Roy Mark

Using radio frequency identification (RFID) devices to collect personally identifiable information raises novel privacy issues that Congress needs to immediately address, public advocates told a U.S. House subcommittee Wednesday. While acknowledging the potential value of RFID to business and government, officials from the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) and the American Civil Liberties Union […]

Last week, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Michael Powell launched a blog to invite comments from the tech community. And did he ever get them. A little more than 23,000 people visited Powell’s column, published by AlwaysOn, and hundreds fired off replies to his call to hear directly from the tech community in order to […]

The Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board (FRTIB) wasted $36 million on a computer programming contract with American Management Systems (AMS), according to a U.S. Senate investigative report released Wednesday. The investigation examined the problems surrounding the four-year contract between the FRTIB and AMS to develop a record keeping system for participants and beneficiaries of the […]

WASHINGTON — Exempting Internet telephony from state regulations can’t wait for Congress to pass an overall telecom reform bill, U.S. Representative Chip Pickering told fellow lawmakers Wednesday. While several bills to exempt Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) from state regulations have been introduced in both the House and the Senate, lawmakers have been reluctant to […]

WASHINGTON — State regulatory agencies would have no authority to regulate or tax communication services delivered over the Internet, including Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone traffic, under legislation proposed Tuesday in the U.S. House of Representatives. The authors of the legislation — Representatives Rick Boucher (D-Va.) and Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) — admitted the legislation […]

Technology businesses and trade groups are pushing for a bigger say about a fast-tracked bill in Congress they say would unfairly penalize them in the process of curbing copyright infringement. The bill is aimed at thwarting copyright infringement, as well as the distribution of pornography, through the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. The group is […]

Worldwide sales of semiconductors continued their strong 2004 performance in May with purchases reaching $17.32 billion, according to a report released today. The numbers reflect a 2.1 percent increase over April and a 36.6 percent jump over May 2003 sales. The monthly data published by the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) shows sales were up in […]

Backed by the clear, though perhaps out-of-date, language of the Wiretap Act, e-mail providers have the right to read and copy the inbound e-mail of their clients, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday. The decision sparked howls of protest from privacy advocates, despite immediate assurances from some of the nation’s largest ISPs that they would […]

The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington today denied Massachusetts’ appeal of the Department of Justice’s (DoJ) landmark antitrust settlement with Microsoft . The decision represents a major victory for Microsoft and comes just days after the company won a reprieve from the European Union over similar monopoly abuse charges. In a unanimous ruling, the […]

Once considered strictly a consumer issue, spyware is sneaking into the enterprise, eating up bandwidth, pumping out unwanted pop-ups, crashing employee computers and potentially posing a risk to sensitive corporate data. “It’s rapidly turning into a very serious problem. Last year, it was mostly annoying with all the pop-ups, but now it’s leaving behind more […]

UPDATED: The U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday upheld a lower court ruling barring enforcement of the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), a 1998 law enacted by Congress to protect minors from exposure to sexually explicit materials on the Internet. On a 5-4 vote, the court sent the case back to the lower court for a possible […]

The Bush Administration released two lengthy reports Thursday with its recommendations to better manage the nation’s increasingly crowded airwaves. The proposal includes limiting the interference protection afforded to incumbents using inefficient technologies. Releasing more spectrum for private sector use is a key component of President Bush’s goal of universal, affordable access to broadband by 2007. […]