Roy Mark

Reporter’s Notebook: President Bush signed an executive order Wednesday afternoon creating a national Identity Theft Task Force. Speaking at a Roosevelt Room gathering of ID theft victims, Bush said, “What we’re going to do is make sure that the 13 governmental agencies involved with identity theft have a well-coordinated strategy to help the victims and […]

WASHINGTON — Some data protection cases are complex and difficult for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to prove. Then there is the case of Nations Title Agency (NTA) and its parent company, Nations Holding Company (NHC). The FTC claims that the NHC, a real estate services firm with operations in 44 states, tossed consumer home […]

President Bush’s goal of “universal, affordable” broadband access for all Americans by 2007 is becoming a flagging notion, according to a study by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). In the report, the GAO determined only 28 percent of Americans had a broadband connection in 2005. In addition, 30 percent of the surveyed households use a […]

IPTV equipment and service revenue is expected to hit $44 billion over the next three years, according to a new report by Infonetics Research. The research firm said worldwide IPTV subscribers will climb to 53 million by 2009. To meet that demand, service providers are rapidly increasing their investments in infrastructure, transport and content. Europe, […]

Rep. Rick Boucher has Hollywood all flustered. Again. Don’t you just hate that? The Virginia Democrat enjoys wide respect, if not support, from both sides of the aisle for his grasp of technology issues. You may not agree with Boucher, but you almost always come away agreeing he has a point. The latest case in […]

Reporter’s Notebook: Defeated at every turn to put tougher net neutrality provisions in telecom reform bills percolating in the U.S. House and Senate, Democrats this week turned to their last resort: introducing legislation of their own. Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts last week lost a House Energy and Commerce Committee vote to prohibit broadband providers […]

Justice was finally downloaded Thursday on Sanford Wallace, a notorious spammer of the 1990s who moved on to illegal spyware operations that installed adware, spyware and other unsolicited software programs on users’ computers. A New Hampshire federal district court ordered Wallace and his company, Smartbot.Net, to pay more than $4 million in restitution, and it […]

A House subcommittee has approved legislation banning all forms of online gambling in the United States. To strike at offshore gambling sites, the panel authorized law enforcement officials to stop credit card and other forms of electronic payments to those sites. Violators would be subject to up to five years in prison. “Virtual betting parlors […]

Five Internet sites selling confidential phone records became the target of Federal Trade Commission (FTC) lawsuits Wednesday. Seeking permanent injunctions to halt the sale of the phone records and financial redress, the FTC contends the sites violate federal privacy laws. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 states that customers’ phone records are their private property and […]

WASHINGTON — The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) stood firm today on its May 2007 deadline for Voice over IP providers to build standardized wiretap backdoors into their systems. The decision comes only two days before the FCC goes to court to defend its authority to extend the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) to […]

WASHINGTON — In one of his first public appearances since stepping down as CEO of Sun Microsystems, Scott McNealy stepped up as the company’s “chief evangelist” and chairman of Sun Federal. The brash executive was in town to preside over the announcement of new storage products from the company as part of a quarterly news […]

Republicans on the Senate Commerce Committee released telecom reform draft legislation Monday that touches on a number of wide ranging issues but leaves network neutrality to further Federal Communications Commission (FCC) study. The legislation would permit national video franchises, allow municipalities to offer their own broadband services, authorize the use of white space spectrum between […]