April 6, 2000 (Computerworld) --
In response to concern about the agency's plans to monitor the Internet for illegal activities, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has promised that the commission won't snoop on electronic conversations and e-mail. However, privacy activists called for safeguards for government surveillance of Internet activity. The SEC recently issued a request for proposals, asking vendors to submit bids to develop an automated search system that could scan the Web for possible security law violations including exaggerated claims of return by investment officers, impersonation of public companies or their officers, fictitious press releases or news reports and disclosures of nonpublic information. Specifically, the agency called for "continuous, comprehensive crawling of the World Wide Web, newsgroups and Listservs." But this doesn't mean that the SEC will be spying on private conversations, said commission Chairman Arthur Levitt in a statement Wednesday. "I want to make clear that the SEC has never had any intention of intercepting or monitoring private transmissions, including conversations taking place in chat rooms or on e-mail," he said. Instead, the SEC simply plans to automate the process of searching public sites that are already accessible to the public through commercial search engines, he said. "This is no different . . . than finding a newspaper article with the aid of a tool that helps you do so more quickly and exactly," Levitt said. But just because a statement has been made public, that doesn't mean the government should track it, said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a privacy rights group in Washington. Rotenberg said he wants the SEC to be subject to judicial review, annual reporting and independent oversight. "I don't think this particular program should go forward until these safeguards are put into place," he said.
One positive development stemming from the collapse of Wall Street may be a boost in interest in computer science and IT careers among students who were previously interested in financial services jobs.
Turning information into a Competitive Advantage View this webcast now! Go to the webcast
Solving Real World Storage Problems
Download this whitepaper now. As your storage needs grow, the cost of managing it need not spiral out of control.Our vision - Universal Distributed Storage - is about:
mainstreaming high endstorage functionality
solutions built on industrystandard hardware
a broad partner ecosystem
Our next generation of Server and NAS products - Windows Server 2003 R2 and Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 - will help you further reduce your storage costs. Download this executive briefing
Integrating FICON and Open Systems/Intermix
Download this white paper today! (Source: Brocade) Large enterprises have been hesitant to try intermix for several reasons including security and management concerns, internal politics, and perhaps a lack of understanding of how FICON/FCP intermix really works. But considering the cost reductions achieved by FICON/FCP intermix and access to the latest advances in technology, FICON/FCP intermix offers a clear advantage for SAN and server network design. This paper discusses the mixing of FICON and FCP devices in the same SAN. It focuses on end users issues and the fabric elements they should consider when evaluating a FICON/FCP intermix solution. Download this white paper
White Papers
Read up on the latest ideas and technologies from companies that sell hardware, software and services.
Companies today are realizing that competitive advantage is harder to sustain when based solely on gains in productivity and cost efficiency. The focus is shifting to invest more in business optimization initiatives which rely on trusted information to develop new insights that deliver better business results. But how can this be done efficiently in a business environment across multiple applications and processes. The answer is an Information Agenda - an innovative approach to transforming business information into a strategic asset for competitive advantage.