Regulation

President-elect Barack Obama's transition team on Wednesday launched a tool on its transition site Change.gov that utilizes the collaborative nature of Web 2.0 tools to bring to attention issues that matter to voters.

Its "Open for Questions" tool allows visitors to submit a question for the transition team and, much like Digg, allows users to vote for other people's questions they find important or vote against questions they don't like. The most popular questions will be regularly answered by the Obama team.

As of Wednesday evening, 159,890 had voted on 1,986 … Read more

The president-elect has been showing off his Web savvy on Change.gov, but George Bush demonstrated Wednesday he also advocates using the Internet to facilitate democracy.

President Bush, in recognition of Human Rights Day, met with bloggers from Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, and Venezuela at the White House and via video teleconference to discuss blogging in favor of democratic change.

The administration has supported pro-democracy new media efforts through programs like the Broadcasting Board of Governors, an independent group responsible for all U.S. government and government-sponsored, non-military, international broadcasting. The BBG collects reports from citizen journalists with … Read more

A U.S. District Court refused to impose an outright ban on the sale of RemoteSpy keylogger spyware, but the court has barred its parent company from marketing the product for deceptive purposes while it considers a complaint from the FTC that the software may violate the FTC Act.

The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Orlando Division, had previously issued a temporary restraining order against Florida-based CyberSpy Software, halting the sales of RemoteSpy. However, the court on November 25 issued a more narrowly tailored preliminary injunction (PDF).

CyberSpy altered the RemoteSpy Web site to comply … Read more

President-elect Barack Obama's transition team announced Friday that all policy documents from official meetings with outside organizations will be made publicly available on the transition Web site on Change.gov.

The site's Your Seat at the Table page allows visitors to download PDF files of the documents, as well as leave comments about them or upload one's own materials for the transition team to review. The page is searchable by keyword.

"This means we're inviting the American public to take a seat at the table, and engage in a dialogue about these important issues and … Read more

The Department of Homeland Security has failed to ensure the nation's cybersecurity, a new report to be released Monday concludes, because the threat of cyberattacks is too vast for any one agency to tackle and must be addressed by a new White House office, as well as revised laws and government practices.

As President-elect Barack Obama fills the remaining cabinet positions in his administration, a Center for Strategic and International Studies commission is recommending Obama create a new office in the White House: the National Office for Cyberspace, headed by an Assistant to the President for Cyberspace. The Commission … Read more

Google's staff representatives in Washington, D.C., are famously mild-mannered. But they showed a flash of steel on Thursday in a response to an incendiary article written by a political adversary paid by AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, and other communications companies.

The article in question was written by Scott Cleland, who alleged that Google is not paying its "fair share of the Internet's cost." He calculated that it uses 16.5 percent of all consumer Internet traffic this year yet pays only a fraction of that in bandwidth costs.

Cleland's anti-Net neutrality group, NetCompetition.… Read more

The Department of Homeland Security is too reactionary to cybersecurity threats, policy experts said Wednesday, and needs to develop stronger incentives for the private sector to take preventative measures against cyberthreats.

The DHS cybersecurity initiative has come under heavy criticism, and some have suggested responsibility for cybersecurity be shifted to the White House. Panelists at a roundtable discussion Wednesday hosted by the House of Representative's Homeland Security Committee agreed there could be stronger leadership, but they emphasized that there are potentially more effective means of improving the nation's response to cyberthreats.

"I personally don't believe you … Read more

Americans leave behind countless digital footprints from everyday activities like making a phone call or using a credit card--footprints government agencies regularly track as part of their counterterrorism efforts.

The collection, retention, and dissemination of this information has dangerously escaped public oversight and congressional scrutiny, public sector experts warned Congress on Wednesday. If the next Congress and administration do not take steps to rein in these programs that are bloating the federal government, they said, it will come at the expense of both civil liberties and national security.

Policy experts laid out their concerns to the House Homeland Security Committee … Read more

President Bush on Tuesday signed the Child Safe Viewing Act, requiring the Federal Communications Commission to explore the market for technologies that allow parents to censor the programming their children watch.

The new law requires the FCC to issue a notice of inquiry to examine what advanced content-blocking technologies are available for various communication devices and platforms. It also calls for the FCC to consider how to encourage the development and use of such technologies without affecting content providers' pricing or packaging.

The term "advanced blocking technologies" is defined in the law as technology that enables parents to … Read more