Good for the Goose…

In response to the U.S. government's policy of documenting foreigners as they enter the country - a program that began on Monday - Brazil is retaliating by taking the fingerprints and photographs of all Americans as they arrive in the South American nation.

Last month, a Brazilian judge ordered the new policy in response to the new U.S. immigrant tracking system, which he characterized as excessive and unwarranted. Americans visiting Brazil already had to obtain visas.

The judge, Julier Sebastiao da Silva, told National Public Radio that Brazilians would suffer "embarrassment" at having to submit their photographs and fingerprints at U.S. points of entry as part of the Homeland Security Department's new US VISIT screening program. He indicated that the policy automatically presumes foreigners are terrorists, and called it "absolutely brutal, threatening human rights, violating human dignity, xenophobic and worthy of the worst horrors committed by the Nazis."

VISIT was implemented in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and is intended to shore up weaknesses in the immigration system that have allowed known terrorists to enter the country. But de Silva said VISIT was targeted only at "people from the third world." More than two dozen nations, mostly in Europe, which participate in the State Department's visa waiver program don't have to submit their personal identifiers to U.S. authorities.

While the judge characterized the new policy as totalitarian, at least one Brazilian official said the decision could have negative consequences. In comments to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Paulo Bustos, the undersecretary for tourism, said the reciprocal policy might make sense on legal grounds, "but it makes no sense from a point of view of Brazil's interests."

"We don't suffer threats from terrorism," Bustos said. "We have open arms for international visitors, and I believe if we follow this idea of reciprocity, we are acting on the motives of others and affecting our own interests."

A spokesman for the Homeland Security Department also took issue with the judge's comments, but said Brazil was obviously free to make its own immigration policy decisions. The spokesman, Garrison Courtney, emphasized that VISIT was required by Congress.

According to news reports, U.S. citizens were pulled out of immigration lines in Brazil beginning New Year's Day. However, the policy hasn't been implemented nationwide, and officials have hinted that if the United States begins exempting Brazilian citizens from the VISIT program, Brazil might stop screening Americans.

Critics of VISIT had feared that it could adversely affect U.S. trade and tourism, particularly if the additional time it takes to screen people at airports, seaports and border crossings creates long lines. However, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge has said that in airports, where VISIT is being implemented first, the process would only add 15 seconds to the customary check-in process.

Online Music Swapping Plummets

In the three months since the recording industry began filing federal lawsuits against online music swappers, the Internet has seen a dramatic dip in the numbers of Americans downloading and sharing song files, according to a study released Monday.

Overall, the percentage of Americans who use the Internet to download music files fell by half since September 2003, when the Recording Industry Association of America began filing lawsuits alleging copyright infringement, according to the study released by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Also, the number of people downloading files on any given day has "plunged," the report said, and one-fifth of those who continue to download and share files said fear of being sued has compelled them to curb their habit.

The Pew project conducted a telephone survey of 1,358 Internet users nationwide from Nov. 18 to Dec. 14, 2003. It discovered that the percentage of music downloaders was down by about half, from about 35 million users to 18 million. The first figure was obtained from a similar poll Pew conducted in the spring of 2003, months before the recording industry's legal offensive.

Those lawsuits "have been a watershed event in American culture," Mary Madden, a research specialist at the Pew Internet Project who co-authored the study said in a statement issued with the report. "While some people may simply be less likely to admit to downloading now, we have never seen an Internet activity drop off this dramatically…something significant has happened."

Data gathered for the report by comScore Media Metrix, a company that measures Internet audience size, found that fewer Internet users are running file sharing, or peer-to-peer, applications on their computers. From November 2002 to November 2003, the popular Kazaa program saw a 15 percent decline. Swapping programs WinMX, BearShare and Grokster suffered drops of 25 percent, 9 percent and 59 percent respectively, comScore found.

The FBI has tracked file-sharers who use the programs to trade child pornography, and the bureau has warned of the security dangers of using peer-to-peer applications. But the recording industry lawsuits marked the first concerted effort to stop file sharers in U.S. courts.

Military Moves to Upgrade Networks

The Defense Department has taken a major step in its push toward network-based warfare. Last week, Science Applications International Corp., the Pentagon's prime contractor on the Global Information Grid-Bandwidth Expansion (GIG-BE) project, awarded subcontracts to four technology and telecommunications companies that will help enhance and speed up Defense's network infrastructure.

The new network is designed to let soldiers, commanders and analysts access intelligence information more quickly and to post information to the network as well. It aims to use connections of 10 gigabits per second or faster. At that rate, the network could technically transmit data between two points more than 10 times faster than a high-speed Ethernet, or local network, and more than 350,000 times faster than a slow dial-up computer modem.

Ciena Corp., Sprint Communications Co., the government division of Qwest Communications International Inc. and Juniper Networks Inc. won subcontracts. The network initially will serve 100 Defense posts worldwide.

The military has been moving toward so called network-centric warfighting, hoping to supply real-time battlefield intelligence to anyone who needs it, from a solider on the front lines to a commander thousands of miles away.