FTC Seeks Anti-Spyware Authority

Zyxwvut writes "The FTC is seeking more legal authority to go after spyware vendors, and Congress has passed a few bills to support them, but the Senate is ignoring them. While the FTC has prosecuted a few of the largest spyware makers, most of them fly under the radar because the FTC has to meet very stringent legal standards before they can do anything."

Comments

WARNING: Pedantry in effect

[Red Flayer]

Congress has passed a few bills to support them, but the Senate is ignoring them

Congress contains the Senate. The House of Representatives has passed a few bills, not Congress as a whole. If Congress had passed a few bills, all that would be left would be Presidential approval.

The reason I mention this is that the House passes lots of bills that never are passed by the Senate. Sometimes the Senate will pass their own version of a bill, and send it back to the House. This is why we have a bicameral legislature -- so that one legislative body can't pass laws by itself. It's a check within a division of the federal government, and serves a useful purpose.

Re:WARNING: Pedantry in effect

[Red Flayer]

you may recall that they split of congress was a compromise between the big/little states that could not agree if the # of reps per state should be based on population or be a set number.

While the debate between how the # of reps did affect the system we ended up with, the concept of a bicameral legislature was older than that debate. England had a bicameral system in the 17th century, for example.

It was originally intended to only have one group in the legislature.

I think you might want to reread your history. There was never a unified 'intent' to have a unicameral legislature. The majority of framers understood the need for a bicameral institution, but were faced with the problem that they did not want an aristocratic house (like the British House of Lords). One fix would have been a single house, as with the NJ plan. Another fix, the one ultimately accepted, was to find another way of assigning the different houses.