Government

A federal appeals court's Tuesday ruling on Net neutrality has sparked dire predictions: Streaming video will cost more; Internet-based multiplayer games could get expensive; and innovation might be stifled. Credo Mobile is gathering names for a petition to Federal Communications Commission chair To...

Net Neutrality received a body slam from a federal appeals court Tuesday, but the door was left open for resuscitating the policy. In a case brought by Verizon against the Federal Communications Commission, the judges on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia found the agency...

The raft of problems connected to the launch of HealthCare.gov appears to have sunk the fortunes of the private contractor paid for running the site. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, charged with overseeing the health insurance marketplace, announced Saturday that it had awarded Accen...

Further proof that the NSA surveillance scandal is impacting the United States IT industry came on Friday with the publication of a study conducted for Canadian Web hosting and cloud services provider Peer1 Hosting. Fully 64 percent of the 300 UK- and Canada-based respondents to the survey hoped to ...

Civil liberties groups and privacy advocates in the United States rejoiced when U.S. Federal District Court Judge Richard Leon ruled last month that the NSA's collection of bulk telephony metadata is likely a violation of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. However, their joy was short-li...

The NSA's surveillance of Americans' emails, Web searches and phone calls has angered the nation, but lawmakers remain divided on the issue. Bipartisan groups have spoken out against the surveillance and a few have introduced legislation to curb it, but some contend it is essential to protect Americ...

The U.S. Supreme Court has decided to jump into a software patent case that could resolve the muddled situation that has been vexing IT companies, legal experts and federal judges for years. Specifically, the Supreme Court said earlier this month that it would rule on Alice Corp. Pty. v. CLS Bank In...

Delta Air Lines this week announced that it will ban in-flight cellphone calls amid growing opposition to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission's proposal to allow them. Delta employees, particularly flight crews, are opposed to on-board cellphone calls, CEO Richard Anderson said in a memo to t...

The Obama administration has reached into Microsoft's ranks for the tech talent it needs to fix the Affordable Care Act cock-up. The White House on Tuesday named Kurt DelBene, who started at Microsoft in 1992 and most recently served as president of its lucrative Office Division, to oversee HealthCa...

Innovation often comes slowly to the U.S. government. It has taken several years, for example, for federal agencies to get used to cloud technology -- and it will likely be several more before that technology is fully embraced at the federal level. That pace also seems to be the case for the federal...

The Obama administration's support of Big Data technology for more efficient and effective government operations was highlighted at a recent White House sponsored conference that featured presentations on more than 30 successful public and private sector projects. "Realizing the enormous potential o...

The European Commission has issued a stark warning to Nokia to not become a patent troll. The company sold most of its mobile phone business to Microsoft earlier this year but retained its patent portfolio. The EC cleared the acquisition last week, but the deal has sparked concerns that Nokia may mo...

The United States House of Representatives on Thursday passed the Innovation Act, a bipartisan bill seeking to curb frivolous lawsuits by patent trolls, by a vote of 325-91. Bill H.R. 3309, whose chief sponsor is House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, will go before the Senate where anoth...

Microsoft is taking steps to make its customers' data more secure in the wake of revelations about government spying. The company was implicated in National Security Agency snooping operations after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked documents related to the agency's activities earlier this...

In the waning days of the current session of Congress, patent reform is one issue that's very much alive. Major IT companies and business associations are making sure their voices are heard in what has become a typical end-of-year legislative scramble. Their efforts may not result in passage of a bi...