This report provides an overview of federal law governing wiretapping and electronic eavesdropping. It also appends citations to state law in the area and contains a bibliography of legal commentary as well as the text of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). This report also includes a brief summary of the recently expired Protect America Act, P.L. 110-55 and of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 Amendments Act of 2008, P.L. 110-261 (H.R. 6304).

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Because of the significance of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) collections to federal receipts and, in turn, to the consolidated financial statements of the U.S. government, which GAO is required to audit, and Congress's interest in financial management at IRS, GAO audits IRS's financial statements annually to determine whether (1) the financial statements IRS prepares are reliable, (2) IRS management maintained effective internal controls, and (3) IRS complies with selected provisions of significant laws and regulations and its financial systems comply with the Federal Financial Management Improvement Act of 1996 (FFMIA)."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Billions of gallons of hazardous liquid waste are injected into underground wells each year. These Class I hazardous deep injection wells are designed to inject waste into an area below the lowermost underground source of drinking water. EPA and the states grant permits to commercial operators to construct and operate these wells and must obtain public comments on the permits. Communities often raise concerns about well safety and other matters. GAO examined the extent to which EPA and the states (1) address these community concerns, (2) consider environmental justice issues, and (3) ensure that financial assurances adequately protect the taxpayer if bankruptcy occurs. GAO, among other things, examined the permit process in the four states that have commercial Class I wells."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Officials at several federal uniformed police forces in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area have raised concerns that disparities in pay and retirement benefits have caused their police forces to experience difficulties in recruiting and retaining officers. These concerns have increased during the past year with the significant expansion of the Federal Air Marshal Program, which has created numerous relatively high-paying job opportunities for existing federal uniformed police officers and reportedly has lured many experienced officers from their uniformed police forces. GAO's objectives were to (1) determine the differences that exist among selected federal uniformed police forces regarding entry-level pay, retirement benefits, and types of duties; (2) provide information on the differences in turnover rates among these federal uniformed police forces, including where officers who separated from the police forces went and the extent to which human capital flexibilities were available and used to address turnover; and (3) provide information on possible difficulties police forces may have faced recruiting officers and the extent to which human capital flexibilities were available to help these forces recruit officers."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Over 7 million individuals with disabilities rely on medical and supportive services covered by Medicaid. However, if working-age individuals with disabilities desire to increase their self-sufficiency through employment, they could jeopardize their eligibility for Medicaid coverage, possibly leaving them without an alternative for health insurance. In an effort to help extend Medicaid coverage to certain individuals with disabilities who desire to work, Congress passed the Ticket to Work and Work Incentives Improvement Act of 1999. This legislation authorizes states to raise their Medicaid income and asset eligibility limits for individuals with disabilities who work. States may require that working individuals with disabilities "buy in" to the program by sharing in the costs of their coverage--thus, these states' programs are referred to as a Medicaid Buy-In. The act also required that GAO report on states' progress in designing and implementing the Medicaid Buy-In. GAO identified states that operated Buy-In programs as of December 2002 and analyzed the income eligibility limits and cost-sharing provisions established by those states. GAO also assessed the characteristics of the Buy-In participants in four states that were among the most experienced in implementing …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO audited the financial statements of the Capital Preservation Fund for fiscal years 2002 and 2001. GAO found that the financial statements (1) were presented fairly in conformity with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles, (2) contained no material weaknesses in internal control over financial reporting and compliance with laws and regulations, and (3) complied with the provisions of laws and regulations tested."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense (DOD) uses the Selective Reenlistment Bonus (SRB) program to reenlist military personnel in critical specialties. In fiscal years 1997-2003, the program budget rose 138 percent, from $308 million to $734 million. In fiscal year 2003, the House Appropriations Committee directed the Secretary of Defense to reassess program efficiency and report on five concerns: (1) how effective the program is in correcting retention shortfalls in critical occupations, (2) how replacement guidance will ensure targeting critical specialties that impact readiness, (3) how DOD will match program execution with appropriated funding, (4) how well the services' processes for administering the program work, and (5) advantages and disadvantages of paying bonuses in lump sum payments. The committee also directed GAO to review and assess DOD's report."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In light of the recent mobilizations associated with the war on terrorism and homeland security, GAO was asked to determine if controls used to pay mobilized Army Guard personnel provided assurance that such pays were accurate and timely. GAO's audit used a case study approach to focus on controls over three key areas: processes, people (human capital), and systems."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In March 2001, the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General reported that the Immigration and Naturalization Service could not account for over 500 of its firearms. Furthermore, in July 2001, the Federal Bureau of Investigation disclosed that 449 of its firearms were lost or stolen. Given the possible threat that lost, stolen, or missing firearms poses to the public, GAO assessed (1) the consistency of federal agencies' firearms controls with federal internal control standards and related criteria; and (2) compliance by Justice and Treasury agencies with established firearms controls and improvements made to strengthen and enforce controls."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Labor negotiations in the airline industry fall under the Railway Labor Act. Under this act, airline labor contracts do not expire, but instead, become amendable. To help labor and management reach agreement before a strike occurs, the act also provides a process--including possible intervention by the President--that is designed to reduce the incidence of strikes. Despite these provisions, negotiations between airlines and their unions have sometimes been contentious, and strikes have occurred. Because air transportation is such a vital link in the nation's economic infrastructure, a strike at a major U.S. airline may exert a significant economic impact on affected communities. Additionally, if an airline's labor and management were to engage in contentious and prolonged negotiations, the airline's operations--and customer service--could suffer. GAO was asked to examine trends in airline labor negotiations in the 25 years since the industry was deregulated in 1978, the impact of airline strikes on communities, and the impact of lengthy contract negotiations and nonstrike work actions (such as "sickouts") on passengers."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In recent years, the challenges of aging populations have become a topic of increasing concern to the developed nations. These challenges range from the fiscal imbalance in national pension systems caused by fewer workers having to provide benefits for greater numbers of retirees, to potential economic strains due to shortages of skilled workers. Part of the solution to these challenges could be greater older worker labor force participation. GAO identified three nations--Japan, Sweden, and the United Kingdom--that had displayed high levels of older worker labor force participation in the past and were now implementing policy reforms that continued to emphasize the importance of older workers. The experiences of these nations suggest that the nature of the reforms, the public availability and transparency of information on the reforms, and the strength of the national economy play key roles in extending older worker labor force participation."

During robot path planning and control the equations that describe the robot motions are determined and solved. Historically these expressions were derived analytically off-line. For robots that must adapt to their environment or perform a wide range of tasks, a way is needed to rapidly re-derive these expressions to take into account the robot kinematic changes, such as when a tool is added to the end-effector. The JFKengine software was developed to automatically produce the expressions representing the manipulator arm motion, including the manipulator arm Jacobian and the forward kinematic expressions. Its programming interface can be used in conjunction with robot simulation software or with robot control software. Thus, it helps to automate the process of configuration changes for serial robot manipulators. If the manipulator undergoes a geometric change, such as tool acquisition, then JFKengine can be invoked again from the control or simulation software, passing it parameters for the new arm configuration. This report describes the automated processes that are implemented by JFKengine to derive the kinematic equations and the programming interface by which it is invoked. Then it discusses the tree data structure that was chosen to store the expressions, followed by several examples of portions of expressions …

NERI Project No.2000-0109 began in August 2000 and has three tasks. The first project year addressed Task 1, namely development of nonlinear prognostication for critical equipment in nuclear power facilities. That work is described in the first year's annual report (ORNLTM-2001/195). The current (second) project year (FY02) addresses Task 2, while the third project year will address Tasks 2-3. This report describes the work for the second project year, spanning August 2001 through August 2002, including status of the tasks, issues and concerns, cost performance, and status summary of tasks. The objective of the second project year's work is a compelling demonstration of the nonlinear prognostication algorithm using much more data. The guidance from Dr. Madeline Feltus (DOE/NE-20) is that it would be preferable to show forewarning of failure for different kinds of nuclear-grade equipment, as opposed to many different failure modes from one piece of equipment. Long-term monitoring of operational utility equipment is possible in principle, but is not practically feasible for the following reason. Time and funding constraints for this project do not allow us to monitor the many machines (thousands) that will be necessary to obtain even a few failure sequences, due to low failure rates (<10{sup …

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Starting with an elementary discussion of quantum holography, we show that entangled quantum states of qubits provide a ''local'' representation of the global geometry and topology of quantum Riemann surfaces. This representation may play an important role in both mathematics and physics. Indeed, the simplest way to represent the fundamental objects in a ''theory of everything'' may be as muti-qubit entangled states.

This report discusses the Public Safety Officers’ Benefits Program, which provides for compensation of individuals injured by vaccinations given as part of a countermeasure plan declared by the Secretary of Health and Human Services in preparation for potential hostile activities involving the smallpox virus.

Models which describe road traffic patterns can be helpful in detection and/or prevention of uncommon and dangerous situations. Such models can be built by the use of motion detection algorithms applied to video data. Block matching is a standard technique for encoding motion in video compression algorithms. We explored the capabilities of the block matching algorithm when applied for object tracking. The goal of our experiments is two-fold: (1) to explore the abilities of the block matching algorithm on low resolution and low frame rate video and (2) to improve the motion detection performance by the use of different search techniques during the process of block matching. Our experiments showed that the block matching algorithm yields good object tracking results and can be used with high success on low resolution and low frame rate video data. We observed that different searching methods have small effect on the final results. In addition, we proposed a technique based on frame history, which successfully overcame false motion caused by small camera movements.

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The objectives of this research project are to significantly extend the theoretical foundation and the modeling of radiation-induced microstructural changes in structural materials used in Generation IV nuclear reactors, and to derive from these microstructure models the constitutive laws for void swelling, irradiation creep and stress-induced swelling, as well as changes in mechanical properties. The need for the proposed research is based on three major developments and advances over the past two decades. First, new experimental discoveries have been made on void swelling and irradiation creep which invalidate previous theoretical models and empirical constitutive laws for swelling and irradiation creep. Second, recent advances in computational methods and power make it now possible to model the complex processes of microstructure evolution over long-term neutron exposures. Third, it is now required that radiation-induced changes in structural materials over extended lifetimes be predicted and incorporated in the design of Generation IV reactors. Our approach to modeling and data analysis is a dual one in accord with both the objectives to simulate the evolution of the microstructure and to develop design equations for macroscopic properties. Validation of the models through data analysis is therefore carried out at both the microscopic and the macroscopic levels. …

This report introduces selected basic sources that are useful in obtaining background information or specific facts on the status of federal legislative or regulatory initiatives. It includes telephone, online, and media sources are included, as well as pertinent directories, such as those of organizations that track areas of interest. Annotations describing each source's contents and organization are included so that researchers can select those that most closely fit their needs. Internet addresses usually provide information about the items, rather than access to them.

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This report reviews many of the core consumer bankruptcy features that have been common to most versions of bankruptcy reform legislation.

This report describes the work performed during the second year of the project, ''Preferred Waterflood Management Practices for the Spraberry Trend Area''. The objective of this project is to significantly increase field-wide production in the Spraberry Trend in a short time frame through the application of preferred practices for managing and optimizing water injection. Our goal is to dispel negative attitudes and lack of confidence in water injection and to document the methodology and results for public dissemination to motivate waterflood expansion in the Spraberry Trend. To achieve this objective, in this period we concentrated our effort on characterization of Germania Unit using an analog field ET ODaniel unit and old cased hole neutron. Petrophysical Characterization of the Germania Spraberry units requires a unique approach for a number of reasons--limited core data, lack of modern log data and absence of directed studies within the unit. The need for characterization of the Germania unit has emerged as a first step in the review, understanding and enhancement of the production practices applicable within the unit and the trend area in general. In the absence or lack of the afore mentioned resources, an approach that will rely heavily on previous petrophysical work carried …