barack obama

The White House today delivered a formal veto threat against a controversial data-sharing bill called CISPA that would allow intelligence agencies to collect personal information about Americans from private companies.

In a statement this afternoon, President Obama's aides said they "would recommend that he veto the bill," which is scheduled for a House of Representatives floor vote this week.

A House committee approved CISPA last week without four key privacy amendments. Sought by CISPA opponents, the amendments would have curbed the National Security Agency's ability to collect confidential data. (See CNET's CISPA FAQ.)

The White … Read more

Silicon Valley firms are presenting a rare united front in an effort to end a political logjam that has blocked high-tech immigration reform.

In an unusual show of support that underscores how important the topic has become, executives from Facebook, Google, eBay and other major tech companies sent a letter today to President Obama and congressional leaders asking them to fix immigration law by the end of 2013. The current system is broken, they say, blaming visa shortages, long waits for green cards, and difficulties bringing spouses and children to the United States.

"Because our current immigration system is … Read more

It's not exactly a secret where President Obama stands on a controversial Republican-backed cybersecurity bill: he's already promised to veto it.

But a cadre of Internet activists opposed to the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act nevertheless created a petition to the president asking him to "stop CISPA" -- and it has crossed the 100,000-signature threshold necessary to secure a response from the administration.

In reality, there's little Obama can do to stop CISPA that he hasn't already done. The administration offered a stark warning in last year's veto threat, which talked … Read more

A petition asking President Obama to oppose a new rule restricting cell phone owners from unlocking their devices has passed the 100,000 mark, meaning the White House is now obliged to respond.

The petition, which passed the threshold last night and now stands at more than 102,000 signatures, protests a regulation from the Library of Congress that prohibits unlocking phones without the carrier's permission -- even when a customer's contract with the carrier has expired.

"I think it's terrific," said Derek Khanna, a Yale visiting fellow who was previously a Republican Hill staffer … Read more

Got a burning question about the new cybersecurity executive order or the 3D printing institute President Barack Obama mentioned during his State of the Union address?

Now's your chance to ask -- the POTUS is holding a Google+ hangout tomorrow to take inquires from the public about Tuesday's speech. The event starts at 1:50 p.m. PT. The White House is currently accepting questions through its YouTube Channel, where you can also vote for your favorite questions.

Obama will answer a selection of the questions with the most votes, live from the West Wing of the White … Read more

President Obama's State of the Union speech didn't generate any memes, but Florida Sen. Marco Rubio gave the Twitterverse something to shout about: his awkward reach for a tiny bottle of Poland Spring water during his official Republican rebuttal address. Almost instantly, the moment was a trending topic.

Unfortunately for Poland Spring, its social media people -- if it even has any -- dropped the ball. What appear to be its official Twitter accounts, @PolandSpringWtr, and @PolandSpringInc, were both dormant after Rubio's instantly panned water break. In fact, the most recent tweet from either account came in … Read more

President Obama invoked the pageantry of his State of the Union address this evening to announce a long-anticipated executive order on cybersecurity, a move that caps months of discussions with technology companies and could reduce pressure on Congress to move forward with controversial new legislation.

The order will "strengthen our cyber defenses by increasing information sharing, and developing standards to protect our national security, our jobs, and our privacy," Obama said.

Obama's executive order doesn't propose new and potentially onerous regulations targeting private businesses, which Democrats had proposed in their unsuccessful legislation last year. It also … Read more

Justin Bieber has wowed his way to the top of the Twitter ranks.

The teen singer now has the highest number of followers in the Twittersphere, according to data from Web site Twitter Counter. Wooing 33.38 million fans to follow his every tweet, Bieber has shot past fellow singer Lady Gaga with 33.36 million followers.

Gaga's reign as the queen of Twitter lasted two and a half years, a spokesman for Twitter Counter told Reuters yesterday.

Bieber is also high on the list for the sheer number of tweets posted at 20,545 so far, an average … Read more

When it comes to yesterday's inauguration, forget about high-def videos, transcripts, images from space, and all that jazz. The best glimpse of the ceremony resides in a gargantuan panorama that lets you zoom around the action that took place on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington D.C.

The image, captured while Obama gave his inaugural speech, required 13 minutes of straight shooting using a dSLR and the Gigapan Epic Pro panorama-capturing device. To create the stunning mosaic, the Gigapan shot 305 high-resolution photographs of different areas in the scene, which were then stitched together to make the zoomable picture. … Read more