Roy Mark

Consumer awareness of identity fraud is growing, according to Howard Beales, director of the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Bureau of Consumer Protection. With an identity theft scam directed at electronics retailing giant Best Buy still fresh in the headlines, Beales told the House Financial Services Committee Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit Tuesday that […]

Members of a House panel expressed frustration Tuesday over the progress of federal agencies in securing their IT systems. Agency heads and other officials responded by saying progress was being made but significant problems remain. The purpose of the hearing held by the Government Reform Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and the Census […]

U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D.Ore.) says he remains “deeply concerned” about the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Total Information Awareness Program (TIA), the controversial data mining project that aims to capture the “information signature” of people in order to track potential terrorists. In February, Wyden sponsored an amendment to a spending bill to stop […]

U.S. Senators Orrin G. Hatch (R.-Utah) and Patrick Leahy (D.-Ver.) have introduced legislation that would criminalize the sending of predatory and abusive spam. The bill targets spammers who hijack computer systems or use other fraudulent means to send unsolicited commercial e-mail. The Criminal Spam Act of 2003 (S. 1293) calls for jail sentences of up […]

The publication of the privacy policy for the controversial Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (CAPPS II) has been delayed by at least two weeks by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), a division of the Department of Homeland Security. The TSA had originally said the policy would be published by June 27 but has delayed that […]

A day after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled anti-pornography filters in public libraries are not a free speech violation, the main litigants in the suit are expressing disappointment over the decision while noting the ruling minimized the law’s impact on adult users. On a 6-3 vote, the Court backed the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA), […]

The U.S. Supreme Court, on a 6-3 vote, ruled Monday that public library Internet anti-pornography filters are not a violation of the First Amendment, even if the filters block some legitimate sites. The decision overturns a Philadelphia federal appeals court ruling that the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) violated the free speech rights of Americans. […]

With none of the fanfare that usually accompanies the introduction of a new bill, Rep. Lamar Smith (R.-Tex.) quietly slipped proposed new legislation into the hopper Thursday calling for greater FBI and Department of Justice (DoJ) involvement in Hollywood’s ongoing war against file swappers. The Piracy Deterrence and Education Act of 2003 (H.R. 2517) calls […]

U.S. Congressmen Brian Baird and Jay Inslee filed legislation Thursday designed to block a decision by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to give VeriSign control of the lucrative market for expired domain names ending in .com and .net. Rival domain registrars across the country have expressed concern over the ICANN effort […]

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee had a busy tech day Thursday, passing measures aimed at slowing spam, funding nanotechnology research and rolling back the cross-media ownership rules recently approved by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). As if that weren’t enough, Commerce Chairman John McCain (R.-Ariz.) promised to get his committee involved in the […]

WASHINGTON — Nanotechnology legislation remained on the national fast track Thursday when the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee approved a bill designating more than $2 billion over three years for nanotechnology research and development programs. A similar bill has already passed the House of Representatives. The 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act (S. 189), sponsored […]

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee approved legislation Thursday that could cost spammers who use false headers or misleading subject lines up to a year in jail and a maximum fine of $1 million. The sponsors of the bill, Conrad Burns (R.-Mont.) and Ron Wyden (D.-Ore.) promised that the penalties would get even tougher […]