Roy Mark

The Senate Judiciary Committee expects to vote next week on legislation making it a crime for data brokers to conceal a security breach involving personal data and increasing penalties for computer fraud when the act involves personal data. The bill adds a legal bite to legislation already approved by the Senate Commerce Committee in July […]

UPDATED: With Hurricane Rita promising a reprise of the communications collapse during Hurricane Katrina earlier this month, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Kevin Martin told lawmakers Thursday the Internet must become a vital part of the nation’s emergency response system. According to the FCC, Katrina knocked down more than 3 million customer telephone lines in […]

WASHINGTON — Despite thousands of lawsuits and a U.S. Supreme Court smackdown verdict against peer-to-peer (P2P) music file-sharing networks, college students are still engaging in widespread copyright theft. The newest trend in illegally swapping copyrighted music and films, according to a new report to Congress, is utilizing Internet2, the second-generation high-speed network serving universities and […]

Even by Washington standards, Thursday’s scheduled Senate Judiciary Committee vote on a data breach disclosure law is clouded by uncertainty. There’s the small matter of a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court nomination. If the Judiciary Committee decides this morning to send Judge John Roberts nomination to the full Senate, the panel may have enough […]

Malicious code for profit tops the list of vulnerability threats in Symantec’s latest report on Internet security. In the first six months of this year alone, attempts to expose confidential data represented 74 percent of the top 50 malicious code samples reported to the security firm. The trend is likely to continue with Symantec reporting […]

While Congress dawdles over the need of a national electronic-waste recycling initiative, states are moving ahead with their own programs. It’s an e-waste scenario that doesn’t please electronics and technology manufacturers, wholesalers or retailers. Thursday, they again urged Congress to take action, primarily in the form of national legislation pre-empting existing state recycling laws. Three […]

WASHINGTON – The Department of Justice (DoJ) sued the National Association of Realtors (NAR) today, charging it with engaging in anti-competitive behavior against online home brokers. The suit comes on the same day NAR unsuccessfully revised its Internet listing policy in hopes of appeasing the government. Concerned those online sites might lead to lower commissions […]

Erie County in New York hopes to uncover Medicaid fraud and waste with the help of on demand computing from IBM. Tapping into an IBM supercomputer running software developed for the private sector, the county aims to curb up to $80 million a year in dubious claims. The program, VerifyNY, allows the county to upload […]

Neither an official state funeral nor the devastating aftermath of a cataclysmic storm will stop the music this morning in Washington. There’s always time for showbiz on Capitol Hill. While Washington buries Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist in a solemn ceremony stretching from the Supreme Court to Arlington National Cemetery, Desmond Child will be laying […]

Peer-to-peer (P2P) music file-sharing service Kazaa said today it would appeal an Australian federal court ruling condemning the company’s business model as aiding and abetting copyright theft. On Monday, the court ruled Sydney-based Sharman Networks, owner and operator of Kazaa, knows its customers are swapping copyrighted files and is doing little to stop it. In […]

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has named a task force to oversee the agency’s Voice over IP E911 mandate. Scheduled to begin meeting this month, the 10-member panel of FCC staff and National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) members are charged with developing educational materials, ensuring compliance, data collection and best practices. The FCC […]

As Congress holds hearings, press conferences and otherwise wrings its hands over the onslaught of data breaches and resulting identity theft, states are taking action. And California is leading the pack. It was the California Legislature, after all, that passed a seminal data-breach disclosure law in 2003. Only because of that legislation, millions of Americans […]