For more than a decade, various experts have expressed increasing concerns about cybersecurity, in light of the growing frequency, impact, and sophistication of attacks on information systems in the United States and abroad. Consensus has also been building that the current legislative framework for cybersecurity might need to be revised.

Some states require voters at a polling place to produce photographic identification (photo ID) before casting a ballot. Such requirements have emerged as a controversial issue in the 2012 presidential election, and they are the focus of this report. Since 2008, almost half the states have enacted laws, many in 2012, relating to voter identification, with several containing photo ID requirements. In contrast, while several bills with voter identification provisions have been introduced in the 112th Congress, none have received committee or floor consideration. About 30 states require voters to provide some form of identification when voting in person, although few require such documentation for absentee voters. Seven of these states require a photo ID for polling-place voting but permit alternatives such as signing an affidavit for voters without an ID. With respect to what type of photo ID is acceptable and what happens if a voter does not have it, no two states are the same. Four states-Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, and Tennessee-permit only voters who present a photo ID to cast a ballot, with few exceptions. Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, and Wisconsin recently enacted similarly strict photo ID requirements that are not in effect at present because of court or U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) actions. In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Indiana voter photo ID law under the U.S. Constitution on equal protection grounds. However, in more recent cases, the question being considered is whether such laws violate relevant state constitutions. Whether voter photo ID laws comport with the Voting Rights Act (VRA) has also recently been considered by the courts and DOJ. Section 5 of the VRA requires certain states and jurisdictions to obtain preclearance from either DOJ or the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia before implementing a change to any voting practice or procedure. For example, in March 2012, DOJ denied preclearance approval under Section 5 to laws in Texas and South Carolina that require voters to show photo ID prior to casting a ballot. Subsequently, federal courts also denied preclearance to both laws, so they will not be in effect for the November 6, 2012, election. The South Carolina law, however, was granted preclearance to take effect in any election beginning in 2013. Photo ID requirements enacted in Alabama and Mississippi are slated for implementation after 2012, and are also subject to preclearance. Supporters of photo ID requirements emphasize the need to prevent voter fraud, while opponents emphasize the need to avoid disenfranchising legitimate voters who do not have ready access to a photo ID. Polling data suggest that most voters and most local election officials support a photo ID requirement but that many are also concerned about the risk of disenfranchisement. The policy controversy centers largely on whether the risk of disenfranchisement or the risk of voter fraud is the greater threat to the integrity of the electoral process. This policy debate is being conducted in the absence of a broad consensus about the evidence pertaining to those risks. Election administration is complex, and changes in photo ID requirements may affect other aspects as well, among them the use of provisional ballots, the potential for long lines, and the possibility that poll workers could misapply the new rules. It may be advantageous to have as much time as possible to implement changes to voting procedures, so that election officials, poll workers, and voters have time to adjust.

The construction, characteristics, operation, and demolition of buildings are increasingly recognized as a major source of environmental impact. Without significant transformation of building construction and operations, such impacts are expected to increase with population growth and changes in other demographic and economic factors. One strategy for achieving that transformation is most widely known by the term green building. However, the term is used differently by different proponents and practitioners, denoting a continuum of practices, from those differing minimally from standard practices, to those aimed at providing buildings with a minimum of environmental impact.

This book provides an overview of how the genetic information contained in DNA is used for identification, and a discussion of issues associated with those uses. It begins by discussing the unique properties of genetic information that make it a powerful tool for identification and what is involved in making identifications from DNA. Next is a description of current federal programs and activities, followed by discussion of issues raised by the development of this new technology. Major issues include the use of DNA identification in the criminal justice system (including sample backlogs, databases, and post-conviction DNA analysis), impacts of technological improvements, and privacy. DNA evidence is a powerful forensic tool in criminal cases. Its use and capabilities have increased substantially since it was first introduced in the late 1980s. A DNA profile may provide powerful evidence in many criminal investigations, either to incriminate or exculpate a suspect. DNA evidence is very stable and can be extracted and profiled from a sample many years after being deposited. The technologies used are increasingly sensitive, powerful, fast, and cost-effective. The cost of performing analyses and the time required continue to decline. Those features of the technology are likely to continue to improve over the next decade.

Local election officials (LEOs) are critical to the administration of federal elections and the implementation of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA,P.L. 107-252). Two surveys of LEOs were performed, in 2004 and 2006, by Texas A&M University; the surveys were sponsored and coordinated by the authors. Although care needs to be taken in interpreting the results, they may have implications for several policy issues, such as how election officials are chosen and trained, the best ways to ensure that voting systems and election procedures are sufficiently effective, secure, and voter-friendly, and whether adjustments should be made to HAVA requirements. Major results include the following: The demographic characteristics of LEOs differ from those of other government officials. Almost three-quarters are women, and 5% are minorities. Most do not have a college degree, and most were elected. Some results suggest areas of potential improvement such as in training and participation in professional associations. LEOs believed that the federal government has too great an influence on the acquisition of voting systems, and that local elected officials have too little. Their concerns increased from 2004 to 2006 about the influence of the media, political parties, advocacy groups, and vendors. LEOs were highly satisfied with whatever voting system they used but were less supportive of other kinds. However, their satisfaction declined from 2004 to 2006 for all systems except lever machines. They also rated their primary voting systems as very accurate, secure, reliable, and voter- and pollworker-friendly, no matter what system they used. However, the most common incident reported by respondents in the 2006 election was malfunction of a direct recording (DRE) or optical scan (OS) electronic voting system. The incidence of long lines at polling places was highest in jurisdictions using DREs. Most DRE users did not believe that voter-verified paper audit trails (VVPAT) should be required, but nonusers believed they should be. However, the percentage of DRE users who supported VVPAT increased in 2006, and most VVPAT users were satisfied with them. On average, LEOs mildly supported requiring photo identification for all voters, even though they strongly believed that it will negatively affect turnout and did not believe that voter fraud is a problem in their jurisdictions. LEOs believed that HAVA is making moderate improvements in the electoral process, but the level of support declined from 2004 to 2006. They reported that HAVA has increased the accessibility of voting but has made elections more complicated and has increased their cost. LEOs spent much more time preparing for the election in 2006 than in 2004. They also believed that the increased complexity of elections is hindering recruitment of pollworkers. Most found the activities of the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) that HAVA created only moderately beneficial to them. They were neutral on average about the impacts of the requirement for a statewide voter-registration database.

In the Berlin of 1942, Lilly Wust was married to a soldier and was the mother of four children. Her quiet domestic life was forever changed when she met and fell in love with Jewish Felice Schragenheim. Aimee and Jaguar, as the two called one another, embarked on an ecstatic affair, exchanging letters and poems and even signing a marriage contract. After only a year, their happiness was destroyed by the Gestapo: Felice was taken away to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Lilly received a last letter from Felice in 1945. Erica Fisher has documented this extraordinary story after spending countless hours talking to 80-year-old Lilly, and to friends and acquaintances of the two women. Her account, together with a collection of photographs, is a witness to an unusual love in a time of extremes.

Even before the terrorist attacks of September 2001, concerns had been rising among security experts about the vulnerabilities to attack of computer systems and associated infrastructure. Yet, despite increasing attention from federal and state governments and international organisations, the defence against attacks on these systems has appeared to be generally fragmented and varying widely in effectiveness. Concerns have grown that what is needed is a national cybersecurity framework a co-ordinated, coherent set of public- and private-sector efforts required to ensure an acceptable level of cybersecurity for the nation. As commonly used, cybersecurity refers to three things: measures to protect information technology; the information it contains, processes, and transmits, and associated physical and virtual elements (which together comprise cyberspace); the degree of protection resulting from application of those measures; and the associated field of professional endeavour. Virtually any element of cyberspace can be at risk, and the degree of interconnection of those elements can make it difficult to determine the extent of the cybersecurity framework that is needed. Identifying the major weaknesses in U.S. cybersecurity is an area of some controversy. However, some components appear to be sources of potentially significant risk because either major vulnerabilities have been identified or substantial impacts could result from a successful attack in particular, components that play critical roles in elements of critical infrastructure, widely used commercial software, organisational governance, and the level of public knowledge and perception about cybersecurity. This book addresses each of those questions in turn.