Gov't Legislation/Regulation - News, Features, and Slideshows

News

• IT Jobs Up, Skilled Immigrants Act Stalls

  A U.S. government report showing that hiring is up had some good news for IT workers: The tech industry added about 7,100 jobs in November, an increase of 0.17% from the previous month.

• SOPA meets strident opposition at House hearing

  A controversial bill to prevent online piracy by rogue foreign sites appears poised to pass the House Judiciary Committee despite strident opposition from some lawmakers.

• Paychecks, .xxx, and domain name woes highlight House hearing

  WASHINGTON -- The best part of Wednesday's U.S. House of Representatives hearing on domain names may have happened when Anjali Hansen, an attorney for the Council of Better Business Bureaus, spoke. You could hear the frustration in her voice.

• FBI rejects FOIA request for Carrier IQ info

  The FBI has denied a request for the release of information regarding its use of Carrier IQ's software, saying that releasing the information could interfere with ongoing law enforcement operations.

• Offshoring comes under bipartisan attack in Congress

  WASHINGTON -- Four U.S. lawmakers -- three Democrats and one Republican -- have teamed up to attack call center outsourcing by introducing a bill that would penalize any company that moves a call center overseas.

• Twitter didn't fuel U.K. riots, study says

  After the U.K. government blamed social networks for fueling the riots last summer, a study shows that Twitter did not incite rioters but was used as a source for positive work.

• Carrier IQ downplays 2010 patent request

  A Carrier IQ executive Monday downplayed the significance of the company's effort to patent a technology it said can help wireless carriers undertake "advertising audience segmentation analysis and content copyright analytics."

• AT&T Merger Plan Hits Huge Roadblock

  Despite mounting U.S. government opposition, AT&T has so far vowed to continue seeking antitrust clearance for its $39 billion merger with rival wireless carrier T-Mobile USA.

• FAQ: Behind the Carrier IQ rookit controversy

  The recent disclosure that top mobile phone providers are using software from Carrier IQ that critics say can gather and track all sorts of personal data from a user's smartphone has sparked a firestorm of controversy.

• Skills-based visa change helps some, hurts others

  The U.S. House of Representatives has approved a bill that will help workers from India, in particular, and China get employment-based green cards over the next few years.

• AT&T may sell off T-Mobile assets to gain approval for $39B merger

  AT&T could be negotiating to sell off as much as 40% of T-Mobile USA assets in an effort to to garner Department of Justice approval of its imperiled $39 billion acquisition of the Deutsche Telekom unit.

• NetApp, Iron Mountain team up on medical archive service

  Iron Mountain <a href="http://www.ironmountain.com/Company/Company-News/News-Categories/Press-Releases/2011/November/28.aspx">today announced</a> a secure cloud-based archive service for medical data based on NetApp's grid-architecture, object-based, storage software.

• This year's H-1B cap is reached at quicker pace

  The annual H-1B cap has been reached for this year, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and at a pace that is two months ahead of last year.

• Is the AT&T merger with T-Mobile USA dead?

  Given the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) staff opposition to the proposed AT&amp;T merger with T-Mobile USA, it's fair to ask: Is the $39 billion deal dead? And if that's true, what happens to T-Mobile? Or to AT&amp;T, which could face a multi-billion dollar penalty payment to T-Mobile if it walks away from the deal.

• Will Congress crush tech spending?

  The failure of the Congressional Super Committee to reach a deficit reduction agreement triggers automatic federal spending cuts beginning the next fiscal year, which will likely make a lot of government IT contractors nervous.