In a report released Tuesday, the Federal Trade Commission endorsed the idea of a do-not-track system to protect consumer privacy on the Web, where advertising companies store user data in an effort to display ads targeted at their interests.

“I assume most customers would be interested in seeing advertising that was relevant to them,” said Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., the ranking member of the subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection. “We need to be mindful not to enact legislation that would hurt a recovering economy.”

The trade commission stopped short of calling for legislation in its report but did say that the industry’s attempts at self-regulation owing to privacy concerns had developed too slowly.

Such a tool “would allow consumers to exercise choices about online tracking in a simple, persistent and universal way,” said David Vladeck, head of the commission’s consumer protection bureau.

But a robust do-not-track option could hobble advertising, the Internet’s main revenue stream and one of the few growing sectors of a sluggish economy.

Several Democratic representatives have said they would support some form of legislation to enforce do-not-track provisions on the Internet.

Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., proposed legislation Wednesday that would seek to stop companies from tracking the online browsing habits of children. He said that some sites targeted at children employ more tracking software than their adult-focused counterparts. It is unclear how such legislation would distinguish Internet use by children from that of their parents.

Daniel Weitzner, a telecommunications policy analyst at the Department of Commerce, noted that online transactions amounted to $3.7 trillion dollars annually.

A growing percentage of that Internet economy is dedicated to tracking and storing information about consumers catalogued by their personal Internet protocol address, Weitzner said.

“Data collection restrictions are blunt instruments,” he said, in response to a question whether the government should allow tracking of information but not the storage and sale of it .

The do-not-track proposal follow the loose principles of do-not-call registries created in the past to thwart telemarketers, but the Internet presents a much different challenge to regulators.

The FTC report suggests that placing universal do-not-track preferences within browsers would be a logical step. The commission’s Vladeck said creating a centralized list was not an option being considered.

The major browsers – Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Google’s Chrome, Apple’s Safari and Mozilla Firefox – all incorporate some form of anonymity options through preferences or third-party plug-ins.

The companies behind the browsers reacted coolly to the proposal, touting the privacy functions already in place and saying they would study the proposal further.

Joan Gilman, a media sales executive at Time Warner Cable, said a do-not-track list would likely dampen the healthiest revenue stream the Internet has available.

“It may also deter the provision of free online advertiser-supported content and inhibit innovation,” Gilman said.

Now back on U.S. soil, the president and his surrogates are seeking to declare a resounding foreign policy victory on several fronts after the speedy summit in the Portuguese capital with NATO allies.

Over three days in Lisbon, the president needed to shore up a shaky NATO coalition in Afghanistan, reshape the debate on NATO’s mission in light of missile defense worries from member states and Russia and put pressure on Congress to pass the New START treaty on strategic nuclear arms reduction in the lame duck session of Congress.

“We got all that,” said Ivo Daalder, the U.S. ambassador to NATO. “We revitalized this alliance not only on paper, but in reality.”

But it remains unclear whether Obama’s success in lining up European leaders to vouch for his foreign policy goals while getting Russian President Dmitri Medvedev to warm to cooperation despite a historic rivalry with NATO will provide Obama with more leverage while Republican senators seek to stall until next year.

Afghanistan

America’s Afghan allies in Europe face domestic populations deeply skeptical and even hostile to the war in Afghanistan. Shoring up that coalition required the bulk of President Obama’s attention in Lisbon.

At the top of the list was moving the time horizon of the conflict beyond the July 2011 strategic review and promised troop drawdown to a broader counterinsurgency mission that would run through 2014 and beyond.

“We have made it very clear that NATO as an alliance will be committed to stand with Afghanistan not only during the time of transition but after,” Daalder said.
“We’re all there for our national security. Al Qaida is just as much a threat to the United States as it is to Germans in Germany.”

With an agreement between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the NATO allies signed on to the plan through 2014 after increasing their contribution by 10,000 troops and trainers as part of this year’s America-led surge in the region.

Obama made clear in remarks at the summit that the coalition forces would not bow to pressure from Karzai to scale back night raids in the country.

Russia

The Russian president has not officially engaged with NATO since the 2008 invasion of Georgia and a series of high-profile scuffles over missile defense that dragged the traditionally antagonistic ties between Russia and the alliance to a new low.

Medvedev agreed to attend the summit at the last minute and brightened his tone compared with his previous NATO dealings to buoy Obama’s efforts at quick ratification of the New START treaty before Congress leaves for the year.

Retired Brig. Gen. John Adams, who worked as a military envoy to NATO until 2007, said failure to pass the START treaty would risk “breakthrough results” of the Lisbon summit.

The Russians also agreed to cooperate with NATO on missile defense systems in Europe, something that seems unlikely a year ago. A year ago, Obama acquiesced to Russian demands to withdraw missile systems in Europe, which drew fire from Republicans in Congress.

Europe

The president only devoted one and a half hours of his weekend trip to discussion about direct relations with the European Union, instead speaking in terms of the strategic NATO alliance.

The short shrift left some EU stalwarts feeling like they missed out on an important discussion about the economic crisis that still grips both sides of the Atlantic.

“Europe is not anymore so sexy,” said Romano Prodi, an Italian politician and former president of the European Commission. “I have not seen in the American administration a moment of recognition of a European existence or a European reality.”

But the short amount of time spent on European Union issues did not stop more than 14 heads of state in Europe from expressing their support for ratification of the START treaty and signing on to the extended timetable in Afghanistan.

Washington

The president needed a foreign policy victory in Lisbon to put himself on a firmer footing with Congress as he tries to push through the treaty with Russia – which would be his most significant foreign policy achievement yet.

The summit was the centerpiece of a messaging campaign to imbue the treaty’s ratification with a sense of urgency.

Even though most Senate Republicans expressed approval for administration efforts on Afghanistan, they seem content to wait out the legislative session on START.

Steve Biegun, a former congressional Republican foreign policy adviser, said it could be lethal to the treaty to try to push it through on a short timetable. Though he supports the treaty, Beigun said Republicans are unlikely to move quickly.

“Don’t make this a test of political manhood,” he advised the president. “This is not about what needs to be done but about when.”

W.H. Bill Murray, on a visit with other World War II veterans, surveys the memorial for the first time. Grant Slater / MNS

The camera is aimed somewhere between the electric blue November sky and the columns ringing the World War II Memorial as the morning shadow of the Washington Monument creeps across the plaza. He drops the camera, advances the film, spins and snaps again.

In every direction, veterans of World War II — 92 of them flown to the capital, at no charge, on one of several so-called Honor Flights that day — were seeing their monument for the first time, one day before their day, Veterans Day.

Their stories, and the stories of relatives and friends, reveal the deep familial bonds of service and the desire for modest recognition from the broader American public at a time when the country’s wars touch only a small slice of the population.

Murray, who retired in 1966 as the top enlisted man on the submarine Nathanael Greene, should not have been drafted in 1942, sent to man the commissary of a sub that saw action against the Japanese Imperial Fleet and was once given up for sunk before reappearing safely in harbor.

He wouldn’t have been there for all that if he hadn’t lied to a judge in South Carolina, rounding up his age one year to 18 so he could marry a girl. As an official 18-year-old, he was drafted soon after.

Murray was one of only two black sailors on his ship, and he didn’t like the other one, he said, a challenge that built character and altered the course of his life as he returned to his native South Carolina “to be part of the change instead of a problem” in the civil rights struggle.

“It’s great to know that people out there are thinking and recognizing that we did something good, something positive, even if it took 30 years too long,” he said, referring to the opening of the memorial nearly 60 years after the end of World War II.

Retired Air Force Master Sgt. Duane Goon of Yorktown, Va., showed up an hour and a half early in anticipation of his father-in-law seeing the memorial for the first time.

Tears streamed from behind his dark sunglasses as Goon recalled the wartime sacrifices made by generations of his family and reflected on the face of his father-in-law as he visited the memorial. Goon himself served in Turkey during 1991’s Operation Provide Comfort, helping to protect the Kurds in northern Iraq from attack.

“The solitude of being away from your family — but then again, you adopt a second family,” he said. “I was pretty lucky, luckier than these older guys who were away for three years straight.”

For years, retired Army Sgt. Maj. Freddie Brock trained soldiers. His military police brigade gave them the skills they needed to survive in war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. When they came home through Dover, he went to the funerals of some of those he had trained.

In 2005, seeing off one of many flights to Iraq, he watched the soldiers board the plane — as he had done before — until he saw his son climb the stairs for his first combat assignment.

“We were shaking everybody’s hand as they were boarding, and I was pretty good right until I looked up and saw my son climbing the stairs,” he said. “What scares you the most is that telephone call that comes at 2 a.m., not knowing if it’s one of your guys or your own son. The constant deployment; the constant worrying.”

Brock’s father served three tours in Vietnam, and he recalled tuning into the nightly news in hopes of catching a glimpse of his father boarding a plane or resting in a camp in view of the camera.

“My son just picked up from me,” Brock said. “And we just pick up from them, just continue carrying the torch. I think the best thing you can do is just thank a veteran for your freedom.”

Corp. Casey Owens relaxes with other race participants after the Marine Corps Marathon on Sunday. Owens lost both legs in 2004 during a medical evacuation mission in southern Iraq. Grant Slater / MNS

Climbing the slopes of the Potomac River valley into eastern Washington, D.C., in the first quarter of the Marine Corps Marathon held Sunday, his arms fought him all the way to mile six.

“In that first stretch, your arms start burning and it’s just like, oh, I hope I’m going to make this,” said Owens, a Marine corporal medically retired in 2006.

Owens is more inclined to zip down the snowy slopes in Colorado, Austria or Chile on his single-ski sled than crank his way by hand up the asphalt course in Washington.

“I was thinking to myself that I should have trained harder,” he said.

Owens finished in the middle of the field on Sunday with a time of 2:20. The fastest hand-crank competitor completed the 26-mile trek in 1:23.

An Air Force lieutenant, Jacob Bradosky, took first among males running in the 25th annual marathon while Janet Cherobon led the women’s division.

Owens lost both legs in 2004 during a medical evacuation mission in southern Iraq when his team tripped a land mine while being pursued in a firefight. His recovery lasted more than two years.

The injury occurred during his second deployment to Iraq. Owens enlisted in 2002 and took part in the invasion of Iraq where he made his way from Kuwait to Baghdad and later was stationed in Najaf.

His recovery after the second tour included a battery of surgeries as doctors tried to save as much as possible of his right leg – the more problem-plagued of the two.

In 2006, the Houston native and self-described flatlander took to the slopes for the first time. He traveled out to Colorado and learned how to maneuver his sled down double diamonds, over moguls and in the half pipe.

He trains seven days a week with 15 other disabled athletes in alpine sports under the guidance of Kevin Jardine, head coach of the Paralympic Military and Veterans Alpine Skiing Program.

Owens said he has his sights set on the 2014 Paralympics in Sochi, Russia, when he will have more than five years of competition under his belt.

But his Olympic hopes took a frightening turn in Portillo, Chile, when he “pancaked” in soft snow at the bottom of a hill. The resulting concussion and remnants from his battle wounds kept him off his ski for a year.

Flying down mountains on three continents allows Owens some freedom of movement. Even with prosthetics, he still relies on his wheelchair after four years, because walking long distances causes back problems, he said.

After the marathon Sunday, Owens wheeled around chatting with other competitors at the Semper Fi Fund’s tent. The race-day sun shone down bright and hand-crank wheelchairs littered the lawn.

Owens looked pleased and glanced across the crowded lawn after a morning of grinding up hills.

“I wonder where the beer tent is,” he said.

The FBI is working with the administration to expand greatly the government’s ability to wiretap everything from mobile phone calls to Internet chat to e-mail. A rough outline of the new surveillance program, which would be sent to Congress for approval, has filtered out to the press and has been discussed in Washington policy forums in recent weeks.

Critics say the proposal would stifle investment and innovation everywhere from mammoth telecommunications companies like AT&T and Verizon to Silicon Valley start-ups. The FBI complains that new technology is causing parts of the Internet to go dark to traditional methods of surveillance.

The likely target would be a range of relatively new services that encrypt user data from end to end, locking out law enforcement’s ability to listen in. Some of those services have familiar names: Blackberry, Skype or Google Chat.

Verizon Communications Inc.’s third-quarter earnings fell 25% as the carrier added fewer subscribers than AT&T Inc. Meanwhile AT&T Inc. added a record number of iPhone subscribers in the third quarter, but paid heavily to do so.

“The law needs to be updated as a way of ensuring that providers maintain the ability that when we do get a court order, they can affect the surveillance we’re asking for,” said Richard McNally, section chief for the FBI’s national security law branch.

The FBI is seeking to update a 1994 law – the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act or Calea – that require service providers to give law enforcement more immediate access to communications over their networks or face fines.

Representatives for several telecommunications industry advocacy groups said they were not prepared to comment on a law that hasn’t been released.

“Calea originally included some money so providers could develop the things we’re looking for,” McNally said. “I think that’s the type of cooperation between the government and the private sector that is necessary now.”

But telecommunications have changed so much even in the last five years that it could prove difficult to insert a back door for eavesdropping into electronic communications.

A host of services used widely by consumers establish an encrypted connection between two users or between the user and a central server. If that server is located outside the United States, it’s unclear what authority the FBI would have to access it.

In many cases, the back door would insert a vulnerability into secure systems, making it less safe and more accessible to hackers. For some services, allowing law enforcement to access user data would fundamentally alter the way a service works. Users’ e-mails, conversations and data would have to be funneled through a central server instead of going directly from peer to peer.

These encrypted peer-to-peer connections are the most likely target of the new administration proposal.

Sascha Meinrath, director of the Open Technology Initiative at the New America Foundation, a non-profit public policy think tank, said the type of encryption used by Research in Motion, which makes the Blackberry, to protect users’ electronic communication would likely grow in popularity and extend to encryption of voice communications as well.

“As we end up with smarter phones, you’re going to see a whole new generation of technologies that encrypt end to end,” Meinrath said.

Communications infrastructure used by even the largest companies, like Verizon or AT&T, will begin to resemble encrypted Internet communications and shift away from a telephone infrastructure that is already in its waning years, Meinrath said.

“What I surmise is this is about creating backdoors that can allow for instantaneous surveillance of (this type of) communications,” he said.

The stalwarts of the communications industry may not be the only ones affected.

Greg Nojeim, senior counsel for the Project on Freedom, Security and Technology, said that law enforcement efforts could wreak havoc on innovation.

“We’re talking about telling the guy who’s building the next great application in his garage or dorm room that he has to build a vulnerability, a backdoor, a way for the FBI to get in,” Nojeim said. “I’m not sure that’s what we want to be telling that guy.”

The report by the Senate Armed Services Committee focuses on two companies and alleges they paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to hire local militias. The leader of one such militia was killed during a raid by U.S. forces on a Taliban meeting at his home, according to the report.

“We must shut off the spigot of U.S. dollars going into the pockets of warlords and power brokers who act contrary to our interest and weakens the support of the Afghan people toward their government,” said Sen. Carl Levin, the Democratic chairman of the committee.

The committee’s report, an analysis of 125 contracts provided by the Department of Defense, also lashes out at lax oversight of security contracts. The Defense Department often showed little to no due diligence before awarding millions of dollars to companies and did not follow up on results, an Armed Service committee investigator said.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said in August that he wanted all private security firms to leave the country by the end of the year. U.S. military and diplomatic officials have called that time line unrealistic.

Republican senators on the committee criticized the report for only focusing on two firms. While there is “real and significant potential for problems associated with the use of private security contractors,” the report “cannot be read as a balanced and comprehensive record of a controversial and difficult issue,” according to a letter signed by Republican committee members.

The report provides details of local Afghans hired by security firms who have fired on American troops, stood guard while high on opium or stacked rocks to mimic a soldier standing his post.

ArmorGroup, a subsidiary of a U.K.-based global security firm, draws the brunt of the criticism for hiring local warlords who later killed each other or were killed by U.S. troops in fighting against the Taliban, the report said.

Internal ArmorGroup documents nicknamed two warlords Mr. Pink and Mr. White after characters in the Quentin Tarantino film “Reservoir Dogs,” the report said. As time passed, Mr. Pink killed Mr. White, then fled the area. He was later replaced by Mr. White I and Mr. White II, the report said.

When ArmorGroup purged several employees because of ties to the Taliban, those same employees signed up for jobs at another security firm, Tennessee-based EOD Technology, the report alleged.

EOD Technology guards bases for U.S. embassies around the world.

Calls to ArmorGroup North America for comment were not returned. In a statement, EOD Technology said it had provided names of its Afghan hires to DOD for review.

Gen. Keith Alexander testifies before the House Armed Services committee on Thursday. The general asked for more authority to access Internet infrastructure. Grant Slater / Medill

Gen. Keith Alexander, who also heads the National Security Agency, said the command, based in Fort Meade, Md., is growing and needs new powers to accomplish its mission.

“Right now, the White House is leading a discussion on what authorities we need,” Alexander said in testimony restrained by its classified nature. He did not elaborate on what authority the command center would seek.

Alexander acknowledged concerns about privacy and civil liberties as the military and intelligence agencies expand their presence on the networks that also form the backbone of private industry in the United States.

Business groups and advocates for civil liberties have expressed concern that the government would seek to regulate that space in the name of national security.

“A lot of people bring up privacy and civil liberties,” Alexander said. “I say, ‘What specifically are you concerned about?’”

He pointed out that people don’t complain that antivirus programs are violating their civil liberties when they scan computers for worms or malicious software.

“We have a responsibility to protect the civil liberties of the American people that is nonnegotiable,” he said.

Jim Harper, information policy director at the libertarian Cato Institute, said the military must restrict itself to the protection of military domains and possibly the network infrastructure of the federal government.

Alexander mentioned the need to create a secure zone for vital infrastructure like the country’s financial system to operate. But Harper said this is a step to far and beyond the military’s mandate to protect the United States.

“Those are not national security interests,” Harper said. “If those are, then we have a hard time finding anything that’s not.”

When the Cyber Command reaches full capacity in the next year, it will employ up to 1,100 civilian and military personnel.

The new command combines two now-defunct military departments that maintained the Defense Department’s global networks and secured them.

Alexander, who added the new command to his responsibilities in May, said he hoped the new organization would be more efficient allowing it to operate within its budget of $120 million, a figure that may increase to $150 million next year.

In laying out the nature of the threat the United States faces on the Web, Alexander replied to a question asking if most of the attacks come from “14- to 15-year-old white boys who have gone off-reservation.”

Alexander pointed to a 2007 incident in which Russian nationalists bombarded the official Web sites of Estonia in a diplomatic dispute over the a Soviet-era war memorial.

In 2008, rumors of a cyber attack followed closely on the heels of the conflict between Russia and Georgia. Early this year, Chinese hackers gleaned personal information of activists from Google prompting the company to pull out of the country.

The Defense Department’s networks are probed roughly 250,000 times every hour, he said.