[government] Forum Topics

It took two years, but Terry Childs, former network administrator for the city of San Francisco, has finally been convicted of one felony count of computer tampering. In [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/story219397.html"]2008[/URL], Childs changed the system's router passwords and then for more than a week refused to give them to anyone, even after …

The case of a Philadelphia school allegedly [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/story263325.html"]spying [/URL]on students through webcams in their laptop computers continues to wend its way through the legal system, with more recently filed court documents alleging that as many as 56,000 pictures were taken. While attorneys for the school system [URL="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/20/us/20brfs-SCHOOLDISTRI_BRF.html"]insist [/URL]none of the …

33 of the 4,000 people who worked for the Securities and Exchange Commission in the last five years -- 31 of them within the past three years -- were busted viewing pornography on the job, including 17 senior employees earning between $99,000 and $222,000 a year, according to a [URL="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/SECPornSummary.pdf"]report …

Awards from the first round of broadband stimulus grants are coming under criticism for duplicating existing infrastructure. "Now as the government awards the money, some phone and cable companies complain that not all of it is being used to bring broadband to places that lack it," said Joelle Tessler in …

In response to criticism of the way it was testing broadband Internet speeds, the Federal Communications Commission, following up a [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/story267741.html"]promise [/URL]it made last month, [URL="http://blog.broadband.gov/?entryId=359987"]announced [/URL]it had hired a vendor to help it perform more accurate tests. "In a couple of weeks, we will be asking for consumers from …

Applications for the second round of U.S. broadband stimulus funding are starting to become publicly available on a federal [URL="http://www.ntia.doc.gov/broadbandgrants/applications/search.cfm"]website[/URL]. Approximately 870 applications had been posted to the database as of Saturday, [URL="http://www.stimulatingbroadband.com/2010/04/update-broadband-stimulus-round-ii.html"]according [/URL]to Stimulating Broadband, a website dedicated to tracking broadband stimulus funding. In the American Recovery and Reinvestment …

[I]So, did anybody hear tonight's mysterious southeast Portland explosion? [/I] Apparently a lot of people, like my Portland friend, did. ("Tonight" was Sunday.) What's interesting is how they used Internet tools to track down the location. As described in an article in the [I]New York Times[/I], people immediately started using …

Just six weeks after Google [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/story259442.html"]announced [/URL]its plan to build a gigabit fiber network for a city, more than 1,100 cities have applied, the company [URL="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/next-steps-for-our-experimental-fiber.html"]said [/URL]on Friday. In addition, more than 194,000 individuals responded, Google said. The company has put a map up on its corporate blog showing which …

About a year [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/story220410.html"]ago[/URL], three girls fought charges of child pornography -- of themselves -- for refusing to attend 10-hour class on pornography and sexual violence after they were arrested for taking pictures of themselves [I]en deshabille[/I]. Now, the district court not only barred the district attorney from initiating any …

Ten percent of people working in the electronics and telecom sector have not read a book for pleasure in the last year. During the same 12 month period, 35 percent had not learnt a new activity or indulged in a new hobby either. According to the Department For Business, Innovation …

In preparation for releasing its national broadband plan tomorrow (which is already coming under [URL="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/business/media/13fcc.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1268658134-LNz+NNwd7fnSKyovP4YlZw"]criticism[/URL]), the Federal Communications Commission has started collecting data from users on their broadband [URL="http://broadband.gov/qualitytest/"]performance [/URL]-- a test that is also coming under criticism. Like [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/story219530.html"]similar [/URL]testing a couple of years ago, the broadband.gov testing suffers …

The issue of teens taking naked pictures of themselves with their cell phones and sending them to other teens has been an issue of increasing [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/story220134.html"]concern[/URL], with teens being [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/story220410.html"]slapped [/URL]with child pornography charges, simply by virtue of the fact that the subject of the picture was under 18 -- …

If it were not bad enough that the Iowa Division of Homeland Security official website was hacked, defaced and forced to close down temporarily it appears that another Iowa state government resource was also compromised a few weeks before. At the end of January the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission …

Announcements for the first round of broadband stimulus grants and loans have slipped a bit; while all the announcements were supposed to be made by March 1, they are now expected to be made by March 15, according to an [URL="http://www.stimulatingbroadband.com/2010/03/broadband-stimulus-pipeline-usda-says.html"]article [/URL]on the Stimulating Broadband website. In the first round …

40 million people were without power in the eastern United States, more than 60 million cellphones were out of service, and Wall Street was closed for a week due to a terrorist cyberattack against the United States. No, it didn't really happen. But it could. Coverage of a simulated cyber …

Legislators around the country are scrambling to look at their states' laws about lewd messages to minors after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court overturned a conviction, saying state law didn't support it because it didn't specify online messaging. “The online conversations in this case, as they were not written with …

It doesn't take a search genius to go and find [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/story253418.html"]plenty of reports[/URL] of how Internet Explorer is, how can I put this nicely, [URL="http://www.itpro.co.uk/blogs/daveyw/2009/11/22/ie-6-and-7-hit-by-hack-attack-code/"]not exactly the safest bet[/URL] if you are looking for the most secure browsing experience. Quite apart from anything else it has the biggest market share …

Perhaps taking the lead from Connecticut Republicans who set up [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/story232782.html"]fake[/URL] Twitter accounts and websites for their Democratic opponents, other political campaigns are doing it, too. In California, an intern for the campaign of Beth Krom for Congress noticed that the website of incumbent Representative John Campbell had a misspelled …

To protest a planned Internet filter in Australia, Australian websites and users are being encouraged this week to turn themselves black. "The Federal Government wants to pass laws to force internet service providers to block banned material hosted on overseas servers," explained one Australian [URL="http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/01/26/2801759.htm"]media source[/URL]. "Communications Minister Stephen Conroy …

As increasing numbers of states are running into budgetary problems, some of them are starting to look at taxing Internet sales. When the Internet first started becoming a commercial entity, Internet sales were exempted from sales taxes in order to help encourage new commercial companies to form on the Internet. …

Well, there's one advantage to global warming: The Kodiak-Kenai Cable Company (KKCC) has announced plans to finance, design, build and operate an express undersea fiber optic cable connecting Asia and Europe, routed through the Arctic, according to an [URL="http://www.kodiakdailymirror.com/?pid=19&id=8381"]article[/URL] in the [I]Kodiak Daily Mirror[/I]. Construction of the $1.2 billion, 10,000-mile …

While waiting for [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/post977515.html"]federal legislation[/URL] legalizing online gambling -- a vote that could happen as early as [URL="http://www.pokerheadline.com/2010/01/efforts-are-taken-by-poker-players-alliance-to-regulate-online-gambling/"]next month[/URL] -- individual states are looking to legalize online gambling as well. States such as [URL="http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/breaking/article_8a288b86-04b0-11df-8663-001cc4c002e0.html?mode=story"]New Jersey[/URL], [URL="http://www.egrmagazine.com/news/263017/california-poker-bill-introduced-next-year-promises-new-pva-chief.thtml"]California[/URL], and [URL="http://jacksonville.com/news/florida/2010-01-20/story/florida_legislature_could_take_a_look_at_regulating_internet_poker"]Florida[/URL] are considering legislation that would permit online gambling within their states -- …

The Federal Communications Commission asked Congress this week for a one-month extension to its Feb. 17 deadline for a [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/story220560.html"]report[/URL] on a national broadband plan, according to an [URL="http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100107-707117.html?mod=WSJ_latestheadlines"]article[/URL] in the [I]Wall Street Journal.[/I] The agency said it needed more time to fully brief commissioners and key members of Congress, …

You could call it Santa 6.0. In what's becoming a regular product cycle, Google [URL="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/now-dasher-now-dancer-track-santa-and.html"]announced[/URL] today the new features that Santa-tracking kids of all ages could expect starting on Christmas Eve at 2 am EST: primarily, support for the Google Earth plug-in, meaning that users will be able to watch …

According to the British government organisation which helps UK-based companies to succeed in the wider global economy, UK Trade & Investment ([URL="http://www.uktradeinvest.gov.uk"]UKTI[/URL]), it is currently helping some 76 UK companies pitch for business with the European particle physics laboratory, CERN. Apparently, CERN spent a massive £110 million ($175.75 million) on …

If you've ever wanted to read [I]Sprague's Journal of Maine History[/I], or [I]Pioneers of Scioto County[/I], but couldn't because they were too old, you're in luck. They're among nearly 60,000 books -- many too fragile to be safely handled -- that have been digitally scanned as part of the first-ever …

The Obama Administration vows to cut costs in part by using open source software (Software whose source code is made available to the user), cloud computing, virtualization, Linux and other low cost technologies. But, does the use of open source software put the government, its records and our national security …

Teens who take revealing pictures of themselves to send to other teens are getting more than embarrassment: They're getting a criminal record as a sex offender. The problem of revealing teen pictures has been getting a great deal of attention lately, with a [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3651.html"]recent survey[/URL] finding that 36 percent of …

The federal government today [URL="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/vice-president-biden-kicks-72-billion-recovery-act-broadband-program"]made[/URL] the first awards aimed toward improving broadband access in the U.S. In the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, also known as the stimulus package, Congress appropriated $7.2 billion for broadband grants, loans, and loan guarantees to be administered by the USDA’s Rural Utilities …

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has [URL="http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/social_network/social_networking_FOIA_complaint_final.pdf"]filed suit[/URL] against a number of government agencies for refusing to disclose their policies for using social networking sites for investigations, data-collection, and surveillance. The EFF is working with the Samuelson Law, Technology, and Public Policy Clinic at the University of California, Berkeley, School of …