Law

President Obama and a trio of House Republicans are visiting Silicon Valley today to highlight their competing proposals for boosting the U.S. economy.

Advisers had promised that Obama's town-hall style event organized by LinkedIn would address questions about jobs, the economy, and "how to move the country forward." It turns out Obama's answers amounted to a single recommendation: pass his proposed legislation known as the American Jobs Act (PDF), which includes a mix of additional government spending, temporary tax breaks, and permanent additional taxes that would take effect 16 months from now.

For their part, … Read more

It was not that long ago that U.S. congressman Spencer Bachus, a conservative Republican from Alabama, was defending Americans' right to privacy against overreaching government surveillance.

"Technology has outrun the law," Bachus said during a July 2000 hearing. He wondered: "What level of monitoring do we, as a country, want to have on private conversations?"

Soon afterward, that House of Representatives committee took the unprecedented step of voting, by a 20-1 margin, to require police to obtain a warrant from a judge before e-mail could be read or mobile phones could be tracked. The legislation … Read more

SAN JOSE, Calif.--Anonymous may have became a little less anonymous this afternoon.

One by one, as alleged members of Anonymous heard their full legal names read aloud in a courtroom here, they stood before a federal judge and acknowledged that, yes, they understood the nature of the remarkably severe criminal charges that were filed against them in July.

The 14 defendants are facing felony charges of conspiracy and computer hacking stemming from last December's distributed denial-of-service, or DDoS, attack against PayPal. It was organized in response to PayPal halting donations to WikiLeaks a few days earlier.

Magistrate Judge … Read more

ASPEN, Colo.--The U.S. Food and Drug Administration started to discuss possible Internet regulations at an event it convened in 1996. Fifteen years later, the pharmaceutical industry is still waiting for an outcome.

A blog post from the Public Relations Society of America last week complained that "it's time for the FDA to act and to properly advise" pharmaceutical manufacturers about what kind of advertising is and isn't allowed, especially on social-networking sites. PhRMA, a trade association representing pharmaceutical makers, said this month that "we continue to wait for FDA's guidance, and to … Read more

ASPEN, Colo.--Criticisms aimed at the San Francisco Bay Area's subway system for temporarily pulling the plug on cellular service have raised "very valid points," a federal regulator said.

FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell said that the agency is still investigating what happened when BART pulled the plug on cell service on August 11 in four subway stations in downtown San Francisco in anticipation of a protest. (A BART board meeting is currently under way--check back later for CNET coverage.)

"What the heck happened, what precedent does it set, were there any laws that were broken?" … Read more

ASPEN, Colo.--A White House aide today previewed the administration's forthcoming approach to Internet consumer protection, saying it will provide "privacy law without regulation."

"Businesses that are engaged in responsible privacy practices today ought not to face any additional burdens," said Danny Weitzner, associate administrator at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) who's on assignment to the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Weitzner suggested during a discussion at a Technology Policy Institute conference here that: "You can have stronger privacy law, clearer rules, clearer principles established in law, … Read more

Criminal charges recently filed against two men who allegedly sold a prototype iPhone to Gizmodo.com have a not-so-obvious side effect.

A successful conviction in San Mateo County will make it easier for Apple to win a civil suit against the gadget blog, if it pursues one as its lawyers threatened last year, legal experts tell CNET.

"Will the criminal case help them? Absolutely," says Hanni Fakhoury, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who's a former federal public defender. "They're going to learn a lot more about what happened." (See related story … Read more

Hackers have broken into a second Web site affiliated with the San Francisco Bay Area subway system, which has come under fire in the last week for turning off cell phone service before a planned protest.

A database belonging to the BART Police Officers Association was posted online today, complete with full names, e-mail addresses, home addresses, and passwords. BART stands for Bay Area Rapid Transit.

It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the embarrassing information leak--a Twitter account affiliated with Anonymous said that no one has "claimed responsibility for the hack," and speculated that it … Read more

A White House terrorism strategy released today says Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks aid in "advancing violent extremist narratives" and should be monitored by the government.

The 12-page strategy (PDF), which outlines ways to respond to violent extremism, promises that: "We will continue to closely monitor the important role the Internet and social-networking sites play in advancing violent extremist narratives."

President Obama said in a statement accompanying the report that the federal government will start "helping communities to better understand and protect themselves against violent extremist propaganda, especially online."

While much of the … Read more