Caron Carlson

Two years after granting the FBI a series of new electronic surveillance and search powers to combat terrorism, Congress is taking a closer look at the impact of those powers and of other provisions in the USA Patriot Act. What makes the matter particularly pressing for politicians is that critics of the act span the […]

Corporate America managed to thwart momentum this year for a law that would require public companies to report cyber-security plans to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Eager to mollify lawmakers who promised to bring the issue back up next year, the industry is now working toward a viable alternative. The most aggressive reporting proposal under […]

Perhaps rivaled only by spam, privacy-invading software, or spyware, has pushed lawmakers to consider harsher legislation. Early next year, legislators, including U.S. Reps. Mary Bono, R-Calif., and Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., plan to launch a revised version of anti-spyware legislation known as the SPI (Safeguard against Privacy Invasions) Act. Lawmakers are working with industry and the […]

SBC Communications Inc. this week expanded its IP-based services to include a network-based IP virtual private network and a hosted Voice over IP service. About two years ago, TIB Transportation Insurance Brokers replaced a frame relay network with a managed IP virtual private network service from SBC. The next step will be to converge voice […]

WASHINGTON—Trying to tie up loose ends before heading home for the year, Congress this week passed legislation dedicating nearly $3.7 billion for nanotechnology research and development. Following Senate approval earlier in the week, the House of Representatives Thursday approved the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act, which names The National Science Foundation as the […]

WASHINGTON—Two years after granting the FBI a series of new electronic surveillance and search powers to combat terrorism, Congress is taking a closer look at the impact of those powers and of other provisions in the USA Patriot Act. What makes the matter particular pressing for politicians is that the acts critics span the entire […]

If negotiating with your telecommunications provider has become more like dealing with a used-car salesman, the time is right to take a new look at the leverage the customer wields in todays networking environment, according to experts in hammering out telecom deals. While larger enterprises are apt to wield more power at the outset, size […]

The federal appeals court reviewing the governments antitrust settlement with Microsoft Corp. reopened questions at the core of the historic case. Should the software company be allowed to commingle middleware with its operating system? To what extent must it disclose technical information? And what, exactly, did it gain by the illegal steps it took to […]

When policy-makers overhauled the telecommunications landscape in 1996 and opened the local telephone market to competition for the first time, technology professionals asked what would happen to phone regulation once voice services are delivered over the Internet. Now, almost eight years later, Washington is ready to begin answering that question. The issue forces lawmakers and […]

WASHINGTON—In a project dubbed Electra, Verisign Inc. plans to expand its proprietary DNS server platform—called Atlas—into a grid-like infrastructure to support more-sophisticated traffic analysis and pattern recognition. Electra, which will be unveiled next year, will help support an early warning system for Internet attacks. The Mountain View, Calif., company will combine data streams obtained through […]