Maine weighs lobbyist text message rules
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Wary of lobbyists calling signals from the sidelines, Maine is taking steps to ban text messages and e-mails to lawmakers in session as it becomes the latest state to address the ever-expanding use of electronic communications in statehouses.
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Technology lobbying groups are stepping up their push for lawmakers to pass several pieces of legislation.
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By Scott Leith, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution  Dec. 15--And now this -- the lobbying that surrounds the AT&T-BellSouth  deal has reached YouTube.   The source of this latest, weirdest bit of advocacy is a 26-year-old  Internet marketing consultant from Hallandale, Fla.
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Vice President Dick Cheney was to visit Maine on Monday to attend a private fundraiser. Cheney was scheduled to deliver remarks at a private luncheon in Cape Elizabeth to raise money for Republican candidates running for the state Legislature this fall. No public events are planned.
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States with restrictions or bans on recorded political phone calls:
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(InfoWorld) - Legislation that would allow the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to seek civil penalties against businesses that obtain personal data under false pretenses may soon get a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives. The full House could vote on Prevention of Fraudulent Access to Phone Records Act as soon as late Friday or Saturday, Representative Joe Barton, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said Friday. Barton, a Texas Republican, asked the House leadership to move forward with the bill afterÂ lawmakers ripped into Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) officials ThursdayÂ for allowing the practice during an investigation into board leaks. HP President and Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurd and former HP Chairwoman Patricia Dunn both testified Thursday that they did not know the details of how the leak investigation was conducted. The pretexting legislation has been stalled since the House Energy and Commerce Committee unanimously approved it in March. The bill would allow the FTC to seek civil penalties against so-called pretexters, those who masquerade as a customer to gain access to phone records or other personal information. Representatives of five mobile phone service carriers raised no objections to the bill during Friday's hearing. Lawmakers questioned if more businesses than HP have used pretexting or other questionable investigatory methods. "How do we, and how does corporate America, break this ethos that, if someone thinks that illegal or unethical activity ... is acceptable, everybody else in a corporation goes along with it?" said Representative Diana DeGette, a Colorado Democrat. DeGette will explore ways to add new requirements to the Sarbanes-Oxley financial reporting law, she said. Christopher Bryon, a columnist for the New York Post, told lawmakers Friday that he was a victim of pretexting four years ago, long before the HP investigation came to light. A facial recognition software company hired a pretexter to gain access to his sources after he wrote a column about the company, Bryon said. Pretexting appears to be a widespread practice among U.S. businesses, Bryon said. "This is not something I wanted my family to grow up with ... wondering if your mail is being read, if your phone is tapped, if there's a bug in your bedroom," he said. The FTC has filed five lawsuits against alleged pretexters, but the agency lacks the legal authority to seek civil damages, said Joel Winston, associate director of privacy and identity protection at the FTC. The FTC sought to recover pretexting-related profits in those cases, but additional civil penalties would give the agency an additional tool to use against identity thieves, he said. A second pretexting bill, the Telephone Records and Privacy Protection Act, has passed the House, but the measure is hung up in the Senate over disagreements over the best approach. The House bill would make pretexting a crime, with a penalty of up to 10 years in prison. Congress is scheduled to adjourn by early next week until after the Nov. 7 general election. Congress may come back into session late in the year to address unfinished business.
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Two Democratic congressmen on Thursday asked Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge to provide Congress written communications between his department and a lobbying firm run by a longtime friend.
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By The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.  Feb. 12--Maybe we ought to be thankful. Usually when legislators want to carelessly overrule one of the state's scientific commissions, they simply introduce a bill to get their way.
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Lawmakers are talking about rewriting the eight-year-old landmark law governing the nation's telephone, cable and media businesses.
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Connecticut lawmakers are pushing a bill that would require age verification rules for social networking sites and would allow parents more control over their children's pages.
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The Register ran a story on August 6th called 'Phone spam misery looms stateside.' It seems that there's legislative nastiness underway in Washington, DC to essentially gut the existing junk fax law, and replace it with a marketer's wet dream.
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In a Feb. 7 story about cellular "spam," The Associated Press erroneously described a list published by the Federal Communications Commission aimed at stopping unwanted commercial e-mail and text messages sent to cell phones. It is a list of domain names to which telemarketers may not send e-mail without permission from cell phone subscribers, not listings of the Web sites that transmit unwanted data.
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E-mailing your best pal in Thailand or family in Toledo is cheaper than running up a long-distance phone bill. But even brimming with smiley emoticons, text messages lack a certain personal touch.
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E-mail, text message or cellphone call? Making contact can be an adventure.
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The Maine Legislature voted yesterday to study broadband and Internet  access in Maine through an amended version of L.D. 1675, Regarding Full  and Fair Access to the Internet. This study was proposed as an  alternative to L.D. 1675, sponsored by Sen.
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Legislation that would make it  illegal to obtain and sell consumers' telephone records could  come to a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday,  said Rep. Joe Barton, one of the measure's authors.
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A consortium of consumer groups is planning to urge federal regulators to clarify how much control cellphone companies can have over the messages and services delivered over their networks.