Politics and Law

Editors' note: This is a guest post. See Paul Bell's bio below.

When President Obama addressed a joint session of Congress in February, he spoke to the need for the United States to become more energy-efficient. To that end, the stimulus bill he recently signed into law provides more than $30 billion for energy efficiency projects, innovative technology loan guarantees, the retrofitting of federal facilities, and the development of the initial framework for a "smart" electrical grid.

These measures put the country on a long-term path toward so-called green-led growth. But how they are implemented is as important as their passage. Moving forward, policymakers must adopt reforms and take advantage of the stimulus funds to make government IT operations more energy-efficient. They also should set policies that encourage and incentivize the private sector to do the same.

To start, they should spotlight the significant stimulus funds aimed at upgrading information technology in federal facilities. Newer, more energy-efficient IT will drive long-term cost savings and environmental sustainability, while boosting government productivity and reducing energy consumption.

The federal government is a major IT user and, as such, a major energy consumer. The most recent Environmental Protection Agency report on federal energy consumption indicates that federal servers and data centers accounted for approximately 6 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity use, for a total electricity cost of about $450 million annually (PDF). And energy use is slated to double by 2011.

The federal government can lead by example by pursuing two interlocking--but equally important--objectives:

First, the Obama administration should challenge federal agencies to freeze IT-related energy consumption at current levels while boosting computing output. This will be faster and potentially more effective than legislation.

And it's not as difficult as it sounds, but depends on successful implementation of three measures: New federal data centers must use the best available energy-efficient IT; existing federal data centers must be converted to "green" data centers within three years; and federal data centers must be connected to intelligent utility networks or smart grids, where possible. This will reduce energy consumption and drive significant cost savings for consumers, small businesses, large enterprises, and public-sector organizations, while enhancing U.S. competitiveness.

At Dell, we've learned that going green doesn't have to involve building costly new data centers. By applying a green approach to our own data centers, we are on track to save $52 million in related costs by the end of this year, and we've avoided the need to build a new data center altogether. We're able to compute more while consuming less.

The federal government must modernize data centers to improve energy efficiency. Most government--and private-sector--data centers have significant unused capacity due to servers consuming power but not always doing a lot of work. That can change by embracing technologies, such as virtualization, that optimize server productivity.

Virtualization is a technology that allows one server to do the work of many. Using software to create multiple virtual machines inside each physical system, virtualization reduces the number of servers required to run a data center. Combined with other technologies, a data center can do as much as three times more work using the same power and space. This unlocks unused capacity, increases computing power, and avoids the expense associated with overprovisioning and buying additional servers.

Second, government should establish policies that encourage greater IT energy efficiency in the private sector. The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy found that for every extra kilowatt-hour of electricity consumed by information and communications technologies, the U.S. economy increases its overall energy savings by a factor of 10. In essence, efficient IT saves more energy than it uses.

Congress, regulators, and the Obama administration should start with a comprehensive assessment of government servers by class and power use. They also should develop a national strategy for deploying IT that drives energy efficiency. A senior White House representative, perhaps federal CIO Vivek Kundra, should coordinate federal efforts on energy-efficient IT, working with Congress to advance this agenda.

Policymakers also should develop a framework to support private-sector energy efficiency, including:

• Tax credits to invest in projects that reduce energy demand.
• Immediate expensing, or accelerated depreciation, for retrofitting or replacing IT that improves energy efficiency by at least 25 percent. Similar benefits should be considered for investment in broadband or related IT that supports flexible work or virtual-meeting programs.
• Energy efficiency investments for small-business administration loan programs.

In an era of tight budgets, Washington can invest in greater energy efficiency--an investment that will show a strong, timely return. While this is an investment for the long-term, it's imperative that desired efficiencies can be realized immediately.

Technology is the great catalyst for human progress, and now there is a valuable opportunity for government to help the sector realize vast new efficiencies, reduce costs, and simplify IT management.

In a move to reach out the Cuban people, the White House on Monday announced a series of changes to U.S. policy toward Cuba, including the authorization of greater telecommunications links to the communist country.

"This will increase the means through which Cubans on the island can communicate with each other and with persons outside of Cuba," the White House said in a statement. "Cuban American connections to family in Cuba are not only a basic right in humanitarian terms, but also our best tool for helping to foster the beginnings of grassroots democracy on the island."

Under the new policy, U.S. telecommunications providers will be able to establish fiber-optic cable and satellite telecommunications facilities linking the U.S. and Cuba, as well as license to enter into and operate under roaming service agreements with Cuba's telecommunications providers. Additionally, U.S. satellite radio and satellite television service providers will be able to obtain a license to provide services to customers in Cuba.

Persons under U.S. jurisdiction will be allowed to activate and pay U.S. or third-country service providers for telecommunications, satellite radio, or satellite TV services provided to individuals in Cuba, save for certain senior Communist Party and Cuban government officials. People will also, under a license exception, be able to export to Cuba communications devices such as mobile phone systems, computers, software, and satellite receivers.

The Obama administration's announcement continues the transition to more open communications between the United States and Cuba set in motion under the Bush administration. President Bush announced in 2008 that Americans could send cell phones to family members in Cuba. He also permitted faith-based organizations and nonprofit groups working with Cuba to provide computers and Internet access to the Cuban people.

Bush's actions came in response to Cuban President Raul Castro's decision to lift the ban prohibiting the use of cell phones by ordinary citizens in Cuba.

The change in policy could also make Cuba less reliant on Venezuela, another leftist country with icy U.S. relations. Even though it would have been more efficient to lay a new cable between Cuba and the U.S., Cuba in 2006 signed a deal with Venezuela to lay a new undersea fiber-optic cable between the two countries.

The State Department is bolstering its use of social media with the appointment of a new senior adviser on innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

(Credit: One Economy)

One Economy co-founder Alec Ross, whose nonprofit organization brings technology to low-income people, starts at the State Department on Monday, The Washington Post reported. As a senior adviser for the State Department, he's charged with using technology to enhance the department's diplomatic missions in areas such as health care, poverty, and human rights.

Internet diplomacy is nothing new in Washington, but the Obama administration has put more emphasis on the potential to increase public dialogue through the Internet.

Ross served as an adviser to the Obama transition team on the technology, innovation, and government reform policy working group, which was led in part by Julius Genachowski, President Obama's choice to chair the Federal Communications Commission. As executive vice president for external affairs at One Economy, he coordinated efforts between the private sector, government, and nonprofits to achieve the organization's mission. He also led the organization's public policy initiatives, which focus on federal and local laws and regulatory issues regarding technology and telecommunications in low-income communities.

Fans of legalizing marijuana pushed their questions to the top of a WhiteHouse.gov voting system. (Click to enlarge.)

(Credit: Declan McCullagh/CNET)

As any major Web site can attest, any online voting begs to be influenced by special interests. CNBC yanked a 2007 presidential poll after enthusiastic Ron Paul supporters boosted their candidate to 75 percent, and the FreeRepublic.com crowd recently flooded a Web vote about stem cell funding.

On Thursday, WhiteHouse.gov became the latest Web site to experience this kind of deluge as part of an online town hall--and this time, it was marijuana legalization advocates who voted to push their questions to the top of the charts.

By the time President Obama's town hall began, questions about legalizing marijuana ranked at the top of the "green jobs," "financial stability," "jobs," and "budget" sections (and came in a close second place in the health care section too). Sample question: "What are your plans for the failing, 'War on Drugs', that's sucking money from tax payers and putting non-violent people in prison longer than the violent criminals?"

White House aides didn't choose any of those questions to present to the president on the nearby screens, but Obama did acknowledge that the topic was a popular one.

He said online voters wanted to know "whether legalizing marijuana would improve the economy and job creation," and joked that "I don't know what this says about the online audience."

But the president--whose administration has indicated that it would effectively end raids on distributors of medical marijuana in California--said he would not support changing federal drug law that makes even possession of pot a crime. "No, I don't think this is a good strategy to grow our economy," Obama said, to applause from the audience.

The White House said that 92,927 people submitted 104,126 questions and cast a total of 3,606,824 votes.

Earlier in the week, some drug-related blogs had encouraged supporters to flood the virtual polls and vote for the marijuana-related questions through the version of Google Moderator that the White House chose for the town hall project. (Google uses the application internally, including for companywide meetings.)

A Marijuana.com discussion thread says: "Vote for the top marijuana related questions." NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said: "Please take a moment right now to log on the WhiteHouse.gov/OpenForQuestions and vote for the questions above, as well as others pertaining to the need to regulate cannabis. Let the President know that millions of American voters believe that the time has come to tax and regulate marijuana."

Obama's brief remarks on the topic demonstrated a weakness of the online town hall format: it doesn't allow followup questions, which journalists used during the president's press conference earlier this week to good effect. If that were possible, drug war foes would likely have had something else to say.

Oh, and during Thursday's online town hall, the president did address topics other than marijuana and federal drug laws, including unemployment and job creation.

Last September, the Bush administration defended the unusual secrecy over an anti-counterfeiting treaty being negotiated by the U.S. government, which some liberal groups worry could criminalize some peer-to-peer file sharing that infringes copyrights.

Now President Obama's White House has tightened the cloak of government secrecy still further, saying in a letter this week that a discussion draft of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement and related materials are "classified in the interest of national security pursuant to Executive Order 12958."

The 1995 Executive Order 12958 allows material to be classified only if disclosure would do "damage to the national security and the original classification authority is able to identify or describe the damage."

Jamie Love, director of the nonprofit group Knowledge Ecology International, filed the Freedom of Information Act request that resulted in this week's denial from the White House. The denial letter (PDF) was sent to Love on Tuesday by Carmen Suro-Bredie, chief FOIA officer in the White House's Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

Love had written in his original request on January 31--submitted soon after Obama's inauguration--that the documents "are being widely circulated to corporate lobbyists in Europe, Japan, and the U.S. There is no reason for them to be secret from the American public."

The White House appears to be continuing the secretive policy of the Bush administration, which wrote to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (PDF) on January 16 that out of 806 pages related to the treaty, all but 10 were "classified in the interest of national security pursuant to Executive Order 12958."

In one of his first acts as president, Obama signed a memo saying FOIA "should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails. The government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure."

Love's group believes that the U.S. and Japan want the treaty to say that willful trademark and copyright infringement on a commercial scale must be subject to criminal sanctions, including infringement that has "no direct or indirect motivation of financial gain."

A June 2008 memo (PDF) from the International Chamber of Commerce, signed by pro-copyright groups, says: "intellectual property theft is no less a crime than physical property theft. An effective ACTA should therefore establish clear and transparent standards for the calculation and imposition of effective criminal penalties for IP theft that...apply to both online and off-line IP transactions." Similarly, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has called for "criminal penalties for IP crimes, including online infringements."

Last fall, two senators--Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Arlen Specter (R-Penn.)--known for their support of stringent intellectual property laws, expressed concern that the ACTA could be too far-reaching.

As Vivek Kundra, President Obama's choice for U.S. chief information officer, was speaking about government transparency at the Washington, D.C., convention center on Thursday morning, his former offices a few blocks away were being raided by the FBI.

Until Obama's appointment last week, Kundra was the District of Columbia's chief technology officer. The FBI raid coincided with two arrests as part of a bribery sting--Yusuf Acar, 40, and Sushil Bansal, 41.

An administration official tells our sister news organization, CBS News, that Kundra has taken a leave of absence from his new position as the federal government's CIO until the FBI investigation is sorted out.

At an arraignment in federal court Thursday afternoon, Acar was charged with conspiracy to commit bribery, wire fraud, conflict of interest, and conspiracy to launder monetary instruments. He was ordered to be held without bond until a hearing Tuesday because prosecutors said he posed a flight risk.

Bansal was charged with conspiracy to commit bribery and conspiracy to launder monetary instruments, though prosecutors said a plea agreement could possibly be reached in his case. He was released after Thursday's arraignment but ordered not to conduct overseas financial transactions or leave the Washington metropolitan area.

Acar worked for Kundra as an information systems security officer with responsibility for government contracts. A number of requests for bids (PDF) posted on the District's Web site list Acar as "responsible for general administration of the contract" and "responsible for the day-to-day monitoring and supervision of the contract, of ensuring that the work conforms to the requirements of this contract."

Bansal previously worked as a project manager for the D.C. government and then founded a consulting firm called Advanced Integrated Technologies Corporation. AITC is a D.C.-government certified contractor with multiple contracts with the city, including one for "information technology services" worth $10 million.

AITC says that its contracts with the city of Washington, D.C., include technical support and network administration for the DMV's driver licensing system and that the city purchased McAfee anti-spyware licenses from AITC.

The FBI affidavit in support of their arrest said Acar and Bansal conspired to defraud the District of Columbia Government and commit bribery through a variety of schemes. In one such alleged scheme, a vendor such as AITC would bill the D.C. government for a higher number of goods than it would provide. A CTO official like Acar would allegedly falsely certify that the greater quantity was actually received, so the vendor would be paid more than necessary and the co-conspirators could split the proceeds.

Kundra's speech at the FOSE 2009 summit on Thursday focused on government transparency. He said: "We also want to tap into the ingenuity of the American people, lowering the cost of government operations, engaging citizens, and radical transparency ultimately pulls the citizens of the United States closer to the government."

"Imagine the vast depository of information the federal government has and what people could do if they had access to it--how it could change the engagement model and help create a more perfect union," he said.

The FBI and U.S. Attorney's office were not immediately available for comment. Kundra's last day in the District government was March 4.

During the FBI raid, most of the employees were told to go home, with others segregated into a waiting room, according to a report by WTOP radio.

Update 11:22 a.m. PDT: Kundra is not a target of the investigation, a spokeswoman for Washington's mayor said, according to Reuters. The U.S. Attorney's office has told us to expect more information soon.

Update 2:55 p.m. PDT: More information added from FBI affidavit.

Update 4:43 p.m. PDT: Added information about Kundra taking a leave of absence.

CNET's Stephanie Condon contributed to this report from Washington, D.C.

The Bush administration secretly concluded after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that it had the authority to wiretap the Internet and telephone calls with virtually no limitations, restrict free speech, and use the U.S. military domestically against suspected terrorists.

Those legal opinions came in a series of memorandums written by U.S. Department of Justice lawyers, including deputy assistant attorney general John Yoo, which were disclosed by the Obama administration on Monday.

Although the broad outlines of the Bush administration's claims to sweeping executive powers were previously known, the newly released memorandums provide a glimpse at both the legal arguments used and the scope of the claims.

An October 2001 memorandum (PDF) by Yoo and special counsel Robert Delahunty, for instance, says that "the president has the legal and constitutional authority to use military force within the United States to respond to and combat future acts of terrorism, and that the Posse Comitatus Act does not bar deployment."

It also envisions the possibility of censorship restrictions that could be slapped on newspapers and the Internet, saying "First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully."

A September 2001 memorandum (PDF) previews what would become an extensive debate over the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program, saying "the president must be able to use whatever means necessary to prevent attacks on the United States; this power, by implication, includes the authority to collect information necessary for its effective exercise."

Yoo is now a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley. Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald has suggested that Yoo could be prosecuted for war crimes; he has been sued by Jose Padilla, the American citizen who detained by the U.S. military for more than three years as an enemy combatant and was subsequently convicted by the criminal justice system.

Some of the Bush administration's sweeping claims to unchecked executive branch powers were struck down by federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court--a fact that lawyers from the outgoing administration noted at the last minute in a set of memorandums that explicitly backed away from the earlier claims.

On January 15, just days before Barack Obama took office, Steven Bradbury, principal deputy assistant attorney general, informed federal agencies that the 2001-era memos were no longer valid.

Bradbury's memo (PDF) revised the Office of Legal Counsel's opinions on topics including treaties, torture, and wiretapping, saying those "do not reflect the current views of this office."

One 2002 memorandum (PDF) hinted at how a suspect could be tortured: "So long as the United States does not intend for a detainee to be tortured post-transfer, however, no criminal liability will attach to a transfer, even if the foreign country receiving the detainee does torture him."

"Americans deserve a government that operates with transparency and openness," said Attorney General Eric Holder in a statement on Monday. "It is my goal to make OLC opinions available when possible while still protecting national security information and ensuring robust internal executive branch debate and decision-making."

commentary The U.S. Senate on Tuesday approved an $838 billion "stimulus" bill by a 61-37 vote, capping more than a week of political sparring between critics of the measure and President Obama, who claimed during a press conference that an "economic emergency" made it necessary.

What didn't come up during the president's first press conference was how one section of the convoluted legislation--it's approximately 800 pages total--is intended to radically reshape the nation's medical system by having the government establish computerized medical records that would follow each American from birth to death.

Billions will be handed to companies creating these databases. Billions will be handed to universities to incorporate patient databases "into the initial and ongoing training of health professionals." There's a mention of future "smart card functionality."

Yet nowhere in this 140-page portion of the legislation does the government anticipate that some Americans may not want their medical histories electronically stored, shared, and searchable. Although a single paragraph promises that data-sharing will "be voluntary," there's no obvious way to opt out.

"Without those protections, Americans' electronic health records could be shared--without their consent--with over 600,000 covered entities through the forthcoming nationally linked electronic health records network," said Sue Blevins, president of the Institute for Health Freedom, a nonprofit group that advocates health care privacy.

The Democratic politicians pushing this bill have far-reaching ambitions. The legislation (PDF) (on page 244, for the curious) hands to a still-to-be-named health care bureaucrat the "goal of utilization of an electronic health record for each person in the United States by 2014." Selecting official standards will be left to the Department of Health and Human Services (page 265).

The databases will, "at a minimum," include information on every American's race and ethnicity. They will be used for "biosurveillance and public health" and "medical and clinical research," both of which raise privacy questions. They will become part of a "nationwide system for the electronic use and exchange of health information."

Plus, the federal government will use its vast purchasing power--think Medicare and Medicaid--to compel adoption of e-records that meet government "standards and implementation specifications."

"Congress must close a number of the unnecessary and damaging loopholes designed by industry that have been added to the economic recovery package," said Ashley Katz, director of Patient Privacy Rights. PPR is especially concerned with a section of the Senate bill, which did not exist in the House of Representatives version, that may permit marketing literature and direct mail to be sent based on the contents of a patient's e-records.

Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C. says he believes PPR "is right to be concerned that the Senate bill would allow for the commercialization of confidential medical information. It changes the incentive structure in data collection."

Short-circuiting a gradual move toward e-health records
Many physicians are moving toward electronic health records for reasons of their own, including market pressure, convenience, and efficiency. This happens as old systems are being replaced or upgraded, questions about security find better answers, and doctors and their staff become more familiar with the technology.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found, in response to a mail survey last year that 38.4 percent of physicians reported using full or partial e-records system, not counting billing. This is up from 25 percent in 2005.

In the absence of the so-called stimulus bill, doctors and companies have been gradually moving in that direction, individually weighing the costs against the benefits and choosing the technology that best suits their needs.

This is the gradual process that the Democrats who wrote the legislation, and sent it the floor without the benefit of a single hearing, hope to short-circuit. The bill punishes physicians who are not "meaningful users" of a government-certified e-record database, and specifies certain procedures and information exchanges that will "satisfy" the requirement.

Starting in 2015, government reimbursements to physicians who are not participating in the federal e-record effort will begin to decline.

HHS would be required by law to improve the adoption of e-records "over time by requiring more stringent measures of meaningful use."

Betsy McCaughey, the former lieutenant governor of New York and an adjunct fellow at the free-market Hudson Institute, wrote an opinion article this week that argues the e-records idea comes from Tom Daschle, who withdrew as a HHS nominee amid questions about his lobbying and nonpayment of income taxes.

"What penalties will deter your doctor from going beyond the electronically delivered protocols when your condition is atypical or you need an experimental treatment?" McCaughey wrote. "The vagueness is intentional. In his book, Daschle proposed an appointed body with vast powers to make the 'tough' decisions elected politicians won't make."

Twila Brase, a registered nurse and head of the Citizens' Council on Health Care, a grassroots group in St. Paul, Minn., says the "stimulus" bill should include explicit informed consent before sensitive and confidential patient records are injected into a national database.

"To protect the human, patient, and privacy rights of all Americans, the final stimulus bill must include an informed consent requirement," said Brase, who also warns that allowing federal officials to define "effective" care will lead to rationing of it.

There are two pro-privacy components of the "stimulus" package. The first says that e-records holders "shall have a right to obtain" a copy of their data in an electronic format. The second includes a notification requirement in the case of a data breach if the information is not encrypted--although, according to the definitions used, no notification is necessary is the unintentional disclosure was made "in good faith."

Also, a "policy committee" will be created inside HHS to devise "the implementation of a nationwide health information technology infrastructure." But of the 18 members, only one is required to have any knowledge of privacy and security matters.

Because the House version is different than the Senate's, negotiators from each chamber will meet to draft a final version, a process that has already begun.

In a move that could reshape the federal government's cybersecurity efforts, President Obama on Monday said a former Booz Allen consultant would conduct an immediate two-month review of all related agency activities.

The announcement indicates that the White House's National Security Council may wrest significant authority away from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which weathered withering criticism last fall for its lackluster efforts.

Obama selected Melissa Hathaway, who worked for the director of national intelligence in the Bush administration and was director of an multi-agency "Cyber Task Force," to conduct the review with an eye to ensuring that cybersecurity efforts are well-integrated and competently managed.

"The president is confident that we can protect our nation's critical cyber infrastructure while at the same time adhering to the rule of law and safeguarding privacy rights and civil liberties," said John Brennan, the president's homeland security adviser.

National Security Advisor Jim Jones, who may expand his department's cybersecurity portolio as a result of new 60-day review.

(Credit: NATO)

Hathaway's appointment comes as Obama plans to overhaul the National Security Council, expanding its membership and effectively centralizing more decision-making in the White House staff. That would vest more authority in a staff run by James L. Jones, a former Marine Corps commandant who warned at a speech in Munich over the weekend that terrorists could use "cyber-technologies" to cause catastrophic damage.

During a panel discussion that CNET News wrote about last fall, Hathaway defended Homeland Security's efforts to develop what it called a National Cyber Security Initiative, saying there was "unprecedented bipartisan support" for it.

"Over the past year cyber exploitation has grown more sophisticated, more targeted, and we expect these trends to continue," she added. "Our cybersecurity approach to date has not kept up with the threats we've seen."

"She's great," James Lewis, a senior fellow at the hawkish Center for Strategic and International Studies, said of Hathaway. "She was one of the people who was making things work in the Bush administration...It is getting a high level attention at the deputy level of the NSC, but I don't think they've figured out what they want to do. I see it as kicking the can, with the potential to eventually bury the issue."

What remained unclear on Monday is the breadth of the review: Will it be inward-looking, designed to make an existing governmental apparatus run more efficiently? Or will it look outside the federal government too, and yield recommendations or regulations aimed at telling U.S. companies how to run their businesses? (Many companies on the receiving end of such a process may, of course, find it rather ill-advised.)

The origin of the Feds' cybersecurity headaches can be found in the process that led to the creation of Homeland Security nearly seven years ago. Politicians in Washington, D.C. decided to decided to glue together a medley of federal agencies to create a massive bureaucracy that would, as one of its new goals, provide a better focus on cybersecurity.

"The department will gather and focus all our efforts to face the challenge of cyberterrorism," President Bush said when signing the 500-or-so-page bill into law in November 2002. "This department will be charged with encouraging research on new technologies that can detect these threats in time to prevent an attack."

Some tasks might benefit from centralization in a sprawling bureaucracy. But it soon became evident that cybersecurity was not one of them. By 2005, government auditors concluded that the department failed to live up to its cybersecurity responsibilities and may be "unprepared" for emergencies; as recently as last fall, DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff said his agency needed to develop a plan to respond to a "cybercrisis."

That led some outside groups to argue that cybersecurity efforts should be taken over by the National Security Agency, which already is responsible for protecting government computers through its "information assurance" arm, or perhaps the White House staff.

The White House announcement on Monday said Hathaway will conduct an "immediate Cyber Security Review." Left unsaid, though, is that a "National Cyber Security Review" was already part of Homeland Security's official plan--finalized in April 2007, nearly two years ago.

CNET's Stephanie Condon contributed to this report.