Roy Mark

A Web-based operation that sold telephone records without consumer consent settled Federal Trade Commission charges Dec. 17 that it violated federal laws. The settlement bans the CEO Group—doing business as Check Em Out—from marketing or selling telephone records. The settlement imposed a total judgment of $222,381, but due to the company’s inability to pay, all […]

Federal Trade Commission Chair Deborah Platt Majoras refused Dec. 14 to recuse herself in the agency’s review of the proposed $3.1 billion merger of online advertising giants Google and DoubleClick. Her refusal received the full support of her four fellow FTC commissioners. The Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Digital Democracy questioned Majoras’ […]

WASHINGTON—Beset with preliminary technical woes and a lack of political traction in Congress and at the Federal Communications Commission, a new organization started up on Dec. 12 to promote the unlicensed use of interference buffer spectrum between television channels. The Wireless Innovation Alliance, a coalition of technology companies, public interest advocates, think tanks and higher […]

Federal Trade Commission chairwoman Deborah Platt Majoras should recuse herself from voting on the Google-DoubleClick deal because her husband works for the law firm representing DoubleClick, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Digital Democracy said Dec. 12 in an FTC filing. Both organizations have jointly filed a petition with the FTC opposed […]

The Grinch this holiday season may well prove to be some of the nation’s largest banks. With losses continuing to mount due to the collapse of the mortgage market, short-term loans are drying up and consumer confidence is falling. The grim reaper greetings from Bank of America, Wachovia, Citigroup and JPMorgan, though, are likely to […]

Consumer and public advocacy groups are urging the Federal Communications Commission to declare that text messages deserve the same nondiscriminatory treatment by telephone carriers as e-mail and voice messages. In a petition filed with the FCC on Dec. 11, the groups claim: “Mobile carriers currently can and do arbitrarily decide what customers to serve and […]

The privacy implications of Google’s proposed $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick continues to raise concerns among House Republicans. The deal is currently under regulatory scrutiny at the Federal Trade Commission. The acquisition would bring together two of the biggest players in online advertising. Google’s text-based AdSense business is based on clickable links, while DoubleClick’s technology […]

WASHINGTON-By all accounts the E-Government Act passed by Congress five years ago is a success. Last year, the governments USA.gov site received almost 100 million visitors and was hailed by Time magazine as one of the “25 Sites We Cant Live Without.” Nevertheless, approximately 2,000 government sites harbor public information unavailable through search engines like […]

Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are blasting a Bush administration proposal to cut 2009 funding by as much as half for local emergency management operations, including interoperability grants. A lack of funding could jeopardize state and local emergency management agencies’ plans to utilize spectrum that will be auctioned by the government in January. […]

While the Federal Communications Commission has moved aggressively to deregulate the broadband market by eliminating line sharing requirements for the nation’s carriers, the agency is holding fast to government-imposed regulations in the local telephone market. In a disappointing vote for Verizon, the FCC unanimously decided Dec. 4 to deny the nation’s second largest carrier’s request […]