Annual Report of the
           ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy (CCPP)
              For the Period 1 July 2010 to 30 June 2011
                Submitted by Peter G. Neumann, Chairman 

Date: September 30, 2010
To: Rosemary McGuinness
    ACM, 2 Penn Plaza, Suite 701 New York, NY 10121-0701

PURPOSE OF CCPP

The ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy (CCPP) seeks to

 * aid the ACM with respect to a variety of internationally relevant
   issues pertaining to computers and public policy, and
 * help make the ACM even better recognized worldwide.

Its most visible project is the ACM Forum on Risks to the Public in
Computers and Related Systems, established in August 1986 in response to
Adele Goldberg's ACM President's message in the February 1985 issue of
the Communications of the ACM (CACM).  It has also served as a hands-on
review board for the Inside Risks columns in the CACM, since July 1990.

CCPP PERSONNEL

The Chairman of the ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy (CCPP)
is Peter G. Neumann.  During the reporting year, the committee consisted
of Steve Bellovin, Peter Denning, Virgil Gligor, Jim Horning, Nancy
Leveson, David Parnas, Jerry Saltzer, and Lauren Weinstein.  This body
exists as an expert advisory group rather than a membership
organization, and has considerable impact worldwide even though it
maintains a relatively low profile.  I am extraordinarily grateful to
them for their continued long-standing participation and their incisive
reviewing of CACM Inside Risks columns and helping resolve occasional
potentially sticky issues relating to the ACM Risks Forum.  The
intellectual memory span and diversity of interests that they represent
is extraordinary.  I continue to value their incisive contributions on
many issues that require insight and wisdom.  Although their oversight
efforts regarding Inside Risks are often not visible to readers, some of
the CACM columns have led to intense interactions with the authors that
occasionally escalated to coauthorship.  The intellectual thoughtfulness
and expertise that they have consistently contributed have greatly
improved the quality of the Inside Risks content and kept the ACM Risks
Forum on track.

CCPP internal interactions generally involve e-mail, with occasional
telephone calls and in-person discussions.  Many constructive interchanges
have occurred during the year, as in the past.

There is some overlap with other ACM committees.  For example, Horning,
and Neumann are active members of both CCPP and USACM.  Although there
is some commonality of problem areas, the charters of CCPP and USACM are
quite different.  USACM has a specifically U.S.-centric focus, whereas
CCPP tends to consider problems within a global perspective.  For
example, Neumann remains active in risks related to election systems,
which is a common interests of CCPP and USACM; Neumann and Horning both
testified for the National Research Council Computer Science and
Technology Board on risks of voter registration databases, which is
primarily a concern of USACM.

CCPP Efforts

CCPP has several manifestations, including

  * RISKS online: The ACM Forum on Risks to the Public in Computers as a
    newsgroup (a digest by e-mail, and distributed as comp.risks via
    USENET).  See Item 1 below.
  * RISKS highlights in ACM Software Engineering Notes (SEN): Edited
    and distilled from the online ACM Risks Forum.  See Item 2 below.
  * The CACM Inside Risks monthly column.  See Item 3 below.
  * RISKS: The Book, Computer-Related Risks.  See Item 4 below.

Neumann has been highly visible in those efforts, but other CCPP members
have also been active participants.  Additionally, some other efforts
have been undertaken, and CCPP members have continued to be active in
ACM advisory roles and in computer policy issues, either directly
related to CCPP or otherwise.

Neumann contributes many hours each week pro bono, moderating RISKS,
responding to queries, engaging in individual dialogues with readers,
and distilling the RISKS highlights for SIGSOFT's Software Engineering
Notes (SEN).  From the feedback we receive, RISKS appears to be one of
the most widely read and most useful of the moderated on-line digests
relating to computer technology.  It serves a real educational purpose.
Despite its high profile and the occasionally controversial nature of
some of the material, RISKS has been a relatively noninflammatory
operation; this reflects the fact that Neumann takes his moderator's
role quite seriously.  (The advisory members of CCPP are invoked as
informal reviewers whenever a potentially controversial contribution
must be considered.  In addition, each member of the committee has
typically played an advisory role during the year on various sensitive
issues.)

CCPP represents an extraordinary collection of creative thinking ability
and resources for ACM, and its members are invoked as appropriate.

RELEVANT ACTIVITIES DURING THE REPORTING YEAR

Following is a list of CCPP-relevant activities.  Almost all were done
essentially pro-bono, and in my case with the considerable blessing and
computer support of SRI International's Computer Science Lab -- for
which I am hugely grateful.

ITEMS OF IMMEDIATE RELEVANCE to CCPP 

1.  The on-line ACM Forum on Risks to the Public in Computers and
    Related Systems.  In addition to various unofficial mirrored sites
    on the Internet, including a new feed at panix.com for comp.risks on
    USENET as of May, 2011, the official archives are available by
    anonymous ftp in the U.S. at ftp://ftp.sri.com/risks/ , and in a
    nicely formatted searchable site in the U.K., courtesy of Lindsay
    Marshall:

    which is also accessible as

    The ACM Risks Forum activity involves many tens or even hundreds of
    thousands of people around the world, some of whom are contributing
    to the CCPP effort through their RISKS submissions.  There are
    always many new first-time contributors each year.

    The ACM Risks Forum continues as an institution.  Since its first
    issue on August 1, 1985, its readership continues to expand, with a
    steady flow of new direct subscribers, via USENET newsgroups as
    comp.risks, and through redistribution centers and mirrored websites
    throughout the Internet.  It reaches essentially every country that
    supports the Internet.

    During the 2010-2011 year, 40 issues of the Digest appeared.  The
    number of submissions for consideration continues to be
    considerable, and the primarily limitation on the frequency of
    issues is the scarcity of my time (and having to delete hundreds
    of spam messages daily that are not caught by our filters).

2.  Highlights from the on-line RISKS Forum continue to appear six times
    each year in the ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes.  Neumann
    was SEN's founding editor in 1976.  After Will Tracz took over as
    Editor in 1995, Neumann has continued to contribute a RISKS section
    to essentially every regular issue.  Will continues the process of
    making current and back issues available online in the ACM Digital
    Archive.  (SEN's circulation is one of the larger among SIGs.)

3. P.G. Neumann (ed).  Inside Risks began in July 1990 as a monthly one-page
   column, originally inside the back cover of the CACM for 18 years. and
   now slated for three longer columns each year.  We continue to expand the
   diversity among the authors.  The following articles appeared or were
   written within the reporting year, as Viewpoints:

Oct 10.222  Risks of Undisciplined Development, David Lorge Parnas
Feb 11.223  The Growing Harm of Not Teaching Malware, George Ledin  
Jun 11.224  The Risks of Stopping Too Soon, David Lorge Parnas

  These columns are available online at

4.  Neumann's RISKS BOOK ("Computer-Related Risks", ACM Press and
    Addison-Wesley, 1995), having transcended its fifth printing, is now
    being printed "on demand", and is now available online as well.  It
    is also available in a Japanese translation.  More recent source
    material is online in the ACM Risks Forum

    and summarized in SEN (item 2).

5.  PGN's Illustrative Risks document provides a topical index for
    SEN and RISKS.  It is updated regularly and is 
    available online as

    as well as

and

.
    The task of maintaining the currency of this resource has become
    more daunting over time, and this index is not keeping up to date.
    However, the search engine at risks.org tends to compensate for that.

6.  Numerous additional activities of PGN are enumerated in Appendix I
    below.

7.  Lauren Weinstein continues his operation of the PRIVACY Forum and
    the Network Neutrality Squad under the partial aegis of CCPP.
      

 

    The Privacy Forum and related services from People For Internet
    Responsibility (PFIR, which he co-founded with PGN), and his other
    outreach efforts continue to provide discussions, information, and
    other services that include the many areas of privacy -- which
    intersect virtually every aspect of our lives.  The PRIVACY Forum,
    Network Neutrality Squad, and other archives are continually
    referenced from around the world, and have been listed as major
    network resources in the links of many private, commercial, and
    governmental entities globally.
 
    As is the case with PGN, Lauren receives numerous e-mail and
    telephone contacts from all manner of media points, and
    continues to participate in newspaper and magazine articles,
    local and network radio and television interviews, and similar
    discussions on privacy and related technology topics.  He has
    also been a commentator for National Public Radio's ``Morning
    Edition'' and for "Wired News" regarding technology and society.  

8.  Other CCPP members have also interacted with various ACM people on
    ACM and CCPP-related issues, reviewed drafts, refereed papers, etc.

9.  Other CCPP members wrote papers and gave talks that bear on
    computers and public policy.

10. This CCPP report is accessible from the acm.org pages, via a link  
    to my CCPP Web page:
    

11. PGN, Computer-Related Risk Futures, ACSAC 2009, Honolulu, December
    2009.  See the proceedings.

12. PGN, Combatting Insider Threats, in Insider Threats in Cyber
    Security and Beyond, Christian Probst, Jeffrey Hunker, Dieter
    Gollmann, and Matt Bishop (editors), Springer Verlag, 2010.
(This chapter was invited based on the 2008 Dagstuhl workshop paper, 
Peter G. Neumann, Combatting Insider Misuse, with Relevance to
Integrity and Accountability in Elections and Other Applications,
Dagstuhl Workshop on Insider Threats, 20-25 July 2008.)

PLANS THROUGH 1 JULY 2011

14. Neumann will continue moderating the on-line RISKS Forum and
    contributing RISKS sections to ACM SIGSOFT's Software Engineering
    Notes.

15. Neumann will continue to coordinate/edit/write the CACM Inside.
    seeking articles on topical RISKS-related subjects written by
    members of CCPP and other contributors.

16. CCPP members will continue to interact with USACM as appropriate.
    We have been encouraging the submission of more Inside Risks columns
    from the USACM community, without much success.  Perhaps in the
    future that will change.   
   
BUDGET AND FUNDING  
 
The 2010-2011 CCPP expenditures were as usual minimal, and the budget
was adequate, with only modest amounts required for computing resources
and communications.  (SRI continues to provide free disk space for the
RISKS FTP archives on ftp.sri.com; the CSL.SRI.COM resources are partly
subsidized by SRI.  In addition, Lindsay Marshall at Newcastle provides
the extremely useful searchable risks.org archives on a pro bono
basis.)  We appreciate ACM's past support, and have been happy to stay
within budget each year.

SUMMARY

The ACM RISKS Forum, the monthly CACM Inside Risks columns, Illustrative
Risks, and the related efforts have continued to be successful in
achieving their intended goals, as well as being highly popular.  This
year we have intensively renewed our long-term involvement in the risks
of electronic voting systems.

We note that several related efforts are already ongoing under the aegis
of the External Activities Board.  For example, the scientific freedom
and human rights, legal, education, and USACM committees involve issues
relevant to CCPP that frequently are discussed in the ACM Risks Forum
from the RISKS perspective.  We are happy to interact with others in
those related areas, without CCPP having to be directly in the loop, and
to offer the Inside Risks space to those efforts that have a reasonable
RISKS-relevant content.  Overall, CCPP seems to have a well-defined
niche of its own.

The ACM RISKS Forum and the PRIVACY Forum span a large gamut of CCPP
issues, and involve reaching out to many thousands of people, throughout
the world, quite a few of whom are actively contributing participants.
RISKS is heavily involved in human safety, privacy, ethics, legal
responsibility, etc., and there is no shortage of public-policy related
issues!

The Inside Risks column serves as a popular CACM feature, and seeks to
distill timely topics in a broadly accessible form.

Continued support of existing and possibly new CCPP activities is
appropriate, and will be appreciated at essentially the same level.  We
are delighted to be a low-budget high-yield part of the ACM.

DIVERSITY

As noted above, CCPP (as opposed to USACM, for example) is explicitly
international in its outlook and content.  In general, we always seek to
broaden our scope and deepen the incisiveness of our content in Inside
Risks columns and RISKS issues.  Also, the risks relating to computers
that we address span a wide range of requirements and application areas.

Also as noted above, CCPP is somewhat unusual within ACM in that it
tends to act as an editorial and advisory board rather than a membership
organization.  We welcome suggestions for additional CCPP members who
might also be willing to be active in writing and reviewing proposed
Inside Risks columns.  We note that the makeup of CCPP has always been
intentionally diverse in the areas of expertise that it encompasses.  At
the moment, David Parnas is the only non-US member, and Nancy Leveson is
the only woman.  Although we currently represent significant topical
longevity, we would be delighted to add some younger folks who have the
appropriate experiential breadth and depth, and will renew that quest in
the coming reporting year.  However, the small size of the group with
deep commitments to the purposes noted above is beneficial to the end
results, so we are not seeking a major expansion.

The CCPP members represent a valuable cross-section of ACM interests
relating to public-policy issues.  All of their efforts in helping CCPP
and the ACM are greatly appreciated, even though many of those efforts
are not noted here explicitly.

We would be delighted to receive further suggestions for new directions
relating to computers and public policy, internationally relevant
initiatives that we might address beyond the ACM Risks Forum and the CACM
Inside Risks columns, and ideas for making our efforts even more visibly
attributable to ACM without compromising the special role of CCPP.

Respectfully submitted, 

Peter G. Neumann, Principal Scientist, Computer Science Laboratory, 
SRI International EL-243, Menlo Park CA 94025-3493 
Net address: Neumann@CSL.SRI.COM or pneumann@acm.org; 
Phone: 1-650-859-2375 FAX 1-650-859-2844

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APPENDIX I: CCPP-Relevant Activities of Peter G. Neumann


RELEVANT PGN EVENTS, July 2010 -- June 2011

Attended the Electronic Voting Technology(EVT)+WOTE Conference in
Washington DC, August 9-10, 2010.

Participated in the 2010 Dagstuhl Summer Study on Insider Threats:
Strategies for Prevention, Mitigation, and Response August 22-26,
Dagstuhl, Germany, gave talk, Insider Threats Considered Holistically.

Gave a colloquium talk at the University of Cambridge, England,
Hierarchies, Lowerarchies, Anarchies, and Plutarchies: Historical
Perspectives of Composably Layered High-Assurance Architectures, October
12, 2010.

Attended the AFRL/CPSG-sponsored 4th Layered Assurance Workshop, Austin
TX, presented a paper, PGN and Robert N.M. Watson, Capabilities
Revisited: A Holistic Approach to Bottom-to-Top Assurance of Trustworthy
Systems, December 6-7 2010

Attended ACSAC 2010 in Austin TX, December 8-10, 2010, organized and
chaired a panel, Risks in the Clouds: Between Silver Linings and
Oncoming Storms Earl Crane, Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi, Matt Blaze, Lee Tien.

Gave colloquium talk at Newcastle University, England, A Layered
Approach to Bottom-to-Top Assurance of Trustworthy Systems, April 5,
2011.  (Also wrote Carrying Goals to Newcastle: A Tribute to Brian
Randell, for Brian's 75th birthday celebration, April 6-7 2011, which
will be published imminently by Springer Verlag.)

<\PRE>

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APPENDIX II: 

Current Web and Internet Addresses for CCPP Members


 (Peter G. Neumann) 
  Neumann@CSL.sri.com and pneumann@acm.org 

 (Steve Bellovin) 
  smb@columbia.cs.edu 

 (Peter J. Denning) 
  pjd@nps.edu 

 (Virgil Gligor) 
  virgil@andrew.cmu.edu 

 (Jim Horning) 
  horning@acm.org 

 (Nancy Leveson) 
  leveson@mit.edu 

 (David Parnas)

 (Jerry Saltzer) 
  saltzer@mit.edu 

(Lauren Weinstein) 
  lauren@vortex.com 


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