Grant Gross

RSA Security Inc. on Monday announced a smart-card management product aimed at helping U.S. government agencies comply with an upcoming presidential directive mandating the use of chip-based identity cards.

A U.S. Senate committee has approved a bill that would outlaw the practice of remotely installing software that collects a computer users' personal information without consent. In addition to prohibiting spyware, the Spyblock (Software Principles Yielding Better Levels of Consumer Knowledge) Act would also outlaw the installation of adware programs without a computer user's permission.

A U.S. district court has ordered a Web business offering free music files, browser upgrades and ring-tones to halt downloads of alleged spyware and adware, at the request of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which announced the court order on Thursday.

Sprint Nextel Corp. and four large cable television providers will move beyond the Holy Grail of integrated telecommunications offerings -- the so-called triple play of voice, data and video -- with a joint venture aimed at adding wireless service to the mix.

A U.S. House of Representatives committee has set a deadline for U.S. television stations to switch to digital broadcasts, but the House deadline is earlier than the deadline set by a Senate committee a week ago.

Questions about the security and accuracy of electronic voting systems are likely to continue into the 2006 national elections, because the U.S. government has not yet completed work on electronic voting guidelines, according to a new government report.

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee has approved an extra 30,000 foreign worker visas for 2006 under a visa program popular with many technology companies, but the increase was halved from an earlier committee proposal.

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and its U.S. subsidiary Samsung Semiconductor Inc. have agreed to plead guilty and pay a US$300 million fine for participating in an "international conspiracy" to fix prices on DRAM (dynamic RAM), the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Thursday.