Headlines is going on a break. We will return MONDAY JULY 7. Have a great, safe holiday.

read more

"Generally, I think the Universal Service Fund needs to be blown up like the Death Star."
-- Rep Mike Doyle (D-PA)

read more

The skids are greased. President Bush and the candidates who want his job, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain, are all on board. As early as today, the Senate will begin voting on new rules governing how spy agencies intercept phone calls and e-mails between suspected terrorists overseas and people in the USA.

read more

The FISA update does not do nearly enough to protect innocent Americans from fishing expeditions in the name of homeland security.

read more

The Associated Press unleashed a firestorm in the blogosphere earlier this month when it demanded that a political site take down AP content it said violated copyrights. Bloggers cried foul, saying the AP's move threatened the free flow of information over the Web.

read more

The Federal Communications Commission announced that the public is welcome to review and comment on a draft of its revised Strategic Plan for 2009-2014. The revised draft Strategic Plan is a "work in progress" that is complete enough to allow review and comment on the strategic direction the Commission intends to follow in the coming years.

read more

A machinist and self-described "blue-collar guy" in his mid-50s from upstate New York, Rick752, as he's known online, spends most nights upstairs in his den assembling a list of Internet ad sites and related data.

read more

California will become the largest state to ban unlimited cellphone use by drivers. The law prohibits drivers under 18 from talking on the phone, and it requires older drivers to use a hands-free headset.

read more

On Friday, the House passed "the most significant revision of surveillance law in 30 years," and the Senate is expected to soon follow suit. House leaders insisted the bill was a "compromise" with conservatives, but as the New York Times noted, it was actually "a major victory for the White House after months of dispute." While progressives succeeded in forcing the White House to accept some important concessions, the deal fails to give the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court the authority to protect law-abiding Americans from being spied on by their government.

read more

Ed Markey (D-MA), the Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, held a hearing exploring the core principles of universal service, which historically has provided a baseline level of affordable voice telecommunications service to everyone in the United States, in light of the rise of Internet-based broadband communications technologies and the changing marketplace.

read more

Vint Cerf and Federal Communications Commission member Jonathan Adelstein joined forces Tuesday in renewing calls for the U.S. government to more actively expand broadband service. They and other members of a new coalition promised hearings across the country and set up a Web site at InternetForEveryone.org to outline principles such as universal broadband access and competition to ensure lower prices and faster Internet connection speeds.

read more

The U.S. should aim for 100M bps (bits per second) of broadband available to all U.S. residents by 2012 and 1G bps by 2015 in order to catch up to other countries that are moving forward with broadband rollouts, recommends a study released Monday.

read more

Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama should issue a statement underscoring the consensus between Republicans and Democrats on the importance of broadband in the United States, says Jim Baller.

read more

Over at the Communications Workers of America’s blog, Speed Matters, the union claimed credit for the Federal Communications Commission’s recent order requiring broadband companies to provide the FCC with more information, including data about availability by Census tract.

read more

What would you do as part of a new administration to impact tech policy on day 1 in 2009?

read more

The interception of Internet traffic to snoop on phone calls or track surfers' behavior is a hot topic -- but what's keeping members of ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee up at night is the interception of traffic to and from sites that don't even exist.

read more

Mark Soohoo, McCain's deputy e-campaign director, drew guffaws at an Internet conference in New York when he tried to dig his candidate out of a techno black hole.

read more

The mainstream media's overheated response to Sen Barack Obama's decision to opt out of the public campaign finance system is a textbook example of journalists protecting Sen John Mccain (R-AZ) and his bald-faced hypocrisy.

read more

Having opted out of public funding for his run for president, how can Sen Barack Obama spend all the money he's raising?

read more

House Telecommunications & Internet Subcommittee Chairman Ed Markey (D-MA) has told cable operators and other broadband providers to hold off implementing ad-service technology similar to what Charter Communications was planning to use from online-ad network NebuAd.

read more