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The National Cable and Telecommunications Association's 58th annual convention being held at the Washington Convention Center this week will attract thousands of attendees as well as a handful of prominent lawmakers. Plus organizers are expecting a number of celebrity appearances during exhibition floor hours. Here are some highlights:
Cable Positive: MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, Thursday 2-3 p.m.
Comcast: Washington Redskins' quarterback Jason Campbell, Wednesday 4:30-6 p.m.
Fox Cable Networks: Major League Baseball's Lou Brock, Wednesday, 3:30-5 p.m.
Speed Channel: NASCAR's Richard Petty, Thursday, 11-12:30 p.m.
FX: The cast of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" (Danny Devito, Rob McElhenney, Charlie Day, Glenn Howerton and Kaitlin Olson), Thursday 2-4 p.m.
SCI FI Channel: Colin Ferguson, star of "Eureka," Wednesday, 3 p.m.
NBCU: Olympic gold medalist Dan Jansen, Wednesday 4:30 p.m.
Bravo: Ariane Duarte of "Top Chef," Thursday 11 a.m.
CNN: Wolf Blitzer, Thursday 11 a.m.-12 p.m.
USA Network: WWE Superstar Batista, Thursday 1:15 p.m.
For more on the Cable Show, click here and read coverage in CongressDaily.
President Barack Obama on Tuesday nominated Roger Baker -- former CEO of Dataline Inc., a mid-sized technology company headquartered in Norfolk, Va. -- to become assistant secretary for information and technology at the Department of Veterans Affairs. This is familiar territory for Baker, who served as chief information officer for the Commerce Department from 1998 to 2001. Prior to joining the federal government in 1998, Baker had an extensive career with software and Internet technology firms, including leading the development of Internet and online banking systems at Visa International, according to a bio provided by the White House.
Baker left the private sector in May 2008 to volunteer on Obama's campaign, serving on the technology, media, and telecommunications policy group. After the president's election, Baker served on the technology, innovation, and government reform and the VA review teams for the transition team. Baker is active in the federal technology community, and has written extensively on improving the management and results of the government's IT investments. He was vice chair of the Industry Advisory Council's Transition Study Group, and a co-author of the group's capstone paper entitled "Returning Innovation to the Federal Government with Information Technology."
The VA's IT infrastructure has been in the spotlight since May 2006 when a laptop computer containing the social security numbers of 26.5 million U.S. veterans was stolen from an analyst's home. Several months later, a computer containing the personal information of up to 38,000 veterans went missing. The computers have since been recovered but the agency has been under a microscope by members of Congress. In the final years of the Bush administration, VA IT chief Robert Howard appeared on Capitol Hill routinely to discuss the agency's efforts to streamline and secure its technology.
U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk's 2009 report to Congress, which describes significant barriers to U.S. trade and investment and actions being taken by officials to address them, flags a number of topics of interest to the tech sector. They include:
• Onerous testing and certification requirements on more than 1,200 consumer goods
• New requirements to register and inspect a broad range of imports
• Ineffective enforcement against trademark counterfeiting and copyright piracy
• Cumbersome and non-transparent approval processes for biotech products
• Discriminatory excise taxes requiring imported products to pay rates 10 to 43 times higher than before
• Prohibited export subsidies (e.g., for "national" brands) that are highly trade distorting
• Limitations to foreign participation in telecom markets, both basic and value added, through a multiplicity of barriers, including high basic capital requirements, and non-transparent and lengthy investment approvals.
The USTR is beginning a review of the implementation of our existing trade agreements, including the enforcement of the labor and environment provisions, the office said in a press release. It is also initiating a process to prioritize trade barriers enumerated in the National Trade Estimate Report and to address the most significant. Additionally, USTR is identifying new cases where market access for U.S. goods and services is in jeopardy because of disregard for the rule of law and is planning to prosecute those cases through multilateral and bilateral dispute resolution.
Technology CEO Council Chairman Mike Splinter has some words of wisdom for President Barack Obama has he heads to the G-20 Summit in London on Thursday -- his first big international gathering since becoming commander in chief. Splinter advised Obama in a weekend letter to urge the other G-20 nations to adopt economic stimulus plans that promote investments in critical national infrastructures, as the U.S. did with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. He also asked Obama to fight for open markets, recommit to a new Doha Round of trade negotiations and fend off protectionism.
"Along with unprecedented challenges, you have an unusual opportunity to help lead the world toward a more secure future. This will not come easy," wrote Splinter, who is CEO of Applied Materials. "The world's political leaders are confronted by severe economic anxieties at home, and these concerns are driving many countries toward protectionist measures... Unchecked, each nation's efforts to close off its own economy and advantage its own domestic industries will harm all nations." Fifty years from now, generations will look back at how the United States responded to the fears and crises of 2009, he wrote, noting: "Whether we react to short-term political pressures or invest in long-term reforms will determine how history judges us."
Read the full letter to Obama after the jump...
The U.S. high-tech sector has weathered the economic storm better than most industries, Technology Association of America President Phil Bond told reporters at a Monday press conference to unveil the trade group's annual state-by-state overview of the technology business. While the 2009 outlook remains clouded with uncertainty, "we're convinced that the tech sector is positioned to contribute to the U.S. economic recovery," he said. Bond other officials from the organization, which was formed when the Information Technology Association of America and American Electronics Association merged, laid out a number of facts and figures to support their notion.
In crafting the economic stimulus bill, Congress and the Obama administration embraced the transformative power of technology for building the infrastructure for the 21st century; modernizing education and healthcare systems; and creating smarter and more efficient ways to use energy, officials said. "We believe it when we say future begins here," Bond said. "We think public policy in the United States has underscored that innovation is America's greatest resource."
According to the 2008 Cyberstates report:
• The U.S. high-tech industry employment was up for the fourth straight year in 2008, adding 77,000 jobs, a 1.3 percent increase.
• Tech sectors adding jobs included software services (+86,200) and engineering and tech services (+26,600).
• Tech sectors shedding jobs included tech manufacturing (-23,100) and communications services (-12,700).
• Nationwide, average high-tech wages were 88 percent higher than the average private sector wage.
• Unemployment rates inched up for several tech occupations in 2008, but remained relatively low - 2.4 percent for computer scientists and 2.5 percent for engineers.
The Obama administration's choice for Patent and Trademark Office director is expected to be announced in April now that the Senate has confirmed Gary Locke, the president's pick for Commerce secretary. If the right person is named to head the PTO, the appointment "may tip the scales to move patent reform legislation from a pending bill to enacted legislation, perhaps as early as this year," Foley & Lardner attorney Hal Wegner said in a Monday e-mail. So who is in the running for the top job at PTO? Sources say the following names are prominently in play:
• Q. Todd Dickinson: Dickinson ran the PTO under former President Bill Clinton and currently heads the American Intellectual Property Law Association. Before joining AIPLA in 2008, he was chief IP counsel for General Electric.
• Jim Pooley: Pooley is a partner in the litigation department of the Palo Alto office of Morrison & Forrester and has practiced in Silicon Valley since 1973. He is immediate past president of the AIPLA and president of the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
• David Kappos: Kappos is vice president and assistant general counsel for IP at IBM. He joined IBM in 1983 as a development engineer. He serves on the board of directors for the Intellectual Property Owners Association and is active in AIPLA.
Shortly after Election Day, CongressDaily pondered Dickinson, Pooley and some other possibilities. They included Eli Lilly general counsel Robert Armitage; 3M IP counsel Gary Griswold; patent attorney Ray Millien; and law professors Mark Lemley of Stanford and Arti Rai of Duke, a classmate of Obama's at Harvard Law School.
Congressional Web sites that offer news, information and other resources that relate to the ongoing economic turmoil are probably attracting more eyeballs than they have in the past. Perhaps that's why House Financial Services Committee ranking member Spencer Bachus unveiled a fresh, new Web presence for the panel's GOP membership on Monday. The revamped site offers quick links to member bios, subcommittee information, issue briefs, achievements, and events. Click here to learn more.
Sens. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., and John Barrasso, R-Wyo., have joined more than 150 members of the House in supporting a resolution opposing the introduction of "any new performance fee, tax, royalty, or other charge" on local radio stations. The nonbinding Senate measure introduced Monday mirrors one sponsored earlier this year by Texas Reps. Gene Green, a Democrat, and Republican Mike Conaway and comes as roughly 500 local members of the National Association of Broadcasters arrive in Washington for their annual state leadership conference.
Legislation offered by House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers and Oversight and Government Reform ranking member Darrell Issa and Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, would bring over-the-air radio in line with Internet, cable and satellite music services that pay artists for use of their work. Broadcasters have long argued that the promotional value of airplay and the resulting album and concert ticket sales make up for the disparity. NAB spokesman Dennis Wharton said the "performance tax" would threaten thousands of jobs, reduce music diversity, and hamstring a new artist's ability to reach radio's 234 million weekly listeners.
Supporters of the House and Senate radio royalty bills, however, sent a press release pointing out that the legislation now enjoys the support of seven committee chairmen in the House. In addition to Conyers, the Performance Rights Act is cosponsored by Foreign Relations Chairman Howard Berman; Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman; Rules Chairwoman Louise Slaughter; Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson; Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Edolphus Towns; and Agriculture Chairman Collin Peterson.
The Supreme Court said Monday it will not consider restoring Virginia's anti-spam law, which is one of the nation's most aggressive state statutes aimed at banning unsolicited e-mail. The high court's decision to reject the case leaves in place a ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court that the law was unconstitutional because it prohibited political, religious and other messages in addition to commercial solicitations. Virginia was the only state to ban noncommercial bulk e-mail. State Attorney General Bill Mims said he plans to draft legislation in the next General Assembly session that addresses constitutional concerns posed by the spam law.
The Supreme Court's decision ensures the reversal of the conviction of Jeremy Jaynes, who in 2004 became the first person ever convicted of a felony for sending spam without allegations of any accompanying illegal conduct. Under a variety of aliases, Jaynes was accused of using T1 Internet connections to send hundreds of thousands of e-mails per day, using e-mail lists later reported stolen from AOL and eBay, among others. He was sentenced to nine years in jail but is serving time in federal prison on an unrelated conviction for securities fraud.
U.S. Internet Service Provider Association Executive Director Kate Dean said her group was disappointed the court chose not to hear the case. "While we believe the lower court's ruling to be flawed, the absence of a Virginia state law does not permit criminals to use ISPs' networks to transmit unsolicited commercial e-mail," she said. The Criminal Justice Legal Foundation's Kent Scheidegger was also displeased. "The premise that this law prevents people from sending e-mails without revealing their identity is wrong," he said. Both U.S. ISPA and Scheidegger's group filed friend-of-the-court briefs in the case.
A total of 275,284 complaints were received by the Internet Crime Complaint Center in 2008 -- up from 206,884 or 33 percent over 2007, the FBI said Monday. Total dollar loss reported in 2008 was $265 million, an increase from $239 million the year before. The average individual loss was $931, according to a new report. The yearly study from IC3, a partnership between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center, details information related to the volume and scope of complaints, complainant and perpetrator characteristics, geographical data, most frequently reported scams, and IC3 referrals.
Non-delivered merchandise and/or payment was by far the most reported offense, comprising 32.9 percent of referred complaints. Internet auction fraud accounted
for 25.5 percent of referred complaints while credit/debit card fraud made up 9 percent of referred complaints. Confidence fraud, computer fraud, check fraud, and Nigerian letter fraud round out the top seven categories of complaints referred to law enforcement. Of those complaints reporting a dollar loss, the highest median losses were found among check fraud ($3,000), confidence fraud ($2,000), and Nigerian letter fraud ($1,650).
Surf on over to CongressDaily's TechCentral for a new "Issue of the Week." Here's a taste:
The Department of Health and Human Services is getting ready to meet its first major deadline for setting up one of two key federal advisory committees established within the $19 billion health information technology section of the economic stimulus package. Members of a policy panel charged with making recommendations to the department's health IT coordinator on the implementation of a nationwide system of electronic medical records are due Friday. Thirteen of the committee's 20-plus members are appointed by GAO with additional members selected by HHS and House and Senate leadership.
The stimulus bill allows more time for the formation of the health IT standards committee, whose members are appointed by the HHS secretary with the national health IT coordinator taking a leading role. The time ahead of that deadline, which has not been announced, may help given that the Senate has yet to confirm Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, Obama's pick for HHS secretary. The Senate Finance Committee will hold its confirmation hearing for her Thursday. Under the statute, the standards committee must consist of healthcare providers, ancillary healthcare workers, consumers, purchasers, health plans, technology vendors, researchers, relevant agency representatives, and experts in healthcare quality, privacy and security. Recommendations from the policy panel dictate the work of the standards panel, which has to develop a roadmap by May.
Read the full story here (subscription required).
New channels on video-sharing Web site YouTube and the Apple iTunes service will allow the Library of Congress to begin sharing content from its vast video and audio collections. The channels, which will be rolled out in the coming weeks, will include 100-year-old films from the Thomas Edison studio; book talks with contemporary authors; early industrial films from Westinghouse factories; first-person audio accounts of life in slavery; and inside looks into the library's fascinating holdings. Among them, the rough draft of the Declaration of Independence and the contents of President Abraham Lincoln's pockets on the night of his assassination.
The move to YouTube and iTunes comes on the heels of the library's launch two years ago of the first U.S. agency-wide blog and its ongoing image-posting pilot project with Flickr. "We have long seen the value of such interaction with the public to help achieve our missions, and these agreements remove many of the impediments to making our unparalleled content more useful to many more people," Librarian of Congress James Billington said in a press release. The GSA last week also announced agreements with Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo and blip.tv that will allow other agencies to participate in new media while meeting legal requirements and the unique needs of government.
Internet industry billionaire and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban posed a few interesting questions on his blog last week. Is a "tweet" -- a post via micro-blogging platform Twitter -- copyrightable? Is a tweet copyrighted by default when it's published? Can there possibly be a fair use exception for something that is only 140 characters or less? Is twittering the process of publishing or is it a private communication to those that follow you? He wonders if the same would apply to social networking site Facebook asking whether users really "own" their status updates.
"I got to thinking about this when I tweeted about an NBA game. I tweeted to the people who follow me. While I never asked that they not distribute it to other tweeters, I did not give anyone permission to republish my tweets in a commercial newspaper, magazine or Web site," he wrote. The NBA fined Cuban $25,000 for grumbling about referees on Twitter. His tongue-in-cheek tweet response: "Can't say no one makes money from Twitter now. The NBA does." Read Cuban's blog here and follow him on Twitter here.
The Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday resumes its markup of legislation that would overhaul the U.S. patent system. The panel began consideration of Chairman Patrick Leahy's measure Thursday but saved the tougher topics for later. Proposals to address how damages are awarded in patent infringement lawsuits have been circulated among members, including language offered by Judiciary ranking member Arlen Specter and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., to provide courts with clearer requirements on handling evidence of infringement and determining damages.
Meanwhile, the House Homeland Security Emerging Threats Subcommittee Tuesday will examine whether payment card industry data standards reduce cybercrime. The security requirements, created to reduce the number and size of data breaches, apply to all businesses that store, process, or transmit cardholder data. Homeland Security Department-funded intelligence "fusion centers" will be the focus of a Wednesday hearing by the House Homeland Security Intelligence Subcommittee. Members will discuss the department inspector general's December report on the state-run facilities, as well as recently adopted operational baseline capabilities for fusion centers.
Washington will be the center of activity for the cable television biz this week when the industry's annual convention returns to the nation's capital and its convention center after a 38-year hiatus. The packed agenda features several marquee policymakers and executives, with Senate Commerce Communications Subcommittee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., kicking off the event Tuesday night with a speech. Senate Commerce ranking member Kay Bailey Hutchison, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor and House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman will appear Wednesday.
President Barack Obama's choice to shepherd the National Telecommunications and Information Administration through the ongoing national digital television transition is Lawrence Strickling, a technology policy expert who served as policy coordinator for his presidential campaign. In that role Strickling oversaw two dozen domestic policy committees and was responsible for technology and telecommunications issues. Prior to joining the campaign, Strickling was chief regulatory and compliance officer at Broadwing Communications, which was acquired by Level 3 Communications in 2007.
From 1998-2000, Strickling served as chief of the FCC's Common Carrier Bureau and prior to that was associate general counsel and chief of the FCC's Competition Division. During his tenure at the FCC, Strickling developed and enforced rules to foster competition and protect consumers in the telecommunications marketplace, the White House said in an e-mail. He also served senior roles at Allegiance Telecom and CoreExpress and was a partner at the Chicago law firm of Kirkland & Ellis. If confirmed by the Senate, Strickling will join former Sprint-Nextel executive Anna Gomez at NTIA. She was named deputy assistant secretary earlier this year.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., has begun using Google AdWords, a program that lets webmasters create their own ads and choose keywords, to respond to Thursday's front page New York Times article about her history of defending tobacco companies. Simply search for "Gillibrand" on Google and an ad from her campaign proclaiming that "Gillibrand Fights Tobacco" should appear to the right. The ad links to a page on her campaign Web site that highlights her anti-tobacco record. A second ad that is displayed points to an immigration reform Web site and the third points to the Times article itself. Gillibrand's campaign usage of the targeted Web advertising platform hints at the future of rapid response in the digital age.
Gillibrand holds a big lead over Republican Rep. Peter King, but would face a more difficult race if former Republican Gov. George Pataki entered it, according to a recent Siena College poll. The poll showed Gillibrand leading King 47-23 percent and she is tied at 41 percent apiece, when matched up against Pataki. Search is a natural tool for political rapid response, said Peter Greenberger, team manager for elections and issues advocacy at Google. "As news breaks, people go online to find more information. Savvy political advertisers take advantage of that spike in interest to get their message in front of voters and lawmakers at the exact moment of relevance," he said.
President Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., led the way in 2008 by using search for crisis communications, and now other political campaigns and issue groups are adopting the same strategies, Greenberger added. Google expects to see a lot more of this in 2009 and beyond. He said his team is already seeing political campaigns use Google earlier and to a greater degree than ever before. For more on politics and Web ads, read National Journal's recent article here.
A $986,796 grant from the Department of Labor will assist approximately 249 workers affected by layoffs at Hewlett-Packard in Corvallis, Ore., the agency said Friday. HP announced on Aug. 20, 2008, that layoffs were pending at the facility and the first dislocation event followed less than a month later. Another round of layoffs is scheduled for May 30. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said the downsizing represents "a significant loss of production workers in this region of Oregon" and the federal infusion will let affected employees access the necessary training and services to find work soon.
The grant money will be awarded to the Oregon Department of Community Colleges and Workforce Development. All of the targeted workers also have been certified as eligible for trade adjustment assistance. Under the grant, workers will have access to services that are not available through the TAA program, including skills assessment, counseling, case management, job-search assistance, job-placement assistance and follow-up services, the agency said. The nonprofit Community Services Consortium will oversee the grant.
Corvallis Mayor Charles Tomlinson thinks the next chapter for HP's campus could be in biotechnology, according to the Albany Democrat Herald. Tomlinson had no comment about whether he'd been in contact with HP about future plans, but said it's no secret that 235,413 square feet of industrial space is available for lease.
The Obama administration's 60-day review of the federal cybersecurity posture will likely conclude that a comprehensive strategy for protecting the government's IT assets and critical infrastructure from high-tech attacks should be run by the White House, Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I., told reporters Thursday. The review being conducted by Melissa Hathaway, a senior adviser to former Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, is more than halfway complete. Recent studies have recommended that oversight authority be housed in the Executive Office of the President rather than the Homeland Security Department or the National Security Agency. "I expect that cybersecurity as we go forward will look very much like our counter-proliferation program," said Langevin, who co-chairs the House Cybersecurity Caucus.
On the campaign trail, Obama promised to create a cyber czar post in the White House and Hathaway is the heir apparent. "I'm very impressed with the due diligence she's exercising in putting together the team and reaching out to outside groups and experts," Langevin said of Hathaway, who was on Capitol Hill for an event to reconstitute the caucus for the 111th Congress. Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., who replaced Langevin as chair of the House Homeland Security Emerging Threats Subcommittee this session, emphasized the enormity of Hathaway's task. She pointed out that there are 42 different departments and agencies involved. "Every new [technological] advance we have creates new vulnerabilities and our responsibility is to have oversight over each and every area," Clarke said.
Microsoft has hired David Pryor Jr. as director of government affairs, where he will lobby the Senate. The company's newest lobbyist has family ties to the Senate. His father, is former Sen. David Pryor, D-Ark. and his younger brother is Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark. who was elected in 2002. Previously, Pryor was senior federal affairs representative for FedEx, where he worked on transportation and aviation issues. Pryor says Microsoft and FedEx share policy interests such as free trade and innovation in the workplace. Pryor says he has never lobbied his father or brother, nor will he in the future.
Before FedEx, Pryor was deputy chief of protocol at the State Department between 1997 and 2000. Pryor has also served as principal of Pryor and Associates, a boutique consulting firm, and as a senior account executive with Hill & Knowlton Public Affairs. Pryor said that having a child with special needs has made him appreciate the power of technology and helped shape his perception of Microsoft. His 13-year-old son, Hampton, attends St. Coletta of Greater Washington where Pryor is president of the board of trustees. He said he has learned about technology by watching how his son, who cannot walk or talk, reacts to assistive technologies and interactive computer software. -- Winter Casey
The European Union said Thursday that the United States is breaking the rules of the World Trade Organization and creating a barrier to trade in its enforcement of laws pertaining to Internet gambling. The Obama administration should consider the issue and the possibility of negotiating a solution, the EU wrote in a draft report. The paper, which is currently being sent to EU member states for comments on the findings, holds that European online gambling companies are still being subject to legal proceedings by U.S. authorities based on their business activities before the U.S. changed its gambling law in 2006.
The EU also said that while U.S. companies may have online gambling operations for horse racing sites in the U.S., EU companies are not permitted to do so. The EU holds that the problem stems for EU companies understanding that it was legal to supply Internet gambling services in the U.S. prior to 2006. U.S. government agencies, including the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and the Justice Department, are studying the report and will discuss it with the European Commission, a USTR spokeswoman said.
House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank plans to reintroduce legislation to effectively unhinge the Internet gambling ban, which passed as part of a larger port security bill in 2006 but was not implemented until recently. A bill introduced by Frank last Congress would have created an exemption to the gambling ban for properly licensed operators and set up a regulatory and enforcement framework for those online firms to accept bets and wagers. It would also have ensured protections aimed at underage users, compulsive gamblers, and potential victims of money laundering and fraud. Read more in CongressDaily here (subscription required). -- Winter Casey
President Barack Obama kicked off his "Open For Questions" online town hall on Thursday telling his in-person audience in the East Room of the White House and thousands who watched via webcast that the event was an "experiment" that began to advance the campaign promise he made to open up the White House to the American people. "What matters to you and your families and what people here in Washington are focused on are not always one in the same," he said.
Vice President Joe Biden's chief economist Jared Bernstein facilitated the discussion, reading the most popular questions submitted and voted on by Internet users. He said over 92,000 people submitted over 100,000 questions and cast over 3.5 million votes. This isn't the first time a president has answered questions on the Internet. Former President Bill Clinton launched an "Ask The White House" feature and George W. Bush continued the the program during his term. Those who monitoring technology and politics said previous attempts were laudable but Obama's offering is most definitely "Web 2.0."
About halfway through the event, Obama acknowledged the elephant in the room -- the fact that a number of high-ranked Web questions tied legalizing marijuana to economic improvements and job creation. "I don't know what this says about the online audience," Obama laughed. "The answer is no, I don't think that is a good strategy to grow our economy." He can thank a grassroots mobilization effort by the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws for all the Mary Jane queries.
Update: More than 67,000 people watched the event online, the White House said.
The most controversial components of a bill that would overhaul the U.S. patent system, which is teed up for Senate Judiciary Committee consideration Thursday morning, will likely be pushed back until next week. Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy's mark up is expected to be a short one (for now) with the panel potentially considering a manager's amendment that will be largely technical in nature, CongressDaily's AM Edition reported. Eight of his committee's 19 members are also likely to be embroiled in the Senate Budget Committee's simultaneous markup of the fiscal year 2010 budget resolution and will have to choose between proceedings.
The biggest hurdle for Leahy continues to be a provision that would change how courts award damages in patent infringement lawsuits -- but sources say a compromise is in the works. A modified version of a "gatekeeper" proposal pitched by Judiciary ranking member Arlen Specter and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., last Congress may be the winning approach, Leahy's cosponsor, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, told CongressDaily. That concept would provide courts with clearer requirements on handling evidence of infringement and determining compensation. Talks are underway for a deal on what a Republican aide called "gatekeeper plus." The staffer said the compromise should appease high-tech firms that have insisted on bold changes to the damages regime.
Read CongressDaily's full story here (subscription required).
Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman Herb Kohl, D-Wis., and the panel's top Republican, Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, on Wednesday unveiled their agenda for the 111th Congress. Among their ambitious list of issues are some high-tech gems.
• Kohl intends to continue his inquiry into the cause of sharp price increases for text messaging. From 2006 to 2008, the four leading cell phone providers doubled the per message cost of text messaging, from 10 to 20 cents per message.
• The subcommittee will continue to examine competition in the consolidating Internet and related online advertising industry with particular attention to deals like Google's purchase of DoubleClick and the now-abandoned Google-Yahoo ad partnership.
• Members want to examine competition in the broadband industry and the issue of "network neutrality" while monitoring whether consumers continue to have the freedom to access the Internet content they wish.
• The panel will examine media consolidation; rising cable television rates; and increased competition in the cable and satellite TV market as well as playing a role in the renewal of the Satellite Home Viewer Extension and Reauthorization Act.
As of Wednesday evening, 32,165 Internet users had submitted 33,334 questions and cast 1,195,231 votes in anticipation of President Barack Obama's online town hall on Thursday at 11:30 a.m. The "Open for Questions" session in the East Room of the White House will focus on the economy and will be webcast live on WhiteHouse.gov. Vice President Joe Biden's chief economist Jared Bernstein will facilitate the discussion, reading some of the most popular questions that were submitted. Afterward, Obama will take follow-up questions from his live audience. A Roosevelt fireside chat, this ain't.
The 100-member on-site audience will be composed of teachers, nurses, small business owners, and community leaders-- and an audience of thousands will watch the event online, White House officials said. The town hall, which takes a page from the tech-savvy transition team's playbook, takes citizen participation one step further than the presidential campaign's YouTube debates. The forum is powered by Google Moderator, a program that lets users decide which questions are most important. The hoopla over the publicly available, open source tool is good PR for Google, which already had close ties to Team Obama. While we can't be sure what questions will be posed to the president since voting closes at 9:30 a.m., here are some of the most popular (corrected for spelling and grammar):
The word on K Street is that former Department of Commerce Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade Christopher Padilla will soon be heading up IBM's government affairs office in Washington. Padilla spent three years at the U.S. Trade Representative under President George W. Bush. Padilla has previously lobbied for AT&T. He has also served as vice president for international affairs at Lucent Technologies and director of international trade at Eastman Kodak.
Padilla is expected to replace Christopher Caine, who we previously reported would be stepping down to start his own company, Mercator XXI. Caine spent 25 years working for IBM. IBM spokesman Chris Andrews said the company does not comment on rumor or speculation about executive hiring decisions. In other news Tracy Schmaler, Yahoo's senior director for public affairs will leave the Internet firm later this week for a job at the Justice Department. The former spokeswoman for Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy will be deputy director of the agency's press shop.
Meanwhile, Carly Fiorina is now chair of the board at the Technology Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank. TPI was founded in 2007 and has a number of former employees of Progress & Freedom Foundation on staff. After being ousted from Hewlett Packard, Fiorina became heavily involved in the presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. -- Winter Casey & Andrew Noyes
The office of Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., believes their boss is the first member of Congress to show how federal recovery funds will be spent in her congressional district to stimulate the economy. Matsui will post an interactive Google Map on her Web site today to show where the funding received from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which President Obama signed into law on Feb. 17, is going in Sacramento. The office said Matsui plans to update the Web site as new funds become available to her district in the future.
"Transparency and accountability have been key components of the economic recovery bill, as such; I have posted a running list of programs and projects that have received funding from the stimulus package on my website, and a Google Map showing where the federal money is going throughout the Sacramento area," said Matsui in a statement. These funds are being dolled out in significant sums to recipients working on efforts that include public safety programs, the evaluation of direct geothermal feasibility and solar photovoltaic systems to reduce energy costs, public housing programs, electric cars to transport disabled visitors, and transportation and sidewalk improvements. -- Winter Casey
In an effort to pull the American media business up from its downward spiral, alternative financing models beyond Web advertising continue to be floated. One of these proposals concerns the idea that a fee or tax could be placed on Internet service providers. "There has been a growing attention to this as the advertising supporting models have weakened over the last six or seven months," said David Ardia, director of the Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard University. The ISP proposal recognizes that "there are some businesses that benefit from the digital distribution of content" such as ISPs, which "are in a good position to transfer money to content holders," he said. Under such a model, the government could collect the fees and divide the money among content creators or ISPs could collect a fee from users and distribute the money themselves.
The U.S. Internet Service Provider Association's Kate Dean gave the ISP proposal a chilly reception. "Every business model has had to adapt to new technologies and that includes ISPs. And this is a time of great change and great opportunity to interfere with this process through regressive taxation is ill advised," she said. Amy Mitchell, deputy director for the Project for Excellence in Journalism, raised the ISP idea during an interview on WAMU's Kojo Nnamdi Show on Monday. Another idea she mentioned is to follow on the cable television model "where the provider charges a kind of subscription fee and any news outlet that it is going to contain inside its walls they have to pay a little bit of money for so some of the fees they collect ends up going out to the news organizations." -- Winter Casey
From CongressDaily's AM Edition...
House and Senate Republicans are preparing to christen their chambers' high-tech membership organizations after a prolonged lull. Once launched, they will have a host of hot topics on their plates including President Barack Obama's tax and trade policy proposals and the union-backed Employee Free Choice Act. Even without a formal agenda in place, House Republican High Tech Working Group Chairman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia joined Judiciary ranking member Lamar Smith and Education and Labor ranking member Howard (Buck) McKeon this month to denounce the EFCA. They contend that card-check legislation would harm workers' privacy rights.
Goodlatte has assembled about 45 members for his working group, which had a prominent role in the Republican-controlled 109th Congress but, like the Senate High Tech Task Force, was largely muffled when Democrats came to power. The Senate Republican High Tech Task Force is also gearing up. It was created by former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., and before former Sen. Gordon Smith of Oregon's tenure last session, was led by Sens. John Ensign of Nevada, Robert Bennett of Utah, and former Sen. George Allen of Virginia. The Senate Democratic High Tech Task Force, which was co-chaired last Congress by Sens. John Kerry of Massachusetts and Mark Pryor of Arkansas, has also been slow to start. Read the full story here (subscription required).
House Science Chairman Bart Gordon said Tuesday that conversations about federal R&D funding as part of a fiscal year 2010 appropriations package will be "difficult" given a range of competing priorities and the ongoing recession but are critical to continued U.S. competitiveness. Government bankrolled research got a "big bump" in the economic stimulus package and the fiscal year 2009 omnibus but sustained growth in the years to come is key, he told Tech Daily Dose.
"At the same time we're asking for more money, we're trying to leverage that by spending what we have better and coordinating that with the private sector," Gordon said. One such example is the House's recent passage of legislation to strengthen and provide transparency in federal R&D to understand the potential environmental, health, and safety risks of nanotechnology. Under the bill, agencies that are part of the National Nanotechnology Initiative would be required to develop a plan for environmental and safety research; near-term and long-term goals and other requirements.
Universities and businesses must do their part to be good partners with government "in determining the best areas for research that can be commercialized, taking it from the labs and universities to the private sector," Gordon said. Representatives from those communities visited Capitol Hill on Tuesday to meet with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other lawmakers to thank them for their support. "They want to [be able to] come back and say thank you next year and the year after and the year after," Gordon said.
If President Barack Obama's primetime Tuesday news conference left viewers wanting more, the administration is inviting the public to post economy-related questions on the White House's Web site and vote on submissions from others. Obama will answer some of the most popular questions in an online town hall Thursday. The "Open for Questions" program is a new experiment for the president's Web team and is the latest effort to open up the White House and give Americans "a direct line to the Administration." The forum is community-moderated and accessible to computer users of all ages so officials warned those taking part that "everyone has a right to their opinion" and to "be thoughtful about the words you choose." In its first few hours, the Web application received 19,932 votes on 230 questions (less than 20 minutes later that grew to 48,586 votes on 1,796 questions).
To learn more, click here.
As Eliza Newlin Carney reported in National Journal's State of Lobbying issue this week, the advocacy industry is increasingly using social networking tools to promote their issue of the day. The Sunlight Foundation is using Twitter to directly lobby senators to co-sponsor the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act that NationalJournal.com's Under The Influence blog mentioned Monday. Sunlight courted bill supporters to lobby senators' BlackBerrys directly via a 'Tweet Lobby'.
"[We] believe this will be the first organized direct lobbying of members of Congress over Twitter," Sunlight Communication's Director Gabriela Schneider told National Journal. Two senators, Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., tweeted about their support of the bill. Both of these lawmakers supported the bill in previous sessions of Congress so their position is not necessarily a reflection of the Twitter lobby. It will be interesting and telling if the Twitter lobby generates a response from a greater portion of the 17 senators on Twitter, especially those who haven't voiced support of the bill in the past. We'll be paying attention -- Eliza Krigman
More than 100 Golden State companies who have serious concerns about legislation intended to overhaul the U.S. patent system are putting pressure on Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., days before the Senate Judiciary Committee is slated to consider the bill. An array of companies including Amgen, Corning, Monsanto and Qualcomm signed the letter sent late last week by the California Healthcare Institute, which represents medical device, biotechnology, diagnostics and pharmaceutical firms. The measure, co-sponsored by Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, contains controversial language that would change how courts calculate damages in patent lawsuits. The signatories argue that the legislation "fails to account for a number of significant court decisions that have both transformed the patent aw landscape and addressed the supposed failings of the current system."
The companies say they support "balanced and reasonable efforts" to improve patent quality up front by modernizing operations and providing new resources to the Patent and Trademark Office. Major high-tech and media companies, however, believe more aggressive, litigation related changes are needed to keep the United States competitive. The bill is scheduled to be marked up Thursday and Feinstein serves on the committee. During a recent hearing, witnesses expressed interest in revisiting a "gatekeeper" damages provision, which was explored in the 110th Congress by Feinstein and Judiciary ranking member Arlen Specter. The proposal, which would provide courts with clearer requirements on handling evidence of infringement and determining damages, was not included in the current version or in the bill that passed Leahy's panel in July 2007.
Robert Tapella, the head of the Government Printing Office, recently sent to President Barack Obama five goals and accompanying actions the GPO can take to help implement the White House's transparency and open government agenda. Tapella, whose office oversees production and distribution of information products and services for all three branches of the federal government, sent the memo to Obama on March 9 but it was released publicly last week.
1. Goal: Position GPO's Federal Digital System (FDsys, at www.fdsys.gov) as the official repository for Federal Government publications.
Action: Develop pilot concepts with the Administration's Open Government office.
2. Goal: Enable and support Web 2.0 functionality through FDsys to support public comments on pending legislation.
Action: Develop a pilot with the Open Government office to evaluate the process
to collect comments on selected bills.
Officials inside the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative have promised to thoroughly review their transparency policies on the heels of complaints by several civil society groups who argued that deliberations over the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Act have been too secretive, Knowledge Ecology International Director James Love said Friday. The review is expected to be completed within a few months and will include a meeting in the coming weeks to discuss initial specific proposals for openness, he wrote on his blog. Citizens and non-governmental organizations are encouraged to think about the specific areas where openness and transparency can be enhanced and how, Love said.
Among the proposals that will be evaluated are the following at the request of KEI:
1. Disclosure of all negotiating texts and policy papers
2. Disclosure of all meeting agenda (as soon as they are available), and participant lists, extending to plurilateral, regional and bilateral negotiations policies that are common at multilateral institutions.
3. Accreditation of civil society NGOs to attend meetings, including in plurilateral, regional and bilateral negotiations, as is common at multilateral institutions.
4. Public consultations and comment periods, including those that accept comments to web based forums.
In addition, the USTR is welcoming groups to make other proposals, he said. Read more about last week's meeting on KEI's blog here and a recent CongressDaily story on the topic here (subscription required).
Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., unceremoniously reintroduced a bill last week that would make changes to the U.S. patent system -- an alternative to legislation sponsored in the 110th Congress and again this session by Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. Under Kyl's plan, which has been tweaked slightly since it was last introduced, litigants in patent infringement lawsuits would be encouraged to use precise economic analyses to determine damages rather than less exact calculations. Supporters of Leahy's bill, which is scheduled for a Thursday mark-up, want a solution that includes specific rules for apportionment of damages in patent lawsuits.
In drafting Kyl's bill last year, staff consulted extensively with critics of Leahy's proposal, including the pharmaceutical and life-sciences industries and members of the Innovation Alliance, a group of small tech firms and companies whose business models depend on patent licenses. A number of others like the Coalition for 21st Century Patent Reform, the Biotechnology Industry Association, Intellectual Property Owners Association, and American Intellectual Property Law Association also weighed in. At the time, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America Senior Vice President Ken Johnson told CongressDaily that Kyl's proposal "pushed the ball forward and helped set the table for responsible reform."
Noticeably absent from the dialogue with Kyl's staff was the Coalition for Patent Fairness, which represents Cisco Systems, Google, Microsoft, Time Warner, and others. That group, which backs Leahy's approach, said in a statement last fall that Kyl's bill "will not fix the nation's patent system, which is broken and draining critical resources from healthy sectors of our economy." At the time, Hatch issued a statement calling Kyl's measure "a worthy attempt" but not a "silver bullet." Read CongressDaily's earlier coverage of the Kyl bill here, here, and here (subscription required).
Internet law expert Susan Crawford has joined President Barack Obama's lineup of tech policy experts at the White House, according to several sources. She will likely hold the title of special assistant to the president for science, technology, and innovation policy, they said. Crawford, who was most recently a visiting professor at the University of Michigan and at Yale Law School, was tapped by Obama's transition team in November to co-chair its FCC review process with University of Pennsylvania professor Kevin Werbach. Her official administration appointment has not been formally announced. Crawford may be best known for her work with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the California-based nonprofit group that manages the Internet address system. She served on ICANN's board for three years beginning in December 2005. She also founded OneWebDay, a global Earth Day for the Internet that takes place every Sept. 22. Crawford, a Yale graduate, clerked for U.S. District Judge Raymond Dearie before joining Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering where she worked until the end of 2002.
Longtime intellectual property rights crusader Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., might have moved on to chair the House Foreign Affairs Committee in the 111th Congress but he has not abandoned his passion for the hot-button policy topic. Berman, whose congressional district includes parts of Hollywood, is planning an April 6 field hearing in Van Nuys on the international impact of counterfeiting and piracy. Berman chaired the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property last Congress and after being tapped for the Foreign Affairs top spot, Judiciary Chairman John Conyers decided to eliminate the panel and handle IP at the full committee level.
The forthcoming hearing titled "Sinking the Copyright Pirates: Global Protection of Intellectual Property" will feature representatives from various sectors of the entertainment industry who will discuss the devastating economic impact of illegal reproduction of copyrighted material overseas, a Monday e-mail from Berman's office said. Members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee will take part but a witness list has not yet been released. According to the International Intellectual Property Alliance, U.S. creative industries account for $110 billion annually in revenue from foreign trade but they are losing billions from IP theft. IIPA recently told the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative in a filing that in 48 countries, the software and recording sectors alone lost more than $18.4 billion to bootleggers.
Watchdog group Media Matters has launched a new Web site called Financial Media Matters, a project "dedicated to holding accountable those who report on the financial and business industry as well as those who report on labor, economic, and other fiscal matters." The organization created the site because it believes reporters have consistently offered false or misleading coverage of the causes of and proposed solutions for the current economic crisis. "Many journalists, both in the financial and mainstream media, have failed to critically examine the issues and instead have simply repeated partisan spin -- from using the phrase 'Obama Bear Market' to touting CNBC on-air editor Rick Santelli's rant as being 'populist,'" Media Matters said in a Monday press release. Among those in the site's crosshairs: CNBC, Fox Business Network, and The Wall Street Journal. "As people across the country struggle with losing their jobs, losing their homes, and losing their nest eggs, Americans are depending on the media -- especially the financial media -- for answers," Media Matters President Eric Burns said.
As President Barack Obama's first 100 days whiz by, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, ranking member Arlen Specter, and Sens. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., and George Voinovich, R-Ohio, are pressuring the White House to make intellectual property protection a priority. The foursome who was the driving force behind last year's PRO IP Act, which former President George W. Bush signed in October, wrote to Obama last week urging him to nominate an IP enforcement coordinator. The position within the Executive Office of the President was created in their legislation and "can improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the administration's efforts to protect American intellectual property," they wrote in a letter obtained by Tech Daily Dose.
Such an official can make a major impact in the fight against counterfeiting and piracy "but only if placed in an appropriate position of authority" inside the White House with adequate funding, the senators said. "Intellectual property rights promote innovation and creativity, long recognized as major drivers of the United States economy. Protecting intellectual property is therefore both a law enforcement objective and an important component of our economy recovery efforts," they wrote. CongressDaily reported shortly after Election Day that Victoria Espinel, a Democrat who served as the first assistant trade representative for IP, was a likely contender. Entertainment industry officials' names were also floated including Shira Perlmutter, a former associate general counsel for Time Warner.
Surf on over to CongressDaily's TechCentral for a new "Issue of the Week." Here's a taste:
Julius Genachowski, the architect of President Barack Obama's technology policy and his pick to run the FCC, quietly made the rounds visiting Senate Commerce Committee members last week, an indication that his formal nomination is near, according to government sources. These courtesy calls will help shape the questioning at his confirmation hearing and provide the public with a glimpse into the mindset of the man who's on track to become the first permanent Democratic agency chief in eight years.
For now, Genachowski's agenda remains shrouded in mystery because he's not granting interviews. But there is one thing that can be said with certainty about his widely anticipated arrival at the FCC in the coming weeks or months: the inboxes on his desk and computer will be overflowing. The two Democrats serving at the commission now -- Acting Chairman Michael Copps and Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein -- are laying the ground work for Genachowski's agenda, and if early indications are any sign, it's ambitious. Policy proposals that remained dormant during the long stretch of Republican control are hastily being dusted off, while regulatory matters that have faced perpetual gridlock could receive fresh attention.
"The Democrats are going to push to see what they can get traction on," said David Kaut, a telecom analyst at the investment firm Stifel Nicolaus, which expects newer players, such as eBay, Google and Yahoo to carry more weight at the agency, with incumbents AT&T, Qwest and Verizon receiving tougher scrutiny. The latter could feel the sting when the commission reviews their requests for relief from existing regulations and discounted rates they're required to charge competitors, though pending litigation in these areas also could guide the agency's hand. Read the full story here (subscription required).
High-tech intruders thought to be in China recently hacked into computers in Sen. Bill Nelson's Washington, D.C. office. Two attacks on the same day this month and another last month targeted work stations used by three of the Florida Democrat's staffers -- a key foreign-policy aide, the deputy legislative director and a former Nelson NASA adviser. The hackers didn't make off with any classified information, which isn't kept on office computers, a Nelson spokesman said in a press release. Similar incursions on Capitol Hill IT networks are up significantly in the past few months, according to various congressional information systems offices.
Nelson, a member of the Senate Intelligence, Armed Services and Finance committees, has joined Senate Commerce Chairman John (Jay) Rockefeller and Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, in cosponsoring legislation aimed at bolstering U.S. defenses against such attacks. "The threat to our national security, to be sure, is real; and, it will require significant investment and inter-agency coordination at an unprecedented level to gain an upper hand against would-be cyber criminals and spies," Nelson said last week. "These are anxious days, when you consider the threat from such espionage facing our country and recent developments on this front."
President Barack Obama on Friday nominated FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein to become administrator for the Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service. He has been at the Commission since December 2002. Before joining the FCC, Adelstein served for 15 years as a staff member in the Senate, for the last seven as a senior aide to former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. RUS issues loans and grants for telecom, energy and water treatment projects and is set to receive $2.5 billion in loans from the economic stimulus package to promote broadband deployment.
CongressDaily reported earlier this month that the White House was quietly assembling a list several candidates for the FCC after Obama announced that he wants his chief technology adviser and close confidante Julius Genachowski as chairman. Mignon Clyburn, a state regulator and daughter of House Majority Whip James Clyburn, is a leading contender to replace Adelstein. Senate Commerce Chairman John (Jay) Rockefeller and ranking member Kay Bailey Hutchison, along with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, are playing an active role in the decision-making to fill a GOP FCC slot. Read CongressDaily's story here (subscription required).
Other key appointments made Friday:
• Steven Koonin, the nominee for under secretary for science at the Energy Department, who is currently chief scientist for BP where he guides the company's technology strategy.
• Priscilla Guthrie, the nominee for chief information officer at the Office of Director of National Intelligence, who is currently IT director at the Institute for Defense Analyses, a nonprofit that administers three federally funded R&D centers.
• David Blumenthal, a former Harvard Medical School professor, to become national coordinator for health IT at the Health and Human Services Department.
Rep. Michael Honda, D-Calif, vice-chair of the House Appropriations Legislative Branch Subcommittee, is giving his constituents the opportunity to redesign his congressional Web site -- and he is using Web surveys and micro-blogging application Twitter to collect ideas. Despite the plans for a new look, Honda's current site has been recognized for its solid design by the Congressional Management Foundation. His office said the purpose of the redesign "is to move America closer to Government 2.0, where the public's ability to access and provide advice to members of Congress is enhanced by new technology and new online participation." Honda has promoted legislation to make data from Congress, the Library of Congress and the Government Printing Office available to the public. See related Tech Daily Dose posts here and here.
Also in the congressional new media arena, a number of lawmakers will be answering questions regarding their own user experiences with new technology such as Facebook and Twitter on April 21 as part of the annual Politics Online conference put on by George Washington University. Lawmakers scheduled to attend include include Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and Reps. John Culberson, R-Texas, Steve Israel, D-N.Y., Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., and Tim Ryan, D-Ohio. -- Winter Casey
Senate Commerce Chairman John (Jay) Rockefeller and Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, are crafting legislation that they hope will improve the country's cybersecurity posture in the face of increasingly sophisticated global attacks against U.S. government networks as well as the nation's broader critical infrastructure. Rockefeller indicated he was working on the bill at a Thursday hearing where he also pledged to make cybersecurity a committee priority this year. He called cybersecurity "a profoundly and deeply troubling problem to which we are not paying much attention." CongressDaily's AM Edition has more coverage of the hearing (subscription required).
"We presently have systems to protect our nation's secrets and our government networks against cyber espionage, and it is imperative that those cyber defenses keep up with our enemies' cyber capabilities," a draft summary of the Rockefeller-Snowe proposal obtained by CongressDaily stated. "However, the threat of cyber attack on our private sector's critical infrastructure - banking, utilities, air/rail/auto traffic control, and telecommunications is equally alarming and protections must be put in place." The document goes on to say the proposal would "bring new high-level governmental attention to develop a fully integrated, thoroughly coordinated, public-private partnership."
Follow the jump for a detailed rundown of what the bill could include...
Fans and foes of legislation that would end a longstanding copyright royalty granted to AM and FM radio made their cases on Capitol Hill on Thursday. The National Association of Broadcasters, which opposes the measure, hosted a panel discussion featuring radio personality Tom Joyner and minority broadcasting executives including Radio One founder Cathy Hughes; ICBC Broadcast Holdings President Charles Warfield; Glory Communications President Alex Snipe and others. They argued the legislation will destroy diversity in the urban radio community and put many radio jobs at risk.
Meanwhile, representatives from the MusicFirst Coalition, which supports the bill, visited members with Duke Fakir of the Four Tops. Fakir joined Motown legends Martha Reeves of Martha and the Vandellas and Mary Wilson of the Supremes in sending a same-day letter to lawmakers asking them to support the bill. "This bill will have a real and positive economic impact in the lives of working musicians and recording artists and help ensure the continued vitality of American music and culture," the letter said.
The Senate on Thursday confirmed John Holdren, a Harvard physicist, as President Barack Obama's science adviser and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Holdren was a professor of environmental policy at the university and served as director of the Kennedy School's program on science, technology, and public policy. His research has focused on causes and consequences of global environmental change; energy technologies; and ways to reduce the dangers from nuclear weapons and materials, according to his official bio.
Oregon State University marine biologist Jane Lubchenco was also confirmed as head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Senate Commerce Chairman John (Jay) Rockefeller said he was pleased to see both nominees win confirmation. "It is time to take science out of the laboratory and into our communities in order to help people understand how science impacts their everyday lives - from clean air and water to fixing our rapidly declining economy," Rockefeller said. "Both individuals will serve this country and the taxpayers honorably; there is much work to be done and no time to waste."
Members of Congress and the Obama administration can anticipate a high-tech lobbying blitz as the boards of both the Information Technology Industry Council and TechNet converge in Washington next week. ITI represents heavyweights like Apple Computer, Cisco Systems, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Dell while TechNet's leadership consists of investors in, and CEOs of, top Silicon Valley firms. This is the first time the organizations have united in such a purposeful way, ITI lobbyist Ralph Hellman said.
Together and separately, representatives from ITI and TechNet will meet with Democratic and Republican leaders of the House and Senate as well as key members from the Judiciary, Commerce, Finance, and Ways and Means Committees. They will also sit down with cabinet secretaries and top administration officials from a range of agencies and departments, Hellman said. "These two organizations work very well together and we'll continue to work together," he told Tech Daily Dose.
Areas of focus include making sure technology-related economic stimulus dollars are spent wisely, patent legislation and trade issues. They will also urge lawmakers to reject attempts to enact changes to tax law that would be harmful to the high-tech community. Obama has proposed such a provision, known as deferral, which tech leaders believe gives companies an incentive to move jobs overseas. "By coordinating our efforts with the administration and Congress we get to reach that many more people," Hellman said.
As expected, the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday delayed consideration of controversial patent legislation introduced earlier this month by Chairman Patrick Leahy and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. The bill has been criticized by a number of industry stakeholders -- mainly because of its controversial provision to change how damage are awarded in patent infringement lawsuits -- but was put on the agenda for the panel's mark up anyway. Under committee rules, any member can request a hold-over on legislation that appears on the agenda for the first time. In this case it was ranking member Arlen Specter who asked that the bill be held (see CongressDaily's PM Edition for more).
Leahy indicated that productive meetings had been held on the legislation with a number of offices. "The hearing last week demonstrated that there is wide consensus among participants in the patent system, academics, and senators on this committee that patent reform is necessary," he said. "It should also be apparent, at least in my view, that the time for posturing has ended, and the time for reaching agreement has arrived." At the patent hearing, Specter asked witnesses for language to describe what the test for damages should be and many of them were close to using the same words, Leahy said. "We are looking for a way to get this right, to legislate responsibly." The committee is expected to revisit the bill in executive session next Thursday.
As the economy worsens and the publishing world struggles to regain footing, Crain Communications has given pink slips to at least three top journalists in its Washington office, according to sources within the company. The privately-owned business publisher shut down RCR Wireless News, a publication that covers the wireless industry, last week. The publication's bureau chief, Jeff Silva, is leaving the company and a source within the firm said he did not think any reporters for the publication were spared. RCR Wireless News had 50,000 print subscribers and more than 100,000 Web visitors per month. "The market for the wireless industry has been hit particularly hard and we needed to direct our resources in other directions," the company's chairman Keith Crain said in a statement.
This week, Crain Communications told its staff that they were cutting Washington reporters for three publications: Advertising Age, which focused on advertising, marketing and media; Television Week, which billed itself as the community newspaper of the television industry; and Automotive News, the newspaper of the automotive industry. In recent weeks, Crain has also closed Financial Week, financialweek.com, Automotive News Europe and Business Insurance Europe. Ira Teinowitz, who was bureau chief for Advertising Age and also covered Washington for Television Week, is leaving the company and Harry Stoffer, a reporter with Automotive News, has also been let go.
"Washington is not the only place getting cut for Automotive News. We also lots a Nashville person, a West Coast reporter I am told, we lost at least two copy editors in Detroit, we lost the IT reporter in Detroit, we lost an assigning editor in Detroit. That makes seven positions that I know of for Automotive News," Stoffer said. Concerning his layoff, Stoffer said "It's shocking, it's unfortunate. I understand companies need to cut back. I question the wisdom for my publication of taking out its Washington bureau at a time when the federal government is making the most critical decisions ever related to the automobile industry." Crain's Washington office still has 11 employees left, he said. -- Winter Casey
A dubiously named industry group formed last year by high-definition television manufacturers VIZIO and Westinghouse Digital to raise awareness about possible price gouging by ATSC-technology patent holders bolstered its Internet presence on Thursday by launching a Web site. The Coalition United to Terminate Financial Abuses of the Television Transition -- or CUT FATT -- said the site will provide "a simple way for consumers to encourage the FCC to hold DTV patent holders accountable, as it has in connection with other violations of digital transition rules. Time is of the essence since analog sets will go dark in just over three months and American consumers are poised to spend more than $2 billion on new digital TVs, CUT FATT spokesman Amos Snead said in a press release.
The FCC recently issued a public notice seeking comment on CUT FATT's petition for rulemaking and request for declaratory filing filed in January that urged the Commission to take immediate action against the alleged mark ups. Visitors to CUTFATT.org can signal their support for that petition by signing an online letter. Comments are due April 27. "When the FCC adopted the ATSC digital television standard, it promised to protect consumers from unreasonable and discriminatory patent fees," Snead said. "CUT FATT applauds the FCC for scrutinizing the demands of patent holders who charge American consumers far more than consumers pay in other countries. Now it is time for American consumers to speak up, and CUT FATT.org makes it easy for them to do so."
My colleague Winter Casey reports at NationalJournal.com...
Speaking at a Center for Democracy and Technology gala last week, Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., predicted that federal shield legislation he introduced in February would pass the House and Senate this session. The bill, H.R. 985, would protect reporters from being compelled to reveal confidential sources even under subpoena. It currently has 40 cosponsors, including Reps. Mike Pence, R-Ind., John Conyers, D-Mich., and Bob Goodlatte, R-Va. An identical bill passed the House during the 110th Congress, but the Senate never considered it.
In order to protect journalists, however, someone first has to decide who qualifies -- no easy task in the fast-evolving new media marketplace. Boucher's office noted that 36 states and the District of Columbia already have statutes protecting reporters, but the laws use varying standards and some require journalists to work for a newspaper or a radio or television station. "We have to be very careful of enshrining in legislation today a view of technology that doesn't take into account that technology changes," said David Ardia, director of the Citizen Media Law Project at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard. "We are also faced with the situation today when journalism and journalism institutions are undergoing tremendous change, and the way we have defined who is a journalist" is changing as well, he added.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, for example, this week stopped printing a paper edition and is available only via the Web. President Barack Obama, in his first news conference from the White House, took a question from a reporter for the Huffington Post, an online-only source of liberal-leaning news that also routinely publishes stories written by celebrities and notable politicos. Under some laws, reporters from neither publication would qualify for protection. Read the full story here.
Commerce Secretary-designate Gary Locke on Wednesday assured the Senate Commerce Committee there will be timely implementation of the transition to digital television and told Republicans that statistical sampling will not be used for apportionment purposes in the 2010 census. His confirmation hearing brought up a range of issues from the monitoring of commercial fishing to cybersecurity. Read more in CongressDaily's PM Edition (subscription required).
Other interesting tidbits:
If confirmed, Locke should pay close attention to challenges currently faced by the Patent and Trademark Office as well as to related bills moving through the House and Senate that could drastically change the patent system, Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., said. "This is such a key issue for further growth of our intellectual property," Brownback said, noting that it is crucial that legislation does not favor one industry over another. "I don't think that's a wise way for us to grow," he said.
Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., raised the impending expiration of the Commerce Department's formal oversight role with respect to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the group that Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration has been reviewing ICANN's progress as part of a three-year agreement to extend a contract between them, which expired in September 2006. Nelson said Locke will have to help decide how the U.S. government's relationship with ICANN will evolve.
On the anti-piracy and anti-counterfeiting front, Locke said he has long been focused on intellectual property protections. In response to a statement by Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., he said bootlegging takes money away from U.S. companies and the nation has to work aggressively to stop the flow of illicit products -- from automobile parts to consumer goods to software.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, on Wednesday laid out his argument for why legislation he cosponsored with Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy should include an "inequitable conduct" provision that would rule patents invalid if owners are not forthcoming to the Patent and Trademark Office. The language was part of a bill that passed Leahy's panel last Congress but was axed from the version they reintroduced this year. "Inequitable conduct reform is core to patent reform, as it dictates how patents are prosecuted years before litigation," Hatch told a symposium on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
The inequitable conduct defense is frequently pled, rarely proven, and always drives up the cost of litigation, he said. If an inequitable conduct claim wins, a valid patent will be held entirely void, and the infringer walks away without any liability, he added. There is "virtually no downside for the infringer to raise this type of attack." Yet Hatch acknowledged the generic drug industry deems the inequitable conduct defense sacrosanct and any attempt to change it will be met with opposition. Once compromise is reached on that issue and on how to calculate damages in a patent lawsuit, "the rest of the bill will fall into place," he said.
With respect to damages, Hatch said specific language like "apportionment, contribution over prior art, or essential features" has been dismissed by many but at last week's Judiciary hearing, Hatch said he heard agreement on a gatekeeper approach where a judge instructs juries on what factors to consider in determining damages and agreement that damages should be based on the economic value of the invention to the infringed product or process. The bill has been listed for a Thursday mark up but will likely be held over. At the event, Hatch also told a joke with the punch line: "But you're a patent attorney, you don't know enough law to hurt anybody." Follow the jump to read it...
The Electronic Privacy Information Center asked the FTC on Tuesday to open an investigation into Google's cloud computing services -- including Gmail, Google Docs, and Picasa -- to determine "the adequacy of the privacy and security safeguards." The petition follows the recent report of a breach of Google Docs. The high-tech watchdog group cited the growing dependence of American consumers, businesses, and federal agencies on cloud computing services, and urged the Commission to take "such measures as are necessary" to ensure the safety and security of information submitted to Google.
A Google spokesman said the company had not yet reviewed the complaint in detail but many cloud computing providers, including Google, "have extensive policies, procedures and technologies in place to ensure the highest levels of data protection." "We are highly aware of how important our users' data is to them and take our responsibility very seriously," the Google spokesman said. Previous EPIC complaints have led the FTC to order Microsoft to revise the security standards for one of its programs and to require Choicepoint to change its business practices and pay $15 million in fines.
For more Google/privacy coverage, read NationalJournal.com's story, "Google Stands To Gain From Cookie Trail" by Neil Munro.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers controls extremely important aspects of the Internet, but is largely accountable to no one, according to a new study from the Technology Policy Institute. The paper comes as interest in ICANN oversight grows among lawmakers and industry stakeholders and the organization moves closer to severing its formal ties with the Commerce Department later this year. The report, coauthored by TPI President Thomas Lenard and New York University economist Lawrence White, reviews the structure and function of ICANN and also a number of other organizations that perform a roughly comparable range of private-sector and quasi-governmental coordination and standard-setting functions.
The authors conclude that no organization with ICANN's level of responsibility operates with the independence that ICANN enjoys. The organization's proposal for complete privatization and termination of the U.S. government's official oversight function would make the accountability problem worse, they wrote. Virtually all the organizations reviewed in the study are governed by their direct users; Lenard and White argue that direct users should similarly govern ICANN. The model would increase accountability and would also be consistent with the reduced regulatory role the authors recommend. Read the Lenard-White study here.
Former Washington Democratic Gov. Gary Locke told the Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday that he plans to shepherd the Commerce Department through turbulent economic times in the same way that he led Washington state when the high-tech bubble hit. "We pressed forward with a series of smart policy initiatives that set us up for future growth and created incentives to drive economic expansion. And we set a laser focus on attracting and developing the next generation of innovative and emerging industries," he said in prepared remarks. "We came out of that period stronger, healthier, and better prepared to embrace economic change."
Locke said setting a foundation for long-term economic growth and job creation is important and reducing the backlog of patent applications at the Patent and Trademark Office is also a key goal. "We must look over the horizon and prepare for the new economy that will emerge when this recession passes," he told senators. "Simply put, we must re-build, re-tool and re-invent our national strategies for sustained economic success." The Commerce Department, as President Barack Obama has noted, must be able to do multiple things at once, Locke said. "I believe we can."
The U.S. Sentencing Commission Tuesday heard perspectives from the Justice Department, high-tech experts and others on how to implement cybercrime legislation that passed Congress last year. The ID theft bill, authored by Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy and signed by former President George W. Bush in September, allows the prosecution of those who steal personal data from a computer even when the victim's computer is located in the same state as the thief's. Under prior law, federal courts only had jurisdiction if the crime was committed across state lines. The measure made it a felony to employ malicious software to damage 10 or more computers and criminalized threats to steal or release information from a computer.
In his testimony, the head of DOJ's Computer Crimes and Intellectual Property Section, urged the Commission to ensure that its execution reflects key differences between economic crimes such as fraud and those involving information theft. Some of the information theft incidents include high-tech hacking cases that involve large-scale data breaches like a 2003 incident involving information broker Acxiom, where more than 1.6 billion customer records were stolen, Michael DuBose said. He testified that guidelines being contemplated restrict consideration of fair market value for calculating loss in situations where "property [is] taken or destroyed."
Read CongressDaily's story here (subscription only) and the testimony here.
After several ill fated attempts at selecting the next Commerce secretary, President Barack Obama has found a candidate who understands what is happening on Main Street and has his "finger on the pulse of what direction America must head toward in generations to come," according to Senate Commerce Chairman John (Jay) Rockefeller. In prepared remarks for Wednesday's confirmation hearing for former Washington Democratic Gov. Gary Locke, Rockefeller said the administration has made "the perfect choice" for the job after previous selections -- Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico and Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H. -- withdrew their names from consideration.
"The people deserve to know that the person working with Congress and this committee every day, to determine the best way to reboot this economy, is a person who -- simply put -- gets it," Rockefeller said, noting that Commerce secretary is "one very big job." If confirmed by the Senate, Locke will immediately begin to tackle the national transition to digital television; management of the 2010 Census, the allocation of $4.7 billion in broadband funds; engagement on climate change; and amplification of science and technology to increase U.S. competitiveness and innovation, Rockefeller said.
The expansive influence the Commerce Department -- much like the vast jurisdiction of the Senate Commerce Committee -- is surprising, he noted. "The department is charged with promoting job creation, improving living standards by promoting economic growth, increasing competitiveness, issuing patents and trademarks, and helping to set industrial standards," Rockefeller said. "This is no small job. And there will be challenges." But the chairman feels confident that Locke will ensure U.S. workers can prosper, businesses can thrive, and the economy can grow. "We need to move quickly on this nomination because there is important work to be done and not a moment to waste," he said.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, reintroduced a bill Tuesday requiring Congress to explicitly state its intention when writing statutory Freedom of Information Act exemptions into new legislation. FOIA "is the power cord that connects the American people to their government," Leahy told a Washington College of Law "Sunshine Week" conference a day earlier. "The growing use of legislation to carve out new exemptions to FOIA poses a danger to the ideals of open government." See CongressDaily's coverage here. The Senate first passed similar legislation unanimously in 2006 but a bill they introduced last Congress did not clear Leahy's committee.
"Too often, legislative exemptions to FOIA are buried within a few lines of very complex and lengthy bills, and these new exemptions are never debated openly before becoming law," Leahy said in a statement. Cornyn added the measure "will ensure that Congress can't slip anti-transparency measures into legislation without someone noticing." The two partnered to author a 2007 bill -- which was signed by former President George W. Bush -- to make the first major reforms to FOIA in more than a decade. The bill restored deadlines for agency action under FOIA and created a FOIA ombudsman at the National Archives and Records Administration, which the fiscal year 2009 omnibus spending bill funded at $1 million.
When President Barack Obama approved a $410 billion omnibus spending bill for fiscal year 2009 last week, he made the first two appropriations related to legislation passed by the 110th Congress that is aimed at fighting counterfeiting and piracy. The Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act, which former President George W. Bush signed in October, increased both civil and criminal penalties for trademark and copyright infringement and created the yet-to-be-named post of an IP enforcement coordinator at the White House. Specifically, the omnibus included $9.4 million for hiring new FBI agents dedicated to work solely on IP issues, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which pressed lawmakers to pass the IP measure.
The funding will allow the addition of two agents in each of the field offices containing Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property units, which the Justice Department has determined most merit assistance in IP rights investigations, with no less than 26 agents assigned for this purpose. The money also provides for the creation of an additional and distinct operational unit at FBI headquarters with at least five full-time, permanent agents dedicated to working with DOJ's Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section on complex, multi-district and international criminal IP cases. Additionally, the omnibus allocates $18 million for state and local grants for "economic, high-tech and cybercrime prevention." While not IP specific, grant requests for IP enforcement would be eligible.
A recent proposal by Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Joseph Lieberman to make Congressional Research Service reports more easily accessible to the public could pose constitutional challenges, according to Harold Relyea, a well-respected CRS analyst who retired in January after more than 30 years of government service. "While you could get 400 members of Congress to agree to let them out to the public, all it takes is a few others to argue constitutional privilege," he told a Washington College of Law "Sunshine Week" conference on Monday. Lieberman wrote to Senate Rules Committee Chairman Charles Schumer this month calling for a sanctioned, automatically updated clearinghouse for CRS documents so "those with power and those without have equal access to this important resource."
A more workable approach could stem from the Rules Committee's authorization last Congress for CRS to create software to let senators place individual reports on their Web sites, Relyea said. The next step could be building an overarching IT framework that would allow the public to search for CRS reports across senators' sites, he said. Other than a "passing generic reference" in its enacting legislation, CRS is not statutorily obligated to publicly distribute reports, Relyea pointed out. By contrast, the Government Accountability Office and Congressional Budget Office do have that requirement. In the past, CRS experimented with publishing summaries of its work but appropriators ended that practice. "Clearly appropriators have not been sympathetic to making CRS reports available to the public," he said.
During his luncheon keynote, Relyea also touched on the Bush administration's narrow definition of materials that apply to the Presidential Records Act. He said that law is in need of review, particularly with respect to the Office of the Vice President. After controversies over former Vice President Dick Cheney's withholding of information, "we need to look at that whole darned office," he said, noting the office lacks a charter to spell out what recordkeeping and disclosure rules apply. Relyea said the 1978 statute will continue to cause problems as electronic filing usurps paper-based records. "There's always room for improvement," he said.
President Barack Obama emphasized the importance of entrepreneurship and technological innovation in remarks to small business owners, community lenders and members of Congress who visited the White House on Monday. "Small businesses don't just provide jobs -- they provide the innovations that help us lead in the global economy," he told the group, noting that smaller companies produce 13 times more patents per employee than large companies. "Now, think about it. Hewlett-Packard began in a garage. It was a small business. Google began as a research project -- small business. The first Apple computers were built by hand one at a time -- small business," Obama said.
The president added that the ongoing economic recovery and the nation's prosperity in the future depend on the success of America's small businesses and entrepreneurs. "Small businesses are the heart of the American economy," he said, noting they account for half of all private sector jobs. His stimulus plan raises the guarantees on Small Business Administration loans to 90 percent and eliminates costly fees for borrowers and lenders. The plan also includes a series of tax cuts for small businesses and tax incentives to encourage investments in small businesses. Meanwhile, the Treasury Department has launched the Consumer and Business Lending Initiative to help unfreeze the credit markets, Obama said. "We've already done a lot. But we've got to do more," he said.
The National Inventors Hall of Fame Museum, which honors the creators of the telephone, wrinkle-free cotton, the television remote control and hundreds of other innovations, has moved to the Patent and Trademark Office's Alexandria, Va., campus. The hall of fame was founded in 1973 by the PTO and the National Council of Intellectual Property Law Associations and was originally housed at the PTO's old headquarters building. The museum outgrew its location and moved to Akron, Ohio where it opened to the public in 1995 and where it developed additional programs. The Akron building closed last year for construction of the National Inventors Hall of Fame School, Center for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Learning, which will open this fall. The organization's headquarters will remain in Ohio.
"We are delighted that the National Inventors Hall of Fame has returned to its roots at the United States Patent and Trademark Office," Acting Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the PTO John Doll said. "The journey to induction begins here with a patent, so it is only appropriate that those innovators who have truly transformed our lives should be honored at our headquarters." The musem's opening is being celebrated with a new exhibit, "Inventive Links" -- a show that illustrates the unexpected way in which modern technology is interlinked. The museum also features an interactive kiosk with biographical profiles and information on all 390 inductees.
In observance of Sunshine Week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation on Monday launched a sophisticated search tool that lets the public to examine thousands of pages of documents the watchdog group has retrieved from government agencies through Freedom of Information requests and litigation. The documents relate to a range of technology issues and government policies that affect civil liberties and personal privacy. EFF's collection sheds light on controversial government initiatives, including the FBI's Investigative Data Warehouse and the Homeland Security Department's Automated Targeting System.
"Until recently, documents obtained under FOIA often gathered dust in filing cabinets," EFF Senior Counsel David Sobel said in a press release. "We believe that government information should be widely available and easy to research, and our new search engine makes that a reality." "We welcomed President Obama's declaration -- on his first full day in office -- that he will work to make the federal government more open and participatory," EFF attorney Marcia Hofmann said. "There's certainly a lot of work to do -- so much government activity has been hidden from public view in the name of 'national security' and the 'war on terror.'"
FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz told a data security workshop on Monday that the United States and other countries must "move beyond the 'we agree to disagree' approach" to securing consumers' sensitive information in the global marketplace. Such harmony among nations, which have varying privacy rules and regulations, is "not beyond our reach," Leibowitz said, pointing to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's 1980 privacy guidelines and a set of security guidelines adopted by the group in 2002. "Without adequate data security there really is no privacy," he said.
Corporations must protect their back doors from hackers, malware, spyware and other high-tech intrusion mechanisms and protect their front door by properly storing and disposing of consumers' data, Leibowitz said, noting that the FTC is "not shy about knocking on anyone's door." Since 1999, the agency has brought a number of cases alleging that companies failed to protect data, including a settlement this month with a consumer reporting agency that failed to properly screen prospective customers and, as a result, sold at least 318 credit reports to identity thieves.
The conference runs through Tuesday. Speakers include: Martin Abrams of the Centre for Information Policy Leadership; Oracle Chief Privacy Officer Joseph Alhadeff; Accenture Data Privacy Director Bojana Bellamy; TRUSTe Chief Privacy Officer Maureen Cooney; Intel Global E-Business Counsel David Hoffman and others. Click here to view the agenda for "Securing Personal Data in the Global Economy."
From CongressDaily's AM Edition:
The much-touted online transparency promised by the Obama administration to allow public tracking of federal stimulus funds might still be months away, as agencies puzzle over the depth of detail required in their weekly reports and Web site architects scramble to design a user-friendly database to handle an ocean of information. Good-government groups and administration officials envision the Recovery.gov Web site as a clearinghouse that lets citizens monitor the dollar-by-dollar effects of economic recovery funds in their hometowns. But with a variety of details in weekly reports from federal agencies, duplicative or hard-to-decipher data sources and reporting requirements that critics say are too shallow to offer meaningful oversight at the local level, the site so far offers little help to watchdogs hoping to map the flow of $787 billion in funds.
"We are waiting for Recovery.gov to post useful data, and that has just not happened yet," said Jerry Brito of the George Mason University Mercatus Center. Brito is a co-founder of independent site StimulusWatch.org, which allows citizens to rate the merit of potential stimulus projects in their communities. White House accountability czars at OMB and the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board share Brito's goal, but they say that supplying the public with the tools to become stimulus watchdogs will take months. Building a database on Recovery.gov with that level of transparency, stimulus overseer Earl Devaney told a group of state recovery representatives Thursday, could take over a year.
Read the full story here.
As more details unfold about last week's FBI sting at federal chief information officer Vivek Kundra's former District of Columbia government office, those who know him say the open government policies he enacted when he took the job in 2007 might have helped investigators nab those engaged in an alleged bribery and fraud scheme. The operation already led to the arrests of a D.C. government employee and a consultant. Even though Kundra has not been implicated in the probe, the Obama administration put him on administrative leave. "This was a real punch in the gut," said one source who wished to remain anonymous.
When Kundra came to the D.C. government after having worked for Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, one of the first items on his agenda was conducting an audit of his department's widespread use of contractors. In what was described by the source as a "war room style" meeting with staffers, he went line by line through the office's budget and had employees explain each outsourced activity to justify why the work could not be done in-house. That immediately cut contractor expenses, the official said. Kundra also used a Google Maps application to list all publicly available information about every IT contract the city awarded, including the hourly rate, start date and project manager.
"The whole purpose for doing that was to make sure that if there was any nefarious behavior, the public could see it and respond -- or more likely, a vendor who had a more competitive offer could see it and compete for the contract," the source said in a weekend interview. "[Kundra] was leading policy initiatives that would help reign in bad management decisions or inappropriate behavior," the individual said. "His policies were frankly the right tonic for how you want to create a less risky atmosphere and curb public corruption." Read more about the FBI raid and last week's arrests at NextGov here.
Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, on Friday received the International Association of Privacy Professionals' 2009 leadership award for her ongoing efforts on the behalf of U.S. citizens in the area of privacy and data protection. She accepted the award earlier this week in advance of the group's annual summit in Washington where privacy experts from around the globe convened for three days of education and networking. "Senator Snowe is at the forefront of protecting citizens' privacy and raising data protection awareness," IAPP Executive Director Trevor Hughes said. "She clearly prioritizes privacy through her legislative efforts to address and prevent the misuse of information."
During her three terms on Capitol Hill, Snowe has advanced privacy legislation to protect citizens' rights, including a bill to prohibit spyware and privacy-invasive practices such as keylogging and skimming and co-authoring privacy provisions in major healthcare legislation. She also voted for the Consumer Phone Records Act to keep unwelcome hands out of citizens' phone logs and to give the FTC and FCC greater enforcement authority in that area. Snowe also sponsored a recently passed bill that lets people take advantage of genetic testing without fearing negative repercussions from the abuse of such information. "I am proud to be an advocate for patient privacy rights and will continue to work to ensure the safety and protection of all Americans," she said.
From CongressDaily's AM Edition:
An aide to President Barack Obama is on leave from his White House job after the FBI raided his old District of Columbia government office Thursday, arresting a city employee and a technology consultant on corruption charges, a White House official said. The charges were lodged against the two men at a federal court hearing as the FBI finished searching the city's technology office, which was led until recently by Obama's new computer chief, Vivek Kundra. Kundra is on leave from his White House job until further details of the case become known, according to a White House official speaking on condition of anonymity. A spokeswoman for Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty, said she was very confident Kundra is not a target of the investigation.
At the court hearing, Yusuf Acar, the acting chief security officer in the city's technology office, was ordered held without bond pending a hearing Tuesday. Prosecutors said $70,000 in cash was found during a search of Acar's Washington home and that he posed a flight risk. Technology consultant Sushil Bansal of Dunn Loring, Va., was released but was ordered not to conduct overseas financial transactions or leave the area. Bansal is due back in court on April 21, and prosecutors said they hoped a plea agreement could be reached in his case. Acar worked under Kundra, Obama's choice to coordinate federal computer systems. Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs would not say whether the White House knew the investigation was under way when it named Kundra last week.
FBI agents raided the former District of Columbia government office of President Barack Obama's federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra Thursday and arrested two individuals as part of a federal investigation, FBI Washington Field Office spokeswoman Katherine Schweit said. Yusaf Acar, an information systems security officer, and Sushil Bansal, the founder of a local IT consulting firm that was awarded city contracts, were expected to be arraigned as early as this afternoon, but no other details were available at press time for CongressDaily's PM Edition.
Before being named to the OMB post last week, Kundra served as the city's chief technology officer under Mayor Adrian Fenty. As the raid was taking place, Kundra was at the Washington Convention Center speaking to the FOSE government IT conference. During his keynote, he discussed the challenges of changing federal agencies through technology. "It's not easy but it's not impossible," he told the crowd. "We can be leaders when it comes to innovation especially in these tough economic times." Part of his plan to engage the public is hosting weekend forums where he will "invite anyone who has ideas to share."
Watch C-SPAN video of Kundra's speech here and read more about Kundra's ambitious agenda from a recent teleconference with reporters here.
President Barack Obama has appointed economist Carl Shapiro to become chief economist for the Justice Department's antitrust division, according to news reports. Shapiro, who served at the agency as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Clinton administration, is the author of "Information Rules" (with Hal Varian) and was an expert witness in the 1999 Microsoft antitrust case while a professor at the University of California in Berkeley. Shapiro has published extensively in the areas of industrial organization, competition policy, patents, the economics of innovation, and competitive strategy with his recent academic research focusing on antitrust economics, intellectual property, patent policy, product standards and compatibility, and the economics of networks and interconnection, according to his Berkeley bio.
"Shapiro is a leading authority on the economics of competition in the information economy. This is a top-flight appointment by the Obama administration and this expertise is just what the country needs now as it looks for ways to turn the economy around," Computer and Communications Industry Association President Ed Black said. He noted that Shapiro understands the impact of different types of corporate behavior on competition and what that means for creating a business climate where innovative start-up businesses can thrive. "Innovation can boost the economy, but a lack of antitrust oversight and badly needed intellectual property reforms can hold the information technology sector back," Black said in a statement.
House Oversight and Government Reform ranking member Darrell Issa thumped the Obama administration's transparency efforts Thursday in a letter to Earl Devaney, chair of the Recovery Act Transparency and Accountability Board. In the letter, he questions OMB guidelines that he believes contradict the president's promise of an "unprecedented oversight effort" of the nearly $800 billion included in the economic stimulus package. On Wednesday, Issa questioned Interim Assistant Secretary for Financial Stability Neel Kashkari about the feasibility of adopting a common reporting format for Troubled Asset Relief Program filings.
"Full transparency requires attention to not just what is posted online, but also how the information is posted. Information about how the taxpayers' money is distributed must be disclosed in a structured, open, and searchable format," Issa wrote in his letter to Devaney. He asked several questions about how Recovery.gov will work. He wondered how data will be disclosed and whether agencies will publish reports there or on their own Web sites. He also asked whether reports from recipients will be sent in a standard format and asked whether there will be disclosure of every transaction between every recipient, contractor, and subcontractor. Read the letter here.
The U.S. government has a range of praiseworthy cybersecurity efforts but many of them continue to suffer from a lack of coordination and funding, Former FBI Director Louis Freeh told the FOSE information technology summit on Thursday. He said turf wars over safeguarding government networks are the 21st century manifestation of a centuries-old dilemma. "It is still same debate that we were having 200 years ago: Is the military going to be responsible for this war or do we need to stand up an independent civilian facility?" That debate is not easily resolved and the problem is "too large and too complicated to relegate into the typical bureaucratic pigeonhole," he said.
His comments echoed those made by witnesses at a House Homeland Security Emerging Threats Subcommittee hearing earlier this week that was intended to inform the Obama administration's 60-day examination of federal cyber efforts. Part of the answer is breaking down silos at the National Security Agency, FBI and other agencies that have a cybersecurity role, Freeh said. "There have got to be centers of expertise that can interface in efficient and practical ways," he said. "There has to be strong, essential executive leadership that lends its genius and persuasion to building types of structures and inter-relationships where information can be shared, expertise can be borrowed and common objectives... can be achieved."
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced Wednesday that Microsoft's Philip Reitinger has been tapped to be deputy undersecretary of department's National Protections Program Directorate. In that role, Reitinger will be charged with protecting the U.S. government's computing systems from domestic and foreign threats. "Phil's background in cybersecurity and computer crime coupled with his experience working across the federal government and the private sector to develop innovative security strategies makes him an asset to our department," Napolitano said.
Reitinger currently serves as Microsoft's chief trustworthy infrastructure strategist, where he is responsible for helping improve protection and security of critical IT infrastructure by coordinating closely with government agencies and private partners. He is also a member of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's National Advisory Council. In that role, he advises FEMA on cyber aspects of emergency management. The DHS appointment marks Reitinger's return to government. He previously served as executive director of the Defense Department's Cyber Crime Center and before that worked as deputy chief of the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property division at the Justice Department.
Giants of the $120 billion U.S. microchip business are united in their message to Congress on topics from the need for industry-friendly tax policies to greater federal investment in research and development, but they are divided over legislation that would bring sweeping changes to the patent system. Intel Chairman Craig Barrett and Qualcomm CDMA President Steve Mollenkopf acknowledged the friction Wednesday during a roundtable that was bookended by visits with lawmakers. The split is over language in a bill sponsored by Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, that would dictate how damages are calculated in patent infringement lawsuits.
Qualcomm believes altering the damages regime could disadvantage entities that rely on patents, particularly small high-tech companies, Mollenkopf said. Barrett argued the opposite, pointing to what he believes is a patent system that has not kept pace with innovation. "We are a big industry that has a lot of different business models and perspectives and we cannot agree on everything," said Mollenkopf, whose company is part of a lobbying group that launched in 2007 to represent the interests of small tech and patent-licensing firms as similar bills moved through the House and Senate. The House passed its version, but the Senate measure stalled in the spring when Leahy and Judiciary ranking member Arlen Specter could not reach agreement on damages language.
Read the full story in CongressDaily's AM Edition here (subscription required).
More of this week's coverage of the patent debate:
Businesses Lead Charge Against Patent Challenge Language
Senators Ask Leahy, Hatch For Caution On Patent Reform
Specter's 'Gatekeeper' Language Gets Backing
Google riled privacy watchdogs on Wednesday when the Internet giant announced that it was venturing into the "interest-based advertising" space. The company said the technology uses information about the Web pages people visit to make the online ads they see more relevant but some argue the real headline is that Google has finally entered the behavioral targeting business -- a practice that has sparked congressional hearings as well as FTC examination. The consumer protection agency released self-regulatory principles for online advertising last month and the Network Advertising Initiative offered its own code of conduct in December.
In a blog post, Google Deputy General Counsel Nicole Wong explained the product has consumer-friendly features to provide meaningful transparency and choice and is "not only consistent with industry groups' privacy principles, but also goes beyond their requirements." Read more about those safeguards here. But the Center for Digital Democracy's Jeff Chester said the move amounts to "the most powerful interactive ad company expanding its data collection and targeting activities whenever we search, view videos or read blogs." He said Google should have adopted an opt-in approach for the new ad service rather than making the default an opt-out scheme.
The Progress and Freedom Foundation's Berin Szoka had a different view, calling the company's announcement groundbreaking because the tracking will be based on a profile of each user's interests created by Web browsing habits -- but not search queries or other user information. Google's program offers "precisely the kind of robust opt-out that privacy advocates have always demanded," he wrote. Szoka said he hoped Google's endeavor will shift the policy debate over user privacy back to an emphasis on the layered approach by supplementing consumer education, industry self-regulation, state laws, and FTC enforcement with technological tools to aid privacy-wary consumers.
President Barack Obama on Wednesday nominated Richard Verma for the post of assistant secretary for legislative affairs at the State Department. Verma has a lengthy lobbying pedigree at the law firm of Steptoe & Johnson, which he rejoined in 2007 after serving for more than five years as a senior policy adviser to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., according to the firm. He originally joined Steptoe in 1998 as a member of the firm's international and technology practices. While there, registered to lobby on behalf of a variety of clients including: the U.S.-India Business Council, EchoStar Corporation, Dish Network, and Liberty Media Corporation.
The Steptoe profile on Verma, an Indian-American, holds that: "He advises on legislative and political strategy and helps companies successfully navigate crisis situations including handling Congressional investigations to designing effective public affairs and messaging campaigns." According to the White House, last year Verma was appointed to serve on the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism. Verma, a former Air Force officer, once also served as country director for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs. -- Winter Casey
President Barack Obama on Wednesday signed a $410 billion omnibus spending bill for fiscal 2009 that includes $1 million to fund for the first time an ombudsman to mediate disputes arising under the federal Freedom of Information Act. Sunshine in Government Initiative director Rick Blum called the inclusion of the provision a milestone for open government. The money will go to the Office of Government Information Services, which Congress established within the National Archives and Records Administration. "For too many years, government transparency has been in crisis," Blum said. OGIS should help end stalemates over disclosure decisions and will help agencies strengthen their responses to FOIA requests, he said.
The omnibus also included a provision to provide free access to Congress' legislative databases. Rep. Michael Honda, D-Calif., first placed a measure in the House bill directing Congress, the Library of Congress and the Government Printing Office to make its data available to the public in raw form. "This language is groundbreaking in that it supports the provision of unfiltered legislative information to the public. Instead of silo'ing the information... access to the raw data will make it easier for people to learn what their government is doing," he said. The language calls for a report to appropriators within 120 days of the release of Legislative Information System 2.0.
High-tech trade association COMPTEL announced Wednesday that its president, Matt Salmon, has resigned and will join Policy Impact, whose clients include General Motors, Prudential and T-Mobile. COMPTEL CEO Jerry James will continue to provide leadership over the group's public policy initiatives and will assume the day-to-day responsibilities. James, a former president of Grande Communications, and Salmon, a former Republican congressman from Arizona, both joined COMPTEL in 2007. Salmon also notably lost a 2002 gubernatorial race against Janet Napolitano, who now serves as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. "It has been a pleasure working with Matt over the past year," James said in a press release. "We appreciate his hard work and dedication and we wish him all the best in his future endeavors." James affirmed that the nearly 30-year-old association remains strong and will continue advocating for its members before Congress, the FCC and the courts.
The FTC is taking aim at what it believes is a potentially deceptive TV commercial for FreeCreditReport.com, a financial Web site owned by credit bureau Experian, by publicizing a spoof advertisement for AnnualCreditReport.com -- the only authorized source to get a free annual credit report under federal law. The FTC's video, which was posted on YouTube earlier this week, highlights the differences between AnnualCreditReport.com and other sites that require users to pay hidden fees or agree to additional services. The FTC's video has been viewed 8,252 on YouTube, which is roughly equivalent to the number of times the ad for FreeCreditReport.com airs over the course of an afternoon on MSNBC, or so it seems.
Interim Assistant Secretary for Financial Stability Neel Kashkari, who testified before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Domestic Policy Subcommittee on Wednesday, said a common reporting format for filings related to the Troubled Asset Relief Program such as XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language) would greatly improve transparency. He previously remarked that the Treasury could not track TARP fund use, according to Oversight and Government Reform ranking member Darrell Issa.
XBRL is in place as a reporting standard in about 40 countries and banks in the United States are currently required to disclose information to the FDIC in XBRL format. The SEC recently approved a final rule mandating the use of XBRL for all public company reporting, with some firms required to comply starting in June. "XBRL is about independent and understandable transparency," Issa said. The technology could show the taxpayers how their money is being used while providing measurable results, he said.
"After two administrations and roughly six months of the blind leading the blind, we are still meeting resistance from the administration on implementing a common platform that would allow us to track TARP dollars and value toxic assets," Issa said. "These are taxpayer dollars and the technology exists to track TARP dollars, but Treasury continues to obstruct transparency." Subcommittee ranking member Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, gave the Treasury's grade for transparency an "F." "The American people who are footing the bill deserve far better than what they're getting in terms of transparency," he said.
NationalJournal.com's Lucas Grindley writes:
With everyone from "Meet The Press" moderator David Gregory to Sen. John McCain suddenly fiending for Twitter, it didn't take long before the media came up with a bevy of cute puns and, just as quickly, top 10 lists of the most vital political feeds to follow. The Los Angeles Times and Politico have so far sounded off with their own rankings of top feeds, but the geek world hasn't been much impressed. Washington social media expert Nick O'Neill used his blog to dismiss the Politico top 10 as "an arbitrary list which was highly effective linkbait." Politico's list included influential politicians, such as Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Al Gore, but real-world cred doesn't necessarily translate into tweets.
The Times created its ranking based on the number of people signed up to read each twitterer's posts -- essentially equating Twitter "followers" with the much-ballyhooed contest to rake in "Facebook friends" during the presidential campaign. Government consultant Mark Drapeau took to his blog to call this "an even worse list" than Politico's. So he wrote up his own based on "my own experiences and some private polling of the Twitter community." Fellow blogger O'Neill made that list. Karl Rove did not. So what is a Twitter newbie -- like one of the congressmen who didn't type their way through President Obama's speech -- supposed to do? How are they supposed to know what they're missing or who to emulate? Read the full story here.
Recently appointed FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz wants to work with Congress on reauthorization legislation this year that he believes will make his agency more effective. He told a Center for Democracy and Technology gala Tuesday night that the quality of the FTC's work is being strained as the quantity increases. The agency currently has 1,100 employees -- several hundred less than it needs, he said. Former Senate Commerce Chairman Daniel Inouye and Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., introduced a bill in the 110th Congress that would have given the FTC a budget boost over seven years as well as independent regulatory authority and the ability to start civil actions in district courts. The bill would have also repealed an exemption that precludes FTC action against common carriers for anticompetitive practices.
Leibowitz, who shared CDT's stage with House Energy and Commerce Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., said one of his top priorities for the agency in the coming months is curbing predatory financial practices, which he believes will only worsen during the recession. He also wants to stop brand pharmaceutical companies from paying off generic drugmakers to delay the availability of their low-cost versions to consumers. Another concern, which he shares with Boucher, is making sure Internet advertising firms respect consumer privacy. Thus far, self-regulatory efforts by industry in this arena are not working, Leibowitz said. Boucher noted that consumer confidence will benefit electronic commerce. He plans to introduce a Web privacy bill with Communications Subcommittee ranking member Cliff Stearns, R-Fla.
On broadband, Boucher said the United States does "not have an enviable position in the world today" and the $7.2 billion in the economic stimulus package helped move the ball forward. However, the stimulus bill "is not our national broadband policy," he said, noting that the legislation directs the FCC to develop such a roadmap. During his remarks, Boucher also predicted that legislation he introduced last month with Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., to create a federal reporter's privilege would pass the House and Senate this Congress. An identical bill passed the House by a wide margin in the 110th Congress.
House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Edolphus Towns on Tuesday met in his Capitol Hill office with Vivek Kundra, who was recruited by President Barack Obama to serve as the federal government's chief information officer. The meeting came less than a week after it was announced that the former District of Columbia chief technology officer would take the top e-government spot at OMB. In this role, Kundra will direct the policy and strategic planning of federal IT investments and is responsible for oversight of federal technology spending. He will also establish and oversee enterprise architecture to ensure system interoperability and ensure information security.
"I was pleased to meet with Mr. Kundra and learn of his great enthusiasm for using technology to transform the way our government operates," Towns said. "I am committed to improving the efficiency of government operations and using safe and secure technological innovations to help meet this objective. Mr. Kundra clearly shares this goal and I believe this his past experiences have prepared him for this challenging new role." Kundra is scheduled to make one of his first public speeches since being tapped for the job at FOSE 2009, a convention for government IT professionals happening this week at the Washington Convention Center. Kundra will keynote at 9:30 a.m. on Thursday.
While much has been written about how the White House and Congress have been dealing with the emergence of "new media," take note -- new media is not new. According to a 1982 paper on the history of the presidential press conference, it was President Harry Truman whose administration "saw increased use of radio and the growth of television technology." Former President Dwight Eisenhower then took a big step when he allowed television cameras to record White House press conferences for delayed broadcasts.
"Those newspaper correspondents who had been long used to the old way saw TV and radio news men as 'interlopers on their turf,' and complained about the written media's diminished advantage," states the report. The paper, published by the White Burkett Miller Center of Public Affairs, noted that the embrace of media technology diminished the importance of reporters at the White House. Former President John F. Kennedy made the landmark decision to broadcast his press conferences live on television, which some reporters complained encouraged "aggressive and superficial reporting."
In the 21st century with Congress and the White House facing decisions about how briefings should evolve in a world filled with bloggers and online news reporters, what forms of online media reporting should be given access to the Capitol and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? How should this change how briefings are set up? President Barack Obama dipped his toe in the debate when he called on Huffington Post writer Sam Stein during his first press conference but it remains to be seen what's next for the briefing room in this administration. -- Winter Casey
Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus said at Monday's confirmation hearing for U.S. Trade Representative-designate Ron Kirk that he intends to introduce "comprehensive customs reauthorization legislation," which some see as a potential vehicle for increasing intellectual property protections for goods imported and exported by the United States. Stakeholders like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce believe such a package could include language to better address trafficking in illicit goods.
On a related note, Baucus and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, introduced legislation last Congress that would make improvements to the USTR's "Special 301" process to help deal with other countries that fail to live up to their international IP obligations. Under the existing USTR structure, the list puts nations with weak IP regimes on two tiers of watch lists, but the bill would require the creation of "action plans" for the worst offenders. If countries do not comply, the White House could ban federal procurement from and stop U.S. financing to those nations.
The Chamber's blog offered up several IP-related issues for Finance Committee members to address at Kirk's hearing. Topics included ensuring that strong and enforceable IP protections, such as those in the Korea Free Trade Agreement, are included in future FTAs; negotiations on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement; strengthening international IP laws and norms; and fighting Internet piracy while protecting copyrighted materials.
On the eve of a House Judiciary Committee hearing to examine legislation that would terminate a longstanding royalty exemption afforded to AM and FM radio, the National Association of Broadcasters slammed the music industry-led effort as being "founded on an incomplete and therefore misleading comparison of U.S. and international copyright law." Proponents of the bill have argued that in every other democratic free market country, radio stations compensate musicians when they play their music. The countries, however, do not compensate artists and musicians within the United States because the United States does not provide a performance right for their artists.
"The record labels have devised a lobbying strategy that relies on cherry-picking international examples that paint a distorted picture of copyright law," NAB spokesman Dennis Wharton said in a press release. "The U.S. protects sound recordings for 45 years longer than Canada and many countries in Europe and elsewhere; if it's 'international parity' that RIAA is looking for, they ought to examine the entire landscape," he said. NAB's analysis also points out that other countries' broadcasting systems are or were government-subsidized while the U.S. business was built by private commercial entrepreneurs.
But the MusicFirst coalition, which supports the legislation, bit back by claiming the analysis is suspect and stale. According to the coalition, the NAB's Canadian counterpart submitted the same study to support its claim that radio play promotes album sales in a proceeding before the Copyright Board of Canada. In November 2008, the board threw it out because the underlying data was destroyed. The same analysis was released by NAB last June and again Monday, officials said. Wharton scoffed at the notion that NAB destroyed data and added: "MusicFirst should get its facts straight before making unfounded allegations." Read more in CongressDaily's AM Edition (subscription required).
Surf on over to CongressDaily's TechCentral for a new "Issue of the Week." Here's a taste:
Longtime Democratic-leaning Time Warner bet big with its campaign money when it gave $544,601 to the Obama campaign in the 2008 election cycle, compared with only $29,676 to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. And now, the media conglomerate has at least five people with ties to the company in key administration positions, not counting former Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons, who served as an economic adviser for the transition.
From the lobbying community, Obama has named Dana Singiser, a former Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld lawyer to be his special assistant for legislative affairs. According to Senate lobbying records, at the firm she registered to lobby for AT&T, Time Warner, Universal Music Group and the Motion Picture Association of America, among others. Ronald Klain, chief of staff to Vice President Biden, also formerly had Time Warner listed on his rolodex. When Klain worked as lobbyist at O'Melveny & Myers, he had the firm as a client.
Also in the White House, Dan Turton, deputy director of legislative affairs for the House, once lobbied for the Entertainment Software Association. A spokesman for ESA -- a group whose members include Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, Inc., a division of Time Warner, Microsoft and Sony -- confirmed Turton once did work for the association. While employed by Timmons & Company, Turton's clients included ESA, the National Association of Manufacturers, Micron Technology and Cox Enterprises, according to lobbying records.
Former Office of the U.S. Trade Representative spokesman Sean Spicer has launched a boutique public affairs firm with his former deputy, Gretchen Hamel, and digital media strategist Nathan Imperiale. The trio's new venture -- Endeavour Global Strategies -- will combine their Capitol Hill, administration and media experience with the latest new media and social networking tactics to offer a full service public relations operation, according to Monday e-mails from Spicer and Hamel. The business also capitalizes on the 440,000-plus miles of international travel that Spicer logged during his USTR days. The firm's tagline is: "Global Focus. Global Reach. Global Solutions."
Spicer left USTR at the end of the Bush administration after serving as the office's point person for creating and implementing the domestic and international media strategy on trade issues. Earlier, he did communications work for the House Republican Conference, the House Budget Committee, and the National Republican Congressional Committee. Before joining USTR, Hamel spent four years on Capitol Hill working for the House Republican Conference as well as former Rep. J.C. Watts, R-Okla., and Rep. John Carter, R-Texas. Imperiale previously did Internet strategy at the White House and launched the House Republican Conference's new media department.
A handful of watchdog groups asked FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz on Monday to appoint a new director of consumer protection for the agency who has "a track record as a genuine champion of consumer rights." The candidate should be someone whose experience reflects not simply a broad familiarity with industry procedures, but a deep commitment to proactively protecting the public from all manner of unfair, deceptive, and fraudulent practices, they wrote in a letter. Lydia Parnes, who had the job for four years, left the agency recently to join law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. Her deputy, Eileen Harrington, took over as acting director.
The letter was signed by the Center for Digital Democracy's Jeff Chester; Michael Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest; the Consumers Union's Ellen Bloom; the Electronic Privacy Information Center's Lillie Coney; Evan Hendricks of Privacy Times; Melissa Ngo of Privacy Lives; and Ed Mierzwinski of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. They said the bureau's broad mandate -- covering everything from advertising and marketing practices to financial services to privacy and identity protection -- holds great weight in the expanding digital world. The American people "can ill afford any unnecessary delays in appointing a suitable candidate," they wrote.
"The FTC requires someone new," Chester said when asked whether he thought Harrington should remain in the job. "It's time to shake up the bureau." The agency failed to warn consumers that their savings and investments were at risk from financial marketing scams for mortgages and other loans, he argued. "If the FTC had a consumer champion leading the bureau, perhaps someone would have blown the whistle sooner," Chester said.
The House and Senate Judiciary Committees on Tuesday will focus on what promise to be the two most pressing intellectual property topics of the 111th Congress. Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy will hear from witnesses on legislation he introduced last week with Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, aimed at overhauling the U.S. patent system. Micron Technology CEO Steven Appleton; Johnson & Johnson Chief Intellectual Property Counsel Philip Johnson; IBM Vice President David Kappos; Tessera Vice President Taraneh Maghame; Intellectual Property Owners Association Executive Director Herbert Wamsley; and Stanford Law School professor Mark Lemley will testify.
House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, who offered a companion patent bill, will turn his attention to addressing a long-standing royalty exemption granted to AM and FM radio. His hearing will examine a bill he introduced with House Oversight and Government Reform ranking member Darrell Issa that would close what they perceive as a loophole in federal copyright law. Leahy and Hatch sponsored a companion measure in the Senate. Witnesses include Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan; the Recording Industry Association of America's Mitch Bainwol; the AFL-CIO's Paul Almeida; W. Lawrence Patrick; University of Texas professor Stan Liebowitz; and Steve Newberry on behalf of the National Association of Broadcasters.
Also on Tuesday, the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Emerging Threats, Cybersecurity, and Science and Technology will provide input into the Obama administration's 60-day National Security Council cybersecurity review. The panel will offer their positions on what a strategic framework should look like while soliciting opinions from witnesses who have devoted the last year-and-a-half performing similar reviews. Witnesses include Government Accountability Office Information Technology Director Dave Powner; Jim Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies; Microsoft Vice President Scott Charney; Oracle Corp. Chief Security Officer Mary Ann Davidson; and Amit Yoran, former director of Homeland Security Department's National Cybersecurity Division.
Two veterans of the Clinton White House have taken top positions at the Office of Science and Technology Policy, which "serves as a source of scientific and technological analysis and judgment" for the president, according to The Wonk Room blog.
∙ Thomas Kalil, who was responsible for technology policy at the National Economic Council in the Clinton administration, has been named associate director for policy. He previously ran the Big Ideas @ Berkeley program at the University of California-Berkeley and was a member of California's Blue Ribbon Nanotechnology Task Force.
∙ Jim Kohlenberger, who served as Vice President Al Gore's senior policy adviser, has been named OSTP chief of staff. As one of Gore's key technology advisers, Kohlenberger worked to help pass the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and helped shape the administration's approach to the Internet. Before joining OSTP, Kohlenberger was executive director of the Voice on the Net (VON) Coalition.
Members of Congress have finally embraced the Web, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and YouTube, and they are hiring new-media experts to help extend their reach. The trend reflects many lawmakers' growing awareness of the Internet's importance to campaigns and of their constituents' increasing desire to connect and gather information on the Web. Further driving the change are an influx of Capitol Hill freshmen familiar with the new tools, and fresh rules that allow members to post on third party Web sites, National Journal magazine reported Friday (subscription required).
Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and John Kerry, D-Mass., have recently hired staffers specifically to handle new media. For more on Collins' new media director, see Tech Daily Dose entry here. Brad Bauman, communications director for Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, said his office was one of the first personal offices to have a designated new media person. Ryan's online communications assistant, Eric Sanchez, has been instrumental in moving the new media operation forward, Bauman said. Sanchez also works with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's"30 Something" working group to advance new technologies. He focuses on the "broader picture of how we can modify traditional media messages to get the biggest bang for the buck we would want from new media."
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has a press secretary that is charged with, among other responsibilities, having a focus on new media, according to Beth Pellett Levine, a spokeswoman for the senator. New media use "has become more of a focus in every office" with members using Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and YouTube, Levine said. Meanwhile, House Minority Leader John Boehner directed his staff to work with ranking members to implement guidelines for their Web sites. It is part of a larger effort to "raise the bar conference-wide in terms of how we're utilizing the web and new media tools," said Nick Schaper, Boehner's new media director.
Tucked away in the FY09 omnibus appropriations bill that passed the House last week is language inserted by Rep. Michael Honda, D-Calif., that directs the Library of Congress and the Government Printing Office to make their data available to the public in raw form, which he believes will increase availability of government data in more user-friendly formats. It is unclear whether the Senate version will include such language, a spokesman for Honda said. Currently, constituents' official channel to learn about legislation is through a limited search form on www.thomas.gov while congressional staffers maintain a more advanced system, Honda said in a statement.
His proposal also requests a report on the feasibility of providing advanced search capabilities. "Representing the interests of constituents becomes easier when technology enables elected officials to tap into the knowledge and expertise of the public," he said. "The American people are our nation's greatest resource. Empowering the public with information can lead to better public policy." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats have been working to make Congress more transparent and ethical, and Honda will remain engaged in making government more accessible to the public, his office said.
Legislation intended to help educate Internet users about privacy and security risks associated with peer-to-peer programs was reintroduced Thursday by House Energy and Commerce Committee members on the heels of reports that file-sharing software was implicated in a security breach involving Marine One, the helicopter used by President Obama. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Mary Bono Mack, R-Calif., John Barrow, D-Ga., and Energy and Commerce ranking member Joe Barton, languished in a key subcommittee last Congress. The measure would ensure P2P programs cannot be installed without providing clear notice and obtaining consent of the computer user and would make it illegal for firms to prohibit users from blocking, disabling, or removing the software.
"Far too many people have no idea that they could be sharing all of their personal files and documents when popular peer-to-peer software is on their computer," Bono Mack said. "Computer users deserve to know - in fair and simple terms - about this potential security risk." "This bill illustrates that there are bipartisan solutions to this problem and takes strong steps to empowering P2P users with information they need to better protect themselves and their families online," Barton said. Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman has an interest in this area dating back to his chairmanship of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. In July 2007, he held a hearing to examine the dangers of inadvertent file-sharing.
The former director of the e-campaign division of the Republican National Committee is resigning but not without getting in his two cents worth. Cyrus Krohn wrote Thursday that the Republicans must attract more computer programmers to build platforms and applications in order to gain political power once again.
"Maybe we should start providing computer science scholarships in exchange for a commitment to serve our party," asked Krohn. "Yes, we have generational and geographical hurdles stunting our digital spurt. The former will be solved actuarially and the latter the Democrats will solve for us by upgrading the grid," he wrote.
Krohn said that he is relocating to Seattle with his family and plans to work on building new online applications for the best presidential candidate to use in 2012. Prior to joining the RNC, he was director of content production for Yahoo and served as publisher of Slate.com. -- Winter Casey
High-tech leaders are praising President Barack Obama's Thursday appointment of Vivek Kundra as federal CIO and administrator for e-government and information technology at OMB. Virginia Secretary of Technology Aneesh Chopra told Tech Daily Dose that Kundra "will be a terrific asset" and has "the right combination of operational excellence and a spirit of innovation" to deliver. Chopra worked with Kundra when Kundra served as Virginia's assistant secretary of commerce and technology. "[It] will be a pleasure to collaborate with him at the White House," said Chopra, who is a rumored contender for Obama's federal chief technology officer job.
"The new federal CIO position provides a foundation that will allow the federal government to finally reap all the rewards of IT from cost savings to security to inter-agency information sharing," said Bill Vass, president of Sun Microsystems. "For too long, a CIO position that has jurisdiction across all government agencies has been as elusive as that oasis in the desert." Kundra's appointment is the first step in maximizing services offered to and the IT investments made by the American taxpayer, he said. Karen Evans, Kundra's predecessor at OMB under former President George W. Bush, called him "an innovative and talented person with a great career staff to support him."
Information Technology Industry Council President Dean Garfield offered Kundra praise. "He will help the federal government's performance by encouraging innovation and preventing waste and duplicity," Garfield said, noting that Kundra's work in D.C and Virginia "shows that he values transparency and accountability." Software and Information Industry Association President Ken Wasch added Kundra "is a great choice who will carry out the incoming administration's plan to use cutting-edge technologies in our public sector to bring government into the 21st century."
Read more:
Federal CIO Lays Out Ambitious Agenda / Obama Names Vivek Kundra Federal CIO
Not-so-suddenly social networking site Facebook has inserted itself into Washington politics and policy and has become a favorite reference point among members of Congress, high-tech experts and even the Obama administration. That's how I justify posting this video by YouTuber Julian Smith. (Hat tip to the FamousDC blog for bringing this to my attention and noting that Smith "is to Facebook as Pat Leahy was to the Bush administration.") Be sure to join Tech Daily Dose's Facebook fan page too.
President Barack Obama's new administrator for e-government and information technology at OMB told reporters Thursday he will launch data.gov, a Web site intended to "democratize data" by giving the public raw feeds of information from a range of agencies. Vivek Kundra, who previously served as the District of Columbia's chief technology officer, said the site would build on successes like the National Institutes of Health's publication of Human Genome Project data that he said "revolutionized personalized medicine" and the Defense Department's release of satellite data, which led to the mass commercialization of GPS devices.
"We need to make sure that all that data that's not private, that's not restricted for national security can be made public," said Kundra, who will also have the title of federal CIO and will work with the yet-to-be-named federal CTO. That official will be "named in due time," he said on a conference call. When Kundra worked for the city, he won widespread praise for embracing consumer technologies. "That lowered our operating costs... and the velocity at which we were deploying technology multiplied," he said, noting that he would like to bring that thinking to the federal sector. As more government information makes its way into cyberspace and the focus on civic participation increases, back-end IT systems must brace for the change, he said.
One of the administration's first attempts at making government more accountable online is Recovery.gov, Kundra said. Once the $787 billion economic stimulus funding makes its way to the state and local level, citizens will be able to track who receives contracts, when and for how much. The guidance recently set forth by OMB "is the floor, not the ceiling" for what can be done on the site, he said. Additionally, Kundra said his team is working with OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Policy and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to retool regulations.gov, the government's e-rulemaking hub, after a high-level American Bar Association task force slammed the site.
From CongressDaily's AM Edition (subscription required)...
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Joseph Lieberman on Wednesday resumed a perennial attempt by some lawmakers and open government advocates to make reports produced by the Congressional Research Service more easily accessible to the public. In a letter to Senate Rules Committee Chairman Charles Schumer, he called for an automatically updated clearinghouse for the documents so "those with power and those without have equal access to this important resource."
Over the past decade, a series of bills requiring public access to CRS reports has made little progress, including a 2007 measure introduced by former Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn. Under the chairmanship of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., last Congress, the Rules Committee authorized CRS to create software to let senators place individual reports on their Web sites. That did not go far enough, Lieberman wrote. Read the full story here.
Also: The FTC and members of Congress Wednesday expressed outrage over the surge in Internet con artists trying to cash in on the $787 billion economic stimulus bill President Barack Obama signed into law two weeks ago. FTC Consumer Protection Bureau Acting Director Eileen Harrington said complaints about scams "mushroomed overnight" and the agency is working with popular Web services like Facebook and Google to crack down on crooks. Read the full story here.
To get a better grasp of history, check out some of the newspaper pages published from 1880 to 1910 that are being made available for free online through the National Digital Newspaper Program. The program announced last week that it has added more than 112,000 additional historic newspaper pages to the Chronicling America Web site.
The National Digital Newspaper Program, a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress, seeks to provide enhanced access to U.S. newspapers by creating over the next 20 years a national digital resource of historically significant newspapers from all states and U.S. territories published between 1836 and 1922. This publicly available free searchable database will be permanently maintained at the Library of Congress.
In all, there are 977,440 pages from 112 titles published in nine states (California, Florida, Kentucky, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York, Texas Utah and Virginia as well as the District of Columbia). Six additional states -- Arizona, Hawaii, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington -- will be contributing content later in 2009, according to an update from the Library of Congress. -- Winter Casey
As anticipated, President Barack Obama has named Vivek Kundra as the federal government's chief information officer. The announcement came Thursday, weeks after it was widely reported that he was the top contender. Kundra formerly served in Washington D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty's cabinet as chief technology officer. In that role he was responsible for technology operations and strategy for 86 agencies. Earlier, Kundra worked for Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia where he served as assistant secretary of commerce and technology.
Kundra has been recognized among the top 25 CTO's in the country and as the 2008 IT Executive of the Year for his work to drive transparency, engage citizens and lower the cost of government operations. He is also recognized for his leadership in public safety communications, cyber security and IT portfolio management. The federal CIO will direct the policy and strategic planning of federal IT investments and is responsible for oversight of federal technology spending. The CIO will also work closely with the yet-to-be-named federal CTO to advance the president's technology agenda.
"Vivek Kundra will bring a depth of experience in the technology arena and a commitment to lowering the cost of government operations to this position. I have directed him to work to ensure that we are using the spirit of American innovation and the power of technology to improve performance and lower the cost of government operations," Obama said.
From Hotline On Call...
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has launched a new Web site -- ImSorryRush.com -- spoofing Republicans who criticize conservative radio personality Rush Limbaugh and "then turn around and quickly beg his forgiveness." The site allows users to customize their own Limbaugh apology letters. "If you're one of the growing number of Republicans who need a quick and easy way to apologize to Rush Limbaugh after you cross him, look no further than ImSorryRush.com," Jennifer Crider, communications director for the DCCC, said in a statement. "Even if you're not a Republican, this new site gives you the opportunity to apologize to Leader Rush just like the elected Republicans did."
The site is an effort, of course, to push the Michael Steele/Limbaugh feud into another news cycle. And to hammer home the notion that "Leader Rush" is heading the GOP. But the Democrats aren't the only ones still musing about Republican National Committee chief Steele's recent criticism of Limbaugh, whom he called an entertainer who makes "ugly" and "incendiary" remarks. The conservative blogosphere is buzzing with discontent. Blogometer's Ian Faerstein reports that bloggers are slamming Steele and sticking by Limbaugh. Read the full story here.
CongressDaily's AM Edition on Wednesday reports (subscription required)...
The White House is quietly assembling a list of two -- and potentially three -- more candidates for the FCC now that President Barack Obama announced Tuesday that he wants his chief technology adviser and close confidante Julius Genachowski as chairman. Mignon Clyburn, a state regulator and daughter of House Majority Whip James Clyburn, is a leading contender for Democratic commissioner. The younger Clyburn, who has served on the Public Service Commission of South Carolina for more than a decade, declined to comment.
She would replace Jonathan Adelstein, who is under serious consideration to run the Rural Utilities Service, an Agriculture Department division that issues loans and grants for telecom, energy and water treatment projects. The RUS is set to receive $2.5 billion in loans from the economic stimulus package to promote broadband deployment. Adelstein, whose term expired in June but can remain through 2009 pending renomination, would exit when a successor is confirmed. Sources said the administration doesn't plan to renew his term. Read the full story here.
Former lobbyist Bruce Andrews will be starting as general counsel of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation on March 9. He previously worked for the lobbying firm Quinn Gillespie & Associates, where he focused on technology policy, telecommunications, judiciary, commerce and financial services issues. Clients of his included AT&T, Sony, Microsoft and Verizon, according to OpenSecrets.org. Andrews has also worked on public policy and telecommunications matters for Arnold & Porter.
"I am excited for the opportunity to return to public service to work for Chairman Rockefeller and the Committee," wrote Andrews in an email he circulated to his contacts. Andrews has seven years of experience working on Capitol Hill including three years he spent serving as the legislative director for Rep. Tim Holden, D-Pa. He last served as a vice president of government relations at Ford Motor Company. His replacement at Ford has not been been named. -- Winter Casey
International organized crime isn't just about drugs, money laundering, extortion and human smuggling anymore -- the illicit activity increasingly involves piracy of feature films, with syndicates active along the entire supply chain from manufacturers to street sales of pirated movies, according to a new RAND Corporation report funded by major movie studios. The profits from film piracy also have been used on occasion to support the activities of terrorist groups, researchers at RAND's Center for Global Risk and Security found, according to a Tuesday press release.
RAND researchers detail 14 case studies of film piracy, providing compelling evidence of a broad, geographically dispersed and continuing connection between piracy and organized crime. As well as documenting cases in North America and Europe, the report outlines the involvement of organized crime with film piracy in South America, Russia and many parts of Asia. The research was based upon 2,000 pages of documents and interviews with more than 120 law enforcement and intelligence agents from 20 countries, officials said.
Film piracy can be even more profitable than drug trafficking or other enterprises commonly linked to organized crime, RAND said. In one example cited in the report, a pirated DVD made in Malaysia for 70 cents was marked up more than 1,000 percent and sold on the street in London for about $9. The profit margin was more than three times higher than the markup for Iranian heroin and higher than the profit for Columbian cocaine, according to the report. Worldwide, criminal penalties for counterfeiting are relatively light and prosecution is sparse compared to selling drugs, the paper stated.
President Barack Obama went public with one of Washington's worst-kept secrets on Tuesday -- that Julius Genachowski, his former Harvard Law School classmate, was his pick to be the next FCC chairman. The announcement that Genachowski (who once worked as legal counsel for ex-FCC Chairman Reed Hundt) was the nominee garnered widespread praise from the high-tech and telecom community.
"He will bring a combination of private and public sector experience to the agency. His tech experience and knowledge will be invaluable in facilitating the continued rollout and enhancement of broadband in America." -- Comcast CEO Brian Roberts
"With his background and interest in expanding broadband to all Americans and ensuring that our nation's telecommunications policies serve the needs of both consumers and industry, it is clear that Mr. Genachowski shares many of the same goals as state regulators." -- National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners
"[It is] natural that our nation's first digital president would choose as FCC chairman someone who has worked in the technology industry and understands how innovation grows from an idea into the next generation companies that drive our economy and create jobs." -- Consumer Electronics Association President Gary Shapiro
Two of D.C.'s biggest entertainment trade associations, the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America, are facing budget and staff cuts, according to news sources. The RIAA recently let go 20 to 25 people, or about 20 percent of its staff. It also declined to fill positions that have been vacated, according to CNET News. In all, the RIAA has reduced staff by 31 people -- or just under 30 percent -- to about 75 people. The association's current CEO, Mitch Bainwol, will remain at the helm.
A spokesman noted that the job cuts follow the decline in the recording industry's revenue, as a result of piracy, the economy and a steep decline in CD sales. He noted that in 1999, the industry's revenue was $14.5 billion. By 2008, revenue had fallen to $8.5 billion. The MPAA is also facing cuts. The association's six-member board clipped the group's budget by $20 million this year and laid off about 20 percent of its staff and consultants in Los Angeles and Washington, the Hollywood Reporter writes. The story also says that the MPAA extended CEO Dan Glickman's contract through the summer of 2010, rather than extending it for multiple years. Glickman's current contract expires this June.
In National Journal's 2008 biannual salary survey, which is based on 2005 and 2006 tax information, we reported that MPAA's annual revenue was $82.1 million and the RIAA's revenue was $46.8 million. -- Bara Vaida
House and Senate sponsors of legislation that would overhaul the U.S. patent system were optimistic Tuesday that after several rounds of serious debate and considerable controversy, the 111th Congress would send a comprehensive patent bill to the president's desk. "This is the Congress, this is the year," Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy said, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with cosponsor Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and their House partners in the endeavor, Judiciary Chairman John Conyers and ranking member Lamar Smith. Read CongressDaily's AM Edition for details.
A European government official expects that President Barack Obama's administration will improve the nation's relationship with the EU on privacy issues. "It may probably be the case that the first changes happen within the U.S. itself, meaning that the respect for data privacy in the fight against terrorism will be much stronger, in general," wrote Ignasi Guardans, a member of the European Parliament and a substitute member of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, in an email. He added that he believes that the U.S. government "is very much aware that this is just one among the big examples of issues where the 'arrogant' image of the U.S. in the last years can be substantially improved."
Meanwhile, the EU has been engaged in discussions to maintain its own database of passenger name record data and to impose the collection of PNR data for flights that occur within the EU. Currently, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security maintains a database of PNR data between the two bodies. Gaurdans expects the PNR data debate within the EU to last until after the European elections take place in June.
Gaurdans said the European Commission is putting pressure to harmonize PNR data plans to avoid ending up with 27 different plans. He said that only France, Denmark and the U.K. have actually adopted legislation on the use of PNR for law enforcement purposes. "There has been very strong criticism from the European Data Protection Supervisor, the Fundamental Rights Agency and the House of Lords [and] as far as there is no EU legislation in place, U.K. can in principle do what they want as long as they follow national, and to the extent it is relevant, EU data protection legislation," he added. -- Winter Casey
More than 100 artists, musicians, songwriters, and independent label representatives will be roaming the halls of Congress on Tuesday urging members to support legislation that would end a long-standing royalty exemption granted to AM and FM radio. The fly-in, organized by the MusicFirst Coalition, will include notable names like Suzanne Vega, The Donnas, Abdul (Duke) Fakir of the Four Tops as well as lesser known but influential musicians: Phil Soussan (the bass player for Ozzy Osborne, Billy Idol, Edgar Winter and others); Dan Workman of Sugar Hill Records; "Save the Best for Last" songwriter Phil Galdston; and Craig Krampf, the drummer on Kim Carnes' hit "Bette Davis Eyes."
The visit to House and Senate members comes on the eve of a House Judiciary Committee hearing on the bill, which is sponsored by Chairman John Conyers and Oversight and Government Reform ranking member Darrell Issa. Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, sponsored companion legislation in their chamber. Texas Reps. Gene Green a Democrat, and Republican Mike Conaway, sponsored a resolution opposing the legislation that is quickly picking up support. Meanwhile, Recording Academy President Neil Portnow sat down with yours truly last week to explain the debate on C-SPAN's "The Communicators." That video is available here.
Updated at 1:10 p.m. on March 3.
The House Committees on Science and Technology; Education and Labor; Transportation and Infrastructure; and the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming have become the first four congressional committees to join the micro-blogging community Twitter, according to a Monday press release. The committees, like a growing number of individual members' offices, plan to use Twitter as a new tool to reach their audience and ensure transparency between the government and the public.
"I believe government works best when it is transparent and information is accessible to all. I want to ensure that the public can easily keep tabs on what the committee is working on," House Science and Technology Chairman Bart Gordon said. House Education and Labor Chairman George Miller added that like President Barack Obamaand House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, he believes greater government transparency is critical and will continue to use new media to open up his panel's work.
Some useful links:
http://twitter.com/SciTechCmte
http://twitter.com/edlabordems
http://twitter.com/HouseTransInf
http://twitter.com/MarkeyMemo
The blogosphere was abuzz Monday over President Barack Obama's weekly video address -- not because of the content (an explanation of the budget outline he sent to Congress) -- but because footage of the four-minute speech was not embedded on the White House Web site from YouTube. The video was instead presented on a generic video player leading some to believe that the administration was distancing itself from the popular Google-owned video sharing site, which has been under pressure lately for how it tracks users' Web sessions with cookies.
But White House spokesman Nick Shapiro told Tech Daily Dose the uproar was unwarranted. He said the Web team simply tested a new way of presenting Obama's weekly address by using a player developed in-house. The decision is "more about better understanding our internal capabilities than it is a position on third-party solutions or a policy," he said, noting the video was also published in third-party video hosting communities. "We will likely continue to embed videos from these services on WhiteHouse.gov in the future," he added.
Update: YouTube's Steve Grove weighs in on the Google blog.
Surf on over to CongressDaily's TechCentral for a new "Issue of the Week." Here's a taste:
Videogame lobbyists are pushing for government policies that encourage affordable, accessible, and faster high-speed Internet service as the agendas for the new Congress and the Obama administration come into focus. Michael Gallagher, the head of the industry's main trade group and former assistant secretary of Commerce under President George W. Bush, believes broadband is the "connective tissue" that his member companies need to survive in a turbulent economy.
Opportunities to play games online and download games and game-related content from a range of legitimate download services help drive demand for broadband, the Entertainment Software Association said in a briefing paper sent to President Obama's transition team. "We're the only form of entertainment online that's interactive -- movies and music are linear." Gallagher told CongressDaily. "We're very pleased with the president's strong embracing of broadband deployment as a high value goal for our country." The $6 billion-plus in broadband funds in Obama's stimulus package was a good start, he added.
Gallagher's group also supports efforts to free up wireless spectrum as gaming moves from PCs and plasma screens to handheld devices. "The administration and Congress have a huge amount to contribute to make sure that resources are available and make sure that rules of the road encourage investment and give companies and customers access to it at reasonable prices and terms," he said.
Senate and House intellectual property leaders will hold a press conference Tuesday afternoon on Capitol Hill to discuss congressional action to overhaul the nation's patent system in the 111th Congress. Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers and ranking member Lamar Smith are expected to introduce bipartisan bicameral patent legislation the same day. The House passed a patent bill last Congress 220 to 175 and the Senate Judiciary Committee reported a similar measure. The bill stalled after Leahy and ranking member Arlen Specter collided over differences on how damages should be awarded in patent lawsuits.
Recent CongressDaily coverage on this issue (subscription required):
Patent Bills Coming Soon From Judiciary Leaders
Leahy: Senate Patent Bill Coming Soon
Senators Close To Reintroducing Patent Overhaul Measure
Eyeing Patent Overhaul, Big Manufacturers Form Coalition
CAP Urges Patent Overhaul Be Priority For Congress, Obama
Look for more in CongressDaily's Tuesday AM Edition.
The FTC on Wednesday will expose bogus Web sites and other scams claiming they can help individual consumers qualify for a share of the $800 billion economic stimulus package that President Barack Obama signed into law last month. Many sites use photos of Obama and Vice President Joe Biden to give the appearance of authenticity, the consumer protection agency said in a Monday e-mail. Sites also use logos from ABC, CBS, CNBC, CNN, FOX, NBC, MSNBC, and other major media outlets to make them appear legitimate. Bureau of Consumer Protection Acting Director Eileen Harrington will speak at the event.
In related news, the Small Business Administration recently issued a warning about fraudulent letters printed on what appears to be an SBA letterhead that were sent to small businesses around the country. The letters tell recipients they may be eligible for a tax rebate under the economic stimulus plan and that the SBA is assessing their eligibility for such a rebate. It then asks them to provide bank account information. The scheme is similar in many ways to e-mail scams often referred to as "phishing" that seek personal data and financial account information that enables another party to access and individual's bank accounts or to engage in identity theft.
The Internet's key oversight agency is saying goodbye to its president and CEO after six years at the helm. Paul Twomey broke the news to attendees at the opening of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers' 34th international public meeting in Mexico City this week. Twomey, who was tapped for the top spot after serving four years as chairman of ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee, said he plans to leave at the end of the year and will "move on to another leadership position in the private or international sectors." Before joining ICANN, he founded Argo P@cific, a firm that helped companies build their Internet presence.
Upon learning of Twomey's decision to step down, some of the most significant leaders in the Internet community praised his work. "I can think of no other person who has had more influence on the course of ICANN's evolution than Paul," said Vint Cerf, Google's chief Internet evangelist, who served for eight years as ICANN chairman. "We owe him a great debt for long and faithful service and I owe him personal thanks for his counsel during my time on the board. The Board will be challenged to find a worthy and capable successor." Internet Society CEO Lynn St Amour added that ICANN has become a stronger organization during Twomey's tenure.
ICANN Chairman Peter Dengate Thrush said he was happy to have Twomey on board until the end of 2009 given the monumental tasks the body has ahead of it this year. In September, the Commerce Department's formal ICANN oversight role expires and the agency is moving forward with a controversial expansion of the way Web domains are assigned. Big brand owners fear that expanding these top-level domains will force them to spend big bucks to protect their identities from fraud and infringement.
The House Judiciary Committee Wednesday will hear perspectives on legislation by Judiciary Chairman John Conyers that would end a long-standing copyright royalty exemption granted to AM and FM radio. The bill, backed by the Recording Industry Association of America and other music business stakeholders, has been criticized by the National Association of Broadcasters. The powerful trade group believes the airplay its members provide is an ample reward for performers who sell albums and concert tickets. A Tuesday House Judiciary Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee hearing on why bankruptcy protections failed to halt the closure of Circuit City has been cancelled.
Meanwhile, the FCC continues to prepare the nation for the transition to digital television signals -- set to culminate June 12 -- with a Thursday public meeting on the topic. The session is the second to be held under acting FCC Chairman Michael Copps, whose first meeting also focused on the switchover. Also on Thursday, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation will release a new report on the need for next-generation broadband networks in the United States. The report will document how the transformative functionalities that next-generation broadband enables will unlock a wave of innovative new Web-applications, delivering benefits to consumers, society, businesses, and the economy.
Congressional advocates for increased federal research and development funding last week hailed President Barack Obama's budget outline for FY10, which would give the National Science Foundation $7 billion -- up from the Bush administration's FY09 request of $6.8 billion. NSF pays for about 20 percent of all federally supported basic research conducted by U.S. colleges and universities and is targeted for a doubling of its budget over 10 years as part of competitiveness legislation signed into law in August 2007.
Key investments in science, technology, and education can help reenergize the economy and prepare workers for the jobs of the future, House Science Committee Chairman Bart Gordon said. Since taking office, Obama has repeatedly stressed the importance of supporting science and his overview highlights the importance of science and technology to several big national goals like education, healthcare, and clean and renewable energy. "What I see in this budget request with regard to energy is that the administration understands we need to be pursuing many different avenues," Gordon said in a statement. "There is not a silver bullet. It's silver buckshot."
Obama's budget allocates $125 million for the Commerce Department's Manufacturing Extension Partnership and $70 million for the Technology Innovation Program, which is a modest increase from the FY09 omnibus. The House-passed version allots $110 million for MEP and $65 million for TIP. The request is a big change from Bush budgets that would have eliminated them. Appropriators annually saved the programs, which offer financing and technical assistance to small businesses and start-ups. Also under the president's plan, NASA would get $18.7 billion, up from the $17.6 billion FY09 request.
For the ninth year in a row, identity theft was the top consumer complaint reported to the FTC in 2008. Of more than 1.2 complaints received throughout the year, 313,982 or 26 percent were related to ID theft, the agency announced last week. Third-party and creditor debt collection as well as shop-at-home and catalog sales came in second and third place respectively while complaints about Internet services; television and electronic media; and computer equipment were also high on the list.
The FTC report breaks out complaint data on a state-by-state basis and contains data about the 50 metropolitan areas reporting the highest per capita incidence of fraud and other complaints. In addition, the document lists the 50 metropolitan areas reporting the highest incidence of ID theft. Credit card fraud was the most common form of reported ID theft at 20 percent, followed by government documents/benefits fraud at 15 percent, employment fraud at 15 percent and phone or utilities fraud at 13 percent.
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