Government

The U.S. government was shaken last year when the Office of Personnel Management disclosed that employment records affecting 21.5 million people had been breached. The Obama administration initiated several comprehensive actions designed to shore up federal data protection -- including an immediate ...

Alternative energy has become a real growth engine during the last several years. It seems to bounce up and down, depending on the leadership in the White House. President Obama is a supporter, so growth has been relatively strong in recent years. The big question is, what will happen under a new pr...

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler on Wednesday announced that he'd shared with colleagues a long sought-after proposal to loosen the set-top box's grip on home entertainment. The proposal seeks to spur competition and consumer choice in an arena dominated by large cable and satellite television providers. Wh...

The U.S. government has authorized an information technology contract with a potential value of $503 million that is designed to meet newly adopted goals for greatly improving IT acquisition. The General Services Administration, which issued the contract for software and cloud-related services, desc...

California State Assemblyman Jim Cooper last week introduced a bill seeking to ban the sale of smartphones that include unbreakable encryption. The bill would require smartphones made on or after Jan. 1, 2017, and sold in California to be capable of being decrypted and unlocked by their manufacturer...

A coalition of 59 organizations on Wednesday sent a letter to U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler calling on him to get cracking on privacy protection rules for consumers. The groups include consumer advocates such as Consumer Watchdog and the Chicago Consumer Coalition as we...

Apple this week released a diversity report showing that initiatives to broaden the makeup of its U.S. workforce haven't been as successful as CEO Tim Cook suggested last year. The EEO-1 report filed with the federal government covers Apple's 2015 hires in the United States. Its numbers vary widely ...

The Federal Trade Commission is extending its regulatory reach to the e-commerce impact of big data. For years, the FTC has asserted vigorously its authority to apply consumer protection laws to emerging developments in the IT realm. Now it is signaling that it will apply that same vigor to big data...

Privacy advocates from around the globe have taken heart from reports that Apple CEO Tim Cook pushed hard against the Obama administration's efforts to reach a compromise on encryption during a recent Silicon Valley meeting. Cook earlier this month joined a delegation of social media and technology ...

The U.S. Army may be in the walking phase of its plan to shift major portions of its information technology resources to the cloud, but a recent contracting initiative could move the service up to a jogging pace by the end of the year. The Army's progress in migrating much of its IT capabilities to ...

All but one of Apple's top team received a pay raise in 2015, according to a proxy statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission this week. While Angela Ahrendts, Apple's senior vice president for retail and online stores, didn't get a raise, she's still pulling down the highest execut...

China's State Administration for Industry and Commerce on Tuesday launched the latest in a series of investigations against Microsoft for possible violations of the country's antimonopoly law. Back in July 2014, about 100 SAIC officials burst into four Microsoft offices in various parts of China and...

Before the Internet, messages were spread by television and newspaper ads and highway billboards. Today that is done through social media. Virtually everyone knows about it, and many people use it. Does it make any sense that a U.S. government agency could violate any laws for using social media to ...

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is engaged in an internal struggle over how it should assess the effect on consumers when businesses fail to provide proper e-commerce security. The outcome of the debate, which surfaced last month, will have a significant impact on the commission's ability to initi...

The Federal Trade Commission and Wyndham Worldwide this month reached a settlement over allegations the company violated federal law regarding the protection of customer records. The settlement could have a significant impact on e-commerce in that it ended a major legal challenge to the FTC's extens...