Regulation

White House opposition likely dooms anti-China Internet bill

Earlier this week we told you about the Bush administration opposing a bill that would slap extensive regulations on technology companies doing business in China and other nations deemed to be unreasonably "Internet-restricting."

That is likely to doom the legislation, which was written by Republican Rep. Chris Smith and enjoys the support of journalist and human rights groups.

We've now posted a copy of the U.S. Department of Justice's letter to Capitol Hill opposing the so-called Global Online Freedom Act. One key section of the proposed law limits the ability of U.S. companies to … Read more

'Internet freedom' bill targeting China cooperation faces rough road

Editor's note: Updated at 5:50 a.m. PDT with comment from Yahoo.

A proposed federal law that would slap extensive regulations on technology companies doing business in China and other nations deemed to be unreasonably "Internet-restricting" is facing an uncertain future due to opposition from the Bush administration and telecommunications providers.

The House of Representatives bill says that search engines, Web e-mail services, and other Internet businesses may not place servers with user account information in those nations. Any "aggrieved" person anywhere in the world would have the right to sue U.S. companies … Read more

Housing bailout bill creates national fingerprint registry

The Senate housing bill approved by a committee this week was already drawing fire from fiscal conservatives and financially responsible homeowners opposed to bailing out housing speculators.

Now it may be time to add privacy advocates to the chorus of voices urging President Bush to veto the bill, which could put taxpayers on the hook for billions of bailout dollars in new taxes or deficit spending.

Buried in the text of the revised legislation, approved by the Senate Banking Committee by a 19-2 vote this week, is a plan to create a new national fingerprint registry. It covers just about … Read more

Republican politico takes aim at Google, yet again

If anyone had any remaining doubts that Rep. Joe Barton has it in for Google, fresh evidence arrived in the mail Wednesday.

The Texas Republican sent a letter to Google on Wednesday with 15 interrogatories, mostly demanding answers about how it will merge its operations and procedures with DoubleClick. As an example, one interrogatory says "please identify the data that will be merged, including, but not limited to, cookie data."

Another demanded information about filtering out cross-side scripting attacks from search results. The letter asks for a response by June 6.

This follows two more letters that Barton … Read more

Web monitoring for ads? It may be illegal

Online advertising has ballooned into a roughly $45 billion-a-year business, to the benefit of Google, Yahoo, ad networks, and innumerable speciality and hobbyist Web sites.

One corner of this ecosystem that hasn't managed to cash in on advertising is, by some measurements, the largest: broadband providers. So it may have been inevitable that they would seek additional revenue by monitoring their customers' online activities and creating behavioral profiles that could yield hyper-relevant ads.

The only problem with this practice is that it may not be entirely, well, legal. The first warning sign came last week when two members of … Read more

Shamos: Why e-voting paper trails are a bad idea

PITTSBURGH--Many computer scientists have been arguing for years that electronic voting machines absolutely must sport paper trails that can be verified by the voter and subsequently used in manual recounts.

It's a formal policy position of the U.S. arm of the Association for Computing Machinery, the professional organization of computer scientists. Stanford University's David Dill even created the pro-paper-trail Verified Voting Foundation and has co-authored an article for us that argues against Internet voting, too.

But support of paper trails is not unanimous. Michael Shamos, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University who teaches an … Read more

FBI nudges state 'fusion centers' into the shadows

WASHINGTON -- The FBI is pressuring states to become more secretive and limit even routine oversight of the bureau's data-sharing arrangements with local police, a new document shows.

A memorandum of understanding written by the FBI and signed by the state of Virginia in February 2008 aims to curb congressional and press oversight of a joint venture called a Fusion Center. Here's more on Fusion Centers.

The memorandum, obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center and released on Friday, says that any "disclosure" to Congress of information shared with the Fusion Center can happen only "… Read more

Homeland Security blinks on Real ID: No hassles on May 11

WASHINGTON--In the long-running Real ID staring match, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security ended up being the first to blink.

Homeland Security announced Wednesday that all 50 states and the District of Columbia will be technically Real ID-compliant by the May 11, 2008 deadline--even though many states actually have rejected the concept and have zero plans to embrace a national ID card.

This means Americans will face no new hassles when using their drivers licenses to enter federal buildings or fly on airplanes starting on May 11. That's a good thing.

But the way this turned out is … Read more

Banks: Planned Net-gambling curb could disrupt e-commerce

Banks, credit card companies, and some Democratic members of Congress are predicting that forthcoming restrictions on Internet gambling will ensnare innocent customers and threaten the viability of e-commerce.

The criticism came at a congressional hearing on Wednesday devoted to the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, enacted in 2006 by a Republican Congress after pressure from social conservatives. The Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department published draft regulations last fall--which financial institutions say will disrupt perfectly legal transactions unless dramatic changes are made before the rules take effect.

"Consumers will be placed at risk of having lawful transactions blocked," … Read more

Sequoia warns Princeton professors over e-voting analysis

Ed Felten is a Princeton University computer scientist who became well-known in technology circles for a paper he co-authored that showed flaws in digital audio watermarks. More precisely, Felten became well-known for the legal threats he received at the time from the Recording Industry Association of America.

Now Sequoia Voting Systems, which is one of the largest e-voting machine manufacturers in the United States, is threatening Felten too.

On Tuesday, Felten posted e-mail he and fellow Princeton professor Andrew Appel received from Sequoia saying:

As you have likely read in the news media, certain New Jersey election officials have stated … Read more