Tag: GOVERNMENT

Not one to let the hyperconservative Australian government walk away with the censorship crown, the UK government plans to make the surfing of Internet porn opt-in. Next month, Communications Minister Ed Vaizey will meet with major UK ISPs to discuss a blanket block of porn. Rather than porn being available to all, UK surfers will have to contact their ISP to be allowed on a 'porn surfing ...

The Federal Trade Commission issued a report yesterday outlining what it feels must be done to ensure the privacy of the average netizen. Key points of the initiative include making consumers much more aware of what they're agreeing to when it comes to their privacy, and instituting a "Do Not Track" scheme that could use cookies to ward off other cookies. The first thing they want to change is ...

In a first that has been deemed "historic," though by who I do not know, Minnesota has become the first US state to move its communications and collaboration suite into the cloud. Last year, Los Angeles switched to the enterprise version of Gmail, but this is the first entire state to move into the cloud. (We should point out that LA has a larger population than Minnesota, however...) The ...

CitySourced is a convenient app that lets you photograph and report issues like potholes, downed trees and broken signs and lights to your city government. It's an idea whose time has come -- phoning in a report or figuring out who to email is a hassle, and the person who receives your call or email probably has to type it into a database. CitySourced skips that step and lets you send a ...

Over the last few days, news has emerged that a U.S. Army intelligence analyst, Bradley Manning, was the source that recently leaked classified information to Wikileaks. But he didn't just leak 260,000 classified cables and a brutal video of an Apache helicopter mowing down civilians and journalists in Iraq -- no, he also leaked the code name and details of the government investigation into the ...

If you've visited WhiteHouse.gov since its change of ownership back in 2009 you'll hopefully have noticed some very cool changes. The site itself was jazzed up -- CHANGE! -- and, as best befits this 'information age', accessibility has been greatly improved for all citizens and denizens of the USA. What you may not have noticed, however, is that the entire site runs on a customized version of ...

It's no surprise that the last few days has seen a huge amount of information bubble to the surface regarding China's recent cyber attacks on the infrastructure of more than 30 Silicon Valley companies. Much of it is coming from the security and anti-virus companies -- now that the attack has been identified and halted, the world in general and the victims in particular want to know how it ...

It's the story that keeps getting crazier and crazier! First Google -- a corporation! -- sticks a finger up at an entire country (the largest in the world), then it comes to light that China has been operating a vast malware-distributing espionage botnet -- and now the White House publicly comes out in favor of Google! That the American government is stepping in can only mean that the ...

We'll throw this in the "Whoops" category. ComputerWorld took some time to outline some of the best (or worst?) data security breaches of 2009. While the actual events might not have been too funny to the people involved, the blunders the technology world has dealt with are pretty comical now that they're safely resolved. Some of the highlights include the TSA getting a little too "open", ...

Anytime you attach the word "Internet" to something, politicians are ready to jump in and try to save us from ourselves. Take "Internet Dating" for example. Since time immemorial, we as a species have gathered in social places, imbibed adult beverages and looked to hook-up with what flips our romantic switch. In the modern age, we go to bars and clubs, even to speed dating events and, last I ...

digg_url = 'http://digg.com/tech_news/Google_announces_free_communication_applications_in_Africa'; Google has announced a partnership with the Rwandan Ministry of Infrastructure, and the Kenya Education Network that will result in the use of Google Apps in Rwanda's educational institutions and government ministries, as well as in Kenya's universities. Both of these African countries will now ...

I just got back from some much needed R & R, and since I left before the most recent Homeland Security PR campaign terror scare, I spent a lot of time on the TSA website the last few days of my vacation trying to figure out the ever-changing array of prohibited items. It wasn't much help. It seemed like they were updating the regs hourly, but the website only every couple of days, and then in ...

Let's face it: Government web site are, as a rule, a pain to navigate. In an effort to remedy that, Google has launched usgov.google.com, a specialized search engine for searching U.S. government web sites. The new site is modeled after Google Personalized Home, and indeed has most of the same features, but with an emphasis on widgets that help you keep track of government updates. For more ...

So Verizon and every other mega-ISP think Google and other content providers are getting a free ride and should be paying on both ends and Comcast might be throttling Vonage to death, none of seems like a trend that's good for consumers, much less the future of the Internet. Luckily I'm not alone: U.S. senator from Oregon Ron Wyden has introduced the Internet Non-Discrimination Act of 2006, which ...