April 2008

A Bush administration lawyer resisted a San Francisco federal judge's attempts Wednesday to get him to say whether Congress can limit the president's wiretap authority in terrorism and espionage cases, calling the question simplistic. "You can't possibly make that judgment on the public record" without knowing the still-secret details of the electronic surveillance program that President Bush approved in 2001, Justice Department attorney Anthony Coppolino said at a crucial hearing in a wiretapping lawsuit. Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker didn't rule immediately on the government's request to dismiss the suit by an Islamic charity in Oregon, which says a document that federal authorities accidentally released showed it was wiretapped. But Judge Walker, in an extensive exchange with Coppolino, said Congress had spoken clearly in a 1978 law that required the government to obtain a warrant from a secret court before it could conduct electronic surveillance of suspected foreign terrorists or spies.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/23/MNAI10AKM0.DTL

Yahoo's short experiment with outsourcing some of its Web-search ads to Google has drawn scrutiny from antitrust regulators, the companies said Wednesday. Yahoo and Google said they had provided the Justice Department with unspecified information in response to questions about the two-week test, which was designed to explore how a possible collaboration could help Yahoo thwart Microsoft Corp.'s takeover bid. Yahoo management doesn't want to sell to Microsoft. It has sought alternatives, including trying to boost the profitability of its search-engine advertising by outsourcing some of its results to market leader Google. Yahoo said the test, which ended Wednesday, would involve no more than 3% of its search results. But any combination of Google and Yahoo, the top two search engines, raises antitrust concerns. The extent of the inquiry by the Justice Department was unclear Wednesday. Neither Google nor Yahoo would say what type of questions the antitrust regulators asked. Justice Department spokeswoman Gina Talamona would say only that the agency was "aware of the collaboration."
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-search24apr24,1,5114069.story
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Speaking at the Quello Communications Law & Policy Symposium, Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Robert McDowell outlined an array of market-driven media choices and then asked his audience why policymakers, "like us," were considering and, in some cases, placing the "proverbial albatross" of more regulation on broadcasters. Commissioner McDowell said adding more regulation, like new reporting requirements for stations, comes at a "tipping point" in history when broadcasters can least afford a regulatory handicap "vis-à-vis unregulated platforms like the Internet." He added that requiring broadcasters to identify categories of programming they have aired -- religious, civic affairs -- is "regulating with a wink and a nod." Reporting of "independently produced" programming smacks of a return to the days of the FCC's financial interest and syndication rules, he said, which were struck down by a court in 1992. "Government cannot outsmart an unfettered and competitive market. The better course is to equip the private sector with the freedom and flexibility necessary to resolve challenges and satisfy consumer demand on its own, while remaining vigilant -- and ready -- to jump in to resolve genuine harms that cannot be addressed any other way."
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6554493.html?rssid=193

According to a new report, 99.8 percent of the Norwegian population will have broadband access by the end of 2008, which is considered to be "a condition for a complete electronic service to all of the citizens of this land... a key to a society in which everyone can participate," said Minister of Government Administration and Reform Heidi Grande Røys.
http://www.aftenposten.no/english/article2386025.ece