February 2010

The Department of Defense announced a new policy Friday allowing all its personnel to use social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace.

"Prior to today, the services and other DoD components developed and implemented their own ad hoc policies -- some banning it all together," the Pentagon said in a statement. "Under this new policy, there will be open and consistent access across the board." The statement added that sites with content that is banned by the military, such as those that offer pornography, gambling and promote hate crimes, will still be blocked.

"Facebook is heartened by today's decision to begin to allow our nation's men and women in uniform and civilian employees across the Department of Defense responsible access to social media, which plays an important role in people's daily lives," Facebook Director of Online Operations Don Faul, a former Marine, said in a statement. "Facebook is an efficient way for people with real-world connections to share information and communicate and can be a particularly beneficial link between those stationed around the world and their families at home."

There are several technology and telecommunications related events this week on Capitol Hill beginning on Tuesday with a 10 a.m. hearing before the Senate Judiciary Human Rights and the Law Subcommittee on the global Internet freedom.

Among those testifying at the Judiciary hearing include Assistance Secretary of State for Human Rights Michael Posner; National Telecommunications and Information Administration Associate Administrator Daniel Weitzner; Iranian blogger Omid Memarian; and Google Deputy General Counsel Nicole Wong, who will likely be pressed on the firm's spat with China over Internet freedom. After revealing that it had been the victim of a cyber attack originating from China, Google announced in January that it would stop censoring its search results for users in China.

Cybersecurity will likely be part of the focus of a House Homeland Security Emerging Threats, Cybersecurity and Science and Technology Subcommittee hearing on Wednesday at 2 p.m. focused on the Homeland Security Department's Science and Technology Directorate.

House Energy and Commerce Communications, Technology and the Internet Subcommittee will be holding an oversight hearing on Thursday at 10 a.m. on funding included in last year's economic stimulus package for broadband access and adoption.

Also on Thursday, the House Science and Technology Committee will hold a 10 a.m. hearing on reforming science, technology, engineering and math education in elementary and secondary schools.

And the Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee will hold a hearing at 10 a.m. on Thursday on the Homeland Security Department's intelligence programs and the effectiveness of state and local fusion centers, which have raised privacy concerns.

More than 100 House members on both sides of the aisle are urging congressional leaders to renew and bolster the expired research and development tax credit as part of upcoming jobs legislation, and an effort is building on the Senate side as well, CongressDaily reported.

A massive tax and safety-net extension package headed to the Senate floor next week would renew the research credit through the end of 2010. Business groups including manufacturers and the high-tech industry also are pushing to boost the value of the credit to help U.S. firms compete with larger benefits offered to global rivals.

"It is estimated that an expansion of the credit would lead to an additional $90 billion in annual GDP, a significant increase in patents generated by American inventors, and generation of additional revenues for the Treasury through economic growth," according to a letter from Reps. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., and Michael McCaul, R-Texas, sent to leaders Thursday. "With this bipartisan support for this initiative, we believe it should be part of any future efforts considered by Congress this year to spur economic growth, and we urge you to work with the administration to renew this important job-creating incentive as soon as possible."

On the Senate side, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, chairman of the Senate Republican High-Tech Task Force, is leading the charge to attach the proposal to a jobs bill in that chamber. "Expanding the R&D credit is a perfect candidate for one of these jobs bills. It leads to job creation in the short term, while stimulating innovation that leads to long term economic growth," said Ralph Hellmann, senior vice president of the Information Technology Industry Council.

White House officials said a January memo aimed at encouraging information sharing and issued in response to the Christmas Day attempted bombing of a commercial jet, should not be perceived as a revival of the controversial data-sifting program that the Bush administration launched after the September 2001 terrorist attacks, Next Gov reported.

The comment came in response to a public interchange earlier this week among three security and information technology specialists who said President Obama's plan for "knowledge discovery," a term included in the memo, resembles the Total Information Awareness program, which the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency initiated unsuccessfully in 2002.

TIA was halted in 2004 after the public criticized it as a violation of civil liberties. The Defense Department, at the time, wanted a program that would probe private information, including citizens' personal credit card accounts, medical data and cell phone records. Privacy advocates say they still are uneasy about the intelligence community's power to probe private data networks.

"The Obama administration considers an individual's privacy and civil rights of critical importance, and [intelligence community] actions concern government data sets, not outside data sources. In no way should the corrective actions memo be construed as requiring a TIA-like IT solution. The term 'knowledge discovery' does not mean TIA," White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said Wednesday.

He was referring to a January memo intended to repair systemic weaknesses identified after the failed attempt to bring down a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas Day. "The IT requirement is a need to fuse existing data in [government] holdings, not aggregate commercial U.S. persons' data from private data sources," Shapiro added.

At an information-sharing talk hosted by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation on Tuesday, K. A. Taipale, executive director of the Stilwell Center for Advanced Studies in Science and Technology Policy, and two other technology experts said the tools being developed under the TIA program and the technologies outlined in the memo sound very similar. To read more, click here.

Two weeks after Google's new social networking site Buzz was met with a barrage of criticism for lacking adequate privacy controls, Google's deputy general counsel acknowledged it is not easy to find the right balance between making a product user friendly and ensuring it respects user privacy.

During a briefing Thursday with reporters, Nicole Wong discussed Google's approach to privacy more broadly but also commented on the controversy surrounding Buzz. Since the launch of Buzz, the Internet firm has made numerous changes to the service including making it easier for users to set privacy settings or to disable it altogether.

There is a "tension of how do we present this to a user to make them comfortable in this new space and yet really figure out what will work and won't," Wong said, adding that
Google has tried to "iterate quickly" in response to user feedback.

She noted that many users asked why Google didn't release a beta version of Buzz. She said it was tested extensively among 20,000 Google employees. Wong acknowledged, however, that "we didn't see everything because we were in a closed environment and you can't actually know how a social network will work until you get it out there in the wild." She added that even "if we had done a limited beta it's not clear to me that we would have gotten a different result. That's the thing we have to figure out."

The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a complaint with the FTC last week urging the agency to "require Google to make the Buzz service fully opt-in, to stop using Gmail users' private address book contacts to compile social networking lists and to give Google users meaningful control over their personal data."

When asked why Google didn't make Buzz a service that users had to choose to opt-in to using, Wong said that "you do have to set it up, so it is opt-in in that sense ... within the context of your Gmail" e-mail service.

She said that Google has been in touch with the FTC about EPIC's complaint but did not elaborate.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., announced Thursday that he has reached a tentative agreement on patent overhaul legislation with the panel's ranking member Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. "We have reached a tentative agreement in principle that preserves the core of the compromise struck in committee last year," Leahy said in a statement. Leahy said he hoped to release details of the agreement "in the coming days" after consulting with other senators and House lawmakers.

Leahy noted that when he began working on the issue several years ago with Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., and others "we wanted to improve patent quality and the operations at the [Patent and Trademark Office], and address runaway damage awards that were harming innovation. We are close to a compromise that will address these issues."

He added, that "No one will think this a perfect bill, but we are close to a comprehensive patent reform bill that benefits all corners of the patent community." The patent bill approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee in April 2009 aimed to address the PTO's chronic application backlog and improve internal efficiencies. It also would change the protocol for challenging patents - a move that has divided small innovators, the life-sciences sector and the IT industry.

The Innovation Alliance, which has been critical of the bill, said the changes "appear to be a positive step in the right direction." The group's executive director, Brian Pomper, said in a statement "We have advocated for significant changes to the post-grant review provisions of the legislation that would prevent repeat legal challenges to patents because allowing repeat challenges would dampen U.S. job creation at the worst possible time." Sessions also has raised concerns about the language related to challenging patents after they have been granted that was included in the bill passed by the committee.

The FCC will ask Congress to spend up to $16 billion over 10 years to build a nationwide, state-of-the-art wireless communications network for emergency responders after the agency failed to persuade the private sector to foot the bill, CongressDaily reported. The network would enable fire, rescue and police squads to share information across jurisdictions, such as video from disaster scenes, and would eventually include voice communications.

During a news conference Thursday, FCC officials said such a network is long overdue. It's been more than eight years since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks exposed problems in how first responders communicate with each other. "We have gone too long with too little progress to show for it," FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said. "The private sector simply is not going to build what the country needs in terms of [a] public safety network."

The proposal will be part of the commission's upcoming national broadband plan, to be unveiled at the agency's March 16 public meeting, the day before the deadline for submission to Congress. The commission estimates that $12 billion to $16 billion in federal dollars would be needed for the network's construction and operation, with more federal dollars required at the 10-year mark. Additional funding could come from local and state governments. To read more click here. (Subscription required).

A new poll released Thursday of elementary and high school teachers, administrators and technology coordinators shows they lack the professional skills to adequately train students about cyber safety, security and ethics. "The study illuminates that there is no cohesive effort to provide young people the education they need to safely and securely navigate the digital age and prepare them as digital citizens and employees," Michael Kaiser, executive director of the National Cyber Security Alliance, said in a statement.

The poll, conducted by Zogby International of more than 1,000 teachers, 400 school administrators and 200 technology coordinators, was released by Kaiser's group, along with Microsoft and the University of Maryland's Educational Technology Policy, Research and Outreach. The survey found that four out of every 10 teachers have not taught any topics related to cyber safety or cybersecurity in the past year. And while more than 90 percent of technology coordinators, school administrators and teachers said they favor teaching cyber ethics, safety and security in schools, only 35 percent of teachers and half of administrators require that these subjects be included in their curriculum.

The poll also found that schools tend to focus more on shielding students from inappropriate Internet content - with more than 90 percent using filtering and blocking software - instead of teaching children ways to safely and securely surf the Internet.

Given students' increasing reliance on electronic media, the study notes the importance of teaching appropriate cyber surfing habits. A Kaiser Family Foundation study released last month found that children between the ages of 8 and 18 consume an average of nearly 7 and a half hours of electronic content per day.

The Senate late Wednesday voted for a measure that would extend three expiring provisions of the antiterrorism law known as the USA PATRIOT Act for one year by unanimous consent, CongressDaily reported.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., has been pushing for passage of a version approved by his panel with additional civil liberty protections, but agreed to an extension of the existing provisions because the authorities would otherwise lapse Sunday, an outcome the Obama administration has argued against.

"I would have preferred to add oversight and judicial review improvements to any extension of expiring provisions in the USA PATRIOT Act," Leahy said. But he added that objections from some Republican senators made that impossible this week.

A week before Senate lawmakers turn their attention to issues of Internet freedom, Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., is making another push to round up support in the House for his Internet freedom bill. Smith circulated a letter to his colleagues this week in an effort to increase the bill's co-sponsors. The bill currently has nine bipartisan cosponsors.

Smith said his latest version of the Global Online Freedom Act builds upon an earlier version introduced in the last Congress. It would still require U.S. information technology companies to disclose the data they block and search engine results they filter when complying with the censorship policies of foreign countries. But the latest version of the bill also would require firms to keep records on and notify the attorney general of demands for information identifying users and would give the attorney general authority to order the firms not to comply.

"The new GOFA, inspired by the landmark Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, asserts a government responsibility to protect free speech and restore public confidence in U.S. business -- responsibilities Congress can never delegate to the private sector," Smith wrote.

Meanwhile, the Senate Judiciary Committee's Human Rights and the Law Subcommittee is set to hold a hearing Tuesday on global Internet freedom. However, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China's hearing set for Monday examining Google and China's spat over Internet freedom has been postponed for a second time due to scheduling issues, according to a spokesman for the commission's chairman, Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D. The commission was established by Congress in 2000 to monitor human rights and the rule of law in China.

Dorgan had originally scheduled a hearing for earlier this month after Google disclosed it planned to stop censoring its search results for users in China, a move that may force it to leave China. Google made the move after it revealed in January that it had been the victim of cyber attacks originating from China that targeted the e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. A representative from Google and cybersecurity experts were expected to testify at the commission's hearing.

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "With cyberattacks constantly and relentlessly nipping at the government's networks, the defense industry continues to see the potential for billions in new cybersecurity business in the coming years," Politico reports. "Already, market research reports show gobs of money being invested in protecting government computers."

• "Sen. John Kerry," D-Mass., "said he is 'deeply disappointed' in an Italian court's decision to send three Google executives to prison. The Italian court acted because of an offensive video hosted on a Google web site," The Hill reports.

The consumer advocacy group Consumer Watchdog wrote the Justice Department Wednesday to urge it to investigate allegations that Google is manipulating its search results to favor its own products.

"As part of your continued antitrust investigation we call on you to shine a light on Google's black box, and require it to explain what's behind search results," the group said in a letter to Christine Varney, the assistant attorney general for antitrust. "If, as it appears, Google is tweaking results to further its narrow agenda, this anticompetitive behavior must be stopped."

The group noted that Tuesday's announcement that the European Commission is investigating complaints from three Internet firms that Google's search engine favors its own products in searches "in an anticompetitive manner demonstrates the seriousness of the issue." One of those firms, the British price comparison site Foundem, provided examples in comments filed this week with the FCC on its open-Internet proceeding of how Google favors its own products in its searches, said Consumer Watchdog, which also has been critical of Google's digital books project.

Google has defended its business practices and its search results, saying in a blog post Tuesday that, "We understand how important rankings can be to Web sites, especially commercial ones, because a higher ranking typically drives higher volumes of traffic. We are also the first to admit that our search is not perfect, but it's a very hard computer science problem to crack."

Internet privacy and tech groups said the conviction Wednesday of three Google executives by an Italian court for privacy violations could have far-reaching implications for the future of global Internet freedom.

An Italian court convicted the Google employees of violating Italy's privacy laws for not
moving quickly enough to take down an online video of students at a Turin school bullying an autistic boy. Google, which noted that the employees had nothing to do with the video and were unaware of its existence until after it was removed from Google's YouTube site, vowed to appeal the decision. Google argued in a policy blog post that the ruling runs counter to European Union law, which exempts firms from liability if they remove illegal content after being notified about it.

"Today's stunning verdict sets an extremely dangerous precedent that threatens free expression and chills innovation on the global Internet," Center for Democracy and Technology President and CEO Leslie Harris said in a statement. She added that the decision "is plainly contrary to the 2000 EU E-Commerce Directive and to the best practices of thriving Internet economies."

Computer & Communications Industry Association President Ed Black echoed CDT's concerns and arguments about EU law. He added that the ruling also could have negative economic implications for Europe. "We hope and expect the appellate process will correct this grave error because it is wrong and harmful to all involved. Otherwise, if Italian law requires the impossible from Internet companies in Europe, there will be no Internet companies in Europe," Black said. Google is a CCIA member.

Calling the ruling "unjust," Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., also voiced concern about the ruling's potential precedent, saying "if it is allowed to stand, it constitutes a serious threat to the Internet."

The FCC plans to free up a large swath of wireless broadband spectrum -- totaling 500 megahertz -- over the next decade, but for now, it won't force television broadcasters to relinquish any airwaves, Congress Daily reported. Instead, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski announced Wednesday that the agency will seek to incentivize TV stations and other licensees to give up bandwidth in exchange for a cut of the auction proceeds. Additional frequencies would be reclaimed through increased spectrum efficiency and sharing.

The FCC has repeatedly warned of a looming spectrum crisis. It needs to identify more airwaves to meet the anticipated surge in mobile demand from its upcoming national broadband plan, to be unveiled at its March 16 meeting. The plan will include a series of recommendations for policymakers, including the proposals he outlined Wednesday. Even though the FCC has authorized a threefold increase in commercial spectrum for mobile broadband in recent years, "that increase will not allow us to keep pace with an estimated thirtyfold increase in traffic," Genachowski said during a speech at the New America Foundation think tank.

The voluntary approach is the least onerous for broadcasters of the several ideas the agency has floated, including forcing stations to relinquish half their spectrum and double up on transmission towers. Broadcast airwaves are appealing for wireless broadband because of their exceptional propagation characteristics and potential to raise tens of billions of dollars in auction revenue, Genachowski said, adding that TV spectrum is not being used as efficiently as it could be.

"Broadcasters are ready to make the case that we are far and away the most efficient users of spectrum in today's communications marketplace," National Association of Broadcasters spokesman Dennis Wharton responded in a statement. NAB supports expanding broadband deployment "without threatening the future of free and local television," he said. To read more, click here (Subscription required).

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., and ranking member Richard Lugar, R-Ind., introduced legislation Wednesday that would allow immigrants who want to start a U.S. business to obtain a two-year visa. The bill would provide immigrant entrepreneurs U.S. visas if they can show qualified U.S. investors will pour at least $250,000 into the entrepreneurs' startup businesses.

"Creating a new magnet for innovations and innovators to come to the United States and create jobs here will offer our economy a double shot in the arm - robust job creation at home and reaffirmation that we're the world's best place to do business," Kerry said in a statement.

The legislation would create a new EB-6 visa category and would allow these entrepreneurs after two years to obtain legal resident status if they can show that they have generated at least five full-time U.S. jobs, attracted $1 million in additional capital investment or generated $1 million in revenue. The proposal is modeled on the existing EB5 visa, which allows foreigners who invest at least $1 million in the United States and create 10 jobs to obtain a green card.

Compete America, an industry coalition that favors allowing more skilled foreigners to obtain U.S. green cards and visas, endorsed the proposal, noting that many of the nation's most successful companies including Google, Intel and Yahoo were all founded in part by foreign nationals. "This is a common sense piece of legislation that deserves wide, bipartisan support," the group said in a statement. "Foreign-born entrepreneurs have founded thousands of innovative start-up companies throughout the country that have helped put America on the leading edge of world technology and innovation."

The competiveness of American industry is at risk unless the nation improves at turning academic research into marketplace profits, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said in a speech Wednesday. High unemployment and rising competition from abroad mean that "the United States cannot afford to merely fund research and say a prayer that some entrepreneur will commercialize it down the road," he said in prepared remarks.

Technological innovations too often fail to turn into new jobs, said Locke, speaking at a National Academy of Sciences forum. "As a result, we are losing our lead in promising industries and jeopardizing the future of our economy," he said. Challenges to confronting the problem include connecting entrepreneurs with researchers and balancing the "competing demands of [pursuing] knowledge for its own sake and focusing on discoveries that have real potential to spawn new industries, new businesses and new jobs." Locke used the forum to ask academics for guidance on "how the Commerce Department and the Obama administration can help."

Another urgent problem is that insufficient resources are devoted to research and development "especially at the federal level," Locke said, noting that as a share of the gross domestic product, U.S. federal investment in the physical sciences and engineering research "has dropped by half since 1970." Still, he touted the administration's efforts to address the problem, pointing to the $100 billion in economic stimulus funds to support "groundbreaking innovations in diverse fields."

Applications that collect information about users' whereabouts may soon face more regulatory scrutiny if Congress backs the suggestions from members of two House Energy and Commerce subcommittees, which held a hearing Wednesday on privacy risks posed by these programs. Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection Subcommittee Chairman Bobby Rush, D-Ill., said he will push legislation that would clamp down on commercial applications companies who collect users' location data.

Rules preventing wireless carriers from sharing customers' location data without their consent must also apply to location-reading application companies, said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass. The wireless regulations ensure a mobile phone is a "telecommunications device and not a tracker," Markey said, arguing that similar rules should govern applications such as global positioning systems (GPS) and mapping programs, services that connect users with nearby retailers, and social applications such as Four Square, which allow users to tell their friends where they are.

Witnesses testified on the benefits of location-collecting applications, including better connecting users with services. However, concerns were raised that this information could be used in harmful ways, leading to such problems as stalking and privacy infringement. This unregulated area "represents a gap in consumer privacy protection," said Communications, Technology and the Internet Subcommittee ranking member Cliff Stearns, R-Fla.

Rush also expressed concern that location-sharing applications will allow advertisers to take advantage of customers' private information. He connected his concern to objections raised over online behavioral advertising, a controversial tactic allowing marketers to use Internet users' browsing preferences to better target ads. "Tracking a user's movements through a virtual world of business-to-consumer Web sites is bad enough," Rush said. "Location-based services, on the other hand, up the ante by making an individual's real-world location data accessible to intended and unintended recipients."

The FCC is giving the public more time to comment on proposed rules aimed at ensuring the openness of the Internet. In an order released Tuesday, the FCC has extended the comment deadline in its network neutrality proceedings until April 8.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski proposed in September that voluntary guidelines governing the Internet's openness be expanded to bar network operators from engaging in discriminatory behavior, require more disclosure about network management practices and subject violators to stepped up enforcement.

The commission had set a Jan. 14 deadline for comments and March 5 for reply comments. In its latest order, the FCC noted that numerous groups including the Motion Picture Association of America, Public Knowledge, Consumers Union and others have requested additional time to comment on the proposed rules.

The FCC said that "given the large record and the National Broadband Plan's release in March, we find that good cause exists to provide all parties a one-time extension of the reply comment deadline," although it did not give as much additional time as some of the groups had requested.

Three Google executives have been convicted by an Italian court for privacy violations for not moving quickly enough to take down an online video of students at a Turin school bullying an autistic boy, Google said Wednesday while vowing to "vigorously appeal" appeal the decision.

Senior Vice President David Drummond, Global Privacy Counsel Peter Fleischer and former Chief Financial Officer George Reyes were convicted for failing to comply with the Italian privacy code, Google Deputy General Counsel Matt Sucherman said on the firm's blog. A fourth Google employee, Arvind Desikan, was acquitted, while all four also were found innocent of criminal defamation.

Sucherman said the "video was totally reprehensible and we took it down within hours of being notified by the Italian police," adding that Google also worked with authorities to help identify the person who uploaded the video.

"We will appeal this astonishing decision because the Google employees on trial had nothing to do with the video in question," he said, adding that "We are deeply troubled by this conviction for another equally important reason. It attacks the very principles of freedom on which the Internet is built."

Judge Oscar Magi sentenced the three Google employees to a six-month suspended sentence, the Associated Press reported.

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "The Federal Communications Commission is poised to hand a big victory to the cell phone industry by allocating more airwaves for mobile broadband services," The Hill also reports.

• "FCC officials will travel to Capitol Hill Thursday to brief congressional staffers about the agency's upcoming national broadband plan following similar outreach conducted Friday with the House and Senate Commerce committees," CongressDailyAM (subscription) reports.

Google announced late Tuesday that the European Union has opened an antitrust investigation into the Internet firm. The European Commission, the EU's regulatory arm, said three firms had filed complaints against Google, according a post by Google Senior Competition Counsel Julia Holtz on the firm's public policy blog.

Google said the three firms include the British price comparison site Foundem, a French legal search engine, ejustice.fr, and Microsoft's Ciao from Bing. Foundem argues that Google's "algorithms" demote the British site in search results because it is a "vertical search engine and so a direct competitor to Google," allegations echoed by ejustice.fr, Holtz said.

She noted that Ciao was a long-time Google AdSense partner, and Google had a good relationship with the firm. After Ciao was acquired by Microsoft in 2008, Holtz said Google "started receiving complaints about our standard terms and conditions."

"While we will be providing feedback and additional information on these complaints, we are confident that our business operates in the interests of users and partners, as well as in line with European competition law," Holtz said.

"Although Microsoft hasn't been notified yet by the commission, we do believe it's natural for competition officials to look at online advertising given how important it is to the development of the Internet and the dominance of one player," Microsoft spokesman Jack Evans said in a statement. "In the meantime, we continue to cooperate with the German government's investigation into complaints brought by Ciao" and others.

A group of pro-democracy leaders representing closed societies like China, Cuba, Iran and Vietnam urged Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton Tuesday to stand behind her call for Internet freedom by funding technologies that can bypass firewalls aimed at blocking access to some Web sites and information.

One day ahead of Clinton's scheduled appearance before the Senate Appropriations State and Foreign Operations Subcommittee, the group released petitions signed by activists still in their home countries urging funding for the Free Gate proxy server designed by the Global Internet Freedom Consortium, which is made up of several groups that specialize in developing and deploying anti-censorship technologies.

At a press conference, consortium adviser Michael Horowitz, director of the Hudson Institute's Project for Civil Justice Reform, questioned why the State Department has not spent $35 million Congress has appropriated for Internet freedom efforts. "All the [consortium] needs are scalable servers and a small staff," Horowitz said. He said just $30 million of the funding could be used to help 50 million users, "which means no firewall in Iran."

David Tian, the consortium's director of technical development, said use of Free Gate in Iran boomed during the election protests in June 2009. But with limited funding available for such efforts, his group cannot support the millions of users trying to use the system to sign on to the Internet in a country that does not impose the same restrictions.

"In one week in June our base increased by seven times," Tian said. "During the protest, period we lifted the cap on users ... to help the protesters, and the user base exploded. We couldn't do that for long, so we put the cap back. If we lifted it, we could easily get as many users as we want."

Horowitz said he is concerned the State Department does not want to fund the consortium for fear of alienating Beijing. "Secretary Clinton made a big speech" on January 21 "about Internet Freedom and got criticized for it by the Chinese," Horowitz said. "Then the next day [Assistant Secretary of State] Michael Posner says there's no silver bullet to end firewalls. That day a signal got sent to China saying 'don't worry, there will be no support for the system the Chinese have spent billions trying to stop.'"

Collecting more data from broadband service providers could help the FCC play a strong role in protecting the nation from attacks waged online, James Barnett, the FCC's bureau chief for public safety and homeland security, said Tuesday.

During a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on cybersecurity, Barnett said the FCC believes that it should "secure additional data ... concerning network and service disruptions" from the nation's phone and cable companies. This information would provide "early warnings" of serious cybersecurity threats. "Companies are not going to be willing to share that information with each other," so government involvement might be critical to harnessing the data, Barnett said. "We are currently examining the best path forward to obtain this information."

The prospect of a heightened FCC role in cybersecurity raised questions about effective coordination between government agencies. Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, asked which government entity "has the full authority ... who pulls the trigger?" Barnett responded that the FCC is only a regulatory agency and has no trigger, adding that FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is "making sure we have good communications with our federal partners," including the Justice Department. He said more detailed cybersecurity recommendations will be unveiled in the agency's national broadband plan next month.

Witnesses provided recommendations on how to bolster cyber protections, with several praising a bill from Senate Commerce Chairman John (Jay) Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, that would boost the White House's power to coordinate cybersecurity policy. President Obama took a step in that direction when he appointed Howard Schmidt in December to serve as the first White House cybersecurity coordinator.

The Obama administration's open government directive is a step toward enhancing transparency and democracy, but it still has a ways to go, technology observers said Tuesday. Nextgov reported that panelists at a State of the Union for Technology event hosted by The Atlantic magazine said that while the mandate could have meaningful results, the challenge is translating innovative ideas into actual government policy.

The administration has to find inexpensive ways to innovate, federal Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra said in his opening remarks. The open government directive gives agencies a free online platform to gather feedback, and since agencies launched their individual pages earlier in February, the administration has received 7,500 comments and ideas from the public.

Chopra said the administration doesn't expect these initiatives to be perfect from Day One. "[We] launch with 'good enough,' get feedback and improve over time -- that's our philosophy," he said.

The initiative indicates a renewed push to get information out, said Daniel Castro, senior analyst at the nonprofit Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, adding that increasing transparency is where the most progress has occurred.

But other panelists said that the administration still has an uphill battle. "The problem is that it is all being done in a highly partisan, highly critical environment, so 'good enough' is attacked in a way that makes it hard to move forward," Center for Democracy and Technology President and CEO Leslie Harris said.

Panelists also questioned whether public wikis and comment periods are effective tools for innovation and agreed that feedback should relate to deliverable outcomes.

As Congress and the Obama administration struggle to implement policies that will help create more U.S. jobs, Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini announced Tuesday that his firm is spearheading a new initiative to invest $3.5 billion in U.S. companies and help create 10,500 new jobs for college graduates this year.

During a speech at the Brookings Institution, Otellini said his company's global investment arm, Intel Capital, will join with 24 other venture capital firms to invest a total of $3.5 billion in U.S.-based tech companies over the next two years. This will include $200 million in a new Intel Capital Invest in America Technology Fund, which will target growing sectors such as clean technology, information technology and biotechnology. Some of the other venture capital firms involved in the Invest in America Alliance include Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Menlo Ventures, and Walden International.

"I believe that together our commitments to seeding the ground with start-up capital will prove to be a very rewarding investment for both the companies that contribute, and for the competitiveness of the United States," Otellini said in his prepared remarks.

He also announced a commitment by Intel and 16 other tech companies to increase the number of graduates they hire in the United States. Some firms like Intel have committed to doubling the number of new graduate hires, which he said will generate 10,500 jobs from these 17 companies alone. "Collectively, this is a bet on America's next generation of innovators," Otellini said.

The firms involved in the hiring initiative include Accenture, Adobe Systems Inc., Autodesk, Broadcom Corp., CDW LLC., Cisco, Dell, eBay Inc., EMC Corp., General Electric, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Liberty Mutual Group, Marvell Semiconductor Inc., Microsoft Corp., and Yahoo.

Attorney General Eric Holder Tuesday defended privacy protections in place at the nation's state and local fusion centers, which were created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to improve information and intelligence sharing between local, state and federal authorities.

During a speech at the annual National Fusion Center Conference in New Orleans, Holder noted the importance of balancing privacy and security. "I do, and always will, oppose the argument that we must sacrifice our Constitution's safeguards to protect our national security. That's simply, and dangerously, false," he said in his prepared remarks. "Discarding the values that have made us the world's greatest nation, and its brightest beacon for justice, will not make us stronger. And it will not make us safer."

He said the fusion centers have kept this "essential truth" in mind and have been "carefully designed" to protect the privacy rights of citizens. Noting the concerns raised by privacy advocates, Holder said the centers have given law enforcement "new tools and capacities for connecting agencies, personnel and information," while also improving the nation's ability to prevent terrorist attacks and fight crime. "But, no, they do not and never will jeopardize every American's guaranteed right to privacy," he said. "The protection of our civil liberties is of critical importance - to me, to the Justice Department, and to this administration."

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Information Privacy Center, said, however, for Holder to determine whether the fusion centers are adequately protecting privacy he should be examining whether they comply with the federal Privacy Act and state and local privacy laws. "Our conclusion is that they do not comply with the clear intent of the Privacy Act," he said. "They have also diminished safeguards in place at the state level."

The new White House intellectual property enforcement coordinator has put out a request for comments seeking input on what should be included in the intellectual property enforcement strategy she is crafting.

This "joint strategy" was mandated by a law Congress passed in 2008, which also created the IP enforcement coordinator position. Victoria A. Espinel is the first person to hold the post after being confirmed by the Senate in December.

A Federal Register notice Tuesday said the strategy must include "an analysis of the threat posed by violations of intellectual property rights, including the costs to the U.S. economy resulting from such violations, and the threats to public health and safety created by infringement." In addition, the notice is seeking recommendations on ways to reduce the supply of infringing goods both in the United States and abroad and weaknesses, duplicative efforts or other impediments to enforcing IP laws.

The coordinator also is seeking input on other issues including ways to improve information sharing between agencies involved in enforcing IP protection laws; disrupting infringement networks in other countries; and strengthening efforts by other countries to protect and enforce IP rights. Comments must be submitted by March 24.

"By committing to common goals, the government will more effectively and efficiently combat intellectual property infringement," the notice said.

Senate Commerce Communications, Technology, and the Internet Subcommittee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., expressed "frustration" Tuesday that the Obama administration has not moved fast enough to build out the country's electricity infrastructure. "I don't often express frustrations publicly about things on the administration, but this is one ... I don't get it. I don't understand ... why this wasn't issue almost number one," Kerry said during a subcommittee hearing. "[If] you want to get the economy moving, you've got to build out America's grid."

Federal Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra responded by saying the administration is committed to working with Congress on policies for connecting the country's regional electricity grids but acknowledged that the White House has not unveiled its own proposal on the issue. According to Kerry, efforts to unite these systems might be essential before the country can begin saving energy through widespread use of smart grid technology.

Smart grid electricity networks increase the efficiency of electricity use by monitoring and adjusting how much power goes to users. For example, output could be optimized so certain appliances receive more power during off-peak hours. Citing the need to connect the nation's electricity infrastructure before such technology could have a major impact, Kerry said that "we don't even have a grid," much less a smart grid.

The hearing sought input from technology experts on what Congress can do to foster energy efficiency technologies, which could cut carbon outputs and slice costs, according to witnesses. Witnesses called for the federal government to act as a role model by adopting such technologies itself. They also said Congress should develop clear policies related to these tools, provide tax incentives for adoption, and offer other incentives to spur utilities to promote such technologies. "Most utilities have little incentive to sell you and me less energy," Adrian Tuck, CEO of the smart grid company Tendril Networks, said.

As part of its effort to craft a national broadband plan, the FCC released a survey Tuesday that showed one-third of Americans are not connected to high-speed broadband Internet services. The primary reasons these 93 million Americans cite for not having broadband service include affordability and a lack of digital skills needed to take advantage of the technology, the FCC found.

The FCC conducted a national random digit-dial survey of 5,005 adults in October and November 2009 to examine Americans attitudes toward broadband. It found 35 percent, 80 million adults and 13 million children over the age of five, do not have broadband connections at home.

"In the 21st century, a digital divide is an opportunity divide," FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, who unveiled the survey during a speech at the Brookings Institution, said in a statement. "To bolster American competitiveness abroad and create the jobs of the future here at home, we need to make sure that all Americans have the skills and means to fully participate in the digital economy."

A new paper Tuesday highlights what it says are the economic benefits from the investments made by broadband providers and warns against imposing regulations that might hamper such efforts. The study was conducted for Broadband for America, which includes as members major broadband and telecommunications providers such as AT&T, Comcast, Qwest, Time Warner Cable and Verizon.

"Given the massive investment that has been made to wire the U.S. economy with first-generation broadband access technologies, and given the significant investment now planned by carriers to upgrade that infrastructure to second-generation access technologies, policymakers must be careful to avoid new regulations that would make such investments unattractive," the study's authors, telecom economists Robert Crandall and Hal J. Singer, said in the paper.

The paper says that investments in "first-generation" access technologies including cable modems, DSL and 3G wireless have generated 434,100 between 2003 and 2009. "We estimate that the going-forward capital expenditures in next-generation access technologies would create approximately 509,000 jobs relative to a world without such investments so long as no new regulatory changes undermine the incentives of [broadband service providers] to continue to invest," the paper argued.

The study represents the latest salvo from the nation's largest broadband providers, which include the major telecom and cable firms, to push back against calls for the FCC to impose new regulations to ensure open access to the Internet by all content providers and to help spur broadband access and use as part of the national broadband plan being crafted by the FCC. A group of cable and telecom firms and associations sent a letter Monday to the FCC opposing what they say is a "radical" effort by some public interest groups to push the FCC to adopt rules that would impose legacy telecom regulations on broadband providers.

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "The government's plan to provide fast Internet connections to all Americans will have to include some basic instruction in Web 101, according to a new survey of Internet users and non-users," AP reports. "The Federal Communications Commission's first-ever survey on Internet usage and attitudes concludes that those who aren't connected today need to be taught how to navigate the Web, find online information that is valuable to them and avoid hazards such as Internet scams."

• "When FCC regulator Mignon Clyburn speaks today in South Carolina's capital, Columbia, it will be her fourth business trip to her home state in seven months -- a frequency that is raising questions about whether she has political aspirations in the Palmetto State or is at least showering it with attention," CongressDailyAM (subscription) reports.

• "Google Inc. representatives are scheduled to resume discussions in coming days with Chinese officials about the fate of Google's China business, said people briefed on the matter," the Wall Street Journal reports.

A coalition of most of the nation's biggest cable and telecommunications providers wrote the FCC Monday to oppose rules they say would harm the spread of broadband Internet access and turn the clock back to the days when the agency imposed stringent rules on telecommunications firms that stifled innovation.

The letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski comes as the agency weighs whether to adopt rules barring broadband providers from discriminating against content on their networks and finishes work on a national broadband plan aimed at setting goals for ensuring universal access to high-speed Internet access. The letter argues that groups such as Free Press, Public Knowledge and others are trying to re-open a battle from the late 1990s that occurred under Chairman William Kennard by urging the agency to classify "for the first time" broadband Internet access as a "telecommunications service," which would subject broadband providers to "legacy" common carrier regulations. They noted that the Kennard FCC rejected such a proposal.

The letter was signed by top executives at AT&T, Qwest, Time Warner Cable and Verizon, as well as the wireless group CTIA, the Independent Telephone and Telecommunications Alliance, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, the Telecommunications Industry Association and the U.S. Telecom Association. Notably absent from the letter was the nation's largest cable provider Comcast, which is in a battle to gain regulatory approval of its merger with NBC Universal.

The letter says the coalition favors preserving the "open" nature of the Internet. "Despite ongoing, productive efforts to reach consensus on how to best effectuate this goal, certain groups advocating an extremist form of 'net neutrality' regulation have now asked the commission to steer the debate in a radical new direction," the firms and groups wrote.

House Homeland Security Border Subcommittee Chairman Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, is looking for some high-tech help to assist in monitoring his state's border with Mexico. He has asked the Department of Homeland Security to deploy a new unmanned aircraft along the border.

"The southwest border region, specifically from El Paso to Brownsville, Texas, would benefit greatly from a remote piloted aircraft," Cuellar wrote in a letter last week to Customs and Border Protection, which is part of DHS and in charge of border security programs. "In an effort to complement the work of our brave border patrol agents, such aircraft will enhance their capabilities and will also improve intelligence gathering to help ensure their safety." He said the technology would boost "our border security and help diminish international criminal organizations' activities, having a direct impact on border violence." The agency has operated three Predator B unmanned aerial systems along the Arizona-Mexico border since 2005.

Cuellar also asked the agency to consider the need for additional Predators along the northern border, where one currently operates. According to CBP, the Predators have flown more than 1,500 flight hours in support of border security missions and contributed to the seizure of more than 15,000 pounds of marijuana and the apprehension of more than 4,000 illegal aliens.

The FTC announced Monday that it has notified 100 groups that personal information, including sensitive data about customers and employees, has been exposed on peer-to-peer file-sharing networks, making the data available to users of those networks and possibly exposing those affected to identity theft of fraud. The FTC also said it has opened investigations of other companies whose customer or employee information has been exposed on P2P networks.

"We have not determined whether your company is violating laws enforced by the
commission," according to one of the letters sent to the companies. "However, the FTC is urging you to review your security practices for personal information about your customers and employees, and, if appropriate, the practices of contractors and vendors with access to such information, to ensure that the practices are reasonable, appropriate, and in compliance with the law."

The letters were sent to both private and public organizations including schools and local governments, and the entities ranged in size from businesses with just eight employees to publicly held corporations employing tens of thousands. The FTC said it found health-related information, financial records and Social Security and driver's license numbers on the P2P sites.

While P2P technology can be used in many ways including to share software, music, video or documents, if it is not configured properly files can be made available for anyone to see, the FTC warned.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood Monday released sample state legislation to help states in crafting laws that would prohibit text messaging while driving. "Texting while driving, like talking on cell phones while driving, is an extremely dangerous and life-threatening practice," LaHood said in a statement. "This language, which we created with a variety of safety organizations, is another powerful tool in our arsenal to help the states combat this serious threat."

The sample bill would "make it unlawful to manually type or enter multiple letters, numbers, symbols or other text in a wireless communication device, or send or read data in the device, for the purpose of non-voice interpersonal communication, including texting, emailing and instant messaging" while driving a vehicle on public streets, roads or highways.

The sample bill, crafted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration with the help of safety and industry organizations, would carry a minimum fine of $75 for the first offense and would escalate for subsequent violations. "For any offense that results in a death or serious injury -the infraction should increase to a felony (criminal offense) with penalties consistent with State sentencing guidelines," the sample bill said.

It would exempt police and other emergency personnel and someone reporting a crime or emergency to law enforcement and would not affect the use of navigation devices.
Noting the high rate of texting among teens, a summary of the bill also says that states may want to consider "specific consequences" for teens caught texting while driving such as delaying when they can receive a regular license.

After Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., moved recently to remove provisions that would extend the research and development tax credit and other business tax breaks from a jobs bill, a coalition of tech and other companies is again urging lawmakers to act to renew the measures.

The Senate is expected to take up the jobs legislation this week. A draft bipartisan jobs bill unveiled two weeks ago by the leaders of the Senate Finance Committee included a one-year extension of the R&D tax credit and other business tax breaks. But Reid opted to strip them out along with other unrelated provisions.

The R&D Credit Coalition argues, however, that extending the R&D tax credit will help retain U.S. jobs. And making the credit permanent and enhancing it would spur the creation of 100,000 jobs, the group claimed. "The research and development tax credit is a jobs credit - the Senate should act quickly to revive it, strengthen it, and make it permanent," the coalition said in a statement Monday.

The coalition added that when the credit expired at the end of 2009, the cost of hiring workers for research activities in the United States increased. "More than 70 percent of the credit allowed to expire in December went to U.S. wages," said the coalition, which is made up of dozens of companies and associations. "Why leave a proven jobs credit on the table?,"

Companies have been meeting with congressional aides and pushing for -- at the very least -- an extension of the credit. "Tech companies would certainly be relieved to see an extension, but a stronger, permanent credit is really the right recipe for recovery and long-term competitiveness," TechAmerica President and CEO Phil Bond said in a statement.

The ad war over legislation that would require AM and FM radio stations to pay a fee to performers for playing their music on the air is heating up again as a coalition of record companies and musicians has launched an ad countering spots broadcasters are airing in opposition to the legislation.

The MusicFIRST coalition's ad, which will be airing on WTOP's AM and FM stations in the Washington area, claims that in opposing the legislation, broadcasters are acting like piggish corporations protecting their profits and refusing to compensate musicians for playing their music on AM and FM terrestrial radio stations. MusicFIRST also is launching a new Web site, www.piggyradio.com, Monday afternoon to detail its concerns.

"Here's another corporate conglomerate feeding at the trough," the ad begins with the sound of pigs snorting in the background. "It's big corporate radio. Yep, the same big corporate radio stations who last year pocketed billions and billions in revenues and failed to represent diverse and local communities while refusing to pay musicians for their work, the musicians we know and love. It's piggy and it's true,"

In its ads, which also are airing on WTOP and other stations, the National Association of Broadcasters also claims to be fighting big corporate interests, saying big record companies, many of them foreign owned, would be the real beneficiaries of the performance rights legislation. NAB also argues that musicians already benefit from free air play while the legislation would place a financial burden on already struggling local radio stations.

The House and Senate Judiciary committees have both passed the performance rights legislation but the leaders of those panels have urged the two sides to try to reach a compromise. While talks were held last year, no new discussions have been announced yet.

David Hatch reports in National Journal magazine this week about cable provider Comcast's efforts to sell its proposed merger with NBC Universal to federal regulators. Since the deal was announced in December, Comcast Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts has made Washington his second home, traveling to the city repeatedly to sell the transaction on Capitol Hill.

Critics of the merger, including independent networks, labor groups, small cable outlets, and watchdogs, warn of dire consequences, from higher monthly rates and fewer programming options to anti-competitive behavior and less media diversity.

Even before the FCC and the Justice Department commenced their regulatory reviews in late January, the jockeying was intense, with Comcast tapping nine outside firms in late 2009 to buttress its lobbying efforts including Blank Rome, Capitol Solutions, and the Duberstein Group, according to congressional lobbying disclosures. Comcast's message, according Executive Vice President David Cohen, is: "With this joint venture, consumers across the country will benefit from new investments in local news and other programming, as well as our commitment to continue NBC as an over-the-air broadcast service."

The merger, valued at $30 billion, would combine Comcast, the nation's largest cable and residential broadband provider and third-largest phone company, with NBC Universal, the country's fourth-biggest programming and entertainment empire.

Andrew Schwartzman, president and CEO of the Media Access Project law firm, is part of a growing chorus of critics who argue that rejecting the deal is the only way to fully protect consumers and competitors.

"I have some experience in this industry and I flat-out don't trust Comcast and NBC to operate in the best interest of consumers," Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., wrote in a February 10 fundraising memo. At a Senate hearing a week earlier, Franken, a former cast member and writer on NBC's Saturday Night Live program, gave Roberts a sobering taste of the passions unleashed by the proposed deal when he accused the CEO of having lied during a private meeting.

Critics say that there's ample justification for doubting Comcast. In early 2008, the company drew embarrassing headlines over allegations that it hired seat warmers to prevent others from attending an FCC field hearing on its Internet practices. Later that year, the FCC cracked down on Comcast for blocking customer access to a file-sharing site through which users swap movies, music, and other content.

Sensitive to the accusations and underscoring that Comcast has friends in high places,
company officials placed a few calls to prompt a supportive statement issued on behalf of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. The company also has taken other steps to repair its bad-boy image, including making financial contributions to three public-interest groups that are among its harshest critics and rolling out ultrafast Internet service in the nation's capital, starting with a predominantly lower-income African-American neighborhood. To read more, click here. (Subscription required)

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "With the March 17 congressional deadline for the FCC's national broadband plan drawing near, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski will unveil survey results about consumer usage of high-speed Internet service during a Tuesday appearance at the Brookings Institution," CongressDailyAM (subscription) reports.

• "US analysts believe they have identified the Chinese author of the critical programming code used in the alleged state-sponsored hacking attacks on Google and other western companies, making it far harder for the Chinese government to deny involvement," the Financial Times reports.

• "A Chinese university thought to be at the center of last month's cyberattack on Google is denying any involvement in the scheme," The Hill reports. "Representatives from Shanghai Jiaotong University this weekend described those reports to Xinhua, China's state-run news agency, as 'baseless allegations which may harm the university's reputation.'"

A coalition of consumer advocates, labor interests and video service providers are urging Comcast President and CEO Brian Roberts to drop litigation that seeks to overturn an FCC regulation he has pledged to follow even if his company prevails in court. Comcast joined a challenge by Cablevision Systems Corp. of a program access requirement designed to ensure that programming owned by cable operators is shared with competing cable and satellite TV providers.

In the wake of the Comcast-NBC Universal merger announcement in December, Roberts has vowed to abide by the requirement even if the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia strikes it down -- a promise critics say is insufficient. "The fact that Comcast has not withdrawn from the litigation raises questions about whether your company will follow through on this commitment," the coalition wrote in a letter Friday to Roberts. "Your assurances are undercut by the fact that your company has a history of opposing the program access rules," they wrote.

In a statement, Comcast Executive Dirctor of Communications and Government Affairs Sena Fitzmaurice said the groups are "confused." Comcast only challenged "the FCC's extension of the rule that prohibits cable companies from entering into exclusive contracts that better enable them to compete with satellite companies who have exclusive content like [DirecTV's] NFL Sunday Ticket." She added that Comcast did not "challenge the rule that ensures that cable-affiliated programmers must charge fair and non-discriminatory rates to competing cable, satellite and phone companies in that case -- we do and will abide by those rules."

Fitzmaurice also noted that as part of the merger review, "Comcast has stated our willingness to discuss with the FCC making the program access rules binding on us even if they were to be overturned by the courts."

The House Judiciary Committee will get its turn to examine Comcast's proposed acquisition of NBC Universal when the panel hosts a hearing Thursday on competition in the media and entertainment distribution market.

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., indicated last month that he would be holding a hearing on the deal, which was announced in December. A witness list has not been released yet. The Senate Judiciary Committee and a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee held hearings earlier this month on the merger.

"It is clear to me that any merger of this magnitude should be reviewed carefully," Conyers said in a Jan. 28 statement. "Nonetheless, Comcast's commitment to diverse programming and maintaining the journalistic independence of NBCU is encouraging. ... However, as the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division considers the competitive impact of this proposed merger, I will be looking for additional guarantees to protect competition and consumers."

Meanwhile, the rest of Congress returns Monday for their first full week of action since the first of two major snowstorms hit the Washington area on Feb. 6.

Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina welcomed Sen. Barbara Boxer's formal entrance Thursday into the race for California's U.S. Senate seat by re-launching a Web site "detailing the many failures" of the Democratic incumbent.

Fiorina, who must first secure the Republican Senate nomination before she can take on Boxer, has made quite a splash with her Web offerings in the race. Fiorina's Web ad released earlier this month featuring demon-eyed sheep while describing her primary opponent former GOP Rep. Tom Campbell as a "fiscal conservative in name only," or FCINO, drew hoots and howls across the political spectrum.

Fiorina's "Call Me Barbara" Web site features a video of Boxer chastising Brig. Gen. Michael Walsh at a Senate hearing last summer for addressing her as "ma'am" instead of "senator" and also includes other items claiming to show that Boxer's "arrogance hurts California."

In her re-election announcement, Boxer signaled she is ready for a tough fight and had banked nearly $8 million by the end of 2009. In addition to Campbell, Fiorina also faces state Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, who has tried to claim the mantle as the only true conservative in the race, in the June GOP primary election.

Google late Thursday announced more changes to its troubled new social networking service, Google Buzz. Since its launch last week, Buzz has been criticized for failing to adequately protect user privacy.

In a post on Google's public policy blog, Managing Policy Counsel Pablo Chavez said Google is adding Buzz to the Google Dashboard, a tool that provides information on all users' Google products and provides links to their personal settings. "For Buzz, the Dashboard is another place to see how many people you're following, how many people are following you, and information about your recent posts as well as links to change your Buzz settings," Chavez wrote.

As it is currently configured, a user of Google's Gmail service who does not want to use Buzz, must click on a link to turn off Buzz. They will then be directed to a different page where they can change their settings or click on a link allowing them to disable Buzz. While Google has made it easier to change the privacy settings on Buzz, critics such as the Electronic Privacy Information Center, say users should have to opt-in to using Buzz and not have to opt-out.

EPIC filed a complaint with the FTC earlier this week urging the agency to "require
Google to make the Buzz service fully opt-in, to stop using Gmail users' private address book contacts to compile social networking lists and to give Google users meaningful control over their personal data," the group said in a news release.

Information will continue to flow freely online 10 years from now, according to the guesses of most respondents to a Pew survey released Friday about the future of the Internet. The survey, conducted Dec. 2-Jan. 11, asked 895 people affiliated with the technology sector about their expectations for the state of the Internet in 2020.

The Internet will remain open and "most disagreements over the way information flows online will be resolved in favor of a minimum number of restrictions," 61 percent of the survey respondents said. But some indicated that their response was only "hope" rather than a concrete expectation.

Taking the opposite view, 33 percent of respondents predicted "the Internet will mostly become a technology where intermediary institutions that control the architecture and... content will be successful in gaining the right to manage information and the method by which people access it."

One respondent who channeled this skepticism was Susan Crawford, a former White House technology adviser in the Obama administration. "The locked-down future is more realistic as things stand now. We've got a very cautious government, an international movement towards greater control, and a pliant public," she wrote. "I wish this wasn't the case."

To achieve its goal of wider Internet access, the FCC Thursday took the unusual step of permitting schools to let the public use their federally-funded computer terminals for personal use, CongressDaily reported. Such public access, which the agency unanimously approved during its monthly meeting, would be permitted during after-school hours, weekends, holidays and summer breaks at each school's discretion.

But school doors only would be open to the public until June 30, 2011 unless the initiative is made permanent. The action was approved in conjunction with the FCC's upcoming national broadband plan, which will detail a strategy for achieving universal, affordable Internet access by 2020. Under the approach, schools that receive federal universal service funds that pay for education-related broadband connectivity could use the resources to assist the general population.

"These connections will be available to adults taking evening digital literacy courses, to unemployed workers looking for jobs posted online, to citizens using e-government services and for other uses that local schools believe will help their communities," FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said. To read more, click here. (Subscription required.)

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "Antitrust regulators in the U.S. and Europe cleared Microsoft Corp.'s plan to form an Internet-search alliance with Yahoo Inc., a partnership the companies hope will be a potent challenger to Google Inc.," the Wall Street Journal (subscription) reports.

The federal judge in New York hearing the case over Google's revised settlement of a class action lawsuit against its effort to create an online library said he would not issue a ruling Thursday on approving the deal, the Associated Press reported.

After the Justice Department and others raised concerns with the original settlement, Google and the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers announced a revised settlement in November. Judge Denny Chin heard arguments Thursday over whether to approve the revised settlement.

The Justice Department and opponents say the revised deal still does not address their underlying concerns with the settlement. In court Thursday, critics such as Microsoft said that it would give Google an unfair advantage, AP reported. Microsoft is part of the Open Book Alliance, which opposes the deal.

Supporters including the National Federation of the Blind told the judge the audio capabilities offered by Google Books' system would give the blind access to millions of books.

Google said in its filing with the court that competitors like Microsoft and Amazon.com "raise anxieties about Google's potential market position, but ignore their own entrenched market dominance. Anxieties about what might be best for a particular objector should not become fatal to what is undoubtedly extraordinarily good for all class members and for the general public."

Finishing work on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is one of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's top 2010 intellectual property priorities, the group said Thursday. The chamber urged the countries involved in crafting ACTA to complete an agreement that is "ambitious and comprehensive, [builds] on existing international rules and norms, and
[complements] the IP provisions of pending free trade agreements."

In a statement, the chamber also cited the need for law enforcement to do more to combat the digital theft of intellectual property. The Internet and new technologies have "fueled an explosion in IP theft, which not only poses a risk to consumer health and safety, but severely undermines sectors of our economy that have historically provided secure, high-paying jobs."

In addition, the chamber called on Congress to pass legislation that would enhance the U.S. Trade Representative's Special 301 process to give U.S. officials more tools to act against countries that do not protect U.S. intellectual property.

Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn criticized NBC Universal Executive Vice President and General Counsel Rick Cotton, who appeared at a news briefing outlining the chamber's IP agenda, for proposing that Internet service providers be allowed to filter their content for copyright violations. "The current law provides that if illegal content is found, the ISP can take it down," Sohn said in a statement. "We don't need to violate the privacy and free speech rights of every Internet user to satisfy the demands of big media."

The FCC Thursday unveiled some of the proposed goals to be included in the national broadband plan the agency is developing. During a meeting, FCC staff unveiled the provisions under consideration for inclusion in the "national purposes" section of the plan, the FCC said in a news release.

"The working recommendations presented today are intended to integrate broadband into the country's priorities and deliver to consumers high-quality healthcare, world-class education, smarter energy tools, 21st century jobs, greater public safety, more opportunities for civic engagement, and a better quality of life," the FCC said. The plan is due to Congress by March 17.

Among the goals cited in the proposal is boosting employment and economic growth. To spur more small businesses to use broadband to increase productivity, the proposal calls for launching public-private partnerships to expand efforts to provide technology training to small and disadvantaged businesses. Noting that many healthcare providers lack access to or can't afford broadband service, the plan calls for "transforming the Rural Health Care Program to subsidize both ongoing costs and network deployment, while expanding the definition of eligible providers."

On improving education, the proposal calls for upgrading the E-rate program to improve the speeds of Internet access in elementary and secondary public schools. In addition, the proposal calls for removing regulatory barriers to online learning and increasing the supply of online learning systems and content. The plan also discusses how broadband can promote energy independence and efficiency. It calls for helping to save energy by integrating broadband "into the smart grid by promoting and improving commercial broadband networks, better coordinating and standardizing private utility networks, and enabling partnerships with public safety networks."

Other goals detailed in the proposal aim to increase public safety and homeland security, as well as enhance government performance and increase civic engagement.

"A next generation Internet supported by accessible, affordable broadband can transform education, health care, energy, government as well as enable job creation and economic growth," Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers said in a statement. "It is critical that our entire government work toward implementing a comprehensive national broadband plan to ensure U.S. competitiveness in the 21st century."

Both the Justice Department and European Commission have green-lighted a search alliance between Yahoo and Microsoft, which owns the search engine Bing, the companies said Thursday. Teaming up to better challenge search leader Google, the companies announced the partnership in July but had to wait for approval from regulators.

The companies will now turn to implementing the deal, they said. Both search engines will continue to operate, but each company will now harness strengths of the other to improve the two platforms. Harnessing its technological skill, Microsoft's Bing will provide the search results that will appear on both sites. Yahoo will sell paid search ads across both platforms, making newcomer Bing more attractive to ad buyers. The companies will continue to compete for "audience, engagement, and clicks," their statement said.

The alliance aims to chip away at the search dominance of Google, which has 65.4 percent of the U.S. search market. Bing has 11.3 percent and Yahoo has 17 percent, according to January search data from comScore. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said in a statement that regulatory approval is an "exciting milestone" and that together the companies will "promote more choice, better value and greater innovation to our customers as well as to advertisers and publishers."

In a news release, the European Commission, the European Union's regulatory arm, said its investigation of the deal "has shown that not only market participants do not expect the transaction to have any negative effects on competition or on their business, but they also expect it to increase competition in Internet search and search advertising by allowing Microsoft to become a stronger competitor to Google."

A measure that would give the FTC more power to implement new regulations tops the NetChoice list of the 10 worst pieces of legislation that "pose the greatest threat to the Internet and e-commerce." The FTC legislation is contained in a House-passed consumer financial protection bill (H.R. 4173).

The FTC language would allow the agency to make new rules using the Administrative Procedure Act, which is less burdensome than the FTC's current rulemaking authority. NetChoice, a coalition of tech trade associations and tech companies, said it is concerned the FTC would use this regulatory authority to impose an opt-in regime for online behavioral advertising. In a conference call, Netchoice Executive Director Steve DelBianco noted that FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz has said he wants to move the online ad world from opt-out to opt in. Given this, the group is worried the chairman will use the new regulatory power to implement such a regime. DelBianco said such a move would devastate revenue streams for many Web sites who now use information they collect from user's Web surfing habits to target ads to them.

Among the other items on the Watchlist for Ugly Laws, or "iAwful" list, include measures proposed in Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, Vermont, and Virginia that NetChoice says will "force out-of-state advertisers to become tax collectors just because they use in-state Web sites to publicize their products." The group also criticized proposals in Florida and Virginia that would require online retailers to collect sales taxes from customers in those states as well as measures floated in Colorado, Indiana, Wyoming and Vermont that would impose new sales taxes on digital downloads.

DelBianco said one of the major themes of this year's list is that many states are looking to the Internet to help fill budget gaps. Half of the measures on the group's list "all have to do with states trying to extract more tax revenue for things people do online," Delbianco said. "It's a disappointment."

The FTC announced Thursday that it has reached a settlement with Ticketmaster over allegations that it used "bait and switch" tactics to steer customers seeking tickets to rocker Bruce Springsteen's concerts to Ticketmaster's ticket reseller, TicketsNow. Consumers complained that they ended up paying much more for Springsteen tickets through TicketsNow or bought tickets that they never received.

The FTC said its investigation found that customers who went to Ticketmaster.com to buy Springsteen tickets last year and found there were none left were steered, often without their knowledge, to TicketsNow. The agency also found that Ticketmaster had used the same tactic for other events as well. In a conference call, FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said some customers were charged as much as four-times the face value for a Springsteen ticket from TicketsNow or bought "phantom tickets" that they never got because TicketsNow "didn't have the tickets to sell.

Leibowitz said the reseller should have disclosed that it did not have such tickets in hand. "Who in their right mind would spend $1,600 on four tickets for a show they may or may not see," he said.

As part of the settlement, those who did not receive tickets or were charged well above the face value of the tickets through TicketsNow and have yet to receive refunds will get refunds. In addition, Leibowitz said both Ticketmaster and TicketsNow have agreed to provide better disclosure to consumers informing them when they are being sent to a reseller and if tickets they are seeking might not be available. "Consumers need to know there is a risk especially if they may never get the tickets they ordered," he said.

In addition, the agency sent warning letters to 10 other major ticket resellers urging them to review their disclosure polices to ensure they are "not making any misleading statements or failing to provide material information to prospective purchasers of tickets listed on your [Web] site." Leibowitz said he hopes to use the Ticketmaster settlement to "ratchet up the rest of the industry for more adequate disclosures as well."

A music industry coalition pushing for a measure that would require AM and FM radio stations to pay performers a fee for playing their music on air is crying foul over the latest radio and TV ads being aired by broadcasters opposing the legislation. In a letter Thursday to members of Congress, the MusicFIRST coalition disputed claims made in the ads airing on local radio and TV stations.

In the broadcasters' radio ad, which can be heard on Washington-area stations such as WTOP, the announcer accuses the music industry of pushing for a new tax "on every song played on the radio," money that would go to giant record companies "most of which are in foreign countries." The ad claims the measure will "bankrupt local radio stations." It also warns that, "like a lot of bad ideas, it will happen unless we tell our members of Congress to stop it."

In their letter, MusicFIRST said while they are not surprised that broadcasters are using the airwaves to oppose the legislation, "What is unique this time, however, is the volume and astonishing distortion of the broadcaster media campaign." The letter rebuts the claims in the ad including broadcasters description of the proposed fee as a tax, saying "to call a payment from one private party for the use of the property of another private party a 'tax' is ludicrous." The coalition also rejected broadcasters' claim that the fees would go to foreign-owned record companies. The letter noted that the fees would be split evenly between performers and copyright owners.

The performance rights legislation has been approved by the House and Senate Judiciary committees. The leaders of those panels have urged the two sides to try to reach a compromise. Music industry and broadcasting representatives met for congressional-sponsored talks late last year but no new meeting has been set. MusicFIRST reiterated its willingness to continue the negotiations but also urged lawmakers to support the bill and reject a resolution opposing the performance rights bill.

National Association of Broadcasters spokesman Dennis Wharton said his group stands by the "accuracy of these ads 100 percent. This is a desperate effort by [the Recording Industry Association of America] to divert attention from two undeniable facts: Passage of the performance tax would kill thousands of jobs in the U.S., and divert hundreds of millions of dollars from American radio stations to foreign record labels based in Tokyo, Paris and London."

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "A key software system for the 2010 Census is behind schedule and full of defects, and it will have to be scaled back to ensure an accurate count of the U.S. population, according to a government watchdog report," USA Today reports.

• "More than 75,000 computer systems at nearly 2,500 companies in the United States and around the world have been hacked in what appears to be one of the largest and most sophisticated attacks by cyber criminals discovered to date, according to a northern Virginia security firm," the Washington Post reports.

• "Democrats and Republicans have tapped into the Google-Apple fight to debate whether the $787B stimulus is a success or flop," The Hill reports. "The parties released Web ads on Wednesday parodying commercials that have become staples of the two competing tech giants' marketing."

A new paper, set to be released Thursday, authored by a former Clinton administration antitrust official argues that if the FTC's lawsuit against computer chip maker Intel succeeds it would set a "terrible precedent" that would discourage innovation and investment into new technologies.

The paper was prepared by Robert Litan, a former senior Justice Department antitrust official involved in the first antitrust investigation of Microsoft, for a firm that does consulting work for Intel. He said in an interview that Intel asked him to examine the FTC's proposed remedies and how the case compares with antitrust actions against AT&T and Microsoft.

In filing its lawsuit in December, the FTC claimed that Intel has "waged a systemic campaign to shut out rivals' competing microchips by cutting off their access to the marketplace." Intel also faces antitrust scrutiny from foreign governments and is appealing a record $1.5 billion antitrust fine levied last year by the European Commission.

Litan's paper argues that the FTC is using an obscure section of antitrust law, Section 5 of the FTC Act. If the FTC succeeds, the paper warned the agency will have "accomplished a radical and sweeping re-interpretation of this nation's antitrust laws, with potentially grave implications for private incentives to innovate and compete." Litan added in the interview that the FTC is pursuing an "extreme legal" theory that is backed up by "very thin" case law.

Homeland Security Department Inspector General Richard Skinner said in a report released Wednesday that the Transportation Security Administration's internal controls for preventing the release of sensitive security information are deficient and led to the improper posting of details about airport security screening operations to the Internet last year, CongressDaily reported.

The TSA failed to properly redact a public contract solicitation containing sensitive information on standard operating procedures for screening aviation passengers and bags, Skinner found. The solicitation, which was for privatizing airport screening operations in Montana, was posted to the Internet in March and remained online until Dec. 6. The sensitive information was finally removed after a TSA employee notified agency officials about the security breach.

"We determined that for the two documents in question, the redactions were not applied properly, and appropriate quality control procedures were not in place to protect against inadvertent disclosure," wrote Skinner, who made five recommendations to improve the process for redacting information.

A prominent consumer advocate warned Wednesday that an FCC proposal to bring ultrafast broadband service to 100 million households over the next decade -- at the sizzling speed of 100 megabits per second -- would leave up to 30 million households without access to the technology, CongressDaily reported. Consumer Federation of America's Mark Cooper said that while he is encouraged by the agency's goal, which he described as "bold," he worried that it falls short of the mark.

The proposal was unveiled Tuesday by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski as a key tenet of the agency's upcoming national broadband plan, which is due to Congress March 17.

Noting there will be 130 million U.S. households by 2020, Cooper urged the FCC to strive to reach 120 million households with ultrafast broadband. He said it is a realistic figure consistent with the agency's push to raise the broadband adoption rate from 65 percent to 90 percent by 2020.

Cooper spoke at a news conference on Capitol Hill in which public-interest groups urged the FCC to include five core goals in its broadband plan, including a broadband adoption rate of 90 percent -- which Genachowski endorsed Tuesday. Other goals, the groups said, should be establishing more competition beyond the cable and telecom duopolies in most markets; tougher consumer protections within 12-18 months; improved data collection standards; and new "nondiscrimination" rules ensuring that any device can be used on any network. To read more, click here. (Subscription required)

Google's revised settlement over its effort to create an online digital library will go before a federal court in New York Thursday.

After the Justice Department and others raised concerns with the original settlement, Google and the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers in November announced a revised settlement, aimed at settling a class action lawsuit filed in 2005 by authors and publishers.

Among those groups that will be urging the court to reject the revised settlement is a coalition led by the American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the University of California-Berkeley's Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic, which are representing two dozen authors and publishers. They argue that the revised settlement fails to include critical privacy and speech protections for readers and writers related to the collection and potential disclosure of personally identifying information about users who browse and read materials online at Google Book Search.

"The lack of privacy protections in the current settlement will deter readers and thereby harm their expressive and financial interests in sustaining and building a readership that browses, reviews, and purchases their works," they wrote in their brief to the court.

The Open Book Alliance, which includes writers, libraries and Google competitors such as Amazon.com, Microsoft and Yahoo, also say the deal should be rejected. In addition, the Justice Department said the revised settlement fails to address the underlying concerns it had with the original settlement, which include issues with class certification, copyright and antitrust.

In a filing last week, Google defended the settlement from such critics, saying "the Department of Justice and the other objectors have failed to articulate a meaningful principle on which the court could reject the [settlement]. That [it] contains forward-looking elements or that it represents in some sense a 'deal' between the parties, provides no basis for the Court to reject it."

The online safety nonprofit group Enough is Enough Wednesday announced a new Internet safety campaign and Web site aimed at helping parents, educators and others protect children from predators and inappropriate content on all Internet-enabled devices.

During a news conference, Enough is Enough President Donna Rice Hughes played excerpts from a four-part teaching DVD the group released Wednesday, which features stories and advice from Web safety experts, victims and a sexual predator. The group said its DVD, accompanying workbook, and Web site "are designed to bring world-class online safety experts directly to individuals and groups."

"Its' important to recognize that (the Internet) is a terrific tool ... but it can also be misused," Hughes said, noting that Web pornographers are very good at marketing their content even going so far as to show Disney characters engaging in sex acts.

Some of those who appeared in the group's DVD also appeared at the news conference to discuss dangers - such as sexual predators who contact kids online, pornography and cyber bullies - that children can encounter when surfing the Web on their home computers, smart phones or even Web-enabled video game players. Among those who spoke at the news conference was Alicia Kozakiewicz, who was abducted when she was 13, held for four days and tortured by a sexual predator she met on the Internet. She said she was naive and felt societal pressure to be more sexually mature, and she fell prey to the predator's "Internet grooming" techniques.

Google finds itself under fresh criticism over the privacy of its new social networking site called Buzz. The Electronic Privacy Information Center has filed a complaint with the FTC claiming that Google Buzz violates consumer protection law.

EPIC said Google should be urged to change Buzz to make it an opt-in service. The service has been criticized for using Google Gmail users address book contacts for Google Buzz social networking lists. Despite changes to Google Buzz since its launch last week, EPIC said that privacy violations remain, noting for example that users are still required to opt out of using the service.

"While email senders and recipients always have an opportunity to disclose email-related information to third parties, email service providers have a particular responsibility to safeguard the personal information that subscribers provide," EPIC argued in its complaint filed Tuesday.

In a post Sunday on Google's public policy blog, Google Managing Policy Counsel Pablo Chavez said the firm has "heard your concerns loud and clear, and we've already taken steps to address them." He noted that Google has made Google Buzz's privacy controls more "visible and useful" and said it also it would be making additional changes. These include "modifying the start-up process so that you review our suggestions for people to follow (rather than automatically following them from the get-go), and adding a Buzz tab to the Gmail settings page so that privacy controls are more easily accessible."

In a case that will likely result in a third trial, the Recording Industry Association of America filed an objection last week after a judge reduced a fine against a copyright violator in a conflict that began three years ago as the music industry's first jury trial to combat piracy.

Last month, a federal district court judge in Minnesota slashed a fine from $1.92 million to $54,000 against Jammie Thomas-Rasset, a Brainerd, Minn., mother of four who was found liable last year for infringing copyright on 24 songs using the file-sharing application Kazaa.

After she was found liable, Thomas-Rasset filed a motion to protest the size of fine, prompting the district court judge to reduce it to $54,000 last month. The plaintiff, however, was offered the option to object, as the RIAA has chosen to do. This action will prompt a new trial to determine the proper size of the fine.

"He was basically pulling the rug out from under any copyright owner," said RIAA spokeswoman Cara Duckworth of the judge's decision to slash the fine.

Key House Energy and Commerce Committee's members Tuesday sought information from two dozen local telecommunications companies as it reviews complaints of "traffic pumping schemes" involving firms that allegedly charge excessive rates for completing calls.

The committee is examining complaints from some big telecom firms that some rural carriers are charging excessive access fees by driving up call volumes by working with high-traffic Web sites such as those that may offer conference calling services or pornographic content.

In the letters to the 24 companies, Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., and Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Bart Stupak, D-Mich., say the "existing access charge regime may create incentives for incumbent local exchange providers to charge excessive rates for terminating access."

In October, the lawmakers sought information from interexchange carriers such as AT&T, Qwest, Sprint, and Verizon about whether they had ever withheld payments to the local providers over access charge disputes.

In one of the letters Tuesday to the local firms, the lawmakers said two of the large telecom carriers reported having disputes with Premiere Communications of Iowa. The lawmakers asked several questions of the firm such as who the company shares revenue with, how many lines does it serve, and how much revenue does it get from access charges associated with free chat line and conference calling services.

Security observers said Tuesday that software developers should be accountable for programming errors that enable cyberattacks, Nextgov reported.

Programming errors are behind most major security bugs and cyber crime, including recent attacks on Google, according to a new list of the top 25 tech mistakes released by the SANS Institute, a research cooperative, and MITRE Corp., a nonprofit technology organization. In addition to the latest rankings, acquisition experts announced new standards for contract language aimed at protecting software buyers from being held responsible for faulty code.

"Nearly every attack is enabled by mistakes programmers make that provide a handhold for attackers," wrote Alan Paller, director of research at SANS Institute in an e-mail. "The only way programming errors can be eradicated is by making software development organizations legally liable for the errors. And that can only be done if there is a safe harbor. The announcement on Tuesday is the foundation for the safe harbor."

The list ranks programming and design errors based on prevalence and importance. It also includes information on mitigation strategies to help developers reduce or eliminate weaknesses. To read more , click here.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski Tuesday disclosed several details about his agency's upcoming national broadband plan, including a goal of extending high-speed connectivity -- at 100 megabits per second -- to 100 million households over the next decade, CongressDaily reported.

Speaking at the annual winter meeting of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, Genachowski set a benchmark of 90 percent adoption of broadband technology by the end of 2020, up from today's rate of roughly 65 percent.

And in a nod to Google, which last week announced plans to build and test blazing fast Internet connections of one gigabit per second to serve as many as 500,000 U.S. consumers, he called for wider deployment of similar experiments. "The U.S. should lead the world in ultra-high-speed broadband test beds as fast, or faster, than anywhere in the world," Genachowski said.

The broadband plan, required by last year's economic stimulus package, originally had a Wednesday deadline for its submission to Congress, but the agency sought a one-month extension after falling behind schedule. The plan is now due March 17. To read more, click here. (Subscription required)

The Center for Democracy and Technology is working to build a coalition to push for changes to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. The 1986 law established rules for government access to, use of, disclosure of and interception of electronic communications.

"The bottom line is that it's been widely recognized that ECPA is out dated, that it does not respond to major developments like cloud computing, location based services" and other technological developments, CDT Vice President for Government Policy Jim Dempsey said.

CDT is expected to unveil the new ECPA coalition in the next few weeks. In calling for new privacy rules to help enhance user confidence in cloud computing, Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith said during a speech at the Brookings Institution last month that Microsoft supports CDT's efforts.

He noted that while ECPA "has in fact played a vital role by providing Americans with statutory privacy protection for electronic and stored communications," it was enacted before the commercialization of the Internet. "Over the past two decades, technology has moved forward and the law has become increasingly antiquated as a result," Smith said. "We now need new action by Congress to modernize the protection of privacy and fill in these legal gaps."

Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., also has voiced interest in examining changes to ECPA. He said Friday that he plans to hold a hearing on ways to update the act. "Congress must work with the Justice Department, privacy advocates and the technology industry to update and clarify the law to reflect the realities of our times," Leahy said in a statement in response to a federal appeals court hearing Friday that examined authorities' access to cell phone location data.

Intelligence experts playing a cyber war game Tuesday to test America's readiness for a nationwide hack faced a simulated crisis that crippled America's power grid - trouble that started with a cell phone virus.

With help from former CIA Director Michael Hayden, the Bipartisan Policy Institute arranged a situation room challenge where experts such as former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and former Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte found there were a limited number of existing strategies to respond to widespread cyber terrorism.

"Our hope in staging this exercise is that we can create public awareness of what the American people thinks, what the government thinks and what the private sector thinks, because they are going to have to deal with these issues," the center's spokeswoman Eileen McMenamin said.

The role-playing game took place in an alternate 2011, when hackers distribute a free phone application containing a virus, which lets them trace every key stroke including passwords and financial transactions. This leads to financial confusion and widespread abandonment of smart phones, which overloads conventional computer servers with extra traffic. On top of losses from the hacks, lack of trust in smart phone products costs the Internet consumer market $3 billion in two weeks alone.

Microsoft has hired Christina Pearson to join its Washington office as senior director for public relations, the software firm said Tuesday. Pearson most recently worked for the public relations firm Fleishman-Hillard, specializing in assisting clients in crafting public relations strategies during crisis situations such as product recalls and public health emergencies.

Before joining Fleishman-Hillard, she worked as the top spokeswoman at the Health and Human Services Department during the Bush administration. Pearson also worked for the Senate Finance Committee and for the communications firm launched by GOP operative Ed Gillespie and former Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour, who is now Mississippi's governor. "Christina's breadth of experience, across both the public and private sectors, makes her ideal for this position," Microsoft's Managing Director of U.S Government Affairs Fred Humphries said in a statement.

A new report released Tuesday by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration shows that while the nation has made progress in the number of households that now get broadband Internet service, minorities, seniors, less-educated, unemployed and low-income households still lag behind other populations.

The NTIA survey, conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau of more than 50,000 households, found that 64 percent of U.S. households have broadband access compared to 51 percent in October 2007. But despite this growth, there is a rural-urban divide with nearly two-thirds of urban households reporting accessing broadband service at home compared with 54 percent of rural households. These figures have improved since 2007 when 54 percent of urban households and 39 percent of rural households had broadband.

The survey also found big income disparities in broadband adoption with 89 percent of those making $150,000 or more had broadband service at home compared with just 19 percent for those making $15,000 or less.

The two top reasons cited by all of those surveyed for not getting broadband service include a perception that they do not need such service or that it is too expensive. Rural residents, however, cited a lack of access to broadband more often than urban residents.

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "After taking steps to stem the public backlash against its social-networking service Buzz, Google Inc. is planning further updates and considering changing how it tests new Buzz features," the Wall Street Journal (subscription) reports.

• Microsoft, Intel and Nokia "have come to the world's largest mobile technology conference," in Barcelona, "with a message: they are willing to abandon tradition if it means getting another shot at the fast-growing mobile device market and blunting the advance of companies like Apple and Google," the New York Times reports.

The Senate Republican High-Tech Task Force Friday urged the White House to help push for a permanent extension and update of the research and development tax credit and to back off policies to reform the U.S. international tax system.

In a letter to President Obama, Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, chairman of the task force, and other GOP senators praised Obama for calling for a permanent extension of the R&D tax credit in his fiscal year 2011 budget plan. "However, we believe that in order to gain the full effect of the incentive and to keep the U.S. as the premiere location for research in the world, we must improve the credit as well as extend it," they wrote.

The R&D credit expired at the end of last year after the Senate failed to take up legislation that would extend it and other tax breaks for a year. Senate Finance Committee leaders included a one-year extension of the R&D credit in their jobs bill released Thursday, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he plans to push a smaller jobs bill that does not include such unrelated tax provisions. In response, Information Technology Industry Council lobbyist Ralph Hellman said, "we don't understand why they would have made the decision to strip extenders out of this package. Excluding [the R&D credit] will create more uncertainty when the economy needs this the most."

Hatch and the other GOP task force members also voiced concern with a proposal in Obama's budget plan calling for changes to a provision that allows U.S. companies to defer paying taxes on overseas profits. The senators argued that the "thrust of your proposals to reform the U.S. international tax system are driven by a misguided sense that U.S.-based firms are abusing the tax rules by effectively moving U.S. jobs and investment to foreign locations. In reality, U.S. firms compete on a global scale, and our current worldwide system of taxation often leaves our companies at a serious disadvantage to those based in other nations." Hellman echoed this concern, saying "these tax issues are front and center right now for the high tech community, and the task force letter really outlined the right policies for moving forward."

Significant privacy concerns monopolized much of the buzz surrounding Google's new social networking tool embedded in Gmail, an application called Google Buzz that the company unveiled this week. Google failed to warn Buzz users that their most-frequent e-mail contacts would be made public to other users unless they changed their privacy settings.

This realization surfaced as users were still adjusting to the new platform, which allows them to post conversations in a format resembling Twitter. Users flocked to Twitter and Facebook to air their privacy concerns after Silicon Alley Insider posted an article that became a pervasive meme on both platforms: "WARNING: Google Buzz Has A Huge Privacy Flaw."

Google responded to the backlash by making it easier for users to hide the information in question. It did not, however, make the information hidden as a default setting, as critics have insisted. Instead, users still have to take action to hide the publicly-available information about their contact lists.

Google responded to critics by emphasizing that it wanted to make Buzz easy to use, adding that its settings are easy to alter. "We thought very carefully about how to create a great experience in Google Buzz with as minimal setup as possible," Google said in a statement. "We designed our auto-following system to enable users to immediately see content from the people they email and chat with most, so when they start using Buzz, it 'just works.'"

Attorney General Eric Holder Friday announced the creation of a Justice Department intellectual property task force to better tackle domestic and international piracy and other IP crimes. "The rise in intellectual property crime in the United States and abroad threatens not only our public safety but also our economic well being," Holder said in a statement. "This Task Force will allow us to identify and implement a multi-faceted strategy with our federal, state and international partners to effectively combat this type of crime."

The task force, which will be headed by the deputy attorney general, will focus on improving coordination with state, local and international law enforcement officials and monitoring and coordinating the department's IP enforcement efforts with increased attention to the link between IP crimes and international organized crime. In addition, the task force will help formulate new policies aimed at addressing the evolving technological and legal issue surrounding IP crimes.

The department said the new task force emerged out of a White House meeting hosted by Vice President Biden in December, which included Holder and other members of the president's Cabinet as well as executives from the movie studios, record companies, book publishers and television networks. Biden said in a statement that the Obama administration "is committed to stronger and stricter enforcement of intellectual property rights, and this new task force is a step in the right direction."

Groups that represent copyright-based industries applauded the department's move. "We are grateful to Attorney General Holder for recognizing the importance of preventing the theft of creative content and enforcing laws against piracy," Motion Picture Association of America President and interim CEO Bob Pisano said in a statement. Business Software Alliance President Robert Holleyman highlighted the importance of IP enforcement, saying a 10 percent reduction in global software piracy over the next four years would "generate 600,000 new jobs and $24 billion in higher tax revenues worldwide."

But Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn urged the task force to balance consumer rights with the enforcement of IP laws, saying "it would be a mistake, and a misuse of government resources, for the department to pursue cases against non-commercial consumer activity."

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius Friday announced that her department will be awarding more than $750 million in funding from last year's economic stimulus package for two initiatives that will help doctors and hospitals in adopting electronic health records and assist states in developing platforms for the secure and private exchange of health information.

The department will provide $375 million in grant awards for 32 non-profit organizations to support the development of regional extension centers aimed at helping health professionals as they migrate to the use of electronic health records. The centers are expected to provide outreach and support services to at least 100,000 primary care providers and hospitals within two years. In a conference call with reporters, Sebelius noted that the funding will help put 3,000-4000 people on the ground working at these centers "to provide the hands-on technical support that we think providers need to make this transition," with a particular focus on small health care providers. She said additional grant funding for these centers will be announced in March as part of the department's effort to create a national network to assist providers in the use of health IT.

Sebelius said $386 million also will go to 40 states and others to facilitate the exchange of health information at the state level and ensure the data is secure and patient privacy is protected. "Privacy is the top priority," she said. "Patients need to be confident that health records are kept private."

When pressed on what steps the department is taking to ensure such data is protected, HHS Health IT Coordinator David Blumenthal said his office is taking several steps. He noted that the economic stimulus package included language increasing fines for breaches of health data. He added that his office also is examining new ways of using encryption and has been working with the White House cybersecurity coordinator on the issue. In addition, HHS will soon be appointing a chief privacy officer, who will be "an important source of expertise" on privacy.

Broadcasters could face tighter FCC rules on how they price candidate ad spots under campaign finance legislation unveiled Thursday by Senate Rules Committee Chairman Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Their bills, to be introduced in both chambers after the recess, aim to mitigate potential fallout from the Supreme Court's decision last month in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, which allowed corporations to make independent expenditures to support or oppose candidates in elections. Many predict the ruling will result in heightened corporate spending on election ads.

The Democrats' proposal addresses that possibility by helping candidates and political parties gain access to the airwaves. The legislation would force broadcasters to sell ads to candidates, political party and political party committees at the lowest market rate in instances when a corporation buys ads supporting or opposing the candidate. The proposal would benefit candidates by granting campaigns the cheap rates corporations receive when they buy ads in bulk. It also aims to ensure candidates can afford airtime if ad prices rise due to heightened corporate spending.

Twitter, Facebook and other types of social media are increasingly becoming important tools for Washington's lobbying community. In a discussion on National Journal's lobbying blog, several lobbyists this week discussed how they have come to rely on these tools to advance causes for their clients.

Pat Cleary, Fleishman-Hillard's senior vice president of digital public affairs, said his firm has embraced social media for all its lobbying and advocacy campaigns. "Twitter has quietly emerged as a powerful grassroots tool," Cleary said. His firm first used it in a campaign for a coalition called FixHousingFirst, which was pushing for a tax credit for all new home buyers. "It turned out to be such a huge success," he said.

Shawn Bullard, president of the lobbying firm Duetto Group, touted the rise and importance of texting as a tool for fundraising and grass-roots organizing. While much has been made of the funds raised for Haitian earthquake victims through texting, Bullard also pointed to the recent success that Republican candidates such as Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell have had in asking supporters to "text GOBOB to 46462 to volunteer, work phone banks, but most importantly to vote."

While social media is an important component of any campaign, Connie Partoyan, executive vice president of the public relations firm Direct Impact, said "it should be in addition to and not at the expense of other key parts of the campaign (advertising, research, message development, grassroots, etc). Social media is just another avenue to get your message out and mobilize people who are important to your effort."

Critics of Google's effort to create an online digital library say its latest proposals to address concerns with the project are "cosmetic" and do little to address the deal's underlying problems. In a federal court filing Thursday, Google defended its revised settlement with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers and urged its approval despite continued concerns about the deal from the Justice Department.

The revised settlement "should be approved because it complies with the letter of the relevant laws and advances their purposes beyond measure," Google said in its filing. "The benefits of approval are bounded only by the limits of human creativity and imagination. The costs of disapproval are equally large."

In a filing last week, the Justice Department said the changes in the revised settlement "do not fully resolve the United States' concerns," which include issues with class certification, copyright and antitrust. A court hearing on the revised settlement is set for Feb. 18.

"The arguments [Google] now offers to defend the amended settlement are the same arguments that have been rejected by the Department of Justice - twice," the Open Book Alliance, which includes Google rivals such as Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo, said in a statement. "Despite the spin from Google's attorneys, the amended settlement will still offer the search and online advertising giant exclusive access to books it has illegally scanned to the detriment of consumers, authors and competition."

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "While much of the rest of the world frets about Chinese cyberspying abroad, China is increasingly alarmed about the threat that the Internet poses to its security and political stability," the New York Times reports.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has elected to push a scaled-back jobs bill, stripping out a one-year extension of the research and development tax credit and other tax breaks included in the draft measure unveiled earlier Thursday by Senate Finance Committee Leaders, CongressDaily reported.

The draft jobs bill released Thursday morning by Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Finance ranking member Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, included a one-year extension of the research and development tax credit, retroactive to Dec. 31, 2009, when it expired.

Reid's decision to strip the R&D credit and other provisions is unlikely to sit well with tech industry groups. The groups have been calling on Congress to update the credit and make it permanent -- or at the very least extend it. TechAmerica voiced disappointment that the Senate Finance measure only included a one-year extension of the credit. TechAmerica and other groups say a permanent extension of the credit would give companies the certainty they need to invest in long-term research projects in the United States.

Legislation to renew the satellite television law governing the transmission of broadcast signals via DirecTV and the Dish Network just can't cut a break. After the Senate Finance Committee Thursday morning released a draft of its massive jobs bill containing provisions to renew the law for another five years -- until Dec. 31, 2014 -- the section was stripped out this afternoon, along with several other tangential riders.

A spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said in an e-mail that the cuts were made to make the underlying jobs legislation "more targeted" so it can move more quickly. The law was set to expire Dec. 31 before receiving a last-minute, two-month extension until Feb. 28.

Even though Congress spent most of 2009 on the highly technical and controversial satellite legislation, reauthorization efforts collapsed in December, forcing the temporary fix. The spokeswoman noted that alternatives are now being explored for moving the satellite measure before the current law expires.

A new report says that President Obama's budget request focuses on ways to cut information technology costs through consolidation and modernization efforts that will increase efficiency, Government Executive reported Thursday. The report was released by the IT research firm Government Insights.

"The presidential budget is a good gauge into where the federal government spending priorities are headed and which programs are favored," the report stated. "However, throw in the volatile nature of the current public mood and the pressure on a Congress up for election, and this could be a more interesting year than usual."

The president's fiscal year 2011 budget submitted to Congress last week includes $79.4 billion in IT spending across all agencies, a slight decrease from the $80.8 billion budget in fiscal 2010. The proposed budget is a 1.2 percent increase from the White House's fiscal 2010 IT budget request of $78.4 million.

According to the report, the fiscal 2011 budget request represents 7,463 IT programs and investments, many of which seek to decrease infrastructure costs. "Overall, the federal government clearly is spending money to save money for the long term, with many current spending plans targeted at system consolidation and other solutions that will allow agencies to reduce long-term costs, machine costs," the report stated. To read more, click here.

A new study released Thursday, commissioned by Public Knowledge and five competitors to the incumbent communications companies, argues that decreased regulation of these dominant telecom players has led to less investment and competition.

The study, conducted by the economics firm Economics and Technology, found "'the "competition-friendly' regulatory policies in effect during the five years immediately following enactment of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 spurred incumbents and competitors alike to invest or to expand their investments in telecommunications facilities." These policies allowed competitors to lease the incumbents' local transmission facilities at "reasonable prices." However, investment and competition faltered after the FCC backed away from some of these policies, the study argued.

"Decreased regulation has not yielded increased investments by" the incumbent telecom companies or their competitors, the report said. "By returning to policies that ensured that (incumbent carriers) wholesale access facilities are ubiquitously available and fairly priced, the FCC has the opportunity to set in motion a new era of innovation, investment and job growth in the telecommunications industry." The study added that such policies would be particularly beneficial to promoting the availability and adoption of broadband Internet access.

Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn said the "FCC should do everything it can do in the National Broadband Plan to restore that competition." Public Knowledge along with Cebyond, Covad Communications, Integra Telecom, Paetec Holdings and tw telecom are expected to submit the study to the FCC next week.

Scott Cleland, chairman of NetCompetition.org, which includes as members dominant telecom firms such as Quest and Verizon, disputed the study's claims. "If a business person effectively is banned from some businesses, must ask and wait permission from the FCC to enter other new businesses, and that business can not use its property in a lawful manner in the way that would optimize its investment, why on the margin would that regulation not discourage additional investment," he said in an e-mail response.

A federal appeals court in Pennsylvania is scheduled to hear arguments Friday over whether the federal government has the right to obtain information about the location of an individual's cell phone without showing probable cause that the information would reveal evidence of a crime.

A magistrate judge denied the government's November 2007 request and a district court upheld that decision in September 2008. The government appealed that decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia.

The American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Democracy and Technology filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the court urging that the district court's decision be upheld. They argued that district courts must require the government to show probable cause before permitting the government to obtain information about the location of a cell phone.

"Congress set a sliding scale for access to information covered by the [Stored Communications Act] and thus provided a statutory 'safety-valve' to judges faced with requests for information that is or may be protected by the Fourth Amendment, allowing them to avoid issuing an order that may violate the Fourth Amendment or call the statute's constitutionality into question," the brief argued.

As expected, the Senate Finance Committee's draft jobs bill released Thursday includes language that would provide a one-year extension of the research and development tax credit, retroactive to Dec. 31, 2009, when it expired. The measure also would provide an extension of satellite television licensing provisions that expire on Feb. 28.

Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Finance ranking member Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said in a joint statement that "action on the expired provisions is long overdue. Timely action on incentives for economic activity and job creation also is needed."

The R&D tax credit and other business tax breaks expired at the end of 2009 when the Senate failed to take up legislation extending those provisions, which the House passed. The issue is a key priority for technology and other companies that do research in the United States. Tech groups have been urging lawmakers to make the R&D credit permanent and update it to keep pace with research incentives offered by other countries.

TechAmerica spokesman Charlie Greenwald said the legislation "is too little, too late. This is a jobs bill and the R&D credit is meant to be a jobs credit, with more than 70 percent of credit dollars going to wages. If Congress really wants to create more well-paying jobs, they must strengthen the credit and pass more than a bare minimum extension." He added that while his group is "happy" to see an extension of the credit in the bill, Congress missed another "opportunity to pass a stronger, permanent R&D credit."

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "Google said Wednesday that it would offer ultrahigh-speed Internet access in some communities in a test that could showcase the kinds of things that would be possible if the United States had faster broadband networks," the New York Times reports. The announcement came "just as federal regulators were debating new rules for the Internet and preparing a national broadband plan commissioned by Congress that could call for higher-speed networks to be available nationwide."

A day before the 31st anniversary of Iran's Islamic revolution, the country's telecommunications agency announced Wednesday that it would permanently suspend Google's e-mail services in Iran in favor of a soon-to-be launched national e-mail service, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The measure is aimed at boosting the development of Internet technology by Iranian sources and building "trust between people and the government," according to the Journal, which also said it was unclear if Google's Gmail service was still operating in Iran.

Official demonstrations marking the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution that toppled Iran's monarchy and replaced it with an Islamic republic are set to take place along with protests from pro-democracy demonstrators, which have been violently opposed by the Iranian government.

The U.S. Congress passed legislation last year as part of the 2010 defense authorization act that authorized funding for the development of technologies aimed at helping the Iranian people evade electronic censorship and monitoring.

Even though much of Washington is shut down by a second major snow storm in a week, Google's announcement Wednesday that it plans to test an ultrafast broadband network, via demonstration projects in a small number of U.S. communities, has sparked a flurry of responses from various groups.

Some groups are encouraging other broadband operators to follow Google's lead in promising to open the network to multiple providers. "I hope this project will encourage other providers to recognize the value of opening up their networks, especially where doing so would bring broadband to unserved or underserved communities," Media Access Project President Andrew Schwartzman said in a statement. Computer and Communications Industry Association President Ed Black said Google's proposed network "demonstrates that investment in bringing the Internet to more people does not require compromising the Internet's historic commitment to freedom and openness." Google is a member of CCIA.

Saying his group "looks forward" to learning more about Google's project, National Cable and Telecommunications Association spokesman Brian Dietz noted that cable providers already have spent $161 billion over the past 13 years to build broadband infrastructure nationwide that reaches 92 percent of U.S. homes. "We will continue to invest billions more to continually improve the speed and performance of our networks and provide tens of millions of consumers with the best possible broadband experience," he added in a statement.

Google announced Wednesday that it plans to build several demonstration networks that would provide ultrafast broadband Internet service. In a blog post, Google product managers Minnie Ingersoll and James Kelly said the Internet firm plans to build and test ultra high-speed broadband in a "small number of trial locations" across the country.

With 1 gigabit-per-second, fiber-optic lines to the home, they say the projects will provide Internet speeds "more than 100 times faster" than what most Americans receive today from their current broadband providers. "We plan to offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people," Ingersoll and Kelly wrote. Communities interested in participating in the demonstration projects will have until March 26 to provide their responses to Google.

"Our goal is to experiment with new ways to help make Internet access better and faster for everyone," they said. Some of the aims of the project include helping to spur the development of next-generation applications, experimenting with new ways to deploy fiber networks and ensuring open access by giving users the choice of multiple service providers.

A draft being circulated this week of the jobs bill Senate Democrats are crafting includes a one-year extension of the research and development tax credit. The provision in the bill would be retroactive, covering research activities that took place after the credit expired on Dec. 31.

The credit expired after the Senate failed to act on legislation in December that would extend the R&D credit and other business tax breaks for a year. Technology industry groups have been pleading with congressional leaders for years to pass a permanent extension of the R&D tax credit, saying it would provide companies with the certainty they need to invest in long-term research projects in the United States. At the same time, they say the credit needs to be enhanced to better compete with R&D incentives offered by other countries.

"Now that Congress has once again allowed the credit to expire, more than 100,000 good paying jobs are at risk," TechAmerica President and CEO Phil Bond said last month. "It should be stronger and permanent if we are to remain competitive globally, but at a minimum, an extension has wide-spread bipartisan support."

In its proposed fiscal year 2011 budget, the Obama administration has called for making the R&D credit permanent. During a budget briefing earlier this month, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director John Holdren said a permanent extension of the credit "will give U.S. companies an important incentive to keep investing in American innovation."

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "Videogame publishers are set to release more than a dozen major titles in coming months as the companies attempt to spark demand outside the crowded holiday season and reverse an industry-wide sales slump," the Wall Street Journal reports.

The Internet Security Alliance Tuesday gave its annual cyber security vision award to the Obama administration's former acting cybersecurity chief Melissa Hathaway. Hathaway has won praise for her work in guiding the administration's 60-day review of the federal government's cyber security programs, which was released in May.

"That effort was in our opinion the most sophisticated effort to date of a government entity analyzing the uniquely 21st century problem of cybersecurity and outlining a path forward," ISA President Larry Clinton said in a statement. "It is primarily for this groundbreaking work that the Internet Security Alliance has decided to honor Melissa today." As part of the review, the administration announced it would tap a White House official to coordinate the federal government's cybersecurity efforts and in December named Howard Schmidt to the post.

Hathaway, who also served under former President George W. Bush, left the administration in August. While noting the work done in recent months, Hathaway said in a statement Tuesday that "I feel like we have lost the sense of urgency of this situation. A full-spectrum threat requires a full-spectrum response, and it requires a mobilization of all of the resources that this country can bring to bear and it requires strength, leadership and bold steps moving forward."

Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, introduced legislation Tuesday that would update the E-Rate program, which provides subsidies to schools and libraries for Internet access.

Markey's bill (H.R. 4619) would require the FCC to create three pilot programs aimed at expanding Internet access and narrowing the digital divide. The first pilot program would require the distribution of vouchers to low-income students to purchase residential broadband service. The second would use a competitive grant program to extend funding for broadband equipment and services to some community colleges and Head Start facilities that can show the need and an ability to incorporate broadband use into their educational programs. And the third pilot called for in the bill project would enable some E-Rate applicants servicing low-income students to apply for discounted services and technology for the use of e-books.

The bill also would adjust the cap on the current E-Rate program to increase with inflation and also make changes to the application process. Markey, who authored the original E-Rate legislation included in the 1996 telecommunications act, said the program has helped to boost Internet access in schools. The number of elementary and high schools with Internet access has gone from only 14 percent when the bill was enacted in 1996 to more than 95 percent today, he said.

"This critical bill will help narrow the digital divide by increasing the range of the latest telecommunication services and devices accessible to low-income students, including residential broadband services and e-books incorporated into students' classroom lessons," Markey said in a statement.

The federal government's chief technology officer unveiled a new Open Government Dashboard Tuesday aimed at providing the public with more information about the progress of agencies in complying with the Obama administration's open government initiatives.

"It makes it easy for the American people to visually track progress on the deadlines to date," Aneesh Chopra said in post on the White House blog. "The dashboard also links to each agency's Open Government Web page, where the public can find more details on the steps taken to implement the [open-government] directive."

After launching Version 1.0 of the dashboard after "just 60 days," Chopra said "the next big step" will be to evaluate each agencies' open government plans, which are due April 7th. He said after agencies meet the deadlines set out for the first 120 days of the initiative, Version 2.0 of the dashboard will "deploy a more holistic set of metrics, informed by agency [open-government] plans. Identifying the right set of metrics will help steer agencies toward high-impact efforts in the years to come."

The European Commission Tuesday urged social networking sites to improve their child safety policies. As part of Safer Internet Day, the commission released a report that found that half of European teens give out personal information on the Web and urged teens to "think before you post."

The commission, the European Union's regulatory arm, praised the steps taken by the 20 Web sites that signed on to the "Safer Social Networking Principles" proposed by the commission last year but said more needs to be done to protect teens online. In particular, the commission is urging social networking sites to make profiles of minors visible only to their friends by default.

"Last year the European Commission urged companies to act, and I am glad that many have heeded this call," EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media Viviane Reding said in a statement. "However, I expect all companies to do more. Minors' profiles need to be set to private by default and questions or abuse reports have to receive quick and appropriate responses."

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "Google Inc. is taking a swipe at Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. with a new feature that makes it easier for users of Gmail to view media and status updates shared online by their friends," the Wall Street Journal (subscription) reports.

Two weeks after the FCC sought information from wireless providers about early termination fees, Google has lowered the fee it charges customers for breaking a two-year contract for its new Nexus One mobile phone on the T-Mobile USA network, the Associated Press reported Monday.

Google has dropped its "equipment recovery fee" on the Nexus One to $150 from $350 for customers who cancel or downgrade their wireless service contracts within 120 days, while those who break the contract after that time will not have to pay any fee. However, customers will still have to pay a separate early termination fee of $200 to T-Mobile, according to the AP.

Last month, the FCC sent letters to several wireless phone providers including Google, AT&T, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless seeking information to determine whether consumers are adequately informed about early termination fees. "We're glad Google has lowered their fee as a direct response to [the] FCC inquiry," Free Press Policy Counsel M. Chris Riley said in a statement. "This is clear evidence that the wireless industry needs an active cop on the beat to look out for consumers."

After coming under criticism last month by Senate appropriators for not moving fast enough to distribute broadband funding, the Commerce Department is picking up the pace. Virginia is the latest recipient, scoring two broadband grants totaling $21.5 million, the department said Monday.

The grants, being funded from the $7.2 billion in broadband money included in last year's economic stimulus package, will help fund the construction of 575 miles of new high-speed Internet infrastructure in southern Virginia, the department said. "Building-out the broadband capacity in Southwest and Southside Virginia is a critical piece of our effort to expand economic and educational opportunities in rural parts of our state," Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said in a news release.

One grant worth $16 million, which will be enhanced by $4 million in matching funds from the applicant, will go to the Mid-Atlantic Broadband Cooperative to add 465 miles of new fiber-optic lines to an existing 800-mile fiber-optic, high-speed network. The new lines will connect 121 elementary and high schools to the existing network, allowing for new distance learning and virtual classroom opportunities, Commerce said. The other $5.5 million grant, matched by $1.4 million from the applicant, was awarded to the Virginia Tech Foundation to add 110 miles of open-access, fiber optic lines between Blacksburg, Va., and Beford City, Va., which will connect Virginia Tech University's main campus to its medical school near Roanoke, Va.

While some economists and the Obama administration say the economy is slowly on the upswing, the Great Recession is still claiming its victims -- the latest being the Supercomm trade show. The Telecommunications Industry Association and the U.S. Telecom Association announced Monday that they are canceling this year's Supercomm convention for broadband communications providers. The convention's planner, Expocomm, told the groups it would not manage Supercomm, which was set to take place this October in Chicago, "due to financial projections" for the event, TIA and USTA said in a joint news release.

Ask and they shall receive? Just two weeks ago, Democratic Sen. Jack Reed questioned National Telecommunications and Information Administration chief Lawrence Strickling about whether states with high unemployment such as Reed's home state of Rhode Island would get priority when the agency doles out broadband grants funded by the economic stimulus package enacted last year.

During the Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing on the broadband funding, Strickling indicated that one of the seven criteria the agency will use in the second round will be whether a proposed project is in an "economically depressed area." Rhode Island's unemployment rate hovered at 12.9 percent in December, the third worst in the country, according to the Providence Business Journal. The NTIA must be listening because it announced Friday that Rhode Island has been awarded a $1.2 million grant to expand broadband Internet access to 71 public libraries in the state.

"This funding comes as libraries are playing an increasingly important role in our communities by offering such assistance as help with writing resumes and searching and applying for jobs online," Reed said in a statement issued by NTIA. Strickling also noted the importance of Internet access to job seekers, adding that the broadband stimulus grant will "open up more opportunities for Rhode Islanders to participate in distance learning, online training and other online applications."

At the same hearing, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke told the subcommittee that he expects every state will receive at least one broadband grant, as stipulated by the economic stimulus package legislation. NTIA also announced Friday a $5.9 million grant to expand broadband access at South Carolina technical colleges. The grant will expand broadband capacity at 51 public computer centers and "create 19 new computer labs at the South Carolina Technical College System's 16 member colleges."

Following two congressional hearings Thursday on Comcast's proposed acquisition of NBC Universal, Comcast Executive Vice President David L. Cohen said in a blog post Friday that "we feel that we took an important step forward" in the firms' efforts to gain approval of their deal from federal regulators. In his blog post, Cohen offered a point-by-point recap of the hearings, saying that "we think that Brian [Roberts] and Jeff [Zucker] were able to articulate why this transaction is pro-consumer and strongly in the public interest."

The House Energy and Commerce Communications Subcommittee held a morning hearing on the Comcast-NBC deal, while the Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee held an afternoon session examining the proposed merger. Comcast Chairman CEO Brian Roberts and NBC Universal President and CEO Jeff Zucker appeared at both hearings.

During the House hearing, lawmakers appeared generally split along party lines over the proposed union of Comcast, the nation's largest video service provider, and NBC Universal, the country's fourth-largest entertainment company, CongressDaily reported. Despite this, several Republicans called for approval, while the worst thing Democrats could say was that the transaction should be closely scrutinized and heavily conditioned.

At the Senate Hearing, Zucker and Roberts received a tongue-lashing over the consequences of their proposed merger from Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., who worked as a writer and performer in years past for NBC's "Saturday Night Live" show. Franken questioned whether the companies would live up to the public-interest commitments they've made to federal regulators to win approval of the merger, according to CongressDaily.

In his recap of the hearings, Harold Feld of Public Knowledge claimed Zucker had "told a little fib" when he told House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., that the management of the free, online programming site Hulu, owned partially by NBC, decided to block access last year to users of the online site Boxee because it was illegally taking Hulu content. Feld argued in a blog post that Zucker acknowledged in a May news interview that he had a hand in Hulu's decision because he was concerned about NBC content being streamed via Hulu to television sets.

Google and the groups that have agreed to a settlement over the Internet' firms online digital library project managed to find a silver lining even though the Justice Department said Thursday that the settlement still has significant problems.

"The Department of Justice's filing recognizes the progress made with the revised settlement, and it once again reinforces the value the agreement can provide in unlocking access to millions of books in the U.S.," according to a joint statement from Google and the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers. They added that if the settlement is approved, it will "significantly expand online access to works through Google Books, while giving authors and publishers new ways to distribute their works."

Justice, which filed comments with the federal court hearing litigation over the Google books project, said in a statement that the proposed revised settlement "eliminates certain open-ended provisions that would have allowed Google to engage in certain unspecified future uses, appoints a fiduciary to protect rights holders of unclaimed works, reduces the number of foreign works in the settlement class, and eliminates the most-favored nation provision that would have guaranteed Google optimal license terms into the future." Despite this, the department said the "changes do not fully resolve the United States' concerns," which include issues with class certification, copyright and antitrust.

David Balto, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, came to Google's defense, saying in a statement issued by Google that the Justice Department "is simply wrong on the ability of a class action settlement to address forward-looking business arrangements." Balto added that the department also erred in pointing to a "supposed competitive advantage the settlement confers on Google. The DOJ's view is clouded by taking a microscopic and static view of an incredibly dynamic marketplace."

The Justice Department announced late Thursday that it still has problems with a proposed settlement between the publishing industry and Google over the firm's plans for developing a global online library, CongressDaily reported. In a filing with the U.S. District Court in New York, the department said there are issues of class certification, copyright and antitrust" that remain in an amended settlement worked out by the parties.

The department said in its filing that "the amended settlement agreement suffers from the same core problem as the original agreement: It is an attempt to use the class action mechanism to implement forward-looking business arrangements that go far beyond the dispute before the court in this litigation."

The proposed agreement, between Google and the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, would settle a class action lawsuit filed in 2005 by authors and publishers who fear Google would infringe on their copyrights by making books available online. The parties proposed a settlement in September, but the Justice Department recommended that the court reject it. Google filed an amended settlement in November. The court has scheduled a Feb. 18 hearing on the revised settlement.

In a statement, the Open Book Alliance, which opposes the settlement, applauded the Justice Department's filing saying, it will "help to preserve competition, promote innovation and protect the public interest. The Department of Justice has made it crystal clear that the proposal before the court is overreaching and cannot be approved." The alliance members include Amazon.com, Microsoft and Yahoo, as well as some library, writer and publishing groups. John Simpson with Consumer Watchdog also praised the department in a statement for "standing firm in opposing this private deal that unfairly benefits the narrow agenda of one company" and predicted the court will reject it.

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "The chief executives of NBC Universal and Comcast received a tongue-lashing Thursday from a former NBC comedian-turned-senator who lectured them about the consequences of their proposed merger," CongressDailyAM (subscription) reports. Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., "questioned during a hearing whether the companies would live up to the public-interest commitments they've made to federal regulators to win approval of the megamerger."

• "Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, addressing the worries of department employees whose personal information was released on the Internet, told them Thursday, 'These failures are simply unacceptable,'" the Washington Post reports.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was in town Thursday for a lunch meeting with President Obama and other CEOs to discuss ways to get the economy back on track. "Microsoft has always believed that the technology sector plays an integral role in job creation and appreciates White House efforts to seek ways for both the private and public sectors to work together to restart the American economy," Fred Humphries, Microsoft's managing director of U.S. government affairs, said in a statement.

Ballmer appears to have made the most of his Washington visit. He also met with a group of about 15 House Republicans including Washington Rep. Dave Reichert, whose Seattle-area district includes many Microsoft employees. Reichert, a member of the House Ways and Means Trade subcommittee, said in an interview that Ballmer talked about the importance of free trade and for Congress to approve pending trade deals. In addition, Reichert said Ballmer discussed his concern with a White House proposal to reform rules that allow U.S. firms to deduct the costs of their overseas operations and defer paying taxes on those overseas profits until the revenue is brought back to the United States. Ballmer indicated that changes to this tax provision could cost lots of jobs, Reichert said.

Reichert said Ballmer also discussed the flap involving Google and China. After revealing last month that it was the victim of cyber attack originating from China, Google said it would stop censoring its search results for users in China. Ballmer indicated his firm is watching the issue but was not asked whether his firm would follow Google's lead, Reichert said. Ballmer did say that Microsoft is concerned about the protection of its intellectual property in China. Reichert noted that Ballmer said Microsoft could make 10 times the revenue as it does now if China would, at a minimum, follow the lead of another Asian country, Indonesia, in protecting intellectual property. China has been criticized for its lax protection of intellectual property.

The Office of Science and Technology Policy Thursday said a new service being launched by a coalition of mobile phone providers, health professionals, and federal, state and local agencies will allow pregnant women and new mothers to receive free health information updates to their mobile phones.

Women can sign up for the text4baby service by texting to 511411 (or BEBE for Spanish). They will receive three free SMS text messages each week timed to their due date or baby's date of birth that will focus on such issues as nutrition, seasonal flu prevention and treatment, mental health issues, risks of tobacco use, oral health, immunization schedules and safe sleep. The service also will provide information on public clinics and support services for prenatal and infant care.

"Text4baby represents an extraordinary opportunity to expand the way we use our phones, to demonstrate the potential of mobile health technology, and make a real difference for moms and babies across the country," federal Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra, who announced the new service at a health technology conference, said in a statement.

The National Science Foundation and Microsoft announced a new partnership Thursday that will provide NSF funded researchers with free access to Microsoft's Windows Azure cloud computing services. Jeannette Wing, assistant director for the NSF Computer and Information Science directorate, said the agency would be providing $5 million in grants for research projects that would use Azure services, which would be available for three years.

NSF said the partnership will help broaden research capabilities, foster collaborative research communities, and accelerate scientific discovery. Cloud computing, which involves accessing servers and storage via the Internet for computational and other purposes requiring more power, gives the "allusion of unlimited resources," Wing said in a Web news conference. She noted that cloud computing is "particularly suited for analyzing massive amounts of data."

Microsoft will make a research team available to help researchers use the cloud technology. In addition to projects aimed at "advancing our understanding of cloud computing," Wing said NSF is hoping computer scientists with expertise on how to leverage cloud computing will collaborate with other scientists on proposed projects. "I think the science community (particularly physicists and biologists) ... are very interested in using this but may not know how. This is exactly the kind of challenge I'm posing to the broad scientific community," she said.

As expected, the House Thursday overwhelmingly passed legislation that would authorize cybersecurity research funding, call for the creation of international cybersecurity standards and aims to improve coordination of the federal government's cybersecurity research initiatives.

"The Internet does not stop at our borders; the consequences of poor cybersecurity measures can greatly impact our national security and economy," House Science and Technology Committee Chairman Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., said in a statement. After beginning work Wednesday on the Cybersecurity Enhancement Act, lawmakers passed the bill Thursday on a 422 to 5.

The bill, introduced by Rep. Daniel Lipinski, D-Ill., would increase the role of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in developing recommendations for international cybersecurity standards; would authorize $395 million over five years for cybersecurity research at the National Science Foundation; and would require federal agencies involved in cybersecurity R&D to develop a strategic plan outlining short-term and long-term research objectives.

"Amidst a growing and evolving threat landscape, this bill will help improve the security of cyberspace by ensuring federal investments in cybersecurity are better focused, more effective, and that research into innovative, transformative security technologies is fully supported," Mark Bregman, chief technology officer for Internet security provider Symantec Corporation, said in a statement.

Rep. David Wu, D-Ore., said he may sponsor a House version of the resolution the Senate passed Tuesday condemning the cyber attack against Google that originated from China. In an interview, Wu said he also may introduce binding legislation that would establish an Internet freedom institute to educate and advocate for Internet freedom.

Wu, the chairman of the Science and Technology Subcommittee on Technology and Innovation, said such an institute also would be charged with sponsoring research into technologies aimed at helping citizens bypass measures imposed by foreign countries to restrict or censor access to information. Wu introduced a resolution last June that said the United States has "grave concerns" about China's Green Dam filtering system, which blocks access to some Web sites and information for users in China.

"I feel strongly about this issue ... and want to be active for the long haul," said Wu, the first Chinese American to serve in the House. Wu said his staff has been examining where such a foundation should be housed, possibly within the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or perhaps as a stand-alone entity.

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "Comcast and NBC Universal are trying to convince lawmakers that the cable TV operator's plan to take control of the NBC media empire is in the public interest," AP reports. "The CEOs for Comcast Corp. and NBC Universal are scheduled to testify" today "at separate House and Senate subcommittee hearings."

• "The proposed union of Comcast and NBC Universal has triggered opposition from a predictably long list of public interest groups, but criticism from the cable industry and NBC's television affiliates could prove tougher for corporate brass to dismiss during congressional hearings on the merger today," CongressDailyPM (subscription) reports.

• "Under an agreement that is still being finalized, the National Security Agency would help Google analyze a major corporate espionage attack that the firm said originated in China and targeted its computer networks, according to cybersecurity experts familiar with the matter," the Washington Post reports. "The objective is to better defend Google -- and its users -- from future attack."

The House is expected to finish work Thursday on legislation that would authorize cybersecurity research and development funding and calls for the creation of cybersecurity standards. House lawmakers began work Wednesday on the Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2009, adopting several amendments before putting off votes on four other amendments and on final passage until Thursday.

The bill, introduced by Rep. Dan Lipinski, D-Ill., would give greater responsibility to the National Institute of Standards and Technology to create a list of voluntary standards for best cybersecurity practices to help prevent international cybercrime. In addition, the bill aims to improve coordination of the federal government's cybersecurity R&D efforts by requiring the agencies involved to develop a strategic plan outlining short-term and long-term research objectives. It also would authorize $395 million over five years for cybersecurity R&D at the National Science Foundation.

"NIST's long history of standards development makes it ideally suited to represent the U.S. Government in helping to develop the hardware and software protocols that underlie the Internet and communications systems," said Lipinski, chairman of the Science and Technology Committee's Research and Science Education Subcommittee. "Strong standards are one of the best ways to make sure that we don't have loopholes that can be exploited."

A Senate counterpart, proposed by Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Chairman John (Jay) Rockefeller, D-W.Va., would give the government greater power to coordinate Internet security. Lipinski said he expects his bill to "complement" pieces of Rockefeller's bill and also could be combined with other bills aimed at implementing the recommendations of the Obama administration's cybersecurity review released last year.

Business Software Alliance President Robert Holleyman said the bill "recognizes that the government can contribute significantly to improved U.S. and global cyber security by supporting and influencing the development of international cyber-security standards, which underpin the global marketplace."

Two House lawmakers wrote Attorney General Eric Holder this week to voice concern with the revised settlement between Google and the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers over Google's digital book scanning project. The two sides filed a revised settlement in November after the Justice Department and several groups raised concerns with the original settlement.

Texas Democratic Reps. Gene Green and Charles Gonzales told Holder that while they are "excited" by the expanded access to books and reading that the digitization project would provide, they are concerned that many copyright owners who have been excluded from the settlement would be harmed.

"Today, there are hundreds of thousands of authors who are not members of the Authors Guild and hundreds of publishers who are not part of the [Association of American Publishers] who would be most acutely affected by the Google Books Settlement," Green and Gonzalez wrote. "Yet their voices have been largely excluded from the process." They urged the department to ensure these authors and publishers "are not left out of this effort."

Groups representing school technology officials voiced concern Wednesday with the Obama administration's proposal to consolidate some education technology programs as part of its fiscal year 2011 budget plan, which was released Monday.

The Consortium for School Networking, the International Society for Technology in Education, and the State Educational Technology Directors Association argued that the proposal to "infuse" technology throughout other programs and zero out funding for the Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) program may hamper technology education innovations. The program, created under the No Child Left Behind elementary and secondary education law during the Bush administration, provided education funds to states for technology hardware, software and professional development.

"Congress and the president included EETT as a core provision of the current ESEA law in recognition of the importance of driving the next generation of innovations in teaching and learning, assessment and continuous improvement, and cost-efficiency in coordination with other federal, state and local school improvement strategies," the groups said in a statement. "We fear that years of investments through EETT and the E-Rate, coupled with American Recovery and Reinvestment Act investment, may be devalued or lost entirely without adequately funding EETT or a successor program."

The budget plan calls for consolidating federal education technology programs into the new Effective Teaching and Learning for a Complete Education program. The administration said the new program would provide grants to states to "strengthen the use of technology in the core academic subjects, including through the development and implementation of technology-enabled curriculum, assessments, professional development, and supporting tools and resources."

The Senate passed a bipartisan resolution Tuesday evening condemning the December cyber attack against Google and other firms that apparently originated from China. The resolution, which passed by voice vote, condemned "the far-reaching cyber attacks allegedly launched from China against Google, [and] at least 34 other companies," called on China to conduct a thorough and transparent investigation of the matter, and also reaffirmed "the centrality of freedom of expression and press freedom as cornerstones of United States foreign policy and United States efforts to promote individual rights."

In a statement following the Senate vote, Sen. Ted Kaufman, D-Del., one of the resolution's cosponsors, said, "This resolution reaffirms freedom of expression and the press as cornerstones of U.S. foreign policy, and we will continue to take measures to promote these fundamental freedoms and rights globally. Governments who use technology to silence their citizens or restrict the free flow of information should consider themselves on notice."

China has erected an electronic blocking system that restricts access in China to some Web sites and information.

When it revealed the cyber attack last month, Google said it would stop censoring its search results for users in China, a move it acknowledged may force it to leave the country. A Google spokesman said the firm did not have any comment on the Senate resolution. But he did say the firm has not implemented its plan to stop censoring Chinese search results yet. When it made its initial announcement in January, Google indicated it planned to talk with Chinese officials about the issue.

While a House companion to the Senate measure has not been introduced, Rep. David Wu, D-Ore., offered a resolution in June that expresses "grave concerns about the sweeping censorship, privacy, and cybersecurity implications of China's Green Dam filtering software, and urging U.S. high-tech companies to promote the Internet as a tool for transparency, freedom of expression, and citizen empowerment around the world."

Kaufman and senators also have been active in pushing the U.S. government to provide support for Iranians seeking to bypass government monitoring and censorship imposed by the Iranian regime. Congress passed legislation last year as part of the 2010 defense authorization act that authorized funding for the development of technologies that will help the Iranian people evade electronic censorship and monitoring.

Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin, D-Ill., wrote to 30 technology and communications companies Tuesday asking them to provide detailed descriptions of their operations and human rights practices in China, CongressDaily reported. Meanwhile, Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., announced that the Congressional-Executive Commission on China will hold a hearing Feb. 10 on Internet policies in China. Dorgan and Levin are the chairman and co-chairman, respectively, of the commission, which monitors human rights violations there.

The hearing follows last month's announcement by Google that it would stop censoring search results for users in China, a move the Internet firm said may force it to leave China altogether. Google made the move after revealing it had been the victim of a cyber attack originating from China that attempted to gain access to the e-mail accounts of human rights activists and other information.

Durbin said he is gathering information about the conduct of other big technology companies to prepare for a hearing on Google's actions. To read more, click here (subscription required).

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "NASA Administrator Charles Bolden" on Tuesday "denied that President Obama's decision to cancel the foundering Constellation program intended to take astronauts to the moon and Mars was an abandonment of America's historic leadership in manned space flight," CongressDailyPM (subscription) reports.

Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair told the Senate Intelligence Committee Tuesday that cyber attacks are a growing threat to the United States, saying in written testimony that "malicious cyber activity is occurring on an unprecedented scale with extraordinary sophistication."

During a hearing on the national intelligence community's annual threat assessment, Blair began his written testimony focusing on the threats posed by cyber attacks. Noting the growing importance of the Internet and communications infrastructure to the federal government, the economy and U.S. society, he warned that "this critical infrastructure is severely threatened."

He said Google' revelation last month that it had been the target of cyber attacks originating from China offered "a stark reminder of the importance of these cyber assets, and a wake-up call to those who have not taken this problem seriously." He noted that firms who report such incidents to federal authorities promptly, "greatly help us to understand and address the range of cyber threats that face us all."

Blair said the threats are multifaceted and come from "nation states, terrorist networks, organized criminal groups, individuals, and other cyber actors with varying combinations of access, technical sophistication and intent. Many have the capabilities to target elements of the US information infrastructure for intelligence collection, intellectual property theft, or disruption." He said addressing the problem will require a "coordinated and collaborative effort" involving the federal government, the private sector and other countries

More than 20 artists including Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong, Mary J Blige, Jackson Browne, Sheryl Crow, and the Black Eyed Peas' Will.i.am and Fergie are calling on Congress to pass legislation that would require broadcasters to pay performers a fee for playing their music on AM and FM radio stations. The artists signed a statement issued in conjunction with Sunday night's Grammy awards ceremony supporting such legislation.

"We support the Performance Rights Act because it is fair to radio and fair to artists," the statement said. "We encourage the radio industry to work with the music community and Congress to pass The Performance Rights Act.

Both the House and Senate Judiciary committees have approved performance rights legislation. But Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., have urged musicFIRST, which is representing musicians and record companies, and the National Association of Broadcasters, which opposes the legislation, to try to negotiate a compromise. Broadcasters argue that the new fees called for by the legislation would impose a financial burden on radio stations already struggling with declining ad revenues and also say artists benefit from the free air play they receive on radio stations.

Executives from Comcast and NBC Universal will be on the hot seat on both sides of the Capitol Thursday to address concerns about the potential competitive and consumer implications of their proposed merger. Comcast Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts and NBC Universal President and CEO Jeff Zucker will appear first before the House Energy and Commerce Communications, Technology, and the Internet Subcommittee for a morning hearing on the "potential impact on the media marketplace of" the deal.

Comcast, the nation's largest cable provider, announced in December that it would take a majority stake in NBC Universal, which controls the NBC broadcast network, a movie studio and cable networks such as Bravo and Syfy. Others scheduled to testify at the House hearing include the Consumer Federation of America's Mark Cooper, the Progress and Freedom Foundation's Adam Thierer, Dispatch Printing Company CEO Michael J. Fiorile, chairman of the NBC Affiliates Board, and Colleen Abdoulah, president and CEO of WOW!, an Internet, cable, and phone provider.

Across the Capitol, the Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee will be hosting an afternoon hearing focused on the Comcast-NBC merger's impact on competition and consumers. Abdoulah, Cooper, Roberts and Zucker will be testing at the Senate hearing as well as the Media Access Project's Andrew J. Schwartzman. When the merger was announced, Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman Herb Kohl, D-Wis., voiced concern, saying, "Antitrust regulators must ensure that all content providers are treated fairly on the Comcast platform, and that Comcast does not get undue advantages in gaining access to programming."

A coalition of critics, including Schwartzman, will hold a teleconference Wednesday to detail the reasons why they believe the merger should be blocked. Among the potential problems that groups such as the American Cable Association, Free Press and the Media Access Project say will emerge if Comcast and NBC are allowed to merge include increases in cable rates and "less new, diverse and independent programming."

Compete America, the industry group focused on labor immigration policies, has hired Monument Policy Group to manage Compete America's lobbying efforts in 2010. In addition, Monument Partner Jessica Herrera-Flanigan and the firm's Senior Vice President Scott Corley will serve as executive directors for Compete America, the group said Tuesday.

The bipartisan team - Herrera-Flanigan has worked for congressional Democrats while Corley has worked for Hill Republicans - will help Compete America push policy makers to enact changes to the nation's employment immigration system that would allow more foreign students and workers to remain in the United States. Specifically, the group is pushing for changes to the nation's green card system and for a market-based approach to allocating H-1B visas for skilled foreign workers.

"It is clear that for any legislative initiative to be successful, it must have bipartisan support," Compete America Co-Chairman Dejan Pavlovic, Oracle's senior director of government affairs, said in a statement.

After the special U.S. Senate election in Massachusetts last month, one company in particular won a share of the credit for Republican Scott Brown's victory.

"And the winner is...Google," declared TechPresident. The Wall Street Journal's technology blog honed in on the Brown campaign's "groundbreaking" use of Google tools. And the digital marketing news site ClickZ highlighted how Brown's team harnessed a range of Google offerings in its upset win in the race for the seat of the late Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy.

But the ubiquity of this meme is hardly an accident. Google representatives reached out to the media to highlight how their company figured into the win. This post-election media push accompanies recent measures to raise awareness about the utility of Google platforms specifically for one kind of client: political candidates. The company's elections and issue advocacy group, which formed in time for the 2008 cycle, launched a weekly blog series on digital strategy last week, is adding staff in time for this year's midterm elections, and conducts regular instructional sessions with campaigns to show how to use Google platforms. Google's offerings include search advertising, the YouTube video site, mobile outreach, and a display network that allows candidates to show their ads on sites across the Web.

But the company's efforts to attract political clients raises a question: Why would a giant like Google, whose business developments are at such a scale that they impact international relations, care about increasing its share of the meager dollars devoted to digital strategy in political campaigns?

Online campaigning, after all, remains a tiny portion of campaign expenditures. "It's still not close to what is spent on television, on radio, and direct mail," said Peter Greenberger, head of Google's elections and issue advocacy team. Online outreach comprised just 4 percent of campaign budgets in 2008, according to Karen Jagoda, president of the E-Voter Institute, which advocates for candidates to increase their online outreach.

George Washington University's Graduate School of Political Management has tapped former National Association of Broadcasters President and CEO David Rehr to work as a media commentator for the school. Rehr left the NAB last May after a rocky four-year tenure marked by a string of defeats for the group including its failure to block the merger of satellite radio providers XM Radio and Sirius. Former Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., succeeded Rehr as the NAB's new chief.

Rehr will continue to serve as an adjunct professor and as a member of the school's Council of American Politics, the university said in a news release Monday. "David brings exceptional experience with his nearly 30 years of political work and academic credentials to offer insight on national political and policy questions," Charles Cushman Jr., the graduate school's acting executive director, said. "His experience at the helm of the National Association of Broadcasters has, and will continue, to serve the GSPM well."

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "The ambitious space initiative that President Obama unveiled for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration on Monday calls for sweeping changes in mission and priorities for the 52-year-old agency," the New York Times reports.

• "Obama's proposed budget represents a 'death march' for United States space flight, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) said Monday," The Hill reports.

• "Google Inc. is preparing to launch a store selling online business software that integrates with its Web services, according to people briefed by the company," the Wall Street Journal (subscription) reports.

House Science and Technology Committee Chairman Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., praised the Obama administration's proposed fiscal year 2011 budget proposal, which would boost funding for research and development across several agencies. "Creating new technologies--especially new energy technologies--and getting them to the market is critical to maintaining our nation's competitive edge, meeting our growing need for energy, reducing carbon emissions, and establishing U.S. leadership in these emerging fields," Gordon said in a statement. "Ultimately, this is the path to grow our economy out of a deficit."

Overall, the budget plan calls for a 5.9 percent increase over fiscal 2010 funding to $66 billion for nondefense research and development activities across several agencies. "After years of declines in the last administration, the 2011 budget keeps research funding on the upward trajectory that began in 2009 and with the recovery act continued" in 2010, John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said during a news briefing Monday.

American Association of Universities President Robert M. Berdahl echoed Gordon's praise for the budget proposal, saying it "underscores the president's strong conviction that the nation's investments in the people and ideas that lead to discovery and innovation are critical to short-term economic recovery and, especially, to long-term economic prosperity."

Gordon also lauded the administration for its commitment to double funding over 10 years for the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Energy Department's Office of Science, as called for in the 2007 America Competes Act, which Gordon authored. "I am pleased to see support from the White House to keep the agencies on a path towards doubling, as was set forth in the original legislation," he said.

In addition to increasing investments in R&D, the administration called for making the research and development tax credit permanent to encourage firms to continue to conduct research in the United States. Making the credit permanent is a key priority for many tech groups. The credit expired at the end of 2009 when the Senate failed to take up legislation passed by the House that included a one-year extension of the R&D credit.

During a question-and-answer session broadcast on YouTube, President Obama Monday reiterated his support for network neutrality and promised to continue to push for a policy that would prohibit broadband providers from being able to prioritize Internet content. Among the more than 11,000 questions submitted, as of Sunday, for the YouTube interview session was one from James Earlywine of Indianapolis, who asked what the president's commitment was to "keeping the Internet open and neutral in America."

In response, Obama said, "I'm a big believer in net neutrality. I campaigned on this. I continue to be a strong supporter of it." He added that FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski shares his view that "we don't want to create a bunch of gateways that prevent somebody who doesn't have a lot of money but has a good idea from being able to start their next YouTube or their next Google on the Internet."

Genachowski proposed in September that voluntary net neutrality guidelines be expanded to bar network operators from engaging in discriminatory behavior, require more disclosure about network management practices and subject violators to stepped up enforcement.

As part of his efforts to boost job creation, President Obama's proposed fiscal year 2011 $3.8 trillion budget released Monday calls for increases in basic science research as well as education and training in an effort to help better position the nation to maintain its edge in innovation. "The budget makes critical investments that will ensure that we continue to lead the world in new fields and industries: doubling research and development funding in key physical sciences agencies; expanding broadband networks across our country; and working to promote American exports abroad," the president said in his budget message to Congress.

The president's proposed budget calls for an 8 percent increase, about $550 million, in funding for the National Science Foundation over fiscal year 2010. It would double funding to $90 million for basic research "aimed at creating a future bio-economy by enhancing our ability to design biological systems, and starting the next revolution in computing by designing new materials."

In addition, the proposed NSF budget also focuses on trying to encourage more minorities to enter scientific fields. The budget would boost NSF's science and technology workforce program by more than 14 percent to $103 million to attract undergraduates at historically black, tribal and Hispanic service colleges and universities. In addition, in partnership with the Education Department, the budget also calls for targeting at least 5 percent, or $19 million, of NSF's undergraduate and graduate fellowship, scholarship and training programs to students pursuing clean energy careers.