Articles about Government

I have a special request for you, President Barack Obama. Intervene on behalf of a great American institution. Surely all it takes is an executive order. You bailed out General Motors and the banks, something you reminded all of us during your reelection campaign. Surely you can come to the aid of a company dear to you. Research in Motion has a big problem. Nokia asks courts in Britain, Canada and the United States to ban BlackBerries, because of a contract dispute. You have the power to stop this travesty before it starts.

We all know how you feel about BlackBerry; after becoming president you fought to keep your RIM smartphone and won. BlackBerry security protocols are good enough even for our Commander-in-Chief. You're an addict and make no secret of the fact. Hell, there have been rumors among hacker communities for years that you are a frequent poster on some CrackBerry forums. You're a fanboy, Mr. President. Now is time to put your loyalty to practice, by saving the tech you love so dearly.

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DARPA, or the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency as it is technically known, has a history of turning seemingly crazy ideas into reality. Now this branch of the Defense Department pursues a new camera/sensor system designed to aid soldiers' vision on the battlefield.

The agency describes it this way: "As missions shift, however, and warfighters are required to work in smaller teams and access more remote locations, it is technology that must adapt if it is to remain useful. Desirable features for many new man-portable systems include small size, light weight, minimal power consumption, low cost, ease of use, multi-functionality and, to the extent possible, network friendliness".

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The U.S. Government's Federal Emergency Management Agency, known commonly by the acronym FEMA, is cracking down on false information and rumor circulating on the internet about Hurricane Sandy and related recovery efforts.

FEMA's introduction of its Snopes-like site follows a highly publicized Twitter misinformation campaign perpetrated by a former hedge fund analyst and republican political consultant tweeting under the name @comfortablysmug.

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Trustbusters and other regulators still have their eyes on Google, which in response has maintained high lobbying presence in Washington. Is that effort paying off?

This week is surprisingly chock full of happenings -- good or bad, you be the judge -- for Google in the areas of lobbying and antitrust. Governments changed their positions on antitrust, rivals combined efforts and Google shifted strategy. All-in-all, it must be busy at the Washington, DC offices.

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Microsoft's Office 365 cloud productivity suite gained even more momentum on Thursday, with both the Department of Transportation and Federal Aviation Administration announcing they will move some 80,000 employees to the platform.

The deal is worth some $91 million over seven years, and is provided through Microsoft partner Computer Sciences Corp. Office 365 plays a central role in the SaaS deal, which will offer DOT and FAA employees email, instant messaging, calendaring and webconferencing tools in a multi-platform environment.

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Microsoft is making a play for the lucrative government sector, releasing Office 365 for Government on Wednesday. The service is much like the standard product, including Exchange Online, Lync Online, SharePoint Online and an option to purchase a local version of Office Professional Plus.

Where the government version of Office 365 is different is how it stores data. Government agencies typically require a good deal more security, so all data is stored in a "segregated community cloud". This means data for government customers will be completely separate from other Office 365 users.

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On Monday, hacktivist group Anonymous announced it will be releasing 1.7 gigabytes of private data it has acquired from the United States Department of Justice, in an event it called "Monday Mail Mayhem." The group claimed the act was being done to "spread information, to allow the people to be heard and to know the corruption in their government. We are releasing it to end the corruption that exists, and truly make those who are being oppressed free."

New York-based security company Identity Finder ran an analysis on the data after it was released on Tuesday, and found the file dump actually contained no sensitive personal information, no secret internal documents, and no internal emails.

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Today, the European Union's Competition Commission set the stage for an antitrust showdown with Google by offering settlement ahead of four pending violations. Proposal would come from the search giant, which initial response suggests resolution won't be easy.

The case revolves around a nearly two-year old effort to determine if Google abuses its dominant position in search. Some of these concerns involve the Mountain View, Calif. company's near-stranglehold of the web advertising market, of which the European Commission received several complaints.

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As the United States approaches its quadrennial general elections, the talk of election tech and voter security is beginning to rise once again. In 2008, during the last general elections, we saw portable, touchscreen voting machines, e-voting security issues, and mandatory paper trails.

Today, election security company Scytl announced it had successfully implemented its voting encryption technology on mobile platforms Android and iOS which could allow people to securely vote on their smartphones and tablets. It looks like this year "m-voting" is going to be a topic of discussion on top of the usual topic of "e-voting."

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As Research in Motion begins to circle the drain, there is one last bright spot for the company that may prevent an all-out collapse: US President Barack Obama. While it may seem somewhat silly, Obama's continued use of his BlackBerry is indicative of a large group of core users that have not abandoned the platform by and large: government.

Obama came from a generation of politicians that found their BlackBerries indispensable tools in the day-to-day business of politics. The smartphone has become so commonplace in Washington that our President famously refused to give up his own device upon taking office in 2009.

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