Day: January 30, 2007

For more info click here The FBI appears to have adopted an invasive Internet surveillance technique that collects far more data on innocent Americans than previously has been disclosed. Instead of recording only what a particular suspect is doing, agents conducting investigations appear to be assembling the activities of thousands of Internet users at a time into massive databases, according to current and former officials. That database can subsequently be queried for names, e-mail addresses or keywords.

For more info click here Twenty-six computer tapes containing Internal Revenue Service taxpayer data have gone missing from City Hall in Kansas City, Mo. The tapes were originally shipped to the City Hall building in August as part of an information-sharing agreement between the IRS and the municipality of Kansas City, according to The Kansas City Star. Officials lost track of the tapes in December. On Friday, the local newspaper revealed that the city was working with the Department of the Treasury, of which the IRS is a division, in an attempt to locate the missing tapes’

For more info click here  WASHINGTON–The Bush administration hasn’t settled on what data it would like Internet service providers to retain about their subscribers or for how long, a U.S. Department of Justice attorney said Tuesday. U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made it clear last fall that he planned to seek national legislation requiring the controversial practice known as data retention, but “we don’t have any position officially about how long records would have to be retained or what records would have to be retained,” said Eric Wenger, a trial attorney with the Justice Department’s computer crime

For more info click here CNN can promote its advertisement-laced online presence however it likes during broadcasts, but new federal rules mean TV channels like Nickelodeon that cater to children no longer enjoy the same freedom. The Federal Communications Commission decreed that during shows geared toward children age 12 and under, cable and broadcast operators may not display addresses for Web sites that contain any links to commercial content. The rules took effect on January 2.

 For more info click here Criminals who post to the Internet images or videos of their violent exploits could face stiffer penalties under a new bill in Congress. Troubled by what he called a “recent trend of posting videotaped attacks onto Web sites like MySpace,” Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, a Florida Republican, proposed on Wednesday requiring states to consider such behavior when issuing sentences. The idea behind the proposal is to curb the use of such videos “to further humiliate the victims as well as spread fear and intimidation,” he said.

For more info click here  The United States has suffered a new setback in a four-year legal battle with Antigua and Barbuda over U.S. restrictions on Internet gambling, a U.S. trade official said. At issue is an April 2005 World Trade Organization ruling against U.S. prohibitions on online horse-race betting. Since then, the U.S. Congress has passed additional legislation to ban betting over the Internet. Gretchen Hamel, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Trade Representative’s office, confirmed Thursday the press reports that a WTO panel “did not agree with the United States that we had taken the necessary