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Supreme Court Takes ‘Informational Privacy’ Case
The U.S. Supreme Court is agreeing to decide how much personal information the federal bureaucracy may acquire on its workers. The justices, without comment, decided Monday to review a lower-court decision surrounding the concept of so-called “ informational privacy .” The 9th U.S.
Continue reading »White House Cyber Czar: “There is No Cyberwar”
Howard Schmidt, the new cybersecurity czar for the Obama administration, has a short answer for the drumbeat of rhetoric claiming the U.S. is caught up in a cyberwar that it is losing. “There is no cyber war,” Schmidt told Wired.com in a sit-down interview Wednesday at the RSA Security Conference in San Francisco.
Continue reading »Lawmakers Punt Patriot Act to Obama
Congress is sending President Barack Obama legislation that extends three provisions of the Patriot Act — despite heated debate among lawmakers that the surveillance measure goes too far. The act, hastily adopted six weeks after the 2001 terror attacks, greatly expands the government’s ability to spy on Americans in the name of national security. Three measures of the act were set to expire at the end of 2009, but in December lawmakers extended the deadline to the end of February in hopes of reaching a compromise.
Continue reading »Dark Knight Cammer Gets 2 Years in Prison
In 2008, the latest Batman movie ‘The Dark Knight’ became a massive hit, setting a one-day box office record of $66.4 million on its opening day and taking $996,500,000 by the end of the year. Of course, Warner worked hard to hinder piracy, even handing out night-vision goggles in Australia to thwart cammers. Over in the United States, however, much lower-tech means were used to identify an individual attempting to record the movie.
Continue reading »US DOE readies $8.33 billion nuclear loan guarantee
Earlier today, the US Department of Energy announced that it was ready to guarantee $8.33 billion in loans for the first nuclear power plant to be constructed under its auspices in decades. The project, a planned expansion of the Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Georgia, would involve building two additional reactors that generate a total of 2.2GW of power.
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