Grant Gross

The U.S. Patriot Act suffered a blow when a New York judge slammed a controversial provision dealing with privacy of personal information. What the 107-page court order says about free speech and the U.S. Constitution.

U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley has called for the U.S. government to cancel an ongoing purchasing contract with Sun Microsystems Inc., but the company says Grassley's request is based on bad information. Grassley, an Iowa Republican, has repeatedly criticized Sun for allegedly overcharging government agencies while on a government-wide purchasing schedule at the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA).

The U.S. government will spend close to US$22 billion on IT projects by the end of September, as agencies rush to spend their budgets by the end of the fiscal year, says a report from Input, an analyst focused on government contracts.

A proposed revamp of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's air passenger screening program offers improved personal privacy, but still falls short of acceptable protection standards, according to a leading privacy advocate. The Transportation Security Administration, part of DHS, will maintain direct control of checking domestic passenger lists against terrorist watch lists.

According to a recent survey, funding and security are top concerns for government agencies when it comes to unified communications systems that integrate voice, video and data over Internet Protocol. "We're talking to the boots-on-the-ground program managers, IT directors who are really charged and tasked with getting some of this stuff done," said Aaron Heffron, vice president of Market Connections Inc., which conducted the survey for Cisco Systems Inc.

Microsoft Corp. will change how desktop search works in its Vista operating system by the end of the year, in response to an antitrust complaint by rival Google Inc., the company said in court documents released late Tuesday.

The Technology CEO Council, an advocacy group representing several tech vendor CEOs, has been meeting with U.S. presidential candidates with the hopes of receiving an encouraging response to the policies they are pushing. The council, whose members include the chief executives of Intel Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM Corp., and Dell Inc., has met with several presidential candidates in recent months, says Bruce Mehlman, executive director of the group.

The U.S. government plans to establish a national identity theft law enforcement centre and create a public education campaign about the dangers of ID theft. A task force named by President George Bush yesterday also called for national data protection standards for companies that collect and sell personal information, as well as stronger public disclosure laws.