June 2010

On June 24, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs approved a comprehensive cybersecurity bill after amending it to limit the president's authority in the event of a cyber emergency.

The bill, co-sponsored by Sens Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Tom Carper (D-Delaware) would make the Department of Homeland Security responsible for protecting civilian networks in the government and private sector. The bill will now head to the full Senate for a vote, where it will likely be merged with other competing pieces of cybersecurity legislation. "These cyber attacks are increasingly more sophisticated, more persistent and more successful," Sen Carper said. "In short -- the status quo is simply not enough." The original bill gave the president indefinite emergency authority to shut down private sector or government networks in the event of a cyber attack capable of causing massive damage or loss of life. An amendment passed Thursday limits that authority further, requiring the president to get Congressional approval after controlling a network for 120 days.

The Federal Communications Commission is stopping the shot clock on the Comcast-NBC Universal merger for a second time. June 24 had been day 50 on what is an informal 180-day deadline for vetting the deal.

The review began March 18. The FCC says that the companies returned incomplete answers and did not follow the directions in responding to a May FCC request for a raft of information from both on everything from organizational structure and channel lineups to copies of all programming agreements and detailed discussions of all deliberations in making content available online. The FCC sent letters to the two Thursday, informing them that the FCC would put the brakes on vetting the merger until such time as they had complied fully.

People who endorse marketers for a fee on Twitter could disclose the payment by adding a hashtag like "#paid ad" or "#ad" to their tweets, the Federal Trade Commission said.

That was just one piece of new advice from the FTC about how to interpret its revised guides to testimonials and endorsements, issued last October. The guides are not in themselves enforceable, but indicate the type of activity the FTC will consider deceptive. They specified that bloggers should reveal "material connections" to marketers -- including the receipt of free review copies -- when consumers would be surprised to learn of the connections. This week, the FTC published additional material about the guides, including answers to frequently asked questions. One of the questions addressed concerned how Web users could make adequate disclosures on Twitter, where posts are limited to 140 characters. The FTC suggested using a hashtag like "#paid ad," noting that it only required eight characters. The FTC also reiterated this week that its focus is on advertisers, not bloggers.

The European Union's data protection authorities released an opinion June 24 declaring that online advertisers who seek to target ads at consumers by tracking their surfing habits must obtain consumer consent before engaging in such practices.

The opinion from the EU's Article 29 Data Protection Working Party, which is made up of data protection officials from the EU's member countries, said firms engaged in online behavioral advertising must abide by EU electronic privacy rules requiring online sites to obtain "informed" consent from users before installing tracking devices such as cookies on Internet users' computers.