "When people (become aware of) the electronic footprints they leave behind, there will be a reaction."

Homeland Security's US-VISIT program is moving from collecting two fingerprints to 10 at U.S. borders.

(Credit: Stephanie Condon/CNET )

The increasing sophistication of identity management has had clear benefits, Hastings said. He noted how the rollout of the Department of Homeland Security's immigration and border management system--United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology--has virtually erased the once-prominent problem of document fraud at U.S. borders. The US-VISIT program, implemented in 2003, involves the collection of biometric data such as fingerprints to monitor for criminals and terrorists at the borders.

US-VISIT is the world's first large-scale biometrics program, according to director Robert Mocny. He said the program has stopped 2,400 criminals based on biometrics alone.

The program is currently transitioning from collecting two fingerprints to a 10-fingerprint standard. Mocny said US-VISIT is also pursuing other forms of biometric identification, such as iris-scanning technology.

"The biggest challenge since day 1 with any service has been the privacy and security aspect of it," said Chase Garwood, chief information officer of US-VISIT. He said the program extends to non-U.S. citizens many of the same protections afforded to citizens.

Protecting Americans' privacy at other borders presents an additional challenge, pointed out Mary Dixon, director of the defense manpower data center for the Defense Department.

Governments in Japan, Australia, the European Union, and other places have begun collecting biometric data at their respective borders as well. The United Arab Emirates has been utilizing iris scans for some time, Mocny said.

"As biometrics increases worldwide, consistent standards are essential," Mocny said. "We can transform the way the world travels."

He said that in order to make the collection of identifiable information palatable for consumers, it has to be noninvasive and familiar to people.

Some panelists suggested that younger generations are more accepting of handing over their personal information, but Dixon took issue with that point.

"They might share" their information online, she said, "but it's their decision whom they share with--they don't want the federal government collecting all of their information."

Conor White, chief technology officer of security systems vendor Daon, said consumers are growing more comfortable with the use of biometrics on an everyday basis, as evidenced by products like the Registered Travelers card, which identifies travelers who pose a minimal security risk.

"People are doing it because they recognize the security and convenience trade-off," he said.

CNET's Declan McCullagh contributed to this report.