theodp writes "Congress is now calling for a Dept. of Labor investigation into a Pittsburgh law firm after a video showing its attorneys advising employers how to game the immigration system was posted on YouTube. Cohen & Grigsby, the firm in question, issued a statement insisting their statements were commandeered and misused, but would not allow CBS to view the original video in its entirety. Cohen & Grigsby has also been advising employers since 2002 that they have nothing to fear if they keep employees in the dark about the existence of DOL-required H-1B Public Access Files."

sgt_doom writes "The C.I.A. announced it was going to reveal "skeletons" by declassifying hundreds of pages of documents detailing illegal abuses over the years. As a preamble, the National Security Archive at George Washington University released a separate set of documents covering internal government deliberations of the abuses from January 1975. Mandatory reading for all those history-challenged individuals who believe government knows best!"

Raver32 sends in word of a PC World article reporting that EU officials are looking beyond Google in their examination of the impact search engines have on privacy. Quoting: "A panel of European data protection officials called the Article 29 Working Group decided Wednesday to request information from Google's rivals amid concerns that search engines are holding onto information about the people who use them for too long, Hustinx said. Hustinx... declined to name the companies. However, they are believed to include Yahoo Inc., Lycos Inc. and Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Live.com."

Spamicles writes "The Senate Judiciary Committee voted Thursday to subpoena documents from the Bush Administration related to the government's admitted eavesdropping on Americans' overseas emails and phone calls without getting court approval. In a 13-3 vote, the Committee decided to authorize its chairman to issue subpoenas for documents related to the NSA warrantless surveillance program. Nearly any request is going to be met with tough resistance from the White House, and the confrontation over the documents 'could set the stage for a constitutional showdown over the separation of powers.'"

tanman writes "After reading an article in the Miami Herald that said "[President] Bush's twin daughters gave him a CD they had made for him to listen to while exercising," a Florida lawyer calculated statutory damages of $1.8 million and has sent a letter to the RIAA asking that they 'display the same vigor in prosecuting this matter and protecting the rights of your rights-holders that it has displayed in enforcing those rights against other alleged violators.' From the letter: 'This is a serious violation of copyright. As you know, whichever of your member organizations that are right[s]-holders for the copied musical works may be entitled to statutory damages of $150,000.00 per musical work copied.'" Update: 06/22 18:55 GMT by KD : The lawyer in question has retracted his analysis and now says no laws were broken, probably.

DesertBlade writes "French government officials are no longer allowed to use BlackBerries for official correspondence. The reason? Fear that the US government will snoop out French national secrets via RIM's network. From the article: '"The risks of interception are real. It is economic war," daily Le Monde quoted Alain Juillet, in charge of economic intelligence for the government, as saying. With BlackBerries, there is "a problem with the protection of information," he said. Juillet's office confirmed that he spoke to Le Monde but said he would not talk to other reporters. Officials at the presidential Elysee Palace and the prime minister's office were not immediately available for comment. Le Monde said information sent from BlackBerries goes through servers in the United States and Britain, and that France fears that the U.S. National Security Agency can snoop.'"

Skapare writes "According to this ReclaimTheMedia article, the Local Community Radio Act of 2007 (PDF) would remove the artificial restrictions imposed on LPFM by a 2000 law passed at the urging of corporate radio giants and NPR, claiming that small community stations would interfere with the signals of larger stations. If passed, this bill will pave the way for educational groups, nonprofits, unions, schools and local governments to launch new local radio stations across the country."

JonRob writes "The Open Rights Group has released a report on challenges faced by voting technology. Using the May 2007 Scottish/English elections as a testbed, researchers have collated hundreds of observations into a verdict on voting in the digital age. 'The report provides a comprehensive look at elections that used e-counting or e-voting technologies. As a result of the report's findings ORG cannot express confidence in the results for the areas we observed. This is not a declaration we take lightly but, despite having had accredited observers on location, having interviewed local authorities and having filed Freedom of Information requests, ORG is still not able to verify if votes were counted accurately and as voters intended.' The report is available online in pdf format for download."

perbert writes "As seen in an interview in IEEE Spectrum: Qualcomm v. Broadcom. Amazon v. IBM. Apple v. seemingly everyone. The number of high-profile patent lawsuits in this country has reached a staggering level. Hoping to curtail the orgy of tech-industry litigation, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is experimenting with reforming the way patents are applied for and processed. Launched on 18 June 2007 was an Internet-based peer-review program whereby anyone (even you) can help to evaluate a number of software patent applications voluntarily submitted for public evaluation. The one-year pilot Peer-to-Patent program is a collaboration between the USPTO and New York Law School's Institute for Information Law and Policy, in New York City. The program's Web site allows users to weigh in on patent applications by researching, evaluating, submitting, and discussing prior art, which is any existing information, such as articles in technology journals and other patents, relevant to the applicant's claims."

An anonymous reader writes "Michael Geist is reporting that a Canadian parliamentary committee has demanded that the government establish a Canadian DMCA. The demand, which comes in a study on counterfeiting and piracy (PDF) released on Wednesday night, recommends ratification of the WIPO Internet treaties, increasing damage awards for copyright infringement, creating new offenses for selling modification devices, and encouraging prosecutors to seek jail time for piracy violations."

*SECADM writes "Learning from Microsoft's error, Google is building a lobbying power house in Washington." From the Washington Post article: Two years ago, Google was on the verge of making that Microsoft-like error. Davidson, then a 37-year-old former deputy director of the Center for Democracy & Technology, was the search-engine company's sole staff lobbyist in Washington. As recently as last year, Google co-founder Sergey Brin had trouble getting meetings with members of Congress. To change that, Google went on a hiring spree and now has 12 lobbyists and lobbying-related professionals on staff here — more than double the size of the standard corporate lobbying office — and is continuing to add people.

brandonY writes "The founder of Creative Commons, the Stanford lawyer behind the 'Eldred v. Ashcroft' case, and the author of 'Code' has spent the last 10 years working tirelessly on behalf of limited copyright terms, net neutrality, and the public domain. Tuesday, Lawrence Lessig announced on his blog that he has "decided to shift my academic work, and soon, my activism" from fighting the good fight for the public domain to fighting the good fight against corruption and the influence of big money's effects on legislation in general."

In the wake of yesterday's announcement of a UK ban on Manhunt 2 , Rockstar has registered its disappointment at the BBFC's decision. The company simply stated that they 'respect those who have different opinions about the horror genre and videogames as a whole, but we hope they will also consider the opinions of the adult gamers for whom this product is intended.' Meanwhile, here in the US, the ESRB has given the game the dreaded AO rating, for adults only. If you're unfamiliar with this seldom-seen designation, it's essentially the 'kiss of death' for a title at retail; a number of popular videogame outlets refuse to carry titles with that rating. MTV's Stephen Totilo has a lengthy and considered discussion of these proceedings. "For 'Manhunt 2,' signs pointed to the title being both less and more extreme than the first. Gone from press previews were mentions of snuff films and Directors. Instead, a more traditionally violent video game premise: one man's struggle to stay alive in an insane asylum gone mad."

slugo writes with a CNN article about young professionals increasingly aware of the small part of the internet they're allowed to play in. Intelligent and internet-savvy, these users are frustrated by China's overactive concern for internet health. "Yang Zhou is no cyberdissident, but recent curbs on his Web surfing habits by China's censors have him fomenting discontent ... Yang's fury erupted a few days ago when he found he could not browse his friend's holiday snaps on Flickr.com, due to access restrictions by censors after images of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre were posted on the photo-sharing Web site. "Once you've complained all you can to your friends, what more can you do? What else is there but anger and disillusionment?" Yang said after venting his anger with friends at a hot-pot restaurant in Beijing. The blocking of Flickr is the latest casualty of China's ongoing battle to control its sprawling Internet. Wikipedia and a raft of other popular Web sites, discussion boards and blogs have already fallen victim to the country's censors."

An anonymous reader writes "An article over at ComputerWorld implies that the EU Privacy Directive, or something like it, will soon be signed into law here in the USA. The author seems to think this is a good thing, but I'm not so sure. From the article: 'We've finally come to realize that self-regulation by industry hasn't worked. The states have stepped in, creating the same situation of conflicting regulation that led to the creation of the EU privacy directive. The only question now is if the law that comes out of Congress will be a small step strictly focused on breaches, such as S.239, or whether we take the bigger step of forming a permanent committee under the FTC to monitor privacy as outlined by S.1178. Either way, the U.S. is finally moving away from the fractured environment of the past and toward a comprehensive privacy strategy.' Is it time for a national privacy law or 'Privacy Czar', or are we better off letting things be?"

An anonymous reader writes "This is a cool redistricting game that was launched out of the capitol building in Washington DC last week. It was created by the USC Game Innovation Lab and has been getting lots of press. It's about time someone took on a tough issue like redistricting reform using the power of the internet." It's crazy that gerrymandering is actually good fodder for a video game.

Spamicles alerts us to a report just issued (PDF) by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. At least 88 White House officials used Republican National Committee email accounts for government business. The RNC has destroyed at least some of the emails from 51 of those officials. Law requires emails sent by officials to be stored or recorded. There is evidence that White House lawyers and the (current) Attorney General knew of this but did not act to stop it. From the article: "These e-mail accounts were used by White House officials for official purposes, such as communicating with federal agencies about federal appointments and policies... Given the heavy reliance by White House officials on RNC e-mail accounts, the high rank of the White House officials involved, and the large quantity of missing e-mails, the potential violation of the Presidential Records Act may be extensive."

myspace-cn sends us to Bo Lipari's blog where it is revealed that Microsoft has moved forcefully into New York State with proposed changes to NY state election law drafted by Microsoft attorneys. A document has been circulating (PDF) among the legislators for a while now. The proposed changes would gut the source-code escrow and review provisions in current law that were hard-fought-for and passed in New York in 2005. Microsoft is siding with the makers of voting machines that run on Windows — the company doesn't want its code inspected by outsiders. From the article: "Now the software giant has gone a step further, not just saying 'we won't comply with your law' but actively trying to change state law to serve their corporate interests... Adding insult to injury, these changes are being slipped into a bill that may be voted on Monday or Tuesday, June 18 or 19."

Martin writes "Microsoft has agreed to change the terms of its school agreement contract with Norwegian regional municipalities, following a complaint by Norwegian open-source software company Linpro to the Norwegian Competition Authority. Microsoft 'introduced two kinds of flexibility in the agreement, that were previously missing,' the head of the company's Norway operations said. One of these 'kinds of flexibility' involved Microsoft not getting paid a license fee for each Linux and Mac computer in schools."

The QuikScat satellite used for predicting the intensity and path of hurricanes could fail at any time (it's already past its designed lifetime). Without this satellite, the accuracy of US forecasters' predictions could be degraded by up to 16% — and there are no plans for any replacement. Bill Proenza, director of the National Hurricane Center, has been outspokenly critical of his superiors on this situation, but he has been warned to stop commenting on it.