According to FBI officials and budget documents, the agency is asking Congress for $5 million a year to pay major telecommunications companies to retain customer Internet and phone call information for at least two years so it can be used in counterterrorism investigations.
Meanwhile the ACLU is sharply criticizing the plan, claiming the FBI is trying to get around the law by having private companies maintain databases that the government is not allowed to create for itself. The ACLU claims the FBI "thumbing its nose" at the law and personal privacy rights.
Amid growing criticism from politicians in a number of states, MySpace has announced that it has detected and deleted 29,000 convicted sex offenders from its site, more than four times the figure it had initially reported.
A United Nations arbitrator has ruled that a podcaster must give up control of the "thesimpsonsmovie.com" site. The arbitrator found that creation of the website amounted to "bad faith registration and use" of the address, in other words cybersquatting, designed to divert business to sites selling merchandise associated with the podcaster rather than Fox, which owns the Simpson’s trademark.