Government

A recent proposal in the U.S. Senate to curb the impact of electronic surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency could enhance privacy for citizens and benefit businesses as well. However, major information technology companies that help the government collect telecom and Internet data s...

Yahoo and Google last week announced they'd be teaming up to secure their Web mail systems with encryption by the end of next year. "Our goal is to make end-to-end encryption fully available in 2015," Yahoo Vice President of Information Security Alex Stamos said at the Black Hat hackers' conference ...

California is poised to enact a consumer-friendly law requiring smartphone manufacturers to install "kill switches" -- that is, antitheft technology that would be activated by the carrier when a consumer alerts it that a device has been stolen or lost. The technology not only wipes the device of per...

U.S. government agencies are struggling to manage the huge amount of data they generate or process, despite the goals of a program designed to operate thousands of data centers more efficiently. The idea behind the FDCCI was to save space, energy and IT costs by consolidating woefully underutilized ...

The U.S. Department of Transportation is drafting a notice of proposed rulemaking, or NPRM, that could restrict consumers' ability to talk on their cellphones during airplane flights. Following last year's Federal Communications Commission proposal to overturn decades-old rules barring in-flight cel...

Microsoft's objections to a court order requiring it to turn over a customer's emails held on a server in Ireland have been rejected. Judge Loretta Preska of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York last week issued an oral ruling in the case, reportedly saying the Electronic Co...

The U.S. government's foray into cloud computing could hardly be called "mature," but it appears to be moving from infancy to something akin to pre-teen status. Agencies increasingly are embracing the cloud, and the pace of acquisition reflects more comfort with the solution. Several recently launch...

The TV game show The Price is Right may be an entertaining diversion, but for federal information technology vendors, getting the price right in government contracts is serious business. Two major software providers recently found out how serious it can be as a result of separate U.S. Department of ...

China's State Administration for Industry & Commerce on Tuesday announced it has launched an investigation into Microsoft under the country's antimonopoly laws, according to press reports. The announcement comes days after SAIC officials reportedly raided Microsoft offices in four cities, seizin...

China is ramping up its campaign against Microsoft, following its ban in May on the installation of Windows 8 on government computers. Officials of China's State Administration for Industry & Commerce reportedly have made unannounced visits to Microsoft offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou an...

Looking for evidence of disability fraud, the district attorney for Manhattan last year obtained 381 search warrants, supported by a 93-page affidavit, and served them on Facebook as part of a long-term investigation into a massive scheme. The search warrants were "sealed," which means they were not...

Vendors could be spending a busy summer preparing to respond to a major federal IT project. The Defense Department is planning to issue a request for bids on a multibillion dollar EHR system by the end of September. The objective of the program is to modernize DoD's EHR system and to make records a...

The Internet adoption rate in China appears to be slowing, based on a report that shows the lowest six-month increase in the number of Internet users in eight years. The total number of Internet users in the country reached 632 million by the end of June. That includes the 14.4 million people who jo...

Amazon is ramping up its drone delivery project and is hoping for approval to conduct outdoor testing on its own property. The company has petitioned the FAA for an exemption from rules barring it from testing the devices. Amazon last year revealed it was working on a project that would allow it to ...

In the wake of the problem-plagued rollout of the Affordable Care Act, similar government health IT efforts are being closely scrutinized within the administration and by Congress. That's why the DoD recently released the third version of a multibillion dollar proposal for a much-improved military h...