congress

Update 1:50 p.m. PST: Added Microsoft's overall lobbying expense figures for the first half of 2007.

Here's a shocker: Microsoft lobbies Congress.

OK, so it's not. But it's interesting to keep tabs on how much the software maker is spending and who it's hired to do its bidding.

The Associated Press reported that Microsoft paid $160,000 last year to the firm Patton Boggs to lobby on "antitrust issues surrounding mergers and acquisitions in the technology sector." The bulk of that--$120,000--was spent in the second half of the year, … Read more

WASHINGTON--The Bush administration on Thursday questioned a proposed law that would force federal agencies to develop specific plans for guarding government computers and networks against "risks" posed by peer-to-peer file sharing.

The Democratic-sponsored bill, called the Federal Agency Data Protection Act, contains a section asking federal agencies to report to Congress what "technological" (e.g., software and hardware) and "nontechnological" methods (such as employee polices and user training) they would employ to ensure peer-to-peer file-sharing programs do not harm the security of government systems.

The proposal, introduced late last year, is the latest manifestation … Read more

While wandering through the mobile theme park that is the 3GSMA Mobile World Congress, we stumbled across a strangely familiar-looking phone at the Spyker stand. Spyker is mostly known for making cars, which gave us pause.

There was no model name on the handset, but of course the first thing we thought of when we saw it was the iPhone. The available press materials failed to shed any light on its name, but when we asked the man at the stand whether or not it belonged to the Spyker portfolio, he responded with a straightforward "yes." Click here … Read more

The GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, is winding to a close, but that doesn't mean mobile phone news have stopped streaming in. The third day of GSMA 2008 saw AMD announcing big plans for mobile phone processors, RIM's co-CEO downplaying the recent BlackBerry outage, and the LiMo Foundation possibly giving Google's Android a run for its money with its own effort at an open, Linux-based operating system. Of course, we also took the opportunity to look at phones and carriers off the beaten path.

For starters, Senior Editor Kent German explored the large Vodafone plaza (… Read more

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives have scuttled an attempt to grant a temporary extension to a controversial wiretap law--that did not include retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.

By a 191-229 vote on Wednesday afternoon, the House failed to approve a bill to extend the Protect America Act for 21 days in its current form. The law--which Republicans say is necessary to allow interception of communications that transit the United States--is scheduled to expire on Saturday.

The vote, in which 34 Democrats joined the Republicans, comes hours after President Bush called for including retroactive immunity for any companies … Read more

With Congress seeking more time to finalize a soon-to-expire expansion of the government's electronic spying powers, President Bush on Wednesday issued an ultimatum: No more delays.

In a brief morning speech delivered from the Oval Office, the president praised the U.S. Senate's passage on Tuesday of a six-year law that would give the administration more latitude to conduct surveillance without a court order. The controversial measure would also immunize telephone companies from past and future lawsuits accusing them of illegal cooperation with government spy agencies. The whole package is intended to be a more permanent replacement to … Read more

Comcast, AT&T, and other network operators would be expected to refrain from "unreasonable discriminatory favoritism" of content on their pipes under a recrafted Net neutrality proposal introduced Wednesday in the U.S. House of Representatives.

But this time around, the new bill (PDF) sponsored by Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of a House Internet and telecommunications panel, isn't directly forcing Internet service providers to follow specific rules. The new bill is an apparent effort to be less prescriptive than his previous efforts, which failed in a Republican-dominated Congress two years ago.

"The bill contains … Read more

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi once said that, without new Net neutrality laws, "telecommunications and cable companies will be able to create toll lanes on the information superhighway. This strikes at the heart of the free and equal nature of the Internet."

That was nearly two years ago. At the time, legislation giving the Federal Communications Commission new regulatory authority over the Internet was rejected by a 269-152 vote in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

Since then, even though her party has controlled Congress for over a year, Pelosi and her fellow Democrats haven't exactly rushed to enact … Read more

Phone madness continues on in Barcelona, Spain, as the second day of GSMA Mobile World Congress comes to a close. Vodafone's CEO said he sees the mobile web as the future, Microsoft announced MSN Direct availability on Windows Mobile devices, and Yahoo launches OneConnect, a new tool that lets mobile phone users to aggregate their social-networking updates and messaging in one spot on their phones. T-Mobile also finally announces plans to launch 3G in the U.S. by summer 2008. There's also hope for an Android phone, as well as an Austrian version of the iPhone by the … Read more