In an informal discussion with technology leaders from industry and academia this morning at Microsoft’s New England Research and Development Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley and staff members from her office covered a range of issues affecting technology businesses and consumers, from cybercrime to the need to overhaul the state’s laws regarding noncompete agreements. Overregulation and outdated regulations were a major theme, with Coakley acknowledging in jest that “we love statutes and regulations in Massachusetts” and saying that in a time of severe budgetary constraints, changing and updating the law is one thing the state government can do to help businesses and entrepreneurs.

The meeting, the first of its kind between representatives of the technology community and the state’s top law enforcement officer, was intended to start a discussion about what sorts of changes to put on the agenda. “We can’t make decisions in the abstract,” Coakley told the gathering of about 30 people from Massachusetts companies and universities. “In a variety of areas where we’ve approached these issues—what technology means for government, for public safety, for privacy—part of what I want to do is get some feedback from you. What are we doing and not doing, and how can we be more helpful?”

Coakley poked a bit of fun at herself, confessing that as late as the mid-1990s, when she was chief of the Child Abuse Prosecution Unit of the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office, she did not know how to turn on her computer to retrieve her e-mail. But after she became DA herself, she said, she got a crash course in computers and the Internet during the prosecution of Michael McDermott, who killed seven colleagues at Edgewater Technology in December 2000 and was convicted of murder after it was revealed that he had used Google to search for information on how to fake mental illness. As Massachusetts attorney general, she led settlement negotiations with Framingham, MA-based TJX to resolve claims around its massive data breach in 2007, and to make sure adequate safeguards are in place to protect consumer data in the future.

“I really like being attorney general, somewhat to my surprise,” Coakley said, “because it’s a great opportunity to learn about a whole range of issues, like where we should be going and how we can help businesses do well in Massachusetts, and how to protect consumers and protect the environment.”

The first issue raised by technology community members was whether Massachusetts should be doing more to make sure that some federal stimulus money reaches small businesses, rather than going exclusively to large corporations and public works projects. “From where I sit it’s been very disappointing to see the [slow] pace of the stimulus money and to see how restricted it is,” Coakley responded. “My focus on the stimulus money is to make sure it goes where it should” and to see that distribution of the funds isn’t mired in paperwork and graft. “It’s an example of big government trying to do big things and not necessarily being effective,” she said, but added, “I don’t know how much discretion we have” to channel the funds to small businesses or players other than those identified in stimulus legislation.

Early into the discussion, attendees raised the controversial issue of noncompete agreements in employment contracts in Massachusetts. Noncompetes (as we’ve written) are seen by many local companies as an essential way to protect trade secrets, but they’re seen by many entrepreneurs and investors as an impediment to employee mobility and innovation. Coakley said …Next Page »

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A federal judge today ordered the CEO of a Bellevue, WA, computer programming and Web design company to pay at least $264,000 in fines and restitution and to serve 90 days’ home confinement for an alleged act of cyberspace sabotage. According to the U.S. Attorney’s office in Seattle, Minecode CEO Pradyumna Samal ordered a Minecode employee to send computer commands that completely deleted a customer’s website, e-mail server, and its customer database in retaliation over a contract dispute. Vinado, an e-commerce wine-seller, had hired Minecode to develop a “virtual gift shop” for its website. The cyberspace sabotage cost Vinado more than $115,000 and forced the company out of business.

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Online Crime Gets More Organized

Cybercrime, once the province of unaffiliated hackers, is coalescing into to a more organized structure that resembles the Mafia, according to a report from the web security company Finjan, of San Jose, CA. As described by Ars Technica, Finjan found that cybercriminals are often organized into a system with a boss and several underbosses and lieutenants. Leave the computer virus, take the cannoli.

Biofuel Spending Doesn’t Cut Carbon, Group Claims

Between them, the United States and the European Union are spending $11 billion to promote biofuels. But Bloomberg reports that, according to a study by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, all that spending is having little impact on carbon dioxide emissions. The report predicts a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by vehicles of, at best, 0.8 percent by 2015.

Sprint Moves to Higher-Speed Broadband

Sprint has announced plans to convert the core of its network to handle data traffic at 40 gigabits per second, GigaOm tells us. That’s up from the current standard of 10 Gb/s. The increase in speed is needed as video downloads and third-generation data transmission become increasingly popular, the company says.

CERN Previews Network of the Future

Today’s Internet capacity will seem incredibly limited in a decade or two, but some of the steps needed to increase bandwidth are being previewed in a large-scale physics project in Switzerland. As CNET News reports, CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, has built an ultra-high-speed network so scientists can share massive amounts of data collected from the world’s largest particle accelerator, scheduled to go online next month. The people who built the network are learning how to handle data moving at speeds about 1000 times as fast as the average home broadband connection.

U.S. Lags on Creating Science Graduates

The United States has not made as much progress on attracting more students to the sciences, engineering, mathematics, and technology-related fields as businesses had hoped, reports the Chronicle of Higher Education. In 2005, 16 business groups called for the U.S. to double its number of bachelor’s degrees in those fields, from 200,000 in 2005 to 400,000 in 2015, to keep up with foreign competition. So far, the number has only grown to 225,000.

NASA Aids Fight against California Wildfires

Aerial sensing drones designed by NASA for research on global warming and general Earth science turn out to be great volunteer firefighters. As the San Jose Mercury News reports, the drones, equipped with infrared sensors, are able to identify trouble spots that firefighters don’t know about, allowing them to successfully adjust their strategy in combating the blazes.

Republican Spider Tracks Obama’s Website

Republican Presidential candidate John McCain may not, by his own admission, have much use for e-mail. But his campaign is employing an Internet spider to crawl Barack Obama’s website and keep track of any changes on an hourly basis, according to Wired. The campaign’s hope is to highlight any shifts in policy Obama might make.

EPA Creates Rules for Storing Carbon

One proposal for limiting greenhouse gas emissions is to capture carbon as it is produced at power plants and store it underground, perhaps in exhausted oil wells. The Environmental Protection Agency is taking a step toward making that possible by publishing a draft of a rule governing such underground storage. The New York Times quotes a carbon storage expert as saying the rule is an important step, but not the only one needed to make carbon storage a reality.

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