Politics and Law

Vice President Joe Biden lauded Hollywood at a gala dinner in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday evening, assailed movie piracy, and promised film executives that the Obama administration would pick "the right person" as its copyright czar.

Just days after four Pirate Bay defendants were found guilty in Sweden, Biden warned of the harms of piracy at a private event organized by the Motion Picture Association of America in the sumptuous, newly renovated Great Hall of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.

"It's pure theft, stolen from the artists and quite frankly from the … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--The director of the National Security Agency on Tuesday downplayed reports of the NSA's attempt to wrest control of cybersecurity responsibilities from rival federal agencies.

"We do not want to run cybersecurity for the U.S. government," Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander said at the RSA security conference here.

Instead, Alexander said, the Department of Homeland Security should continue to oversee Internet and computer security for civilian agencies, while the NSA would provide that service for military agencies.

Alexander's remarks come during a 60-day review of the federal government's cybersecurity efforts ordered by President Obama … Read more

The FBI has used a secret form of spyware in a series of investigations designed to nab extortionists, database-deleting hackers, child molesters, and hitmen, according to documents obtained by CNET News.

One suspect used Microsoft's Hotmail to send bomb and anthrax threats to an undercover government investigator; another demanded a payment of $10,000 a month to stop cutting cables; a third was an alleged European hitman who was soliciting for business from a Hushmail.com account.

CNET News obtained the documents -- totaling hundreds of pages, although nearly all of them were heavily redacted -- this week through … Read more

The National Security Agency tried to wiretap a member of the U.S. Congress without a warrant, and has engaged in "significant and systemic" illegal surveillance activities in the last few months including e-mail and telephone call interceptions, according to a report this week.

The article in Wednesday's New York Times said the Obama administration acknowledged there had been abuses but said they had been resolved. The attempted eavesdropping on a congressman came about because he or she was part of a delegation to the Middle East in 2005 or 2006, and was ultimately blocked.

The NSA … Read more

If a little-known but influential alliance of state politicians, large retailers, and tax collectors have their way, the days of tax-free Internet shopping may be nearly over.

A bill expected to be introduced in the U.S. Congress as early as Monday would rewrite the ground rules for mail order and Internet sales by eliminating what its supporters view as a "loophole" that, in many cases, allows Americans to shop over the Internet without paying sales taxes.

Currently, Americans who shop over the Internet from out-of-state vendors aren't always required to pay sales taxes at the time … Read more

As any major Web site can attest, any online voting begs to be influenced by special interests. CNBC yanked a 2007 presidential poll after enthusiastic Ron Paul supporters boosted their candidate to 75 percent, and the FreeRepublic.com crowd recently flooded a Web vote about stem cell funding.

On Thursday, WhiteHouse.gov became the latest Web site to experience this kind of deluge as part of an online town hall--and this time, it was marijuana legalization advocates who voted to push their questions to the top of the charts.

By the time President Obama's town hall began, questions about … Read more

The Obama administration has sided with the recording industry in a copyright lawsuit against an alleged peer-to-peer pirate, a move that echoes arguments previously made by the Bush administration.

A legal brief filed Sunday in a case that the Recording Industry Association of America is pursuing in Massachusetts argues that federal copyright law is not so overly broad and its penalties not so unduly severe that they count as "punitive." Current law allows a copyright holder to receive up to $150,000 in damages per violation.

The brief says "the harms caused by copyright infringement" on … Read more

A privacy advocacy group has asked the Federal Trade Commission to pull the plug on Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, and the company's other Web apps until government-approved "safeguards are verifiably established."

If the FTC grants the request, hundreds of millions of Internet users would be unable to access their e-mail or documents until the agency's formidable collection of lawyers in Washington, D.C., became satisfied with the revised applications. The outage would extend to businesses that pay for access to Google Apps.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center submitted the far-reaching request to the FTC in … Read more

Police Blotter is a regular CNET report on the intersection of technology and the law.

What: Facebook photograph shows part-time teaching aide at Ohio high school with three cheerleaders holding Smirnoff bottles.

When: The Court of Appeals of Ohio, Twelfth District, rules on February 9.

Outcome: Conviction for allowing minors to possess alcohol upheld.

What happened, according to court documents and other sources: Most people are merely embarrassed by photos a friend tosses onto Facebook. Mary Ellen Hause went to jail because of them.

Hause, who worked as a part-time teaching aide at Springboro High School, near Dayton, Ohio, was … Read more