Congress and the White House are working on creating a new policy that will guide law enforcement agencies wanting to tap into e-mails during the course of a criminal investigation. The challenge is how to identify and pluck the incriminating few from the more than 1.4 billion e-mails flying through cyberspace daily without compromising the freedom and privacy of law-abiding citizens. The FBI currently uses a device called Carnivore, which culls through all the communications on an Internet service provider's network, including mostly those of non-suspects. The White House is proposing a new legal policy that would treat e-mail the same way telephone calls are now treated. Law enforcement agencies would have to demonstrate probable cause before getting a court order that would let them intercept the e-mails of a suspect.

Which end is up?

Federal financial aid and accreditation policies are putting a major crimp in the ability of distance education to expand, say some educators. Testifying before the Web-based Education Commission, the distance education providers faulted Department of Education regulations that currently limit the amount of teaching that can be delivered outside the classroom to 50 percent.

One of those testifying before the congressionally appointed commission was Laura Palmer Noone, provost of the University of Phoenix. She noted that the measure of a good education should be how much a student learns, not how much time the student sits in a classroom. "We are focusing on the wrong end of the student," she said, according to a report in the Chronicle of Higher Education's online newspaper, Academe Today.

The new assistant secretary of postsecondary education, A. Lee Fritschler, also testified, noting the Education Department's openness to distance education. The problem of how to assess what students get out of a course hasn't been solved, however, he said: "We haven't been able to develop any output measures." Perhaps tests, papers and grades are becoming obsolete?

The commission has held four hearings since its creation last year. Headed by Sen. Bob Kerrey (D.-Neb.), it is charged to develop policy recommendations geared toward maximizing the educational promise of the Internet for all levels of schooling. The commission's report is expected out in November. For more information and hearing testimony, go to www.hpcnet.org/webcommission.

Vive la resistance!

The French Ministry of Finance has banned the civil service from using many English words that the ministry finds are becoming too commonplace in French parlance. According to an Associated Press news account, terms that especially offend are computer jargon, like "e-mail" and business words, like "start-up." Instead, the ministry instructs, civil servants are to use the terms "courrier electronique" for e-mail and the phrase "jeune pousse" (or "young plant") for start-up. This edict came down shortly after a newspaper reported that French president Jacques Chirac had referred to some companies as "les start-ups" and their managers as "les start-upistes."