FEC May Regulate Internet Political Activity
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With political fund raising, campaign advertising and organizing taking place in full swing over the Internet, it may just be a matter of time before the Federal Election Commission joins the action.    Well, that time may be now...
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(InfoWorld) - Google has formed a political action committee to exert pressure on the U.S. Congress and promote legislation that benefits the company. The group, called Google NetPAC, saw the light on Thursday, when Google registered it with the U.S. Federal Election Commission, a Google spokesman confirmed via e-mail. "Google NetPAC will support officeholders and candidates who share Google's goal of preserving and promoting the Internet as a free and open platform for information, communication, and innovation," the spokesman wrote. A key legislative and regulatoryÂ concern for Google is net neutrality. Its executives favor a law to force broadband providers like AT&T and Comcast to give all traffic on their networks the same quality of service and speed. In addition to Google, other Internet companies like Yahoo, eBay, and Amazon.com support net neutrality andÂ want Congress to prohibit broadband providersÂ from blocking or degrading Web content and services from potential competitors. Opponents, which include broadband providers and network equipment vendors like Cisco Systems and Qualcomm, say a net neutrality law will let Internet companies like Google continue toÂ ride for "free"Â on broadband networks. Such a law will prevent broadband providers from charging Web companies new fees for higher speeds and a better quality of service, money needed to build faster networks for new bandwidth-intensive services like Internet TV, net neutrality opponents say. If companies like Google don't pay extra, then broadband providers will have to increase fees to consumers, they say. Other regulatory and legislative issues that are likely of concern for Google include Internet privacy, stock-option accounting, law-enforcement access to search engine records and copyright protection. Google also hired former Republican senators Dan Coats and Connie Mack as outside lobbyists, the Google spokesman confirmed. "We've hired outside firms from across the political spectrum that offer effective expertise to communicate our policy messages," he wrote. Other high-tech companies with political action committees include Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon.com, eBay and AOL's parent company Time Warner.
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Let 'em know they're being watched US consumer protection body the Federal Trade Commission has backed a tightening of rules on internet advertising and the use of personal information. It has proposed stronger industry regulation of the tracking of users' habits.â¦
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E-mail is a dangerous thing. Sen. Sam Brownback's presidential campaign discovered that fact last week when an intern pinged a huge list of people who had contacted the Kansas Republican about his position on the comprehensive immigration bill. The Senate had voted for cloture on the legislation...
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Justice Department tells FCC that internet service providers should be allowed to charge a fee for priority Web traffic. DOJ says it's opposed to "Net neutrality," the principle that all Internet sites should be equally accessible to any Web user.
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A new tool aimed at circumventing Internet filters used by some governments was released Friday, offering hopes for freer access to information for activists, journalists and others.
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Â· Internet industry asked to help curb illegal materialÂ· Terror bill proposes new powers against suspects
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In its third presidential election, the Internet has finally reached political adolescence. Candidates use it to raise millions and rally their followers.
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Ron Paul probably won't be the next president of the United States. But the internet gave him more traction than an extremist candidate should expect to receive. Commentary by Tony Long.
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The Internet and the voting process are developing a manifold relationship. In February, US voting will actually move to the Web with the Democratic Party's first ever online global primary.
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When contact info for Republican delegates got posted on the web, the Department of Justice subpoenaed an ISP, but now seems to be backing off. Ann Harrison reports from New York.
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The Internet is changing the nature of political fund raising. The Illinois Senator has proved that small donors really matter
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The net and video games are becoming essential tools for political activists.
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A federal Internet gambling ban poses threats to lawful gaming online and must be amended right away, they argue in a Capitol Hill lobbying blitz.
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Bloggers and other Internet activists made their marks in the past two presidential elections chiefly by building networks of political enthusiasts and raising money for candidates. Now, they are pushing aggressively into policymaking -- and not just over high-profile issues such as Iraq.
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Federal agency now turns to Internet service providers for information on people under investigation.
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As the United States' presidential candidates pinball their way across New Hampshire on the day of the state's closely watched primary elections, a new form of grassroots activism appears to be taking root across the Atlantic, in Eastern Europe, that melds dirty pool tactics with the cutting edge of malware technology.Researchers with carrier security specialists Arbor Networks claim that they recently discovered several additional incidents of botnet-driven DOS attacks that were tied to political issues. Danny McPherson, chief research officer at Arbor, will report his group's findings to the assembled computer security and law enforcement experts at next week's Department of Defense Cyber-crime conference in St. Louis.Since April 2007, when a campaign of targeted denial-of-service (DOS) attacks against Web sites controlled by the prime minister of Estonia and several regional banks were carried out with crushing results -- crippling the URLs for a period of several days -- experts have wondered aloud to what extent politics played a hand in the scheme.At the time, press reports and IT security experts speculated that tension between Estonia and Russia -- sparked by Estonia's decision to move a Soviet-era World War II memorial of a bronze soldier -- may have motivated the coordinated DOS attacks. With a number of well-known malware distribution and botnet control networks based out of the region, experts speculated that Russian hackers, either on their own or at the behest of a paying customer, took out the Estonian sites to display their displeasure with the statue's removal.Now new evidence has been discovered that indicates the same sort of political activism believed to have driven the 2007 Estonian Web site attacks not only exists but is becoming more popular."We spent some time after the Estonia attacks looking into this part of the world, and we've found evidence of other politically motivated botnet DOS attacks," said Jose Nazario, senior software engineer at Arbor. "It's hard to tell who is responsible for these campaigns, but they definitely appear to be tied to some recent Russian and Ukrainian elections."According to Nazario, who is known as an expert tracker of botnets -- the armies of malware-infected computers that can be controlled remotely to be used for everything from DOS campaigns to the distribution of spam -- two elections in particular appear to have drawn activity similar to the Estonia incidents.In one instance, Nazario said his team uncovered a botnet-driven DOS threat carried out against several Web sites controlled by Viktor Yanukovych, the recently defeated Ukranian prime minister, during his re-election campaign.In another incident, Nazario said that his team was able to discover a DOS campaign aimed at sites controlled by the "Other Russia" political party led by one-time 2008 Russian presidential candidate Garry Kasparov, who is more widely known as one of the greatest chess players of all time.During each of the individual attacks, banks of botnet-infected computers successfully took the candidates' sites down for several days before they were restored, according to Arbor.Additionally, Nazario said the botnets used in both sets of attacks represent the cutting-edge of the increasingly popular and sophisticated malware sub-genre.Rather than using IRC relays to communicate with each other like most traditional botnets, the politically driven threats utilized Web-based requests to speak to each other -- a much harder form of traffic to differentiate from legitimate network throughput, Nazario said.The same advanced botnets are currently being used to distribute malware and spam, but the systems also appear to have been specifically designed to help their controllers carry out different types of distributed DOS attacks, he said.Nazario said the botnets being used in Russia and the Ukraine closely resembled the zombie PC armies that have been used in years past to attack anti-spam efforts such as Spamhaus and CastleCops -- both of which have previously been targeted successfully and had their sites temporarily taken offline.The activity could also suggest that the systems are being rented out by their creators to other people for the purpose of executing their own threats -- or being built through botnet toolkit technologies being developed in the region, the expert said.Whether or not botnet activism will wash ashore in the U.S. any time soon remains unclear, but it seems apparent the trend is taking off across the pond.Nazario said it remains hard to tell if the botnet campaign tactic has become a weapon of official political entities, or merely a tool of groups acting independently to promote some cause or belief, but lean towards the latter scenario."We don't know who is behind any of this activity, and we don't want to speculate, but you have to ask yourself, is this directed by someone higher in the political organizations, or is it merely somebody who is acting as a lone vigilante?" Nazario said. "It could be that this is something that is being carried out by a handful of individuals that have some sort of belief or disagreement to promote, or it could of course represent something bigger."