Newsbytes Law & Regulation Week In Review 03/03/00 – News Briefs
WASHINGTON, DC, U.S.A., 2000 MAR 3 (NB) — By Staff, Newsbytes. Hatch Won’t Hatch Clinton Net Security Idea; ‘Bored’ Teen Coolio Admits Hacks – Detective; Clinton Battens Down Govt. Net Security Hatches; Workplace E-Mail Privacy Bill Reintroduced In Calif.; Bush Tries To Clarify Remarks On Microsoft; INS Warns Of Looming High-Tech Visa Cap; Hacker Whacks Salesgate, Takes Credit Data; First ‘Digital Divide’ Bill Passes Senate; AOL, Time Warner Promise To Make Open Access No. 1 Priority; DoubleClick To Hold Off On Privacy Plan; Bell Atlantic-GTE Merger: Just One Hurdle Left; Judiciary Committee OKs Net Hooch Bill; Democrats Won’t Sign Off On E-Signatures – Staffers; Mitnick Points To Computer Security’s ‘Weakest Link’; Commerce Secretary Rejects Privacy Bills, Punts On Net Taxes; Net Sales Form Small Piece Of Economic Pie; Sens. Burns, Hollings Hear AOL IM Complaints; Lobbyists Growl Over Tech Accounting Rules; Rural Schools Missing Out On High-Speed Internet; FCC To Stick To Six-Month Merger Review Process; Tech Leaders Scoff At New Foreign Worker Bill; Online Voting Case Against Arizona Democrats Dismissed; Industry Must Take Lead In Cybercrime Prevention – DoJ; Y2K Last Gasp Leaps Into Snooze Mode; Administration Tiptoes Around Net Tax Issue; NSA Eavesdropping Needs More Oversight – Rep. Barr; iCraveTV Settlement Leaves Legal Issues Open; Australian Domain Name Authority Chief Quits; FBI Warded Off Denial Of Service Strike; Bush On Porn In Libraries: Filter This!; ICANN Moves Closer To ‘At Large’ Representation.
Hatch Won’t Hatch Clinton Net Security Idea The Clinton administration’s proposal to devote $80 million to the FBI to help combat illegal usage of strong encryption products and other Internet security hazards needs a congressional sponsor to be introduced as legislation, but Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, won’t be the man for the job. http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/144974.html
‘Bored’ Teen Coolio Admits Hacks – Detective A youth described as a polite, bored 17-year-old high school dropout has reportedly admitted to hacking into several major Web sites – including one belonging to the US State Department. http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/144973.html
Clinton Battens Down Govt. Net Security Hatches President Clinton has asked each cabinet secretary and agency head to “renew their efforts” to make sure their computer networks are safe against denial of service and other illegal Internet attacks. Clinton said he also asked White House Chief of Staff John Podesta to coordinate a “review of federal government vulnerabilities,” which will be due by Apr. 1. http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/144971.html
Workplace E-Mail Privacy Bill Reintroduced In Calif. California State Senator Debra Bowen (D-Redondo Beach) has developed something of a reputation as the state’s legislative guru on high-tech matters. Now, she’s shown that she can be tenacious as well when it comes to the issue of protecting the privacy of employee- generated e-mail. http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/144965.html
Bush Tries To Clarify Remarks On Microsoft With four days to go before Super Tuesday, George W. Bush’s presidential campaign is scrambling to clarify comments made in Washington state that implied he sided with Microsoft in the government’s antitrust lawsuit. http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/144948.html
INS Warns Of Looming High-Tech Visa Cap Halfway through February, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) had already doled out well over half of the high-tech-oriented H-1B visas available for 2000, and the agency warns that it may soon be forced to turn away H-1B applicants. http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/144945.html
Hacker Whacks Salesgate, Takes Credit Data Salesgate.com says “some” credit data belonging to thousands of customers that was taken when a hacker broke into the e-commerce site was posted on the Internet. http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/144924.html
First ‘Digital Divide’ Bill Passes Senate Legislation that would increase tax credits for corporations donating their old computers to schools easily passed the Senate, becoming one of the first successes in the relatively young crusade to bridge the “digital divide.” The New Millennium Classrooms Act – which doles out substantial credits for computer donations – passed the Senate 96 to 2 as an amendment to an education savings-account bill. http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/144921.html
AOL, Time Warner Promise To Make Open Access No. 1 Priority The CEOs for both America Online Inc. [NYSE:AOL], and Time Warner Inc. [NYSE:TWX], told Senate lawmakers they would uphold their recent promise to allow Internet service providers to access their combined high-speed networks, even though that promise was not yet legally binding. http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/144918.html http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/144731.html http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/144692.html
DoubleClick To Hold Off On Privacy Plan Embattled Internet advertiser DoubleClick Inc. [NASDAQ:DCLK], said it will wait for the government and Internet industry to establish privacy standards before it implements a plan to link identifiable personal data to Internet user behavior. http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/144919.html
Bell Atlantic-GTE Merger: Just One Hurdle Left The proposed merger between telecommunications giants Bell Atlantic [NYSE:BEL] and GTE [NYSE:GTE] has cleared its penultimate hurdle with approval of the transaction today by the California Public Utilities Commission. That leaves only the approval of the transaction by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) before merger can become reality. http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/144914.html
Judiciary Committee OKs Net Hooch Bill The Senate judiciary committee unanimously approved a bill that would allow state attorneys general to prosecute in a federal court wine merchants who use the Internet and other means to sell alcohol illegally across state borders. http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/144906.html
Democrats Won’t Sign Off On E-Signatures – Staffers Some Senate Democrats are stalling on allowing the Senate to pick members to attend a conference committee session to draw up compromise House-Senate language on digital signatures, according to congressional staffers. http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/144905.html
Mitnick Points To Computer Security’s ‘Weakest Link’ The government’s best efforts to stem the rising tide of computer crime will be largely ineffective unless those efforts address the human failures that make most computer intrusions possible, convicted hacker Kevin Mitnick told a Senate committee. http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/144903.html
Commerce Secretary Rejects Privacy Bills, Punts On Net Taxes Keeping true to his agency’s encouragement of Net self-regulatory privacy initiatives, Commerce Secretary William Daley told Newsbytes that he opposes online privacy legislation currently circulating in Congress. http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/144888.html
Net Sales Form Small Piece Of Economic Pie The Internet accounted for $5.3 billion in 1999 fourth quarter retail sales, but that still only counts as 0.64 percent of the total $821.2 billion in retail sales estimates for the holiday season, according to Commerce Department statistics. http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/144883.html
Sens. Burns, Hollings Hear AOL IM Complaints A group of industry executives has slammed efforts by America Online Inc. [NYSE:AOL] to keep its instant messaging system incompatible with other Internet service providers (ISPs). Eight companies complained about AOL’s IM practices in an open letter addressed to Senate Commerce Committee Ranking Member Fritz Hollings, D-S.C., and fellow Commerce member and Communications Subcommittee Chairman Conrad Burns, R-Mont., known for his “digital dozen” slate of technology bills. http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/144862.html
Lobbyists Growl Over Tech Accounting Rules Influential members of the technology community spoke out on Capitol Hill on Thursday to preserve a method of bookkeeping especially useful to tech companies during mergers or acquisitions, arguing that changing the rules would prevent the formation of new ventures on the Internet and stunt US economic growth. http://www.newsbytes.com/news/00/144928.html
Rural Schools Missing Out On High-Speed Internet Small, rural educational institutions cannot afford to reap the benefits brought by the Internet and its ultra high-speed brethren, the Next Generation Internet (NGI), witnesses from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and several universities told Senate lawmakers. http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/144833.html
FCC To Stick To Six-Month Merger Review Process The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced a proposal to streamline the merger review process by recommending a 180-day timeline for the review of license transfers. http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/144815.html
Tech Leaders Scoff At New Foreign Worker Bill A House bill aimed at alleviating the high-tech workforce shortage by boosting the number of visas available to skilled, foreign-born workers, has met with a less than enthusiastic response from high-tech industry leaders, who gripe that the bill does not go nearly as far as recently proposed Senate legislation. http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/144806.html
Online Voting Case Against Arizona Democrats Dismissed A US District Court judge late Tuesday evening dismissed a suit against the Arizona Democratic Party which sought to stop voting in the nation’s first binding online presidential primary on the grounds that it would discriminate against minorities, saying he would allow the election to go forward and void the results if they proved discriminatory. http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/144784.html
Industry Must Take Lead In Cybercrime Prevention – DoJ Despite alarming growth in the rate, severity and scope of cyberattacks in recent months, the Federal government must take a backseat to industry in the crusade to stave off future electronic threats, Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder said during a Joint House and Senate Subcommittee Hearing. http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/144719.html
Y2K Last Gasp Leaps Into Snooze Mode It may only happen every 400 years, but the fact that the year 2000 is a leap year in itself is more noteworthy than any of the minor computer glitches that have taken place so far. And according to the Administration, 8.5 billion government dollars later, along with potential US public-private spending of nearly $100 billion, the Year 2000 problem has become the ghost of survivalist angst past. http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/144710.html
Administration Tiptoes Around Net Tax Issue Where exactly the Clinton Administration stands on the thorny Internet taxation issue remained murky following a meeting between the president and the National Governors Association (NGA) Monday. http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/144696.html
NSA Eavesdropping Needs More Oversight – Rep. Barr Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., thanked the National Security Agency for its promise that it does not violate online or communications privacy rights, but said that recent advances in technology make privacy protection more difficult, despite the best intentions of the federal agency. http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/144694.html
iCraveTV Settlement Leaves Legal Issues Open Renegade Canadian Web site iCraveTV.com has agreed to stop Webcasting off-the-air signals from US and Canadian television stations in a bid to settle copyright- infringement lawsuits in both countries. http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/144688.html
Australian Domain Name Authority Chief Quits Joseph O’Reilly has unexpectedly quit his post as the head of the .au Domain Authority (auDA) – the non-profit organization whose aim is to become the industry self-regulatory body for administering the .au country-level namespace. http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/144654.html
FBI Warded Off Denial Of Service Strike The FBI confirmed that it recently warded off a denial of service attack against its Web site. http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/144651.html
Bush On Porn In Libraries: Filter This! Officials on the campaign trail of Texas Governor George W. Bush, R, took the time Monday to clarify comments “Dubya” made in Michigan before a local city’s vote on Internet filtering in public libraries, saying if you’ve gotta screen out the porn legislatively, it ought to be a local rather than a federal filter. http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/144647.html
ICANN Moves Closer To ‘At Large’ Representation The powerful and controversial organization charged with managing the Internet’s vital addressing system took another step toward filling its elected leadership gaps last week, when it unveiled a Web site aimed at luring “at-large” members. http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/144639.html
Reported by Newsbytes.com, http://www.newsbytes.com .
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