Politics and Law

WASHINGTON--Even Republicans will probably concede that Barack Obama's campaign made good use of the Internet in the last year. Now an advisor is saying that an Obama administration would do the same, even turning to wikis to discuss topics like privacy.

Bureaucrats in Washington will have to confront a number of issues in the next few years such as how to regulate private, portable electronic health records, said Reed Hundt, a technology policy adviser for Obama and former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.

"That's the kind of thing that shouldn't be decided by one person … Read more

A correction was made to this story. See below for details.

Calling venture capitalist Tim Draper an ardent Republican is something of an understatement. In 1999, he was enough of a fan of then-candidate George W. Bush that he chaired three fundraisers over a year before the actual election.

Salon once dubbed him "George W.'s point man in Silicon Valley." The Draper, Fisher Jurvetson managing partner is a longtime proponent of limited government, free markets, and libertarian concepts like school vouchers, making him a natural fit for a political party whose platform lauds "lower taxes, reasonable … Read more

Technology CEOs and other business leaders are taking to YouTube to encourage their employees to tear themselves away from their desks for an hour on November 4 to go vote.

VoteHour.org, launched by Google, features about two dozen 40-second clips from the likes of eBay CEO John Donahoe, Intel CEO Paul Otellini, Seagate Technology CEO Bill Watkins, and Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse. Executives from other sectors who made videos for the site include Borders CEO George Jones and Cintas CEO Scott Farmer. There are also about two dozen more written endorsements of the "vote hour" from … Read more

This week's 60 Minutes included a story about what have been called "financial weapons of mass destruction"--credit derivatives or credit default swaps.

CBS News' Steve Kroft reported that a vote in Congress in 2000 on an obscure bill called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 was one of the causes of today's meltdown on Wall Street. (Disclosure: CBS News and CNET share the same parent company.)

That broadcast inspired the editor of a political watchdog site to post a list of the current members of the U.S. Congress who voted for the final … Read more

Companies including Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft on Tuesday joined with human rights groups to launch an initiative aimed at protecting free expression and privacy on the Internet on a global scale.

The Global Network Initiative will provide guidelines for communications technology companies to follow in response to laws in various countries that may interfere with an Internet user's privacy or freedom of expression. Members of the initiative have agreed to ensure that their activities and business operations reflect the principles it aims to protect.

"These principles provide a valuable road map for companies like Yahoo operating in markets … Read more

Updated at 11:15 a.m. PDT to include new information.

Google will be paying authors and publishers $125 million as part of a settlement agreement that resolves a suit against its Google Book Search initiative, the Authors Guild and a group of publishers announced Tuesday.

The settlement enables authors and publishers to receive compensation for online access to their works.

Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild, called the settlement "the biggest book deal in U.S. publishing history."

Google is digitizing the works from many major libraries, including the New York Public Library and the … Read more

Until Monday, Sen. Ted Stevens was best known in technology circles for his "series of tubes" analogy. Now he'll be known for his jury conviction on corruption charges.

A federal jury in Washington, D.C., convicted the Alaska Republican of all seven charges of accepting gifts and home renovations from a wealthy oil contractor and then lying about them on official documents.

Stevens is running for re-election next week. Because it's too late for the Republican Party to remove his name from the ballot and because it's not terribly likely that Alaskans will vote for … Read more

Government computers in Ohio may been used to illegally access personal information about Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, otherwise known as "Joe the Plumber," according to the Columbus Dispatch.

During their October 15 debate, presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain referred to "Joe the Plumber" constantly. In the days following the debate, information on Wurzelbacher's driver's license or his sport utility vehicle was retrieved from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles database three times, the Dispatch reported.

With access to such information limited to legitimate law enforcement and government business, state and local officials are … Read more

A surge in popularity among Democratic congressional candidates is spilling over into Washington state and imperiling the political career of Rep. Dave Reichert, who represents an area that's home to technology firms including Microsoft, Expedia, T-Mobile USA, and Sharebuilder.com.

Reichert, a two-term Republican, is no doctrinaire conservative. The National Journal has dubbed him a centrist, and his campaign Web site boasts that he opposed President Bush "54 percent of the time." A Reichert spokesman told CNET News that the 8th District is fairly libertarian and looking for a candidate who works across party lines.

That voting … Read more