October 1 - 12:50am EDT   A bill pertaining to accelerating growth of broadband service was recently passed through both the Senate and the House, and is currently undergoing its final approval at the Senate and the President. PC Mag writes that measure S. 1492 seeks to ensure underserved communities are provided with proper service, as well as updating the government's definition of what broadband service is. The FCC considers 200 Kilobits per second to be broadband, which is not concurrent with modern technology. [full story]

August 15 - 8:10pm EDT   During the second quarter of 2008, Apple reportedly spend $450,000 on lobbying within the federal government, under a broad spectrum of interests in energy conservation, education, and intellectual property rights. Forbes writes that a disclosure form – which Apple filed July 21st – shows Apple dividing the aforementioned figure among patent reforms, consumer product safety, No Child Left Behind, and energy efficiency, as well as initiatives to quash spyware. [full story]

June 12 - 12:20am EDT   The Canadian government on Wednesday announced it would hold a press conference regarding pending amendments to the Copyright Act, a move said to resemble the DMCA measure in the US. The conference is set to transpire at 9:30 on Thursday, June 12th for press, with ministerial comments following at 10:45. Press have been advised that no wireless communications devices would be permitted at the assembly, including cell phones, modems, and wireless microphones. [full story]

May 26 - 5:45pm EDT   The latest update in the Indian government's ban of the BlackBerry cellular phone has the Canadian maker of the device, Research In Motion, telling the government it is not able to provide it with encrypted messages sent by its enterprise customers. RIM already had a 15-day ultimatum imposed on it by the government, which is demanding access to all wireless communications for security reasons. [full story]

May 20 - 4:00pm EDT   A controversial bill may be passed in front of the UK legislature later on this year that would keep all text, e-mail, VoIP and phone messages as well as Internet history from cellular networks on file with the government for one year, alleges a report published on Tuesday. Unlike the current requirement outlined by the European Union, the bill would have cellular network providers surrender all information to the government, instead of keeping just phone and text logs themselves. [full story]