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CIA Delays Release of Cold War Data
According to a report in the July 15th edition of The New York Times, the Central Intelligence Agency will not release secret records from most of its major cold-war covert operations in the forseeable future. The agency pledged five years ago to declassify thousands of files on 11 paramilitary and political operations launched as long as 50 years ago.
Although the CIA has published some documents from the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and the successful 1954 coup against the Guatamalan Government, it appears from the Times report that the agency never undertook a serious effort to declassify the other nine operations, which constitute a secret history of American power as used against foreign governments by Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy. Officials of the agency's directorate of operations have steadfastly opposed releasing cold war secrets, saying that even 40- and 50-year-old documents can reveal the agency's present-day sources and methods. The CIA also claims that document declassification is a painstaking process requiring resources that the agency can't afford. About 150 people, most of them retired agency employees, work on declassification. The report was written by Tim Weiner and appears on page A13.
Digital 'Streaming' Advances on 'Net
Two recent articles in The New York Times explore how digital "streaming" is changing the way Americans receive music, live news, radio, and other information. "Streaming" involves the digital distribution of information via the Internet or other communications link, freeing producers from the costs of physical manufacturing and distribution.
An article about Broadcast.com, Inc., a small three-year-old company that streams live news and other information over the Internet appeared in The New York Times on July 18th. The price of the company's shares in their first day of trading rose from $18.00 per share to $62.75 on the Nasdaq market, the best opening day gain for any well-capitalized company in Wall Street history. The article appeared on page B1.
Related articles about streaming technology appeared in The New York Times on July 13th and July 16th. The article that appeared on July 13th discussed new desktop and network servers for streaming, and a new standard for streaming technology - Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL). According to the Times, SMIL should allow Web programmers to put video, audio, text and charts into an integrated presentation that can be broadcast live or on demand to Internet-connected personal computers. The industry hopes that SMIL will open the way for a flood of streaming-media programming, as HTML did as the Web's document format. This article was written by Steve Lohr and appeared on page D-3.
The July 16th Times article discussed digital music distribution over the Internet. In addition to freeing producers of the costs of manufacture and distribution, music could be geared to more specialized audiences that may be small and widely scattered. Other possibilities include significantly lower prices, or songs provided free as part of a promotion. Because a CD holds 650 megabytes of data, fast modems and high-capacity lines will be essential if digital music distribution is to become popular. The article was written by Jon Pareles and appears on page B-1.
Imaging Software Corrects Imperfections
Several former IBM employees have developed software that corrects flaws in scanned images and want to make it integral to many kinds of imaging devices, according to a report in the July 16th issue of The Wall Street Journal. The former IBM software engineers formed a company, Applied Science Fiction, which has developed a terchnology called "Digital Ice," short for image correction enhancement.
Digital Ice is a software product that removes surface imperfections and flaws like dust and fingerprints from scanned negatives of prints without harming the original image. It works by assigning the smudges to a layer separate from the colors and then removing the layer. The process can be performed automatically, or controlled manually, requiring between 7 and 20 seconds for a typical 35mm image. According to the Journal, Digital Ice can save hours of laborious reconstruction with photo-editing software. One scanner manufactured by Nikon already uses Digital Ice, and Applied Science Fiction is working with corporations like Hewlett-Packard and Eastman Kodak to develop other products. The report was written by Journal staff reporter Evan Ramstad, and appears on page B6.