As laid out in a May column in the Washington Post, the Bush Administration wants to update FISA -- the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act -- so that it covers modern technology, eWeek notes.Yes, this is the same FISA law that the Administration flaunted with the NSA warrantless spying program.
As nanotechnology becomes more commonplace in food, drugs and cosmetics, the FDA must revise its regulatory standards to assess the emerging technology, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. An agency task force reported recently that nanotechnology, based on those tiny particles so small that they're measured in billionths of a meter, is already being used in consumables, adding benefits and unknown risks to humans and the environment.
DARPA has chosen 36 finalists for its Urban Challenge, a close-in city version of its "grand challenge" for robotic car designers, The San Francisco Chronicle reports. The defense agency isn't quite ready to unleash robocars on a real city; this contest will take place at a former Air Force base in Victorville, Calif.
A judge's recent decision that California's law regulating video games is unconstitutional -- the eighth such decision such 2001 -- shows that courts are unwilling to allow states to limit free speech based on concerns about violence, The New York Times reports.“It’s more than a trend,” said Ronald Collins, a scholar at the First Amendment Center in Washington.
Not that long ago, municipal Wi-Fi was the talk of the town, so to speak. These days the latest rendition of the information superhighway is getting a bumpy ride, or plenty of static (choose your metaphor), as ISPs and telecoms are walking away from the business of partnering with local government to build free or cheap public networks, Business Week says.
After the FCC rejected the White Space Coalition's prototype device -- which was touted as being able to sense spectrum to determine which frequencies are freely available in any given area -- Microsoft argued that the technology actually works, they just provided the FCC with a substandard unit. Friday, the Coalition -- which includes Google, Intel and Philips, as well as Microsoft -- filed a response to the FCC, arguing that a replacement device worked properly.
California secretary of state Debra Bowen accused Election Systems & Software (ES&S) of ripping off the state by selling five counties nearly 1,000 electronic-voting machines that were not certified, InfoWorld reports."Given that each machine costs about $5,000, it appears ES&S has taken $5 million out of the pockets of several California counties," Bowen said in a statement.
Computer forensic scientists are intrigued and dismayed by the iPhone, Wired reports. The article cites Derrick Donnelly, chief technology officer of Blackbag Technologies, which specializes in Apple forensic solutions.
Via the Washington Post, 160 laptops owned and operated by employees of the FBI have disappeared over the last four years, according to a Justice Department report from the Inspector General's office. The report stated that the FBI has 26,000 laptops.
The Federal Communications Commission violated rules by tipping off some corporations and trade groups about when commissioners planned to vote on important issues, a Government Accountability Office report has found. Consumer and public interest groups did not get such useful information, The Los Angeles Times reports.
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