November 2010

The Federal Trade Commission is expected to release its long-awaited privacy report Wednesday with recommendations on how to improve consumer privacy online.

Among the potential proposals that may be included in the report is a call for the creation of a "do-not-track" list aimed at giving consumers more control over who can track them while they surf the Internet. Such a list could be modeled after the Do-Not-Call registry, which allows consumers to opt out of receiving most unwanted telemarketing calls.

The FTC does not have authority to mandate the creation of a do-not-track list and could only recommend that Congress pass legislation implementing such a proposal.

Several consumer groups have called on the agency to propose such a list as one way to address growing concerns over the rise in online behavioral advertising, which involves tracking a consumer's Web activities in order to target ads based on a consumer's preferences.

The do-not-track issue will be further examined at a hearing on Thursday before a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee.

Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., Tuesday called on the Justice Department and Federal Communications Commission to either block Comcast's merger with NBC Universal or to impose "stringent conditions" on the deal.

In a letter to all five FCC members and Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust Christine Varney, Franken cited the recent dispute between Comcast and Level 3 over a new "recurring fee" the broadband Internet backbone provider says Comcast has demanded to transmit online movies and other content to Comcast customers who request such content. The move comes after Level 3 announced a new deal earlier this month with Netflix to serve as its primary content delivery network for streaming movies over the Internet.

Franken argued that Comcast's alleged actions are "highly problematic" and could result in higher fees for Netflix customers. Comcast has countered that Level 3 has "misportrayed" the issue.

"Comcast's flagrant willingness to violate net neutrality and engage in apparently anticompetitive conduct -- in the midst of two simultaneous federal merger inquiries, no less -- trumpets the need to stop this merger, or, at a bare minimum, impose stringent conditions upon it to protect net neutrality and competition in the Internet and media marketplace," Franken said in the letter.

Franken, a former writer and performer on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" show, has voiced strong concerns about the proposed merger of the nation's biggest cable provider with NBCU, which controls a major Hollywood studio, broadcast network and several cable networks.

UPDATE: Comcast wrote the FCC Tuesday providing a lengthy rebuttal to Level 3's claims over the fee dispute.

"Despite Level 3's effort to portray its dispute with Comcast as being about an 'open Internet,' it is nothing but a good old-fashioned commercial peering dispute, the kind that Level 3 has found itself in before," Comcast Senior Vice President Joe Waz and Vice President of Legal Regulatory Affairs Lynn R. Charytan wrote. "Notwithstanding Level 3's claims, this is not about online video, it is not about 'paid prioritization,' it does not involve putting 'toll booths' on the Internet, and it is not about net neutrality. Indeed, if anything, it is Level 3 that is seeking 'non-neutral' treatment that would favor its network traffic over those of all its competitors."

Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., who sits on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, vowed Tuesday to work to overturn any net neutrality order that the FCC may vote on in December.

"This is a hysterical reaction by the FCC to a hypothetical problem," Blackburn said in a statement. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski "has little if any congressional support for net neutrality."

Blackburn said that Genachowski can expect "this folly" to be overturned next year. In order to make that happen, Blackburn said she will reintroduce her bill to "pull the FCC from the policy making process on the first day of the 112th Congress."

Nearly 20 Republican members of the Energy and Commerce Committee, including the candidates vying to be chairman of the panel in the 112th Congress when the GOP takes control of the House, oppose the FCC taking any action on the issue in 2010.

"If Genachowski goes forward with this net neutrality order in December, it poisons the well for cooperation on spectrum and [universal service fund reform], issues that are ripe for bipartisan cooperation," said Howard Waltzman, a former Energy and Commerce Committee aide. "It's an indication that the FCC is not willing to work with the new Congress."

Democratic Reps. Mike Doyle of Pennsylvania and Ed Markey, D-Mass., are among those members of the committee who are expected to support any action from the FCC to protect the openness of the Internet.

Update: 4:50 pm

Add Democratic Sens. John Kerry of Massachusetts, Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and Ron Wyden of Oregon to the list of lawmakers who support Genachowski's rumored move to take action on net neutrality.

The trio of senators wrote Genachowski Tuesday urging him to "bring the Open Internet proceeding in December."

The lawmakers offered the chairman sympathy for the criticism he has received from all sides during his effort to find the appropriate role for the agency on protecting the open Internet.

"It is always easier to criticize the policy-making process than it is to make good policy," the senators wrote.

In conclusion, they urged him to move forward on his path to a "principled center."

The Federal Trade Commission Tuesday said it has reached a settlement with a firm over charges that it failed to inform parents that information it was collecting about their children would be disclosed to third-party marketers.

The FTC claimed that EchoMatrix did not adequately disclose to parents that information it collected from its Sentry software program allowing parents to monitor their children's online activities also was being shared with marketers through EchoMatrix's Pulse marketing research program. The pulse program promoted itself as allowing marketers to see "unbiased, unfiltered, anonymous" content from social media websites, blogs, forums, chats and message boards. The FTC said one source of information available to Pulse users was data from the online activity of children recorded by the Sentry software.

The FTC alleged that EchoMatrix violated federal law by failing to notify parents who subscribed to Sentry that information about their children's online activities would be shared with third-party marketers. "The only disclosure made to parents about this practice was a vague statement approximately 30 paragraphs into a multi-page end user license agreement," the FTC said in a news release.

As part of the settlement, EchoMatrix has agreed not to share or use information it has obtained from its Sentry program or any other program for purposes other than allowing registered users to access their accounts. It also requires the company to destroy information it has transferred from the Sentry program to its Pulse database.

"Companies need to make clear disclosures about how they are going to use and share personal information they collect online - even more so when that information relates to children," FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection Director David Vladeck said in a statement.

The FTC is currently reviewing its rules related to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act to see if they need to be updated to reflect changes in technology. The act requires websites to obtain parental approval before collecting information from children under 13.

Despite intense speculation that the FCC is preparing a net neutrality order for its December meeting, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski Tuesday declined to answer any questions on the subject at the agency's monthly meeting.

As members of the public filed into the commission's meeting room, Genachowski spokeswoman Jen Howard warned reporters that he wouldn't be answering questions related to net neutrality or the recent complaints filed against Comcast. Genachowski stayed true to Howard's word.

Without providing any details, Genachowski defended the process his office has conducted about the rumored net neutrality order saying he is "proud" of the way his agency has handled the issue. That statement came after one reporter noted criticism from some observers that the commission has "too cozy" a relationship with big industry evidenced by a spate of meetings between AT&T and the chairman recently.

He also declined to comment on whether the FCC will be able to carry out the national broadband plan under a Title I net neutrality order. A consensus has emerged among industry analysts and observers that the commission has backed off of an earlier plan to reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service under Title II of the Communications Act. Such a change would lend the FCC greater regulatory authority.

Genachowski may circulate a draft of the order Wednesday, according to one source familiar with the situation.

The investment firm Stifel Nicolaus said Tuesday that a dispute involving a new fee Level 3 says Comcast has imposed for transmitting online movies and other content could hamper Comcast's push to gain regulatory approval by the end of the year for its merger with NBC Universal.

Level 3, a broadband Internet backbone provider, said Monday that Comcast had informed the firm earlier this month that it would impose a "recurring fee" for transmitting online moves and other content to Comcast customers who request such content. The new fee was imposed soon after Level 3 announced it had inked a deal with Netflix to serve as its primary content delivery network for streaming movies over the Internet and also will provide storage for the Netflix library of content.

"By taking this action, Comcast is effectively putting up a toll booth at the borders of its broadband Internet access network, enabling it to unilaterally decide how much to charge for content which competes with its own cable TV and Xfinity delivered content," Level 3 Chief Legal Officer Thomas Stortz said in a statement Monday. "This action by Comcast threatens the open Internet and is a clear abuse of the dominant control that Comcast exerts in broadband access markets as the nation's largest cable provider."

Comcast Senior Vice President Joe Waz shot back with his own statement saying that Level 3 has "misportrayed" its negotiations with Comcast and has offered Level 3 the same terms as it offers the firm's content delivery network competitors. He argued that Level 3 is trying to "undercut" its competitors and get Comcast to accept a "more than a twofold increase in the amount of traffic Level 3 delivers onto Comcast's network -- for free."

Stifel Nicolaus said in a research note that it is still "sorting through the allegations and their potential fallout, but they come at a bad time for Comcast, and unless they're definitively and quickly knocked down or explained away, they could further complicate its push to receive final regulatory approval for the NBCU deal by year-end," the investment firm said.

It also noted that the controversy could have implications for the ongoing debate at the FCC about whether to approve network neutrality rules, which would bar broadband providers from discriminating against Internet content, services or applications. The controversy "raises the question of why Comcast picked this moment to impose the new charge, which if nothing else could muddy the merger review and net neutrality proceeding," Stifel Nicolaus added.

Meanwhile, public interest groups are using the controversy to pressure the FCC to block the Comcast-NBCU deal and to move forward on net neutrality rules. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee said Tuesday that it will run online ads urging the FCC to act on net neutrality and is urging supporters to sign an online petition.

"This outrageous abuse of power by Comcast comes on the very week that President Obama's FCC chairman, Julius Genachowski, will announce whether he'll fulfill Obama's promise to protect the open Internet and net neutrality -- which would prevent this type of corporate abuse," the group said in its e-mail alert to supporters.

While technology remained the largest U.S. merchandise export, high-tech exports fell 16 percent in 2009, according to a new report released Tuesday by the TechAmerica Foundation.

The report said that U.S. tech exports reached $188 billion in 2009, 18 percent of all us exports. Imports of high-tech products also fell in 2009 by 11 percent to a total of $299 billion. This reduction in imports helped improve the high-tech trade deficit, which still stands at $111 billion.

Four states, Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana and Wyoming, actually saw a growth in tech exports between 2008 and 2009. While California continues to be the top high-tech exporter, its exports also were down 16 percent to $41.3 billion. Other top tech exporting states include Texas, Florida, New York, and Massachusetts, which also saw a decline in tech exports.

The top foreign market for U.S. high-tech goods was the European Union, where U.S. exports dropped 20 percent. The four other top U.S. export markets were Mexico, where exports actually rose by 1 percent, followed by Canada, China and Japan.

The only high-tech sector that did see a slight increase in exports in 2009 was in electro-medical equipment, which rose 1 percent to $20.2 billion

"Trade is vital to every state's economy and to the U.S. high-tech industry as a whole," TechAmerica Foundation Vice President of Research and Industry Analysis Josh James said in a statement. "After several years of rising exports, the tech industry saw a 16 percent dip in 2009 largely resulting from the global economic downturn."

The European Commission said Tuesday that it has opened a formal antitrust investigation into whether Google has abused its dominant position in the online search market by favoring its own services over those offered by competitors.

The commission, the European Union's regulatory arm, said the probe was launched after receiving complaints from search service providers that their services are treated unfairly in Google's unpaid and sponsored search results, while favoring the Internet firm's own offerings.

"The Commission will investigate whether Google has abused a dominant market position in online search by allegedly lowering the ranking of unpaid search results of competing services which are specialized in providing users with specific online content such as price comparisons (so-called vertical search services) and by according preferential placement to the results of its own vertical search services in order to shut out competing services," the commission said in a statement.

It also said it would examine whether Google lowered the "quality score," one of the factors it uses in determining the price paid by Google advertisers, for sponsored links of competing search services. In addition, the investigation will examine allegations that Google requires advertising partners to agree to "exclusivity obligations" that prevent them from placing competing ads on their websites to block other competing search tools and also whether Google has imposed restrictions on the portability of online advertising campaign data to competing online advertising platforms.

Google revealed in February that three Internet firms had filed complaints against it with the commission. 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, all of which made allegations similar to those being investigated by the commission.

UPDATE: In a statement Tuesday, Google said, "Since we started Google, we have worked hard to do the right thing by our users and our industry -- ensuring that ads are always clearly marked, making it easy for users to take their data with them when they switch services and investing heavily in open source projects. But there's always going to be room for improvement, and so we'll be working with the commission to address any concerns."

Consumers Union, one of the nation's most respected consumer advocacy groups, is stepping up its opposition today to the proposed $30 billion combination of Comcast and NBC Universal with a new ad campaign calling for the deal to be blocked. The non-profit will canvass the city this week with a 10x22 foot "mobile" billboard featuring an image of a boa constrictor that resembles a TV cable and the tagline: "Don't Constrict Choice - Reject the Comcast Buyout of NBC."

If you'd like to check it out, the billboard is scheduled to be near L'Enfant Plaza at 7th St SW and Maryland Ave SW this morning at 11 am ET.

The ad campaign also features a new website, SayNoToComcastNBC.com, that provides a means for visitors to contact the FCC about the pending transaction. Both the agency and the Justice Department have entered the final stretch for their regulatory reviews of the proposed joint venture, which would create a juggernaut in the areas of telecommunications and television production and distribution.

Consumers Union and other critics insist that approving the deal could result in higher prices and fewer programming options for consumers, abusive behavior against smaller competitors and reduced opportunities for independent producers. Supporters insist the new Comcast would offer more programming choices, face unprecedented competition from a growing crop of online video providers and undermine its business interests if it withholds content from rivals.

The ad campaign follows concerns raised Monday by other watchdogs that FCC complaints filed recently against Comcast by Level 3 Communications and Zoom Telephonics, a manufacturer of cable modems, suggest the union shouldn't be approved. Comcast issued statements yesterday denying allegations that it acted anticompetitively against those companies.

In response to news that the Obama administration shut down a number of Web addresses of sites that facilitate illegal file-sharing or sell counterfeit goods, public interest groups expressed concern about the precedent it sets.

"There are risks to large-scale seizures of domain names without any adversarial process," said David Sohn, senior policy counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology.

In the past couple of days, the Justice and Homeland Security Departments have shut down more than 80 websites as part of an effort to curb Internet counterfeiting and piracy. The government crackdown coincided, intentionally, with "Cyber Monday," one of the busiest online shopping days of the year.

Internet users hoping to make a purchase on one of the targeted sites will be redirected to a screen with a message from the government saying that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a department of Homeland Security, has confiscated the domain name "pursuant to a seizure warrant issued by a United States District Court."

Sohn, and Casey Rae-Hunter, policy strategist for the Future of Music Coalition, are worried about website operators' ability to defend themselves, or lack thereof.

"What is the recourse for 'false positives?" Rae-Hunter said. It's one of a number of questions he has about the "powers afforded to Immigration and Customs Enforcement to take down websites."

The New York Times reported that at least one of the operators of a targeted site, Waleed A. GadElKareem, did not receive any notice before it was shut down.

Mr. GadElKareem told the NYT that his server was up and running at a different address.

Citing the ability of operators to easily move content from one site to another, Rae-Hunter noted the importance of having enforcement tools that protect copyright but that are "thoughtfully applied and at the very least, effective."

At a press conference on Monday, Attorney General Eric Holder defended the government's actions saying it's in the best interest of good business.

Intellectual property "crimes threaten economic opportunities and financial stability," Holder said. "They destroy jobs."

Bob Pisano, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, a staunch advocate of stricter enforcement of copyright infringement, applauded the government's efforts.

"These 'worst of the worst' rogue websites, which cloak themselves in respectability yet traffic in counterfeit and stolen goods, victimize not only the buyers of these products, but the more than 2.4 million hardworking Americans whose livelihoods depend on a healthy motion picture and television industry," Pisano said. "We thank the Department of Justice and ICE for their continuing efforts in addressing this serious problem."

Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Patrick Leahy, lead sponsor of a bill moving through Congress that would specifically authorize the seizure of domain names of sites associated with IP theft, also praised the actions taken by the Obama administration.

The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act recently cleared the Judiciary Committee and awaits consideration of the full Senate.

"We can no longer sit on the sidelines while American intellectual property is stolen and sold online using our own infrastructure," Leahy said in a statement. "This costs American jobs, hurts our economy, and puts consumers at risk."

Mark Cooper, director of research at the Consumer Federation of America, is open to supporting a net neutrality order from the FCC that doesn't reclassify broadband as a public utility.

"I'm not religious about Title I or Title II as long as it's effective to get the job done," Cooper told Tech Daily Dose. "When I say effective, it means not having a [Congressional] resolution of disapproval stop it and not having the court stay the order."

Whether the commission needs to regulate broadband as a common carrier (Title II of the Communications Act) in order to protect the openness of the Internet is the central issue in the ongoing net neutrality debate. Cooper's comment comes as the FCC is rumored to be preparing a net neutrality order to vote on during its December meeting.

According to commission policy, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski must distribute a draft of the ruling tomorrow, three weeks in advance of the December meeting. However, Genachowski may wait until Wednesday to circulate the proposal, a source familiar with the situation said.

The FCC has yet to confirm or deny the rumors.

When it comes to net neutrality, Cooper has the following message for the Chairman: "Unanimity is impossible and inaction is unacceptable." Cooper met with Genachowski, as well as his Chief of Staff Edward Lazarus, last week.

More than six months has passed since Genachowski proposed reclassifying broadband under Title II of the Communications Act after a court case cast doubt on the commission's authority to regulate the Internet. The Democratic commissioner called his plan the "Third Way" saying he would exempt broadband from the most onerous provisions of Title II such as price controls.

Nonetheless, industry, and some lawmakers from both sides of the aisle, rejected Genachowski's plan saying it will stifle innovation and chill investment. Conversely, the fiercest advocates of net neutrality opine that Title II is needed to carry out the National Broadband plan and guard against fears of an Internet where only those with deep pockets have access to quality service.

Over the last week, the FCC has been meeting with industry and public interest groups alike to try and forge a point of consensus.

The two largest carriers, Verizon and AT&T, are supportive of the model created by Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee Henry Waxman. Waxman, D-Calif., advanced a net neutrality bill through the House in September that failed to garner GOP support but found common ground between industry and some public interest groups.

Verizon is lobbying the commission to let any FCC order on the matter expire in two years.

In talks with the Chairman, "we continue to urge the commission to consider the Waxman framework and include a sunset clause," a Verizon spokesman said. Given the interest members of Congress have expressed about this issue, and the uncertainty about the FCC's authority to act in this area, a sunset clause would be an "appropriate deference to Congress," he added.

It's really important "to keep in mind that the circulation of the rule is the beginning of the process," said Markham Erickson, executive director of the Open Internet Coalition. The Chairman "has to get at least two other commissioners on board."

Of the five FCC commissioners, at least three must support a rule in order for it to be adopted.

The NetCoalition expressed concern about Comcast's pending acquisition of NBC Universal Monday by joining the Coalition for Competition in Media, a group that opposes the merger as currently proposed.

Without the right conditions, the NetCoalition, which represents Google, Wikipedia and Bloomberg, among others, fears the union of the two media giants will undermine consumer's power over the Internet.

"The Internet remains one of the most dynamic forces in our economy, one that provides choice and access to millions of users worldwide," said Markham Erickson, executive director of the NetCoalition. "This merger puts too much of that resource in too few hands. We are concerned this merger will create a vertically and horizontally integrated media behemoth that will smother competition, diminish choice, and reduce broadband network investment all while raising prices for consumers."

Comcast categorically refutes these claims saying that the media marketplace will remain competitive and consumers will benefit if the two companies are allowed to combine.

Erickson told Tech Daily Dose that the group's concerns have remained the same since it raised them at an FCC field hearing on online video competition in Chicago, Illinois, last July. It's not about blanket opposition, he noted, but ensuring that the appropriate conditions are attached to merger approval and that everything is scrutinized carefully.

The merger is currently being reviewed by both the FCC and the Justice Department. Comcast hopes to receive approval by the end of the year but industry analysts have suggested that it won't happen until early 2011.

Comcast has been contacted for comment.

UPDATE: 1:28 pm

Comcast responded to NetCoalition's criticism saying the comments are unfounded.

"The FCC record demonstrates, by any measure, [that] this transaction affects only a small part of the broadband access market and the online content marketplace," a spokeswoman for Comcast said. "While a small number of self-interested competitors have voiced concerns, the overwhelming evidence in the FCC record shows this transaction will benefit consumers by bringing them more choice and the anytime, anywhere future faster."

Like everyday relationships between people, diplomatic relations between nations amount to a tissue of white lies, a matter of faking your delight at greeting an interlocutor you actually despise, or disguising your true disdain for the capabilities of a friend. Think of that famous scene in the movie Annie Hall, when Woody Allen and Diane Keaton have a dull, awkward conversation, which the filmmaker then annotates with subtitles revealing what they are actually thinking. ("I hope he doesn't turn out to be a jerk.") That's diplomacy.

At first blush, the release Sunday of thousands of confidential State Department documents by whistleblower WikiLeaks, as revealed in the New York Times, appear to do little more than offer a vivid annotation--occasionally a comical one--to years of often ineffective diplomatic relations between the United States and the rest of the world. In many cases, the exposed cables mainly seem to add clarifying detail to issues and diplomatic positions that have long been known.

That's not to say the latest Wiki-leakage isn't serious, especially since there are reportedly many more documents to come. And it may well be that some individuals are harmed or injured--or worse--by the release. One U.S. diplomatic cable exposed by WikiLeaks, for example, reveals that a "Chinese contact" told the U.S. embassy in Beijing that "China's Politburo directed the intrusion into Google's computer systems in that country." Life will not be pleasant for that "contact" if his or her identity is discovered. Other covert assets may well be compromised and indiscreet diplomats may well lose their jobs, especially since the document dump appeared to reveal a program of informal espionage under which U.S. diplomats were ordered to gather intelligence on their counterparts.

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Tech Daily Dose is taking a break to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday. We'll be back on Monday with the latest and greatest tech and telecom policy news.

A group representing state utility regulators called on congressional leaders today to ensure that two key agencies have the funds they need to do proper oversight of the broadband grants distributed as part of the 2009 economic-stimulus package, National Journal Daily reported.

The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners wrote the top leaders in both the House and Senate urging them to provide the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the Agriculture Department's Rural Utilities Service with the necessary oversight funding after the continuing resolution expires on Dec. 3. To read more, click here. (Subscription required)

It appears MagicJack has not been so magical lately for some of its customers and those of other telecom companies.

Several consumers have complained that MagicJack, which offers Internet-based telephone service for as low as $19.95 a year after purchasing the MagicJack adapter, has been blocking some calls from other telecom providers to MagicJack customers.

When the calls are blocked, consumers get a message that says: "Your phone carrier has routed this call improperly. This call is being identified as a local call, and it should be identified as a long distance call. To complete this call, please call your carrier's customer service number. Or dial 305-848-8288, wait for a dial tone, and enter the number you are trying to reach."

On the 800notes.com website, which provides forums for telephone users to speak out about issues of concern, several consumers said they had been blocked from making calls to MagicJack customers and heard the recording directing them to contact their carriers. Posters to the site indicated they were customers of MagicJack and a variety of other providers including AT&T, Google, Sprint and Verizon.

In a post to the site last week, a consumer named Rob writes, "This has all the markings of a sales/billing dispute between MagicJack and the major carriers, and MagicJack is trying to deflect blame and/or get angry callers to dial Sprint, MetroPCS, AT&T, etc. hoping to it'll pressure the big boys to drop down to one knee and grant long-distance pricing concession(s) to MagicJack."

YMAX, MagicJack's parent company, did not return a call seeking comment. A spokeswoman for VocalTec Communications, which bought YMAX earlier this year, said the firm is "not aware of the situation and VocalTec is not available for a comment."

The FCC did not immediately have comment on whether the commission has received complaints about the issue.

One telecom industry source said it appears that MagicJack is attempting to have the calls classified as long-distance calls in order to generate more fees for the firm than a local call would provide.

The issue revolves around the thorny matter of inter-carrier compensation, which refers to the fees one carrier pays to another to originate, transport, and/or terminate calls. The FCC pledged to tackle the issue as part of its national broadband plan. An FCC spokesman said the agency is still scheduled to address the issue this year, though one telecom source says the matter is likely to be pushed off until next year.

In a blog post Wednesday, AT&T Vice President Hank Hultquist outlined some of the firm's concerns about the current inter-carrier compensation system, saying FCC action to reform it is long overdue. "This entire system is built on a series of arbitrary rules and assumptions that have long been overtaken by reality," he wrote.

The Federal Trade Commission said Wednesday that it has reached settlements with the operators of websites that the agency claimed were deceptively touting free government grants for personal expenses and debts.

As part of an investigation into scams related to the financial downturn, the FTC alleged that the operators promised consumers access to a "members only" website that included information on how they could obtain government grants. The defendants named in the case include Ryan Champion, Joseph C. Fleming IV, and In Deep Services, Inc., doing business as Grant$ For You Now.

For access to the information, the websites asked consumers to provide their credit or debit card information to pay for a $1.99 processing fee.

The FTC said in a news release that the federal government does not provide grants to pay off debts or personal expenses and that the information provided on the "members only" site was "full of inaccurate and obsolete information."

In addition, the agency said the operators of the sites did not inform consumers they would be charged recurring monthly fees of up to $95 a month and an additional one time fee of $19.12 and that they falsely offered a 100 percent money back guarantee. The sites were shut down in June 2009 after the FTC sued them and won a temporary restraining order.

As part of the settlement, the operators of the sites were each ordered to pay more than $9 million, which will be suspended if they pay back taxes owed to the Internal Revenue Service and the state of California and surrender their remaining assets to the FTC. If the defendants are found to have misrepresented their finances, they could be ordered to pay the $9 million fine.

In addition, they have been banned from marketing or selling any grant-related products or services or offering any program in which consumers have to opt-out of being charged a recurring fee. The settlement also prohibits the operators from automatically charging a consumer's credit or debit card account without permission.

Higher-income Americans are among the most avid users of the Internet and cell phones according to a new study released Wednesday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

The study found that 95 percent of those in households earning $75,000 or more a year use the Internet at least occasionally and 93 percent of this group has access to high-speed Internet service such as a cable modem or DSL. Of those in household making less than $75,000 a year, 70 percent reported using the Internet on occasion and 85 percent of them have access to broadband Internet service.

The survey also found that high-income Americans also are more likely to own a cell phone, 95 percent for those making more than $75,000 compared with 83 percent for those making less than this amount.

The survey also found that those with the highest incomes, more than $150,000 annually, are much more likely to get their news online than those making less than $30,000 a year, 80 percent compared to 60 percent.

"The correlation between higher income and increased internet usage was consistent for nearly every online activity and technology," center Senior Fellow Jim Jansen said in a statement. "Income was a significant factor, even when accounting for other attributes, such as age, education, race, gender, and community type."

The European Parliament approved a resolution Wednesday signaling its willingness to support a controversial trade agreement aimed at boosting international cooperation in combating counterfeiting and piracy.

The resolution calls on the commission, the European Union's regulatory arm, to move forward with submitting the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement to the European Council and parliament for a vote while stressing that the agreement "requires parliament's consent and, possibly, ratification by the member states in order to come into force."

The parliament called on the commission "to confirm that ACTA's implementation will have no impact on fundamental rights and data protection, on the ongoing EU efforts to harmonize intellectual property rights enforcement measures, or on e-commerce," according to a parliament news release.

Despite releasing a finalized text of the agreement last week, lower-level officials with the ACTA negotiating countries will meet next week in Sydney for a "legal scrub" of the document. The parliament's resolution reminded the commission that it must consult with the parliament before accepting or proposing any amendment to the current ACTA text.

The parliament has voiced concern with the process used to negotiate the trade agreement and an earlier resolution called for more transparency.

The lastest resolution outlined specific concerns with the ACTA text released last week, including with the section related to the Internet. For example, the lengthy resolution voices concern with "the very broad definition of acts of 'commercial scale,'" along with an obligation to improve criminal sanctions against Internet piracy. The resolution said these provisions "may encourage parties to the agreement to adopt legislation which will in practice lead to the criminalization of private users and intermediaries."

Despite this, the Paris-based Internet civil liberties group La Quadrature du Net said it was disappointed by the parliament's move. "All citizens concerned with democratic law making, the preservation of the online ecosystem, freedom of speech, privacy and access to medicines should work with their elected representatives to make sure that the European Parliament does not give its assent to ACTA," the group's spokesman Jérémie Zimmermann said in a statement.

Harry Potter's "invisibility cloak" may be one step closer to becoming reality than fans of the popular book and movie series may have imagined.

The European Commission said Tuesday that research funded by the commission has made breakthroughs in tailoring the flow of light using nanotechnology that could lead to its use in lenses and optical circuitry as well as in making some objects invisible. While Harry Potter's invisibility cloak makes anything draped in it invisible, the German, Greek, Turkish and UK scientists have only managed to cloak objects of the "sub millimeter size."

The PHOME project has up until now only been able to make "invisibility cloaks" that work in two dimensions, which meant a hidden object was invisible when the observer attempted to look at it head on, but became visible when viewed from the side, the commission said. "This study is the first to result in the creation of a device that renders an object invisible in all three dimensions," the commission added in a statement.

"This project has achieved in real life what we knew only from special effects in the cinema. Such cutting-edge research is crucial to laying the foundations for new technologies essential for Europe's competitiveness," European Commission Vice President for the Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes said.

Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., has received the backing of a group of minority and civil rights groups in his bid to become the ranking Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Communications, Technology and the Internet Subcommittee.

In a letter Monday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the groups cited Rush's experience on the committee, his work on the 1996 telecommunications act and ability to work well with other Democrats and Republicans.

"With the exhaustive list of issues awaiting CTI's consideration, we need to be sure that the ranking member of this crucial subcommittee is up to speed," according to the letter signed by such groups as the Minority Media & Telecommunications Council, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Urban League and the Rainbow Push coalition. "Congressman Rush is not only up to speed, but he is ahead of the curve. His years of experience and intricate knowledge of current issues within CTI's domain make him the optimal candidate for this position.

The current chairman of the Communications Subcommittee, Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., was defeated in the midterm election earlier this month, leaving the top Democratic spot on the panel open in the next Congress when the GOP will have control of the House. Rush is currently the chairman of the Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection Subcommittee but announced earlier this month his desire to switch to become the ranking member on the Communications panel.

A House Energy and Commerce subcommittee plans to hold a hearing next week on whether Congress should pass legislation mandating the creation of a "do-not-track" list that could allow consumers to opt-out of being tracked while on the Internet.

The Dec. 2nd hearing is being held by the Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection Subcommittee. Subcommittee Chairman Bobby Rush, D-Ill., introduced privacy legislation ealier this year. A Rush aide told Tech Daily Dose last month that Rush is weighing whether to add legislation to his privacy bill that would mandate the creation of a do-not-track list, which would be modeled after the Do-Not-Call list that allows consumers to opt out of receiving most telemarketing calls.

"We just want to hear a little bit more about how it might work operationally," Rush's subcommittee counsel, Tim Robinson, said in October. The panel will examine whether it would "provide adequate relief to consumers who would like to limit tracking of their [activities] online."

Consumers are increasingly being tracked when they go on the Web by online firms seeking to target personalized ads based on consumers' preferences. Some industry officials argue that a do-not-track list would be difficult to implement and that there are tools available to consumers today that give them some control over tracking technologies.

Further fueling speculation that the Federal Communications Commission may push a net neutrality proceeding, the commission announced Tuesday that it has delayed its next meeting by a week to Dec. 21.

The meeting change, originally scheduled for Dec. 15, gives FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski an additional week before he must circulate a proposal to his fellow commissioners in order to add an item to the agenda. Now eager spectators can wait for news of a rumored net neutrality plan to come on Dec. 2.

The investment firm Stifel Nicolaus said in a research note Tuesday that it believes "Genachowski is looking to move a network neutrality order under a Title I framework, which could remove Title II broadband regulatory overhang that has been of particular concern to cable" and other broadband providers.

Earlier this year, Genachowski had proposed reclassifying broadband as a telecommunications service under Title II of the communications act after the commission's authority over broadband providers was put into doubt by an April federal appeals court ruling.

The firm added that it believes Genachowski wants to build on the net neutrality provisions included in draft legislation circulated in September by House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., which was not introduced due to GOP opposition.

"Our sense is the chairman is considering an approach that would generally bar unreasonable wireline broadband discrimination but not prohibit specialized/managed services, leaving those to be monitored and dealt with case by case, if necessary," the firm said.

Four public interest groups filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission Tuesday urging the agency to investigate whether those offering online health information and services are engaging in unfair and deceptive advertising practices.

In their complaint, the Center for Digital Democracy, Consumer Watchdog, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group and the World Privacy Forum alleged that groups and firms engaged in health marketing have established a "stealth interactive" marketing campaign aimed at promoting the use of specific brand drugs and persuading consumers to seek treatments for possible health conditions. In addition, the groups also claim that these health marketers aim to collect personal information from consumers by offering free e-newsletters on medical issues and discounts for prescription drugs and services.

They also claimed that health marketing organizations also are collecting data from consumers about specific health concerns they may seek information about and tracking their other Web activities to target medical-related ads at them. In addition, the groups say there is a not a clear separation between information that is supposed to be editorial content and promotional material by sponsors and advertisers.

"There is a failure to adequately disclose the relationship and role of advertisers and sponsors on leading health information sites," according to the complaint. Among the examples it provides is WebMD's disclosure on its website that says users can trust our "content is timely and credible." But the complaint points to information in WebMD's annual report to the Securities and Exchange Commission that says, it develops "sponsored programs that target specific groups of health-involved consumers, clinically active physicians and other healthcare professionals and place these programs on the most relevant areas of The WebMD Health Network so that our advertisers and sponsors are able to reach, educate and inform these target audiences."

WebMD spokesman Adam Grossberg responded to the complaint, saying "As the most visible and trusted brand for health and wellness information, WebMD places the trusted relationship we have with our users first. We have always been transparent and direct with our users. At the same time, WebMD's journalistic responsibility is to make a clear distinction between news and other information, so that individuals can readily distinguish independent editorial information from paid, promotional information. All sponsored content on our site is clearly labeled as such."

He added that WebMD has "continuously met" health website accreditation standards that include disclosure, health content, security, privacy and quality oversight.

In addition to WebMD, other firms named in the complaint include AOL, Everyday Health, Google, Health Central, Microsoft, Quality Health, and Yahoo.

The groups called on the FTC to investigate the data collection usage practices of drug advertisers; require companies engaged in online marketing of health products to provide information on the kinds of techniques and methods they use; review the privacy policies of health and drug maker websites; and probe whether health bloggers who claim to be independent have violated the FTC's "endorsement" guidelines by accepting money from drug makers and others.

"By using powerful digital marketing tools, pharmaceutical and online health information companies now have unprecedented abilities to take advantage of consumers," Center for Digital Democracy Executive Director Jeff Chester said in a statement. "Many of the new interactive marketing techniques have been purposely designed to tap into the concerns and anxieties of individuals who are going online to seek health information."

A new study released Tuesday ranks the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as the most savvy user of social media and online strategies among public sector organizations surveyed.

The study, authored by New York University Professor Scott Galloway, George Washington University Business School Dean Doug Guthrie and others, measured the effectiveness of public organizations' social media and online strategies. The first annual Digital IQ Index measured the effectiveness of an organization's website, digital marketing, as well use of social media, and mobile strategies.

"Social media and other online strategies are critical tools that public sector organizations use to encourage transparency, engage constituents, and serve the public in an era of cost cutting," Guthrie said in a statement. "Our leaders and public sector organizations need to embrace these powerful new tools."

The survey examined 100 government offices, independent agencies, multilateral organizations, industry associations and advocacy groups. It describes NASA as being "in its own stratosphere, experimenting with the latest technologies from geo-local to 3-D animation."

Coming in second behind NASA was the White House, followed by the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the U.S. Army and the Democratic National Committee. Following just two spots below was the DNC's rival, the Republican National Committee.

The study found that social media is a key tool for driving users to their websites with 69 percent saying that Facebook is among the top eight sources for referral traffic. The study's authors also found that more than 80 percent of organizations use at least one social media platform. Despite this, 51 percent of those measured were described as "challenged" or "feeble."

"Most of these organizations still have yet to reap low-hanging fruit: purchasing search terms, establishing a presence on social media platforms, and investing in mobile," according to the study.

AT&T Senior Executive Vice President Jim Cicconi urged the FCC last week to use House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman's net neutrality bill as a model for a commission order on the matter, according to a disclosure document.

Waxman, D-Calif., led an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to shepherd a net neutrality bill through the House in September. Despite never introducing the bill due to lack of GOP support, he did achieve consensus from industry and some public interest groups on language that would codify some rules to protect the openness of the Internet.

On Sunday and Monday, Cicconi met with Edward Lazarus, chief of staff to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. The pair discussed net neutrality and in addition to noting the merits of the Waxman bill, Cicconi encouraged the agency to explore alternative methods to preserve the Internet's openness.

The meeting comes amid intense speculation that the commission is preparing to move forward on a net neutrality order in its December meeting. A spokeswoman from the FCC has yet to deny or confirm the possibility.

If the agency doesn't delay its December 15th meeting, the chairman's office will have to distribute an outline of the proposal by Wednesday: the deadline to circulate an order to the FCC's other four commissioners before adding it to the December meeting agenda.

Insiders say that Genachowski has yet to make up his mind about how to proceed. The FCC met with both industry and public interest groups Monday to discuss the issue.

Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., asked the Justice Department Monday to investigate whether Comcast violated antitrust law with its recent announcement of a new management team for NBC Universal if the two companies receive federal approval to combine business operations, National Journal Daily reported.

Franken, who is on record opposing the $30 billion transaction, asked DOJ to assess whether Comcast has engaged in "gun-jumping," the practice of illegal collaboration between pre-merger companies.

The FCC and Justice have entered the critical final stretch of their regulatory reviews of the proposed Comcast-NBCU joint venture, which seeks to create a communications titan that would be a major player in several commercial sectors, namely broadband and phone services; distribution of content via cable, broadcast, and the Internet; and programming production. Decisions on the deal are expected either late this year or early next year.

"By publicly announcing their intended managers of each component of NBC Universal, Comcast has effectively told employees at NBC Universal who their 'real bosses' are," Franken said in his letter to Christine Varney, head of Justice's antitrust division. Franken gained fame as a writer and performer on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" before entering politics. To read more, click here. (Subscription required)

While the FCC continues to keep quiet on the prospect of a December net neutrality order, the commission will be speaking out on the next generation of emergency calls Tuesday at an event with public safety officials in Virginia

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski will join Jim Schwartz, chief of the Arlington County Fire Department, and Jack Belcher, the department's chief information officer and director of technology services, to discuss a "21st century 9-1-1 system."

Such a system would enable consumers to send text messages, videos and photos to emergency all centers through broadband applications.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski will make an announcement about a commission proceeding that, consistent with a vision laid out in the national broadband plan, will determine how to transition the current system to broadband-enabled, next-generation 9-1-1.

In a call to arms, World Wide Web founder Tim Berners-Lee urged Web users to protect the Internet from becoming a fragmented territory.

Citing threats from all the big players in the telecom space--carriers, social networking sites and search engine operators--Berners-Lee made his case in a new Scientific American article for Internet users to realize their control over the medium and protect it from commercial interests that could undermine its freedom.

Whereas much of the debate over the future of the Internet hinges on what the FCC should or shouldn't do, Berners-Lee brings a fresh perspective by arguing for action from users.

"People seem to think the Web is some sort of piece of nature, and if it starts to wither, well, that's just one of those unfortunate things we can't help," Berners-Lee wrote. "Not so." The computer engineer posited that, by virtue of designing computer protocols and software, the process is completely under the control of the user. "We choose what properties we want it to have and not have," he added. "It is by no means finished (and it's certainly not dead.)"

The tech luminary asserted that some of the Web's "most successful inhabitants" are taking actions that degrade the universality of the Internet.

"Large social-networking sites are walling off information posted by their users from the rest of the Web," he wrote. "Wireless Internet providers are being tempted to slow traffic to sites with which they have not made deals."

Search engines or browsers that become too powerful could limit innovation, he also noted.

Berners-Lee also argued that net neutrality principles should apply to mobile platforms powered by wireless Internet, "Exempting wireless from net neutrality would leave these [mobile] users open to discrimination of service."

To the chagrin of consumer advocates and the delight of the wireless industry, a proposal developed by Google and Verizon over the summer called for exempting wireless providers from a draft framework on net neutrality.

Despite emphasizing the power the user has over the Web, Berners-Lee wrote that government legislation is needed to grant net neutrality some legal protection.

Director of the World Wide Web Consortium, Berners-Lee wrote the first Web client and server in 1990.

CORRECTION (1:21 p.m.): The original story incorrectly attributed this statement to the FCC, it is the Free Press.

Amid speculation that the FCC will proceed with a net neutrality order in December, the public interest group Free Press made its case for reclassifying broadband as a telecommunication service on Monday with the release of a new report.

"The Commission can and should re-establish its authority over broadband networks by classifying broadband Internet connectivity as a telecommunications service," wrote Aparna Sridhar, policy counsel for Free Press and author of the report. "Doing so will establish a stable, bounded, and conservative foundation for its broadband agenda."

Last spring, after a court case cast doubt on the FCC's regulatory authority over broadband, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski proposed classifying the Internet under Title II of the Communications Act, the same statute that governs telephones. Such a change in regulatory status would allow the commission to assert authority over carriers when necessary, ostensibly. Genachowski calls his plan the "third way" saying he would exempt broadband from the more onerous provisions of Title II such as price controls.

Industry and lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have rejected the plan saying it will chill business investment and innovation. Public interest groups argue just the opposite.

On a conference call with reporters, fellow communication experts and consumer advocates Tim Wu, author of Master Switch; Susan Crawford, Cardozo Law School professor and Free Press President Josh Silver, supported Sridhar's thesis.

Genachowski's plan is "both necessary and wise," Silver said. Silver argued that industry research claiming that Title II will hurt business and stifle innovation is "misleading."

The report comes at a critical moment as industry observers believe the commission is preparing to consider a net neutrality order in December under Title I of the Communications Act. The purpose of such an order would be to codify rules that will allow the FCC to protect the openness of the Internet. Up for debate is whether a rule under Title I will sufficiently empower the agency to carry out the national broadband plan and protect the Internet for consumers.

"Title I is leading the agency down a path of intense confusion," Wu said. According to Sridhar, Title II is the only good choice. "The only question that remains is whether Julius has the political courage to go through with it," she said.

Public interest groups are speaking with the FCC this afternoon and NCTA, the principle trade association for cable, is meeting with agency staff to discuss net neutrality today.

The commission has yet to deny or confirm that it is preparing a net neutrality rule for the agency's meeting next month.

Update 5:04 pm:

Countering Free Press, USTelecom Senior Vice President Jonathan Banks said that the group's "contention that regulating broadband Internet services under Title II of the Communications Act is a 'sound, legal path' flies in the face of respected legal opinion." Banks pointed to an argument made by Supreme Court litigator Seth Waxman who wrote the FCC saying that regulation under Title II "would be fundamentally at odds with principled agency decisionmaking and with the proper role of administrative agencies within our constitutional system."

The Commerce Department's work on consumer privacy protection in the international arena reflect "indifference and neglect," according to a new report released Monday by the World Privacy Forum.

Through examining an agreement with Europe to protect personal data, known as the "Safe Harbor Framework", the study found that consumer protection has not been a significant concern or priority for the Commerce Department.

Moreover, "The Department's history with the Safe Harbor program also indicates a lack of rigor regarding enforcement and compliance in the privacy programs it already administers," said Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum.

Established in 2003 and led by Dixon, the World Privacy Forum is a nonprofit focused on conducting research and analysis about privacy issues.

The study consistently showed "that many and perhaps most Safe Harbor participants are not in compliance with their obligations under the Safe Harbor Framework."

The World Privacy Forum expressed concerned that given the Commerce Department's past performance; it won't effectively protect consumers in the future as the issue gains importance and prominence. The Commerce Department and the Justice Department were named co-chairs of the president Obama's recently established Subcommittee on Privacy and Internet Policy.

The new privacy panel is "without a strong voice for consumer privacy interests," the report states.

The Commerce Department did not respond to an immediate request for comment.

Update: 11-23-10 9:50 am

The Commerce Department, in response to the study, emphasized its commitment to protecting consumer privacy on the net while suggesting that the Bush administration may have dropped the ball on this issue.

"In the late 1990's, the Commerce Department played a lead role - along with the FTC - in shaping the largely self-regulatory online privacy regime that we have today. That included each agency taking on a distinct role in implementing the US-EU safe harbor beginning in 2000," a commerce spokeswoman said.

"While the last administration may not have been as visible on these issues during the intervening years, the Obama administration is committed to stepping up its engagement as the Internet evolves to promote policies that will preserve consumer privacy online while ensuring the Web remains a platform for innovation, jobs, and economic growth."

Countering Republican opposition to the FCC possibly moving forward with a net neutrality order during its December meeting, member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Penn., put out the following statement:

"Net neutrality is essential for continuing the rapid pace of innovative internet technology and content, and I look forward to hearing [FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski's] plans to protect the Internet, and to working with him to ensure that the Internet is open to all voices."

A spokesperson for the FCC did not respond to an immediate request for comment about whether the commission intends to include net neutrality in its December meeting.

UPDATE:6:10 pm

Still not saying whether the commission will move on a net neutrality order in December, the FCC responded to a request for comment indicating their current position on the matter.

"Net Neutrality is about preventing anyone from regulating the Internet," an FCC official said. "There are some cable and phone companies out there that want to decide which apps you should get on your phone, which Internet sites you should look at, and what online videos you can download. That's regulating the Internet -- and that's what the FCC is trying to stop."

and Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., became the second Democrat to support action on net neutrality this year.

"It is my hope that the Commission will act this year to ensure that the Internet retains the features of openness and non-discrimination that have made it the most successful communications and commercial medium in history," Markey said. "The Commission should resist attempts to permit paid prioritization on the Internet, which would undermine its success, favoring certain content providers to the detriment of other content creators unable or unwilling to pay. Likewise, exclusion of wireless services from open Internet requirements could widen the digital divide by establishing a substandard, less open experience for traditionally underserved regions and demographic groups that may need to access the Internet on a mobile device."

In the wake of news that the FCC may be moving forward on a net neutrality order for its December meeting, Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., put out the following statement.

"The FCC should not be trying to institute a government takeover of the one industry that is currently expanding and creating jobs when we currently have close to ten percent of Americans unemployed," Shimkus said. "We need to incentivize the tech sector to continue to expand and bring both high speed internet and much needed jobs to America. The FCC's attempt to take over the Internet will hinder both of these things. Both the UK and the EU have announced they are abandoning attempts to create net neutrality regulations - the FCC should follow suit."

Kyle McSlarrow, president and CEO of the powerful National Cable and Telecommunications Association, will depart next spring, the organization announced Friday.

"Serving at NCTA has been a great honor, a wonderful learning experience, and personally and professionally rewarding," McSlarrow said in a statement. "I have been proud to represent the cable industry, which I now regard as my home. I am truly grateful to the NCTA Board for having given me this opportunity and for their strong leadership and support."

McSlarrow will seek another position within the cable industry that will allow him to work more on "business and operating activities."

Patrick Esser, President of Cox Communications, Inc., and currently chair of the NCTA Board of Directors, offered praise for the departing executive

"For nearly 6 years, Kyle has successfully navigated the public policy interests of our industry during a period of significant change and substantial challenges," Esser said. "He's led our industry to embrace many landmark initiatives, such as our work on the DTV Transition, the Adoption Plus proposal to advance broadband adoption in low income households, and highlighting parental controls and the importance of online safety."

The NCTA will conduct a national search to find a successor. NCTA is the principle trade association of the cable industry representing pay-tv operators that serve more than 90 percent of the nation's cable television households.

The GOP is reacting strongly to chatter this morning that FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski may schedule a Dec. 15 vote on a new initiative aimed at strengthening the agency's network neutrality rules, which are intended to ensure unfettered access to Internet content.

"Ramming through Internet regulations would ignore the will of a bipartisan majority of Congress and the American public," wrote Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., the ranking member on the House Energy and Commerce telecommunications subcommittee. Stearns has been a contender to helm the full committee or the subcommittee in the new Congress next year.

Scores of lawmakers from both parties have portrayed tougher net neutrality rules as an unnecessary government takeover of the Internet. Proponents of stricter rules say they're needed to ensure that larger corporations don't dominate the Internet and block or degrade smaller competitors.

To achieve his goal, Genachowski would rely on section Title I of the 1934 Communications Act, which governs information services, even though a federal appeals ruled earlier this year that the FCC needs a stronger legal authority to regulate broadband under Title I.

National Journal magazine reported in October that Genachowski was considering a work-around solution that would allow him to regulate high-speed Internet service under Title I of the Act. The chairman appears to have backed off a more controversial proposal that would subject broadband to heavier regulation as a public utility under Title II of the law.

While a Title I approach drew fire from Stearns, the powerful U.S. Telecom Association, whose members include AT&T and Verizon, the nation's top two telecom carriers, previously signaled that it's open to the idea.

"Since the December [FCC] meeting agenda will be released next week when Congress is in recess, it appears that Chairman Genachowski is trying to slip it under the radar and hope no one notices," he added.

"We believe FCC Chairman Genachowski is leaning toward scheduling a vote to adopt net neutrality rules using Title I authority at the FCC's December 15 open meeting," wrote Paul Gallant, research analyst with MF Global, in a Friday advisory. "We do not believe this decision has been finalized, but right now it appears to be the most likely scenario."

"We haven't circulated the December agenda. These rumors from outside, uninformed sources are pure speculation at best," responded FCC spokeswoman Jen Howard.

UPDATE:4:56 pm

19 Republican members signed a letter urging the FCC not to circulate a net neutrality rule in December.

You've just set up your brand, spankin' new Google TV-capable Sony high-definition digital television set that you received for Christmas or Hannukah, and you're ready to hit the "Quick Search" bar to start exploring the vast world of content now at your fingertips.

While your $1400, 46-inch widescreen toy might look and act like a TV, don't be fooled. It's actually a sophisticated computer (which happens to display football games and other programming) that runs on a powerful Intel chip and Android software that is automatically updated via the Internet.

You glanced at the privacy policy (see earlier post) and think you know what it says. So now it's time to test your knowledge about the data that Google TV does - and doesn't - collect about you. That's right, you're ready for a pop quiz:

1) Google TV knows that a user is watching television and can store this information.
True ( ) False ( )

6) When using "incognito mode," Google can't monitor your TV viewing. True ( )
False ( )
Congratulations. You've now completed the Google TV Privacy Policy Pop Quiz. The correct answers are at the bottom.

For more information about the growing debate over the implications of Google TV, see the latest issue of National Journal magazine (subscription required).

1. T
2. F
3. T
4. F
5 .T
6. .***This is a trick question because incognito mode is not yet available for TV viewing. The right answer is "not applicable."

Introducing the privacy policy for Google TV. Clocking in at 3,462 words and eight pages, you'll need to set aside an ample block of time to read and digest it - and may require an attorney to thoroughly understand it.

To be fair, the privacy policies for other major companies in the Internet and media space, such as Amazon and Comcast, are of a similar length or even longer. But with Google TV's unique ability to combine our two most time-consuming habits -- television viewing and Web surfing -- into one couch potato experience, this is legalese that might actually be worth reviewing.

For the uninitiated, Google TV is a new technology from the folks out in Mountain View, Calif., that transforms high-definition televisions into Internet-surfing devices. Controlled with a wireless keypad, you can watch the boob tube and YouTube at the same time, update your Twitter account on your TV set, and search for content across multiple platforms - including broadcast, cable and the Web.

Google states in its policy that, for now, it is not collecting data on TV viewing histories, but that it might to do so in the future. Google TV, however, does know when you're watching TV and does collect certain "non-personalized" information about your online and TV interests.

For more information about the growing debate over the implications of Google TV, see the latest issue of National Journal magazine (subscription required).

Below is the entire Google TV privacy policy. Please read it carefully because you'll be quizzed about in the next Tech Daily Dose blog post:

Privacy Notice for the Google TV Platform
Last modified: October 15, 2010

The Google Privacy Policy describes how we treat personal information when you use Google's products and services ("Google Services"), including information provided when you use Google TV. In addition, this Privacy Notice describes our privacy practices that are specific to Google TV.

"Google TV" is a Google Service that is incorporated into or that works in conjunction with certain third party hardware, devices, products, and services ("Retail Products") that are provided by Google's partners and/or licensees of the Google TV software platform ("Google TV Platform"). The Google Privacy Policy and this Privacy Notice for the Google TV Platform are referred to together as the "Google Privacy Policies." Products and services provided by third parties, including providers of Retail Products and/or applications available on or through a Retail Product or the Google TV Platform, may be governed by separate privacy policies made available by those third parties ("Other Privacy Policies").

Please note that the Google Privacy Policies apply only to the products and services provided by Google through the Google TV Platform, and not to any non-Google products or services. In the same way, any privacy terms presented to you in Other Privacy Polices or other third-party agreements are controlling only with respect to the non-Google elements of a Retail Product or other third-party product or service. You should carefully review any Other Privacy Policies that apply to your use of third-party products and services. To the extent that any Other Privacy Policies or other third-party agreements contain any provision bearing on your legal relationship with Google on privacy matters, that provision is null and void, regardless of whether it conflicts with or agrees with the Google Privacy Policies. To put it simply, only the Google Privacy Policies apply to your use of Google Services, and the Google Privacy Policies override and supersede any provision or statement made by any other party relating to Google's data collection or privacy practices, or to your use of the Google Services.

Information we do not collect

•Google will not collect your TV viewing history unless you provide opt-in consent.The Google TV Platform is not currently designed to collect or store information about which channels you tune to or what programs you watch through the regular television service connected to or through your Google TV Retail Product. Google may collect and store non-personalized usage information related to the fact that a user is watching TV generally, as opposed to surfing the web or using another application on the Google TV Platform. We may also collect and store non-personalized information regarding your query term or page request through the Quick Search Box (see below), but we do not currently gather information regarding your specific program-level viewing activity within the TV application on the Google TV Platform. However, please note that third-party television service providers typically do collect user data relating to channels tuned and content viewed through their services ("Tuning Data") and may share that information with third parties under certain circumstances; please consult your TV service's subscriber privacy policy for more information. For certain Retail Products with enhanced integration with Google TV (for example, DISH Network), we will have the ability to receive Tuning Data from your television service provider. However, before we receive any personalized Tuning Data that is related to your use of the Google TV Platform and sharable by your service provider we will ask for your opt-in consent. If we do not ask for your consent to receive data from your television service provider, then enhanced integration is not possible with your Retail Product and we will neither request nor receive your Tuning Data from your service provider. If you do have an enhanced integration Retail Product and provide your consent for sharing your Tuning Data, Google will use it to provide you with additional functionality, personalized features and/or an enhanced integration of your television service with the Google TV Platform. We may also use such data internally to improve the Google TV Platform or other Google Services. If you do not consent to your service provider sharing personalized Tuning Data with Google, you will still be able use your Retail Product but it will lack the enhanced integration that is provided by sharing your Tuning Data (for example, you will not be able to search across your DVR and VOD content). To the extent that we share Tuning Data with third parties in the future (such as Google TV application developers), we will do so only if you give your opt-in consent and if the sharing is for the purpose of providing enhancements and improvements to the the Google Services or Retail Products.

Google may in the future enable the collection of personalized television viewing history directly through the Google TV Platform in order to provide useful personalization services and additional features or functionality. If we do enable such a function, Google will (a) only collect such information with your opt-in consent in a manner that gives you transparency, choice and control over the collection and sharing of your television viewing history through the Google TV Platform; (b) update this Privacy Notice to inform you of the change and describe what information we will be collecting and how it will be used should you choose to opt in; and (c) notify you that this Privacy Notice has been updated and that such personalized television viewing history data may be collected through an optional feature of the Google TV Platform.

•Google TV does not collect location information through Google Chrome. Specifically, the location feature of Google Chrome that allows you to share your location with other sites on the Web is disabled in the Google Chrome browser on Google TV. Should we enable that feature in the future, we will update this Privacy Notice to inform you of the change and provide you with a settings option within Google Chrome on Google TV to disable that feature, similar to the settings available on stand-alone versions of Google Chrome.

•Google TV does not knowingly or intentionally collect information from individuals under the age of 13. You must be at least 13 years old to establish a Google Account for use with the Google TV Platform. Given the shared and social nature of television and video viewing, we understand that children under the age of 13 may sometimes use the Google TV Platform and/or the Retail Product in a family setting, but they may do so only with the involvement of a parent or legal guardian, under that person's account and otherwise subject to the Universal Google Terms of Service and the Additional Terms of Service for the Google TV Platform. While certain third-party content that is child-oriented may be accessible via the Google TV Platform, either on television or online, we expect that all use of the Google TV Platform and/or the Retail Product by children will be under the direction and supervision of a responsible adult. You can find more information about safety features on Google TV (including the ability to lock access to the Google Chrome browser on Google TV and/or enable Safe Search) at the Google TV Help Center online.

Information we do collect and how we use it

•In order to set up your Google TV Retail Product and use the Google TV Platform, you must sign in with your Google Account (if you already have one) or create a new, free Google Account. Your Google Account information is stored by Google in connection with the registration and activation of your Retail Product. For every Google TV Retail Product that you use, you will have to associate the new device with a Google account before we can authenticate and activate your device.

Other than with respect to Google Queue on Google TV (see below), the Google Account associated with your Google TV Retail Product does not automatically transfer or apply to your use of other Google services on Google TV. If the Google Service requires you to log in with a Google Account, you will be required to log in separately -- using either the same or a different Google Account, as you choose -- to access the Service and/or its personalized features. Your use of other Google Services through the Google TV Platform is governed by the terms of service and privacy notice applicable to the specific Service.

Please keep in mind that if your Google TV Retail Product in a location that is accessible to others, such as a living room or dorm room or other community setting, it is your responsibility to manage access to the device in that shared setting and to protect any personal information stored on it. As with any shared device, you may wish to log out of specific Google services (or third-party web sites) that you have accessed through the Google TV Platform in order to prevent inadvertently sharing information with others who have access to the device. Certain information relating to the sites you visit on the internet or items that you have bookmarked are stored on the Retail Product and may be accessible or viewable by others who have access to the device; in some cases, this may reveal information about television channels you have accessed or other video content that you have requested or that has been delivered to you through the Google TV Platform. If you wish to keep the details of your user activity private from others, you should consider using incognito mode when browsing the internet or connecting your Google TV Retail Product to a television in a more secure or private setting.

•It is not possible to log out of the Google TV Platform itself; you must remain authenticated with a Google Account that is associated with the Retail Product in order to use it. However, you can clear data stored on the device through a setting on the Google TV Platform. You may also perform a factory reset of your device to clear all data and associate the device with a different Google Account. For information on clearing history stored on your Google TV Retail Product, and for related privacy and safety settings information, please visit the Google TV Help Center.

Each Retail Product is assigned one or more identification numbers, such as a MAC address. These identification numbers are associated with your Google Account and one or more of them may be used to authenticate and activate your Retail Product, authenticate delivery of some services and features on the Google TV Platform, and to allow your device to sync information between the Google TV Platform and other Google Services.

•In order to continually improve our services and provide a better user experience, we collect some basic usage statistics from your Retail Product and/or the Google TV Platform, along with information such as the hardware model of your Retail Product and the version of the Google TV Platform you are running. This information does not by itself identify you to Google, although it may be unique or consist of or contain information that you consider personal. This information may be associated with your Google Account and/or shared with our Retail Product or other third-party partners on an non-personal or aggregate basis that does not individually identify you.

•We collect information on device-level events such as crashes or other troubleshooting information that may be associated with your Google Account temporarily in order to provide customer service. This information is non-personalized after approximately two weeks and is then stored only in the aggregate, if at all. None of the information collected for this purpose contains application-level information but is instead data related to such things as network service disruptions, login failures, setup errors, and the like. Apart from this device-level event information, and any content or data that you specifically opt in to synchronizing with your Google Account, other usage data that Google collects regarding your usage of the Google TV Platform is non-personalized before being stored in our server logs.

If you opt in to synchronizing your Google Queue content on the Google TV Platform, that information may be associated with your Google Account and stored and treated in a manner consistent with the Google Privacy Policies. For certain Retail Products that have an enhanced integration with the Google TV Platform, your Google Queue content may include your DVR recordings or Video on Demand content from your TV service provider. You can manage your Google Queue subscriptions to online podcasts through the Google TV Platform; content from your TV service provider that is integrated into your Google Queue should be managed through your DVR or VOD interface, which is accessible through, but separate from, the Google TV Platform (available for Retail Products with enhanced integration). We receive certain log information from the Google TV Platform, including from use of the Quick Search Box, similar to what we receive in Web Search. This information will be non-personalized before it is stored in our logs but the non-personalized data may include your query term or page request. This non-personalized data may in turn include information about the specific video or other content browsed or television channels that navigated to from within the Google TV Platform interface (such as from a query result, a series page, or the What's On feature). The Google TV log information may also include data about which applications you have accessed through the Google TV Platform (but not data related to your specific activity or usage within a third-party application or service), use duration for particular features on the Google TV Platform, IP address, browser information, the date and time of your request, one or more cookies that may identify your hardware or software configuration, and similar information. Some of this data may also be stored on your Retail Product.

•In addition to third-party sites across the internet, you may use the Google TV Platform, including the Google Chrome browser on Google TV, to access certain Google products and services such as Gmail, Google Talk, YouTube (including YouTube Leanback), Blogger, Web Search, Google Video, and so forth. Certain of these products and services may allow you to personalize the content you receive from Google. For these services, we will store your preferences and the information you provide for customization in accordance with the Google Privacy Policy and any privacy notice that describes how Google treats your personal information when you use that specific service.

To fulfill contractual commitments to rightsholders who provide content through applications on the Google TV Platform, we may use certain information (such as unique device identifiers, IP address, and cookies) to enforce security limits.

•Special legal privacy protections for users may apply in cases where law enforcement or civil litigants ask Google for information about specific video content that has been delivered to a user through the Google TV Platform. As described in this Privacy Notice, much of the data currently collected through the Google TV Platform and stored in our server logs is currently non-personalized and therefore Google may simply be unable to fulfill certain requests for user-specific information relating to third-party video content delivered through the Google TV Platform (or video content that is rented or purchased through applications or services accessible through the Google TV Platform). At the federal level, the United States has a special "video privacy" law stating that information relating to a consumer's request or receipt of certain audiovisual materials may not be disclosed in a way that identifies an individual along with his or her viewing history except under certain specific conditions (for example, if the consumer consents to the disclosure, or if the person asking for the information meets a special, high standard such as providing prior notice to the consumer and obtaining a warrant or court order). Some state and local jurisdictions may have similar laws. Where these video privacy laws exist and apply in our judgment to the Google TV Platform, we will raise them and we will continue our strong history of fighting for high standards to protect users, regardless of whether a particular video privacy law applies.

•Google uses the information that it collects and stores from the Google TV Platform for the purposes described in the Google Privacy Policy, including to process your requests and deliver Google services to you, provide customer service functions, provide you with a better user experience, and report on aggregate user trends.
•We may share non-personal aggregated information collected through the Google TV Platform with our business partners and certain other third parties.

Google Chrome on Google TV

Google Chrome is pre-installed as an application on your Google TV Retail Product. Your web browsing and navigation on the Google TV Platform occurs through the version of Google Chrome that is installed on your Google TV Retail Product. Information specific to how we treat personal information when you use Google Chrome generally is set forth in the Google Chrome Privacy Notice, which also applies to your use of Google Chrome on Google TV. Specific differences between the information set forth in the Google Chrome Privacy Notice and the treatment of your personal information through Google Chrome on Google TV are described below. For these specific items only, and only with regard to your use of Google Chrome on the Google TV Platform, this Google TV Privacy Notice supersedes the Google Chrome Privacy Notice.

•All references to "your computer" or "your machine" in the Google Chrome Privacy Notice (or in the Google Privacy Policy or any specific Privacy Notice) should be interpreted as "your Google TV Retail Product" or the device through which you access and use the Google TV Platform.

Because Google Chrome is pre-installed on the Google TV Platform, statements in the Google Chrome Privacy Notice that pertain to any download, installation, or update of Google Chrome do not apply to Google Chrome on the Google TV Platform. Any updates to Google Chrome on Google TV will be performed as part of regular updates to the Google TV Platform. Use of Google Chrome on Google TV necessarily involves the provision of registration information because a Google Account is required to activate and use the Google TV Platform. However, you can use Google Chrome on Google TV without signing in to any specific Google services other than your initial registration through the Google TV Platform.

Some features of Google Chrome are not available on the pre-installed version of Google Chrome on Google TV (such as Translate, Autofill, downloads of extensions and plug-ins, location and synchronization services, and the like). For any feature not available through the version of Google Chrome on Google TV, the information in the Google Chrome Privacy Notice relating to that feature does not apply to your use of Google Chrome on the Google TV Platform.

•For instructions on how to delete information from your browsing history as stored on your Google TV Retail Product through the Google TV Platform, or for information on managing aspects of Google Chrome that are unique to the Google TV Platform, please access the Settings menu on your Retail Product or visit the Google TV Help Center online rather than the Google Chrome FAQ referenced in the Google Chrome Privacy Notice.

•The pre-installed version of Google Chrome on the Google TV Platform includes incognito mode, which works in the same way as incognito mode on stand-alone versions of Google Chrome for sites that you visit on the internet. Although incognito mode may appear as an option in the menu settings of your TV application on the Google TV Platform (and/or the incognito mode notification icon may appear on-screen during your television viewing sessions if you have incognito mode enabled in Google Chrome on Google TV), incognito mode is not currently available in connection with anything other than web sites that you visit while using Google Chrome; it specifically does not apply to your television viewing sessions through the Google TV Platform. This is because Google does not currently collect any specific television viewing history data through the Google TV Platform (see above), and therefore there is nothing to "incognito." Should we collect television viewing history data through the Google TV Platform in the future, we will update this Privacy Notice to describe the availability and operation of incognito mode as applied to your television viewing sessions at that time.
More information

Further information about Google TV is available here. For more information about our privacy practices, visit the Google Privacy Center or go to the full Google Privacy Policy. If you have additional questions, please feel free to contact us through our website or write to us at:

Privacy Matters
c/o Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, California, 94043 (USA)

If the pending merger between Comcast and NBC Universal is approved, the new management structure has already been configured, SNL Kagan reported.

Comcast Chief Operation Officer Steve Burke, who is poised to become CEO of NBC Universal after the merger, has chosen Bob Greenblatt, formerly the president of entertainment at CBS, to become chairman of NBC Entertainment. The position is currently held by Jeff Gaspin.

Ted Harbert, currently with Comcast, will join NBC Universal as chairman of NBC broadcasting overseeing broadcast advertising sales, affiliate relations, companywide research and more.

Read more about the staff changes here.

The merger is pending before the Federal Communications Commission. Earlier this week, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., announced his opposition to the merger, saying it "would not serve the public interest no matter how many conditions were attached."

In a letter to the FCC's five members, Sanders urged the commission to block the merger, saying it would hurt both consumers and competition. It would create "great harm to competition by creating an entity with the incentive and means to squeeze content producers that currently compete with NBCU," he wrote.

In response, Comcast touted the support for the merger from more than 400 elected officials. "The overwhelming record in support of the Comcast NBCU transaction show the significant public interest benefits that it will deliver, including more independent programming choices, more opportunities for ownership diversity, more local public affairs programming, more viewing options for families and children, and accelerating the 'anytime, anywhere' video future consumers want," Comcast Vice President Government Communications Sena Fitzmaurice said in a statement.

Meanwhile, a former Comcast employee will move up in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's office. David Krone, who served as a senior vice president for Comcast where he reported to the media company's Executive Vice President David Cohen, has been promoted from deputy chief of staff to chief of staff. Krone also worked for the National Cable and Telecommunications Association.

"David's experience in the private sector and commitment to public service will serve him well in this role as chief of staff," Reid, D-Nev., said in a statement.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Thursday threatened to block legislation aimed at curbing piracy and counterfeiting on foreign Web sites, saying the bill is a heavy-handed solution to the problem.

"It seems to me the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act as written today, is the wrong medicine," Wyden, the chairman of the Finance International Trade, Customs, and Global Competitiveness Subcommittee, said during a hearing on international trade and the digital economy. "Deploying this statute to combat online copyright and infringement seems almost like a bunker buster cluster bomb when really what you need is a precision-guided missile."

Wyden said that unless changes are made to the bill, introduced by Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., to ensure it "no longer makes the global online marketplace more hazardous to consumers and American Internet companies, I'm going to do everything I can to take the necessary steps to stop it from passing the U.S. Senate."

The bill, which was approved Thursday morning by the Senate Judiciary Committee, would authorize the Justice Department to file a civil action against a domain name linked to piracy or counterfeiting and seek a preliminary order to shut down the domain name. It is backed by a wide range of copyright-related industry groups and by several labor organizations.

When asked about the bill at the Finance subcommittee hearing, Computer and Communications Industry Association President Ed Black mentioned his concerns with the bill's domain name language. Black said while his group is concerned about copyright infringement and counterfeiting, he argued there hasn't been adequate hearings or input from the business community on the measure.

Even though the bill passed on a 19-0 vote, at least two senators on Judiciary voiced concern with the bill. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., called on the Judiciary Committee to hold a hearing on the bill.

National Journal sat down recently with Rep. Robert Goodlatte, a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, to discuss his work in the technology space and his personal tech habits. The Virginia Republican is co-chairman of the Congressional Internet Caucus and chairman of the Republican High-Tech Working Group. A clip of the interview follows. To read the whole interview, go here. (Subscription required.)

National Journal Daily reported Thursday that Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., says that the Senate will not act on cybersecurity legislation during the lame-duck session, punting the issue of how to improve the government's response to cyber threats to the next Congress.

Lieberman made the comments during a hearing Wednesday on the Stuxnet worm that has targeted the control systems of critical infrastructure facilities.

Lieberman has been working with Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John (Jay) Rockefeller, D-W.Va., to try to merge the two panels' cybersecurity measures into one, but said time is running out to reach a compromise.

Lieberman said he hoped the hearing would help educate lawmakers and the public "about the reality of the cyber threat to the United States and how important it was that we worked hard to develop cybersecurity reform legislation, and how unfortunate it is that the clock is going to run out on us before we have a chance to complete negotiations with the other committees and the administration." To read more, click here. (Subscription required)

Meanwhile, House Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., late Wednesday introduced his own cybersecurity bill with Reps. Jane Harman, D-Calif., and Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y.

It would authorize the Homeland Security Department's Office of Cybersecurity and Communications, and create a new Cybersecurity Compliance Division to oversee the establishment of performance-based standards dealing with risks to the .gov domain and critical infrastructure networks. It also would require the Homeland Security Department to work with network operators to develop security plans that meet "risk-based performance standards" and share threat intelligence information with other federal agencies and some private companies.

"From a security and good-government standpoint, the way to deliver better cybersecurity is to leverage, modify, and enhance existing structures and efforts, rather than make wholesale bureaucratic changes," Thompson said in a statement. "This bill will make our nation more secure and better positions DHS - the 'focal point for the security of cyberspace' - to fulfill its critical homeland security mission."

The bill is unlikely to see any action during the lame duck session, but Thompson is expected to reintroduce the legislation in the 112th Congress. With Republicans taking over control of the House in the next Congress, Thompson will lose the chairmanship but is in line to become the ranking member on the Homeland Security Committee.

The future of industry efforts to make online behavioral advertising more transparent for the consumer may be linked to a blue triangle.

Hoping to quell growing concern from policymakers and the public over online behavioral advertising, the nation's largest media and marketing associations embarked on an a self-regulatory campaign that will debut in the coming weeks in the form of a blue triangle. Online behavioral advertising involves tracking a user's Web activities in order to target ads at them based on their preferences.

The triangle, which is being launched by a group known as the Digital Advertising Alliance, is an icon that will appear on Web ads that are using "third-party interest-based data," commonly perceived as behavioral marketing. The icon is aimed at providing more transparency to the user and empower him or her to control the information that companies are collecting about them.

Clicking the triangle brings up a window from the advertiser with more information about the ad and a second click takes the user to a site with more details about what kind of data companies collect and provides the ability to opt-out of specific "interest-based" advertising providers. The second site also will allow a user to see all of the information collected about a given browser by companies participating in the self-regulatory scheme.

"It's not just about meeting minimum requirements," Colin O'Malley, co-founder of Better Advertising, said at a forum Thursday on online advertising sponsored by the U.S. Telecom Association. We must ensure "that there truly is transparency and control for the consumer writ-large," he added.

Better Advertising, which focuses exclusively on dealing with concerns about behavioral online advertising, was selected by the Digital Advertising Alliance to carry out the self-regulatory principles embraced by the industry in 2009. Better Advertising is funded by the investment firm Warburg Pincus.

"Self regulation in the advertising world gets you much better compliance than a law does," said Stuart Ingis, a partner at the Venable law firm who represents the Digital Advertising Alliance.

Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have vowed to take action on privacy matters in the 112th Congress and the FTC will release a report on the matter in the coming weeks.

Christopher Olsen, assistant director of the privacy and identity protection division at the FTC, said that industry is moving in the right direction with the triangle logo, but he still has concerns about "the pace at which they are moving" and has "questions about how it will work."

According to Olsen, the pending report will address how businesses can move toward a "privacy-by-design approach." Such an approach would mean "building privacy into the fabric of the company and into the development of new products and services at the outset." Other concepts the report will address include simplifying choice for the consumer and privacy policies.

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved legislation Thursday aimed at cracking down on online piracy and counterfeiting with a particular emphasis on rogue foreign websites.

Even though it was approved on a 19-0 vote, the Combatting Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act is unlikely to pass the Senate during the lameduck session. While saying she was "pleased to support" the bill, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., noted the bill would need some more work as it moves forward. She cited concerns raised by critics of the bill with a provision that could lead to the revocation of a domain name for websites found to be involved in piracy or counterfeiting.

The bill's opponents are "particularly concerned about the domain name remedy," Feinstein said. She said the committee should be "open minded to the alternatives on this one point."

Judiciary ranking member Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., said that Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who was not at the markup, also indicated the bill would need more work and has requested a hearing on the measure.

The committee approved a substitute amendment by voice vote to the bill that would address some of the concerns with the bill including adding language requiring that a court must find the "rogue website is dedicated to infringing activity before any action is required," Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the bill's sponsor, said in a statement.

"It will take a strong, sustained effort to stop Internet thieves and profiteers," Motion Picture Association of America President Bob Pisano said in a statement. "We believe that Congress and the [Obama] administration can make a significant contribution to that effort by turning the ... bill into law and giving law enforcement significantly enhanced tools for addressing a threat that deprives American innovators of the fruits of their labors and menaces our nation's economic health."

A Veterans Affairs Department claims examiner used a personal unencrypted thumb drive to store records on veterans that included Social Security numbers and then lost the drive. In another instance, a VA employee printed out records containing personal information on veterans and took them home.

The two incidents, described by VA Chief Information Officer Roger Baker Wednesday in a monthly briefing on data breaches reported to Congress, indicate department employees still do not follow policies and procedures to safeguard information, Nextgov.com reported.

Baker said an employee at the regional Veterans Benefits Administration claims office in Nashville, Tenn., plugged an unencrypted thumb drive into his VA computer to store information as he worked. The data included files on 186 veterans and contained a range of sensitive personal information, including names, medical and financial records, birthdates, addresses and Social Security numbers. VA policies prohibit the use of personal and unencrypted thumb drives on its computers. To read more, click here.

A group of state utility regulators Wednesday formally approved a resolution urging Congress to provide two key agencies with the funding they need to oversee two grants programs aimed at helping to spur broadband access and adoption.

The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners adopted two telecommunications resolutions at its annual meeting in Atlanta. The first calls on Congress to provide the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the Agriculture Department's Rural Utilities Service with the funding they need after the continuing resolution passed by Congress expires on Dec. 3 to provide adequate oversight of the programs used to distribute broadband funding from the 2009 economic stimulus package.

The group said the funding could be allocated by adding a provision to the next continuing resolution Congress passes to provide both agencies with broadband oversight funds or by passing the fiscal year 2011 spending bills that fund the agencies.

"It is important to the States' interest in deploying broadband infrastructure to
unserved and underserved areas and in promoting broadband adoption that NTIA and RUS provide sufficient ongoing oversight of the ... grant and loan awards to ensure that the broadband projects and programs are completed and implemented on time, on budget, and deliver the promised economic and social benefit," NARUC said in the resolution.

The group also approved a resolution urging the Federal Communications Commission to crack down on "traffic pumping" by some telecommunications firms. It involves charging excessive access fees to complete calls by driving up call volumes by working with high-traffic Web sites that may offer conference calling services or adult chat lines.

NARUC called on the FCC to immediately address traffic pumping, which can cost hundreds of millions of dollars a year, instead of trying to deal with it as part of a larger overhaul of inter-carrier compensation.

"These schemes have negatively impacted consumers and all segments of the
telecommunications industry," the resolution said.

The group also announced it has elected North Dakota Public Service Commissioner Tony Clark to serve as its new president. He will succeed David Coen of Vermont, whose term expired Wednesday.

Several groups are pushing the Senate Judiciary Committee to act Thursday on legislation that would crack down on online piracy and counterfeiting.

The legislation, sponsored by Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., is on the committee's agenda for its Thursday markup along with several nominations and other bills. Only one of the nominations is viewed as controversial at this point. Several sources say they expect the committee to get to the online piracy bill if it can muster the necessary number of members needed to report legislation out of committee. Leahy said earlier this week that "he'd love" to move the bill at Thursday's markup.

The committee Wednesday released a lengthy list of supporters. They included letters of support sent Wednesday from the Newspaper Association of America and a group of trade unions.

"We appreciate the leadership you have shown with your efforts to move this legislation through the Senate and urge you to continue to push for its enactment during the time remaining in the 111th Congress," according to the letter from such labor groups including the American Federation of Musicians, Communications Workers of America, International Brotherhood of Electrical Engineers and the Teamsters.

"The industries most directly impacted by these rogue websites are among the most vibrant and important in the country; the entertainment and manufacturing sectors provide excellent wages and benefits to American working families and in these very difficult economic times are precisely the types of jobs we cannot afford to lose."

Supporters of the bill have worked to deflect criticism from civil liberties, public interest and some tech groups. The have voiced concerns with provisions in the bill that could lead to the revocation of the domain names of Web sites that engage in piracy or counterfeiting. Critics argue the bill would set a precedent that could harm Internet freedom around the world, undermine the domain name system and hamper innovation.

"It gives the government dramatic new copyright enforcement powers, in particular the ability to make entire websites disappear from the Internet if infringement, or even links to infringement, are deemed to be 'central' to the purpose of the site," Peter Eckersley, senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, wrote in a blog post on the bill Tuesday. "Rather than just targeting files that actually infringe copyright law, [the bill's] 'nuclear-option' design has the government blacklisting entire sites out of the domain name system -- a reckless scheme that will undermine global Internet infrastructure and censor legitimate online speech."

In addition, a group of law professors sent a letter Tuesday to the committee voicing several objections to the bill. "To begin with, the Act is an unconstitutional abridgment of the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment," according to the letter signed by such law professors as David Post at Temple University, Michael Froomkin of the University of Miami and Pamela Samuelson of the University of California at Berkeley.

Under fire from Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, for the top spot on the House Energy and Commerce Committee in the 112th Congress, Rep. Fred Upton is pushing back on all fronts, National Journal reported.

Upton, R-Mich., made major efforts Monday and Tuesday to burnish his conservative credentials.

In a letter to presumptive House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and the Republican Conference, Upton promised to repeal the health care overhaul law as chairman.

In another letter, he signaled his intent to haul White House energy adviser Carol Browner in for questioning about his concerns that the inspector general found the White House staff had made edits to an executive summary from the Interior Department in hopes of moving forward with the deep-water drilling moratorium. To read more, click here. (Subscription required)

Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J. said Wednesday that he will reintroduce in the next Congress the Internet freedom legislation he has pushed for several years.

Smith said Internet censorship is growing around the world. "We're regressing," he told Tech Daily Dose. He added that China's Internet censorship efforts are being adopted by other countries, citing Belarus as the latest example. Earlier this year, the Belarus government set up a center to provide domain names and to censor information available to Internet users in Belarus.

Smith's Global Online Freedom Act would require the State Department to set up an Office of Global Internet Freedom and compile an annual list of Internet-restricting countries. The measure also would require U.S. information technology and communications firms to store personally identifiable information outside of Internet-restricting countries and report when countries ask them to censor, block or restrict access to information.

Smith, an outspoken supporter of human rights, said he was disappointed he was unable to move his bill in the 111th Congress despite his past work with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on human rights issues in China. Smith is a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and will likely chair one of the panel's subcommittees when the GOP takes control of the House in the 112th Congress.

Smith also voiced concern that the State Department has not used funding appropriated by Congress a few years ago to help human rights activists in China and others bypass China's Internet firewall, aimed at blacking access to banned information on the Web. "The money is not going to the people who can pierce the firewall," Smith said. "It does work."

In the latest salvo of the battle for the gavel of the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee, Republican members of the House wrote their fellow colleagues Wednesday to support Rep. Joe Barton's bid for chairmanship.

Reps. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., and John Shimkus, R-Ill., two of the signatories, had previously been identified as candidates for the position. A spokesman for Shimkus said his boss still plans to seek the top spot on Energy and Commerce if Barton does not succeed in getting a waiver from GOP rules limiting members to three terms as chairman of a committee.

Other lawmakers signing the letter are Reps. Ralph Hall, R-Texas, Joe Pitts, R-Pa., Lee Terry, R-Neb., Michael Burgess, R-Texas, Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Steve Scalise, R-La.

Fred Upton, R-Mich., is Barton's primary challenger for the position. Barton has more seniority, but it is widely believed that he would need a waiver from Republican leadership to assume the position due to term limits--a point that Barton adamantly disputes. Nonetheless, most insiders have speculated that Upton will get the job, the Michigan lawmaker announced Tuesday that he would seek the chair.

To bolster Barton's case for assuming leadership, the signatories of the letter pointed to his willingness to fight Democrats and Obama administration by any means necessary.

"Under Joe's leadership, and despite being outnumbered and outgunned, we subjected the Democrats' health bill to 17 days of brutal markup, including a 10-day retreat by the Democrats to regroup despite their overwhelming superiority of numbers," the letter states. Democrats "won, but it was stubborn, intelligent Joe Barton who made certain that they'd won a Pyrrhic victory."

The letter also pointed to Barton's pushback on cap-and-trade and credited him with killing Waxman's net neutrality bill.

Barton, "served one term as our chairman, and we believe it is essential to the new mission of all Republicans in the House that he have the opportunity to serve a second term," his supporters stated.

Pilots who fly passenger and cargo planes want the government to implement a program under which their identities will be confirmed using biometrics so they can pass quickly through airport security checkpoints and avoid--for the most part--controversial screening procedures involving body scanners or pat-downs, National Journal Daily reported.

Pilots unions have entered into what are described as "high level" and "sensitive" talks with Obama administration officials in recent days in response to a public backlash against the use of the whole-body imaging machines and physical pat-downs that are seen as being too invasive. To read more, click here. (Subscription required)

Privacy and civil-liberties advocates Tuesday called for controversial passenger-screening procedures at the nation's airports to be suspended and for Congress to investigate whether the Homeland Security Department has misled the public about the safety of whole-body scanning machines, National Journal reported.

The advocates, including consumer activist Ralph Nader, want the use of whole-body imaging machines to be suspended at least until the department conducts a rule-making process under which it discloses detailed information about the safety of the machines and allows for public comment. To read more, click here. (Subscription required)

The CEOs of some of the nation's top tech companies wrote Senate and House leaders this week to urge them to extend and expand the research and development tax credit before lawmakers adjourn for the year.

"Failure to pass this legislation will undermine efforts to encourage domestic investment, innovation and high wage employment," the Technology CEO Council said in a letter Monday to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, who will become speaker when the GOP takes control of the House in January.

The credit expired, as it has more than a dozen times before, at the end of 2009 and has yet to be extended. At the same time, the credit's worth also has eroded over time, falling from the most effective in the world to 24th best, "behind such nations as Japan, China, India and Korea," the council said.

"As American companies we invest billions in domestic research and development collectively and intend to continue doing so as long as possible," the letter said. "But while other nations encourage innovators to hire more research and development staff in their markets, American policy makers effectively discourage such investments through their inaction and inconsistency."

Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., told reporters after a Senate Democratic caucus meeting Tuesday that his preference is to extend and expand the R&D tax credit. "We have to find some way to get that passed," Baucus said.

He also was asked if he would try to move an extension of the R&D credit and other business tax breaks as a separate measure instead of including them in the larger tax bill to extend expiring income tax cuts. "It's hard to get something new...at this late stage in the game passed but it's good policy, it's good law," Baucus said.

He also said that Senate Democrats have yet to formulate a strategy for how they plan to move the tax legislation they hope to pass before adjourning.

The council is chaired by IBM CEO Samuel J. Palmisano and also made up the chiefs of Applied Materials, Dell, EMC, Intel, Micron, and Motorola.

In its ongoing effort to try to block Google's acquisition of ITA Software, a coalition of online travel sites sent a letter Tuesday to every member of Congress warning against the negative repercussions that merging the two companies could have on consumers.

"This combination threatens to enable Google to dominate online flight and travel search, which can reduce the quality of travel information available to consumers, increase advertising costs, and result in higher airfares," according to the letter from the Fair Search coalition, which includes Expedia Inc., Hotwire, TripAdvisor, KAYAK and Travelocity.

ITA, which makes travel technology software, provides the backend flight search technology for American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, United Airlines, Continental Airlines, Bing, Kayak, and Orbitz and others. With Google's dominance in the search market overall, travel search competitors fear they will be squeezed out of the marketplace.

"We believe that Google should not be allowed to enter a market in a way that simultaneously undermines the ability of other competitors to provide quality products to consumers and continue to innovate themselves," the coalition said.

Google argues that "by combining ITA Software's expertise with Google's technology, we will be able to build new flight search tools for users that will make it easier for them to search for flights, compare flight options and prices, and get them quickly to sites where they can buy their tickets."

A report released Tuesday by the Small Business Administration found that most small businesses say more competition for high-speed Internet services are key to innovation, better customer service and lower prices.

The report, which examined the impact of broadband speeds and prices on small businesses, also found that the availability, speed and price of broadband services vary significantly for metropolitan and rural small businesses. Rural businesses generally pay more for less service, the report found.

"All small businesses must have access to fast and affordable broadband if they're going to succeed in the global economy," Winslow Sargeant, SBA's chief counsel for advocacy, said in a statement. "Today's study shows that a lack of competition in broadband providers is having a negative impact on rural small businesses."

Despite this, 90 percent of small businesses, as of April, subscribe to broadband compared with 65 percent of adults who subscribe at home. A case study in the report comparing prices paid by small businesses and residential Internet users in Minnesota and Tennessee found small businesses pay two to three times more than residential customers for equivalent broadband speeds regardless of where they were located.

Senate Small Business Committee Chairwoman Mary Landrieu, D-La., said the report underscores the need to continue to implement provisions in the FCC's national broadband plan aimed at increasing access and the availability of broadband.

Senate Small Business ranking member Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, added that the report "emphasizes the fact that we simply must do more to make broadband accessible and affordable for our nation's small businesses."

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has released the "finalized" text of a trade agreement aimed at boosting international cooperation in curbing piracy and counterfeiting but it has yet to quell critics who say the agreement is unconstitutional.

"Following legal verification of the drafting, the proposed agreement will then be ready to be submitted to the participants' respective authorities to undertake relevant domestic processes," USTR said when releasing the text Monday.

Staff with the negotiating parties are still expected to meet at the end of the month in Sydney for a final "legal scrub" of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. Other remaining issues still outstanding after officials met for the final round of talks in Tokyo in September were resolved through e-mail and phone conversations, a USTR spokeswoman said.

USTR has maintained that as an executive agreement that does not change U.S. law, ACTA does not need Senate ratification. Other countries also have taken this view.

Australian Trade Minister Craig Emerson, whose government is hosting the technical legal review meeting later this month, said Australia would not have to change its domestic laws to implement ACTA.

"Australia already has rigorous enforcement standards - we want to see those same high standards adopted by other countries for the benefit of our knowledge-intensive exporters," Emerson said in a statement Tuesday.

Critics argue that ACTA is unconstitutional as it currently stands because it does not take the limited approach of most executive agreements.

USTR "argues the agreement will be binding on the U.S. once Ambassador [Ron] Kirk, as the U.S. negotiating representative, agrees to it. Congress will not receive the opportunity to review and amend the agreement before it goes into effect, as it would in any traditional international agreement binding on the U.S.," Sean Flynn, associate director of American University's Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, wrote in a blog post Monday. "If USTR succeeds in this bold plan, it will dramatically expand presidential power to make law without congressional consent."

Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., Tuesday formally announced his bid to chair the Energy and Commerce Committee when Republicans take control of the House in the 112th Congress.

Upton is facing competition from at least two fellow Energy and Commerce members, current full committee ranking member Joe Barton, R-Texas, and Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill. Barton, however, must either obtain a clarification of GOP rules that his past service as ranking member does not run counter to GOP term limits for committee chairmen or a waiver allowing him to continue to serve as the panel's top Republican.

In a letter to House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, who is expected to be the next speaker of the House, Upton touted his work as both chairman and ranking member on three Energy and Commerce subcommittees: Oversight, Communications and Energy, where he currently serves as the top Republican.

While on the committee, he noted his work in passing legislation to curb indecency on television and targeting online predators.

"My vision for the Energy and Commerce Committee is a conservative agenda that focuses on cutting spending, removing the regulatory burden, restoring freedom, keeping government accountable through rigorous oversight, and jobs," Upton wrote. "We are going to take a coordinated approach that involves other committees and our conference, and focuses on an aggressive communications strategy that effectively articulates our message to the American people."

Like Barton and Shimkus, Upton said repealing the health care legislation enacted earlier this year would be one of his top priorities as chairman. He also pledged to work better with other committees and end jurisdictional squabbles that he said have hampered the panel's agenda, while also seeking more input from Energy and Commerce members.

Barton has promoted his record as a strong conservative, while describing Upton as more moderate. In the letter, however, Upton appeared to tout his conservative credentials by noting his opposition to abortion, support for abstinence-only education and work in cutting spending.

At a Senate Commerce subcommittee hearing Wednesday, cable operators will hammer the point that current federal laws advantage broadcasters in programming carriage negotiations, according to testimony of the witnesses obtained by Tech Daily Dose.

"Our objection is to a government-sanctioned process that favors broadcasters by allowing them to put consumers at risk," according to prepared testimony from Time Warner CEO and President Glenn Britt. Britt and other witnesses testifying on behalf of the cable industry will argue for Congress to repeal "special privileges" granted to broadcasters or overhaul the retransmission consent regime established by the 1992 Cable Act.

Under the Cable Act, broadcasters can insist that cable operators include their programming under a "must carry" provision, or they can choose to negotiate a price for an operator's right to retransmit their signal. Historically, broadcasters elected "must carry," but in recent years, networks have increasingly opted to negotiate a price for their signal. Unstable ad revenue and ownership of premium content--such as the popular Fox shows "Glee" and "American Idol"--have made carriage-fee negotiations a more attractive option for broadcasters.

A high-profile TV blackout this month, which left consumers in the New York area without Fox programming due to a cable-fee negotiation standoff between Cablevision and Fox, prompted Senate Commerce Communications Subcommittee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., to call a hearing to review the law and consider overhauling it

Cable firms will take issue with the local monopolies granted to broadcasters that prevent cable operators from negotiating with more than one broadcast channel in a given market. Such exclusive rights were given to broadcasters to protect local programming that may not be commercially viable in a free market.

Broadcasters will claim that cable firms are manufacturing a need for government intervention while at the same time rejecting additional federal involvement.

"We are very concerned that government mandates -- such as requiring Univision to keep providing our programming to a distributor even where we failed to reach a deal -- would distort the market by removing our distributors' primary incentive to reach agreement," Univision President and CEO Joe Uva said in his prepared testimony.

Chase Carey, chief operating officer of Fox's parent News Corp., will take a swipe at the cable industry's complaints, saying they are "particularly ironic coming from companies that until recently were a monopoly in their markets." Carey also argued in his prepared testimony that broadcasters are asking for a fair market price for their valuable programming.

Groups representing actors, authors, composers, directors, musicians, photographers and other artists wrote Senate Judiciary leaders Tuesday to refute claims by critics of legislation that would crack down on online piracy that it would hamper Internet freedom.

The letter to Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and ranking member Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., targets criticism of legislation crafted by Leahy and others that the committee may take up Thursday.

Civil liberties, public interest and some tech groups have voiced concerns with the bill, saying provisions in the legislation that could lead to revocation of domain names or the shut down of Web sites that engage in piracy or counterfeiting would set a precedent that could be used by authoritarian governments to silence their critics. But in their letter Tuesday, the intellectual property groups dismissed such claims.

"By establishing an open and transparent judicial process constrained by due process, enactment of your legislation would set a positive precedent regarding the U.S. commitment to the inviolability of the rule of law in the Internet age," according to Tuesday's letter. "The Senate Judiciary Committee has proven time and again that it can legislate in a manner that secures the property rights of creators while preserving copyright's historic role as the 'engine of free expression.'"

The letter was signed by such groups as the American Federation of Music, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, American Photographic Artists, American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, Motion Picture Association of America, National Songwriters Association, Recording Industry Association of America and the Screen Actors Guild.

A group that represents U.S. credit unions is urging lawmakers to consider legislation requiring retailers to do more to protect consumer credit card information and other sensitive financial data.

In a letter Monday to House and Senate leaders, National Association of Federal Credit Unions President and CEO Fred Becker called on lawmakers to hold hearings "to investigate the problem of data breaches" and consider legislation requiring merchants to do a better job protecting consumer financial information.

"Each year, millions of consumers are put at risk when they leave the cash register that their financial identities may be stolen, fraudulent charges will appear on their account and their credit scores may be damaged," Becker wrote. "Financial institutions, including credit unions, also bear a significant burden as the issuers of payment cards used by millions of consumers."

For example, he said that when there's been a data breach or fraud involving a consumer's credit card, credit unions and other credit card issuers must notify the consumer, issue a new card and change account numbers, which cost the financial institutions both time and money. Noting that the financial regulatory bill enacted earlier this year would reduce the amount of interchange fees that credit unions and other financial institutions can charge merchants to cover such costs, Becker urged lawmakers to require merchants to "be accountable for costs of data breaches that result from their own neglect."

NAFCU also said that while credit unions and others financial institutions must meet certain requirements for protecting consumer financial information, retailers are not required to meet similar requirements. The group urged Congress to require merchants to meet similar standards that now apply financial institutions for protecting consumer data. In addition, Becker urged lawmakers to require retailers to notify consumers when there's been a data breach involving their information.

Several bills were introduced this Congress addressing concerns with data breaches and requiring retailers and other businesses to do more to protect data and notify consumers when there has been a data breach but none have been enacted.

Comcast executive vice president David Cohen said today that when it comes to Internet regulation, self-governance should trump federal mandates.

Cohen pointed to engineering-led groups such as the Internet Engineering Task Force and Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group (BITAG) as alternative and ultimately more efficient options for regulating Internet content. BITAG's role would be advisory for federal agencies on the technological aspects of Internet policy issues.

For support, Cohen called attention to News Corp.'s decision last month to temporarily block access of the online video website Hulu.com -- which it co-owns with other networks -- from Cablevision customers. News Corp. was angry that Cablevision was balking at the fees it was demanding for carriage of its Fox broadcast and cable channels.

"It happened on a Saturday afternoon," Cohen said. "It happened for three hours and as blogs lit up and customers started to complain, News Corp. reversed its decision. If you were going to rely on government, it wouldn't have happened in three hours on a Saturday afternoon."

But Cohen was quick to say that he doesn't advocate that federal regulators be completely hands-off. "By no means am I suggesting a libertarian approach to Internet policy in America," he said. "All of us benefit from having a free and open Internet, and maintaining that is a legitimate government concern. The only question is 'how.'"

As an answer, Cohen and his fellow panelists agreed that policy leaders must conclude the controversial debate over net neutrality and focus on implementing the National Broadband Plan. Introduced by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski earlier this year, the plan would shift up to $16 billion in Universal Service Funding to more directly support broadband in under-served areas, free up to 500 Mhz of spectrum to support the next generation of mobile broadband, and provide improved connectivity to policy institutions.

"It's time to put this [net neutrality] debate behind us--check the box and move on," Cohen said. "We can have a regime with real self-regulation and a real body that can deal with issues and have some basic governmental protections for an open Internet. They can coexist side by side, and that kind of plan will move us further toward a solution than net neutrality ever will."

In the wake of New Corp.'s brief blocking of Hulu, Comcast's pending combination with NBC Universal has come under the scrutiny of net neutrality advocates. The joint venture, currently under regulatory review by both the FCC and Justice Department, has drawn criticism over concern that the united companies will threaten media diversity and hamper competition. Comcast categorically refutes these claims.

The Obama administration's ten-year strategy for nearly doubling the nation's wireless broadband spectrum will begin with the repurposing of underutilized frequencies controlled by the federal government. The Commerce Department announced today that it has identified 115 megahertz of federal airwaves that it wants shared with wireless Internet providers within the next five years.

President Obama and the FCC plan to free up 500 MHz of spectrum over the next decade for wireless connectivity to meet the nation's insatiable appetite for smartphones, laptops and other bandwidth-consuming mobile devices.

The recommendation that spectrum reallocation start with government-controlled airwaves is significant because the FCC originally floated the idea of forcing television broadcasters to relinquish some of their coveted frequencies. The powerful National Association of Broadcasters balked at the idea, and the commission later agreed only to repurpose TV spectrum if stations participate on a voluntary basis.

Regarding today's announcement, Commerce said steps would be taken to guard against interference with federal agencies operating in spectrum bands that would become accessible to commercial broadband providers.

Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration released two documents detailing its short-term and long-term spectrum goals:

Ten-Year Strategy

Near-Term Goals

The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation outlined a new growth strategy Sunday that embraces increased use of information and communications technologies (ICT).

Under a five-prong growth strategy, APEC has committed to realizing "smart socioeconomic activity through ICT applications." The growth meme includes promoting digital prosperity through investment in next generation broadband infrastructure; creating conditions ripe for emerging technologies such as cloud computing; and protecting effective privacy protections, among other initiatives.

President Obama attended the closing ceremonies of an APEC retreat this weekend on the last leg of his ten-day Asia tour. Founded in 1989, APEC is comprised of 21 countries, including the United States, which is dedicated to advancing free-trade for Asia-pacific prosperity.

As part of the innovative growth strategy, APEC economies also committed to improving their "intellectual property rights protection and enforcement capabilities" through strengthening efforts to "develop a global IP infrastructure."

Read more about APEC's new growth strategy here.

Two pilot unions urged members last week to avoid security screening by the full body scanners being deployed at airports across the country. They are concerned about the amount of radiation the advanced imaging technology machines emit and the cumulative effects on pilots, NextGov reported.

In a Nov. 8 letter to members, the U.S. Airline Pilots Association, which represents 5,200 US Airways pilots, warns that the Transportation Security Administration "has offered no credible specifications for the radiation emitted by these machines. As pilots, we are exposed to more radiation as a function of our normal duties than nearly every other category of worker in the United States. . . . USAPA has determined that frequent exposure to TSA-operated scanner devices may subject pilots to significant health risks."

A similar letter from the Allied Pilots Association, the union representing 11,500 pilots with American Airlines, was obtained by The Atlantic, Nextgov's sister publication. It advises members that the backscatter screening devices now being deployed could be "harmful to your health." The letter also reminds pilots they are exposed to more radiation than most other workers, including those at nuclear power plants. "There is mounting evidence of higher-than-average cancer rates as a consequence," the letter noted.

Both letters advised pilots to seek other screening methods, such as standard magnetometer devices, or a pat-down by a Transportation Security Administration officer. Under enhanced pat-downs, screeners examine more of the person's body.

While recommending the pat-downs as an alternative to the AIT scanners, both unions described them as demeaning and intrusive. USAPA recounted the experience of one US Airways pilot who "experienced a frisking that . . . left him unable to function as a crew member."

Read the full story here.

CORRECTION: The Politico event will be held on Thursday at 8:00 am. The original post listed it for Monday at 11:00 am.

Monday
The Brookings Institution hosts a 12:30 pm forum on "Internet Governance and Regulation". Featured speakers include Comcast Executive Vice President David Cohen and Sascha Meinrath, director of the New America Foundation's Open Technology Initiative.

Tuesday
Broadband Breakfast Club hosts an 8:00 am event on public safety and the need for better broadband. Speakers include Steven Berry, president and CEO of the Rural Cellular Association and Charles Dowd, Deupty Chief, Communiciations Division, NYPD.

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation will hosts a 4:00 pm event on "Perspectives on the Future of Digital Communication"

Wednesday
The Senate Commerce Committee holds a 2:30 pm hearing on "Television Viewers, Retransmission Consent, and the Public Interest".

Thursday
Politico hosts an 8:00 am an forum on what's next for technology. Featured speakers include Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va and John Ensign, R-Nev and White House Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra.

US Telecom will host a 9:00 am panel discussion on "Rules of the Road for Behavioral Advertising: Balancing Consumer Privacy and Internet Innovation."

The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold an executive business meeting at 10:00 am. The agenda includes consideration of the "Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act"

Rep. Bobby Rush of Illinois plans to seek the top Democratic spot on the Energy and Commerce Communications, Technology and the Internet Subcommittee, a spokeswoman confirmed Friday.

Rush, who currently chairs the committee's Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection panel, sent a letter to House Democrats seeking their support for the ranking spot on the Communications subcommittee, which has jurisdiction over key issues such as privacy, Internet and telecom regulation, and other issues.

The top Democratic spot on the subcommittee opened up after the panel's current chairman, Rick Boucher, D-Va., was defeated in the midterm election earlier this month that also handed Republicans control of the House in the 112th Congress. Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., was next in line to chair the subcommittee but opted to seek the top Democratic spot on the Natural Resources Committee instead.

In the letter to House Democrats, Rush touted his work on the Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection Subcommittee and his collaboration with Boucher and his subcommittee. Rush crafted privacy legislation earlier this year that he planned to try to merge with a draft measure Boucher was crafting.

"My involvement and interest in [the Communications subcommittee] activities and its jurisdiction have not waned nor have they wavered during my entire tenure on the Energy and Commerce Committee," Rush wrote. "Rather, they have grown deeply over the years as traditional and emerging communications providers seek to grow their domestic and global markets, harness underdeveloped spectrum in licensed and unlicensed spectrum bands, and export more of their products, services and technologies to foreign markets. It is vitally important that we have leadership at the helm of this subcommittee which is strong, effective and knowledgeable about the impact that future legislation and policy will have in the marketplace."

Facebook may be launching their own web-based email system as early as Monday, several media outlets have reported.

According to the Los Angeles Times and Tech Crunch, the new email service has been nicknamed "Project Titan" and the "Gmail Killer," inside of the company.

A spokesperson for Facebook declined to comment.

If the rumors are true, it could put to rest problems with Facebook's messaging system that was originally built for back-and-forth communication like SMS.

Under the rumored email service, a users addresses will be your vanity url at Facebook.com (vanityurl@facebook.com). The service could offer insight into a recent tussle between Google and Facebook over sharing contacts. Google recently changed its terms of service preventing Facebook, and other third-party applications, from importing Gmail contacts unless data sharing reciprocity is provided.

If Facebook plans to launch on Monday, their Web 2.0 summit held in San Francisco, Calif., will be the likely platform.

Here is the likely line-up of witnesses for Wednesday's hearing on carriage fee negotiations, according to a source familiar with the situation:

Tom Rutledge, Chief Operating Officer, Cablevision.

Glenn Britt, President and CEO, Time Warner Cable

Charles Segars, CEO, Ovation (a channel dedicated to the arts)

Chase Carey, President, News Corp.

Joe Uva, CEO, Univision

William Lake, FCC Media Bureau Chief, may also testify, according to an industry source.

The hearing comes in the wake of a high-profile cable fee dispute between Cablevision and News Corp.'s Fox that left millions of viewers in the New York area without Fox programming for weeks.

When U.S. customs agents shut down TVShack.net in late June for illegally distributing popular movies, television shows, and other copyrighted material online, officials touted it as a major victory. The site now bears a notice stating that its Internet address was seized by the federal government.

But days later, TVShack was back up and running--this time using a Web address linked to the Cocos Islands off Australia, beyond reach of U.S. authorities. In the wake of the White House's June release of a comprehensive strategy for protecting intellectual property, pressure is mounting from key industry players, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Motion Picture Association of America, for tougher action against online pirates.

Yet as Washington turns up the heat, copyright infringers are using technology to stay a step ahead. They are increasingly targeting the U.S. market with sites registered overseas to escape the jurisdiction of U.S. regulators and law enforcement. They make more of their videos available for instant viewing, bypassing time-consuming downloads, and they sometimes divert lawful transmissions of programs to unauthorized sites.
"The Internet has literally changed everything," said John Morton, director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, in an interview. "We're in a long-term game of cat and mouse" with online pirates.

As the Web evolves into a major platform for distributing programming, the stakes are rising. "As soon as a movie comes out, a couple of days later it is widely available," said David Green, vice president for public policy at NBC Universal, which is seeking federal approval for its $30 billion merger with Comcast, the nation's largest cable provider.

To read the rest of this story, visit National Journal magazine (subscription required).

The Energy Department is shutting down Purple, a five-year-old supercomputer that was once the darling of the government's fleet of machines for simulating nuclear weapons performance, NextGov reported.

Energy officials announced the department has turned off the IBM machine that was procured for $230 million, following a decade-long pursuit to build a 100 teraflop-per-second computer. A teraflop is 1 trillion computer operations per second. Scientists used Purple to simulate the aging of the nation's nuclear stockpile, without testing nuclear weapons underground.

Taking the system offline is expected to free up personnel, space and money to operate even faster systems, Energy officials said Wednesday night.

When it was unveiled in 2005, Purple and sister computer BlueGene/L -- both housed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California -- held more supercomputing power than any other scientific computing facilities on Earth.

"The Purple machine was the icon of the Advanced Simulation and Computing Initiative kicked off in 1996 that was intended to demonstrate that science-based simulations could effectively underwrite the nation's nuclear deterrent during a moratorium on underground nuclear explosive testing," said Don Cook, deputy administrator for defense programs at Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration.

NNSA spokesman Damien LaVera added that since 2005, "thanks in large part to the NNSA's continued investment in supercomputers, platforms have gotten exponentially larger and faster. Purple has served its mission, and been replaced by even more powerful and energy efficient platforms."

Research scientists said it is understandable that, since the agency has an ongoing need to conduct large-scale simulations, it wants to be efficient in its use of people, power and space.

"They want to make sure they are utilizing the best machine that they can put in play," said Stanley C. Ahalt, director of the Renaissance Computing Institute, a collaborative academic center in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina. "The unfortunate situation is that these machines that are very costly become obsolete very quickly. For NNSA, which has such a critical mission in terms of managing the nuclear stockpile they have to refresh the machines. Five years was a good run."

The computer simulations that Purple brought to bear added a third leg of science, alongside theory and experiment, Energy officials noted.

But that third leg needs to be propped up, computing experts say. For more than half a decade, the scientific community has been warning that foreign countries soon will eclipse the United States in supercomputing prowess if the government does not increase funding for equipment and training. The nation relies on the uber-processing speeds of the systems for modeling scenarios ranging from climate change to the spread of a pandemic flu.

"The real problem is that we are not educating the next generation of [Americans] to understand how to use these machines," Ahalt said. "Computational science is a critically important area for our security and for our ability to stay in front of research and development. China is making investments in people who know how to use these things."

Normally U.S. systems dominate the top spots on a half-yearly list of the world's 500 most powerful supercomputers. But, in June, a Chinese supercomputer -- Nebulae -- ranked second for the first time in history, at 1,271 teraflops, and theoretically can perform faster than the No. 1 machine, Energy's 1,759 teraflop Jaguar. Researchers expect that China's system will top the list when it is updated next week.

The National Association for Regulatory Utility Commissioners is debating a policy that, if passed in its current draft form, would call on Congress to appropriate more money for oversight of broadband stimulus grants.

As part of the Recovery Act, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the Agriculture Deparment's Rural Utilities Service were charged with distributing $7 billion to foster broadband access and adoption in the United States. The grants have been awarded and NTIA is waiting on Congress to appropriate additional money to oversee the program's grantees.

In the draft proposal, NARUC urges Congress to provide additional funds for oversight before December 3rd, when the current funding for this activity expires.

Members of NARUC's Telecommunications Committee, who have convened in Georgia for the group's annual meeting, will debate the draft resolution Friday. If it is approved, it will go to the group's board of directors on Tuesday for its backing, and then for consideration by NARUC's full membership on Wednesday.

Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman isn't concerned about "cord cutting," the industry term for traditional pay-tv subscribers who cancel their service in favor of content available through alternative platforms, namely the Internet.

During the company's third-quarter conference call Thursday, Dauman said the anxiety with cord cutting is "much ado about very little" and argued that cord cutting was not affecting the business. Viacom owns MTV, Comedy Central, VH1 and Nickelodeon, among other popular channels. The company reported 20 percent growth in attributable adjusted net income from this time last year jumping from $432 million to $461 million.

Provided the economy recovers, the media executive expects the number of television subscribers in the U.S. to "grow at a better clip than it has over the last year and a half or so."

Viacom holds a stake in the cable network EPIX; the two companies recently signed a major distribution deal with Netflix. During the conference call, Dauman noted that the Netflix deal is the "first time a nontraditional distributor valued content for a new segment of the pay window 'at a level that is comparable and indeed higher than the rates traditional distributors pay,'" SNL Kagan, a firm that specializes in media and communications analysis, reported.

New players in the television distribution game such as Google TV and ivi have raised concern that cord cutting is a trend that could undermine the business model of traditional cable providers.

The European Commission's top tech and telecom official indicated Thursday that the European Union would not pursue net neutrality legislation at this point, echoing the conclusion of a review released earlier this week.

In a speech at a Net Neutrality Summit in Brussels, Neelie Kroes, the commission's vice president for the digital agenda, discussed the commission's review released earlier this week into whether the EU should impose rules that would bar network providers from discriminating against Internet content or services. The review indicated there was not a need for legislation at this time.

"In general, [European broadband] providers have upheld the principle of open access - end users may access most of the applications and services of their choice," Kroes said in her prepared remarks.

She said the EU should "avoid regulation which might deter investment and an efficient use of the available resources. That would be cutting off our nose to spite our face."

She also noted that that the telecom framework the EU adopted in 2009 includes "important tools" to help member state regulators protect the openness of the Internet. She said it is important to give the EU's member states time to implement the telecom framework, which she said will help promote "both network and service competition" that will make it easier for consumers to switch between providers.

"We should not underestimate this element. A healthy competitive environment allows tackling many potential problems at their root, avoiding the emergence of monopolistic gatekeepers which could create serious dangers for net neutrality," Kroes said. "This is why the debate is different here than in the United States."

The net neutrality debate continues to rage on in the United States, where net neutrality supporters are pushing the Federal Communications Commission to move forward on its open Internet proceeding, while broadband operators and other critics continue to argue that such rules will hinder broadband investment and innovation.

Kroes did cite some concern about operators blocking access to Internet telephony services such as Skype. She reserved the right to pursue legislation to address this or any other problems that might threaten consumer access to the Internet content or services of their choosing.

"If we encounter significant and persistent problems, I will not be afraid to change the law in the future to achieve competition and choice consumers deserve, be it through general measures to enhance competition, such as to further facilitate consumer switching, or if this fails, through targeted obligations on unjustified traffic differentiation applicable to all ISPs irrespective of market power," Kroes said.

One of Google's most persistent critics called on the House Energy and Commerce Committee Thursday to hold a hearing into the firm's Wi-Fi data collection controversy, citing a discrepancy in a Google official's testimony on the matter during a Senate hearing in June.

Consumer Watchdog wrote Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and ranking member Joe Barton, R-Texas, to once again request a hearing into the Wi-Fi controversy. Google revealed in May that cars that collected images for the company's Street View service "mistakenly" also gathered payload data from unsecured Wi-Fi networks.

While the FTC recently announced it was dropping its probe of the matter, the FCC confirmed Wednesday that it is investigating the issue. Several state attorneys general and data protection authorities in other countries also are investigating the matter.

Consumer Watchdog urged Waxman and Barton to call Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Google Director of Privacy Engineering Alma Whitten to testify. The group cited a "discrepancy" in testimony Whitten gave about the controversy during a Senate Commerce hearing in June. The group claims that while Whitten testified at the time that Google did not breach any private data from the Wi-Fi networks, information revealed before the hearing from an investigation by the French National Commission on Computing and Liberty revealed the opposite.

"Google has demonstrated a troubling pattern of changing its story in public statements as it has offered explanations of why it gathered private data from wireless networks. Moreover, it is clear that Whitten, who mentioned Google's Wi-Spying in congressional testimony this summer, gave a written statement that contradicted the facts," Consumer Watchdog President Jamie Court and John Simpson, director of the group's Inside Google project, wrote.

"Whitten's actions must be examined closely because in its effort to revamp its image and portray itself as a company concerned about consumers' privacy, Google has promoted her to director of privacy for engineering and product management," they added.

Barton, who is campaigning to become chairman of Energy and Commerce when the GOP takes control of the House in January, said last week that the Wi-Fi controversy was "very troubling" and voiced skepticism about Google's claims that it collected the Wi-Fi data by mistake. Barton also indicated that he would examine the issue if he is chairman of the committee in the 112th Congress.

Another senior member of the committee, Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., also has voiced concern about the controversy. In a statement Wednesday, he applauded the FCC's decision to investigate the issue.

"The Federal Communications Commission is rightly investigating whether Google's Street View cars steamrolled privacy laws in pursuit of mapping information," Markey said. "I commend the commission for taking action - the potential for this technology to be used for drive-by snooping into people's personal lives is not something to be taken lightly. ... I will continue to actively monitor developments in this important area."

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Consumer Watchdog's charges. But Whitten said in the same testimony from the June Senate hearing that "these samples of payload data have never been used in any Google product or service; nor do we intend to use them."

She added, "I can attest that it was not consistent with the value we place on the responsible handling of personal data. Google is taking the review of this matter very seriously and we will report back with the changes we'll make to prevent such a thing from happening in the future."

Despite his efforts to highlight his conservative credentials in his bid to become chairman of the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, still had some kind words for one of the Democrats whose defeat helped put the GOP in a position to reclaim control of the House in the next Congress.

During an appearance last Friday on C-Span's "The Communicators" program, Barton was asked how the loss of Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., a key player on telecom and tech issues who currently chairs the Energy and Commerce Communications Subcommittee, would affect the panel. After generally coasting to re-election in past years, Boucher was defeated in the midterm election by Republican Morgan Griffith, the majority leader of the Virginia House of Delegates.

While stressing that as a Republican he's always "happy to get more Republicans and to have a majority," Barton said that when politics are removed, "there is not a better person in Congress than Rick Boucher as somebody knowledgeable on issues of telecommunications but also energy."

Barton, who currently serves as the top Republican on Energy and Commerce, praised Boucher's deep knowledge on those issues and legal expertise as well as his willingness to work with Republicans.

"On the political side, I welcome his successor as part of the new Republican majority," Barton added. "On a personal side ... Rick Boucher is one of the good folks, an example of what being a good congressman is. He will be missed, as a person."

Key lawmakers made moves Wednesday to further their campaigns for Committee leadership positions in the ongoing kabuki theatre that's sure to continue until all the panels are officially formed.

Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., announced Wednesday that he will seek the top Democratic spot on the Resources Committee and Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, touted support from former GOP House chairmen to argue his case for assuming the chairmanship on Energy and Commerce Committee.

"The stakes have never been higher for creating new energy jobs, protecting our environment, and increasing our national security by properly managing our own natural resources," said Markey. "Now is not the time to capitulate to an agenda that will allow China and the rest of the world to win the clean energy jobs race, all at the expense of the planet. Following the largest oil spill in our nation's history, it is imperative that we have a cop on the beat policing the oil industry."

Markey's decision to pursue the spot as ranking member of the Natural Resources Committee may put Reps. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., or Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., in line to take the ranking position on the Energy and Commerce Communications Subcommittee. Markey had been next in line for that panel with the defeat of the subcommittee's current chairman, Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va.

Rush, who is currently chairman of the Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection Subcommittee, said last week that he was interested in retaining a leadership position on Energy and Commerce but had not decided what subcommittee he would seek a ranking spot.

Barton, who has been waging an aggressive campaign to take the chairmanship of the Energy and Commerce Committee despite broad consensus that he would need a waiver from GOP leadership to exempt him from term limits, released a letter Thursday morning from former Republican chairmen saying he does not need a waiver.

Barton, who currently serves as the ranking member on Energy and Commerce, has argued that while GOP rules limit House members to three terms as chairman or ranking member on a full committee, Republicans who had served as ranking members when the GOP last won control of the House in 1994 were allowed to serve three full terms as chairmen.

"Joe has served one full two-year term in the chair at the Energy and Commerce Committee and is seeking a second term. He was denied the chairmanship when Democrats won the majority in 2006 and held on to it for four years," Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, a former chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and former Reps. Bill Archer, R-Texas, and Bud Shuster, R-Pa., wrote to the GOP transition team. "We believe he deserves that second term now, and that neither the spirit nor the letter of the rule was ever intended to prevent it."

While in the House, Archer served as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, while Shuster headed the Transportation and Infrastructure panel.

Information Technology Industry Council CEO and President Dean Garfield Thursday urged U.S. and South Korean officials to "seize the opportunity" and conclude a fair trade agreement during President Obama's visit to Seoul.

"We strongly encourage the U.S. and Korean governments to seize the opportunity to conclude a free trade agreement," Garfield said in a statement from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Japan. "This agreement, when completed, will be a job creator and economic catalyst at a time when both are badly needed. Given its positive implications for the American public as well as employers and markets worldwide, we hope both countries will conclude their efforts as soon as possible."

Despite strong support for such an agreement from ITIC and other U.S. business groups, Obama said during a joint news conference from Seoul Thursday with South Korean Leader President Lee Myung-bak that it could take days or weeks to conclude a deal. "We discussed the need to keep moving forward towards a U.S.-Korea free trade agreement, which would create jobs and prosperity in both our countries. We believe that such an agreement, if done right, can be a win-win for our people," Obama said.

Obama added that the leaders had "asked our teams to work tirelessly in the coming days and weeks to get this completed, and we are confident that we will do so."

Garfield said while "these types of negotiations are always challenging and unpredictable, failure to achieve a meaningful agreement shouldn't be an option for either side." Helping to secure free trade for information technology products is one of ITIC's top priorities. The group, made up of such companies as Apple, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Microsoft, notes that "two-thirds of our markets and an even larger share of IT spending growth are outside our borders."

Obama is in the South Korean capital for a meeting with leaders of the G20 countries.

Though intelligence agencies intercepted e-mails between Army Maj. Nidal Hasan and a radical Muslim cleric a year before he allegedly went on a violent rampage and killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, in November 2009, lack of clear policy and procedures impeded sharing of such threat information with the Army, the service said this week in its final review of the incident.

Nextgov.com reported that the FBI also reportedly learned that Hasan had wired money to sources in Pakistan months before the shooting, but again this information did not make its way to the Army.

Foreign intelligence information is shared by the FBI through multiagency federal, state and local Joint Terrorism Task Forces, but prior to the Fort Hood attacks Defense Department participation in these task forces was inadequate, the Army said in its report, which was released Tuesday.

The Army now plans to station 26 criminal investigators with these task forces. In April, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the Pentagon will use the FBI's e-Guardian threat reporting system to access multiagency terrorist threat information. In its new report, the Army said it planned to merge information from e-Guardian with classified intelligence information to provide even better insight into potential terrorist threats. To read more, click here.

Privacy experts traded barbs Tuesday during a tense panel discussion on the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, which revealed just how difficult legislating privacy issues can be.

Disagreement among the speakers and audience members nearly put an end to the discussion, but enough order was restored to shed light on a few important facets of the decade-old COPPA law and how it might be improved upon.

During the session at the Family Online Safety Institute's annual conference, several panelists discussed whether the Federal Trade Commission should increase the age of children covered by COPPA from 13 to 18 in order to offer its protections to teenagers. As it stands, the law restricts how operators of commercial websites and online services can collect information about children under the age of 13.

Both panel and audience members, however, raised doubts about the prospects that the FTC would include teens up to 18 in any revisions made to COPPA.

"Raising the COPPA age has constitutional problems," said Guilherme Roschke, a staff attorney at the Institute for Public Representation at Georgetown University's law school.

Dona Fraser, director of privacy online at the Entertainment Software Rating Board, a nonprofit that self-regulates the interactive entertainment software industry, said the FTC lacks the tools to enforce compliance with the law.

"What this law is missing is consumer education because the law has no teeth," Fraser said. "It's not worth trying to comply when there is no enforcement."

Berin Szoka, who has served as a senior fellow at the now-defunct Progress and Freedom Foundation, commended COPPA for having "restrained ambitions," saying it's not intended to be fool proof.

"What's relevant to [COPPA's] success is how effectively parents can implement what's important to them about protecting their children online," Szoka said, adding that providing parents with better tools is key.

The FTC is in the process of reviewing public comments as part of an effort to determine whether COPPA should be updated to keep up with technological changes. The law was enacted in 1998 and the rule implementing it went into effect in 2000. FTC staff is aiming to provide a recommendation to the five commissioners by the end of the year.

The FCC is investigating the Google Wi-Fi incident a commission official confirmed to Tech Daily Dose on Wednesday.

"Last month, Google disclosed that its Street View cars collected passwords, e-mails and other personal information wirelessly from unsuspecting people across the country," said Michele Ellison, Enforcement Bureau Chief of the Federal Communications Commission. "In light of their public disclosure, we can now confirm that the Enforcement Bureau is looking into whether these actions violate the Communications Act. As the agency charged with overseeing the public airwaves, we are committed to ensuring that the consumers affected by this breach of privacy receive a full and fair accounting."

The brouhaha surrounding Google's privacy breach started in May when the company said it "mistakenly" collected personal information from unsecured Wi-Fi networks while collecting images for its Street View service, which provides street-level images of addresses.

Previously, Energy and Commerce ranking member Joe Barton, R-Texas, and Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., a senior member of the Energy and Commerce panel, wrote FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz about whether the FTC is investigating the matter. The FTC began investigating the incident but dropped it recently saying Google had made improvements to deal with their privacy problems.

Last Friday, Barton, a top contender to be the Energy and Commerce Chairman in the 112th Congress, said the incident was "very troubling" and questioned whether it was a mistake as Google has said.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center wrote the FCC last May urging the commission to open an investigation on the matter. Citing provisions of the Communications Act, EPIC noted that the FCC has the statutory authority and obligation to "safeguard the privacy of customer information," over airwaves and restrict "the intercept of communication over 'wire or radio' without authorization."

The Justice Department announced Wednesday that Hewlett-Packard has agreed to pay $16.25 million to settle allegations of fraud related to the FCC's e-rate program, which provides subsidies for Internet access in schools and libraries.

The company agreed to the settlement following a joint investigation by Justice and the Federal Communications Commission into allegations that contractors working for HP and other companies provided gifts to personnel with the Dallas Independent School District and Houston Independent School District to help obtain contracts that included $17 million in HP equipment.

According to a statement released by the FCC, the school district officials were offered meals and entertainment such as trips on a yacht and tickets to the 2004 Super Bowl in order to obtain information and win contracts to provide E-rate services despite a requirement that such contracts be awarded through a competitive bidding process.

In addition to paying the $16.25 million, most of which will be returned to the E-rate program, HP will abide by a compliance agreement overseen by the FCC aimed at ensuring the company "plays by the rules in the future," the commission said.

"We continue to be vigilant in our management and oversight to prevent
any activities that undermine the integrity of the E-rate program," FCC Wireline Bureau Chief Sharon Gillett said in the statement. "The FCC will do all it can to ensure that E-rate funds are not diverted from their purpose of increasing educational opportunities."

The FCC adopted an order in September aimed at bolstering the agency's rule barring E-rate applicants from soliciting or receiving gifts and firms seeking to provide E-rate services from providing gifts.

UPDATED: HP said in a statement that the company "requires that all employees and partners adhere to lawful and ethical business practices. The activities at the center of this investigation occurred more than five years ago, the partner relationships have been terminated and the employees involved are no longer with the company. HP fully cooperated with the authorities and the matter is now resolved."

Even though the hot issue of whether to renew expiring income tax cuts are expected to dominate, next week's lame-duck session of Congress will featuring at least two technology-related hearings.

The Senate Finance Committee announced Wednesday that its International Trade, Customs, and Global Competitiveness Subcommittee would be holding a hearing Nov. 18 on international trade in the digital economy.

A spokesman for subcommittee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said the hearing will examine "the importance of keeping overseas markets for digital goods and services as open and fair as the U.S. market." He added that witnesses will discuss both the benefits of tech to the global economy and the challenges the tech sector faces abroad, such as censorship, discriminatory privacy practices and security concerns about cross-border data flows.

Those expected to testify at the Finance hearing include Computer and Communications Industry Association President and CEO Ed Black, Salesforce.com Senior Vice President Daniel Burton, Association for Competitive Technology Board President Mike Sax and Greg Slater, Intel's director trade and competition policy.

The Senate Commerce Committee also announced Wednesday that its Communications Subcommittee will be holding a hearing Nov. 17 on disputes over retransmission agreements between cable providers and broadcasters. The most recent spat between Fox and Cablevision led to a cutoff of Fox broadcast programming for Cablevision's customers in the New York area before the two sides reached an agreement late last month.

The committee did not release a list of witnesses expected to appear at the hearing.

UPDATED: The Senate Judiciary Committee said Wednesday that it will be holding a markup on Nov. 18 and among the items on the panel's long agenda is legislation (S. 3804) sponsored by Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., aimed at cracking down on online piracy and counterfeiting. A committee spokeswoman said while the panel hopes to get to the bill, it will first act on the 19 nominations on the agenda before it moves to the five bills it has listed for possible action.

A new poll released Wednesday found most of those surveyed say doctors, health technology systems, health insurance companies, hospitals and labs should not be allowed to share or sell patients' health information without their consent.

The online interactive survey of 2,000 adults was conducted by Zogby International for the health privacy watchdog group Patients Privacy Rights.

The poll found 97 percent of those surveyed said doctors, health technology systems, hospitals and labs should not be allowed to sell or share their personal health information without consent, while 98 percent want the same standard applied to insurance companies.

During a conference call with reporters, physician Deborah Peel, the group's founder and chairwoman, said insurance companies are increasingly selling aggregated data about their customers. While the companies say they do not reveal the identities of their customers, Peel argued that "it's too easy to re-identify" those customers.

Other findings from the poll found 91 percent support giving patients control over who can access their electronic health records; 87 percent say patients should decide who can see or use their health information; and 78 percent said they would be more likely to use a website that gave users a say in who can see or use the health information they provide to the site.

Peel noted that websites that provide medical information often gather and sell information provided by their users. She called on Congress to pass legislation that would require consent from patients before using their medical information. A handful of measures were introduced in Congress this year that would require patient consent before medical information or other highly sensitive information such as financial data could be shared or used by others. "The bottom line is that we have to solve this problem at some point with a law" from Congress, Peel said.

The survey, conducted Aug. 24-26, had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.2 percentage points.

Critics of Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill, are lampooning the lawmaker, who announced Tuesday that he is formally seeking the chairmanship of the Energy and Commerce Committee, for saying that God, not man, will determine climate change.

At an Energy and Commerce Energy and Environment Subcommittee hearing in March 2009, Shimkus quoted several passages from the Bible pointing to God's authority on climate. "The earth will end only when God declares it's time to be over. Man will not destroy this earth, this earth will not be destroyed by a flood," Shimkus said.

"I appreciate having panelists here that are men of faith and we can get into a theological discourse of that position, but I do believe that God's word are infallible, unchanging [and] perfect," Shimkus added.

The clip of Shimkus' remarks is circulating the Internet accompanied by snide remarks about the lawmaker's faith in religion over science.

"The panel selected by the majority included two ordained ministers representing religious organizations," Shimkus spokesman Steven Tomaszewski said. "Both witnesses cited Bible passages in their prepared remarks. The congressman simply countered with his own Bible passages."

Another key official involved in the FCC's broadband agenda is leaving the agency. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski announced Wednesday that Phoebe Yang, his senior adviser on broadband, will be leaving next month.

Yang, who will be joining the senior management team of the Advisory Board Company, played a key role in helping to craft and implement the FCC's national broadband plan, which was released in March and outlined ways to help spur broadband access and adoption.

"Phoebe has been indispensable to the commission's efforts to take early and decisive action to implement the national broadband plan -- from leading the creation of the commission's 2010 Broadband Action Agenda to advising the Executive Branch on how broadband policies can spur innovation in addressing national priorities such as health care, energy, and education," Genachowski said in a news release.

Other officials involved in helping to craft the broadband plan who have left the commission in recent months include Blair Levin, the former executive director of the FCC's broadband initiative who departed in April and is now a senior fellow at the Aspen Institute. Colin Crowell, a former senior counselor to Genachowski who also played a key role in the broadband plan, left the commission in June to start his own consulting firm.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., called on the Federal Communications Commission Wednesday to do more to crack down on unauthorized charges added to consumers' phone bills by a third party.

In a letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, Klobuchar, a member of the Commerce Committee, voiced concern about the practice known as "cramming." She said complaints about unauthorized charges have been on the rise, particularly among smart phone users who can download applications to their phones.

"Victims of cramming may have inadvertently signed up to receive a message - such as a horoscope or a joke - without realizing they would be billed each month. Or a victim may simply be an unlucky target of a scam," Klobuchar wrote. "These charges, which may go unnoticed for months, appear to be legitimate and are often hidden in a bill." She added that such charges often are difficult to remove.

Klobuchar, who has been critical of early termination fees imposed on wireless phone customers who break their contracts early, urged the FCC to consider adopting rules that would require phone companies to clearly identify third-party charges on their customers' bills, including a clear description of the services being charged. In addition, she called on the FCC to establish clear procedures companies must follow to ensure that a consumer has agreed to purchase a service that will be charged to their phone bill.

"As I have written to you before, wireless consumers are increasingly faced with confusion over wireless charges and uncertainty about their bills," she added in the letter. "Cell phone cramming and unauthorized third-party charges only add to this confusion."

Verizon Wireless has agreed to pay a record $25 million fine to settle allegations from the Federal Communications Commission that the wireless provider erroneously billed millions of customers for unexplained data charges.

Last month, Verizon Wireless agreed to pay a record $25 million fine to settle the FCC's allegations that the wireless provider erroneously billed millions of customers for unexplained data charges.

The group that manages the Internet's address system Wednesday announced changes that would allow the firms or organizations that operate the databases of new top-level domain names to also own the companies that sell Internet address registrations to the public.

The move, adopted by the board of directors for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers at a special meeting last week, formalizes policies governing the relationships between companies or groups that operate as registries and registrars, which sell domain name registrations to the public.

"In the absence of existing policy or new bottom-up policy recommendations, the Board saw no rationale for placing restrictions on cross-ownership," ICANN board Chairman Peter Dengate Thrush said in a statement. "Any possible abuses can be better addressed by properly targeted mechanisms. Co-ownership rules are not an optimal technique in this area."

ICANN's board, however, did include some restrictions aimed at addressing potential concerns with the cross-ownership policy, including requiring registries and registrars to abide by a code of conduct that prohibits them from misusing data or engaging in other forms of "abusive conduct arising out of registry-registrar cross-ownership," ICANN said in the statement.

In addition, ICANN has imposed auditing requirements and graduated sanctions that could lead to termination of a registry or registrar's contract with ICANN and punitive damages. ICANN also noted that it retains the right to refer any competition issues to the appropriate government antitrust authority.

ICANN, which operates under an agreement with the Commerce Department, has never implemented a formal policy on the issue since the California-based non-profit corporation in 2000 approved the first set of new top-level domain names to compete with the only domains available to the public at the time: .com, .org and .net. At the time, Network Solutions was the sole operator of the registries for all three names.

ICANN has been debating for the last two years among its various supporting organizations whether to continue, expand or eliminate restrictions in its agreements with registries that limit them from owning more than 15 percent of a registrar.

"The decision was a surprise because betting men were giving odds that the board would institute a cross-ownership restriction limiting registrars and registries to owning between 2 percent and 15 percent of each other," Antony Van Couvering, CEO of a consulting firm that provides advice to firms that want to operate new generic top-level domains, said in a blog post. "The 2 percent figure is what the Board voted for in March 2010, a vote widely understood to be a warning to the so-called ICANN community to reach an agreement on the issue. The 15 percent figure is what had been lobbied for heavily by various powerful incumbent players, who buttressed their position with the argument that this was what had been done in the past."

After a company fired an employee for criticizing her supervisor on Facebook, among other reasons, the social media giant has weighed in saying that users must take responsibility for their online actions.

"Just as in your offline life, there are some people who you want to be more open with than others, which is why Facebook gives you complete control over how you share information," Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said Tuesday evening. "People who use Facebook should ensure their sharing settings are consistent with the way they conduct themselves in the real world."

The National Labor Relations Board, in what is being viewed as a groundbreaking case, accused the American Medical Response of Connecticut, an emergency ambulance service, of illegally firing Dawnmarie Souza for negative comments she wrote about her supervisor on Facebook.

NLRB argues that employee criticism of their superiors or employer on a social networking site is generally a protected activity and that employers would be violating the law by punishing workers for such statements. The New York Times first reported the news on Monday.

American Medical Response has disputed the NLRB's claims. "The employee in question was discharged based on multiple, serious complaints about her behavior," the company said in a statement. "The employee was also held accountable for negative personal attacks against a co-worker posted publicly on Facebook. The company believes that the offensive statements made against the co-workers were not concerted activity protected under federal law."

An administrative law judge is scheduled to hear the case on Jan. 25.

With newly empowered Republicans seeking to exert strict oversight of the FCC, which has the votes to move forward on a controversial net neutrality proceeding opposed by the GOP, former congressional aide William Nordwind appears well suited to provide advice on the conservative agenda.

He is currently a partner in the Venable law firm, representing clients on telecommunications, commerce and energy related matters. Nordwind's portfolio includes two of the industry's biggest players in the telecommunications space: Verizon and Time Warner Inc.

Nordwind is part of a group of influential Washington insiders who are poised to play an important role in advising Republicans as they prepare to take control of the House in January when the 112th Congress convenes. Other potential powerbrokers will be profiled in this week's National Journal magazine.

Before joining the private sector, Nordwind spent more than 15 years working on Capitol Hill including once serving as the liaison between the personal office of Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., a contender for chairman of the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee, and the Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigation Subcommittee.

Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., formally announced Tuesday that he plans to seek the chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, adding another contender to the race to head the powerful panel with jurisdiction over tech and telecom as well as energy, health and other issues.

Shimkus, who currently serves as the ranking member on the committee's Health Subcommittee, has served on the committee since 1997 and has sat on every Energy and Commerce subcommittee at one point since joining the panel. In a letter to House Minority leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, who is expected to become speaker when the GOP takes control of the House in January, Shimkus said his experience on the panel as well as his work as vice chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee and as co-chairman of that group's Mentoring Program "makes me uniquely qualified among a group of talented contenders to lead the Energy and Commerce Committee."

He faces competition from Energy and Commerce ranking member Joe Barton, R-Texas, who must obtain a waiver or a clarification of GOP rules limiting members to serving six years as chairman or ranking member on House committees, and from Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., who also is expected to seek the committee's top spot. Upton is a senior member of the committee and serves as the ranking Republican on the Energy subcommittee.

Shimkus said one of his top priorities as chairman would be to repeal the health care legislation enacted earlier this year by congressional Democrats.

"I have the credentials within the committee to bring fairness, without protests from the other side of the aisle, in its operation; to hold full oversight hearings on [Obama] administration actions and implementation of laws; and to use our jurisdiction to help create jobs, not more government regulation," Shimkus said in a statement.

While the policy landscape in the United States remains largely unsettled, the European Commission indicated Tuesday that a consultation with stakeholders on net neutrality does not suggest a need for new European Union rules at this time but action might be needed in the future to preserve the openness of the Internet.

In detailing the results of a review on network neutrality, the commission indicated its consultations with stakeholders "did not reveal a widespread call for further EU legislation, but there is an expectation that additional guidance may be needed in the future."

While the commission, the EU's regulatory arm, appears to be taking a wait and see attitude, U.S. regulators are under intense pressure from both sides of the net neutrality debate.

Supporters of net neutrality, which includes public interest groups and some Internet firms, have been pushing the Federal Communications Commission to act on its open Internet proceeding, which could lead to rules barring broadband providers from discriminating against Internet content. Critics including broadband providers and many congressional Republicans, however, argue that such rules would bar providers from conducting necessary network management and providing other services they already offer and would stifle broadband investment and innovation.

Other findings from the commission's three-month review, which ended Sept. 30, include a call from a "majority of respondents" to allow for the telecommunications framework adopted by the EU in 2009 to be fully implemented by EU member states before taking further action in this area. In addition, the review also found that while most respondents agreed on the need for providers to be able to conduct traffic management, some stakeholders voiced concern this "could be abused to favor one service over another."

The commission also said European regulators of electronic commerce voiced concern about the impact on competition and innovation if broadband providers begin to prioritize Internet content, while others worry that any moves by Internet operators to require content providers to pay for faster delivery of their content could amount to a "tax on innovation."

The issues identified by the commission in its review are expected to get more discussion Thursday at a net neutrality summit hosted by the commission and the European Parliament.

The Internet Innovation Alliance released an analysis Tuesday that claims that U.S. consumers can save thousands of dollars a year by using their broadband connections to access a range of services and products from travel to clothing.

The alliance says that consumers can save as much as $7,700 annually by using broadband to obtain better prices for services and products. For example, the analysis, conducted for the alliance by Nicholas J. Delgado with the Chicago-based wealth management firm Dignitas, claims that broadband users can save as much as $2,700 over non users on entertainment by paying less for concerts, events and other activities. Other areas identified for savings include $1,532 on travel, $974 on housing and $193 on newspaper subscriptions by accessing their news for free on the Internet.

"Beyond the dollars that can be saved with an Internet connection, being online brings unquantifiable advantages like access to education, job opportunities, social networking and on-demand information," alliance Co-Chairman Bruce Mehlman said in a statement.

Countries involved in negotiating a trade agreement aimed at curbing international piracy and counterfeiting are set to meet at the end of month in Sydney for a final "technical meeting," according to documents from the European Commission.

"The hosts propose that delegations included a legal expert and also a person familiar with the history of the negotiations, to avoid the re-opening of previously agreed issues," according to the leaked documents from the commission's Trade directorate. "They are also asking for a modest sized delegation, as the issues involved will solely be of a technical nature."

The document on the Sydney meeting, which will take place Nov. 30-Dec. 3, noted that the parties would be meeting for a "legal scrub" of the draft of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement approved at a meeting earlier this fall in Tokyo.

A USTR spokeswoman confirmed that the meeting will take place and said only staff will be attending for the United States.

Meanwhile, the commission documents also detailed some of the concerns raised by negotiating parties such as France, Italy and Spain, about such as issues as the treatment of patents. Several countries "expressed the concern that ACTA could be seen as TRIPS minus, because certain provisions on the chapters on civil enforcement do not cover infringements of all" intellectual property rights, the commission document says, referring to the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property agreement. Some of the negotiating parties "also complain about the fact that certain provisions in the border and digital chapters are only mandatory for copyright and trademark infringements and consider this discriminatory."

The ACTA negotiators agreed to allow countries to exclude patents from some ACTA provisions such as civil enforcement if they choose, but the commission document indicates that the European Union favors including patents. The commission said the reason behind these "targeted differences" is that "in several ACTA countries there are a number of civil, customs and digital enforcement provisions that only apply to trademarks and copyright or even only to copyright."

Meanwhile, the commission also noted that at the last formal ACTA negotiating session in Tokyo, the parties agreed "that ACTA would be a treaty covering infringements of IPR and not only of copyright and trademark, as was the wish of many ACTA parties."

The reference to a "treaty" is likely to further inflame ACTA critics who argue that the USTR's decision to treat ACTA as an "executive agreement," which means it does not require Senate ratification, is unconstitutional.

When asked about the Sydney meeting and the commission documents, Sean Flynn, associate director of American University's Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, said "it is a bit shocking that the parties are secretly planning a next round of negotiations to 'legal scrub' the text while the USTR still refuses to have an on the record meeting with the public on it. This agreement is an affront to democratic values that should guide the creation of substantive international intellectual property law."

The Business Roundtable, made up of the CEOs from the country's biggest companies, announced Tuesday that it has launched a new initiative aimed at addressing "evolving" information technology policy challenges facing the country such as eliminating cyber threats that could harm U.S. firms.

The group, which includes the leaders of companies such as AT&T, Bank of America, Cisco Systems, Microsoft and PepsiCo, also aims to focus on developing policies that "promote a resilient and secure global Internet;" promoting IT policies around the world that benefit the United States; pushing more investments in "high-risk" IT research and development; and finding ways to use information technology to benefit society.

"Effective deployment of technology is critical to America's sustained economic growth," Business Roundtable Executive Director Larry Burton said in a news release. "Right now, we must bring together the leaders of industry and government to define new business models that will ensure we continue to benefit from the tremendous power of technology in business, national security, research and our daily lives."

Nextgov.com reported that public service campaigns to promote safe Web surfing and developing best practices for fending off cyber attacks are not constructive activities for the government, a panel of cybersecurity experts told Federal Communications Commission officials recently.

FCC is now identifying the five most critical threats to the Internet, as well as a plan to address such risks in accordance with the Obama administration's National Broadband Plan, a roadmap for attaining ubiquitous, affordable high-speed Internet access. To assess the threat landscape, the agency on Friday sought the input of about 10 security officials who work for Internet service providers, research institutions and the government.

The most vocal participants said the mercurial nature of attacks makes it nearly impossible to devise defensive procedures or rely on computer users to ensure that viruses don't spread. The most effective role for the government is preparing for the unknown, they said.

October marked the government's annual cybersecurity awareness month. This year's theme was the notion that cybersecurity is a shared responsibility among the government, network services providers and Web surfers.

But James Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said educating end users will not protect the Internet.

"I've kind of given up on the end points. We had National Cybersecurity Awareness month last month. A complete waste of time," he said. "We're never going to get the end, the edge, to be safe. It's never going to happen." To read more, click here.

A new Commerce Department report on U.S. households and access to high-speed Internet service has found usage gaps that fall along racial lines, which officials say cannot be explained by income and education levels alone.

"An African-American household with the same income and education level as a white household is still less likely to have broadband access," Rebecca Blank, Commerce's undersecretary for economic affairs, said today in releasing the report. "That finding is quite striking, and it's not something we expected to see."

The report, "Digital Nation II," is the "most comprehensive analysis of broadband usage," available, Blank said in a conference call with reporters. To produce the report, the department, in collaboration with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, analyzed data from the Census Bureau's Internet Usage Survey of 54,000 households collected in October 2009.

One Economy, a nonprofit that aims to close the digital divide for low-income homes, praised the report.

"Today's report casts a bright light on one of the most significant steps that we can take towards advancing digital opportunity" said Ken Eisner, Managing Director, One Economy. "The United States needs to act quickly and focus efforts on broadband adoption, which will create jobs, provide economic opportunities for small businesses and improve educational outcomes for those most in need."

Read the full story here (subscription required)

Last year's historic switch to digital television signals was supposed to usher in a new era of crisp, high-resolution programming. Problem is, according to the media research firm Nielsen, four out of five cable and broadcast programs are watched in the lower-resolution standard-definition format.

"Despite the billions of dollars that Americans have spent buying high definition TVs, more than 80 percent of television viewing is still a standard definition experience," Nielsen concludes in a news release issued today.

Fresh data from Nielsen indicates that while 56 percent of U.S. households have purchased high-definition sets, only 13 percent of viewing each day on cable and 19 percent via broadcast is "true HD" - which requires that both the set and programming source be in hi-def.

Among the reasons for the paltry HD levels: most homes have one or more non-HDTV sets in use that can only display standard-definition, and even on HD sets, 20 percent of the transmissions are in the lower-quality resolution.

For more details, visit the Nielsen Wire.

Rep. Jerry Costello, D-Ill, announced Monday that he will not pursue the ranking member position on the House Science and Technology Committee during the 112th Congress.

"I am deeply committed to my work on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee," Costello said in a statement. A lot of significant legislation may come up next year including the FAA Reauthorization bill, a new highway bill, and the Water Resources Development Act, noted Costello.

"I want to maintain my focus on these issues in which I have invested so much time and attention, and which should be a major part of our continued efforts to improve the economy,"he added.

Costello, currently ranking member on the Science and Technology panel, leaves the spot open to Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas, who follows Costello in seniority.

The American Cable Association released a new report Monday claiming that consumers will be hit with an additional $2.4 billion in fees over the next nine years if the $30 billion proposed joint venture combining Comcast and NBC Universal is approved by federal regulators. The assertions were made as the FCC and Justice Department enter the final phase of their reviews of the transaction.

The association commissioned Dr. William Rogerson, an economics professor at Northwestern University who served for a year as chief FCC economist in the late 90s, to conduct the research. Rogerson concluded that a combined Comcast-NBCU would charge competing pay TV systems more for its programming. Those systems, in turn, would pass the added costs onto their customers through higher subscription rates.

"It is clear that the Comcast-NBCU deal will send monthly cable bills higher by billions of dollars over the next decade, underscoring ACA's view that regulators must protect consumers and competition from a transaction whose benefits are vastly outweighed by its harms," ACA President and CEO Matt Polka said in a statement.

"Without meaningful and cost effective conditions on the Comcast-NBCU transaction, regulators also run the risk of crippling effective competition in the pay-TV distribution market," added Polka, who is holding a press conference now about the group's research.

Updated with react from Comcast:

In a written response, Comcast spokeswoman Sen Fitzmaurice accused the ACA of releasing "flawed" analysis. "It relies on assumptions and calculations that are unsupported, directly contradicted by available data, and contrary to previous FCC rulings," she said of the report issued today. She also noted that similar concerns have been raised about previous media mergers -- and summarily rejected by the FCC. "ACA is making an obvious attempt to further delay the approval of the Comcast-NBCU transaction," she added.

Charlie Bass, a Republican who defeated Ann McLane Kuster on Tuesday to win back his post as House Representative of New Hampshire's second district, is a likely candidate for the Energy and Commerce Committee in the 112th Congress.

Bass, who served in the House from 1995 to 2006, spent six years on the Energy and Commerce panel. From 2003 to 2006, he served on the Communications subcommittee.

Given his experience, "I'm pretty sure he has the best case to get back on the Committee," said an industry lobbyist, who also remembered Bass to be a "strong supporter of industry," and "skeptical of net neutrality."

Bass also has knowledge of rural telecommunications issues, according to Communications Daily. Nearly 50 percent of Bass' district lives in rural areas.

Bass comes from a political family: His grandfather Robert Bass was elected governor in 1910 and his father, Perkins Bass, served as a member of the House from 1955 to 1963. During his tenure in Congress, the Rep.-elect earned an ideologically mixed record with conservative positions on economic issues and moderate stances on most other issues.

Read more about him here (subscription required)

Monday
Commerce Department holds a 9:30 am conference call to discuss a new report on "Exploring the Digital Nation: Home Broadband Internet Adoption in the United States." Commerce Undersecretary of Economic Affairs Rebecca Blank and NTIA chief Lawrence Strickling will speak.

The Commerce Department holds 10:00 am meeting of the Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee

The American Cable Association hosts an 11:00 am conference call to discuss a new report that "quantifies the magnitude of the financial harm to consumers that will result from the proposed Comcast-NBCU merger."

Tuesday
The Chamber of Commerce's Global IP Center hosts a noon forum on "Recent Successes and the Future of IP Enforcement." Featured speakers include Doug Gansler, Maryland Attorney General and David Green, vice president for public policy, NBC Universal.

The Embassy of Sweden holds a 2:00 pm seminar on "Digital Native and Digital Tourists: A Meeting Between Cultures," examining the media reality of today's children and young people.

Wednesday
US Telecom hosts a 9:00 am smart grid breakfast briefing on "the role of broadband service providers in utility communications networks."

Friday
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation will host a 9:30 am forum on "The Unfinished Radio Revolution: New Approaches to Handling Wireless Interference."

The FCC will host its annual Capitalization Strategies Workshop. The workshop will focus on capital acquisition both for developing entrepreneurs and for women and minority-owned businesses.

House Energy and Commerce ranking member Joe Barton, R-Texas, said Friday one of his top priorities if he is successful in his bid to reclaim the chair of the panel would be to block the FCC from reclassifying broadband as a telecommunications service.

During an appearance on C-Span's "The Communicators" program, Barton discussed his technology and telecom agenda if he becomes chairman of Energy of Commerce when Republicans take over control of the House in January.

Highlighting one of his top telecom concerns, Barton said the committee might need to move legislation to block the commission from going forward with FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski's plan to reclassify broadband under Title II of the communications act.

Genachowski proposed such a change after the FCC's authority over broadband providers was put into doubt by an April federal appeals court decision. Barton and other critics of the move worry that the FCC will seek to implement network neutrality rules that would bar broadband providers from discriminating against Internet content. These rules, critics say, would hamper broadband investment and innovation.

"It's imperative that we maintain the freedom of the Internet," Barton said. "I do not agree with the FCC's attempt to regulate the Internet through Title II. We can certainly move legislation making that crystal clear that they do not have that authority. So we will be doing aggressive oversight of the FCC."

But in order to do that, Barton must first gain the chairmanship. GOP rules limit members from serving more than six years as chairman or ranking member of a committee. Barton, who has served in both roles for six years, said he will be seeking a clarification of Republican rules.

He noted that when the GOP won control of the House in 1994, many of the Republicans who had served as ranking members were allowed to serve three terms (six years) as chairmen even though they had previously served as ranking members on those committees.

Using that precedence as his guide, Barton said he believes he still has two more terms to serve as chairman of Energy and Commerce since he only served one term from 2005-2006 as chairman of the committee before Democrats won control of the House in 2006. He said he would try to get the rule clarified by the House Republican transition team.

Barton is expected to face competition for the chairmanship from a handful of Republican members including Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich. When asked how his tenure as chairman would differ from Upton's, Barton described himself as a "consistent conservative across the board," while saying Upton was more "moderate." Barton added that given his past experience as chairman from 2005-2006, he could "hit the ground running."

Meanwhile, when asked about his other tech and telecom priorities, Barton said if he could "get bipartisan agreement, I'm very open to reforming the universal service fund. It's long overdue." He said legislation introduced earlier this year by Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., who was defeated for re-election on Tuesday, and Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., could serve as a "good base" to begin crafting legislation.

Barton also reiterated his desire to pursue privacy legislation, saying he was "a little bit surprised ... that we have not moved a privacy bill in this Congress." He said it is an issue he can work with Democrats on, citing such members as Reps. Edward Markey of Massachusetts and Bobby Rush of Illinois, who as chairman of the Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection Subcommittee introduced a privacy bill earlier this year.

"Privacy is one of those issues gaining in importance. It's something that could be addressed if we could get the right coalition," Barton said. "As chairman, I would be very, very willing to legislate in that area."

Barton was asked about whether he would hold a hearing on Google's acknowledgement that it had "mistakenly" collected information from unsecured Wi-Fi networks as Google cars collected photos for the firm's Street View service. He said the incident was "very troubling" and questioned whether it was a mistake as Google has said. Barton added that it is an issue the committee could examine as part of its effort to craft privacy legislation.

Barton also was asked about the controversy over the D-block of spectrum that public safety officials want reallocated to them for an interoperable broadband communications network. The FCC, however, wants to auction the spectrum to commercial bidders and use the proceeds to help pay for a public safety network. Barton said he favors auctioning the D-block "no strings attached."

A broad coalition of academic, industry and professional groups wrote Senate leadership Friday urging the upper chamber to pass the COMPETES Act this session of Congress.

The COMPETES act would fund a host of research programs and bolster science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education. Championed by outgoing Rep. Bart Gordon, D- Tenn., the bill cleared the House last spring and is now waiting for action in the Senate. Gordon is retiring.

The letter calls on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his counterpart, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, to "pass the reauthorization of the America COMPETES Act in time to work with the House to make it possible for the president to sign this important legislation into law before the end of this Congress."

The original bill passed in 2007 with strong bi-partisan support and "was meant to be the first three-year installment of a longer-term commitment toward," fostering innovation and competition in America, according to the letter.

Making the case for spending money in tough economic times, the signatories noted that, "strong funding of basic research and STEM education programs will help ensure the economic growth needed to restore long-term fiscal strength and national prosperity."

Paul Otellini, CEO and president of Intel; William Green, an executive at Accenture; and Jared Cohon, president of Carnegie Mellon University, signed the letter, among others. Nearly 250 groups endorsed the letter.

From this week's magazine:

With a Democratic Congress, a Democratic president, and a Democratic chairman, the last two years have meant political cover for the regulatory ambition of the Federal Communications Commission. Chairman Julius Genachowski, appointed by President Obama, may have taken only incremental steps toward fulfilling the FCC's agenda, but he had political support from the highest public offices to go further.

All of that's about to change. Under Republican control of the House, the FCC will now answer to skeptics of government intervention in the market. GOP lawmakers can't tell Genachowski what to do, but they can still bully him to kill initiatives that the administration hoped to accomplish--foremost among them, Obama's campaign promise to enforce network neutrality. Republican gains in Congress will mean a "much more intensely focused commitment to the free-market perspective," said former FCC Chairman Michael Powell. "The burden of proof shifts: It's no longer industry having to prove why they shouldn't be regulated." Now it's the government officials who will have to prove why they should regulate.

Industry insiders agree. There will be "much more aggressive oversight of the FCC," said Howard Waltzman, former chief counsel on telecommunications and the Internet for the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Republicans will be "taking an inventory of what the FCC has been doing," Waltzman said, and evaluating whether it's "being responsive to [conservative] priorities."

Read more here (subscription required)

The Defense Information Systems Agency earlier this week announced plans to extend its long-standing videoconferencing agreement with AT&T, because AT&T is the only company capable of providing the service, NextGov reported.

DISA originally awarded AT&T the Defense Information Systems Network Video Services-Global contract in 1997 with a ceiling price of $125 million and an eight-year life span. But since AT&T owns all the hardware and proprietary software the system runs on, the agency has extended the agreement on a sole-source basis since its original 2005 expiration date.

The initial agreement called for AT&T to install videoconferencing hubs in California, Georgia and Maryland to support both classified and unclassified sessions. Today, according to DISA, AT&T provides dial-up, Internet protocol-based and dedicated links for point-to-point and multipoint videoconferencing.

DISA declined to disclose the value of the three-year extension until it is official around the end of November. This May, the agency increased the ceiling value of the contract by $5.6 million, from $239.3 million to $244.9 million.

The Communications Workers of America have come out in favor of legislation that would reallocate to public safety officials a controversial chunk of spectrum that the Federal Communications Commission plans to auction to commercial bidders.

The legislation offered by Senate Commerce Chairman John (Jay) Rockefeller, D-W.Va., would reallocate the D-block of spectrum to public safety officials for an interoperable public safety communications network. It also would direct the FCC to establish standards that allow public safety officials, when not using the network, to lease capacity on a secondary, but preemptible basis, to commercial users or others.

The FCC's plan calls for auctioning the D-block and using the proceeds to help pay for the construction of an interoperable public safety communications network.

First responders say that they do not have enough spectrum to meet their needs and that the D-block is especially well suited for an interoperable communications network. The CWA, which includes 16,000 public safety workers, agreed in a letter sent late last month to Rockefeller.

The Rockefeller bill "is a common-sense approach to provide dedicated capacity for the current and future needs of public safety," CWA President Larry Cohen wrote. "With advances in technology, public safety has an increasing need to access mission-critical high-speed data and video networks."

Supporters of the FCC plan argue that re-allocating the D-block to public safety officials still does not address the question of how to pay for an interoperable communications network.

The Federal Communications Commission will address several items at its November meeting aimed at bringing more spectrum to market, according to tentative draft released on Thursday.

The first item seeks comment on a proposed rule that will lay the groundwork for spectrum incentive auctions aimed at giving broadcasters and other spectrum holders a share in proceeds from these auctions in exchange for relinquishing some of their spectrum for mobile broadband and other uses. Congress must first give the commission authority to proceed with the auctions.

The commission also will take up an order aimed at relaxing the FCC's rules on experimental licensing in the wireless space and another on accelerating "opportunistic use" of under-developed spectrum. When a device detects available spectrum in a given licensed or unlicensed band, and is able to use it, it's considered "opportunistic use."

According to one former FCC official, the "opportunistic use" order will raise controversy about whether spectrum is a property right or a government resource. If it's the latter, people with devices that can sense unused licensed spectrum, may use it without having to pay.

The lightning rod issue still in the FCC's portfolio, net neutrality, will not be addressed in November, according to the agenda.

So far Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., is keeping mum about what leadership spot he will seek on the Energy and Commerce Committee in the 112th Congress and whether he wants to switch to become the ranking member on the Communications, Technology and Internet Subcommittee.

The top Democratic spot on the Communications Subcommittee will be open next year after its current chairman, Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., was defeated Tuesday. With the Republican takeover of the House, Boucher would have had to give up his gavel, but he was expected to retain the ranking spot on the subcommittee had he succeeded in winning a 15th term.

Rush, who currently heads the committee's Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection panel, is second in line to become the top Democrat on the Communications Subcommittee behind Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass. Rush said in a statement Thursday that he has not indicated which spot he will seek.

"I believe that continuing to serve in a leadership capacity on the House Energy and Commerce Committee will afford me the opportunity to further serve my constituents and the people of this nation," Rush said. "I will be communicating with the Democratic leadership about the future agenda of the Democratic Caucus and how best I can serve on behalf of the American people."

Energy and Commerce ranking member Joe Barton, R-Texas, who is pushing to take over the chairmanship of the full committee in the next Congress, has indicated that privacy will be a top issue for him. It's an area he could work on with Rush, who introduced a privacy bill earlier this year that has been endorsed by key tech firms such as eBay, Intel and Microsoft.

Two areas in the technology and telecommunications space--privacy and spectrum--are emerging as the likeliest to see legislative action during the 112th Congress, National Journal Daily reported.

Ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, Thursday vowed to take action on Internet privacy.

"In the next Congress, the Energy and Commerce Committee and our subcommittees are going to put Internet privacy policies in the crosshairs," Barton said in a release. "I want the Internet economy to prosper, but it can't unless the people's right to privacy means more than a right to hear excuses after the damage is done." Click here, to read more. (Subscription required)

Twitter has hired its first D.C.-based employee to act as a liaison for candidates and policymakers.

C-SPAN's Adam Sharp unveiled the news himself Thursday with a Tweet announcing that he will be joining the company for a job that in part will assist policymakers as they use Twitter to help them communicate and interact with their constituents and the world.

Possible Lesson #1: Don't be so quick to click the "Tweet" button.

It's a message that could have helped out House Energy and Commerce Chairman Joe Barton, R-Tex., when a tweet sent from his account said this about a televised speech in February from President Obama: "Aggie basketball game is about to start on espn2 for those of you that aren't going to bother watching pelosi smirk for the next hour." That Tweet was quickly followed by another that urged Barton's Twitter followers to "disregard that last Tweet from a staffer."

Sharp, who was the executive producer of digital services at C-SPAN, will also be tasked with helping Twitter better understand how they can serve politicians. He said he will start his new gig on Nov. 29.

UPDATE: A Twitter spokesman said while Sharp will be based in Washington, his job will not be focused on lobbying and public policy.

"Adam's combination of media and political experience will be uniquely suited to helping policy leaders, governmental bodies and political organizations of all stripes better connect and engage with their constituencies via Twitter," Alexander Macgillivray, Twitter's general counsel and government affairs and communications lead, said in a statement.

Twitter also said it has no plans to hire additional staff in Washington at this time.

In the wake of the midterm elections, net neutrality has moved from a "solution in search of a problem," to a "solution in search of a constituency," a former economic official during the Clinton administration said Thursday.

Everett Ehrlich, who served as former President Bill Clinton's under secretary of Commerce for economic affairs, and other staunch opponents of the FCC's plan to reclassify parts of broadband as a telecommunications service argue that the current Internet ecosystem is working fine and that a heavy government hand will imperil its continued success. With a wave of Republicans coming into Congress as a result of Tuesday's election, Ehrlich's comment suggests that net neutrality proponents will need to recruit supporters of the commission's proposal to protect the openness of the Internet.

Ehrlich's remarks came during a conference call to discuss the future of broadband regulation as a result of the midterm elections.

"Rather than addressing hypothetical issues," such as net neutrality, "the FCC should turn its attention to real-world issues like bringing more spectrum to market and implementing the broadband plan," said Hal Singer, a managing director at Navigant Economics, a consulting firm that provides economic and financial analysis of legal and business issues.

Both Singer and Ehrlich urged the commission not to proceed with its plan to reclassify broadband under Title II of the Communications Act, a more stringent regulatory regime. Such a change in classification includes a "poison pill of price regulation" that will "kill jobs and slow investment" in the digital economy, Singer stated.

According to Singer, telling a carrier that it can't charge for enhanced quality of service--such as a dedicated line a content provider might need to stream a concert over the Internet--is a form of price control. Principles enshrined in the net neutrality doctrine would prohibit content creators from paying for preferential treatment of their content over the Internet.

Despite such concerns, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has said he would exempt broadband from price controls.

The European Commission said Thursday that it plans to update its 1995 data privacy directive to adapt European privacy rules to new technologies and methods for collecting information.

"The protection of personal data is a fundamental right," commission Vice President Viviane Reding, the commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship, said in a statement. "To guarantee this right, we need clear and consistent data protection rules. We also need to bring our laws up to date with the challenges raised by new technologies and globalization."

These challenges include the increasing use of behavioral advertising on the Internet, which involves tracking a user's Web activities in order to target ads based on that user's interests.

Among the issues the review aims to address include strengthening consumer rights by ensuring that the collection and use of personal data is as limited as necessary and that consumers are told how the information will be used and given a chance to provide "informed consent" for the use of that data. In addition, the review will attempt to reduce the red tape facing companies and the differences in data protection rules among the EU member states, while ensuring more consistent application of those rules throughout the EU. In addition, the commission said it wants to provide consumers with more protections when it comes to law enforcement's access to their personal information and review current rules requiring companies to retain communication traffic data for up to two years.

Another area under review that will likely affect U.S. firms that do business in Europe aims to boost protection for data transferred outside the EU. "The EU should strive for the same levels of protection in cooperation with third countries and promote high standards for data protection at a global level," the commission said.

Stakeholders will have until Jan. 15 to submit comments to the commission on the proposal.

The original EU privacy directive, which went into effect in 1998, barred the transfer of data to non-EU countries that did not have "adequate" privacy protections. Because the United States does not have a comprehensive privacy law similar to the EU's, U.S. firms were concerned at the time that they would not be in compliance with the EU rules. As a result, the U.S. government negotiated an agreement, approved by the EU in 2000, that allowed companies that abide by a set of safe harbor principles to be found to be in compliance with the EU rules.

While most voters said the economy was their primary concern when they went to the polls Tuesday, it hasn't stopped stakeholders on both sides of the open Internet debate from noting which lawmakers who supported their side won or loss.

The latest salvo in the post-election net neutrality spin battle came from net neutrality proponent Free Press, which noted that at least 25 House incumbents who signed a letter from Rep. Gene Green, D-Texas, urging FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski to abandon his proposal to re-classify broadband as a "telecommunications service" lost their bids for re-election. The move is aimed at giving the FCC the authority, which was put in doubt by a federal appeals court ruling in April, it needs to implement rules that would bar broadband providers from discriminating against Internet content.

Two more incumbents listed by the group on Wednesday who signed the letter were in races too close to call. One, Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash., had a slim lead over his GOP opponent, while Rep. Dan Maffei, D-N.Y, was narrowly behind as of Thursday. At the same time, Free Press noted that all 32 House incumbents who signed a letter in support of the FCC's reclassification proposal were re-elected, although most of these represent heavily Democratic districts.

NETCompetition.org Chairman Scott Cleland noted Wednesday that 95 of the candidates who signed a pledge from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee calling on them to back net neutrality rules lost in Tuesday's elections. They included the pledge's high-profile champion Democrat Ann McLane Kuster who lost her race to former GOP Rep. Charlie Bass in New Hampshire 2nd congressional district.

Cleland argued that efforts to make net neutrality a campaign issue show that supporters of open Internet rules are a small minority. "Free Press's long and loud claim that net neutrality was an important political issue to the American people has been exposed as completely untrue," Cleland wrote in blog post Wednesday.

Free Press Managing Director Craig Aaron dismissed Cleland's claims, saying that net neutrality is "hardly something that determined the outcome of those races." He said many of the candidates who signed the pledge were facing uphill battles.

Only 4 percent of Americans who go online use location-based services that allow them to share their location with friends and others who are nearby, according to a new survey released Thursday.

The new survey from the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life project examined how many Americans who go online use "geosocial" services like Foursquare and Gowalla, which involve the use of Internet connected phones and other mobile devices to allow others to track where the users are by "checking in" to locations. These services also allow users to leave comments or reviews of certain businesses or other locations.

The biggest users of these new services include Hispanics, 10 percent of whom use geosocial services and younger adults, ages 18-29, 8 percent of whom use these services. In addition, 7 percent of adults overall who use their mobile phones to go online use geosocial services.

The report accompanying the survey notes, however, that some people may be unaware that they are using geosocial services.

"The ability to report one's location is a feature that has recently been added to many pre-existing sites such as Twitter and Facebook. It is possible that as the lines between different types of services become increasingly blurred, it is difficult for respondents to always pinpoint exactly what sort of software they are using--especially on their mobile devices," according to the report.

Without Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., who lost to GOP challenger Morgan Griffith Tuesday night, questions loom over who will become the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet and what the change will mean for interests in the technology and telecommunications sectors, National Journal Daily reported.

Boucher's departure will leave a key leadership position open on the communications panel for Democrats, as well as a vacuum for someone else to fill as the leading House sponsor of telecom legislation.

A likely candidate to replace him is Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., who now chairs a special panel dealing with climate change, but has a wealth of experience in telecommunications, mainly from serving as the subcommittee's top Democrat from 1987 to 2008. In addition, the new Republican majority in the next Congress may pull the plug on the climate-change panel, created in 2007 by Democrats when they controlled the House. To read more, click here. (Subscription required).

Just over a year ago, "network neutrality" advocates were literally dancing in the streets to celebrate FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski's bold plan for expanding and strengthening agency guidelines designed to prohibit anti-competitive conduct on the Internet. The chairman proclaimed that action was needed to ensure that the hallmark of today's Internet - its openness - would remain for future generations.

"It's to make sure that, in the 21st century, the garage, the basement, and the dorm room remain places where innovators can not only dream but bring their dreams to life. And no one should be neutral about that," the chairman said during his Sept. 2009 announcement.

But as the GOP swept to power yesterday in the House, prospects for Genachowski's plan - already under assault from major industry players and scores of lawmakers in both parties - grew much dimmer. Genachowski still has the votes he needs to proceed, but few telecom experts think he's willing to take on a Republican-controlled House that can make his life miserable with time-consuming oversight and assaults on the agency's annual budget.

For a flashback of rosier times for the pro-net neutrality crowd and its legions of Internet dreamers, check out this wacky Left Coast video created in the wake of Genachowski's announcement.

Technology and telecommunications industry groups and others Wednesday lamented the defeat Tuesday of Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Communications, Technology and the Internet Subcommittee.

Boucher was defeated in his bid for a 15th term by Republican Morgan Griffith, the majority leader of the Virginia House of Delegates, on a day that claimed many long-term Democratic incumbents who had managed to win over the years by bringing home federal dollars, which may have worked against them in an anti-incumbent year.

"Congressman Boucher was the defeat of the night for the tech world. He was the best and most knowledgeable congressional geek for tech policy," Consumer Electronics Association President and CEO Gary Shapiro said.

Despite representing a largely rural district, Boucher had managed over the years to easily win re-election -- even running unopposed in 2008 -- by focusing on constituent service, bringing jobs to his district and protecting its key sectors such as the coal industry. He also has helped make his rural district, home of Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, one of the most wired districts in the country.

Boucher may be best known in Washington for his work on telecommunications and tech issues. Co-chairman of the Congressional Internet Caucus, Boucher has played an important role in many tech and telecom issues over the years such as the Satellite Home Viewers Act, which allowed satellite companies to provide local broadcast programs to their subscribers, the 1996 telecommunications act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which updated the nation's copyright laws for the digital age.

"Rep. Rick Boucher was at the center of American telecommunications policy for nearly three decades, a profoundly transformative period covering the break up of AT&T and the explosive arrival of the global Internet," American Cable Association President and CEO Matthew Polka said in a statement. "Rep. Boucher understood that good policy is made when concept confronts opportunity, and he went about the business of lawmaking with erudition, calm civility and intellectual rigor in an effort to locate the most desirable outcome for the nation and his rural Virginia district."

Boucher is a senior member of both the House Energy and Commerce and Judiciary committees, panels with prime jurisdiction over issues that affect tech and telecom industries. He assumed the chairmanship in the 110th congress of the Energy and Commerce Communications, Technology and the Internet Subcommittee and got to work on a number of key issues including overhauling the universal service program and crafting privacy legislation.

The Obama administration on Tuesday proposed a common set of security requirements for cloud computing that all federal agencies and contractors could share, Nextgov.com reported.

The move is intended to expedite the transition to universal Web-based services by eliminating the need for agencies to assess and authorize every information technology product. During the next decade, the White House wants agencies to shift their IT operations to the cloud -- the collective term for software, servers and file storage that users access online on a subscription basis -- instead of managing and owning individual, in-house infrastructures.

The new blanket specifications, referred to as the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), are designed to allow contractors and one agency to evaluate and sign off on security controls and then let every other agency use the same template. "Completing the security assessment and authorization process separately by each customer is redundant," the 90-page proposal stated. A "government-wide risk and authorization program will promote faster and cost-effective acquisition of cloud computing systems by using an 'authorize once, use many' approach to leveraging security authorizations."

Cloud computing advocates have long said the technology will save money, reduce the government's greenhouse gas emissions and increase productivity. But the main drawback always has been agencies' concerns about losing control of their data in a shared, online pool of information. Click here, to read more.

After hearing some good news from the FTC last week that the agency has dropped its probe into its Wi-Fi sniffing incident, Google took steps this week to try to put another difficult issue behind it.

Google announced Tuesday that it has settled a class action lawsuit filed by users of the company's social networking service Google Buzz. In an e-mail to Google Gmail users, the company said it will pay $8.5 million into an "independent fund" to support groups that promote online privacy education and policy. The firm also has pledged to do more to educate users about the privacy controls available on Buzz.

"The more people know about privacy online, the better their online experience will be," Google said in the e-mail. Google noted that the settlement covers all Gmail users who had a chance to use Buzz before Tuesday. Those users who do not want to be part of the settlement must opt out by Dec. 6.

After Google launched Buzz earlier this year, the firm was blasted for automatically signing its Gmail users up for Buzz and using their contacts as a list of suggested Buzz friends. Google moved quickly to address concerns over these features and to provide users with more choices but controversy continued to plague the service for months after the launch.

The Buzz controversy was overshadowed in May by Google's acknowledgement that it had "mistakenly" collected data from unsecured Wi-Fi networks around the world as its Street View cars collected pictures for the street-level pictures provided as part of Google Maps.

The FTC announced last week that it had dropped its investigation of the Wi-Fi matter, although the firm still faces probes by data protection authorities in other countries and several U.S. state attorneys general. One of those who has taken a particular interest in the issue is Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat who was elected to the U.S. Senate Tuesday. He said last week that his probe would continue despite the FTC's decision to end its investigation.

While much of the headlines Wednesday focused on the gains Republicans made across the country in Tuesday's midterm elections, two GOP former tech CEOs bucked the trend by losing their first bids for political office in California.

Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and ex-eBay CEO Meg Whitman were both defeated by comfortable margins Tuesday night. In California's governor's race, Democrat Jerry Brown defeated Whitman by 12 points, according to the latest results, even though she poured $142 million of her own money into the race. Fiorina, who also put $5.5 million of her own money into her bid, was defeated by Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer by nearly 10 points.

While Fiorina touted her business experience, Boxer hammered the Republican for laying off thousands of U.S. workers as HP's chief and shipping U.S. jobs overseas. Even though Fiorina lost by nearly 10 points, most polls had the race much closer. Boxer described the race as the "roughest and toughest race of my career."

Still, most of the CEOs of Californa's top tech companies appeared to side with Boxer in the race by contributing to her re-election effort over Fiorina.

In other races of interest to the tech community, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., cruised to re-election as did several other Democratic House members such as Reps. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., Jay Inslee, D-Wash., Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif.

The notable exception was Energy and Commerce Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., who despite running unopposed in 2008 was defeated Tuesday by Republican Morgan Griffith, the majority leader of the Virginia House of Delegates.

In other races, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., is ahead of Republican challenger Dino Rossi but the contest remains too close to call. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., survived despite a fierce challenge from Republican Sharron Angle. Reid was second only to Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who was easily re-elected, in contributions from the communications and electronics sector. Reid collected nearly $800,000 from this sector, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The third highest recipient of donations (nearly $670,000) from this sector, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., also won Tuesday night. Boxer was the fourth highest recipient of donations from the communications and electronics sector with $666,000, followed by Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., who also was ahead in his race though his contest against Republican Ken Buck also has yet to be called.

It looks like efforts to make net neutrality a campaign issue did not fare so well in Tuesday's elections.

According to NETCompetition.org Chairman Scott Cleland all 95 of the candidates who took a pledge to support efforts to back rules that would bar Internet providers from discriminating against Internet content lost in Tuesday's elections, including its high-profile champion Democrat Ann McLane Kuster in New Hampshire's race for the 2nd congressional district. She was defeated by former GOP Rep. Charlie Bass, who did not appear to make net neutrality a campaign issue.

The pledge, crafted by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said: "In Congress, I'll fight to protect Net Neutrality for the entire Internet - wired and wireless - and make sure big corporations aren't allowed to take control of free speech online."

Cleland's group, which includes major broadband providers such as AT&T, Comcast, Qwest and Verizon, opposes efforts to impose net neutrality rules. Cleland said the election results show that groups like Free Press, a strong proponent of net neutrality, are out of step with the rest of the country.

"FreePress's long and loud claim that net neutrality was an important political issue to the American people has been exposed as completely untrue," Cleland wrote Wednesday in a blog post.

It is unclear if net neutrality played a role in Kuster's race or any of the others. Exit polls showed most voters said the economy was their number one concern. Cleland argued that the failed effort by supporters to make net neutrality an issue "speaks volumes about how few and extreme net neutrality supporters are."

Free Press Managing Director Craig Aaron said it would be hard to look at the election results as "some kind of referendum on net neutrality." He said while his group, which was not involved in crafting or pushing the pledge, was glad the 95 candidates took "a stand on an important issue like net neutrality," if Congress had managed to pass legislation on the issue, it might have been an accomplishment that net neutrality supporters could have run on.

Aaron said with Republicans winning control of the House, his group and other net neutrality supporters will put more pressure on the FCC to act on the issue.

Updated at 9:53 with more information

Congress lost one of its foremost experts on telecommunications with Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., falling to GOP challenger Morgan Griffith.

"Tonight the Congress has lost one of its most intelligent and tech-savvy members," said Public Knowledge President GiGi B. Sohn. "Rick Boucher has been one of the most moderate and thoughtful voices on communications and intellectual property policy. It has been a great honor and pleasure working closely with him over these past 9 years, and I hope to have the opportunity to do so again in the future."

First elected to Congress in 1982, Boucher has been the man behind a host of telecommunications and technology legislation. From writing provisions of the 1996 Telecommunications Act to working tirelessly to advance legislation that would reform a $9 billion fund that subsidizes low-income and rural communications, Boucher has been a cornerstone of telecom policy for nearly three decades.

"Boucher is one of a handful of legislators to appreciate the Internet's unique character and the opportunity it represents," said Richard Bennett, a research fellow at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. "With Boucher leaving the Internet subcommittee, we face the prospect of a a telephone-era regulator taking his place."

Boucher also was one of the few Democrats who voted against the health-care reform law, though his "no" vote apparently wasn't enough to satifsy conservative-leaning voters in Virginia's 9th District.

It is quite a reversal of fortune for Boucher who did not even face a Republican challenger in 2008 and coasted to re-election in most years. Even in 1994, when the last big Republican tide swept Democrats from power, Boucher won easily with 59 percent of the vote.

Allbritton Communications, owner of Politico, endorsed FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski's "third way" proposal to reclassify parts of broadband from and information service to a public utility, in a disclosure document filed with the FCC Friday.

"After careful review and consideration of Chairman Genachowski's [third way] proposal...Allbritton finds it to be a reasoned and enforceable framework that will prevent abuses on wired and mobile Internet, and is pleased to support it," wrote Jerald Fritz, a top executive at Allbritton.

In the document, Fritz expressed concern that without FCC regulation on broadband, "carriers will have the opportunity and the means to favor content owned by the carrier or offered by carrier-business partners all while slowing down or entirely blocking speech they find competitive for any reason."

Last spring, Genachwoski proposed reclassifying broadband under Title II of the Communications Act, a stricter regulatory regime, after a court decision cast doubt on the commission's authority over the Internet. Despite assurances that broadband would be spared more onerous provisions of Title II, such as price controls, industry and many lawmakers view it as the "nuclear option."

Ultimately, Allbritton is concerned that its Internet content will be discriminated against by companies that own distribution platforms and content.

It's on the same grounds that Allbritton's waging an aggressive campaign to halt the pending $30 billion Comcast-NBC Universal merger.

If the merger goes through, Allbritton fears that Comcast could put channel 8, a Washington news channel owned by Allbritton, out of business with discriminatory market practices. If NBC Universal launches its own local news channel for the Washington area, Comcast, as the owner of the distribution platform, will have financial incentive to favor its own content when it comes to carriage fees and channel placement, Allbritton claims.

Comcast categorically refutes the claims that the merger will hamper competition and harm media diversity. Conversely, Comcast executives argue that the media market remain competitive after the companies unite and will also benefit consumers.

While no one knows for sure if the FCC still plans to proceed with the third way plan, there is chatter among the telecom community that the agency will proceed with a net neutrality order under Title I. Such a move would grant the commission less authority over broadband, but would also be much less controversial.

As one of Congress' foremost experts on telecommunications, Rep. Rick Boucher played a pivotal role in bringing high-speed Internet connectivity to his rural district in southwest Virginia. Now, with his reelection on the line, his political opponents have turned to the Web in their aggressive push to derail his 28-year run in Congress.

In a disjointed new video featuring an animated version of the congressman speaking in what appears to be a computer-generated voice, Boucher rants about secret conservative backers funding the campaign of GOP challenger Morgan Griffith. "They're outsiders - very mysterious outsiders. We do not know who they are," the anime Boucher alleges in the video. "I'm the victim of secret money from mysterious alien donors."

An unidentified character in the video interrupts with the assertion that Boucher's Washington record is out of sync with the priorities of his constituents. "Maybe the people of southwest Virginia resent the fact that you passed cap and trade and voted with Obama and Pelosi 96 percent of the time," the character claims. The clip can be found on a blog called "Disrupt the Narrative" that is critical of the Democratic Party.

Buttressing Griffith's campaign, the Republican Party of Virginia takes aim at the congressman with a website that's blunt about its goal: RetireRick.com. Griffith's site, meanwhile, features an ad with this declaration from President Obama: "I just want you all to know I love Rick Boucher." With the president's approval rating sagging and unemployment high in Boucher's district, the ringing endorsement is unlikely to play well with voters.

Boucher fires back on his reelection site with a gallery of campaign videos featuring no-nonsense testimonials from rugged coal miners and veterans. Some of the ads tout the technology companies he's lured to his district over the years to create an estimated 5000 jobs, including AT&T, DirecTV, Dish Network, XM Satellite Radio and Verizon.

The congressman is a longtime member of the House Energy and Commerce Communications Subcommittee, which he now chairs.

As to the view that he's too cozy with the administration, Boucher responds in one of the clips: "The real numbers put me in the very center, which is where I've always been. I oppose my party when it's the right thing to do."

The White House on Monday detailed a $1.76 billion program for 2011 and beyond, with additional funding, to reinvent industry with minuscule semiconductors, tiny medical implants and other nanoscale materials, NextGov reported.

The implications of the National Nanotechnology Initiative draft strategic plan for information technology range from threat-detection sensors for the Defense Department to ultradense memory for intelligence satellites.

Nanotechnology provides the intelligence community transformative and game-changing capabilities not achievable with conventional electronics, materials, or power technologies, and with greatly reduced size, weight and power, the proposed plan stated.

Officials now are inviting the public to submit feedback on the policy -- a rewrite of an interagency program that since 2001 has coordinated research and development in the field of nanotechnology, which is the practice of controlling matter at the atomic or molecular levels. The strategy directs agencies and the research community on how to allocate funding for study and development for at least the next three years.

Nanotechnology is expected to continue the ever increasing miniaturization of semiconductor processing and memory devices. The vision for nanoelectronics decades from now is being shaped by the National Science Foundation, Pentagon, National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the intelligence community.

Read more here.

Google is suing the U.S. Government saying the Interior Department favored competitor Microsoft when considering bids for a new web-based email system.

On Friday, in an action filed with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, the Internet giant asked the court to stop the Interior Department's bidding process. The bidding process is designed in a way that guarantees Microsoft would win the contract, Google asserts.

A spokeswoman for the Interior Department declined to comment on whether the procedure is unfairly favoring Microsoft over its competitors.

"Notwithstanding Google's efforts and DOI's assurances to Google representatives that DOI would conduct a full and open competition for its messaging requirements," the bid request "specified that only the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite-Federal could be proposed," Google wrote in the complaint filed Oct. 29.

"Google is a proponent of open competition on the Internet and in the technology sector in general," a Google spokesperson said. "Here, a fair and open process could save US taxpayers tens of millions of dollars and result in better services. We're asking the Department of Interior to allow for a true competition when selecting its technology providers."

A spokesperson for Microsoft did not respond to an immediate request for comment.

According to the suit, the Interior Department's contract aims to create one standard computing platform for roughly 88,000 agency employees who currently use 13 different e-mail systems.

Interior Department officials told the Internet firm that Google Apps for Government did not meet security requirements. The contract in question is worth nearly $60 million dollars.

Former Xerox Chairwoman and CEO Anne Mulcahy, who is often mentioned as a possible high-level appointee in the Obama administration, took a couple of digs today at fellow CEOs Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, the Republicans running for governor and senator from California, respectively.

"I am the former woman CEO that is not running for public office in California," Mulcahy said in a speech to the Women's Foreign Policy Group. She added that there are "a few great women and not so great women running in tomorrow's election." But Mulcahy said that her comment did not mean that she opposes CEOs running for office in general, adding that she is "a huge fan" of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Mulcahy, a Democrat who has been mentioned as a possible successor to Lawrence Summers as director of the National Economic Council or for other administration jobs, said Obama administration officials "need to do a better job of listening [to the business community] with an intention to be responsive." But she added that the business community, which has been critical of Obama, should not be "totally parochial about business."

Mulcahy said she has not been approached for the NEC job, but that "informally or formally I hope to play a role between government and business." Mulcahy described the speculation about her becoming director of the NEC as a "media frenzy" prompted by the fact that she is one of the few Democratic women who has been a CEO, and because White House insiders have indicated they want a woman business leader for the post. The administration, she said, can be more responsive to business "but not be blind to the underserved in this country" and not "grant" business all it wants. "It's jobs, jobs, jobs ... but we can't be naïve about pulling back from our global responsibilities," she added.

In her role as chairwoman of the international charity Save the Children, Mulcahy said she has learned that so many of the world's problems, such as poor nutrition and lack of sanitation, are "solvable." She also noted that she recently returned from Iraq and said that military victories in Iraq and Afghanistan will be short lived if there are not proper schools to educate the next generations in those countries. Such issues cannot be addressed by "silos" separating government and business, she said.

Read more here.

NextGov reports:

When hackers convene at their annual conferences, they play a game called Spot the Fed. The rules are simple. If you think you see a federal employee walking the halls, point the person out to your colleagues around you. This might, or might not, trigger a storm of controversy or some nervous laughter. If your fed radar proves keen enough, you win a free shirt that reads, "I spotted the fed!" The person identified gets an "I am the fed!" shirt.

The tradition started in the 1990s, when the purpose was to duck from snooping law enforcement officials and avoid being detained. Today, hackers play the game mostly as a gag, a parody of their cat-and-mouse relationship with the buttoned-down establishment that used to haunt them at get-togethers like Black Hat, a weeklong gathering of phone phreaks, ham operators and hackers before it became professionalized, and DEF CON, a computer underground confab that is the more radical and freewheeling cousin of Black Hat.

And how has it changed for the feds? They aren't crashing the parties to infiltrate the hacker population anymore, at least most aren't. They're at these meetings to do some, pardon the pun, networking and to ask for help.

When Michael Hayden, former CIA director and ex-chief of the National Security Agency, was invited to give the keynote speech at the 2010 Black Hat conference in Las Vegas on July 29, he spoke about the fragile state of cybersecurity. "We all get treated like Poland on the Web, invaded from the West on even-numbered centuries, invaded from the East on odd-numbered centuries," he said.

His statements were an overture to the hacking community to help secure the Internet. "Rivers, hills and mountains become a military officer's friend," because they make it difficult for networks to be penetrated, he said. "You're going to build the rivers and hills into the Web. You're going to create geography that is going to help the defense."

At the same time, representatives from the Defense Department's newly founded Cyber Command were making their rounds at the conference and at DEF CON, held right after Black Hat at the nearby Riveria Hotel and Casino, to check out the latest tricks the hacking community has up its sleeve.

Army Col. Rivers Johnson, a spokesman for the Cyber Command, explained their presence this way: "As we are a new organization, Cyber Command considers these venues important because we are always interested in the technology that may be available at these conferences." He wouldn't state on the record that representatives from the command were there recruiting possible cyberwarriors, but he did say the organization was hoping to do some networking.

Read more here.

Want to see which political candidates have been surging on twitter recently?

Check out the New York Times' interactive twitter graphic. In real time, the graphic tracks the number of posts related to candidates running for governor or the Senate through visual representation. A given candidate's bubble grows or shrinks according to the number of posts about them.

A playback of the past couple of days reveals that Tea Party candidates Christine O'Donnell, Joe Miller and Sharron Angle, have eclipsed fellow candidates in twitter activity, as of 1:30 pm on Monday. The graphic measures tweets to and from candidates' accounts as well as tweets from the candidates' account that are re-tweeted by others.

For the past two years, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has receded into the background of American politics, garnering no national headlines for hosting the types of blockbuster hearings the panel became known for during the George W. Bush and Clinton administrations. The committee's diminished visibility is far from surprising -- it's a condition common when the panel is chaired by a member from the president's party, NextGov reported.

But that all could change on Tuesday. If the GOP wins back control of the House, as most pollsters predict, many expect the Oversight Committee to become one of Congress' most critical bodies -- ground zero for an inevitable battle between Republicans and the Obama administration.

Assuming Republicans win the necessary 39 House seats, the committee will be chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican who has taken delight in tormenting the White House with investigations large and small. Nicknamed the "Annoyer in Chief" by The New York Times -- a title Issa wears as a badge of honor -- the five-term congressman has vowed to bring a "renewed spirit of action and reform" to the committee and to hold the administration accountable.

"How confrontational things become really depends on how cooperative people are at responding to our questions," said Issa spokesman Kurt Bardella.

And while some Democrats have speculated that Issa will use his perch to conduct political witch hunts, others expect a more traditional, reform-minded approach.

"Darrell understands institutionally you have a role and it's not to turn your head when things are going wrong," said former Virginia GOP Rep. Tom Davis, now director of federal government affairs for Deloitte & Touche LLP. "But he's not out there to score points on what he can take out of the Obama administration's hide. I don't think he starts out with that intent. They need to understand they are going to have a lot of eyes on them at this point. They wanted a transparent administration. It's going to be transparent."

Issa plans to model his style after Davis, a mentor and Republican moderate who led the committee from 2003-2007. To prove his intentions, Issa is considering changing the name of the committee back to Government Reform and Oversight. Former committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., flipped the name when he took the gavel in 2007 as a sign that he would intensify oversight of the Bush administration.

Issa has said he will follow a different script and that divided government will not descend into petty partisan attacks. For example, one of his top priorities, likely to attract bipartisan support, is to provide subpoena power to the government's inspectors general community. Currently, only the Defense Department IG has such authority.

Read more here

Providing evidence that blackouts over programming fee disputes are becoming a common phenomenon, DirecTV is dropping the pop culture and gaming channel G4 today, TheWrap reported.

Comcast, owner of the G4 channel, asserts that they have been "trying to engage DirecTV in fair and reasonable discussions to continue to carry G4." A previous agreement over how much DirecTV pays Comcast to carry G4 expired in September, but both sides agreed to extend the deadline by a month in the hopes of finding consensus.

G4 programming includes "Attack of the Show," a popular program that reviews new tech items and pop culture as well as giving previews of video games, movies, and digital media. The program's host, Kevin Pereira, announced on-air Saturday that the satellite provider had failed to reach a new carriage deal with Comcast.

News of the G4 blackout comes in the wake of a much more high-profile cable fee dispute that left several million Cablevision subscribers in the New York area without Fox programming for roughly two weeks.

Key public officials, including Sen. John Kerry, Commerce Communications Subcommittee Chairman and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, are now arguing for modernizing the law that governs program-fee negotiations to "fix a broken system."