FCC Wireless Bureau Acting Chief James Schlichting wrote to Apple, AT&T and Google on Friday inquiring about recent reports that Apple won't approve the Google Voice application for the iPhone and has removed related (and previously approved) third-party applications from the iPhone App Store. In light of pending FCC proceedings regarding wireless open access and handset exclusivity, the Commission wants a more complete understanding of this situation, he wrote.
Some questions posed in the letters with answers due Aug. 21:
• Why did Apple rejected Google Voice and remove the third party software?
• What related apps were removed or have been rejected?
• Did Apple act alone, or in consultation with AT&T, in rejecting Google Voice?
• Does AT&T have any role in the approval of iPhone applications?
• What other apps have been rejected for iPhone and for what reasons?
• Is there a list of prohibited applications or of categories of applications?
Reps. Edward Markey, D-Mass., and Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., reprised the congressional push for a so-called "network neutrality" mandate on Friday by introducing legislation that would prevent Internet service providers such as telephone and cable companies from interfering with Web content that passes through their pipelines. The bill would essentially bar ISPs from using the claim of network management to impose their own priorities on data traffic, based on financial arrangements or other considerations.
Open Internet groups cheered the move. Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn said the measure would "bring online certainty to millions of Internet users and companies" and Ben Scott, policy director for Free Press, said the legislation would "help to ensure that the public -- not big phone and cable companies -- controls the fate of the Internet." Prior attempts at legislating in this arena have been met with fierce lobbying for and against the measures but they ultimately failed.
U.S. Telecom Association President Walter McCormick called the bill's introduction "a disappointing but not unexpected development." He said the language "would not preserve Internet freedom, but would instead lead to a government-managed Internet." President Obama, however, has repeatedly called for net neutrality and new FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski plans to fortify the agency's Internet guidelines -- which focus on protecting consumer rights -- by adding a fifth principle explicitly barring discriminatory behavior by broadband providers.
President Obama signed on Friday into law a temporary extension of a federal program that awards R&D grants to small businesses on the day it was set to expire. As a result, the Small Business Innovation Research program has been prolonged until Sept. 30, 2009 as lawmakers work on differing versions of reauthorization bills. Senate Small Business Chairwoman Mary Landrieu said the temporary relief ensures that the SBIR effort "will continue creating cutting-edge technologies and high-paying jobs" but a permanent reauthorization of that and the Small Business Technology Transfer program is critical.
"We have been working hard [with the House] to reach a fair compromise that will reauthorize and strengthen the SBIR and STTR programs and that will guarantee that these programs remain for truly small businesses," she said in a statement. The version that passed the Senate recently reauthorizes the programs for eight years while capping awards for start ups that are majority-owned and controlled by multiple venture capital firms. The House bill extends the programs for only two years and places fewer restrictions on the allocation of funds. A 2003 ruling made small businesses that receive substantial funding from venture capitalists ineligible for the programs.
The Smithsonian has posted a preliminary version of its Web and new media strategy that details ways in which the institution wants to overhaul its digital experience and promote a new learning model that helps people along their "lifelong learning journeys." The blueprint was born from workshops, a Smithsonian 2.0 conference, Twitter, YouTube and ongoing collaborations on its wiki.
Three main themes emerged during the strategy-creation process:
• Update the Smithsonian Digital Experience: Build on excellence and the potential for excellence throughout the Institution by focusing on Web-publishing fundamentals and improving access to collections, community, and content across all platforms.
• Update the Smithsonian Learning Model: Support new kinds of learning, innovation, and knowledge creation inside and outside the Institution.
• Balance Autonomy and Control within the Smithsonian: Balance the benefits and risks of central control and creative autonomy while binding oversight and operations to a shared vision for the future.
To make the themes actionable, the strategy describes eight goals, each of which has its own set of policy, program, and tactical recommendations...
Digital music royalty collector SoundExchange has completed four independent agreements with Sirius-XM, College Broadcasters Inc. and the National Religious Broadcasters Music License Committee, which will set the rate structure for the webcasters through 2015. An additional agreement signed late Thursday night will be confirmed publicly in coming weeks, officials said Friday. While the rates and terms are specific to each group, they all involve pre-set annual increases to reflect the rising value of sound recordings.
The deals come on the heels of an announcement earlier this month that a payment formula for "pureplay" services, whose main business is streaming music, had been reached after more than two years of private negotiations. See CongressDaily story here(subscription required). The agreements were negotiated under the Webcaster Settlement Act, which gave SoundExchange the authority to negotiate alternative rates and terms to those set by the Copyright Royalty Board in 2007.
House Foreign Chairman Howard Berman, whose previous leadership on the House Judiciary intellectual property subcommittee was instrumental in bringing negotiators together, cheered the new agreements. "I want to thank all the people who spent long hours in my office working towards a solution that works for artists, webcasters, and most importantly music fans. It was worth every moment to ensure that new technologies recognize that creators should have the opportunity to thrive," he said in a statement.
Two Friday staffing announcements from the Business Software Alliance and The Telecommunications Industry Association:
• BSA has hired Washington attorney Jodie Kelley as general counsel and vice president of anti-piracy. Kelley, who served for six years as vice president and deputy general counsel at Fannie Mae, will lead the high-tech trade group's domestic and international intellectual property enforcement programs, its efforts against Internet crime, and its educational programs to promote software license compliance and respect for IP.
• The standards development organization TIA is bringing on Cheryl Blum as vice president for standards and business development. Blum will be leaving Alcatel-Lucent, where she is a senior manager. She has extensive experience with almost every aspect of telecom systems, including software development, systems engineering, network architecture and standards development.
The House Judiciary Courts and Competitive Policy Subcommittee voted Thursday to prohibit agreements that set minimum prices on goods or services, reversing a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision. On a voice vote, the subcommittee agreed to the bill and sent it to the full committee, which is not expected to take it up before fall. Courts and Competitive Policy Subcommittee Chairman Hank Johnson, D-Ga., said the Supreme Court upset 96 years of law that will make consumers pay higher prices. "This bill takes a stand for the consumer," said Johnson. Read more about the split decision in Leegin Creative Leather Products, Inc. v. PSKS, Inc. here.
Internet auction giant eBay, which has emerged on the front lines of the movement to restore the vertical price fixing ban, lauded the subcommittee's action. "When large manufacturers and their biggest retail partners enact price-fixing policies they burden consumers with inflated prices and rob the economy of the value provided by small business competition," eBay Vice President Tod Cohen said. But Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said there may be occasions when minimum resale price maintenance is important, such as to preserve warranties or to protect small retailers against giant discounters. He was assured by Johnson that the bill would be developed further before the full committee takes it up.
Read CongressDaily's full mark up report for H.R. 3190 here (subscription required).
If Apple ever needs a stand-in for the hip young actor who plays "Mac" opposite the geeky, lumbering "PC" in its popular TV ads, Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., might be a good choice, National Journal reports. He told a high-tech luncheon recently that his office is 100 percent Macintosh and explained that the brand is easier to use and less prone to viruses. "I can spend more time getting things done and waste less time dealing with computer problems," he said. Stearns added that he uses the built-in video conferencing to interview and hire district office staff. "Even though we run Microsoft Office for Mac, I can also run Windows on my Mac too. So I have the best of both worlds," Stearns went on. The office of Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., is also entirely Apple, according to a spokesman for the House chief administrative officer. At last count, 268 Macs were assigned in the House, and most were laptops. Meanwhile, fewer than 5 percent of total devices in the Senate are Macs and no offices use them exclusively, said Kimball Winn, chief information officer for the Senate sergeant at arms.
A federal advisory group of the nation's leading scientists and engineers will meet for the first time under the Obama administration next week (see agenda here). The President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology will convene Thursday and Friday to set priorities for the year and hear from some administration science and tech all-stars. White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director John Holdren and co-chairs Harold Varmus and Eric Lander will kick off the meeting, which will focus largely on healthcare and energy.
President Obama's Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra, Department of Health and Human Services National Coordinator for Health Information Technology David Blumenthal and Blumenthal's advisor John Glaser will first discuss health information technology. Then National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Director Elizabeth Nabel and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Director Carolyn Clancy will tackle comparative effectiveness research.
PCAST members will them move on to a discussion of energy and environment with Robert Sussman, senior policy counsel for the Environmental Protection Agency and Shere Abbott, associate director of environment for OSTP. They'll wrap up day one with an address from Energy Secretary Steven Chu. On Friday, Holdren will give an overview of OSTP activities and various PCAST committees will report on economic development; innovation and technology; international security; science, technology, engineering and mathematics; education; healthcare and life sciences; and energy and environment.
Senate Judiciary Committee
"The Performance Rights Act and Parity among Music Delivery Platforms"
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Dirksen Senate Office Building Room 226
2:30 p.m.
Sheila E
Grammy Award-winning Artist on behalf of the MusicFIRST Coalition
Bob Kimball
Executive Vice President, Real Networks
Marian Leighton-Levy
Owner, Rounder Records
Steve Newberry
Joint Board Chairman, National Association of Broadcasters
President and CEO, Commonwealth Broadcasting Corporation
Ralph Oman
Adjunct Professor, George Washington University Law School
James L. Winston
Executive Director, National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters
The outgoing chief of the federal government's intelligence-information sharing efforts told a House panel Thursday that his successor should report directly to Congress and the president without interference from any agency. Thomas McNamara, who has coordinated information sharing at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence since 2006, appeared before the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing and Terrorism Risk Assessment before leaving office Friday. At the hearing, he detailed the challenges ahead and laid out a roadmap for his replacement who has not been named. Read more in CongressDaily's PM Edition (subscription required).
Lawmakers who were instrumental in creating McNamara's job as part of 2004 intelligence reform legislation lauded the progress that has been made on his watch but said more must be done. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Chairman Joseph Lieberman and ranking member Susan Collins told Tech Daily Dose that McNamara's was a Herculean task of creating a culture of sharing among previously siloed intelligence agencies. Collins urged President Obama to quickly appoint a replacement so the momentum will not be lost. Lieberman said state-run "fusion centers" must be improved and the problem of over-classification of data must be addressed.
"In an intelligence culture that for years has been plagued by turf protection, [McNamara] is a brave voice in the wilderness," added House Homeland Security Intelligence Subcommittee Chairwoman Jane Harman, D-Calif. "His efforts over the years to elevate information sharing in our nation's counterterrorism toolbox have truly made us stronger and our intelligence capabilities more robust." House Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson also issued a statement acknowledging progress made during McNamara's tenure but said he was concerned many enduring challenges are not new.
House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman and Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., want the FCC to consider probing allegations of retaliation by AM and FM stations over pending bills that would require over-the-air radio to pay performers for songs they broadcast, CongressDaily reported Wednesday. While the lawmakers did not take a position on the merits of the June complaint by the MusicFirst Coalition, they said in a letter that the agency should conduct a "thorough examination" of the merits of the claims.
MusicFirst's petition argued that stations have refused their ads but run ads by the National Association of Broadcasters, which opposes the legislation. Most recently, MusicFirst's media buyer was rejected by Clear Channel stations in Houston and Detroit. On Thursday, MusicFirst released the 30-second ad featuring Duke Fakir of the Four Tops, which stations would not run. The bill that is the focus of the ad war passed the House Judiciary Committee in May and will be the subject of a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday. Read a preview story about the hearing in CongressDaily here (subscription required).
While calls to Clear Channel were not immediately returned an NAB official said broadcasters are under no obligation to accept any and all advertising. WPGC in Washington, D.C., for example, is not obliged to take ads from WKYS claiming that WKYS is the best hip-hop music station in town. The seminal 1973 Supreme Court decision in Columbia Broadcasting System v. Democratic National Committee outlines that broadcasters have the right to reject advertising.
In the five months since passage of the stimulus package, thousands of research-related awards have been made, supporting scientific efforts in every state and the District of Columbia, according to an analysis released Thursday by the Association of American Universities, Association of Public and Land-grant Universities and the Science Coalition. The measure delivered the largest increase in basic research funding in American history -- $21.5 billion. The bulk of the money is for scientific research and education projects, while $3.5 billion is allocated for research facilities and equipment.
• Some 3,000 students and teachers are participating in a stimulus-funded summer jobs program through the National Institutes of Health.
• The National Science Foundation has expanded its teacher scholarship program through stimulus funds. To date, $59.1 million of the $60 million allocated has been obligated to more than 60 U.S. colleges and universities.
• The Energy Department Office of Science is using stimulus money to support the creation of 16 university research centers to help build a new 21st-century energy economy.
• The National Institutes of Standards and Technology announced more than $55.5 million to support the construction of new scientific research facilities at four universities.
Click here to read more details about how R&D funds have been spent across the country.
A little bird tells Tech Daily Dose that Sheila E., the multiple Grammy Award nominee best known for collaborating with Prince , may testify on behalf of the MusicFirst Coalition at Tuesday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on legislation that would end a longstanding royalty exemption granted to AM and FM radio. E. recently embarked on a country career and her first music video "Glorious Train" debuted on CMT in March (see above). Or if you prefer classic E., check out "Glamorous Life" here. The National Association of Broadcasters, which has lobbied hard against the bills in the House and Senate, will have a seat at the witness table that will most likely be filled by Commonwealth Broadcasting CEO Steven Newberry. Newberry also appeared before the committee in 2007 opposite singer-songwriter Lyle Lovett. Read a preview story about the upcoming hearing in CongressDaily here (subscription required).
An advertising partnership unveiled Monday by Yahoo and Microsoft is already raising eyebrows among lawmakers. Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman Herb Kohl, D-Wis., said his panel would closely review the deal, which would result in direct competitors working together. A similar deal between Google and Yahoo fell apart in November after U.S. regulators warned they would file a lawsuit to block it.
"Our subcommittee is concerned about competition issues in these markets because of the potentially far-reaching consequences for consumers and advertisers, and our concern about dampening the innovation we have come to expect from a competitive high-tech industry," Kohl said in a statement. Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee ranking member Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said he did not see "any immediate yellow flags" from an antitrust front. Competitive Enterprise Institute argued regulators "can best serve consumer interests by leaving well enough alone."
But some watchdogs disagree. They say the relationship could be an initial step toward complete integration of the two firms, raising questions about the collection and sharing of consumer data. The Center for Digital Democracy's Jeff Chester said he will ask antitrust officials in the United States and Europe to "closely and skeptically" examine the deal. "What we are now witnessing is the emergence of a global digital advertising duopoly: Google and Microsoft/Yahoo," Chester said.
Drivers in the United States would be banned from texting on a cell phone or other personal electronic device while operating a moving vehicle under legislation unveiled Wednesday by Sens. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., Robert Menendez, D-N.J., Mary Landrieu, D-La., and Kay Hagan, D-N.C. The measure comes in the wake of a rash of mass transit accidents caused by distracted operators and a new study by Virginia Tech researchers that found drivers are 23 times more likely to get into an accident when texting. A Car and Driver Magazine study last month indicated that texting while driving is more dangerous than driving intoxicated.
Under the bill, states that did not bar sending of text or e-mail messages while operating a car or truck would risk losing federal highway funds. The measure requires the Transportation Department to establish within six months of passage minimum penalties that must be contained within state law. States would have two years to pass compliant bans or else risk losing 25 percent of their highway money for each year they fail to comply. States that comply after the two-year deadline can retroactively recover lost highway funds, the senators said. Aides said a House companion has not been introduced.
"We have seen too many lives ruined due to drivers recklessly using their cell phones. With this new legislation, drivers will finally be held responsible for dangerous behavior that puts the public at risk," Schumer said in a press release. Fourteen states and the District of Columbia currently ban all drivers from texting while operating motor vehicles and 11 other states have a modified prohibition on texting while driving. Verizon Wireless General Counsel Steve Zipperstein said his company supports the bill because it is "consistent with our belief that good public policy is supported by good science."
IBM Assistant General Counsel David Kappos, President Obama's pick for Patent and Trademark Office director, appeared before a congratulatory and largely sympathetic Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. During the hearing, he outlined his priorities for the agency, should he be confirmed, and answered questions about the PTO's internal turmoil while offering thoughts about various legislative proposals before Congress that are intended to update the U.S. patent system for the 21st century. Details are available in CongressDaily's PM Edition here (subscription required).
But Kappos, who has a broad knowledge of intellectual property issues, also weighed in on the economic import of IP protection and spoke about the piracy and counterfeiting challenges faced by the movie, music and software industries. In response to a question from the committee's newest member, Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., Kappos said the United States "unquestionably" faces IP theft problems on a global scale. He hinted at "new capabilities" in the Obama administration -- presumably the yet-to-be-named White House IP czar -- that he expects will lead to "aggressive actions" against bootleggers and more collaboration with foreign counterparts.
He went on to say that, if confirmed, he would work with various administration officials "to engage with whatever countries are needed" including IP offenders in Asia, Eastern Europe and Africa. Kappos said the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative's annual "Special 301" report, which documents countries doing poorly on IP and those that are improving, is "clearly an important part" of the effort. Education is also essential. He said the U.S. government should work with the governments of other countries to help put in place new laws and enforcement scenarios that protect the rights of content creators.
House Global Warming Chairman Edward Markey and ranking member James Sensenbrenner, who seldom agree on issues before their committee, will largely read from the same playbook at a hearing Wednesday intended to reinforce the importance of American intellectual property in conjunction with international climate change talks. The hearing comes as nations prepare for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December where negotiators will try to reach agreement on how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Lawmakers and the business community are working to make their views known to the Obama administration, and Sensenbrenner and Markey raised the issue during a trip to China with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in May.
The House has repeatedly made clear that IP needs to be protected. The House voted overwhelmingly in June to establish U.S. policy in opposition to any climate change treaty that could harm IP rights as part of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, and the State Department's appropriations bill includes text requiring the agency to certify robust IP protections. Cap-and-trade legislation that passed the House last month said IP rights are vital for R&D investment. Sensenbrenner wrote to Energy Secretary Steven Chu in April asking for details about the administration's position on IP rights for energy technology, and Chu responded in May. In the letter, Chu affirmed his belief in protecting IP but noted opportunities to develop technologies through shared research investments.
Read a preview story in CongressDaily's AM Edition here (subscription required).
House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Edolphus Towns on Wednesday was expected to blame the Bush administration for having a laissez-faire attitude that has allowed privacy and security problems posed by peer-to-peer networks to persist online. At a hearing on the topic, he is likely to call for legislation to guard against inadvertent file-sharing, heightened FCC and FTC involvement and the creation of a public awareness campaign to inform people about the dangers of P2P software. The panel held similar hearings in 2007 and four years earlier. In response, the P2P industry adopted a voluntary code of conduct to prevent unintentional data disclosures, but a new committee investigation showed popular platforms like LimeWire are not living up to their promises.
In his opening remarks, Towns pointed to an analysis by security experts at Tiversa and said specific examples of recent LimeWire leaks "range from appalling to shocking."
• The Social Security numbers and family information for every master sergeant in the Army had been found on LimeWire.
• The medical records of some 24,000 patients of a Texas hospital were inadvertently released and most of the files are still available on LimeWire.
• FBI files, including surveillance photos of an alleged Mafia hit man, were leaked while he was on trial and before he was convicted.
• A security breach involving the Secret Service resulted in the leak of a file on LimeWire containing a safe house location for the First Family.
Read a preview story in CongressDaily's AM Edition here (subscription required).
More than eight months after abandoning its planned advertising partnership with Google amid intense scrutiny from Capitol Hill and the Justice Department, Yahoo is joining forces with Microsoft. The companies announced an agreement Wednesday that they believe will improve the Web search experience for users and advertisers. Under the plan, which they expect to close in early 2010, Microsoft would power Yahoo search while Yahoo will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies' premium search advertisers, according to a press release.
The agreement does not cover each company's Web properties and products, e-mail, instant messaging, display advertising or any other aspect of the companies' businesses. "In those areas, the companies will continue to compete vigorously," they stated. The transaction will be subject to regulatory review and the agreement entered into Wednesday anticipates that the parties will enter into more detailed definitive arrangements prior to closing. The pair acknowledged that their deal will "be closely reviewed by the industry and government regulators" and they welcome questions.
Under the 10-year agreement, Microsoft will acquire an exclusive license to Yahoo's core search technologies, and Microsoft will have the ability to integrate Yahoo search technologies into its existing Web search platforms. Microsoft's new search engine Bing will be the exclusive algorithmic search and paid search platform for Yahoo sites. "Providing a viable alternative to advertisers, this deal will combine Yahoo and Microsoft search marketplaces so that advertisers no longer have to rely on one company that dominates more than 70 percent of all search," the firms said in an indirect jab at Google.
President Obama's pick to head the National Archives and Records Administration in the increasingly digitized era is David Ferriero, director of the New York Public Libraries -- one of the largest public library systems in the United States and one of the largest research library systems in the world. In his current post, Ferriero is responsible for collection strategy; conservation; digital experience; reference and research services; and education, programming, and exhibitions, according to the White House personnel announcement. The NYPL has 2,600 full-time employees and a budget of $273 million.
The National Archives, best known as the keeper of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, recently unveiled a draft update to its strategic plan through 2016 that includes new ideas for electronic records management and language pertaining to the creation of a new National Declassification Center. In late May, Obama instructed his national security adviser, James L. Jones, to consult with agency heads and submit recommendations to him on how and whether to revise a 1995 executive order that created new standards for classifying government documents. NARA also houses a new office intended to mediate disputes under the Freedom of Information Act.
Senate Commerce Chairman John (Jay) Rockefeller issued his first subpoena Tuesday as head of the committee to Vertrue, Inc., for withholding information related to the company's allegedly deceptive online business practices. The subpoena requires the Norwalk, Conn. firm to produce documents that were explicitly requested by Rockefeller in May, including communications Vertrue had with business partners and credit card companies about "mystery charges" passed on to consumers as well as internal discussions regarding complaints about those unauthorized charges. The subpoena demands that Vertrue CEO Gary Johnson provide the files to the committee by Aug. 18.
Vertrue General Counsel George Thomas told Tech Daily Dose that his firm requested that Rockefeller issue the subpoena to better protect the personally identifiable information of consumers. Vertrue previously provided redacted documents that omitted individuals' names, addresses, telephone numbers and financial information. "Without a subpoena that information would not have been adequately protected in our view," he said, adding that if the contents were stolen or misappropriated Vertrue could be liable. Under the subpoena, the committee will have in its possession in a matter of days unredacted documents that include personal details and live credit card account information.
Regarding the panel's broader investigation, Vertrue maintains it has never done anything unlawful. The practices being examined by Rockefeller's staff -- including handling of so-called "pre-acquired account information" and "post-transaction sales" -- are specifically permitted by FTC laws and rules, Thomas argued. Rockefeller also issued letters to e-commerce marketing firm Webloyalty.com to get more details about the controversial business practices. Read Rockefeller's latest letter to Vertrue here and the subpoena here.
Update: A Senate Commerce aide said Vertrue requested a subpoena pertaining to the consumer complaints -- not on the larger issue of e-mail, financial documents and other internal communications. "They would like to make this look like it's a narrow issue, when the actual reason the subpoena was issued was a broader failure to cooperate in the investigation," said the aide, who accused Vertrue of "slow walking" the investigation.
A high-profile case involving a dispute over Patent and Trademark Office rules announced last fall aimed at increasing patent system efficiency could soon come to a close. The Justice Department on Friday filed a motion with the court handling the case to stay proceedings for the purpose of permitting the new Patent and Trademark Office director to reconsider implementation of the rules, which limit applicants to filing two new continuing applications and one request for continued examination. The change was challenged by drug manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline and an independent inventor, Triantafyllos Tafas.
Since all parties consented to the motion, it is expected to be granted, Foley & Lardner intellectual property attorney Hal Wegner said in a memo. Even if the case is not settled, oral arguments before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit are scheduled for Oct. 7, prior to which the new PTO chief could take other actions. IBM executive David Kappos, President Obama's pick to head the PTO, will appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday then has to be confirmed by the panel and the full Senate. It is uncertain whether the confirmation process could be complete before Congress is scheduled to leave town for August recess next Friday.
Public comments on whether the Obama administration should abolish or alter its policy barring federal Web sites from tracking users' Internet behavior are due Aug. 10, according to a notice published in the Federal Register on Monday. "The goal of this review is for the federal government to continue to protect the privacy of people who visit federal government Web sites while at the same time making these Web sites more user-friendly, providing better customer service, and allowing for enhanced Web analytics," the notice states. Feedback can be submitted at Regulations.gov and Whitehouse.gov/open or by e-mail at oira_submission@omb.eop.gov and fax (202) 395-7245.
The Office of Management and Budget is considering a three-tiered approach to the use of Web tracking technologies on government sites: (1) Single-session technologies, which track users over a single session and do not maintain tracking data over multiple sessions or visits. (2) Multi-session technologies for use in analytics, which track users over multiple sessions purely to gather data to analyze Web traffic statistics. (3) Multi-session technologies for use as persistent identifiers, which track users over multiple visits with the intent of remembering data, settings, or preferences unique to that visitor for purposes beyond what is needed for analytics.
The White House on Monday made a push to reach the one million follower mark on the micro-blogging Web site Twitter (see above). At 11:30 p.m., it had 795,343. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., President Obama's challenger on the campaign trail in 2008, hit the one million milestone earlier this month (and released an official statement about it too). FYI: Obama's personal Twitter page has attracted more than 1.8 million followers.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies, SANS Institute, the Defense Department, universities and private sector partners launched a series of competitions Monday intended to encourage young people to enter cybersecurity-related careers. The goal of the U.S. Cyber Challenge is to find 10,000 scholars to become "cyber security practitioners, researchers, and warriors," CSIS said. The effort was unveiled at a Capitol Hill briefing where National Security Agency Information Assurance Director Richard Schaeffer stressed the importance of recruiting new high-tech talent.
"The pipeline is reasonably robust but it needs to be more robust," he said. "We're talking about tens of thousands of technical professionals." Schaeffer said he wants outreach to occur as early as middle school. "I still want young folks to say I want to be a policeman [or] fireman... but I'd love to hear them saying I want to be a computer scientist... and know what it means," he said. Last week, a report by the Partnership for Public Service and Booz Allen Hamilton cited a troubling shortage of skilled cyber professionals and a lack of leadership, planning and coordination within the federal workforce. "This is clearly a place where public-private partnership is essential," he said.
The three cyber challenge components are a "Cyber Patriot" defense competition from the Air Force Association; a DOD competition focusing on cyber investigation and forensics; and a SANS Institute challenge testing mastery of vulnerabilities. Click here (PDF) for the U.S. Cyber Challenge flyer and here to read more about the initiative.
Federal and technology transfer officials believe that using "march-in" authority, which allows agencies to take control of a patent under certain circumstances, could have a chilling effect on government-sponsored research, according to a Government Accountability Office report (PDF) released Monday. The officials told GAO that if a march-in occurred, investors would be less likely to provide the funds to commercialize federal inventions for fear of losing their investments. Also, because the process can be long, a march-in would have limited utility in an emergency situation, they said.
GAO reviewed the departments of Defense and Energy, NASA and the National Institutes of Health to review because they accounted for 89 percent of federal research funding for fiscal year 2006 and none had exercised its march-in authority. DOD, DOE, and NASA have never received information that would lead them to initiate such a proceeding in the last 20 years and NIH has been petitioned formally three times but never pursued a case. DOD, NASA, and NIH said they valued the authority but DOE officials disagreed, in part, because no agency has ever used it.
Until March 2009, the Bayh-Dole Act required GAO to report periodically to determine whether march-in authority should be exercised; how the authority has been used; and what barriers and disincentives have been encountered. The GAO made no recommendations as part of its analysis. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the topic in October 2007. For more details click here.
The FTC will likely recommend in an upcoming report that virtual worlds like Second Life incorporate some sort of age-verification technology to keep youngsters away from inappropriate content, Progress and Freedom Foundation senior fellow Berin Szoka said at a Monday briefing on online child safety. Requiring a small fee paid by credit card to access areas of Internet communities intended for adults could do the trick, he and DLA Piper attorney Jim Halpert said. But WiredSafety.org Executive Director Parry Aftab, who also spoke at the event, argued such a mandate could disadvantage those who do not have credit cards. Others pointed out there are ways to circumvent age verification tools and they may not keep minors out of restricted areas.
Report language from the fiscal year 2009 omnibus appropriations bill required the FTC to study the availability of explicit content in virtual worlds and report to Congress by December. An agency spokeswoman said the FTC was on target to meet that deadline. Appropriators asked for the report and for the agency to issue "a consumer alert to educate parents on the content that is available to children on virtual reality Web programs," according to the omnibus language. The Commission's last major action in this arena was a September 2000 report that was highly critical of the entertainment industry. As a result, companies promised to impose tougher standards and voluntarily comply with the paper's recommendations.
As Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman Herb Kohl, D-Wis., urged the Justice Department on Monday to take caution as it investigates a pending merger between Live Nation and Ticketmaster, Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., sent a stronger message to regulators -- essentially asking that the $2.5 billion all-stock transaction be blocked. Kohl wrote to Assistant Attorney General Christine Varney saying she should approve the pairing only if she finds the deal is unlikely to lead to higher prices for consumers or cause substantial harm to competition in the concert ticketing and promotions. Read more on that in CongressDaily's PM Edition (subscription required).
Pascrell, whose letter was signed by more than 40 colleagues, wrote that "consumers, business managers, artists, independent promoters, and music fans in every state are likely to suffer if the merger is allowed to occur." The lawmaker has also urged a federal probe of Ticketmaster since its February sale of tickets for Bruce Springsteen's latest concert tour. Online ticket buyers were redirected by Ticketmaster to its higher priced re-sale site, TicketsNow.com, when the tickets were first offered for sale. He has also introduced a bill intended to bring greater transparency to the ticketing marketplace. The companies have justified the deal on efficiency grounds and argued it will benefit consumers.
In February, the CEOs of Live Nation and Ticketmaster tried mightily to convince skeptical senators that their merger would ultimately benefit performing artists and consumers. The executives argued at a hearing that competitors abound in the concert and ticketing arenas, but the system is broken from an artist and fan perspective. Read coverage of that hearing here (subscription required).
National Journal's Under The Influence blog reports that Comcast is bringing on two new D.C. hires already familiar with Capitol Hill. One is Joe Trahern, a former lobbyist for General Motors, who will be Comcast's senior director of federal government affairs. Before GM, Trahern served as chief of staff to Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., as a staffer for Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and in political affairs at the White House under President Bill Clinton.
Rudy Brioché, the other new hire, joins as senior director of external affairs and public policy counsel. In that role, he will help define the company's public policy interests, which revolve around telecommunications law. He has served as a legal adviser at the Federal Communications Commission and before that worked for Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J. Comcast spent $2.8 million on lobbying during the first half of this year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. In 2008, the company spent a total of $12.5 million, placing it among the top spenders in the entertainment industry, the Center said. Topping Comcast's 2008 lobbying agenda were tax, broadcasting, and intellectual property issues.
Now a half-year into the Obama administration, two White House posts viewed as critical to the high-tech and intellectual property sectors remain vacant -- and lawmakers and industry stakeholders are getting antsy, CongressDaily's TechCentral "Issue Of The Week" reports. President Obama's picks for the cybersecurity and IP coordinator jobs have all but been finalized; individuals familiar with situation said, yet no personnel announcements have been made. "A lot of people are frustrated about this because there was so much pomp and circumstance around it," said one high-tech watchdog. A White House spokesman declined to comment on either post.
In May, Obama was joined by members of Congress, Cabinet secretaries and technology executives when he announced the cyber czar position in conjunction with the release of a 60-day review of the nation's cybersecurity posture. He pledged to handpick his cyber chief, but since then, little has been said about the post. Getting the IP enforcement coordinator in place has proven difficult despite the fact that the top candidate has been known to insiders for months. Unlike the cyber czar, the IP official is a Senate-confirmed post and the White House isn't sure where to house the individual. Read the full story here (subscription required).
Google should commit to a strong privacy regime as part of its effort to digitize mass quantities of books before a fairness hearing this fall on a $125 million settlement the company reached with publishers, the Center for Democracy and Technology said in a Monday report. The paper asks the court to approve the Google Book Search settlement but to retain oversight in order to monitor implementation of a privacy plan. U.S. District Judge Denny Chin has scheduled a hearing for Oct. 7 and the Justice Department formally acknowledged an investigation into Google's settlement earlier this month.
"The new service will considerably increase public access to millions of books containing much of the world's written knowledge and ideas and will transform how the public conducts research, interacts with written text and shares information and ideas with others," CDT President Leslie Harris said in a press release. Libraries have a long history of protecting reader privacy and safeguarding the right to read anonymously; the report highlights how Google -- which helps fund CDT's work -- can best adapt to its new role as traditional library functions are centralized and moved online, the analysis stated. Read the report here (PDF).
• More than six months since President Obama took office, the process of filling key positions in his administration continues. Obama's nominee for director of the Patent and Trademark Office, IBM Assistant General Counsel David Kappos, will appear for questioning Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The session gets underway at 10 a.m. in Room 226/Dirksen Senate Office Building.
• The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Wednesday will resume its examination of inadvertent file-sharing over peer-to-peer networks, with a hearing that will focus on how the popular platform LimeWire could adversely affect both privacy and national security. The session takes place at 10 a.m. in Room 2154/Rayburn House Office Building.
• The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee plans to mark up legislation Wednesday that would replace a 2005 law -- popularly known as 'Real ID' -- which required states to issue new secure drivers' licenses and identification documents to their residents. The session kicks off at 10 a.m. in Room 324/Dirksen Senate Office Building.
• With last month's nationwide transition to digital television signals firmly behind them, broadcasters plan to celebrate with a Tuesday reception on Capitol Hill that will trumpet their latest technology: digital broadcasts to mobile devices, including cell phones, netbooks and in-car displays. Invited dignitaries to the event -- which kicks off at noon in the foyer of the Rayburn House Office Building -- include Reps. John Dingell, D-Mich., Edward Markey, D-Mass., and Cliff Stearns, R-Fla.
Read more details at CongressDaily's TechCentral here.
NextGov reports that Bev Godwin, director of online resources and interagency development for the White House new media team, asked the public on Friday to weigh in on the decade-old federal policy that does not allow agencies to use persistent cookies on their Web sites. The reason has to do with privacy, but it makes it harder for agencies to create Web services like those in the private sector. The White House wants the public to tell them what they think. White House Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra and Michael Fitzpatrick, associate administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, provided details on the administration's Open Government blog and the Office of Science and Technology Policy's blog.
OMB is considering a three-tiered approach to the use of Web tracking technologies on government sites: (1) Single-session technologies, which track users over a single session and do not maintain tracking data over multiple sessions or visits. (2) Multi-session technologies for use in analytics, which track users over multiple sessions purely to gather data to analyze Web traffic statistics. (3) Multi-session technologies for use as persistent identifiers, which track users over multiple visits with the intent of remembering data, settings, or preferences unique to that visitor for purposes beyond what is needed for analytics. Comments submitted by Aug. 10 will be taken into consideration.
House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers and a number of colleagues on Friday asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate the Arbitron ratings company's use of so-called portable people meters and their impact on radio station revenue streams. Many minority-owned broadcasters have expressed concerns about the validity of data collected by the machines and National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters Executive Director James Winston complained about the devices at a hearing earlier this month. Conyers wants the report finished by April 2010.
Winston argued Arbitron has a monopoly over radio rankings and stations that do not subscribe lack data to show potential advertisers. At the same hearing, Arbitron CEO Michael Skarzynski said his firm is developing solutions to help broadcasters, particularly minority and niche outlets, weather the bad economy. One such measurement tool, which will be tested this month, would pair radio exposure with audience engagement so an advertiser could get a clear picture of what ads are most successful with a given station's audience. Read more about the hearing here (subscription required).
"The advertising revenues and viability of minority-owned radio stations depends on an accurate measurement of their audience ratings. I believe it would best serve the public interest to conduct an independent review of the methodology and accuracy of this process," Conyers said in a statement. Other members signing on to the letter include: House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Edolphus Towns and ranking member Darrell Issa, R-Calif.; Rick Boucher, D-Calif., Hank Johnson, D-Ga., Maxine Waters, D-Calif., Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., Mike Quigley, D-Ill., Pedro Pierluisi, D-P.I., and Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas.
The American Civil Liberties Union has tapped Michael Macleod-Ball as acting director of its Washington office, which has been on the front lines of the battle against government warrantless wiretapping, Internet free speech fights and a range of other issues. The group is searching for a new legislative director because its top lobbyist Caroline Fredrickson left to become executive director of the American Constitution Society -- a center-left rival of the conservative Federalist Society. That was the ACLU's second recent high profile loss. Earlier this year, Tim Sparapani, who was the group's senior legislative counsel, became public policy director for social networking site Facebook.
"Michael's wide range of legal, civil liberties and legislative experience in both the public and private sectors makes him a well-suited candidate to lead our outstanding legislative staff during this transition period," ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said in a Friday press release. Macleod-Ball joined the ACLU's DC office in September 2007 as chief legislative and policy counsel, where he managed a team of policy counsels and lobbyists who work with Congress and the White House. He previously served the organization for 25 years in New England and Alaska.
Center for Democracy and Technology President Leslie Harris and Google public policy chief Alan Davidson on Friday dismissed a recent Technology Policy Institute report that argues there is a trade-off between increasing Internet privacy protections for consumers and the free flow of Web-based goods and services. Harris said "In Defense of Data: Information and the Costs of Privacy" should be renamed "In Defense of Straw Men." "Privacy and having a robust marketplace online are not inconsistent," she said at a Capitol Hill event sponsored by TPI.
"It's not true that somehow privacy advocates are anti-advertising or our ultimate goal is to rid the Internet of advertising," said Harris, who appeared alongside Davidson on a panel that included proponents of the paper written by Emory University economist Paul Rubin and TPI's Thomas Lenard. Harris rebuffed the report's "parade of horribles" including the idea that increasing privacy would curtail ads; add difficulty to search engine functionality; and diminish companies' ability to protect against network threats. She and Davidson both argued in favor of baseline privacy legislation, which is currently being drafted by House Energy and Commerce Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va.
Davidson wants a bill that provides transparency, meaningful choice and security for users. Such a measure would be helpful to companies like his because it gives users some level of confidence that they will be protected online, he said. "Privacy is not about draconian restrictions on companies. It's about providing consumers with some control over their data," Harris added. Rubin defended his report, arguing he did not say "the world would collapse if there were regulation." He believes regulation will lead to more expensive Internet-based services and there will be more barriers to innovation. He also argued that no one has pointed to specific harms to consumers from the statutes already on the books.
Read more about the event in CongressDaily's PM Edition.
The number of datasets on Data.gov has increased from 47 to more than 100,000 - with new sets being added continuously, Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag announced Friday in a blog post. The Web site was launched in May by White House Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra to provide raw feeds of government information from a range of agencies and departments. Since its launch, Data.gov has received more than 18 million hits. "The early response has been very positive. Individuals and organizations are not only viewing the data, but are also improving upon our work by analyzing and repurposing the information," Orszag wrote.
He also gave a shout out to the Sunlight Foundation, which recently launched Apps for America 2: The Data.gov Challenge to elicit from the public the most innovative applications based on the data available on Data.gov. One of the submissions is FlyOnTime.us -- a Web site that uses data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, available on Data.gov, to let consumers to see estimated versus actual arrival times for flights on major commercial carriers. Kundra has also been been working with state and local governments to encourage them to open the warehouses of public data. California, the District of Columbia and Utah have already taken up the challenge. Click here for more.
A blue ribbon panel of high-tech and security experts whose December report spurred a flurry of cybersecurity hearings and legislation is entering a new phase that its co-chairs hope will inform and influence the Obama administration, CongressDaily's AM Edition reported. The Center for Strategic and International Studies' Commission on Cybersecurity for the 44th Presidency has begun examining "foundational problems" that are key to fixing the nation's security vulnerabilities with the goal of releasing recommendations this year, Microsoft Vice President Scott Charney said at a Thursday briefing.
Lt. General Harry Raduege, chairman of Deloitte & Touche's Center for Network Innovation, said some of the group met in June to construct a blueprint for their work, and the full panel will reconvene Friday. Some issues they will tackle include authentication of Internet users, international engagement, and how to scale security solutions while preserving privacy and civil liberties, Charney and Raduege said. Charney said the commission was pleased with its 96-page original report but drafting that analysis brought up a host of new questions about the 21st century cyber infrastructure. "The appropriate response to problems will not be the traditional response of many years ago," he said.
Google spent $950,000 on lobbying in the second quarter of 2009, according to a disclosure form filed with the Senate Office of Public Records this week. By comparison, the Silicon Valley titan doled out $880,000 in the first quarter of this year and $770,000 in the last quarter of 2008. Yet other prominent tech players in Washington paid more and some paid less. Microsoft, for example, spent over $1.8 million in the second quarter and $1.6 million in the first quarter. Yahoo lobbyists racked up $480,000 in the second quarter and $460,000 in the first quarter.
Google's government affairs team -- as well as hired guns at Dutko Worldwide, Franklin Square Group, McBee Strategic Consulting and others -- weighed in on a range of issues during the several month period including privacy and competition issues surrounding online advertising; patent reform; copyright issues related to the Google Book Search project; and online consumer protection issues. They also focused on cybersecurity; content regulation; renewable energy policies; electricity grid upgrades; international freedom of expression and censorship; health information technology and privacy; and various broadband policies.
The battle over legislation that would end a longstanding royalty exemption afforded to AM and FM radio will move to the Senate early next month with an Aug. 4 hearing in the Judiciary Committee. Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy and House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers introduced the legislation, which would bring traditional broadcasters in line with Internet, cable and satellite platforms that pay performers for their works. The Recording Industry Association of America, SoundExchange and the American Federation of Musicians are carrying the torch for that effort while the National Association of Broadcasters has fought hard against the measures. Leahy's panel previously held a hearing on the issue in November 2007 where singer-songwriter Lyle Lovett testified.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., will chair the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing. No witnesses have been announced. The House Judiciary Committee approved its version of the bill in May with a vote of 21-9 after members made changes aimed at addressing broadcasters' concerns. The committee adopted, by voice vote, a manager's amendment that would delay the bill's enactment date and reduce the amount of fees stations would have to pay. Conyers said the compromise would cover 90 percent of minority-owned stations and 77 percent of all stations. Rep. Gene Green, D-Texas, sponsored a resolution opposing the royalty. More than 240 members have backed his effort. Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., offered a similar Senate resolution, which has 22 cosponsors.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will wade back into the debate over inadvertent file-sharing over peer-to-peer networks next Wednesday. The panel has scheduled a hearing that will focus on how popular platform LimeWire and other services could endanger citizens and jeopardize national security. Lime Group Chairman Mark Gorton, Tiversa CEO Robert Boback and Progress and Freedom Foundation Senior Fellow Thomas Sydnor are scheduled to testify. The committee held similar hearings in July 2007 and four years earlier. After the 2003 hearing, the P2P industry adopted a voluntary code of conduct to prevent inadvertent disclosures of sensitive information.
In March 2007, the Patent and Trademark Office released a report suggesting that inadvertent file-sharing may still be a serious problem and that the industry might not be living up to its promises. In response to the PTO report, committee staff conducted its own probe. Using LimeWire, aides ran a series of common searches during a one month period. They were able to easily obtain personal bank records and tax forms, attorney-client communications, corporate strategy documents for Fortune 500 companies, confidential corporate accounting documents, government emergency response plans, and even military operation orders.
Meanwhile, Rep. Mary Bono Mack, R-Calif., who is not on the committee, introduced legislation earlier this year that would help educate Internet users about P2P privacy and security risks. The bill came on the heels of reports that file-sharing software was implicated in a security breach involving Marine One, the helicopter used by President Obama. Bono Mack's measure, which was cosponsored by Rep. John Barrow, D-Ga., and Energy and Commerce ranking member Joe Barton, would ensure P2P programs cannot be installed without providing clear notice and obtaining user consent. It would also make it illegal for firms to prohibit users from blocking, disabling, or removing the software.
High-tech giant Intel lodged its appeal Wednesday in the European Court of First Instance against the $1.45 billion fine imposed by the European Commission earlier this year. The company did not give specific details of the legal grounds for its complaint but ZDNet UK reported that the European court will publish details of the appeal in several weeks. "We felt the EC decision was incorrect, and that evidence was ignored or misinterpreted," an Intel representative told ZDNet UK on Thursday. "We believe the Commission ignored the realities of the microprocessor market, which is highly competitive."
The fine for excluding competitors from the market for x86 central processing units was the largest penalty ever assessed by the European Union for a breach of competition, and it followed actions against Intel in Japan and South Korea. U.S. regulators are also getting involved. The FTC acknowledged in June 2008 that, after several years of scrutiny, it was opening a formal probe of Intel. Intel and rival chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices, whose microprocessors are based on Intel's x86 architecture, have ratcheted up their Washington lobbying efforts. Read more in National Journal here (subscription required).
Eight public interest, consumer and public health organizations wrote to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative on Wednesday recommending the office and other federal agencies reduce secrecy and increase transparency in negotiations that involve global norms for knowledge governance. The groups' submission included a lengthy discussion of 21 specific recommendations, plus three attachments that describe transparency norms in a variety of multilateral and plurilateral norm setting fora.
The letter from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Knowledge Ecology International, Public Knowledge and others is a product of a consultation with USTR officials that began in March and included a July 13 meeting between USTR and more than a dozen non-governmental organizations. One major area of concern is the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. Negotiations between the United States and a handful of trading partners are occurring largely behind closed doors with the goal of concluding in 2010.
The groups' recommendations go beyond ACTA, to address the transparency of all USTR negotiations that concern the setting of global norms for knowledge governance. "Transparency is the foundation stone for balanced policy making," EFF's Gwen Hinze said in a press release. "ACTA could lead to new invasive monitoring of Internet communications by ISPs and raise serious potential due process concerns for Internet users." KEI's James Love said he is heartened by the USTR's recent request for the public to offer concrete ideas about transparency. Read the 21 recommendations here.
White House Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra, Office of Science and Technology Policy Director John Holdren and other key administration officials and staff will participate in discussions about their work and careers prior to a National Design Awards luncheon on Friday. The awards were launched at the White House in 2000 to celebrate design in various disciplines from architecture to product design. First Lady Michelle Obama will host the annual gathering.
• Chopra will discuss the future of interaction design with Jeff Han of Perceptive Pixel Inc. and Andrew Blauvelt of Walker Art Center. This program is free to the public and no advanced registration is required. Hirshhorn Museum, Auditorium (Independence Avenue at Seventh Street S.W.)
• Holdren will discuss the future of technology and sustainability with Amory Lovins and Bill Moggridge. This program is free to the public and no advanced registration is required. National Museum of the American Indian (Fourth Street and Independence Avenue S.W.)
• Other participating Obama officials include White House Acting Communications Director Anita Dunn, who will discuss the relationship between current events and the design process; White House Deputy Social Secretary Ebs Burnough; and Neill McG. Coleman, general deputy assistant secretary at the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
CongressDaily's AM Edition reports (subscription required) that Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy hopes the third time will be a charm for his legislation intended to better protect citizens' personal information. The bill, which he reintroduced Wednesday and in two previous Congresses, would increase criminal penalties for identity theft involving electronic data and criminalize intentional or willful concealment of a security breach. Leahy said passage of the measure, which would pre-empt a patchwork of state data breach laws, is among his top legislative priorities.
Leahy's cybersecurity bill is one of many expected in the House and Senate. Senate Commerce Chairman John (Jay) Rockefeller and Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, were first with legislation in April, which could see committee action before August recess. Rockefeller issued a statement saying he and Snowe are working hard on the measure and hope to mark it up soon. "This is an enormously critical issue that cuts across every agency of government, every sector of our society and our economy, and of course multiple committees," he said. Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Chairman Joseph Lieberman is reportedly working on his own measure.
Major shortages of skilled cyber professionals and a lack of leadership, planning and coordination within the federal cybersecurity workforce threaten national security according to a Wednesday report by the Partnership for Public Service and Booz Allen Hamilton. The report recommends that the White House develop a government-wide blueprint to acquire, train and retain cyber talent. President Obama declared cybersecurity to be one of the nation's most serious economic and national security challenges and the solution is "to build a vibrant, highly trained and dedicated federal cybersecurity workforce," Partnership President Max Stier said.
The report also recommended devising new job classifications because one classification hasn't been updated since the 1980s. Furthermore, the paper urges the creation of a dedicated, high-level team within the Office of Personnel Management to identify and remove barriers to hiring top cybersecurity talent. Meanwhile, members of Congress should expand and fund programs that train graduate and undergraduate students in cybersecurity. Training programs should be developed to ensure a state-of-the-art federal cybersecurity workforce, the paper stated. Read the full report here.
Nearly two dozen business groups led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sent a letter Monday to the leaders of the House Financial Services Committee raising concerns about proposals to create a Consumer Financial Protection Agency. The letter urges Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank and ranking member Spencer Bachus to delay consideration of a CFPA until after the August recess "to provide due time for all stakeholders and decision-makers to fully understand the legislation's scope and its potential economic and legal impacts," CongressDaily reported (subscription required).
Also signing on were a number of major players in the high-tech and advertising space including the Consumer Electronics Association, the American Association of Advertising Agencies, Consumer Data Industry Association, Direct Marketing Association, and the Interactive Advertising Bureau. The letter is viewed by some consumer advocates like Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy and Ed Mierzwinski of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group as an attempt to kill the legislation, which would create a new federal watchdog.
The IAB, whose board's executive committee includes representatives from Google, AOL and Walt Disney Co., is afraid of having an agency that would be empowered to investigate how online marketers sell and promote a wide range of financial products online, Chester said. Mierzwinski called the proposal to create such an agency "a game changer" and "the biggest thing for financial consumers since deposit insurance in the 1930s." He testified June 24 at a House Financial Services Committee hearing on the issue. Read a copy of the business groups' letter to Frank and Bachus here (PDF).
President Obama on Wednesday nominated Dennis Hightower, an entertainment industry veteran, to become deputy secretary at the Commerce Department. Hightower has more than 30 years of experience in global marketing, strategic planning, operations and international general management, according to the White House personnel announcement. Most recently, he served as CEO of Europe Online Networks S.A., a privately held broadband interactive entertainment company based in Luxembourg.
From 1987 to 1996, Hightower led multi-billion dollar enterprises as president of the Walt Disney Company's television and communications operation and president of consumer products for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Hightower also recently served on the boards of directors for Accenture, Domino's Pizza, Lightfleet (a start-up high-tech firm), and Brown Capital Management. He formerly served on the boards of the Gillette Company, Northwest Airlines, PanAmSat Corp., Phillip-Van Heusen Corp., TJX, and as a member of the Price Waterhouse Chairman's Advisory Council.
Additionally, Hightower taught at Harvard Business School, where he focused on leadership, building emerging markets and global general management. He is a decorated Vietnam veteran and was a member of the Defense Business Board. Hightower was an Army officer for eight years, rising to the rank of Major by age 27, according to his bio.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy has released the committee's completed questionnaire pertaining to David Kappos, President Obama's pick for Patent and Trademark Office director, which could signal that his confirmation hearing is around the corner. Kappos, an executive at IBM who would also serve as undersecretary for intellectual property at the Commerce Department, was selected by Obama on June 18 but his hearing was delayed due to the committee's focus on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.
The 16-page questionnaire doesn't include any real surprises. Kappos details his background, professional affiliations and pro bono work as well as his financials. According to the form, he owns vested IBM options valued at approximately $147,000 and those options would be sold within 90 days of his appointment as the PTO's top dog. He also owns unvested IBM options and restricted stock valued at about $1.5 million. All of that deferred income would be cancelled upon his resignation from IBM. On a more personal note, Kappos owns property in Tenants Harbor, Maine originally valued at $100,000. Read more on the committee's Web site here.
Update: Tech Daily Dose has learned that the Kappos confirmation hearing has been scheduled for next Wednesday, July 29. He will appear before the committee with a pair of judicial nominees who also require vetting.
Cable television, the Internet, cellular phones and other handheld electronic devices have provided new opportunities for techniques like viral and word-of-mouth marketing that add new complexities to the government's job of monitoring deceptive advertising, FTC Consumer Protection Bureau Director David Vladeck told the Senate Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Insurance Subcommittee on Tuesday. "We are continually learning about new and creative methods to get promotional messages out to consumers," he said at a hearing that covered issues ranging from false claims in weight loss promotions to bloggers who are paid by advertisers to endorse certain products.
National Consumers League Executive Director Sally Greenberg said blogging, by its nature, has encouraged an explosion of discourse about practically every product available -- but the FTC needs to crack down on those who are cash in by writing favorably about a product. Marketers frequently fabricate "spontaneous" Internet "buzz" around products and services by paying for endorsements by influential bloggers and celebrities, she said. "As with any emerging means of communication, 'rules of the road' must govern to protect against deceptive advertising," she added. The FTC has proposed requiring consumer-generated media outlets to disclose a financial relationship with a product. Read more about this topic in CongressDaily's PM Edition (subscription required).
The House late Tuesday passed legislation 417-5 that would help find children or senior citizens in the critical moments after they are reported missing by expanding a widely praised Florida non-profit into a national program. A Child Is Missing utilizes the latest technology to place 1,000 emergency telephone calls every 60 seconds to residents and businesses in the area where the person was last seen. The program works in concert with the AMBER Alert, but is activated more quickly, according to a press release from Rep. Ron Klein, D-Fla., who sponsored the bill. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., has introduced a Senate companion measure.
The House bill would authorize the Justice Department to dole out $5 million a year through 2015 to broaden the initiative's reach. "This legislation is essential to every family around the county," Klein said. "Every parent's worst nightmare is to find that their child is missing, and today's legislation can put their minds at ease by utilizing the latest technology to quickly find missing children and avoid potential tragedy." Time is a critical factor as 74 percent of children who are kidnapped and murdered are slain within three hours of their abduction, he said. A Child is Missing was founded by Sherry Friedlander and is based in Ft. Lauderdale. The program has safely recovered kids from Ohio to Alaska.
White House Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra believes a "huge, tectonic shift" is needed for government agencies to accept a new era of open government, which has become a major mission of the Obama administration. The bottom line, he told a high-tech conference on Tuesday, is that "at the end of the day we're stewards of taxpayer dollars and we need to be open and transparent around using that money." The latest project to launch in that space was in June when he unveiled a Web-based IT dashboard that sheds light on the performance of IT projects across government. As a result of that initiative, the Veterans Affairs Department said it was temporarily halting 45 projects that were found to be behind schedule or over budget.
"It's okay if a project is behind schedule as long as we understand what is causing the delay," Kundra said. "We need to understand the root cause so we can solve the problem." At the VA, the worst offender was 110 percent more expensive than planned and 17 months behind schedule. The agency plans to audit all the projects in question to determine whether additional resources or new management teams can get them back on track. "If we didn't highlight this and make data available, we would be continuing to plow good money after bad money," Kundra explained. Putting data out there through the IT dashboard and other initiatives forces agencies to take action and drive change across government, he said.
What about slowly aging Web offerings that predated the Obama era like FedBizOpps -- a contracting portal for commercial vendors and government buyers -- or the Federal Register's Web site? "We're looking at the lessons learned in investments from these platforms and making sure we can scale them," Kundra said. His team wants to ensure that the technology that supports those services is agile enough so the content can be repurposed. Similarly, legacy data systems used internally by agencies are being reviewed. "The key is to make sure we find those game-changing ideas and disrupt how we're thinking about the linear fashion in which we go out there and invest in technology," he said.
The National Archives and Records Administration has unveiled a draft update to its strategic plan through 2016 and is asking for public input. The document, which lets the agency to take stock of accomplishments, make adjustments for new mission requirements, and propose improvements to performance measures, is open for comments through Wednesday, Aug. 5. As part of the update, NARA details strategies for expanding its leadership in federal records management, including electronic records management, and includes language pertaining to the creation of a new National Declassification Center.
In late May, President Obama instructed his national security adviser, James L. Jones, to consult with agency heads and submit recommendations to him within 90 days on how and whether to revise a 1995 executive order that created new standards for classifying government documents. He also asked Jones to weigh in on his campaign pledge to create a declassification center. NARA's draft plan states that by 2012, 90 percent of agency declassification programs should be earning high scores from the Information Security Oversight Office, which oversees government-wide classification programs.
Read NARA's draft strategic plan here (PDF) and submit comments via e-mail to vision@nara.gov or by fax (301) 837-0319.
TechNet's search for a new president and CEO has turned up a number of qualified candidates but the high-tech group's board has apparently not yet settled on one. The bipartisan political network of Silicon Valley CEOs and senior executives enlisted professional search firm Korn/Ferry International after its former chief, Lezlee Westine, announced her departure in April. She became CEO of the Personal Care Products Council and took TechNet's Washington-based fundraiser Meredith Simpson with her.
TechNet Senior Vice President/General Counsel Jim Hawley has been serving as acting CEO and is among those interested in the top spot, sources told Tech Daily Dose. But Hawley, who lives in Sacramento, Calif., may have to be willing to move to the nation's capital if he truly wants a shot at the CEO job. Korn/Ferry's confidential eight-page description of the position clearly states that TechNet's president and CEO must be located in Washington and would make frequent trips to Silicon Valley.
According to the Korn/Ferry document, TechNet's CEO "will be the industry's advocate before all levels of government and in all public venues." "He/she must be proactive and focused on advancing the organization with a strong commitment to serving, increasing, and developing its membership." The document goes on to state that: "In conjunction with the leaders of TechNet's member companies and the board of directors, the CEO will develop and be personally engaged in implementing a strategic plan achieving specific results in Washington and around the nation."
Following on last week's passage of a resolution by the NAACP saluting House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers and supporting performance royalties for musicians that would be provided under a bill he is shepherding through Congress, the Detroit branch of the organization is taking similar action. The Rev. Wendell Anthony, who heads the NAACP in the Motor City appeared at a news conference Tuesday to support the bill that would let performers as well as songwriters get royalties for songs played by AM and FM stations, the Associated Press reported. Radio stations in Detroit and around the country have bashed the Conyers bill, arguing that performers and record labels already are compensated and the measure could hurt stations already struggling in the recession.
"This civil rights for musicians legislation guarantees fair pay for musicians. This is a rebuke of Radio One and Clear Channel for exploiting musicians and smearing members of the Congressional Black Caucus," a spokesman for the MusicFirst Coalition said last week upon passage of the NAACP's resolution at the group's centennial conference. Radio One founder Cathy Hughes and her son, CEO Alfred Liggins, were criticized by Conyers and other members of his committee earlier this month for refusing to appear at a hearing on minority owned media. Hughes previously wrote an open letter arguing the legislation would "murder black owned radio" and in May, the Michigan Broadcasters Association vowed to defeat the measure, claiming it could cost stations in the state more than $63 million annually.
White House Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra and Defense Department Deputy Chief Information Officer David Wennergren on Tuesday stressed the importance of agencies embracing transparency while maintaining a focus on network security. During speeches at an open government conference, the pair emphasized the goals are not mutually exclusive. "We cannot have an either-or scenario," Chopra said, citing several recent examples of federal projects that accomplish both objectives. Wennergren said that risk avoidance doesn't work in the Web 2.0 world since "relentlessly sharing is what the future is all about."
"The more you block access, the more secure you feel. The less bad stuff gets in, the less good stuff gets out," he said, calling such a scenario a self-inflicted denial of service attack. Chopra also spoke about the Obama administration's aim to fundamentally change the culture across government "not just by words and regulatory activities" but also by facilitating what he called "frictionless platform generation." Early examples of this include wikis, blogs, and peer review platforms already launched by a range of agencies. Additionally, Chopra lauded DoD's information portal DefenseSolutions.gov, calling it a case study in how agencies can embrace technology and their user communities.
Much of Chorpra's comments were focused on the big picture -- how the United States can remain an "innovation machine" amid increasing global competition and rapidly changing technologies. The upside, he said, was that venture capitalists have begun showing success again by churning out innovative new companies. The downside is that the U.S. rate of growth across a number of innovation indicators -- like higher education attainment and the number of highly skilled scientists and researchers -- lags behind other countries. He cited a recent analysis by Rob Atkinson at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation as proof.
The heads of three high-tech industry associations sent letters late last week to the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate committees currently writing healthcare legislation urging them to avoid technology mandates and ensure "broad, fair, and open competition" among health IT providers. The letter -- signed by Business Software Alliance President Robert Holleyman, Information Technology Industry Council President Dean Garfield, and Jonathan Zuck, president of the Association for Competitive Technology -- outlined a set of principles "to maximize the contributions health IT can make" to improving Americans' healthcare. Read the House letter here and Senate letter here.
"There is near-universal agreement that we can deliver better care less expensively through the use of existing and new technologies. Efforts that would limit new ideas and participants ... should be opposed," they wrote. "We urge you to oppose the inclusion of any explicit or implicit technology mandates in health-related legislation that would prevent ... governments or private parties from considering and procuring the best available technologies in health care management." They said health IT systems should be interoperable; information should be portable; procurement should be inclusive; cost analysis should be comprehensive; security and privacy protections should be a high priority; and usability should be a key criterion.
President Obama and key advisers appealed to liberal bloggers during a conference call Monday evening, urging them to support the administration's healthcare reform agenda. Obama was joined by David Axelrod, healthcare guru Nancy Ann DeParle and White House Online Programs Director Jesse Lee. The call marked Obama's first serious interaction with the progressive blogosphere since taking office, bloggers who were invited to participate said. Obama gave brief remarks about the healthcare reform debate, noting that the blogs can cut through the conventional wisdom and debunk myths about this legislative battle. He also pressed them to keep the pressure on members of Congress in the run up to August recess because the default position in DC is "inertia."
Obama took questions from John Amato from Crooks and Liars; Jonathan Singer from MyDD; David Dayen from D-Day; Cheryl Contee from Jack and Jill Politics; Gerald Weinand, formerly of Turn Maine Blue; and Joan McCarter from DailyKos, according to a post by Joe Sudbay of AmericaBlog. On the call, the president outlined his criteria for reform: (1) Does it cover all Americans; (2) Will it drive down costs over the long-term; (3) Will it improve quality; (4) Are prevention and wellness included; (5) Does it contain insurance reforms on issues like pre-existing conditions; (6) Does it provide relief to small business; and (6) Is there a serious public option? He warned that House and Senate bills may not have all of the above but the conference committee will be critical.
Listen to a recording of the entire call with liberal bloggers here.
CongressDaily's David Hatch writes in TechCentral's latest Issue Of The Week that the iPhone and BlackBerry Storm are at the eye of a political storm in Washington. These and other ubiquitous smart phones have triggered debate over the future of exclusive deals that tether wireless handsets to select carriers. The iPhone is only available on AT&T's network, a problem for consumers outside its coverage area or dissatisfied with its service. The BlackBerry Storm has a similar relationship with Verizon, posing the same set of challenges.
Powerful lawmakers, regulators and watchdogs want to disconnect such deals for good to give consumers more options. "The best handsets are reserved for the largest carriers," complained Harold Feld, legal director for Public Knowledge, an advocacy group that wants to ban these arrangements. For smaller carriers serving rural and less-populated markets, "there's no way they can compete." Critics of the status quo point to Europe and Asia, where many cell phones can be operated on multiple networks and customers switching providers can retain their handsets by using removable SIM cards -- short for "Subscriber Identity Module."
Major wireless carriers that routinely offer handsets under exclusive terms insist the approach spurs innovation by letting them share the risk of introducing cutting-edge products along with manufacturers. "Exclusive handset arrangements have provided U.S. consumers the most advanced devices in the world at distinctly affordable rates," AT&T lobbyist Jim Cicconi argued this month in a letter to Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman Herb Kohl, D-Wis. Read more here (subscription required).
Proposed changes to the Patent and Trademark Office's post-grant review process included in a bill sponsored by Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy would increase the patent pendency waiting period by more than 25 percent, and could add to the cost of defending patent validity by billions of dollars, according to an analysis by Case Western Reserve University economist Scott Shane. Judiciary ranking member Jeff Sessions requested that Shane examine the issue earlier this month as staffers for Leahy and Sessions continue meeting with stakeholders about the topic.
The Leahy measure, which passed his committee 15-4 in April, would adopt House-passed text from 2007 that lengthens the timeline for challenging a granted patent and strips out a "public use or sale" provision that Leahy added as a basis for challenging a patent. Specifically, Shane's research found that the length of time between patent application and issuance would increase from 32 months to 40 months and the costs of defending patent validity could rise by $2.2 billion. He also argues that the proposed changes would lead to an annual reduction of $4.4 billion in industrial R&D and would make uncertain the validity of $1.4 billion to $1.7 billion of patents issued annually.
Earlier research from Shane, which was commissioned by the Manufacturing Alliance on Patent Policy, concluded that adopting House language on how damages are calculated in patent lawsuits could lead to job loss and decreased R&D. The alliance, which also bankrolled the new report, is backed by Corning, Monsanto, DuPont and others critical of Leahy's patent reform push. A recent report by the Coalition for Patent Fairness, which supports patent overhauls and counts Cisco Systems, Apple, Dell and others as its members, found that pending legislation would create 100,000 new jobs.
On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to land on the moon -- a milestone that launched a generation of scientists and new research and development efforts that had a huge impact on the economy. Now, 40 years later, the Science Coalition asked university researchers from across the country to reflect on that event and share their thoughts about the next frontiers in science and what America must do to ensure that these scientific frontiers are reached.
Here's a sampling of the comments collected:
"Perhaps more than anything, we need to address the scientific challenge of providing more effective, efficient and diverse sources of energy to drive the global economy, its citizens, and its infrastructure." University of Maryland geology professor William McDonough
"Instead of looking for a single innovation to transform transportation, the next great challenge will be a revolutionary and holistic reinvention of vehicles. The next 'moon landing' will be a new science-driven way of approaching automobiles ... that goes beyond slashing mpg or substituting gas with electricity." Dennis Assanis, director of the Michigan Memorial Phoenix Energy Institute
"The 21st century equivalent to putting a man on the moon will be our understanding of the human brain - and in particular, achieving the ability to stimulate the brain to repair itself, including restoring old memories and learning new information after damage and disease. ... That understanding will revolutionize the way we treat devastating neurological injuries and disease." University of Rochester's Elissa Newport
Read more perspectives from 29 scientists here (PDF).
Some exciting news so please forgive the shameless self promotion... National Journal Group, the parent company of Tech Daily Dose, will soon unveil 3121, a new feature on NationalJournal.com that will become available exclusively to Capitol Hill staffers in September. 3121, now in beta, will be the first professional networking tool designed exclusively for congressional members and staff. The site will offer an online directory of contacts, communications tools and customizable news feeds and users will be able to find and collaborate with colleagues and create personalized news filters. Hill staffers can visit 3121launch.nationaljournal.com to request to participate in the beta and read the latest updates about the project from the 3121 development team, which has collaborated with New Media Strategies, Jive and JESS3 on the project. *FYI* "3121" is the extension for the Capitol Hill switchboard.
Follow the jump for screenshots of 3121...
Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and intellectual property rights leaders will release a new report Monday afternoon detailing the impact of copyright on the U.S. economy. The analysis covers the four years through 2007, and was prepared for the International Intellectual Property Alliance -- which represents U.S. music, movie, software and video game industries. Locke will be joined at the event -- which takes place at 12:15 p.m. at the Commerce Department -- by Business Software Alliance President Robert Holleyman, Entertainment Software Association President Michael Gallagher, and Recording Industry Association of America Chairman Mitch Bainwol, among others. Stephen Siwek of Economists Inc., who prepared the report, will also be present.
In other news, the Senate Judiciary Immigration Subcommittee Tuesday will explore the feasibility of creating a system under which the legal status and identity of all U.S. workers would be verified using biometrics, such as fingerprints or iris scans. The session kicks off at 2 p.m. in Room 226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Senate Judiciary Immigration Subcommittee Chairman Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., plans to introduce comprehensive immigration reform legislation by Labor Day, which would give an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the country a path to obtain legal status. Schumer's legislation is expected to include a mandate under which workers would have to participate in a biometric verification system, which could include requiring them to obtain an identification card.
Read a comprehensive list of this week's tech events at CongressDaily's TechCentral page (subscription required).
Telecommunications analysts at Stifel Nicolaus on Friday said an advertising and search deal between Microsoft and Yahoo would get a close look from the Justice Department and probably the European Union's antitrust authorities. Sources at the two high-tech companies said an agreement in imminent and could be announced as soon as next week. The All Things Digital blog reported that top Microsoft executives traveled Thursday to Silicon Valley to smooth out technical issues and said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is reportedly deeply involved with the talks.
"We have always viewed a Yahoo deal with Microsoft as less risky, from the standpoint of antitrust review, than a deal with Google," Stifel Nicolaus analysts said in an e-mail. Google last year eventually backed off its efforts to do a search transaction with Yahoo in the face of resistance from the DOJ and criticism from Capitol Hill. There are several elements of a Yahoo-Microsoft deal that pose risk, the analysts said. The antitrust review would depend on the precise terms of the deal, which could take the form of a Microsoft acquisition of all of Yahoo, or, more likely, could be another run at some type partnership, they said.
Tech watchdog Jeff Chester warned the companies would not get a free pass from privacy and consumer groups even if the pairing would provide much needed competition to Google. Microsoft and Yahoo have created elaborate data collection services across platforms and applications and they have competing ad targeting businesses in search, display and mobile, he said. "Microsoft and Yahoo should expect privacy and consumer groups to vigorously press regulators to closely and skeptically examine the deal -- and at the very least impose a series of tough conditions on data collection practices," he said.
The fifth round of negotiations for the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement took place in Rabat, Morocco on Thursday and Friday. Participants included Australia, Canada, the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland, Sweden, and the United States. A spokeswoman for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said the meeting was opened by Minister of Industry, Trade and New Technologies Ahmed Reda Chami who emphasized the importance of ACTA and pledged to make intellectual property a main priority.
The discussions focused on international cooperation, enforcement practices and institutional issues (as described in an April summary provided by the USTR). Participants also continued discussions on transparency matters, including providing information to stakeholders and the interested public. Participants agreed to release draft agendas before all subsequent negotiating rounds. The next round will be hosted by South Korea in November. Participants also confirmed their intention to conclude the agreement as soon as possible in 2010, the USTR spokeswoman said.
Earlier this week, tech watchdogs urged ACTA participants to set aside a portion of the negotiations dealing with "Internet distribution and information technology." Last week, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and trade groups representing movie studios, music labels, video game and software companies and others wrote to the USTR.
See related CongressDaily items here and here (subscription required).
The Veterans Affairs Department will temporarily halt 45 technology projects with a combined value of $200 million that are either behind schedule or over budget, the agency announced Friday. The worst offender was 110 percent more expensive than planned and 17 months behind schedule. During the coming weeks, the VA will audit all the projects to determine whether additional resources or new management teams can get them back on schedule. If they cannot be fixed, the projects will be canceled, officials said. The VA was able to catch the troubled contracts, in part, due to the Obama administration's new Web-based IT dashboard, which sheds light on the performance of projects across the federal government.
VA Secretary Eric Shinseki ordered a review of the department's 300 IT projects and implementation of an internal program designed to increase the accountability for technology initiatives agency-wide. "VA has a responsibility to the American people, who are investing millions of dollars in technology projects, to deliver quality results that adhere to a budget and are delivered on time." he said. "They need to have confidence that the dollars they are spending are being effectively used to improve the lives of our veterans." Read a blog post on the VA news by White House Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra here. The announcement is part of a broader administration effort to make the government more transparent, boost accountability and drive better performance, he wrote.
Computer chip giant Intel and rival AMD have a long history of bitter legal battles and appear to be restocking their arsenals for a showdown in Washington, according to an article in the latest issue of National Journal magazine. Both have ramped up their lobbying and advertising budgets as Congress moves forward on issues that mean a great deal to them: competition, innovation, tax, and trade. Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission, after several years of scrutiny, recently opened a formal probe of Intel for anticompetitive practices. At the Justice Department, new Assistant Attorney General Christine Varney vowed to reinvigorate antitrust enforcement in the Obama administration. On the heels of regulatory actions against Intel in the European Union, Japan, and South Korea; the FTC probe and the Justice announcement have helped AMD position itself as David to Intel's Goliath. Read the full story here (subscription required).
Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr, who helped launch companies like Amazon.com, Symantec and Google, told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Thursday that the United States has led the world in high-tech innovation but distantly trails China on clean energy because existing policies "haven't given us any clear, long term market solutions." The key is cap-and-trade, he said. He urged senators to send a long-term signal that low carbon energy is valuable. "We must put a price on carbon and a cap on carbon emissions. No long-term signal means no serious innovation at scale, which means fewer new American success stories," he said in testimony.
The hearing came on the heels of House passage last month of cap-and-trade legislation sponsored by Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman and Energy Independence and Global Warming Committee Chairman Edward Markey. Senate Environment Republicans panned that bill, saying it would cost the country jobs and won't bring down costs for consumers. Senate Energy ranking member James Inhofe called the Waxman-Markey bill a "1,000 page contradiction." He argued it would cause a net reduction of up to 2.7 million jobs, citing an analysis by the National Black Chamber of Commerce, whose president also testified.
Senate Environment Chairwoman Barbara Boxer pledged to do even more than the House to protect consumers and ensure that traditional power companies and innovative new technologies are kept on a level playing field as it crafts its cap-and-trade bill. She added that she is "carefully reviewing" Waxman-Markey language that would assist industries that are energy intensive and that are subject to international competition. Sen. Thomas Carper, D-Del., noted the country faces huge energy challenges and lawmakers have the potential to "find a pony in that pile of manure." Read more about the hearing here.
Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday commended the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board for enhancing the amount of information available about the distribution of economic stimulus funds on Recovery.gov. The Web site's new offerings -- a map that details how states are putting money to use and a series of maps that show how funds are moving out to contractors, grantees and loan recipients -- will provide citizens "an unprecedented look at their taxpayer dollars at work," Biden said in a statement. He said he looked forward to seeing the amount of content on the site grow as implementation of the stimulus continues because "unprecedented transparency has been one of the hallmarks of our implementation of the Recovery Act."
Meanwhile Earl Devaney, the man who oversees Recovery.gov, unveiled the "Chairman's Corner" on Thursday -- an online report to the American people about how things have gone and what to expect in the future. He said there's a central reporting system in the works for recipients of Recovery Act funds to submit quarterly reports on their use of the money. Under a separate contract, he's working on the next generation of Recovery.gov. Later this summer, he'll be ramping up accountability to more thoroughly review problems or allegations of impropriety (complete with electronic and telephone hotlines).
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Joseph Lieberman and Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, slammed Grants.gov on Thursday on the heels of a new Government Accountability Office report (PDF) that shows the Web site designed to streamline the federal grant process is plagued by technical limitations, degraded performance and user difficulties. Lieberman urged the Office of Management and Budget to work with Congress and the stakeholder community to "strengthen both the management and technology behind Grants.gov, while streamlining and increasing transparency."
Voinovich, who is ranking member of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Government Management, the Federal Workforce and the District of Columbia, said he was "concerned that a tool designed to improve the distribution and effectiveness of federal grants has so many issues in this technological age, in some cases putting applicants at a disadvantage compared to those who utilize other channels." He said the GAO report underscored the need for the House to pass the Federal Financial Assistance Management Improvement Act to help put Grants.gov back on the right course.
The legislation, sponsored by Lieberman and Voinovich, passed the Senate in March but does not yet have a House companion. Their bill would require OMB to maintain a public Web site that allows federal grant applicants to search and apply for grants; manage, track and report on the use of grants; and provide required certifications and assurances for grants. The measure also requires OMB to report to Congress within nine months of enactment, and biennially thereafter for 15 years on progress made in implementation. Additionally, the bill lays out a framework for OMB and agency-level strategic plans.
From CongressDaily's AM Edition...
FCC nominees Mignon Clyburn and Meredith Baker were generally noncommittal during their Wednesday confirmation hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee, giving few, if any, hints on how they might decide policy and regulatory issues. That left lawmakers to use the hearing to reiterate their strong criticisms of the commission Clyburn and Baker would join, if confirmed, to fill the remaining Democratic and Republican vacancies, respectively. Read more.
Meanwhile... Senate Commerce Chairman John (Jay) Rockefeller has asked 11 federal agencies, including the FCC, the FTC and the Commerce, Homeland Security and Transportation departments, to report on their cybersecurity preparedness and the effectiveness of their incident-response capabilities. Read more.
And... A group of public interest, library and technology organizations are urging U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk to set aside a controversial portion of Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement negotiations focused on "Internet distribution and information technology." Read more.
Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) began his questioning of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see video above) by raising questions about Internet service providers' ability to speed up and slow down Web traffic. He asked whether there is a "compelling First Amendment interest in ensuring this can't happen and the Internet stays open and accessible." Sotomayor responded that the Internet is "revolutionary" and it affects all areas of the economy and society. But the role of the court is never to make the policy. It's to wait until Congress acts," she added.
The two remaining FCC nominees -- South Carolina regulator Mignon Clyburn and former Commerce official Meredith Baker testified before the Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday afternoon. The Democrat and Republican, respectively, would round out the five-member agency, which now has three regulators, including its new chairman, Julius Genachowski. Read more in CongressDaily later.
Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor fielded questions from Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., during the continuation of her confirmation hearing Wednesday about her perspectives on U.S. v. Falso, a recently decided case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit involving the legality of evidence obtained in a home search -- specifically the search of a defendant's computer. Sotomayor, who was on the panel, held that police did not have probable cause because there were no allegations that the defendant, Jon David Falso, actually possessed child pornography or subscribed to any such Web site. Concerning Falso's past crimes, the court held that the correlation was not strong enough.
Sotomayor said the case "presented a very complicated question" because there had been two cases addressing how much information a warrant had to contain in order for the police to search a defendant's computer. "I was looking at it in the backdrop of the conflict that it appeared to contain in our case law, and what our case law said was important for a police officer to share with a judge," she said. "I held that the acts violated the Constitution, but that the evidence could still be used, because the officers had -- there was in law a good-faith exception to the error in the warrant."
Read a longer summary about U.S. v. Falso written by the Electronic Privacy Information Center here and view the actual opinion here.
The co-creator of the government accountability Web site StimulusWatch.org has launched a new project intended to make federal rulemakings easier for the public to access and offer comment. Jerry Brito, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, recently unveiled OpenRegs.com, which takes the Federal Register's daily XML feed to new heights. Currently, the U.S. government's Regulations.gov allows citizens to find, review, and submit comments on federal documents but Brito and others believe the portal is not as dynamic and user friendly as it could be.
OpenRegs.com offers automated lists of comment periods closing soon across all agencies; recently opened comment periods; and recently published final regulations. Users are also be able to find regulations by agency and by topic as well as subscribe to alerts for particular issues of interest. Furthermore, the OpenRegs.com community is able to discuss certain regulations online and submit comments. Brito told Tech Daily Dose in an e-mail that the U.S. government has made some strides to modernize. Regulations.gov has launched a user-feedback section and officials have promised a design refresh later this summer.
After leaving Microsoft in December, Jack Krumholtz is joining the Glover Park Group as a managing director of its government relations practice. Krumholtz opened the Microsoft federal government affairs office in Washington, D.C., in 1995 and acted as a one-man shop for a year working out of the company's Chevy Chase sales office. Given the distance from Capitol Hill, Krumholtz spent most of his time in his Jeep on conference calls and writing and checking emails on the side of the road, said the company at the time. See Tech Daily Dose entries here for more on Krumholtz and here for details on his replacement at Microsoft, Fred Humphries.
Elsewhere in the tech policy world, David Washington, who has been serving as the associate director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, has joined the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation as a senior fellow. At ITIF, Washington will work on building private and public partnerships. Washington has a PhD in forensic clinical psychology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a master's degree in legal studies from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Law School. -- Winter Casey
The Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday will hear perspectives on a proposal by ranking member Kay Bailey Hutchison to ban inmates in some prisons from using smuggled cellular phones. Her legislation and a companion bill introduced by Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, would allow the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a governor or a governor's designee to petition the FCC for a wireless jamming device in a particular correctional facility. Under the measures, which were introduced in January, the FCC would have to consider whether the jammer would interfere with emergency or public safety communications outside the prison's walls. Current law prevents interference with wireless services.
According to news reports in Texas, death row inmate Richard Tabler used a smuggled phone to make threatening calls to a state senator. Tabler's phone was found in the ceiling above a shower and officers found 11 additional phones belonging to other death row inmates while looking for it. "This legislation will fight criminal enterprises behind bars and protect innocent victims and public officials from harassment and threats from criminals," Hutchison said in press release. Corrections officials have reported a surge in phones infiltrating prisons and in some states, the number confiscated phones has doubled in two years.
After a 15 year public policy career in Washington, Center for National Security Studies Deputy Director Lisa Graves is leaving the Beltway for Madison, Wis., where she will head up the Center for Media and Democracy, a government and media watchdog group. Graves was on the front lines on a range of high-tech and privacy issues at CNSS and at the American Civil Liberties Union, where she served as senior counsel for legislative strategy. She testified on Capitol Hill against the Bush administration's illegal warrantless wiretapping program; collection of personal financial records and other sensitive information; and military satellite spying as well as on Patriot Act and Freedom of Information Act issues. Prior to the ACLU, Graves worked as chief nominations counsel for Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy when he was ranking member of the committee. CMD's search committee heard from more than 60 applicants and conducted numerous interviews before selecting Graves unanimously. She will replace John Stauber, who founded the nonprofit and its newsmagazine PR Watch in 1993.
More than a month after rumors started swirling, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy confirmed Tuesday that former Google Head of Global Public Policy and Government Affairs Andrew McLaughlin has begun working for the Obama administration as a deputy chief technology officer. CTO Aneesh Chopra already had one deputy, Beth Noveck, who focuses on open government issues. In June, Consumer Watchdog and the Center for Digital Democracy criticized McLaughlin's selection, claiming it would violate the intent of President Obama's ethics rules.
McLaughlin, who served on Obama's transition team as a member of the Technology, Innovation and Government Reform Policy Working Group, is not the only new addition to the OSTP team. Deborah Stine, who previously worked as a science and technology policy specialist at the Congressional Research Service has been hired as executive director of the Council of Advisors on Science and Technology Policy. She previously served as associate director of the Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy at the National Academy of Sciences and before that was director of a graduate fellowship program at the National Academies.
PCAST is co-chaired by Obama's science adviser and OSTP Director John Holdren; Eric Lander, director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; and Harold Varmus, president of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer Craig Mundie are also on the panel.
President Obama's Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra unveiled a new blog on Monday that will facilitate a discussion about an Internet-based dashboard he unveiled last month that makes available in a single location details about every major IT project of the federal government. The interactive Web site lets the public see each initiative's goals, schedule, cost outlays, key personnel, contractors used, and where the effort stands in real time. Since its June 30 launch, the IT dashboard has received more than 20 million hits and the White House has gotten an "encouraging response" from members of Congress and the public," Kundra wrote.
"We want to hear from you about what works and what doesn't with the site. Is there a more innovative approach that an investment should consider? Does the contract data look incorrect to you? Is there an application that we should add? This is a site to serve you, and to do that, we need to hear from you," he said. Answering that call, the Sunlight Foundation has already offered a detailed critique of the IT dashboard here.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., appears to have come along way with his technology literacy since the 2008 presidential campaign. On Monday, his account on the micro-blogging Web site Twitter topped one million followers. "I'm both honored and humbled that over one million people follow me on Twitter. It has been one of the most enjoyable experiences in my long political career - not too bad for an old guy," McCain said in a statement. Flashback to July 2008: McCain told the New York Times in an interview that he was learning how to use a computer but isn't an e-mail enthusiast.
"I don't e-mail, I've never felt the particular need to e-mail," he said. "I don't expect to be a great communicator. I don't expect to set up my own blog." At the time, McCain said he was "becoming computer literate to the point where I can get the information that I need including going to my daughter's blog." Meghan McCain wrote McCainBlogette.com during the campaign. He also told the newspaper that his staff surfs the Web on his behalf.
A few recent McCain tweets:
# Live interview with Russ Clark, KBLU-AM 560 in Yuma, AZ @ 10:45 am ET to chat about my upcoming trip to Yuma on Friday.about 1 hour ago
# Wow, I just went over 1 million followers - thanks everyone!!about 19 hours ago
# Interview with Voice of America on upcoming Afghanistan elections.
# Fighting the good fight on Senate floor 2 strike F-22 funding from DoD bill -saving the taxpayer $1.75 b - Need Joint Strike Fighter insteadabout 23 hours ago
And here are a few folks McCain is following on Twitter: CNN's Larry King; comedian Rainn Wilson ("The Office"); House Minority Whip Eric Cantor; Gov. Bobby Jindal, R-La.; Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz.; basketball star Shaquille O'Neal; Gov. Tim Pawlenty, R-Minn.; ABC's George Stephanopoulos; NBC's David Gregory; and McCain's daughter, Meghan. (Psst, President Obama has 1.7 million Twitter followers -- and McCain isn't one of them).
The Senate late Monday unanimously passed legislation to reauthorize two federal programs intended to increase research and development funding for small businesses, which are slated to expire July 31 absent congressional action. The House passed its version of the bill to prolong the Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs last Wednesday. Recipients of SBIR and STTR awards have produced more than 85,000 patents and have generated millions of well-paying jobs across all 50 states, Senate Small Business Chairwoman Mary Landrieu said in a press release that commended her colleagues for moving forward with the measure. She pledged to work with the House to get a bill to President Obama before the end of the month.
"Reauthorizing the SBIR and STTR programs will unleash the ground-breaking innovation potential of our nation's small businesses, particularly given that these critical initiatives direct more than $2 billion in federal research and development funding annually to small-tech firms across the nation," ranking member Olympia Snowe said. "At a time when the nation is struggling to dig out of the deepest recession since the Great Depression, we must ensure that our country once again brings to bear the kind of ingenuity, creativity, and innovation that made America and our free-market economy the greatest and most powerful on earth."
The Senate bill, which differs from the House version, provides for an increase to the SBIR program allocation, raising it to 3.5 percent, spread out over 11 years. The SBIR allocation increase includes all agencies, including the National Institutes of Health. The bill also increases the STTR program allocation from 0.3 percent to 0.6 percent over six years. Additionally, the Senate bill would amend eligibility requirements to allow businesses owned and controlled by multiple venture capital firms to compete for a percentage of SBIR projects. To improve the diversity of the programs, the measure also reauthorizes the Federal and State Technology program and Rural Outreach Program.
Read CongressDaily's coverage of House action here (subscription required).
NextGov.com's Aliya Sternstein reports...
The General Services Administration will release by early next week a redacted version of the potential $18 million contract to upgrade Recovery.gov, GSA officials said on Monday. Government transparency advocates had been calling on GSA and the board overseeing stimulus spending to publish the agreement that will cost taxpayers $9.5 million through January 2010 and up to $18 million if all options are exercised. Officials on Wednesday announced that GSA, on behalf of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, had negotiated the contract with Hollywood, Md.-based Web services developer Smartronix, but provided few other details about the deal.
The board late Friday posted an update that included a link to a June 15 request for proposals, which states the vendor must "move with speed" to provide a system that is expandable, secure and able to extract information from a separate data collection portal, feed that information to various third-parties and assess data quality. The new version of Recovery.gov is slated to launch Aug. 27. The solicitation also requires a back-up system and maintenance services. SRA International and Accenture, both technology services providers, also bid on the contract, GSA spokesman Robert Lesino said on Monday.
Meanwhile, the government's chief overseer of economic stimulus spending is defending last week's award to Smartronix. Earl Devaney said Friday in an interview with National Journal Group that critics of the contract's cost have oversimplified the task of rebuilding "the government's largest Web site" in a matter of months, as well as the challenge of putting in place security controls and interconnectivity with a reporting system designed to handle an ocean of data. Read more about Devaney's comments in Monday's CongressDaily PM Edition here (subscription required).
After searching for more than five months for the right person, Hewlett-Packard has settled on Larry Irving to serve as vice president of global government affairs and effectively act as the new leader of the company's public policy efforts around the world. Irving will report to Michael Holston, HP executive vice president and general counsel.
Irving has been the president and CEO of the Irving Information Group, a consulting firm focused on international telecommunications and technology companies. He served for almost seven years as assistant secretary of Commerce for communications and information and administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration under former President Bill Clinton. Irving was part of the U.S. team that negotiated the World Trade Organization agreement on basic telecommunication services.
When asked if he will be registering as a lobbyist, Irving said: "I will comply with the law."
-- Winter Casey
A Web-based governmental social networking project aimed at improving patent quality by connecting the Patent and Trademark Office with outside scientific and technical experts has effectively shut down after a two year test run and accolades from the White House. The Peer-to-Patent project, a joint effort between the PTO and New York Law School's Center for Patent Innovation has stopped accepting new applications but will continue processing those already in the system. The PTO elected to close Peer-to-Patent to new applications "until it can complete a full evaluation of the impact the project has had on the patent examination process," according to a NYLS press release.
There remain more than 70 applications on the Peer-to-Patent site awaiting review and interest in the program remains high as evidenced by the continued interest of applicants, the federal government, educational institutions, and international patent offices, officials said. Major companies such as General Electric, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, and Microsoft all submitted patent applications to the Peer-to-Patent process. Other patent applications were submitted by Cisco Systems, Disney Enterprises, eBay, Novel, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, Xerox, and Yahoo, as well as smaller firms.
Peer-to-Patent was launched in June 2007 by Beth Noveck, a professor at the law school who now serves as President Obama's deputy chief technology officer and head of the White House's open government project. The project is featured in the White House Open Government Innovations Gallery, an online resource that "celebrates the innovators and innovations who are championing the President's vision of more effective and open government." IBM executive David Kappos, Obama's pick for PTO director, was one of the early proponents of Peer-to-Patent and directed IBM in providing both financial and technical assistance for the effort.
Telecom analyst Jessica Zufolo has left Medley Global Advisors to join the Obama administration as deputy administrator for the Agriculture Department's Rural Utilities Service, which will be run by Jonathan Adelstein, a Democratic member of the FCC for seven years. Under Obama's economic recovery plan, the service will distribute $2.5 billion in loans and grants to spur the deployment of broadband to mostly rural areas. Adelstein, a South Dakota native and former senior aide to former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., was warmly received by the Senate Agriculture Committee during his nomination hearing last Tuesday. Read more in CongressDaily here (subscription required).
Before Medley, Zufolo was legislative director for the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners where she was responsible for developing and executing national legislative strategy and policy on Capitol Hill. Earlier, she worked for the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y.; then-Rep. Charles Schumer of New York and Rep. Peter Defazio, D-Ore. In a Sunday e-mail, Zufolo said her first day at USDA is Monday and noted that Medley would fill her position soon to maintain its presence in the telecom sector.
The chief watchdog overseeing stimulus funds on Friday dismissed criticism of the federal government's award of an $18 million contract to a Maryland-based company to overhaul tracking Web site Recovery.gov. Earl Devaney, the top cop at the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, said critics of the project's price tag have oversimplified the task of rebuilding "the government's largest Web site" in a matter of months, as well as the challenge of putting in place security controls and interconnectivity with a reporting system designed to handle an ocean of spending data.
The contract calls for the spending of $9.5 million by January 2010, with options that would boost the price tag to $18 million by 2014. Republicans circulated messages ridiculing that figure on Thursday, and good government groups bristled at a lack of details about the contents of the procurement deal. Smartronix, Inc. was picked by a GSA-led panel of experts, Devaney said, adding he did not personally participate in the selection process and had "never heard" of the firm before.
*Updated* The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on Friday refused to rule on the constitutionality of a federal panel that sets copyright royalties. Licensing firm Royalty Logic claimed the Copyright Royalty Board is unconstitutional because the Librarian of Congress, who is not technically the head of a government department, appoints its judges. As such, the complaint argued the CRB should be forced to vacate its decision in a proceeding that set the fee structure for webcasters.
National Music Publishers' Association President David Israelite wrote to House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers and ranking member Lamar Smith recently urging them to consider introducing legislation that would make moot any constitutional challenges to the CRB. Israelite argued that Royalty Logic's lawsuit could have meant the unraveling of all the panel's decisions since its judges (pictured) were appointed in 2006. He said Friday's ruling was a "sigh of relief" for the music industry. David Oxenford, an attorney who represents small webcasters in CRB proceedings, said the decision "really just delays the consideration of the issue of the constitutionality of the CRB. Now that this issue is on the table, it is bound to be raised by other parties in other CRB proceedings."
As the CRB embarks on its consideration of webcasting rates for 2011-2015, "there is a cloud hanging over its existence -- one that may take another Court decision, or some corrective action by Congress, to remedy," he wrote on his blog. Royalty Logic's attorney Kenneth Freundlich said he was surprised at the court's failure to address what he called a "fundamental issue." At the hearing, the judges pondered whether there should be further briefings on the matter but never followed up. Instead they cited "'inadequate briefing' as a basis for ducking the issue," he said, noting the ruling cites two cases that support his arguments. "Let this decision be a warning to all concerned and a message to Congress to fix this mess," Freundlich said.
Qwest Communications is rejoining the U.S. Telecom Association as high-speed Internet issues take on a higher profile in Washington. The Denver-based telecommunications firm, which provides local service in 14 western states, left the association eight years ago "because we believed it to be in our best interests to do so at that time," a company spokesman said Friday. He declined to elaborate on the circumstances of the split but a 2001 Washington Post story shed some light on the rift: "Depending on whom you talk to, USTA either suspended [Qwest] for not paying its rather hefty dues or the company quit the group after growing apart." At the time, Qwest's annual dues were nearly $800,000, but the company had negotiated a 25 percent reduction, the article said.
Regardless of their checkered past, Qwest and U.S. Telecom have formally reunited and Friday marked "a big day for the broadband community," the association's chairman, Ron McCue said in a press release. "Our member companies - large and small, urban and rural - are united by a shared commitment to delivering the broadband future across America," he said. McCue noted that his organization and its member companies have been working closely with Qwest on key industry issues for a number of years and "at this critical time for our nation, its economy and American innovation, it is very meaningful that this industry is joining together in a common bond." The Obama administration recently released guidelines for its $7.2 billion broadband stimulus program, which has a number of corporations licking their chops.
Commerce Secretary Gary Locke is giving "serious attention to the critical responsibilities" of his department's role with respect to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, he told Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., in a June 29 letter circulated this week. Nelson and Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, wrote to him in May urging Commerce and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to help find "a permanent accountability mechanism to replace the oversight that has historically been provided by the department." ICANN's formal relationship with the U.S. government is slated to expire in September, which has prompted calls for greater scrutiny of the California-based nonprofit on Capitol Hill.
"Given the Internet's importance as a global medium supporting economic growth and innovation, any decision that the department makes with respect to the future of the joint project agreement with ICANN will be guided by the need to continue preserving the security and stability of the Internet's domain name and addressing system," Locke wrote. While ICANN has made progress in the last 10 years, "accountability remains a threshold issue," as recognized by NTIA's call for public comment that ended last month, he said. NTIA also asked stakeholders whether sufficient safeguards are in place to ensure that ICANN's model of private, bottom-up' policymaking is working for everyone involved.
Sens. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., and Sam Brownback, R-Kan., secured $30 million in federal funding for the State Department's efforts to promote Internet freedom as part of the agency's fiscal year 2010 spending bill. The program must be approved by the full Senate and the House before it makes its way to President Obama's desk. The money would promote widespread, secure Internet use by individuals residing in countries practicing repressive Internet monitoring, censorship and control. The outlay is "a low-cost method of allowing people, especially those living under repressive regimes, to access all-source, uncensored, unfiltered information," the senators said in a Friday press release.
"Tearing down these Internet cyberwalls can match the effect of what happened when the Berlin Wall was torn down," Specter said. "This funding seeks to enable freedom of thought, expression and the unimpeded flow of ideas and information, and I am pleased my colleagues have recognized the program's importance." Brownback added the battle being waged in the streets of Iran and China is also being fought on micro-blogging site Twitter, social network Facebook and other platforms. "This is a pivotal moment for people living in oppressive regimes. The best way to ensure their ability to communicate and share their story with each other and the world is to keep the Internet open," he said.
The House passed a State spending bill Thursday that did not include Web freedom funding but Energy and Commerce Committee member Mary Bono Mack, R-Calif., earlier this week urged lawmakers to hold a hearing on the role of the Internet in giving a voice to those in repressive countries. Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., who in the 109th Congress chaired a high-profile Internet freedom hearing of the House subcommittee that oversees global human rights, has repeatedly introduced legislation that would prevent U.S. tech firms from working with nations that capture and convict citizens for engaging in democracy promotion and human rights advocacy online.
House Judiciary Courts and Competition Policy Subcommittee Chairman Hank Johnson, D-Ga., was among the most vocal lawmakers at Thursday's hearing on issues confronting minority-owned media. While Judiciary Chairman John Conyers was critical of Radio One founder Cathy Hughes and her son, CEO Alfred Liggins, for refusing to appear before his panel, Johnson took his criticism of their absence a step further.
While humorously pondering what might have taken precedence over the hearing, the former DeKalb County Commissioner suggested that Hughes -- who has been critical of legislation Conyers introduced that would end a royalty exemption afforded to AM and FM radio -- was "out spending some of that 700 percent increase in salary" that she was reportedly gifted as matriarch of the largest minority-owned media company in the United States. And Liggins? "I guess he's out spending the $10 million bonus that he received last year in the midst of these difficult economic times," Johnson riffed.
But during a hearing recess, Tech Daily Dose reached Liggins by phone and he was definitely not on a shopping spree. The Radio One executive explained that he did not want to testify at a hearing that would further bash broadcasters for opposing the Conyers performance rights legislation. Had the session focused solely on slipping advertising revenue and other challenges facing his industry, he might have been on board. Liggins also clarified that the purported bonus was, in fact, not as steep as Johnson indicated and "compensation at our company should be irrelevant."
Read more coverage of the hearing in CongressDaily's PM Edition here and in Friday's AM Edition (subscription required).
Radio One, the largest U.S. minority-owned media company, came under fire from the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday for refusing to testify at a hearing billed as a forum to examine plummeting advertising revenues, increased media consolidation and pending legislation that would end a long-standing copyright royalty exemption for over-the-air radio, which broadcasters oppose. Judiciary Chairman John Conyers and others scolded Radio One founder Cathy Hughes and her son, CEO Alfred Liggins, for being no-shows. Other critics of the bill who Conyers said snubbed him include National Action Network President Rev. Al Sharpton; Rainbow Push Coalition President Rev. Jesse Jackson; syndicated radio host Tom Joyner; and the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council's David Honig.
Judiciary Courts and Competition Policy Subcommittee Chairman Hank Johnson, D-Ga., said broadcasters were invited to weigh in on the bill before it passed the committee in May, but their unwillingness to offer performers any compensation is unreasonable since Internet, cable and satellite services all pay. Liggins called the hearing "misguided and disingenuous." He said he backed out as a witness after learning Conyers would focus on the royalty bill and had invited a supporter of the measure, R&B Foundation Chairman Kendall Minter, to testify. "I'm not going to sit there and get beat up," Liggins said in a phone interview. Read the full story in CongressDaily's PM Edition here (subscription required).
Despite self-regulatory guidelines announced last week by major marketing industry trade associations, advocacy efforts persist for stronger Internet privacy legislation. Jeff Chester, the executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, said the trade groups' initiatives make passing legislation more challenging, but that there's momentum in the House for such laws. One indicator of their fate "will be how quickly Congress enacts legislation for Obama's financial regulatory agency," Chester said, since that debate will make clear the congressional appetite for ramping up consumer protections. He also thinks the potential agency would have a regulatory role in future Internet privacy laws. The silver bullet for Web privacy regulation could be the prospect of portraying them as crucial to consumers' financial well-being. An individual's bank account, loan ratings, and other financial data are among materials that can be viewed online, Chester said.
For its part, the American Civil Liberties Union anticipates increasing its Internet privacy advocacy in the coming months, spokesman Jay Stanley said. He said problems associated with behavioral advertising are worsening and his group expects to have more time on its hands in the Obama administration to handle that since concerns over warrantless wiretapping and other government overreaches have receded from the foreground they occupied during George W. Bush's term.
While the Federal Trade Commission praised the new industry guidelines the commission is "waiting to see how these principles play out," FTC attorney Peder Magee said. On the industry side, the principles are being positioned as rendering legislation unnecessary. Lee Peeler, executive vice president at the Better Business Bureau, which will help enforce the principles, pointed to Web site privacy policies as an example of industry regulating even in the absence of federal statutes. "Almost every Web site in the country has a privacy policy on it now," Peeler said. -- Sara Jerome
The Intellectual Property Owners Association on Wednesday urged Senate Judiciary Committee leaders to schedule a hearing soon on the confirmation of President Obama's pick for Patent and Trademark Office director, David Kappos. IPO said it is "critical for new management to be put in place as soon as possible" to address the many challenges currently "hindering effective processing of patent applications." The letter said Kappos meets all of the qualifications IPO has recommended for the PTO position in letters to the administration. The PTO, which is funded through user fees and is faced with a lengthy patent application backlog, recently suspended overtime pay for patent examiners and earlier instituted a hiring freeze.
The group told Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy and ranking member Jeff Sessions that Kappos, an IBM executive, has an exceptional record in IP law and significant experience in industry as a manager. He has worked within IPO and other associations to improve IP practice and communications with the PTO. Kappos is in line behind Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor whose Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing begins next week. While the agency awaits its new leader, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke has appointed Nicholas Godici, a high-ranking Clinton administration patent official, to serve as an expert appointee and liaison between the PTO and Commerce.
House Energy and Commerce Committee member Mary Bono Mack, R-Calif., urged the panel's leadership Wednesday to hold a hearing on the role of the Internet and communications technologies in giving a voice to those silenced by repressive governments. Calling attention to recent events in Iran and China, where mobile phones and applications like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube delivered uncensored, citizen-fueled reports from the streets, Bono Mack said it is time that Congress examines the threat that Web censorship poses to free expression. "We cannot stand idly by while the voices of the oppressed are silenced," Bono Mack said in a press release and in a letter to Chairman Henry Waxman and ranking member Joe Barton.
Web sites developed in the United States provide opportunities for people whose words would otherwise never be heard and can foster respect for human rights and freedom across the world, she said. Following last month's disputed election in Iran, a "Twitter Revolution" allowed citizens there to broadcast firsthand accounts and on-the-scene footage of protests and violence in Tehran. At the same time, the government was doing everything in its power to control messages and images leaving Iran. Meanwhile, China has continued to use its "Great Firewall" to block content on a regular basis and researchers estimate that 30,000 or more Internet police monitor online traffic, Web sites and blogs for political and other offensive content.
In the 110th Congress, Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin chaired a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Human Rights and the Law Subcommittee that examined U.S. companies' business dealings in Internet restrictive countries. Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and others were on the hot seat. In 2006, Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., chaired a similar high-profile hearing of the House subcommittee that oversees global human rights. Smith has introduced legislation on multiple occasions that would prevent U.S. tech firms from working with foreign governments that seek to conduct Internet surveillance to find, capture, convict and often torture citizens for engaging in democracy promotion and human rights advocacy online.
This week's crude and fairly ineffective attacks on U.S. and South Korean Web sites were a minor event, network experts said, but could represent a warning shot portending much more serious threats to worldwide communications and commerce on the Internet. James Lewis, a cybersecurity scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, noted the paradox in the attacks - that they were well-coordinated and broad in scope, but very limited in their aims. If they were the work of the North Korean government or affiliated forces, as South Korean officials suspect, said Lewis, it seems that the real purpose might have been to get the attention of foreign governments. Much like North Korea's missile and nuclear testing, this week's cyberattacks could be part of a diplomatic game aimed at extracting concessions from the United States and Western powers, he speculated.
On the other hand, any number of foreign governments, including North Korea, are capable of much more serious action that could do greater and long-term damage to Internet communications, Lewis said. Robert Beverly shrugged off the reported attacks this week as insignificant, but said that what keeps him up at night worrying is an attack on the domain name system - the computers that translate familiar words like Google into numerical Internet protocol addresses. Beverly, a network computing expert affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that a network of privately-owned computers around the world, known as root name servers, coordinate this activity.
Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, the only Cabinet secretary to join President Obama on his trip this week to Russia, stressed the need to combat intellectual property piracy and counterfeiting with Russian Minister of Economic Development Elvira Nabiullina, although the issue took a backseat to broader issues. "IP is on the agenda, but I wouldn't want to exaggerate its importance in these talks," a senior Commerce official traveling with Locke said Tuesday. Topics like Russia's accession to the World Trade Organization, larger rule of law questions surrounding government transparency and import tariffs, and climate change were prioritized. But in same-day remarks at a business summit, Locke lauded Russia's recruitment of U.S. corporations like Boeing, Motorola, Microsoft, and Procter & Gamble, all of whom have a huge stake in fighting foreign and domestic IP crime. Locke said the United States and Russia must "increase the openness of our markets to trade and to investment" and during tough economic times remember to "not repeat the historic mistakes of protectionism of previous eras." Locke and Nabiullina will lead a business and economic relations working group under a bilateral commission co-chaired by Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
Read the full story in CongressDaily's AM Edition (subscription required).
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Federal Financial Management Subcommittee Chairman Thomas Carper, D-Del., said sweeping computer attacks that impaired the Web sites of several agencies including the Treasury Department, Secret Service, Federal Trade Commission and the Transportation Department around July 4 demonstrate that the U.S. government needs to be better armed to fight 21st century security threats. News reports late Tuesday and early Wednesday said the attacks were targeted at varying points over recent days, and sites of 11 South Korean organizations were targeted as well. The activity was a possible coordinated assault by North Korea, officials with knowledge of the incidents told various media outlets.
In April, Carper introduced legislation that would bring big changes to the way agencies protect sensitive information. His bill would modernize the Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002, and empower agency chief information security officers to focus their efforts on monitoring, detecting and preventing cyber intrusions. It would also augment the power of the Homeland Security Department's U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team to be proactive before a cyber attack penetrates government networks. "We need to pass this legislation so our federal agencies can stop spending billions of taxpayers' dollars on wasteful paper compliance and instead invest in real security - the kind of security that prevents these types of attacks," Carper said.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., will soon introduce legislation that would create a competitive grant program for state and local education agencies and non-profit organizations to provide Internet safety education to teachers, schools and parents. The measure, which would authorize up to $175 million over five years, would be administered by the Justice Department in collaboration with the departments of Health and Human Services and Education. Wasserman Schultz's bill will be a companion to one introduced earlier this year by Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J.
"There's no silver bullet, no one technology," Wasserman Schultz said at a Wednesday briefing on Capitol Hill sponsored by Point Smart, Click Safe -- a coalition of non-profits and companies like Comcast, Google, Verizon, and Yahoo. "Our bill recognizes that knowledge must be our children's first line of defense," she said. Wasserman Schultz, who has 10-year-old twins and a five-year-old daughter, said she hoped her legislation could provide the strong federal leadership called for in a new Point Smart, Click Safe report. Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., who also spoke at the event, said it is imperative that non-profits and high-tech firms "help us help parents understand."
The Point Smart, Click Safe paper asks policymakers to consider expanding online safety efforts to emphasize digital media literacy programs. It also calls for the president or Congress to lead a federal agency that would work collaboratively with all major stakeholders in marshaling resources for improved online safety. Additionally, the group urged policymakers to consider adopting a set of national goals for online safety, including minimum standards for a curriculum on digital literacy. Click here to review Point Smart, Click Safe's recommendations and here to read a new paper by Web safety expert Adam Thierer of the Progress and Freedom Foundation.
The White House still lacks a cyber czar but that's not stopping high-tech hackers. The Associated Press reported late Tuesday that a widespread computer attack that began July 4 knocked out the Web sites of several government agencies, including some that are responsible for fighting cyber crime. Officials told the AP that the Treasury Department, Secret Service, Federal Trade Commission and the Transportation Department's sites were all down at varying points over the weekend and into this week. Some were still experiencing problems or delays Tuesday evening.
The fact that the government sites were still being affected three days after it began signaled an unusually lengthy and sophisticated attack, officials told the AP on the condition of anonymity. The weapon of choice was a denial of service attack, which commonly involves saturating the victim machine with a flood of external communications requests that prevent it from responding to legitimate traffic. President Obama in May said he would handpick a cybersecurity enforcement coordinator who would report to the National Economic Council and National Security Council but that position remains vacant despite murmurs about potential candidates.
Homeland Security Department spokeswoman Amy Kudwa told Tech Daily Dose that her agency was aware of the attacks on federal and private sector public-facing Web sites and the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team has issued a notice to agencies as well as other partner organizations, on this activity and advised them of steps to take to help mitigate against such attacks. "We see attacks on federal networks every day, and measures in place have minimized the impact to federal Web sites," she said. "US-CERT will continue to work with its federal partners and the private sector to address this activity."
Gary Fazzino, Hewlett Packard's vice president for government and public affairs since 2000, has left the computer company to become vice president of government affairs for Applied Materials, a capital equipment manufacturer for the semiconductor, display and solar industries. He will be headquartered at Applied's Santa Clara, Calif., complex. Fazzino said his new firm has "has shown strong government policy leadership for many years, especially in the areas of clean, renewable energy and solar power."
"Energy and the environment are top policy priorities for governments around the world, and Applied Materials' technology... will be an important part of the solution," Applied CEO Mike Splinter said in a press release. "Expanding relationships and engaging in dialogue with government are important to the long-term success of Applied Materials, and Gary's proven ability to help shape public policy will be invaluable as we explore new markets and new lines of business." Prior to joining HP, Fazzino was mayor of Palo Alto from 1992-93 and again from 1999-2000.
Applied spent $130,000 on internal lobbying in the first quarter of 2009, according to disclosure forms. The company also worked with Franklin Square Group, Elmwood Strategies, McAllister & Quinn, and the Washington Tax Group on a range of issues including solar manufacturing incentives, climate change legislation, and the economic stimulus bill. HP's lobbying budget for the first quarter of 2009 was quite a bit bigger. The company spent $840,000 and brought in McDermott Will & Emery, Palmetto Group, Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti.
The House late Tuesday passed legislation under suspension of the rules that would authorize the Patent and Trademark Office to use money statutorily cordoned off for its trademark portfolio to pay for patent-related work. The PTO, which is funded through user fees and is faced with a lengthy patent application backlog, recently suspended overtime pay for patent examiners and earlier instituted a hiring freeze. PTO officials have said the loan is justified because the trademark budget has a massive surplus. House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers's bill and a companion measure sponsored by Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy are intended to stave off potential furloughs and reductions-in-force. Under the Conyers bill the PTO could use trademark funds made available for fiscal year 2009 of up to $70 million to support the processing of patents and related activities. The measure would also establish a surcharge to repay those funds. The PTO would have until June 30, 2010 to use the authority and the surcharge would take effect no later than Sept. 30, 2011 with all funds being repaid by Sept. 30, 2014. Worth noting: The Leahy bill doesn't assign a specific dollar amount.
Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, launched his Facebook page on July 2 and has already managed to more than 300 fans, NextGov.com's Bob Brewin writes. Mullen's Facebook page shows he's a wired guy, with links to podcasts, videos and Twitter feeds, although the last Tweet - on July 5 -- is a bit dated: "Off to Moscow for the Summit. Looking forward to signing the workplan for better cooperation with the Russian military."
From Tuesday's CongressDaily PM Edition (subscription required).
After more than two years of private negotiations, music and Internet industry stakeholders have arrived at a formula for commercial webcasters to pay copyright owners and artists for their songs. The deal came a week after President Obama signed legislation sponsored by Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., that kept deliberations on track while delaying implementation of a controversial 2007 rate-setting by a federal panel that determines royalty fees for various distribution platforms.
Under the agreement announced today, "pureplay" services, whose main business is streaming music under a government license, would pay a percentage of their U.S. revenue up to 25 percent as well as a $25,000 per year minimum royalty as an alternative to the Copyright Royalty Board's calculation, which webcasters argued could put them out of business. Wyden said he was happy to help reach a deal and ensure that the "unjust decision of the CRB wasn't applied to this dynamic new medium." Inslee said webcasters and copyright holders "needed this freedom to negotiate and craft a royalty rate structure that's fair for all impacted parties."
The Government Accountability Office is the latest federal agency to embrace video sharing community YouTube and micro-blogging platform Twitter with the goal of helping users of such Web sites stay informed about the work of the investigative arm of Congress. "GAO is always exploring ways to use innovative practices and emerging technologies to carry out its mission," Acting Comptroller General Gene Dodaro said in a press release. "While we've made extensive use of the Internet for some time, posting material on YouTube and Twitter offers new possibilities to inform people about our efforts to promote accountability and transparency in federal programs and operations."
The GAO has posted many of its videos, including those from its economic stimulus and presidential transition Web pages on its YouTube channel. The main featured video is "More Than Numbers," a recruitment reel based on news coverage of GAO's work. The office is also providing links back to underlying reports or testimony to assist viewers interested in reading more about the agency's findings, conclusions, and recommendations. Through the Twitter account, individuals will be alerted when a GAO product is issued. The agency has created two Twitter feeds, one for reports and testimony and another for legal products. More than 50 federal agencies and a growing number of lawmakers now use Twitter to send and read each others' updates.
Commerce Secretary Gary Locke has named a high-ranking Clinton administration patent official to serve as an expert appointee whose job will be to assist the new Patent and Trademark Office director and act as a liaison between the office and the Commerce Department, which houses the PTO. Nicholas Godici served for five years as commissioner for patents, acting under secretary of commerce for intellectual property and director of the PTO and got his start as at the agency as an examiner 30 years earlier. His term in the Obama administration is limited to 180 days. IBM executive David Kappos was tapped to become head of the PTO last month but must be confirmed by the Senate. He is in line behind Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor whose Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing begins Monday.
Godici, who has been a top advisor to Birch, Stewart, Kolasch & Birch, LLP since 2005, could be a valuable asset at PTO as the agency struggles to avoid budget cuts and furloughs. The office, which is funded through fees collected from its users, recently suspended overtime pay for patent examiners and earlier this year instituted a hiring freeze. Lawmakers have introduced legislation that would let the PTO's patent division borrow money from its trademark portfolio, which has a multi-million dollar surplus. A House bill sponsored by Judiciary Chairman John Conyers is scheduled for a floor vote under suspension of the rules late Tuesday. Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy has introduced a companion measure in his chamber.
Godici was on Capitol Hill in December where he spoke at a Computing Technology Industry Association event that focused on the future of the PTO. Watch a video of that briefing here. Other panelists included Gerald Mossinghoff, Bruce Lehman, and Q. Todd Dickinson, all former leaders at the PTO.
A two-year-old effort by Internet and government transparency activist Carl Malamud and the National Technical Information Service to post oodles of videos online for use in the public domain has become the one of the most popular YouTube channels of the U.S. government. The FedFlix program ran for a year and it was so successful that the project agreement was amended so NTIS now sends Malamud and his team at Public.Resource.Org a minimum of 100 tapes a month. In addition to those, Malamud has systematically written every other agency he could find and paid for DVDs or asked for videotapes. For example, he has about 60 hours of valuable training material from the Federal Aviation Administration, reels from the Mine Health and Safety Administration, and a slew of Occupational Safety and Health Administration safety videos.
All told, Malamud says he has posted 1,000 videos online, including original Walt Disney, John Ford and James Cagney films as well as content from the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, Fish & Wildlife Service, U.S. Army and Air Force, the Smithsonian Institution and many others. The videos can be found on YouTube for casual viewing; on the Internet Archive Web site, where users can burn their own DVDs; and at Bulk.Resource.Org as raw data so individuals can create their own stock footage library of public domain material. Most of the content is from the federal government but Malamud has added videos from Washington, Illinois and a few other places. A California state agency wrote him this week offering 17 DVDs filled with material.
Watch several of Tech Daily Dose's favorite flicks after the jump...
The Library of Congress, which preserves and makes available to the public more than 138 million books, photographs, maps, sound recordings, films, and other material in 470 languages, is undergoing a massive transformation thanks to the digital revolution -- and that point is not lost on lawmakers. The Senate on Monday approved a FY 2010 spending bill that would provide the institution with $8.5 million to update its information technology infrastructure. The library's overall budget under the legislative branch appropriations package would be $638.5 million, which is $31.5 million higher than 2009 and $19.8 million below President Obama's request. The House passed its own version of the bill last month, which provided $7.3 million for "digital collections and educational curricula."
"While less than the full request, the amount recommended is sufficient for LOC to embark on upgrades to its content delivery, content management and core technology," a Senate Appropriations Committee report from last month stated. The panel said it expects the library to update its digital strategy to ensure IT investments are targeted appropriately. The report pointed out that while a preliminary digital strategy has been developed, it does not represent an integrated, library-wide plan for digitization. Appropriators called on the institution to "incorporate key stakeholder views on the extent to which the library should make its collections available digitally."
The Veterans Affairs Department would get $3.3 billion for IT projects to develop electronic health care records, paperless claims systems, and seamless integration of medical and service records with the Department of Defense under the agency's FY 2010 spending bill that passed a key Senate Appropriations subcommittee Monday. Subcommittee passage clears the way for the bill to be considered by the full panel later this week. The broader $133.9 billion bill, which also covers military construction, includes more than $76.7 billion in discretionary funding -- $439 million over President Obama's budget request in discretionary funding. Under the measure, military construction would get $23.2 billion and $53 billion in discretionary funding would go to the VA. A companion bill that passed the House Appropriations Committee last month asks for the same amount for high-tech investments, mirroring Obama's request. "We have done our best to address both the needs of the military and our veterans in this legislation. I remain committed to keeping our promises to our veterans and honoring them by ensuring they receive the care they deserve and require," said Sen. Tim Johnson, D, S.D., who chairs the Senate Appropriations Military Construction, Veterans Affairs Subcommittee.
On Saturday, President Obama will deliver a speech in Accra, Ghana and the White House is making sure Internet and mobile phone users around the world can get involved. In a message on the social networking site Facebook, administration officials said individuals will be able to submit questions, comments, and words of welcome in English or French via SMS text messages. SMS participants will also get live highlights from Obama's trip. The president will answer some questions following his speech in a radio broadcast.
Use a local SMS short code in:
-Ghana (1731) -Nigeria (32969) -South Africa (31958) -Kenya (5683)
-Long numbers for mobile registration pan-Africa: 61418601934 and 45609910343.
(Note: This SMS platform is not available in the United States)
Additionally, the White House will host a live Facebook-based chat during Obama's speech at http://apps.facebook.com/whitehouselive. On micro-blogging site Twitter, the White House asks participants to use the hashtag (#obamaghana) to find and share reactions related to his visit. The administration publicized Obama's June 4 appearance in Egypt using a range of high-tech platforms. The Cairo speech was translated into 14 languages on America.gov and spurred a flood of activity on Twitter.
Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., on Monday successfully pushed through an amendment to the $3.1 billion FY 2010 legislative branch appropriations bill that he argued would make it easier for the public to examine Senate expenses, such as salaries for staff, travel and office operations. Those records are already computerized but his plan would make the files available online for public review. Senate Appropriations Legislative Branch Subcommittee Chairman Bill Nelson, D-Neb., and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid supported the proposal and agreed to a limited debate on the issue. He said his amendment would help the Senate "lead by example" and rein in spending within individual offices while providing much needed public accountability for taxpayer dollars. "I'm just as frugal with their money in my office as I am on the floor," said Coburn, who routinely objects to congressional spending sprees and has earned the nickname "Dr. No."
Meanwhile, a similar effort in the House has been delayed due to "security and support issues" that the House Administration Committee says must resolved before so-called "statement of disbursements" are made available in an electronic format. Although the chamber's servers were upgraded to handle massive, sudden influxes of e-mail and Web hits, the new technology needs to be tested in preparation for what is expected to be an enormous online interest in records, the committee said in a Thursday statement. Additionally, the committee and the Chief Administrative Officer want to ensure staffers are fully trained to explain the SODs to constituents who may call or e-mail. Online support materials like a frequently asked questions page and a glossary of terms are in the works. The first SOD to be posted on the Internet will cover the quarter beginning July 1, 2009 and will be posted as soon as possible following the end of that quarter.
President Obama often refers to the clear-cut benefits of striking a healthy balance between transparency and national security, such as upholding the Constitution. More ambiguous are the financial savings derived from increased transparency, NextGov's Aliya Sternstein writes in TechCentral's latest Issue Of The Week. In fact, even some open government proponents say Obama's transparency agenda may initially cost taxpayers more money. Specifically, the administration's ongoing review of classified information policy to address the problem of over-classification likely will result in some short-term overhead expenses. The cost-range is hard to assess, partly because the federal budget is not structured to provide that sort of empirical data, said Steven Aftergood, who directs the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, a nonpartisan think tank. But in the short term, "any change in policy is likely to result in increased costs, including changes that favor more open government, if only due to the costs of producing revised guidance and of employee training," he said.
On the other hand, the alternative -- over-classification -- is almost always expensive, say some classification specialists and transparency advocates. Information technology systems to guard classified information are particularly costly. Information security continues to be the most costly category reported by agencies, representing 56 percent of total security classification costs for FY08. Of the four subcategories of information security, "information systems security continues to be the most costly, at $4.3 billion, or 90 percent of estimated costs for information security," according to a May 19 report to the president from the Information Security Oversight Office at the National Archives and Records Administration. That office oversees classification and declassification policies and audits classification programs.
Read the full Issue Of The Week here (subscription required).
President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev held their first joint press conference in Moscow on Monday where they spoke about plans to reset the countries' relationship. The pair released a statement outlining a new framework for arms reduction and announced the creation of a bilateral commission with working groups focused on a range of topics including: nuclear energy; arms control; foreign policy and fighting terrorism; drug trafficking; business development and economic relations; energy and environment; agriculture; science and technologies; space cooperation; health; handling of emergency situations; civil society; and educational and cultural exchanges.
Additional working groups will be created and announced in the coming months, along with sub-groups under each working group as appropriate, officials said. While it was not explicitly mentioned, intellectual property policy -- namely anti-piracy and counterfeiting measures -- could easily fit into one or more of those categories. Russia regularly ranks among the top offenders in assessments of global IP infringement. In its annual "Special 301" report, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative noted serious concerns with Russia but credited positive steps taken by the government like the nation's accession to the World Intellectual Property Organization's Internet treaties.
The International Intellectual Property Alliance, which represents the American music, movie, software, and video game industries, told the USTR earlier this year that Russia's "enforcement efforts generally remain inadequate, and the copyright industries continue to await sustained, effective and deterrent enforcement, enhanced legal reform, and greater market access for legitimate copyrighted materials." The country has not met its obligations under a 2006 IP agreement with the United States and must take action against entities that knowingly distribute infringing products, combat the growing threat of Internet piracy, and address illegal optical disc manufacturing, IIPA stated. Read more from IIPA here.
The United States and Japan released the results of their work under a joint regulatory reform and competition policy initiative on Monday, citing progress in a number of areas, including several tech-related topics. U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk welcomed the progress, noting it helps to further open Japan's market, improve its business environment, and stimulate new opportunities for growth. Japan is the United States' fourth largest trading partner and goods export market.
Some information technology progress from Japan:
• Strengthening protections for music and motion pictures by amending the copyright law to make illegal Internet downloads knowingly made from unauthorized sources.
• Creating new opportunities for certain electronic fund transfer providers by introducing the legal framework necessary to offer such services in Japan.
• Completing reviews by ministries and agencies of their privacy guidelines to ensure consistency with standardized cabinet office guidelines, thereby improving predictability for companies to comply with privacy requirements.
• Launching an improved database of government information systems procurements to provide more transparency for all IT vendors and potential bidders, including by posting procurement plans, specification documents and tender notice information.
The Internet experts at Morningside Analytics recently took a look at the blog footprint of WhiteHouse.gov now and one year ago. The results? The Obama administration has successfully expanded its online reach beyond the political blogger echo chamber and is now part of a broader discussion within online communities that are normally attentive to health, science, technology and culture, the firm said. Above, an illustration of the current reach of WhiteHouse.gov. Click here to compare with a 2008 snapshot.
A day after announcing she would resign, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin staked out national goals for herself in a 465-word missive on Facebook. "I am now looking ahead and how we can advance this country together with our values of less government intervention, greater energy independence, stronger national security and much-needed fiscal restraint," she wrote on the popular social networking site. "I hope you will join me. Now is the time to rebuild and help our nation achieve greatness!" She repeated in the posting what she said in her Friday speech that she does not need a formal title to "forge progress in America." She has been considered a likely candidate for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. As former White House adviser Karl Rove and other pundits assessed her move on the Sunday talk shows, Palin bit back with a post on the micro-blogging Web site Twitter. "Critics are spinning, so hang in there as they feed false info on the right decision made as I enter last yr in office to not run again," she wrote. Read more weekend coverage from CongressDaily here.
The Justice Department has formally acknowledged an investigation into Google's settlement with publishers over its effort to digitize mass quantities of books. The New York Times and others have reported that Deputy Assistant Attorney General William Cavanaugh wrote to the federal judge administering the settlement, stating: "The United States has reviewed public comments expressing concern that aspects of the settlement agreement may violate the Sherman Act... At this preliminary stage, the United States has reached no conclusions as to the merit of those concerns or more broadly what impact this settlement may have on competition. However, we have determined that the issues raised by the proposed settlement warrant further inquiry."
The $125 million agreement was signed in October to resolve a 2005 class action lawsuit filed by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers against the Internet giant. In the complaint, the authors and publishers said Google's plan to digitize millions of books from libraries and make them available in its Book Search service amounted to a whopper of a copyright violation. The settlement would let Google display books online and profit from them by selling access to titles and by selling subscriptions to its collection. Authors and publishers would get a chunk of the revenue. U.S. District Judge Denny Chin set a Sept. 18 deadline for the government to offer its views in writing. He has scheduled an Oct. 7 hearing on the settlement.
Daniel Weitzner will be the next chief of the policy office at the Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration, according to government sources. Weitzner served as a technology advisor to President Obama's campaign for president. He has been involved in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-directs MIT's Decentralized Information Group with Internet expert Tim Berners-Lee. Weitzner was a founder and deputy director for the Center for Democracy and Technology and has also been a senior staff counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Weitzner was among the first to advocate user control technologies such as content filtering and rating to protect children and avoid government censorship of the Internet, according to his bio on W3.org, the World Wide Web Consortium. His arguments played a critical role in the 1997 Supreme Court case Reno v. ACLU, awarding strong free speech protections to the Internet. Weitzner successfully advocated for adoption of amendments to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act creating new privacy protections for online transactional information such as Web site access logs. -- Winter Casey
Regina Dugan will soon return to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency at the Pentagon but this time she'll be in the driver's seat. Dugan, whose first tour at DARPA lasted from January 1996 until May 2000, will be the agency's 19th director and the first woman to hold the job. Her start date has not yet been announced. Prior to the appointment, she held several key positions in industry, most recently as president and CEO of RedXDefense -- a company she founded in 2005 that specializes in technologies to defend against explosive threats. She has also served in senior positions for several firms with roles ranging from global sales to research and product development.
At DARPA in the late 1990s, Dugan won an agency award for her leadership of the "Dog's Nose Program," which led to the development of a field-portable system for detecting the explosive content of land mines. She is also the recipient of the deFleury Medal, the office of the secretary of defense award for exceptional service, and the award for outstanding achievement. She has participated in wide-ranging studies for the Defense Science Board, the Army Science Board, the National Research Council and Science Foundation, and sits on the Naval Research Advisory Committee and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency Science and Technology Panel, according to a press release.
"Regina Dugan is precisely the dynamic leader DARPA needs to open new technology frontiers and transition revolutionary technologies to serve our nation's interests," said Zachary Lemnios, director of Defense Research and Engineering. "I am delighted she will be leading this agency and look forward to working closely with her." Lemnios, who was sworn in Thursday, joined the Obama administration after serving as chief technology officer of the Lincoln Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He previously served as head of DARPA's Microsystems Technology Office, which is responsible for setting the agency's strategic vision and technical plans.
Innovation and job creation will be the topic du jour at the White House on Thursday afternoon when President Obama meets with business leaders from small and large companies. The conversation, which will include several high-tech executives, will focus on potential ways of developing long-term solution to strengthen the U.S. economy. CEOs participating in the dialogue will talk about what steps they have taken to increase productivity in their industry during a recession through innovation and technology, according to a White House e-mail.
Amit Chatterjee, CEO of and founder of Hara Software, is among the participants. Prior to founding Hara he led SAP's fast-growing governance, risk and compliance unit and before that, worked with clients like Cisco Systems and Oracle at McKinsey & Co. Hara builds software that lets companies track their use of natural resources and carbon emissions. Applied Materials CEO Michael Splinter will also attend the meeting. Splinter is a 30-year veteran of the semiconductor industry and has led Applied Materials to record revenue and profits during his tenure.
Other attendees include Standard Renewable Energy CEO John Berger, Dow Corning CEO Stephanie Burns, Positive Edge President Alex Laskey, FPL Group President Jim Robo, Hycrete CEO David Rosenberg and Chuck Swoboda, CEO of Cree Lighting.
High-tech advocacy groups this week filed a friend-of-the-court brief opposing efforts by music licensing organization ASCAP to impose additional licensing payments on providers of musical ringtones for mobile phones. The Center for Democracy and Technology, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Public Knowledge urged a New York federal court to reject ASCAP's claim that ringtones are "public performances" under copyright law simply because a phone may ring when the user is in a public place. ASCAP's position implies that mobile phone users are copyright infringers and would expand liability in ways that could chill innovation in products far beyond the relatively narrow context of ringtones, the groups argued.
ASCAP, which has about 360,000 members, recently released a memo in support of its legal battle against AT&T and Verizon that argues wireless carriers make billions of dollars from ringtones including per tone charges and multiple additional charges surrounding the transmission of ringtones. The revenue generated is "more than sufficient to cover a reasonable payment to ASCAP members," the organization said. Additionally, ASCAP stressed that it seeks to license carriers' transmissions of music and is not trying to charge consumers. EFF attorney Fred von Lohmann called ASCAP's an "outlandish argument," noting that under its reasoning, someone playing a car radio with the window down would be violating copyright law.
A related debate could play out on Capitol Hill. In a recent recent letter, songwriter and music publisher representatives requested legislation to expand the scope of the public performance right so that it will apply to digital downloads of audiovisual works. Trade groups representing Internet music providers, e-commerce firms and electronics manufacturers claim the effort would "impose a licensing obligation and potentially significant royalties on activities that are unequivocally unrelated to public performance." House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers is planning a hearing on the issue while Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy has begun talking with stakeholders.
Several major marketing trade groups will release self-regulatory principles Thursday intended to protect consumer privacy in advertising-supported interactive media. The groups argue the guidelines will require advertisers and Web sites to clearly inform consumers about data collection practices and enable them to exercise control over that information. The issue has gained steam on Capitol Hill lately with a series of hearings by key panels of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The framework is an effort of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, the Association of National Advertisers, the Direct Marketing Association, the Interactive Advertising Bureau, and the Council of Better Business Bureaus. The groups offer seven principles as part of a self-regulatory program that is expected to be implemented in early 2010. Here are the basics:
• The Education Principle: The digital media industry intends, in a major campaign that is expected to exceed 500 million online ad impressions, to educate consumers about online behavioral advertising over the next 18 months.
• The Transparency Principle: Clearer and easily accessible disclosures to consumers about data collection and use practices associated with online behavioral advertising. It will result in enhanced notice practices.
The Obama administration on Wednesday publicly disclosed on the Internet its annual report to Congress on staff titles and salaries. Since 1995, the White House has been required to deliver such a document to Capitol Hill. Consistent with President Obama's commitment to transparency, his Web team posted the rundown as a PDF document and as a searchable table (powered by Socrata) as it was sent to lawmakers. In addition to core White House staffers' details, the report also contains the title and salary of administration officials who work at the Office of Policy Development, including the Domestic Policy Council and the National Economic Council.
For the nosiest amongst us, here's a quick listing of some key officials' earnings:
Rahm Emanuel, Chief of Staff: $172,000
David Axelrod, Senior Adviser: $172,000
Valerie Jarrett, Senior Adviser: $172,000
Carol Browner, Assistant to the President: $172,000
Anita Dunn, Director of Communications: $172,000
Robert Gibbs, Press Secretary: $172,000
Greg Craig, Counsel to the President: $172,000
Lawrence Summers, Director, National Economic Council: $172,000
James Jones, National Security Adviser: $172,000
Susan Crawford, Special Assistant, Technology: $130,500
Matthew Loveless, Director, Technology: $55,000
Timothy Ryan, Assistant Director, Technology: $50,000
David Cole, Deputy Director, Technology: $60,000
Jason Brown, Director, Cybersecurity Policy (Detailee): $91,259
Macon Phillips, New Media Director: $115,000
Jesse Lee, Director, Online Programs: $70,000
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joseph Lieberman praised the Office of Management and Budget's announcement Tuesday of a new Web site that allows the public to track and comment on federal information technology spending. "When I won enactment of the E-Government Act almost a decade ago, the federal government was a newcomer to the online world and had only just begun to think seriously about how to provide American taxpayers with valuable electronic services and information. All that has changed," Lieberman said in a statement.
The IT dashboard on USASpending.gov "marks another leap forward for open government, public accountability, and management efficiency and serves as a model to open up more information on federal spending." With a click of the mouse, anyone can see and have their say about the decisions, successes, and setbacks of how tax dollars are spent on IT projects, he said. Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Federal Financial Management Subcommittee Chairman Thomas Carper, D-Del., concurred, saying he wants to work with the Obama administration to expand the effort to bring greater transparency for other large investments, including weapons acquisitions.
Read CongressDaily's Tuesday coverage of the issue here (subscription required).
A trade advisory body to the European Union and the U.S. government on Wednesday approved a resolution calling on policymakers worldwide to consider measures to moderate what its member argue are harmfully long terms of copyright and related rights. The TransAtlantic Consumer Dialogue's declaration opposes protections that exceed the period required by a 1994 World Trade Organization agreement. That WTO's treaty says performers have the right to prevent unauthorized recording, reproduction and broadcast of live performances for no less than 50 years and producers of sound recordings have the same window to prevent unauthorized reproduction.
In cases where the WTO's guidance is not followed, TACD asks governments to introduce measures, such as limitations and exceptions to rights, or registration requirements. The 80-member group first discussed the resolution with representatives from the EU and United States in June during TACD's annual meeting in Brussels. "For too long, legislatures have accepted uncritically the assertions of industry that longer copyright terms necessarily lead to more creation. However, as terms reach multigenerational lengths, mounting evidence has shown that long terms can chill discussion, debate, analysis and revisiting of existing works," Public Knowledge's Sherwin Siy said in a press release.
Extending what amounts to a temporary monopoly without sound economic justification, does not facilitate the search for new business models, nor address the need for the increased provision of legal content, argued Kostas Rossoglou of the European Consumers' Organisation in Brussels. "Copyright should aim to keep a balance between rights holders and society as a whole." TACD's Anne-Catherine Lorrain noted that if policymakers decide longer terms of copyright protection are needed, "they still have the option to counter-balance the harmful effects of such policies, by adopting several measures to improve public access to knowledge goods."
Read the TACD resolution here.
The White House will bring back its popular online town hall concept on Wednesday with an event streamed live on the Internet that will focus on healthcare reform. President Obama will answer questions from an on-site audience at Northern Virginia Community College in Annandale, Va., as well as queries from the Internet. His senior advisor Valerie Jarrett will moderate the event. Unlike Obama's March town hall, which pulled questions about job creation and the economy from a user-generated list on the White House Web site, this time the administration has reached out to social networking site Facebook, video sharing site YouTube and micro-blogging platform Twitter.
On Saturday, Obama posted a video asking for questions on healthcare reform and in just a few days, the Web team received hundreds of submissions. "The questions spanned the ideological spectrum, and ranged from heart-breaking and personal to almost wonkishly policy-focused," White House Online Programs Director Jesse Lee wrote in a blog post. Citizens can watch, discuss, and engage at 1:15 p.m. EDT through a Facebook live-stream chat application and viewers can send comments at WhiteHouse.gov/live or take part in a conversation on Twitter using hashtag #WHHCQ.
Senate Judiciary ranking member Jeff Sessions has requested that Case Western Reserve University innovation expert Scott Shane analyze the potential impact of a pending bill's approach to administratively challenging a patent's validity after it is granted. The proposed changes to the Patent and Trademark Office's post-grant review process are included in a bill sponsored by Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, which passed his committee 15-4 in April. Staffers for Leahy and Sessions have been meeting with stakeholders about the issue in recent weeks even as the panel focuses on the forthcoming confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.
As amended, the measure would adopt House-passed text from 2007 that lengthens the timeline for challenging a granted patent and strips out a "public use or sale" provision that Leahy added as a basis for challenging a patent. Shane's research earlier this Congress on apportionment of damages concluded that adopting House language could lead to job loss and decreased R&D investment. Leahy's panel ultimately watered down the damages text so the bill could advance. Shane's report was commissioned by the Manufacturing Alliance on Patent Policy, a group backed by Corning, Monsanto, DuPont and others. His latest research will be ready for Sessions within two weeks, Tech Daily Dose has learned.
Click here to read recent CongressDaily coverage of the emerging conflict over post-grant review language (subscription required).
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