Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard is pushing ahead with plans for a nationwide broadband network, saying the $38.8 billion program will reach 93 percent of the country's citizens. But ahead of Australia's August 21 elections, the opposition party is pushing a plan of its own for what it says is "better, reliable and affordable broadband."

Google's gathering of data from unprotected Wi-Fi networks during its Street View surveys in Britain collected no "meaningful personal details that could be linked to an identifiable person," according to British data-protection officials. The statement comes as a 37-state investigation and several lawsuits are pending over the same data-collection practice in the United States.

The United States should try to negotiate an international agreement declaring some types of infrastructure off-limits in the event of cyberwar, says Michael Hayden, former head of the CIA and National Security Agency. An international body could, for example, declare that "cyberpenetration of any grid is so harmful to the international financial system that this is like chemical weapons: none of us should use them," he told the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas.

The Defense Information Systems Agency may offer new forms of cloud-computing services to federal agencies, an official says. Alfred Rivera, DISA's director of computing services, said the agency may offer platform-as-a-service, Microsoft Office, and SharePoint in addition to its existing Rapid Access Computing Environment cloud platform.

A new study says that video accounts for the largest proportion of data on wireless networks, leading to congestion that peaks around 10 p.m. each day. The 2010 Mobile Minute Metrics report from Bytemobile found congestion on even the fastest networks, suggesting that "not even next-generation network technology will be sufficient to satisfy user demand for data services."

After reviewing a whistleblower complaint that Oracle had been overcharging the federal government for software, the Justice Department has decided to join the lawsuit. "We take seriously allegations that a government contractor has dealt dishonestly with the United States," said Tony West, assistant attorney general for the department's civil division.
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Ruling favors Intel in antitrust case - Wall Street Journal, July 30

Motorola cited strong sales of its Droid smartphone in posting higher quarterly profits Thursday. The company, which launched a new version shortly after the quarter ended, said it is on track to sell 12 million to 14 million of the devices this year.

As they await Friday's release of gross domestic product data for the second quarter, most economists have trimmed back their forecasts for growth for the rest of the year. Still, some say the early expectations for the recovery were overblown, with Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard calling the economy "remarkably normal for a postfinancial-crisis recovery."

The latest reading of the Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist Confidence Index declined by a "significant amount" in the second quarter, as uncertainties about the economy and taxation combined with concerns about capital availability for start-ups. But the index, compiled by Mark Cannice of the University of San Francisco, remains above its low ebb, reached in the last quarter of 2008.

A new bill that would let states force online retailers to collect sales tax from customers where they have no physical outlets has surfaced in the House. The bill by Rep. Bill Delahunt, D-Mass., has won some early bipartisan support, with Gov. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., and state Rep. Chris Rants, R-Iowa, calling the tax measure "simple fairness."

An Obama administration proposal to specify e-mail and other Internet records as subject to federal examination without court order is merely a "clarification" of existing practice already allowed under the law, according to the Justice Department. But others, including Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, say the plan raises "serious privacy and civil liberties concerns."
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Move breaks campaign promise (Editorial) - New York Times, July 30

A provision in the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act would allow creation of contractor blacklists without their knowledge or a chance to appeal, according to several industry groups lobbying against it. "Without a doubt, it would have disastrous, if unintended, consequences," said TechAmerica President Phil Bond.

The FBI has begun rolling out its long-awaited electronic case-management system, Sentinel, and "the heart of the system is in place," FBI Director Robert Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee. However, Mueller indicated he could not yet say when Sentinel, which was the subject of a partial stop-work order in March, will be fully operational.

A Government Accountability Office report says that the Federal Aviation Administration needs better ways to measure progress on on its Next Generation Air Transportation System. Current methods don't adequately monitor the status of NextGen projects, or how problems in one can affect others, the report said.

Citing increases in smartphone usage, the Government Accountability Office has added a mobile version of its website, with reduced- and no-graphics options that still allow PDF-format report downloads. GAO spokesman Charles Young said the site is designed to function with BlackBerry, iPhone, Android and other mobile devices.

Accenture, Mahindra Satyam-Morpho and L1 Identity Solutions have won a key initial contract as part of India's national biometric identification-card program. The initial two-year phase of the program -- which ultimately is to cover all 1.2 billion Indian citizens -- will extend to 200 million people.

A new International Monetary Fund report says that if China doesn't do more to encourage domestic consumption it will see a surge in its diplomatically sensitive trade surplus. Bringing down the trade surplus -- which remains well off its 2007 peak in the wake of the global economic crisis -- will involve "an exceptionally complicated exercise in macroeconomic engineering," the report said.

A surprise decline in Japan's industrial production in June has renewed fears for the fate of the nation's economic recovery. The drop was attributed to cutbacks by electronics and auto manufacturers worried about falling demand from abroad.