Government & Public Sector

When student visa approval forms for 9/11 hijackers Mohammed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi arrived at Huffman Aviation in Venice, Fla., six months after the two men had died flying hijacked jets into the World Trade Center in New York City, it was clear that the system that tracked foreign students was in need of repair.

Net users and Internet service providers in France are mounting a last-ditch protest against a piece of legislation entitled A Bill to Promote Confidence in the Digital Economy, which entered its final reading in the French national assembly Thursday.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman in late December called for the creation of an automated system for identifying and tracking farm animals to improve the government's ability to respond to emergencies, such as the case of mad cow disease discovered in Washington state.

The Chinese government has granted licensing rights for the security protocol at the heart of China's national WLAN (wireless LAN) standard to nine more companies, a spokeswoman for the State Encryption Management Committee (SEMC) said Tuesday.

This U.S. election year, rather than punching holes or connecting dots on paper ballots, many of us will cast our votes on electronic touch screens.

Microsoft Corp. is continuing efforts to sell software upgrades to the Israeli government, despite the government's recent decision to stop buying Microsoft applications in protest over the Redmond, Washington, company's sales policies.

There's no question that e-mail is addicting for many and an unavoidable workplace necessity. For good or ill, e-mail prevails. But do privacy rights have to take a backseat for this convenience? Do we endure spams and scams as a tradeoff in a virtual world? What are the ethical issues related to e-mail?

The discovery of a single cow with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in a Washington state dairy herd in late December illustrates the need for a national livestock identification system to trace infected cattle in the U.S., government and beef industry officials say. But plans to deploy such a system are still hobbled by a lack of funding.