Internet

The head of the Federal Communications Commission will warn Congress not to repeal the controversial Internet regulations enacted last December, CNET has learned.

Undoing the agency's Net neutrality rules will "increase uncertainty, decrease investment, and hurt job creation," FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski will say, according to a draft of his prepared remarks.

Genachowski will offer an unyielding, point-by-point defense of the FCC's 3-2 vote, which fell along party lines, saying that it's already increased investment and that relying on antitrust laws to police errant behavior would be "problematic" and "ill-suited to the … Read more

As U.S. special forces assaulted Osama bin Laden's walled compound in Pakistan, a Twitter user was already recording a rough outline of the events to come.

Sohaib Athar, who describes himself as a 33-year-old programmer and consultant "taking a break from the rat race by hiding in the mountains with his laptops," happened to be staying up late at the time. And, from an account called Really Virtual, he live-blogged what he heard.

Athar's real-time dispatches and self-effacing follow-ups have transformed him into an instant online celebrity. He's received at least one marriage proposal--through … Read more

The first U.S. government report that Osama bin Laden was dead didn't come from the White House. Nor was it the Pentagon, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or the State Department.

Instead, it appears to have originated with a freshman Tea Party congressman from Florida, Dennis Ross, who posted a note to Twitter at 10:41 p.m. ET yesterday saying: "Bin Laden is dead. GOD BLESS AMERICA!" (See list of related CNET stories.)

That public announcement came nearly an hour before President Obama's White House appearance. It came three minutes before The New York … Read more

Nearly 10 years ago, Osama bin Laden changed the way many of us lived.

The coordinated suicide attacks on September 11, 2001, began what would become known as the War on Terror. They led directly to the invasion of Afghanistan and the formation of the Department of Homeland Security, and indirectly to the Guantanamo Bay prison and a rise in government centralization and secrecy.

What's not as obvious is how al Qaeda's attacks, at least in technology and political circles, shifted the discussion from protecting electronic privacy to facilitating government surveillance.

Bin Laden was killed yesterday in Pakistan … Read more

A Democratic congressman isn't satisfied with Apple's explanation of why iPhones keep track of their users' locations and wants a federal probe into the Cupertino software marker's privacy practices, CNET has learned.

Rep. Jay Inslee of Washington said through a spokesman yesterday that a Federal Trade Commission investigation is still needed to "ensure all the questions regarding this issue, including the lack of disclosure, are answered." Inslee said he has not received a response from Apple to a statement he sent out last week.

Inslee, who is a member of the House Energy and Commerce … Read more

Google acknowledged today that it collects location information from Android devices, but downplayed concerns about privacy by saying the information is not "traceable to a specific user."

That claim, it turns out, depends on the definition of "traceable."

According to detailed records provided to CNET by a security researcher, Android phones regularly connect to Google.com and disgorge a miniature data dump that includes time down to the millisecond, current and recent GPS coordinates, nearby Wi-Fi network addresses, and two 16-letter strings representing a device ID that's unique to each phone.

Apple, which came under fire this week … Read more

The Huffington Post and ABC News easily topped a ranking of the most visible online news sites conducted after Google's recent algorithm changes.

In third place was Fox News, which received a significant boost over the course of a month with 22 first-page appearances on Google for its main Web site, up from 11 in March, according to CNET's analysis of nearly 100,000 search results. By contrast, Huffington Post enjoyed 54 first-page mentions and ABC News a total of 35.

To test how Google's new "Panda" algorithm, coupled with another announcement last week, affected … Read more

The Obama administration said today that it's moving ahead with a plan for broad adoption of Internet IDs despite concerns about identity centralization, and hopes to fund pilot projects next year.

At an event hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C., administration officials downplayed privacy and civil liberties concerns about their proposal, which they said would be led by the private sector and not be required for Americans who use the Internet.

There's "no reliable way to verify identity online" at the moment, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said, citing the rising … Read more

The U.S. Justice Department today dismissed as "absurd" any privacy and free speech concerns about its request for access to the Twitter accounts of WikiLeaks volunteers.

In a 32-page brief filed in federal court in Virginia, prosecutors characterized their request for a court order as a "routine compelled disclosure" that raises no constitutional issues.

These types of records "are widely subpoenaed by grand juries without raising 'chilling effects,' or occasioning constitutional litigation and delays," prosecutors wrote. Any claim that Twitter's logs "are subject to heightened protections under the First Amendment is … Read more