by Henry Norr
San Francisco Chronicle
Monday, September 17, 2001

Tech pros and cons revealed

Last week's events were a useful reminder of high technology's limits.

Echelon, Carnivore and all the other snooping devices deployed by law- enforcement and intelligence agencies can't stop a determined band of conspirators. Scanners can see through our bags, but any object can be turned into a weapon or a pretend bomb. Our spy satellites can read license plates from the sky, but we can't find Osama bin Laden.

And while our air traffic control system manages thousands of flights a day, it apparently falls to pieces if someone simply flips a switch to shut off a plane's transponders.

PUT THE WEB TO WORK: On the other hand, last week also brought lots of examples of how technology, especially the Internet, can help in times of crisis. As the Pew Internet & American Life Project documented this weekend, thousands of survivors used e-mail and instant messaging to reassure family and friends of their safety, or to hunt for colleagues.

Amazon.com not only turned over most of its home page to a plea for contributions to the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund -- as many other Web sites did -- but also used its patented 1-Click system to make donating easy. It even waived its usual policy of taking a cut of contributions made through its "Honor System."

Users responded quickly and generously: As of Friday afternoon, the site had racked up almost 140,000 contributions totaling more than $5 million. The default amount is set to $10, but donations averaged $26 the first day and climbed steadily to $35 by Friday, according to spokeswoman Patty Smith. They came from all over the world, she said. When I talked to her, there were 128 countries on her list, ranging from Albania and Andorra to Zambia.

JustGive (www.justgive.org), a site designed specifically for facilitating donations to nonprofit organizations (without ever taking a cut for itself), also mobilized for the crisis. In addition to a "How You Can Help" page, with links for contributing to a variety of organizations and finding a blood center, the site, based in San Francisco, created a special fund that will channel donations to the families of victims of the attack, including police, fire and rescue workers.

(For a while the site also had a wish list detailing technology items needed by the Red Cross in New York. The list was apparently posted to a variety of sites, and according to an auto-reply from the Red Cross IT administrator involved, the response was overwhelming.)

"What we thought would be sent to five or six people," he wrote, "has made it from sea to shining sea, awesome is the power of the Internet. What we really need MOST at the moment is time . . . time to sort through what has been offered and to reassess our needs." Unfortunately, no one can contribute that, even over the Internet.)

Many high-tech companies also announced contributions to crisis causes. The largest, apparently, came from General Electric, which pledged $10 million to assist the families of the firefighters, police officers and emergency rescue personnel who died while responding to the attacks.

Microsoft came through with $5 million in cash and another $5 million worth of technical services for emergency-assistance agencies. And Cisco promised $6 million.

WATCH YOUR POCKETS: Of course, the Internet is a tool for scoundrels as well as for people of goodwill. Just a day after the attacks, a pair of anti- spam organizations, the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email and San Francisco SpamCon Foundation, issued a warning about a variety scams that fraudulently solicit contributions in the name of victims.

San Francisco Chronicle