Congress pushes (again) for ISP data retention
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More data = more damage, when breached Silicon Justice The US Congress is trying to land a one-two sucker punch on internet service providers (ISPs).â¦
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(InfoWorld) - Three Republican U.S. senators on Thursday called on Congress to pass a permanent Internet tax ban before a moratorium expires Nov. 1. The current Internet tax moratorium, which Congress has extended twice since 1998, bans taxes on Internet access, as well as other taxes unique to the Internet. It's important for Congress to pass a permanent ban soon before state and local governments begin to tax Internet access, said Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican. Those who wonder what impact Internet taxes could have should look to U.S. telephone and mobile phone bills, where taxes are up to 20 percent of the cost, McCain said. "We cannot allow that to happen to the Internet -- likely the most popular invention since the light bulb," McCain said at a press conference. Several senators, many of them former state governors, have opposed a permanent extension of the tax ban. Earlier this year, Senators Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, and Tom Carper, a Delaware Democrat, introduced a bill that would narrow the moratorium's definition of Internet access and extend the ban for four years. That bill would close what supporters have called a loophole allowing telecom providers to argue that voice and other services bundled with Internet service shouldn't be taxed. In addition, nine states that were allowed to maintain their Internet taxes would lose a total of up to $120 million a year under a House of Representatives version of the moratorium extension, The National Governors Association has argued. The House version of the moratorium bill strips these states' exemptions. If Congress makes the ban permanent, nothing would stop Internet providers from trying to expand the number of untaxed services, David Quam, director of federal relations for The National Governors Association, said in June. "The temporary provision keeps everyone honest," Quam said then. But Senator John Sununu, a New Hampshire Republican, argued Thursday that a permanent ban is needed. If there's a problem with bundled services, that can be worked out in the bill, he said. The Internet is "critically important to interstate and global commerce," Sununu said. "It makes no sense to have a national and global communications and business network to be subject to taxes by every state, city, and county in the country." The news conference came a day after the American Homeowners Grassroots Alliance, an advocacy group, sent letters to Congress calling on lawmakers to extend the tax ban. New Internet taxes would hurt telecommuters and home-based businesses, the group said. Supporters of a permanent ban say it will help more U.S. residents connect to the Internet, a policy goal of many lawmakers. Asked if they would support another temporary tax ban, the three Republicans rejected that option. "If it's the right thing to do, we ought to make it permanent," said Senator Trent Lott, a Mississippi Republican.
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A congressional inquiry into online data brokers has raised concerns that federal and local law enforcement may be skirting privacy laws to obtain calling records
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U.S. President George Bush called on Congress Monday night to broaden&#160;protection for telecommunications carriers&#160;that helped the government monitor phone calls and e-mail.The Protect America Act, which allows the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) to intercept phone calls and e-mails of suspected terrorists without first obtaining a court warrant, is due to expire Friday and Bush called for its extension as part of his final State of the Union address.&quot;To protect America, we need to know who the terrorists are talking to, what they are saying, and what they are planning,&quot; he said in the televised address. &quot;Last year, Congress passed legislation to help us do that. Unfortunately, Congress set the legislation to expire on Feb.1. This means that if you do not act by Friday, our ability to track terrorist threats would be weakened and our citizens will be in greater danger. Congress must ensure the flow of vital intelligence is not disrupted.&quot;Failure to extend the legislation won&#39;t just hit the NSA. The telecommunications carriers that worked with the agency despite the lack of court warrants also face privacy lawsuits and an extension to the legislation would provide them legal protection. Bush touched on that point as well.&quot;Congress must pass liability protection for companies believed to have assisted in the efforts to defend America. We&#39;ve had ample time for debate. The time to act is now,&quot; said Bush to applause from mostly Republican members of the audience. Vice President Dick Cheney, seated behind Bush, also applauded the call.Cheney and the White House last week pushed Congress to extend the act and provide protection for telecom carriers. AT&amp;T and other carriers are facing lawsuits in San Francisco by civil liberties groups and individuals who allege that the surveillance program is illegal.Earlier Monday, efforts by Republicans to curtail debate in the U.S. Senate and force a vote on an extension to the act failed, and debate is due to resume Tuesday.&#160;
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Details of security lapses with motorists' data are expected when MPs get updates on Whitehall data losses.
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Citizens have until Friday to sway government regulators on net neutrality, the principle that ISPs should treat all packets of internet data equally.
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Two lawmakers have introduced legislation that would prohibit broadband providers from blocking or impairing Web content from competitors.Reps. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Chip Pickering, a Mississippi Republican, introduced the Internet Freedom Preservation Act Wednesday. The bill says it is U.S. policy to &quot;guard against unreasonable discriminatory favoritism for, or degredation of, content by network operators based upon its source, ownership, or destination on the Internet.&quot;The bill would also require the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to open a proceeding on broadband services and consumer rights. The FCC would be required to investigate whether broadband providers have adhered to its August 2005 policy that providers should refrain from blocking or interfering with Web content.&quot;The open architecture nature of the Internet ... has ensured the Internet&#39;s place as the greatest level playing field ever created,&quot; Markey said as he introduced the bill. &quot;The goal of this bipartisan legislation is to assure consumers, content providers, and high-tech innovators that the historic, open architecture nature of the Internet will be preserved and fostered. [The bill] is designed to assess and promote Internet freedom for consumers and content providers.&quot;A group of advocacy groups, as well as Google and Amazon.com, praised the bill, saying it is needed as recent news report have suggested Comcast is slowing its customer access to high-bandwidth applications such as BitTorrent. Comcast on Tuesday filed a document with the FCC defending&#160;its practice of engaging in &quot;network management.&quot;Petitions by advocacy group Free Press and online video distributor Vuze to have the FCC prohibit Comcast&#39;s traffic throttling &quot;raise important issues about the ability of broadband network operators to engage in reasonable network management to ensure that their customers can enjoy a positive broadband experience,&quot; Comcast said in its FCC filing. &quot;Network management is best left to the sound, good-faith judgment of the engineers and proprietors who run and own the networks and who are best able to remedy customer service issues promptly, rather than to regulation.&quot;The FCC has no prohibitions against Comcast&#39;s behavior, the company argued. &quot;Free Press mistakenly relies on the [2005 FCC] Internet Policy Statement as creating rules the commission can enforce,&quot; Comcast said.But representatives of the Open Internet Coalition, including Free Press and Public Knowledge, praised the new Markey legislation, saying it would remove doubt about U.S. policy on blocking or slowing Web content.In the last six months, Comcast and other broadband and mobile-phone providers have repeatedly tried to block content on their networks, said Markham Erickson, the Open Internet Coalition&#39;s executive director. Erickson called Comcast&#39;s Tuesday FCC filing &quot;remarkable.&quot;&quot;It appears to declare war on Internet users, policy makers, and even the FCC,&quot; he said. &quot;It essentially says that the FCC has no legal ability to protect consumers from discriminatory behavior.&quot;The Comcast filing called Free Press&#39; complaints about its network management &quot;inflammatory hyperbole.&quot; Asked about Erickson&#39;s comments on the filing, Comcast spokeswoman Sean Fitzmaurice denied that the company was saying the FCC had no authority to regulate net neutrality.The Markey bill is not as specific as past net neutrality bills that failed in a Republican-controlled Congress in 2006, but it would set a standard in federal law, said Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge. &quot;It&#39;s the right bill at the right time,&quot; she said.Without prohibitions against blocking or slowing Web content, broadband providers could sign deals with some content providers and shut out new Internet-based companies, added Richard Whitt, Google&#39;s Washington telecom and media counsel.&quot;Keeping the on-ramps to the Web free of undue discrimination is not about Google, it&#39;s about the next Google,&quot; Whitt said.Comcast declined to comment on the Markey bill. But Hands Off the Internet, an advocacy group with members including broadband providers AT&amp;T and Qwest, said it could support an FCC study of net neutrality.&quot;There&#39;s no question that a reasoned examination of the facts will demonstrate the folly of net neutrality,&quot; the group said in a statement, &quot;However, we are concerned that an effort to seek public input is intended to be a stalking horse for federal Internet regulation. The continued push by special interests to regulate Internet neutrality undercuts the best hope Net users have for faster, more affordable broadband.&quot;
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Lawmakers may soon pass a bill that would set up a huge network of databases that law enforcement officials could tap to find terrorists. But that kind of unfettered access to data about Americans raises eyebrows. By Ryan Singel.
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Members of the U.S. Congress introduced a flurry of new technology-related bills this week, including two bills that would require companies with data breaches to notify affected customers.
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How else to catch child porn viewers? The US Attorney General has asked senators to pass a data retention law for telcos and ISPs. Alberto Gonzales told a Senate panel that such a law would help to prosecute child pornographers.â¦
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A BILL seeking to classify phone calls made over the Internet separately from conventional voice calls has been filed in Congress.
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The US Congress on Friday reinstated a ban on Internet access taxes after the House of Representatives agreed to extend it for another three years rather than make it permanent.
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A month after giving the Bush administration new latitude to conduct electronic surveillance on American soil, some in Congress are having second thoughts.
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Whoever wrote a legislative provision to give more members of Congress access to income tax records should be tracked down and held to account, a Democratic senator said Monday.
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For Congress to do anything that helps protect consumers and the critical Internet infrastructure as a whole, it must pass laws that require proactive processes to protect computers, not that tell people how to deal with the resulting mess, writes columnist Ira Winkler.
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Congress is poised to extend a ban on taxing Internet access, a move that would please Internet service providers but possibly cost states millions of dollars in lost revenue. -washingtonpost.com
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The FBI wants to pay the major telecommunications companies to retain their customers' Internet and phone call information for at least two years for the agency's use in counterterrorism investigations and is asking Congress for $5 million a year to defray the cost, according to FBI officials and...