The use of peer-to-peer networks for sharing files has come under fire during recent months, including the dismantling of Swedish BitTorrent site Pirate Bay, but it turns out even members of Congress need to be kept in check over their file-sharing practices.
Ten privacy groups urged Congress on Tuesday to take greater steps to limit advertising that tracks consumers’ behavior online.
The coalition, which included the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Consumers Union and Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, singled out behavioral advertising, in which Internet users are tracked, analyzed and served ads based on the information gleaned from their movements, in its recommendations.
Obama officials received some 2,200 applications from companies and organizations for some of the $7.2 billion in stimulus money set aside by Congress to build out new high-speed Internet lines and services.
A group of 10 tech-industry executives spent Tuesday and Wednesday lobbying members of Congress and the Obama administration on issues like taxes, immigration reform, and software piracy.
The group, which included Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen, and Sybase CEO John Chen, met with Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, among others.
Unless Congress embarks on far-reaching change in public policy to maintain the viability of journalism as it evolves online, we will soon find ourselves with the remnants of a broken industry incapable of providing the knowledge necessary to manage life in a complex world.
Since Steven Chu’s nomination as secretary of energy, most of our opportunities to see him talk have come during testimony before various congressional committees.
The creator of the brilliant television series The Wire today asked Congress to legalize monopolistic collusion by newspapers.
As Congress once again considers a response to the latest outbreak of “inadvertent” peer-to-peer file sharing, the P2P software industry will doubtless point to its efforts to bring the problem under control.
Congress is a tech-savvier place today than it was when Edward Amoroso, AT&T’s chief security officer, started making trips to Washington more than 20 years ago.
Back then, he says, he would discuss virus threats at length before a lawmaker would raise his hand. “You’re expecting some question that might impress you, and they’d ask, ‘Can you tell me what a virus is?’”
On March 10, Dan Spatz joined hundreds of other people who crammed into a 500-seat auditorium at the Commerce Dept. building in Washington, D.C. The crowd of executives, entrepreneurs, and local officials had gathered for the first public hearing about how the federal government plans to distribute $7.2 billion in grants and loans to improve broadband Internet access in the U.S.
It’s only been a few weeks since Congress set aside $7 billion and change in the economic stimulus plan to build out high-speed broadband networks, but some policy wonks are already looking forward to how the U.S. should spend future investments on broadband.
If not all lawmakers were 100 percent attentive during President Obama’s speech before Congress on Feb. 24, there’s a good reason. D.C. has become a land of Twits–or perhaps the proper term is Twitterers.
Despite the fact that many Americans distrust the National Security Agency for its role in the Bush Administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, the agency should be entrusted with securing the nation’s telecommunications networks and other cyber infrastructures, President Obama’s director of national intelligence told Congress on Wednesday.
In an interview Friday, Rep. Rick Boucher, (D-Va.) called for Congress to take a tougher stance in regulating online ad-targeting, despite the FTC’s endorsement of industry self-regulation.
“I am coming to believe (industry self-regulation) is not sufficient,” said Rep. Boucher, chairman of the House subcommittee on communications, technology and the Internet. He noted that there is a need for a set of laws that dictate parameters for how companies collect, share and use online data about their consumers.
A bill forcing cellphone cameras to make a sound when taking shots has been introduced in Congress, with its sponsor citing voyeuristic and exploitative picture-taking as the reason behind it.
The Camera Phone Predator Alert Act would require camera-phone manufacturers to include an audible “click” or other sound when the device takes a photo.
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