US Congress focuses on indecency
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US legislators approve a bill which could see broadcasters and entertainers receive huge fines for indecency.
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Congress may keep up the focus on the prison abuse scandal following the disclosure that the military has concealed as many as 100 &quot;ghost detainees&quot; from the Red Cross.
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WASHINGTON _ Republican congressional leaders and their staffs were "willfully ignorant" in responding to early warnings of improper advances toward underage male pages by then-Rep. Mark Foley of Florida but did not violate any House rules, the House ethics committee concluded Friday.
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The FCC leads the campaign to rein in 'indecency' on the airwaves. But in a world of unlimited spectrum, some think shackling the First Amendment is what's obscene. By Frank Rose from Wired magazine.
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A committee responsible for  enforcing ethics in the U.S. House of Representatives on  Thursday began investigating a sex scandal that has enveloped  Republicans struggling to keep control of Congress in the  November 7 election.
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A U.S. senator on Thursday  introduced legislation that would allow regulators to follow  through on a new rule that says expletives uttered on broadcast  television are a violation of TV decency standards.
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The House on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved a dramatic increase in fines for indecent programming, rejecting criticism the penalties will stifle free speech and homogenize radio and TV broadcasts.
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The inspector-general of the House of Representatives will investigate recent allegations of sexual misconduct among congressional pages, the Democratic and Republican leaders of the chamber announced.
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Congress looks set to tackle energy legislation -- again.
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Tinkering with a tradition that goes back to Thomas Jefferson, House members in the new Congress will be able to refer to senators by name on the floor &#151; as long as they don't get too personal.
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A scandal over a U.S. Republican congressman sending sexually explicit e-mails to underage boys ratcheted up on Sunday with the FBI and a congressional ethics committee looking into the accusations.
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As Congress looks into "pretexting," CNET News.com's Declan McCullagh asks if politicos are really in favor of our privacy.
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The House is expected to approve legislation this week that seeks to increase exponentially the amount of money broadcasters and performers would have to pay for indecency violations.
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House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert has asked the Justice Department to cast a wide net in its investigation of lewd e-mails sent by a Republican legislator to young pages, even looking into whether other lawmakers learned of them and failed to notify authorities. But legal experts said yesterday that...
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Two U.S. senators said on Thursday  they would introduce legislation that would potentially protect  users of popular social networking sites like News Corp's   MySpace from registered sex offenders.
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(InfoWorld) - When the U.S. Congress adjourned in the early morning hours Saturday, it left a number of technology-related bills unfinished, including two bills addressingÂ fraudulent access to personal telephone records. Despite pressure from members of the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee, the full House failed to act on the Prevention of Fraudulent Access to Phone Records Act. The law would have allowed the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to seek civil penalties against businesses that obtain personal data under false pretenses. The committee has been looking into privacy concerns related to so-called pretexting since early this year, but the issue came to a head last month, whenÂ Hewlett-Packard revealedÂ it had used questionable investigative techniques in the surveillance of board members, employees, and reporters. With pretexting, private investigators or identity thieves pretend to be customers of mobile phone carriers or other companies in order to gain access to personal records such as call logs. Congress still has more time to act on the pretexting legislation or six related bills this year, however. After a month-plus break allowing lawmakers to focus on the Nov. 7 election, Congress will return for a lame-duck session Nov. 9. Democrats last week complained that the House Republican leadership had held up the pretexting legislation, but Representative Joe Barton, a Texas Republican and Energy and Commerce chairman, said he'd continue to push for the legislation. Congress alsoÂ failed to pass a wide-ranging broadband billÂ that would replace local franchise rules with a national system for telecom providers launching Internet Protocol-based television services in competition with cable TV. And although U.S. President George Bush called on Congress to pass legislation authorizing a controversial National Security Agency (NSA)Â surveillance program, two bills making it easier for the government to conduct surveillance without court-ordered warrants also stalled. One piece of Internet-related legislation did pass early Saturday. The Senate passed a bill providing money for seaport security, and added to the bill was a provision prohibiting U.S. banks and credit-card companies from processing payments to online gambling sites. A group of professional poker players had asked Congress to reject the bill, but a group of House Republicans pushed for the legislation, saying offshore gambling sites were breaking U.S. gambling-control laws. Bush had called for legislation to authorize the NSA program, which has listened in on the electronic communications of U.S. residents without court-ordered warrants, as a way to head off multiple lawsuits targeting the program. He has argued the program is necessary to help keep U.S. residents safe from terrorism. The HouseÂ passed one surveillance bill, but the Senate failed to act. The House bill would allow federal law enforcement officials to spy on U.S. residents for up to 90 days without a court order in the period after a terrorist attack. The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), a civil liberties and privacy advocacy group, said it was happy to see the surveillance and broadband bills stall. Republicans supporting the surveillance bill were pushing it as a way to show they were focused on national security during the last weeks of the congressional campaign, said Nancy Libin, a staff counsel at CDT. "Now that they've gone home, I'm not sure what kind of priority it will be when they come back," she said. Several civil liberties groups had opposed the broadband bill as it lacked protections for so-called net neutrality. Net neutrality advocates want a law that would prohibit broadband providers from blocking or slowing service to Web sites offering competing content, and they have successfully halted the Senate version of the broadband bill, despiteÂ heavy lobbying from large broadband providers.
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Lawmakers charged with enforcing  ethics in the U.S. House of Representatives met on Thursday to  begin an investigation of a sex scandal that has ensnared top  Republicans and could harm their chances of keeping control of  Congress in the November 7 elections.