The rules would require a customer to give their “affirmative consent” before their cable or internet provider could collect or disclose any information on their viewing or web-browsing habits.

The program will launch this month.

Amtrak has announced a “major expansion” of its on-board Wi-Fi service, moving it beyond the Acela train and on to a number of more widely used and affordable alternatives.

The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority announced today that passengers can now access free wireless internet at both National and Dulles — the first time since networks were installed at the airports in 2007 that the service will be free for everyone, regardless of whether or not they have a subscription to a major wireless carrier.

They may be short on books, under-staffed, and generally depressing, but the District’s public libraries are now all Wi-Fi hotspots. In late May the Georgetown branch announced it was the first public library in the city to offer free Wi-Fi, and now the remaining 20 branches and Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library will similarly do so. The District’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer and the D.C. Public Library’s Information and Telecommunications Office worked…

The Labor Day weekend is just around the corner, and with summer vacation heaving its last gasp, we’ve got slim pickings as far as area author events go. MONDAY Jennifer Egan’s latest novel, The Keep, blends meta-fiction, intimations of revenge, high-tech weirdness and claustrophobic creeps in a story of two cousins who reunite in Eastern Europe to refurbish an ancient castle. One of the characters in the book can apparently detect the presence of Wi-Fi…

The Smithsonian Insititution announced Monday that it will install a Common Wireless Access System in phases over the next two years, a step which means both free wireless Internet and improved mobile phone reception in and around their museums. The announcement comes 2 years after non-profit Open Park began a push to provide Wi-Fi across the National Mall, which resulted in three hotspots in the area — a good start, but without the Smithsonian’s cooperation…

Sometimes The Onion is scarily prescient. Just yesterday I was browsing through the site on a whim and got a chuckle out of this story, titled “Verizon Introduces New Charge-You-At-Whim Plan”. Then, while browsing through the local news, I came across WTOP’s story about a new surcharge that Verizon is about to introduce. The stories even carry the same date. Like I said: scarily prescient. But enough Onion-admiration; let’s move on to the Verizon-bashing. The…

The District’s public library system may be bad enough that the person tapped to lead it will be paid more than the mayor, but at least it’s moving into the 21st century. Through a post on D.C. Watch’s twice-weekly online newsletter we find that the public library’s branch in Georgetown has recently launched its own Wi-Fi network, part of a larger plan to offer free wireless internet access in 20 public libraries around the city…

More on the church parking issue, you say? Today we find the Washington Times reporting that some Logan Circle residents are fuming at what they see as a concession to the neighborhood’s powerful churches, a day after D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams put off enforcement measures and instead appointed a taskforce to study the matter. After close to a year of complaints, city officials promised to start enforcing the city’s double-parking laws on Sunday, going…