Technology & U.S. Politics

The tax-free purchasing haven known as the Internet may be nearing an end, as delegates from 32 states on 13 November 2002 approved a model interstate agreement to reform and streamline the USA’s localized sales tax system.

The Council on Foreign Relations issued a report on 25 October 2002 that outlined the lack of progress in the U.S. to prepare for another terrorist attack, and focused on (among other things) the need to secure America’s surface-freight cargo facilities. This lack of progress is all the more perplexing, given ...

On 18 September, the President’s Critical Infrastructure Protection Board released its draft National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, but most of the report’s recommendations offered guidelines for voluntary steps and little in the way of concrete requirements, timetables, or actions.

If anyone still harbors doubts that the civilized world now takes IT security more seriously, he or she should read an August 2002 report from the Organisation For Economic Co-Operation And Development (OECD).

In recent weeks, a movement has emerged to take advantage of publicly-available wireless local area network capacity that so far has escaped the grasp of commercial interests and governments. And it shows once more the ability of the Web to spread ideas in a way that would make the early Web ...

A recent poll shows IT professionals, as a group, say we can expect more attacks on U.S. government systems, and they blame the government itself for not being adequately prepared.

President Bush's announcement of a new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on 6 June focused largely on the rearrangement of organizational-chart boxes. But moving the boxes is the easy part. Getting a technical infrastructure and management culture that encourage the sharing of knowledge promises to be much tougher.

In the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 events, it has become clear that misinformation about the United States can spread like wildfire, through information technologies (IT), such as the Web and e-mail. The United States once had a professional public affairs agency to explain American policies and ideas to overseas ...

Disclosures of how the suspected 11 September hijackers used driver’s licenses acquired with fake credentials to hide their identities, have stimulated calls for national standards on drivers licenses. Proponents believe uniform rules for driver’s licenses will prevent criminals from hiding their true identities and reduce incidences of identity theft. Privacy advocates, ...

Ever since the IT industry began exercising its political clout, the industry’s business managers known as Suits, have set the political agenda, rather than the Geeks -- the architects, engineers, and code-writers who actually create the technology. Now the Geeks want to be heard, and are getting organized.