The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on telephone subsidies, with some rich areas of the country receiving up to US$23,000 per line per year from the agency's Universal Service Fund, according to a new study.
Democratic members of a Senate committee promised Wednesday to push hard for new online privacy protections and for legislation that would require companies to put security monitoring tools on their networks.
A senior Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives will soon introduce legislation designed to give Web users more control of their personal data and to give the U.S. Federal Trade Commission power to enforce voluntary privacy standards developed with Internet companies, he said Friday.
Late last week, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a budget bill that included a prohibition on the U.S. Federal Communications Commission enforcing net neutrality rules, but it's unclear whether that provision will survive.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission's antitrust settlement with Google will create few changes in the way the company operates, both critics and fans of the deal said.
The US presidential election result leaves President Barack Obama in the White House and maintains the balance of power in Congress. In many longstanding technology debates, policy experts see little movement forward, although lawmakers may look for compromises on a handful of issues.