Business Editors
--(BUSINESS WIRE)
The following Corporate Profile is available for inclusion in your files. News releases for this client are distributed by Business Wire and also become part of the leading databases and online services, including all of the leading Internet-based services.
Published Date: Feb. 28, 2003 Company Name: Catena Networks Address: 307 Legget Drive Kanata, Ontario K2K 3C8 Main Telephone Number: 866/2CATENA Internet Home Page Address (URL) www.catena.com Chief Executive Officer: Jim Hjartarson Public Relations Contact: Jenny Gilcrest Business number: 858/792-4974 E-mail address: jenny@ardellgroup.com Industry: High-Tech
Company description: Catena Networks builds innovative broadband access systems that enable service providers to accelerate the deployment of integrated POTS and broadband DSL services and converge their separate voice and data access networks.
Headquartered in Redwood Shores, Calif., the company operates world-class research and development facilities in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada and has more than 250 employees across North America. Founded in 1998, Catena is a privately held company that has secured U.S. $192 million in venture financing.
M2 PRESSWIRE-23 September 1998-MUSCAT: Muscat offers a lifeline to PLS customers (C)1994-98 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD
RDATE:220998
-- America Online Lessens its Support to the PLS Market
Muscat today announced a seamless Personal Library Software (PLS) migration path for all existing PLS customers. The new product and service has been launched in response to America Online's (AOL) acquisition of the software company earlier this year.
Muscat's new PLS Gateway will integrate, with its market leading knowledge retrieval system - Muscat FX. Muscat FX offers a powerful, open and scalable software environment for creating and sharing knowledge. It works with information held in a wide range of data formats - on fileservers, intranets, the Internet and in the databases of the leading on-line information providers.
Muscat FX offers an intuitive and adaptable search environment that combines natural language searching with boolean and structured search techniques. It uses a unique combination of reference tools to maximise the relevance and quality of the information delivered to users, facilitating the process of knowledge creation.
Earlier this year, AOL announced its acquisition of PLS, which had direct implications on PLS's worldwide customer base, who range from large corporate organisations to small publishing houses. Muscat's new gateway enables PLS customers to retain their existing PLS databases and benefit from the full set of features offered by Muscat Fx.
Chris Nowell, chief executive for Muscat, said: "Muscat is the only company in Europe to offer an entirely seamless migration path for PLS customers. Although PLS is today rather outdated compared with products like Muscat FX, the software has been available across Europe for many years and there are thousands of companies that are still heavily dependent on it.
Nowell continued: "We now have a product offering that is technically more advanced and functionally richer than anything else on the market. We are determined to offer companies tangible solutions for all their business requirements through our strategy of aggressive product development, building upon our unique Linguistic Inference technology.
A standard licence for Muscat FX entitles customers to index and search data stored on one server, such as a fileserver, an intranet server, a Web server or a competitor's Web server. Muscat FX licences are available from GBP 4,000 and can be easily extended to fully exploit the unrivalled scalability of Muscat FX.
Founded in 1995, Muscat now has over 300 corporate installations worldwide and is headquartered in Cambridge, UK. In 1998, it opened its first European office in Holland and intends to open distribution channels across Europe. In 1997, the Dialog Corporation, the world's largest information provider acquired a 70% stake in Muscat, recognising it as a leading provider of solutions for knowledge management.
CONTACT: Caroline Howlett/Jessica Norrie, Profile Public Relations Tel: +44 (0)181 948 6611 e-mail: carolineh@profilepr.co.uk e-mail: jessican@profilepr.co.uk
*M2 COMMUNICATIONS DISCLAIMS ALL LIABILITY FOR INFORMATION PROVIDED WITHIN M2 PRESSWIRE. DATA SUPPLIED BY NAMED PARTY/PARTIES.*
M2 PRESSWIRE-July 11, 2011-: France Telecom-Orange signed an agreement on the organization of experiments with a view to improving working conditions(C)1994-2011 M2 COMMUNICATIONS
RDATE:11072011
On 7 July 2011, France Telecom-Orange signed an agreement on the organization of experiments to with a view to improving working conditions with CFDT, CFTC and CGT, representing 56 % of the votes cast during recent workforce elections. This agreement is part of the "Conquests 2015" business plan and the Group's new social contract, one of whose priorities of which is to improve the quality of worklife.
the purpose of the agreement is to:
define a national framework for negotiating the organization of experiments locally (primary establishment, secondary establishment, subsidiary).the objective of these experiments is to significantly improve working conditions for all of the Group's employees.
the agreement is a first step in negotiations on "improving working conditions", with the parties agreeing to continue negotiations, particularly on the working environment and workstation
The proposed experiments should be designed to prevent psychosocial risks and improve working conditions. They may be proposed by Management and by at least two locally representative labour organizations.
The organization of the experiments will be subject to local negotiations with locally representative labour organizations.
Each experiment must specify the initial conditions, desirable changes/improvements, objectives of the experiment, scope of the experiment, employees involved, duration of the experiment (maximum of one year), the criteria used to assess the experiment, etc.
Indicators will be identified for each experiment and followed up to assess its economic, qualitative and social efficiency.
At the completion of the experiments, a report will be drawn up, presented and discussed with the representative labour organizations having signed the local agreement. The report on these experiments will serve to identify areas for consideration and actions to widely institute new ways of working.
Group HR Director Bruno Mettling said "I am delighted by the signature of this agreement, which is integral to the negotiations on stress opened in 2009 and an important milestone in implementing the new social contract."
contact presse
01 44 44 93 93, Sebastien Audra,
sebastien.audra@orange-ftgroup.com
About Orange France Telecom-Orange is one of the world's leading telecommunications operators with 170,000 employees worldwide, including 102,000 employees in France, and sales of 11.2 billion euros in the first quarter 2011. Present in 35 countries, the Group had a customer base of 215.9 million customers at 31 March 2011, including 141.6 million customers under the Orange brand, the Group's single brand for internet, television and mobile services in the majority of countries where the company operates. At 31 March 2011, the Group had 156.7 million mobile customers and 13.9 million broadband internet (ADSL, fibre) customers worldwide. Orange is one of the main European operators for mobile and broadband internet services and, under the brand Orange Business Services, is one of the world leaders in providing telecommunication services to multinational companies.
With its industrial project, "conquests 2015", Orange is simultaneously addressing its employees, customers and shareholders, as well as the society in which the company operates, through a concrete set of action plans. These commitments are expressed through a new vision of human resources for employees; through the deployment of a network infrastructure upon which the Group will build its future growth; through the Group's ambition to offer a superior customer experience thanks in particular to improved quality of service; and through the acceleration of international development
France Telecom (NYSE:FTE) is listed on Euronext Paris (compartment A) and on the New York Stock Exchange.
For more information (on the internet and on your mobile): www.orange.com, www.orange-business.com, www.orange-innovation.tv
Orange and any other Orange product or service names included in this material are trade marks of Orange Brand Services Limited, Orange France or France Telecom.
((M2 Communications disclaims all liability for information provided within M2 PressWIRE. Data supplied by named party/parties. Further information on M2 PressWIRE can be obtained at http://www.presswire.net on the world wide web. Inquiries to info@m2.com)).
InFlight Labs, LLC, developer of InFlightMessenger.com, the popular advanced air-to-ground communication service for passengers, has announced that they will deploy a powerful new Inflight Emergency-911 Service that will help airline pilots and staff to alert up to 100 government personnel simultaneously in the event of an inflight crisis.
InFlight Labs, LLC, will introduce a new proprietary product called "Inflight 911 Services™" which is scheduled to be released later this year. Inflight 911 Services™ web interface leverages the aircrafts Wi-Fi Internet to establish a top priority secure and dedicated connection between aircraft personnel and an Inflight 911 Services™ administrative team.
With one touch, an airline pilot or staff member can access a secure network which gives them immediate 2-way communication between the aircraft and the Inflight 911 Services™ administrative team. Inflight 911 Services™ communications are also simultaneously transmitted to the mobile and/or computer devices of 100 "+" government personnel, such as the FAA, Homeland Security, FEMA, FBI, CIA, 911 and related agencies. This patent pending service is not limited to the U.S. market and can benefit Wi-Fi-enabled commercial and business aircraft located anywhere in the world. This service operates on both the ground and while in-flight; by using the aircraft's existing Wi-Fi Internet service, provided by GoGo Inflight, Row 44, OnAir, Panasonic Avionics and/or others.
Inflight 911 Services™ dynamic web interface stores more than 18 points of critical information in an encrypted format about the flight details, air crew and current crisis situation. This critical profile information is embedded in each real-time message sent and received. All Inflight 911 Services™ activity is time-stamped with a downloadable message history, ensuring vital accountability.
"Inflight 911 Services is the perfect "Plan B" for airline staff when ground or controller tower personnel cannot be reached. This innovative service would have been helpful in recent incidents of unreachable air traffic controllers at Tahoe International Airport, at Boeing Field/King County International Airport, Knoxville Airport, and Reagan International Airport in March and April of 2011."
"Inflight 911 Services™ will benefit everyone from airline staff to passengers and government officials by bringing numerous key resources together within minutes of an in-air emergency," states Tiffany Van Alst, spokeswoman for InFlight Labs, LLC.
"It is imperative for the airlines to have alternate source of "air-to-ground" communication for aircraft in both commercial and business aviation markets. Accessing the existing in-flight Wi-Fi internet service allows InFlight Labs' solutions to 'go live' within days or weeks, versus possible years through a hardware solution deployment."
"We will be seeking strategic partners to help cultivate and develop this 'win-win' solution which adds an additional layer of safety and security in today's aviation market," says Tiffany Van Alst.
InFlight Labs, LLC:InFlight Labs, LLC is a privately held company with offices in Manhattan, NY, and Los Gatos, CA. The company is currently in the process of launching a world-class proprietary platform to aggregate an advanced, real-time communication experience for its subscribers. For more information please visit: www.InFlight911Services.com.
Keywords: Air Traffic, Airlines, Aviation, InFlight Labs, InFlight Labs Llc, Panasonic Avionics, Transportation.
This article was prepared by Computer Weekly News editors from staff and other reports. Copyright 2011, Computer Weekly News via VerticalNews.com.
Captive, the first novel distributed as part of the company's Artist Spotlight Program, builds a global audience during the joint promotion
SAN FRANCISCO -- BitTorrent Inc., a leading innovator creating advanced technologies to efficiently move large files across the Internet, today announced that Captive had surpassed 400,000 downloads globally. Captive is a psychological thriller touching on terrorism, ideology and global unrest.
As of 5 p.m. April 26, the ClearBits.net tracker had registered 417,575 completed downloads of the novel.
"I was able to build a global audience in two weeks," said Jones. "We reached across borders and traditional media boundaries and were rewarded with an engaged audience. People told me about passing the word on to their friends who in turn downloaded and read the book. And, yes, the sequel is coming in 2012."
"Captive's numbers illustrates the demand for all types of digital content in the BitTorrent ecosystem. Progressive authors like Ms. Jones are leading the way for a new form of reader engagement, and we're very pleased with her success," said Shahi Ghanem, chief strategist at BitTorrent.
Lou Kerner, social media analyst at Wedbush Securities, when asked about the promotion, responded, "The ability of a first time author like Megan Jones to quickly reach more than 400,000 downloads via BitTorrent highlights how social media is democratizing everything and decreasing the power of traditional gatekeepers like book publishers."
The novel was released directly to the BitTorrent community and promoted on BitTorrent.com and oTorrent.com homepages; offered to new users during the installation of the BitTorrent Mainline and oTorrent software; and offered for free download in the company's new App Studio.
"BitTorrent was a wonderful partner and is very attuned to their audience needs; the community truly embraces the technology and artists who use it," said Jones of the company.
While the book download was free, BitTorrent encourages fans to show their support for Jones' efforts via signing up for the sequel on her site: www.meganlisajones.com and engaging on Facebook and Twitter. The book is also available through a variety of retailers online and off, including Amazon.
BitTorrent first launched the App Studio last August. Other notable artist-endorsed spotlight releases have included Sick of Sarah, Zenith, The Yes Men Fix the World, Four Eyed Monsters, PAZ, Beyond the Game, and Pioneer One.
About the Book
Captive: A Novel: Khalil is held in captivity after being seized evaluating the location for a possible bombing. George, a psychology professor on leave, is charged with extracting any information Khalil may know. Will George break Khalil in time to stop Omar? Each man must face his own limitations as they are tested by circumstance and their own past decisions.
Book ISBN: 978-0-976861768
About Megan Lisa Jones
Megan Lisa Jones is a lawyer and investment banker who works primarily with companies in high growth, evolving or disrupted industries. A child of immigrants, she grew up in Silicon Valley and thus embraces emerging technology enabled options. An avid reader and traveler, she writes about issues which capture her attention and imagination. www.meganlisajones.com
About BitTorrent
BitTorrent creates advanced, innovative technologies to efficiently move large files across the Internet. The company's two main products today include the original BitTorrent software and the tiny-but-mighty oTorrent, which combined boast over 100+ million users. BitTorrent is based in San Francisco, Calif. For more information, visit www.bittorrent.com, and follow on Twitter @bittorrent, or Facebook.
HIV-TRePS is a new system launched by the RDI that predicts how HIV and AIDS patients will respond to different HIV drug regimens, with an accuracy of 80%. It is free to use, accessed over the Internet, and helps physicians choose the optimum combination of drugs for each patient. HIV-TRePS has the potential to improve patient outcomes and reduce the number of drugs used, which in turn could improve the tolerability and reduce the costs of therapy.
London, UK (PRWEB) October 6, 2010 -- A ground-breaking system for predicting how individual patients with HIV and AIDS will respond to different drugs is launched today by RDI, a UK-based not-for-profit research group. The experimental system, called the HIV Treatment Response Prediction System (HIV-TRePS), is available free of charge over the Internet and helps physicians select the best treatment for their patients.
HIV-TRePS harnesses the power of complex computer models that have been trained with data from tens of thousands of patients treated in hospitals around the world. Physicians access the system over the Internet and enter their patient's data, and the system predicts how the patient will respond to hundreds of alternative combinations of HIV drugs. Within seconds, the physician receives a report listing the drug combinations that the models predict are most likely to work.
Studies conducted by the RDI and its partners have demonstrated that the system can potentially improve patient outcomes and reduce the overall number - and therefore cost - of drugs used.
"This is a very exciting development - the system literally puts the experience of treating thousands of different patients at the doctor's fingertips," commented Dr. Julio Montaner, Past President of the International AIDS Society and Director of the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV & AIDS, based in Vancouver, Canada. "This has the potential to improve outcomes for people living with HIV and AIDS around the world, particularly where resources and expertise are scarce."
Selecting and changing treatments for patients with HIV and AIDS in order to keep the virus suppressed is complex and challenging. There are approximately 25 HIV drugs available, from which physicians normally choose a combination of three or more to suppress the virus. However, mutations occurring in the viral genetic code can cause resistance to the drugs used against it. The physician then has to select a new combination of drugs to overcome this resistant strain.
The computational models within HIV-TRePS, called "Random Forests," base their predictions on a range of more than 80 different variables including mutations in the viral genetic code, the drugs used to treat the patient in the past, CD4 cell counts (a type of white blood cell that is attacked by HIV) and the amount of virus in the bloodstream. The models estimate the probability of each combination of drugs reducing the amount of virus to below the limit of detection in the blood (50 copies HIV RNA/ml) based on what the system has 'learnt' during its training with thousands of real clinical cases. The system's overall accuracy during development and testing was approximately 80%.
The easy-to-use system has proven to be a significantly more accurate predictor of response than genotyping with rules-based interpretation - a test that is commonly used today to help drug selection.
"We are really excited about the launch of this system, which is a milestone for us, our research partners around the world and also for the use of bioinformatics in medicine," said Dr Brendan Larder, Scientific Chair of the HIV Resistance Response Database Initiative (RDI). "We believe this approach can make a significant difference in a variety of settings and diseases."
The RDI is already working on a version of HIV-TRePS for use in resource-limited settings where there are fewer treatment options and health care workers do not have access to all the information that this initial system requires. The RDI's approach could also have potential benefit in other diseases, most obviously where drug resistance can be a problem such as Hepatitis.
The RDI is an independent, not-for-profit research group set-up in 2002 with the mission to improve the clinical management of HIV infection through the application of bioinformatics to HIV drug resistance and treatment outcome data. Over the eight years since its inception, the RDI has worked with many of the leading clinicians and scientists in the world to develop the world's largest database of HIV drug resistance and treatment outcome data, containing information from approximately 70,000 patients in more than 15 countries.
Note: HIV-TRePS is an experimental system intended for research use only. The predictions of the system are not intended to replace professional medical care and attention by a qualified medical practitioner and consequently the RDI does not accept any responsibility for the selection of drugs, the patient's response to treatment or differences between the predictions and patients' responses.
More information can be found at: www.hivrdi.org.
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Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/10/prweb4610464.htm.
9780838909621
Creating your library brand; communicating your relevance and value to your patrons.
Doucett, Elisabeth.
Am. Library Association
2008
124 pages
$45.00
Paperback
Z716
Doucett, director of the Curtis Memorial Library in Maine, has written this book for fellow librarians on how to use marketing and branding to make these institutions more competitive in an electronic age. With the advent of the Internet, Web 2.0 and other electronic resources, libraries need to break free of the non-profit mold and consider such strategies as creating logos, use graphics and visuals in decor, and even hiring outside consultants to create a fresh image. Each chapter ends with a specific exercise designed to increase traffic and exposure by emphasizing the entertainment value of libraries, as opposed to presenting them as just a learning resource.
([c]20082005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR)
Carnival Freedom Senior Cruise Director's Blog, FunShipIsland.com, CarnivalConnections.com Each Achieve One Million Visitor Mark
MIAMI, Nov. 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- As a testament to the growing reach and popularity of Carnival Cruise Lines' on-line marketing channels, the blog of Carnival Freedom Senior Cruise Director John Heald, FunShipIsland.com and CarnivalConnections.com continue to achieve unprecedented success, with each surpassing the one million visitor mark in recent months.
A pioneer in the on-line marketing arena, Carnival's new Web-based initiatives are designed to provide a highly effective and innovative means for reaching out to consumers and travel agents, who can access the various channels on a convenient 24/7 basis.
"Cruising is still an unfamiliar experience to many and these new Web- based efforts boldly take the promotion of the 'Fun Ship' cruise experience to new levels, one that provides visitors with a unique look at our company and products while offering helpful tools for researching and planning their vacations," said Vicki Freed, Carnival's senior vice president of sales and guest services.
Carnival's new Web-based marketing efforts include: * John Heald's Blog: Originally introduced as part of a Web site for Carnival Freedom's inaugural European season, Heald's blog (accessible via carnival.com or johnhealdsblog.com) has taken on a life of its own and is now one of the most popular travel-related blogs on the Internet, consistently ranking in the top 25 of the 1.6 million blogs of Wordpress, a leading blog-hosting service. Through his blog, Heald offers candid and colorful commentary on daily shipboard life, sharing interesting and often poignant tales of the guests and crewmembers he comes into contact with on a daily basis, all with his trademark brand of humor. * FunShipIsland.com: A first-of-its-kind online destination where visitors can explore, play and experience a "Fun Ship" cruise from the convenience of their computer. FunShipIsland.com provides a comprehensive, visual overview of the various aspects of the Carnival cruise experience, offering an immersive world where visitors can play in a virtual casino, experience the line's iconic Twister waterslide, embark on a Rhino 4x4 Jeep ride, and tour the "Camp Carnival" play area, among other experiences. Guests can also tour Carnival's various stateroom categories to preview their desired accommodations. In the near future, FunShipIsland.com will be expanded to allow travel agents to customize the site, link to their agency's Web site and forward to their client base. * CarnivalConnections.com: An on-line community specifically created to bring family and friends together by helping them plan and manage their "Fun Ship" cruise vacations, the site features an "e-invite" electronic invitation tool that can be tailored family reunions, girlfriend getaways and other groups. CarnivalConnections.com's interactive features can also be used by travel agents as an electronic group-marketing tool to attract or retain their client base.
Carnival is the largest and most popular cruise line in the world, with 22 "Fun Ships" operating voyages ranging from three to 18 days in length to the Bahamas, Caribbean, Mexico, Alaska, Hawaii, New England, Canada, Bermuda, Europe, the Greek Isles and South America.
The line currently has three new ships on order, including the 113,300-ton Carnival Splendor, set to launch Carnival's first Northern European cruise program July 13, 2008, and the 130,000-ton Carnival Dream and Carnival Magic - to be the largest "Fun Ships" ever constructed when they enter service in June 2009 and October 2011, respectively.
For additional information on the "Fun Ship" vacation experience, contact any travel agent, call 1-800-CARNIVAL or visit carnival.com.
Carnival Cruise Lines, a unit of Carnival Corporation & plc (NYSE/LSE: CCL; NYSE: CUK), is a proud member of the exclusive World's Leading Cruise Lines. Our exclusive alliance also includes Holland America Line, Princess Cruises, Cunard Line, Costa Cruises, and The Yachts of Seabourn. Sharing a passion to please each guest, and a commitment to quality and value, our member lines appeal to a wide range of lifestyles and budgets. Together, we offer exciting and enriching cruise vacations to the world's most desirable destinations.
CONTACT: Jennifer de la Cruz or Tim Gallagher, +1-800-438-6744, or +1-305-599-2600 ext. 16000, both for Carnival Cruise Lines
Web site: http://www.carnival.com/ http://funshipisland.com/ http://www.carnivalconnections.com/ http://www.carnivalcorp.com/ http://www.johnhealdsblog.com/
Byline: Mark Hosenball and Evan Thomas (With Michael Hirsh, Michael Isikoff, Daniel Klaidman, Richard Wolffe, Holly Bailey and John Barry)
In the difficult days after 9/11, White House officials quietly passed the word through Washington's alphabet soup of intelligence agencies: tell us which weapons you need to stop another attack. At the supersecretive NSA, the National Security Agency (also known as No Such Agency), the request came back: give us permission to collect information on people inside the United States. The NSA had been struggling, without much success, to listen in on terrorists who use cheap and easily available encrypted phones, and officials eagerly drew up a wish list, according to a participant in the discussions. This source, who declined to be identified discussing sensitive matters, said NSA officials did not really expect the White House to say yes to domestic spying. After scandals over wiretapping erupt-ed in the 1970s, the code breakers and electronic sleuths at the NSA had been essentially restricted to eavesdrop-ping on conversations between foreigners abroad. American residents and even most foreign visitors to the United States were off-limits to "Big Noddy," as NSA insiders call their giant "Ear in the Sky" surveillance capability.
But after 9/11, president George W. Bush wanted fast action. He believed that most Americans thought their government should do whatever was necessary to catch terrorists before they struck again. Though the details remain highly classified, the "National Security Presidential Directives" issued by Bush called for an all-out war on terrorism, including, it is generally believed, expanded electronic surveillance. Out went the old rules--a 1980 document called "U.S. Signals Intelligence Directive 18," which sharply limited domestic surveillance; in came a new, still dimly understood regimen of domestic spying.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. In times of war, open societies have been will-ing to accept the need for secret spy services. Americans now spend upwards of $40 billion a year on intelligence. Given a hard choice between security and privacy, most Americans would probably choose to sacrifice some of the latter to get more of the former. The harder question is whether the techno wizards at the NSA, overwhelmed by tidal waves of digital data, searching for tiny poisonous fish in a giant sea, can provide true security from another 9/11.
There can be no doubt that Bush correctly read the public mood in the days and weeks following the 2001 attacks. And had the president sent a bill up to Capitol Hill giving the NSA broad powers to wiretap and eavesdrop inside the United States, in all likelihood, the lawmakers would have shouted it through. But the president did not ask for public support. Instead, like most chief executives charged with running the modern national-security state, he chose the path of secrecy. True, the administration's spymasters confidentially briefed congressional leaders on the new eavesdropping program. But some of the lawmakers now claim they were confused, or misled, or somehow did not fully understand what the spooks were telling them. Perhaps the legislators weren't fully informed. Or perhaps they didn't really want to hear what they were told.
In any case, the story eventually, and inevitably, leaked. Last December, The New York Times revealed that the NSA had eavesdropped on thousands of phone calls between people in the United States and foreign countries without first obtaining warrants. Then, last week, USA Today reported that the NSA had amassed a vast database of billions of calls inside the United States--not the content of the calls themselves, but a record of when and to which phone numbers the calls were made and for how long. (The government did not ask the phone companies for names and addresses, but the simplest Internet search of a phone number can divulge that information.) The revelation was another blow to Bush, whose approval rating in the new news-week Poll dipped to 35 percent, his record low in the survey, and it may slow the administration's plan to find a CIA director who can restore morale at the beleaguered intelligence agency. The brewing scandal is likely to entangle the government and the phone companies that helped in a legal morass.
Administration officials have always insisted that any eavesdropping or "data collection" had been narrowly focused on Al Qaeda terror suspects. It is hard to determine if the NSA goes on fishing expeditions. A senior administration of-ficial, who declined to be identified discussing classified matters, acknowledged to NEWSWEEK that the NSA had crunched through vast databases to help identify suspects who may have then been subjected to electronic eavesdropping, either without a warrant or under court order. This official claimed that the NSA program had helped gather evidence that had foiled terrorist operations, though the official would not be more specific. If the program "leads to one disruption of another 9/11, then it would be worth it," said the offi-cial. But other administration officials interviewed by NEWSWEEK questioned whether the fruits of the NSA program--which they doubted, though not publicly at the risk of losing their jobs--have been worth the cost to privacy. And many Americans naturally wondered whether Big Brother was watching or listening in ways that are still unknown. There are hints, for instance, that the government has been fishing the Internet as well as the phone lines.
In San Francisco, a privacy group called the Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed a lawsuit based in part on the testimony of Mark Klein, an AT&T technician for 22 years who claims he witnessed the construction of a "secret room" for the NSA at AT&T's San Francisco headquarters in early 2003. Later that year, Klein says, he discovered that cables from the secret room were tapping into massive volumes of Internet communication. Klein says he discovered similar operations in other cities on the West Coast, and now concludes that the NSA had created the capability of "vacuum-cleaner surveillance" of all data crossing the Internet. AT&T says it has always obeyed the law and worked to safeguard the privacy of its customers. The federal government has mostly remained mum, though at a Dec. 19 White House briefing, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales somewhat cryptically referred to "many operational aspects" of the eavesdropping program "that have still not been disclosed." After the USA Today story, President Bush told reporters, "We are not trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans."
Whether that is strictly true will likely be on the agenda this week as lawmakers on the Senate intelligence committee grill Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, Bush's choice to take over the troubled CIA. Hayden ran the NSA before and after 9/11, when the agency was expanding its surveillance programs. "I have substantial questions about his credibility," Senate intelligence committee member Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, told NEWSWEEK. He points to Hayden's public statements that the NSA monitored only international calls. "There was never any mention of establishing a domestic database," says Wyden.
Republicans defending Hayden's nomination can counter with some early polls showing that most Americans support expand-ed electronic surveillance to catch terrorists, even if it intrudes on their privacy. (Much depends on the wording of a poll question, of course, and later polls showed more skepticism. The NEWSWEEK survey found 53 percent agreed with the statement that NSA data collection "goes too far in invading people's privacy," while only 41 percent agreed that the collection program is "a necessary tool to combat terrorism.") Most legal experts seemed to agree that the government could collect a huge database of phone records without violating the Constitution's ban on "unreasonable searches and seizures." Still, the phone companies that cooperated with the NSA--AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth--will be hauled into court, accused by their customers of violating the arcane and murky restrictions of various federal communications laws. All of them have protested that they were complying with the law, though it has been noted that they were paid for their cooperation, and lawyers suing the phone companies will undoubtedly want to know if they were pressured by threats to withhold valuable federal contracts. One much smaller phone company--Qwest, based in the Rocky Mountain states--refused to turn over its call records, arguing that the NSA never satisfied the company's legal doubts about the agency's request.
Americans are not naive about the need to snoop at home and overseas. In 1929, Secretary of State Henry Stimson shut down a secret code-breaking operation called the Black Chamber by saying, "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail." But America's enemies are apt to play dirty, and during World War II and the cold war, the federal government decided, in effect, to play dirty, too--to steal secrets and eavesdrop, at home as well as abroad.
Washington spun a huge web of intelligence agencies with acronyms familiar (like CIA and FBI) and obscure (like NRO--for National Reconnaissance Office--to operate spy satellites). The attitude toward secret or "black" operations was, at first, rather "stiff upper lip" and Brit-ish. Policymakers did not want to know too much about what the spooks were up to. Presidents were protected by the doctrine of plausible deniability. They were supposed to be able to say, plausibly, that they really didn't know how that secret was stolen--or that a journalist's phone was tapped or that a foreign government was overthrown. If caught, American spymasters were supposed to fall on their swords and take responsibility.
Of course, blame-taking didn't quite work so stoically in practice. During the Watergate scandal, it emerged that the Feds had been carrying on a program of domestic spying, tapping phones and opening the mail of real and imagined enemies of the state. At the 1975 Church Committee hearings, intelligence officials squirmed and pointed fingers. New laws were enacted, including the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires the Feds to get a warrant from a secret court before eavesdropping on foreign calls in and out of the United States.
The NSA was banned from any domestic espionage. At those 1975 hearings, Sen. Frank Church, the chairman of the committee appointed to investigate intelligence abuses, made a statement that today seems ominous and possibly prescient. The Idaho senator said he was most worried about the NSA. The secret agency's capabilities were so great they "could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything, telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no place to hide."
The NSA does have vast capabilities. One senior U.S. intelligence official, speaking anonymously because of the sensitivity of the subject, told NEWSWEEK that the heat generated by the NSA's secret supercomputers has been so great that officials have been talking about carting in snow and ice to mask the machines from the prying sensors of foreign spy satellites.
But increasingly, there has been talk of the agency's "going deaf." The NSA had its best luck monitoring Soviet lines of communication--for example, a microwave transmission from Moscow to a missile base in Siberia. But the new enemy is more shadowy and elusive. In 2002, General Hayden told NEWSWEEK, "We've gone from chasing the telecommunications structure of a slow-moving, technologically inferior, resource-poor nation-state--and we could do that pretty well--to chasing a communications structure in which an Al Qaeda member can go into a storefront in Istanbul and buy for $100 a communications device that is absolutely cutting edge, and for which he has had to make no investment for development."
According to most accounts, the NSA remains behind the telecommunications curve. A December 2002 report by the Senate intelligence committee not-ed that only a "tiny fraction" of the NSA's 650 million daily intercepts worldwide "are actually ever reviewed by humans, and much of what is collected gets lost in the deluge of data." Hayden told news-week that year that the NSA had been slow to catch up to new technology, and that he was obsessed with turning the enemy's "beeps and squeaks into something intelligible."
One of Hayden's most ambitious initiatives was called Trailblazer. It was a program aimed at helping the NSA make sense of its many databases--to put them to use. By more efficiently locating and retrieving messages, Trailblazer could help the NSA "data-mine," to find patterns in the huge volume of electronic traffic that might help lead sleuths to a terror suspect. Instead, the program has produced nearly a billion dollars' worth of junk hardware and software. "It's a complete and abject failure," says Robert D. Steele, a CIA veteran who is familiar with the program. Adds Ed Giorgio, who was the chief code breaker for the NSA for 30 years: "Everybody's eyes rolled when you mentioned Trailblazer."
What went wrong? The NSA apparently tried a clunky top-down approach, trying to satisfy too many requirements with one grand solution, rather than taking a more Silicon Valley-like tack of letting small entrepreneurs compete for ideas. John Arquilla of the Naval Postgraduate School at Monterey, Calif., a renowned "network" intelligence expert, says: "The real problem Big Brother is having is he's not making enough use of the Little Brothers"--the corporations that have become expert at manipulating databases for commercial use.
"Data mining" has been a boon to credit-card companies that can match customers and products. It has also helped the Feds track drug dealers who constantly buy and throw away cell phones (the technology can monitor frequent phone-number changes). Identifying and tracking terrorists may be a taller order. For one thing, terrorists have learned not to even use phones. A computer disk or message between, say, Osama bin Laden and Iraqi insurgent leader Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi is hand-delivered. Some terrorists have learned to leave messages hidden in Web sites. Others are given passwords to go on the Web sites and find the messages. Since that process involves no electronic communication--no e-mail or phone call--the NSA is kept in the dark.
Effective data mining might have averted 9/11, notes Philip Bobbitt, who served as a National Security staffer in the Clinton administration. On Sept. 10, 2001, the NSA, monitoring pay phones in Qaeda-controlled Afghanistan, intercepted two messages, "The match begins tomorrow" and "Tomorrow is zero hour." No one knew what to make of these messages, which in any event weren't translated until Sept. 12. But the CIA and FBI had the identities of two of the hijackers, who had been linked to earlier Qaeda plotting, in the agencies' computers. "Had we at the time cross-referenced credit-card accounts, frequent-flier programs and a cell- phone number shared by those two men, data mining might easily have picked up on the 17 other men linked to them and flying on the same day and at the same time on four flights," Bobbitt recently wrote in The New York Times.
There are doubts within the upper levels of the U.S. government that the NSA, four-and-a-half years after 9/11, is any better equipped and run to piece together the next "Tomorrow is zero hour" intercept. NEWSWEEK has learned that some top government lawyers were troubled by the NSA data collection and search program--not on legal grounds so much, but because they doubted its efficacy. A senior administration official who was involved in legally vetting the NSA program but declined to be identified discussing sensitive matters says that a crude cost-benefit analysis left him uneasy. The NSA program ran a risk of intruding on the privacy of Americans. There are always "false positives." National Journal's Shane Harris conjured up the example of a book agent who represents a journalist who once interviewed Osama bin Laden. A faulty pattern analysis could make him a terror suspect. To justify the risk of dragging such innocents into government investigations, there needs to be evidence showing a high probability of return on the investment--the prospect of actually catching a terrorist.
So far, the best catch the Feds have offered up is a truckdriver named Iyman Faris, who conceived a rather farfetched plot to cut down the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch. (Faris was apparently identified by a captured Qaeda leader; it's not clear the NSA played any role.) Of course, intelligence services do not always brag about their successes, and one U.S. official privy to the intelligence tells NEWSWEEK that another attack on an urban area in the United States was averted as well. The official would not discuss the plot for fear of revealing NSA listening methods.
There has been at least some debate inside the administration over how much license to give the NSA. In the spring of 2004, senior Justice Department lawyers objected to warrantless eavesdropping. For several months, until new rules to safeguard privacy were adopted, the program was suspended. It is not clear whether the NSA's data-collection program was also put on hold or altered in some way.
The administration is not eager to air its internal debates. At the Justice Department, an internal watchdog, the Office of Professional Responsibility, began an investigation into whether DOJ lawyers had behaved unethically by interpreting the law too aggressively--by giving a legal green light to coercive interrogations and warrantless eavesdropping. But the OPR lawyers had to drop their investigation last week when the administration refused to give them the necessary security clearances.
Catching Al Qaeda or some shadowy terrorist offshoot before it strikes again will take all the tools of spy tradecraft--old-fashioned human intelligence (HUMINT) as well as signals intelligence (SIGINT) like electronic eavesdropping. It is frustrating to think how close the CIA and FBI came to stopping 9/11. After Al Qaeda bombed the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, local police managed to catch one of the would-be bombers who had decided not to commit suicide in the blast. The conspirator was turned over to American intelligence officials, who persuaded the man to give up the phone number of a Qaeda safe house in Yemen. The NSA began listening in on the phone line of the safe house. American agents were tipped to a Qaeda terror summit in Kuala Lumpur in January 2000. Two of the 9/11 hijackers--Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar--were at that summit. Somehow, the CIA failed to hand over the identities of these two terrorists to the FBI in time for the slow-moving bureau to track them before they flew into buildings on 9/11.
That was a human error, but it was caused in part by the culture of secrecy that permeates the national-security state. The CIA and FBI are renowned for their turf wars and unwillingness to share secrets. It's hoped that intelligence reform and the shame of failure have prodded the intelligence agencies to share a little more. As the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan observed, during the cold war excessive secrecy did more to hurt national security than to help it. In an overly secretive world, assumptions go untested and rigorous thinking is stifled. The CIA, for instance, failed to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union, in part because agency analysts refused to reach out to outside economists and experts.
It is true, as the old World War II saying goes, that "loose lips sink ships." But by refusing to tolerate an open discussion of new rules post-9/11, the Bush team lost a chance to gain public support for the necessary trade-off between security and privacy. Figuring out how to track and find Internet-savvy terrorists is a daunting task. Government officials--even the superspooks of the NSA--need all the help they can get.
CAPTION(S): I Spy: Bush says privacy is fiercely protected; right: NSA's Threat Operations Center
Hot seat: Hayden, nominated to head the CIA, ran the NSA before and after 9/11. He is expected to face tough questions about the agency's expanded surveillance programs at a Senate hearing this week.
Senator Specter has announced plans to summon the three phone companies to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee
(text, illus) As America Calls . . . The NSA Collects: We're making billions of calls each day on landlines, on mobile phones and over the Internet. But more call options also make it easier for suspected terrorists' communications to go undetected; The NSA--the U.S.'s largest intelligence organztion--has stepped up efforts to intercept suspicious eletronnic chatter. But can amassing records of every U.S. phone call help? (graphic omitted)
(text, photos) The 'SIGINT' Story: The NSA's call-data program is the latest in a long string of U.S. efforts to gather signals intellignce (SIGINT) by tappping into electronic communications. The highs and lows: (graphic omitted)
