March 2011

The Federal Communications Commission is going to take up an issue that has divided AT&T and its intended ride, T-Mobile USA -- data-roaming. At its April 7 meeting, the FCC also plans to consider rules to accelerate broadband deployment, including easing restrictions on attaching devices to utility poles. Read more on our new Tech website.

Microsoft Corp has filed a complaint to European regulators accusing its rival Google Inc of interfering unfairly with other search engines.

It is the first time Microsoft has asked regulators to intercede in a competition matter - Microsoft is itself in hot water with both US and European regulators over its own competition practices.

Microsoft's complaint says that Google keeps rival search engines from using search boxes on its web sites, and cellphones that use Microsoft's operating system cannot connect properly to YouTube.

"These allegations cover new and difficult ground and, if Google fights, clearly increase the likelihood of a long investigation," Matthew Hall, an antitrust lawyer at McGuire Woods LLP in Brussels, told Bloomberg news.

Google suggested it was not overly concerned by the complaint, Reuters reported.

"We're not surprised that Microsoft has done this, since one
of their subsidiaries was one of the original complainants,"
Google spokesman Al Verney told Reuters.

Look here for our latest story on this.

Don't look for the House Energy and Commerce Committee to start its evaluation of AT&T's proposed merger of T-Mobile USA any time soon.

"It's not on our short-term agenda," Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., told Tech Daily Dose Thursday.

He said given the recent history of big mergers, it will likely take the Justice Department and Federal Communications Commission a year or more to decide whether to approve the deal between the second and fourth largest wireless firms. That was the time frame both agencies took in evaluating Comcast's acquisition of NBC Universal.

"If you look at the history, it's going to take a long time," Upton said.

While declining to give a date, Upton said he expects the committee will hold a hearing later this year to "walk through" the issues related to the merger.

When the deal was announced earlier this month, Upton and Energy and Commerce Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., voiced as much concern about the process the FCC planned to use to evaluate the deal as they did about the potential impact on competition in the wireless market.

"A key question for this committee is whether the FCC is conducting thorough market analysis and how that influences the agency's decision-making," Upton and Walden said in their joint statement on the deal.

Energy and Commerce is one of several congressional panels expected to examine the AT&T-T-Mobile merger. The others include the Senate Commerce Committee and the House and Senate Judiciary committees.

The Federal Trade Commission announced Wednesday it has reached a settlement with Google over privacy issues related to the rollout of the Internet giant's social networking service Buzz. Google has agreed to regular third-party audits for the next 20 years as part of the deal.

Google is contrite. "We'd like to apologize again for the mistakes we made with Buzz," Google says in its blog.

For more on this breaking story, please check out our new tech page

Bipartisanship appears to be alive and well in Congress -- at least when it comes to privacy legislation. Lawmakers in both the House and Senate are looking hard for dates from the other party to join in offering legislation to boost consumer privacy online.

In the Senate, Communications Subcommittee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., is meeting this week with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in hopes of finally bringing him on board as the lead GOP co-sponsor of the Massachusetts Democrat's draft privacy bill.

When asked about signing on to Kerry's bill, McCain said Tuesday, "We're still in discussions." Asked if he has specific concerns, he said, "No, it's just a very tough and complex issue moving forward."

On the other side of the Capitol, Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., said Tuesday that he is seeking a Democratic co-sponsor for legislation he plans to offer "soon," though did not offer a specific date. Stearns, a senior Energy and Commerce Committee member, did not provide any names of potential Democratic partners but is eyeing members of the Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over the issue, according to an industry source.

Stearns' draft legislation is more limited in scope than Kerry's measure. The Stearns measure would require firms tell consumers what information they are collecting about them and give them a choice to opt out.

Stearns' legislation may get an airing at a privacy hearing the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade is expected to hold in early May, a spokesman for Chairwoman Mary Bono Mack, R-Calif., said.

Kerry's bill has gone through nearly a dozen drafts with the latest circulating this week. It narrows the definition of personally identifiable information and also added a "privacy-by-design" provision requiring companies to build protections into their products and services.

Industry sources said Kerry is aiming to introduce the privacy bill next week.

The Sunlight Foundation has figured out just how much the continuing resolution will cost the Obama administration's open government programs.

"The returns from these government initiatives in terms of transparency are priceless. They help the government operate more effectively and efficiently, thereby saving taxpayer money and aiding oversight," the foundation's Daniel Schuman said in a statement. "In fact, we were able to calculate how much was spent on Data.gov by using the Office of Management and Budget's IT Dashboard - one of the initiatives that would face virtual extinction if Congress does not rescind these proposed budget cuts."

Read more about the group's findings here.

Investment research firm Stifel Nicolaus said in a research note Tuesday that "an air of inevitability" appears to have settled in Washington and on Wall Street over the proposed merger of AT&T and T-Mobile USA.

"The deal couldn't be won in a week, but it could have been lost, and it wasn't," Stifel Nicolaus said in the note.

"Public-interest and consumer groups criticized the deal, and Sprint said it should be blocked, but initial congressional responses were generally muted, with calls for 'close scrutiny,' which has become something of code for a protracted government review concluding in approval with a set of conditions that the merging companies carry triumphantly to investors," the firm said.

However, Stifel Nicolaus cautioned that this inevitability does not extend to antitrust officials' review of the deal. "There is a material risk that the government will block the deal or seek conditions so substantial that AT&T walks away," it said.

The New York Attorney General has promised to review the proposed merger -- read more here on our Tech page.

AT&T, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless say they'll speed up donations to Japan that are made using mobile phones, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., says.

Boxer had asked the companies to make sure that red tape did not slow down the flow of donations made by sending text messages. "If not expedited, these text donations can take as long as 90 days to be sent to relief organizations while the contributions are being collected through the wireless company's billing process," her office said in a statement.

"I am pleased that our nation's four largest wireless providers will expedite mobile donations to Japanese relief efforts to help the victims of this terrible disaster," Boxer said.

"Now all those who send their donations by text can rest assured that their contributions are being rushed to assist those most in need."

Today's updated e-Reads: It's all about the iPad - streaming TV shows, or kid's books...
Time Warner Cable is streaming several dozen TV channels to customers' iPads but channel owners like Viacom and Scripps Networks want cable companies to pay them more for the privilege to stream, the New York Times reports.

The New York Times also reviews the best kid's books available on the iPad

President Obama has succumbed to the iPad craze, according to Marketwatch .

What might IBM do with its $10.7 billion in cash? Who else is sitting on a pile of money? Check it out here

And check out the rest of our e-Reads here.

"We will be working with like-minded groups to create an environment where this merger can't be approved," says Sprint vice president for government affairs Bill Barloon. Read more here.

Moody's says the loan that would underwrite the deal is risky and encourages even more such bad bank behavior. it's almost certainly not the last objection we will hear. Read more here...

Four out of five doctors surveyed say they plan to buy an iPad. More on this and other e-Reads here...

Here's yet another medical condition to keep an eye out for -- Facebook depression...

Washington continues to talk about cyber security, even if action on that hot topic remains rare.

In town is the Air Force Association's first CyberFutures Conference, which will focus on "the newest and most dangerous enemy facing the United States."

The conference will feature presentations from a range of academic, military, and government experts (including the FBI's Gordon Snow), as well as an expo to showcase cyber security technology. The two-day event will also include the finals of CyberPatriot, a "high school cyber defense competition." More on the conference here.

The Senate Commerce Committee has postponed a hearing on cyber security originally planned for Wednesday. The panel was slated to hear testimony from some top cyber security experts, including the assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Cyber Division.

In announcing the hearing, Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.V., vowed to pass cyber security bill this year. "Every day, cyber thieves are stealing our identities, our money, our business innovations and our national security secrets," he said. "They are trying to rob us of our economic and global competitiveness, and right now we're not stopping them. There is too much at stake and no time to waste.

The witness list includes: Gordon Snow, assistant director of the FBI Cyber Division; Harriet Pearson vice president, security counsel, and chief privacy officer for IBM; Sara Santarelli, Verizon's chief network security officer; and Thomas Kellerman, vice president of security awareness for Core Security Technologies.

A new date for the hearing has not yet been set.

Consumers Union's stance on AT&T's proposed purchase of T-Mobile is clear: the transaction must be blocked.

"I don't think there are really any conditions that could, at this point, alleviate the harms that would come out of the transaction," Parul Desai, policy council for Consumers Union, told C-SPAN Friday during the taping of the latest segment of "The Communicators," to air Saturday and Monday.

"AT&T hasn't shown to me why it would need T-Mobile's assets and spectrum" to achieve its post-merger goal of extending advanced 4G wireless service to 95 percent of the country, she said. "They already have the spectrum [they need]. They just haven't invested [in] or built out that spectrum."

While Desai acknowledges that wireless voice prices have gone down in recent years, she said that rates for broadband data plans are on the rise. "If this venture is about mobile broadband, that obviously involves data," she said.

Desai also raised concerns about the specter of layoffs, a worry shared by the Communications Workers of America, despite its early endorsement of the deal. "We will obviously be looking at that carefully. Our first priority as a union is to ensure the employment security of workers at the companies," Debbie Goldman, CWA's Telecommunications Policy Director, told C-SPAN. "We care a lot about this," Goldman added.

CWA supports the transaction because AT&T Wireless is unionized, and the acquisition of T-Mobile would provide an opportunity for its employees to organize.

How do you define competition? How regulators will parse the AT&T-T-Mobile merger...

Channel Register accuses RSA of sitting on information about the cyberattack on its SecurID system

More e-reads here.

The House bill on patent legislation is out next week. We got a peek at one version ...

Do those pesky evenings and weekends interfere with your need to do research? Ever need a burning policy question answered stat, but you just can't be bothered to get up off the sofa?

The Brookings Institution has the perfect answer for you: an iPad app.

"We believe we're the first think tank to launch a native app designed exclusively with the Apple iPad in mind," David Ingenito of Brookings said by email.

The app lets you read research, run a calendar of events and search the organization's database, similar to apps already available for the iPhone, Android and Blackberry. You can download it here.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., wants to know if the White House is pulling the strings at the Federal Communications Commission, a supposedly independent agency.

In a March 24 letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, Issa demands the details about frequent visits by agency brass to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

The congressman is particularly concerned that the White House may be quietly playing a significant role in shaping Genachowski's controversial agenda -- which includes tough, new network-neutrality rules for the Internet.

The agency's three Democrats approved the Internet regulations in December over the objections of the two GOP commissioners, Republican lawmakers, and some broadband companies.

Genachowski visited the White House 81 times between January 2009 and November 2010, according to White House logs, Issa writes. This equals the number of visits by the secretaries of five other agencies during the same time period, he adds.

But some of the visits occurred before Genachowski arrived at the FCC. He was nominated in March 2009 and sworn into office three months later.

Eddie Lazarus, Genachowski's chief of staff, made roughly 60 trips to the White House during that period, Issa notes. Genachowski is a Harvard Law School buddy of President Obama, and served as a technology adviser for his presidential campaign.

In his missive, Issa demands that the FCC provide a log of all meetings with the White House and furnish any documents, including e-mails, that the agency shared with the White House on net-neutrality.

The congressman also complains that Genachowski failed to adequately reply to his previous letters seeking details about the agency's close connections to the White House.

A senior FCC official said in a written response that many of the meetings were related to the agency's creation of the nation's first National Broadband Plan, a ten-year technology blueprint released in March 2010.

RSA's keyfob-based SecureID system may have been hacked, but there is a last line of defense, The New York Times reports: You.

Their advice: Use a difficult-to-guess pass code, be wary if all of a sudden you are locked out, and beware of low-tech efforts to trick you into downloading malware that can gather user names and passwords...

The serial entrepreneur who sold the online music site Lala to Apple has started another company -- this one a cellphone-based social network called Color, Reuters reports. Is the competition good news for Facebook?

What does the AT&T-T-Mobile merger portend for the spectrum crunch? Reuters says nothing good...

Other stuff we are reading about today

Rather than blocking access to social media websites, organizations from businesses to federal agencies need to tap the value of social media, technology consultant Jesse Wilkins said Wednesday.

Speaking to a crowd at the info360 information management conference in Washington, D.C., Wilkins said too many organizations are ignoring social media and treating the emerging tools as passing fads.

"We shouldn't stand in front of the steamroller," said Wilkins, director of systems engagement for the Association for Information and Image Management. He said prohibiting employees from accessing social websites like Facebook or Twitter "is just not realistic."

Anyone with a mobile device can bypass organization firewalls, and there are too many sites to completely block them all, Wilkins noted. Most importantly, he argued, organizations that block social sites or don't have official sites are missing out on important tools.

Rather than engaging in a losing battle against burgeoning social media websites, companies and agencies should develop a basic governance policy to guide the use of such resources, and work to ensure the tools are used constructively.

"You need a governance framework so people know what's expected," Wilkins said. "Not just what you can or cannot do, but how to use it effectively."

Such policies should be broad enough that organizations don't have to change them every time a new website or feature pops up. "It's not the tool that matters, it's the content," he said.

In today's highly litigious world, organizations can't afford to not have guidelines in place to prevent unwanted publicity or lawsuits based on misused social sites, Wilkins concluded. But, he said, trying to block such sites completely won't matter if an offensive or embarrassing item ends up in news reports.

House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, will introduce his own version of patent reform legislation next week, possibly as early as Monday.

Smith scheduled a hearing of the Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition and the Internet for next Wednesday to consider the bill, still unnumbered but tentatively titled "The America Invents Act." Earlier this month the Senate passed a patent reform bill, also entitled "The America Invents Act."

After the Senate bill passed, Smith said he would introduce his legislation by the end of March, and a spokeswoman confirmed Wednesday that he plans to unveil his proposals next week.

The rumor is the House version may have less restrictive post-grant review provisions and may not include language specifically banning Congress from diverting fees from the Patent and Trademark Office, at least not before next week's hearing, according to industry lobbyists.

Drunk and want to avoid the police? There's an app for that, and Congress doesn't like it.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and three other Democratic senators Tuesday wrote executives with Apple, BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion and Google to complain about applications in their apps stores that alert drivers to drunken driving checkpoints.

"We appreciate the technology that has allowed millions of Americans to have information at their fingertips, but giving drunk drivers a free tool to evade checkpoints, putting innocent families and children at risk, is a matter of public concern," Reid and Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., and Tom Udall, D-N.M., wrote.

"We hope that you will give our request to make these applications unavailable immediate consideration."

Research in Motion complied. "We appreciate RIM's immediate reply and urge the other smartphone makers to quickly follow suit," the senators said in a statement later on Wednesday.

After inciting activist outrage and an online petition that garnered more than 150,000 signatures, Apple has decided to pull the Exodus International "Gay Cure" app from its app store.

Prior to its being yanked from the store,The Atlantic's Nicholas Jackson described the app as containing "lists of events, videos and news stories that are carefully curated to reflect the mission of Exodus International, which states that individuals can 'grow into heterosexuality.'"

The application is only the latest to incite public outrage before being pulled from digital shelves. And it again raises the question, still seemingly unanswered, about Apple's criteria for rejecting controversial applications. Read more here...

Joe Waz, a Washington fixture as senior vice president of External Affairs for Comcast is leaving the company.

Waz joined Comcast in 1994 and led Comcast's policy efforts, including serving on the company's political action committees and testifying before Congress and government regulators.

"I've worked with Joe for almost two decades, and his wise counsel and guidance on public policy helped Comcast become the leading company it is today," said Comcast Executive Vice President David Cohen. "No one has been more tireless in representing the company on public policy issues. From his work guiding our many acquisitions through regulatory approvals to his role as President of the Comcast Foundation, Joe has been essential to our success."

Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn said although she and Waz often came down on opposite sides of issues, he had an "exemplary full-time career."

"I enjoyed working with him, even though we may disagree on issues from time to time and always believed he was an honest broker of ideas," Sohn said.

Waz may technically be leaving Comcast but he won't go far. Although he is moving to the west coast, Waz plans to establish a part-time consulting firm with Comcast as his first client.

The Washington Post asks whether all the inside Washington heavy hitters who can help AT&T navigate the regulators...

Expanding access to high-speed Internet is vital for the American economy, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski told CTIA's Wireless Conference on Tuesday.

The chairman, rarely one to make news with his speeches, avoided any mention of the looming regulatory fight over AT&T's merger with T-Mobile.

Here are a few highlights from his remarks as prepared.

On the demand for wireless broadband:

"I was at the Consumer Electronics Show two months ago, and it may as well have been a wireless convention. Virtually every product on the CES floor was connected to the Internet, and overwhelmingly through wireless connections. If you had shut down wireless Internet access, pretty much nothing there would have worked. As CES made clear, and you know well, broadband is no longer a luxury. It's an essential platform for new products, economic growth and job creation - creating opportunities and opening markets that allow businesses to start, grow, and hire."

On the economic impact of broadband development:

"According to industry studies, deploying the 40,000 towers needed for these next-generation mobile networks will create 53,000 jobs and help us reach the goal the President set to bring 4G service to 98 percent of Americans in the next 5 years. The bottom line: mobile broadband is being adopted faster than any computing platform in history, and could surpass all prior platforms in their potential to drive economic growth and opportunity."

On the increasing demand for next-generation wireless networks:

"The amount of spectrum available for mobile broadband represents about a threefold increase over where we were a few years ago. Sounds good, except that analysts forecast a 35X increase in mobile broadband traffic over the next 5 years. Cisco has projected a nearly 60X increase between 2009 and 2015. This explosion in demand for spectrum is putting strain on the limited supply available for mobile broadband, leading to a spectrum crunch."

Genachowski listed four ways his agency plans to "address these challenges and seize the opportunities of mobile."

1. Providing fair rules of the road for an open Internet.

2. Empowering consumers by supporting a vibrant, transparent and competitive marketplace.

3. Removing obstacles to robust and ubiquitous 4G deployment.

4. Unleashing spectrum for 4G mobile broadband and beyond.

Those little SecurID keyfobs everyone has to carry around? Consider them compromised, security experts say. Read more by Aliya Sternstein of Nextgov here.

The CCIA, whose members include T-Mobile USA, as well as eBay, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, doesn;t like the proposed deal with AT&T.

"This may be the most aggressive and anti-consumer merger proposal in history, with many antitrust issues to be unraveled in the coming months," CCIA President Ed Black said in a statement.

It's not the first time the CCIA has done something like this -- read more here.

Wireless data traffic jumped by 110 percent, MMS messaging is up 64 percent and 57 percent more Americans carry around smart phones, the CTIA found in a survey.

Guess what that means? "In order to meet the demands by consumers and businesses, we need more spectrum so our wireless ecosystem can keep fueling the 'virtuous cycle' of innovation and competition," the CTIA says.
Read more here...

While merger partners AT&T and T-Mobile have been talking up their synergies, they're actually lobbying against each other on a critical matter involving spectrum for first responders.

At issue is the D-block, airwaves that police, fire and rescue squads claim for a planned nationwide wireless emergency communications network. T-Mobile wants the D-block auctioned to commercial carriers, and insists that public safety groups already have a sufficient amount of megahertz for the network.

AT&T, which along with Verizon could be barred from bidding on the frequencies due to their vast spectrum holdings, wants the airwaves given directly to first responders, a move that it argues would ensure a more robust network.

Further complicating the situation, T-Mobile is allied with Sprint -- which announced Monday that it strongly opposes a merger of AT&T and T-Mobile -- against AT&T on the D-block.

Now that AT&T and T-Mobile plan to combine, one of them, presumably T-Mobile, would have to balk. An AT&T spokeswoman did not have any immediate comment, while a T-Mobile spokesman could not be reached at deadline.

Read more about the proposed $39 billion merger here

Microsoft is taking Barnes & Noble, as well as several other companies, to court over the bookseller's Nook e-reader, TheAtlantic.com reported. The software giant says Barnes & Noble, Foxconn International Holdings, and Inventec violated Android operating system-based patents.

Read the story, as well as Microsoft's statement, here.

AT&T's proposed merger with T-Mobile will be a boon to consumers that will improve quality and access, Chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson says.

But members of Congress and consumer advocates were already weighing in with their doubts about whether the deal would be a blessing or a curse for consumers, and lawmakers promised they would not let the companies sail through the takeover unchallenged. Read more here.

AT&T Inc. and Deutsche Telekom AG said on Sunday they had an agreement under which AT&T will acquire T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom in a $39 billion cash-and-stock transaction.

Under the agreement, AT&T will add about 46.5 million Americans to its 4G Long Term Evolution network, improving the quality of telephone connections, the companies said in a joint statement. The move also cuts the number of major carriers in the US market by 25 percent -- something consumer groups imediately noted.

"This helps achieve the Federal Communications Commission and President Obama's goals to connect 'every part of America to the digital age.' T-Mobile USA does not have a clear path to delivering LTE," the statement reads.

"This transaction represents a major commitment to strengthen and expand critical infrastructure for our nation's future," said Randall Stephenson, Chairman and CEO of AT&T. "

AT&T's acquisition of T-Mobile USA provides an optimal combination of network assets to add capacity sooner than any alternative, and it provides an opportunity to improve network quality in the near term for both companies' customers. In addition, it provides a fast, efficient and certain solution to the impending exhaustion of wireless spectrum in some markets, which limits both companies' ability to meet the ongoing explosive demand for mobile broadband," the statement reads.

The statement says that Americans still have other wireless privers to choose from. "The U.S. wireless industry is one of the most fiercely competitive markets in the world and will remain so after this deal," it reads.

But the arrangement leaves just two other major wireless telephone carriers for the U.S. market -- Verizon and smaller Sprint.

Consumer groups immediately complained. Gigi Sohn of the digital consumer group Public Knowledge called the takeover "unthinkable.".

""The wireless market, now dominated by four big companies, would have only three at the top. We know the results of arrangements like this - higher prices, fewer choices, less innovation," Sohn said in a statement..

""The fact that AT&T and T-Mobile would even think of such a combination shows how desperately the U.S. needs both strong network neutrality rules and a competition policy that requires dominant broadband providers to make their networks available to competitors."

"There is nothing about having less competition that will benefit wireless consumers. And if regulators approve this deal, they will further cement duopoly control over the wireless market by AT&T and Verizon," agreed Derek Turner of the media reform group Free Press .

"A market this concentrated -- where the top four companies already control 90 percent of the business, and two of them want to merge -- means nothing but higher prices and fewer choices, as the newly engorged AT&T and Verizon exert even more control over the wireless Internet."

The boards of both companies have approved the deal but it must be approved by regulators. As part of the deal, Deutsche Telekom gets an 8 percent equity stake in AT&T and a seat on its board of directors.

The Internet just got its own red light district - a .xxx extension for adult entertainment (read: porn) sites.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the California-based non-profit group that manages Internet addresses, approved the .xxx web domain extension over the objections of the porn industry and several governments, including the Obama administration.

ICANN's vote at its meeting in San Francisco is a first step to greatly expanding the choice of top-level domains that are available - those two, three and four-letter extensions such as .com, .edu,.org and .info.

Florida-based ICM registry will run .xxx and already has a dedicated website --http://www.icmregistry.com/index.php.

ICM will keep it clean, making sure .xxx websites exclude spam, viruses or illegal behavior.

"At the moment, the consumer has no way of knowing who is operating to good standards or has viruses," Stuart Lawley, ICM Registry's chairman and chief executive, told the Washington Post. "This new domain allows webmasters to associate with best business practices."

The Government Advisory Committee , a group of representatives who monitor ICANN's activities for their national governments, told ICANN this week that some governments that oppose such a domain name may block access to .xxx sites.

The FCC on Friday approved the $22 billion merger of CenturyLink and Qwest Communications with several consumer-friendly conditions, including a five-year requirement that qualifying households receive monthly broadband service for less than $10 and computers for less than $150.

The deal, which would combine CenturyLink, the nation's fifth largest telecom carrier, with Qwest, the third biggest, was approved by the agency's five regulators, three Democrats and two Republicans.

The new company will be called CenturyLink.

The agency did not impose a condition requiring the merged entity to abide by it's tough new "network neutrality" regulations even if they're overturned in court -- as it did with the Comcast-NBC Universal joint venture. An agency source said a net neutrality condition was not required because the new entity is not a major distributor of content and is already subject to the stricter rules, as long as they stay on the books.

That didn't sit well with Free Press, a prominent watchdog group that had sought the additional restriction. "Instead of following precedent and ensuring this merger could benefit the public, [FCC Chairman Julius] Genachowski was unwilling to place any conditions on these companies beyond what they agreed to do voluntarily," said Free Press Research Director S. Derek Turner in a statement.

The new company's service territory covers 37 states, including several out West. The merger, announced on April 22, 2010, was touted as an opportunity to expand broadband services over a 173,000-mile fiber optic network.

The Justice Department previously cleared the deal after determining it would not raise any antitrust concerns, government sources said.

It's the quickest and easiest way to donate after a tragedy -- texting a quick number on your cell phone to send $10 to a cause.

But it can take 30 to 90 days for this money to be sent to a relief organization, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., complains, and that is far too long.

The hangup is the billing process -- the wireless carrier must wait to send its monthly bill to the customer and get payment back. Only then does the company forward the donation.

"In past global humanitarian crises, American mobile-phone companies have remitted donations immediately to nonprofit organizations," Boxer wrote in a letter to the heads of the big cell phone carriers --Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile USA, Verizon Wireless, and AT&T.

"In light of the scale of destruction in Japan, American wireless carriers should again immediately remit mobile donations to organizations conducting relief efforts on the ground," she urged.

"Guaranteeing a speedy transmission of funds will not only match customers' expectation that their donations are having an immediate impact" Boxer said, "but will also ensure that donations are rushed to those most in need."

The House is seeking feedback from member offices on ways to improve the chamber's website, House.gov, to provide Americans with better access to member offices and legislative information.

House Republicans' new House Technology Operations Team, headed by Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, is leading the effort to revamp the House website and is aiming for a re-launch of the site in April, a spokeswoman said.

Chaffetz held a forum Wednesday afternoon with representatives from House offices to seek input on ways to improve the site. Offices are being surveyed on changes they would like to see to House.gov. A mockup of the new site was released at the event but Chaffetz team is not sharing it with the public yet.

"To increase transparency, efficiency, and citizen engagement, it is imperative that the House use technology to improve internal operations," Chaffetz said in a statement earlier this week after being tapped to head the new technology team.

The group that manages the Internet's address system is grappling with frustrated governments that want a greater say in such hot-button issues as the introduction of new domain names. One of the hottest - the .xxx domain extension.

While the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has yet to release its agenda for its Friday meeting in San Francisco, the board is expected to take action on a longstanding issue of whether to approve the introduction of a .xxx extension for adult content.

ICANN, a California-based nonprofit corporation, approved the proposal in 2007 to basically open up the Internet to almost any new Internet address. But it is still in the process of implementing its proposal and has yet to set a date for when it will start accepting applications.

Among those who have objected to a .xxx domain is the Government Advisory Committee , a group of representatives who monitor ICANN's activities for their national governments. This group said in a letter to ICANN this week that some governments that oppose such a domain name may block access to it if it is approved.

The Free Speech Coalition, an association that represents the adult entertainment industry, also opposes the .xxx domain.

The group argues that if .xxx is approved, "domains will cost adult website operators millions annually in unnecessary fees; will make adult websites easier to block by governments and other anti-adult entities; and could needlessly fragment the Internet."

Most observers don't expect ICANN to resolve this or other issues about expanding domain names at its Friday board meeting but it may make some progress in addressing a list of about a dozen concerns about the rollout of new names raised by the Government Advisory Committee.

These concerns include proposals for improving the protection of trademarks when new domains are introduced and better procedures for examining names that might raise concerns within certain countries such as those based on a nationality, religion or ethnicity.

The Government Advisory Committee has sought to review applications for new names and exert a veto over objectionable domain names. ICANN has agreed to some of the committee's suggestions and has said it would allow the panel to provide input on new names before they are approved. But ICANN has not committed to providing governments with a veto.

This week, Government Advisory Committee representatives argued for an early warning process for objectionable new domain names that would give them a chance to raise possible issues about a name before an application for such a name is approved.

The dispute points to a larger issue related to Internet governance. Some countries have pushed over the years for the International Telecommunication Union to have a greater say in ICANN's operations or even to take over some of ICANN's functions. The United States has resisted, saying it would stifle Internet growth and innovation.

"While some nations persist in proposing such measures as giving the International Telecommunication Union the authority to veto ICANN Board decisions, the United States is most assuredly opposed to establishing a governance structure for the Internet that would be managed and controlled by nation-states," Lawrence Strickling, head of the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration, said in a speech to ICANN on Monday.

"Critical to the success of the ICANN model is finding a way to better integrate the perspectives of governments," Jonathan Zuck, president of Association for Competitive Technology, said in an interview.

While he believes the ICANN model is largely working, Zuck said his group wants to strengthen ICANN from within and make sure it "has sufficiently rigorous processes and accountability to be more impervious to criticism from the outside."

Click here for a related slideshow.

As expected, group of House lawmakers Thursday reintroduced legislation that would legalize online gambling and set up a regime for regulating the activity.

Rep. John Campbell, R-Calif., introduced the measure along with House Financial Services ranking member Barney Frank, D-Mass., and Reps. Peter King, R-N.Y., and Ed Perlmutter, D-Colo. It would essentially overturn a 2006 law that prohibited most online gambling and barred banks, credit card companies and other payment processors from processing payments for online bets.

The legislation mirrors a bill, sponsored by Frank, that was approved by the Financial Services Committee last year.

Supporters of such legislation argue that the 2006 law has done little to deter those Americans who want to gamble from seeking out online gaming sites based outside the United States. They say the United States should legalize online gaming and set up a regime to tax and regulate it to ensure consumers are better protected. They say tax revenues from online gaming could raise billions of dollars over the next decade.

"Clearly, Americans want to gamble on the Internet, and policymakers need to provide both the freedom to do so, as well as ensure that appropriate consumer protections are in place," Campbell said in a statement. "Regulating online gaming and making certain that these sites are operating legally in America will also create economic growth through generated tax revenue and the possibility of attracting foreign players to U.S. sites."

The bill is expected to be referred to the House Financial Services Committee, where it will likely face stiff resistance from Chairman Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., who strongly opposed Frank's bill last year.

Fresh off a new round of righteous indignation sparked by a hidden-camera sting, Republicans were taking on NPR on the House floor Thursday morning, seeking to strip any federal funding the news organization receives.

Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., introduced a resolution prohibiting NPR from receiving federal funds, either directly, or from member stations. Lamborn, who proposed a similar bill last year, insists his proposal isn't meant to cripple the organization, but simply save taxpayer money.

"Taxpayers should not be on the hook for something that is widely available in the private market," he said. "I wish only the best for NPR. Like many Americans, I enjoy much of their programming. I believe that they can survive, even thrive, in the free market without the crutch of government subsidies."

Republicans characterized the resolution as a budget-cutting measure while Democrats said the effort was a blatantly partisan attack on a popular and important news and information service.

"Public radio is an institution that allows democracy to thrive," said Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt.

Conservative activists released a video earlier this month that showed NPR fundraising executive Ronald Schiller telling people posing as Muslim philanthropists that Tea Party supporters are "seriously racist, racist people." In the video, later shown to have been heavily edited, Schiller also said he thinks NPR does not need federal funding, contradicting assertions by other executives.

Schiller was already on his way to a new job with the Aspen Institute, a position he turned down after the video became public. NPR CEO Vivian Schiller resigned a day later.

Republicans concerns over NPR reached a new high late last year when the organization fired commentator Juan Williams for comments he made on a Fox News show. On Tuesday the House voted to cut $50 million from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helps support NPR, as well as PBS.

On Thursday the White House came out strongly against defunding NPR or the CPB, calling the measures unacceptable.

"The vast majority of CPB's funding for public radio goes to more than 700 stations across the country, many of them local stations serving communities that rely on them for access to news and public safety information," said the Statement of Administration Policy. "Undercutting funding for these radio stations, notably ones in rural areas where such outlets are already scarce, would result in communities losing valuable programming, and some stations could be forced to shut down altogether."

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski exchanged barbs with broadcasters Wednesday over potential spectrum reallocation plans designed to free up airwaves for new technology.

In a speech to Mobile Future Forum the FCC head said that allegations that wireless and cable companies are "hoarding" spectrum rather than deploying it are "not true."

"There are some who say that the spectrum crunch is greatly exaggerated - indeed, that there is no crunch coming" he said. "They also suggest that there are large blocks of spectrum just lying around - and that some licensees, such as cable and wireless companies, are just sitting on top of, or hoarding, unused spectrum that could readily solve that problem... The looming spectrum shortage is real - and it is the alleged hoarding that is illusory."

The National Association of Broadcasters fired back (respectfully), and reiterated its call for independent verification of Genachowski's claims.

"We would respectfully ask for an independent study to confirm Chairman Genachowski's assurances that spectrum suitable for wireless broadband is not lying fallow, given recent verbatim remarks to the contrary from current FCC licensees," said NAB President and CEO Gordon Smith in a statement.

And CTIA, the wireless association, waded into the fray with a statement calling the NAB's request for an independent study "odd."

"The airwaves are a finite resource and America cannot afford to have an industry whose viewership is declining stand in the way of our ability to meet businesses' and consumers' demand for all that the mobile Internet makes possible," said CTIA President Steve Largent. "In particular, NAB has once again endeavored to search for any hint of outlier instances where spectrum allegedly is not being put to productive use - a point that has been consistently refuted by the facts."

The NAB also took issue with Genachowski's assertion that the FCC has already completed a "baseline spectrum inventory." The chairman cited the analysis in Wednesday's speech as well as letters sent to Congress last week. Some members of Congress have called for more information before auctioning off the airwaves.

"Some have argued that giving the FCC incentive auction authority should wait for a spectrum inventory," Genachowski said in his speech. "The good news is that we have already completed a baseline spectrum inventory that tells us more than enough to conclude that incentive auctions are an essential item to add to the FCC's toolkit."

NAB Executive Vice President Dennis Wharton called Genachowski's remarks a "disappointing response" to congressional concerns.

"The question is not whether the FCC can identify locations and licenses on the spectrum dashboard that have been set aside for specific services," he said. "The real issue is whether specific companies that bought or were given spectrum worth billions have actually deployed it."

Two members of the Senate Commerce Committee urged the Federal Communications Commission Wednesday to implement data roaming rules that would ensure consumers don't lose wireless broadband coverage when they travel outside their providers' network area.

In a letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, Senate Commerce Communications Subcommittee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said data roaming rules are especially important in rural areas, where "many consumers suffer from a lack of adequate wireless coverage."

"By establishing clear rules on data roaming, the FCC can help provide certainty to both large and small wireless providers," the senators wrote.

They said smaller wireless carriers have been unwilling or unable to expand their networks because of difficulties they have faced in reaching data roaming agreements with larger carriers or because of fluctuations in the price of data roaming charged by large carriers. At the same time, Kerry and Klobuchar said larger carriers have had little incentive to improve service in rural areas given the uncertainty over future data-roaming rules.

"This standoff shortchanges consumers and denies businesses an important communications tool," the senators added.

Kerry and Klobuchar as well as other lawmakers have pointed to the success of the 2007 FCC rule that set up a system for negotiating voice-roaming rates and that they say has led to the near disappearance of sky-high roaming charges for consumers.

Last week, a group of smaller wireless carriers including Cricket Communications, Sprint and T-Mobile called on the FCC to take action at its April meeting on a rule mandating data roaming.

One year after the Federal Communications Commission released its National Broadband Plan, federal officials tout the past year's accomplishments while critics say the agency is moving too slowly and becoming distracted by the net neutrality debate. The truth is, both sides are right to a degree.

Of the plan's 200-plus recommendations, about 34 percent remain untouched, according to the Benton Foundation, a telecommunications public interest group. But almost 10 percent of the proposals are complete, and about 56 percent are in progress or have at least been started. And with a 10-year schedule for implementing the proposals, that puts the FCC roughly on track.

According to the agency's own count, it has completed about 80 percent of its first-year goals, which leaves some observers unimpressed.

"Despite all the fanfare surrounding the National Broadband Plan, so far the FCC has delivered no more than the status quo," said Free Press Research Director Derek Turner. "Americans are no better off now than they were last year, and the future outlook is not promising."

The broadband plan, a blueprint aimed at taking America to the next level of communication and technology, has been both praised and attacked, with groups like Free Press saying the FCC's efforts are not serious.

But many of the people who helped draft the 300-page document say it's too soon to render judgment on how effectively the plan is being implemented.

Among the plan's unaccomplished goals: a national public safety communications network and reform of a fund originally used to provide telephone service to rural and low-income areas.

But the FCC has started the ball rolling on several of those major goals, while others require congressional action.

And the agency has modernized a program to provide schools and libraries with Internet service; approved plans to extend broadband service to tribal lands; moved ahead with the debate over spectrum auctions; and launched a national broadband map.

Blair Levin, who oversaw production of the plan as executive director of the Omnibus Broadband Initiative at the FCC, told National Journal Daily that there's no one metric to measure how successful the plan has been.

"It's not a simple answer. There are too many aspects to give it a letter grade," said Levin, now a Communications and Society fellow at the Aspen Institute. He acknowledged that some areas need improvement, but he said that focusing on counting specific achievements misses the bigger picture. "The plan was extremely successful at setting the agenda. Either the ideas are being implemented or they are leading to better ideas," Levin said.

That, Levin said, is the greatest legacy of the plan so far. "Are we moving in the right direction? Absolutely, in some areas better than others, but we are moving, and the plan put broadband on the agenda," he said.

Although the FCC's work on net neutrality (which was not in the plan) has grabbed headlines and sparked congressional reaction, Levin said he is pleased that the FCC has focused largely on implementing the broadband plan.

In remarks to the Mobile Future Forum Wednesday, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, perhaps unsurprisingly, struck much the same tone as he said his agency has been "focused like a laser" on broadband issues.

"...when this endeavor began, too many Americans didn't know what broadband was," Genachowski said. "Too many Americans, young and old, too many companies small and even large, didn't understand the benefits of being connected... So, in just one year, broadband has now become part of the vernacular. Not just a topic for us geeks at the FCC, but in the national bloodstream."

And another of the plan's original writers, Mohit Kaushal, who joined Levin at an event sponsored by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation Wednesday, said there will continue to be debate about how the plan is, or is not, implemented.

"There is always going to be gap between policy and implementation because so much is open to interpretation," Kaushal said.

Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I., unveiled a comprehensive cybersecurity bill Wednesday that would establish a national office to coordinate responses to Internet attacks and give the Department of Homeland Security the authority to decide which private networks can be regulated as "critical infrastructure."

The Executive Cyberspace Coordination Act would create a National Office for Cyberspace to oversee efforts by federal agencies to protect against cyber attacks; ensure that the government buys the most advanced technology; and encourage a workforce trained to defend against online threats.

"Our nation sits at a crucial moment, where cyber attacks are common, but have not yet significantly impacted or endangered the American way of life," Langevin, a member of the House Intelligence Committee and co-founder of the Congressional Cybersecurity Caucus, said in a statement. "In this case, we have the opportunity to improve prevention and response to cybersecurity threats, but we must take action now."

In addition to establishing the cybersecurity office, the bill would also:

• Require annual independent audit of federal agencies
• Establish a Federal Cybersecurity Practice Board
• Establish Office of the Chief Technology Officer
• Grant the Department of Homeland Security the authority to protect critical infrastructure
• Develop better cooperation across agencies
• Define the sectors of our society that most urgently need protection
• Enhance the Public Private Partnership for Critical Infrastructure

Senators voiced concern on Wednesday about finding the right balance between the continued growth of advertising-based free content on the Internet and ensuring consumers feel confident that their privacy is protected when they surf the Web.

While in the process of crafting his own privacy bill, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., pressed Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz, Lawrence Strickling, administrator of the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration and others on finding that right balance.

"We can't let the status quo stand," Kerry, chairman of the Commerce Communications Subcommittee, said during a hearing on consumer privacy. "We can't let the collectors of information dictate the level of privacy protection people will get when they engage" on the Internet.

The latest draft of Kerry's privacy legislation includes many of the provisions endorsed by Strickling in testimony reflecting the Obama administration's position.

This includes a "consumer privacy bill of rights" to incorporate the Fair Information Practice Principles embraced by many countries, such as providing consumers with notice about the information being collected about them, choice, access to the information and security to ensure the data is protected.

Privacy groups said they thought the administration proposal was too weak. The Center for Digital Democracy, Consumer Action, the Consumer Federation of America, Consumer Watchdog, U.S. PIRG and the World Privacy Forum worried that industry players would take over developing such standards.

"The involvement of a multi-stakeholder process should inform, not replace, rulemaking," they said in a joint statement.

Strickling said the administration is not proposing a specific bill. However, he noted that the Commerce Department is developing a statement of policy on privacy, which he hopes to finish by spring.

Kerry and other members pressed both the government witnesses and industry and privacy advocates about the best legislative approach. Kerry questioned Leibowitz on the FTC's call, included in its own staff privacy report released in December, for the creation of a do-not-track system to allow consumers to opt out of being followed on the Web for advertising purposes. Kerry asked whether requiring such a system would punish companies with strong privacy policies.

Leibowitz noted that a do-not-track proposal would provide more protection from firms that do not respect consumer privacy and also would give consumers a choice on whether they want their Internet activities monitored even when companies do provide strong privacy protections. Several browser makers,including Microsoft and Mozilla, have committed to incorporating do-not-track mechanisms in their latest browsers.

Many companies now track consumers when they go from website to website in order to target ads to them based on their preferences. And Kerry suggested that people may not mind this.

"We have found historically people consistently say this is something [they are] really super, super concerned about, then tend to engage in practices on the Internet that sort of belie that a little bit," Kerry said.

American Civil Liberties Union Legislative Counsel Chris Calabrese said despite the best intentions of some companies, consumers do not have a federal law they can fall back on when needed. "Company promises are important but not enough," he said.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., voiced concern that overly restrictive regulations could hinder the growth of the Internet and advertising-supported free content as well as innovative approaches to protecting privacy developed by industry players.

"I just think we've got to be very careful about unintended consequences," she said. "We don't want to handcuff the good guys."

Strickling responded that he believes the legislative proposals he outlined answers such concerns, saying they would provide baseline privacy protections while also providing industry with flexibility to craft more specific proposals.

Microsoft and Intuit are among companies that favor legislation. Officials from both firms signaled support for Kerry's draft at the hearing. Intuit Chief Privacy Officer Barbara Lawler said her company likes the "direction that the proposal is going."

Kerry said he is still refining his bill and has been trying to find a Republican co-sponsor. He has been in discussions with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a former chairman of the Commerce Committee, but he has not signed on yet.

"I hope we can introduce it in short order," Kerry said. "We need to do it, and do it soon."

If you get stopped by the police in Houston, it will take them just 16 seconds to compare your fingerprints to the 2 million that are in a database of terrorists, sex offenders, criminals with outstanding arrest warrants and others.

The Repository for Individuals of Special Concern system is part of the FBI's new nationwide Next-Generation Identification system that eventually will employ a host of new technologies to more quickly and accurately identify criminal suspects, Nextgov.com reported.

"Most criminals don't carry IDs, or if they do, they're fake IDs," said John Traxler, NGI program manager at the FBI's criminal justice information services division. The new identification system enables police officers to use a handheld fingerprint reader to send prints through a squad car's radio to the FBI's database and learn almost instantly whether there is a match.

If not, don't relax yet. Your prints also can be compared to 70 million stored in a much larger database. That will take about 30 minutes.

For now, the NGI system, which began operating Feb. 25, handles fingerprints only. But during the next several years, new biometric capabilities will be added to make identification possible through facial recognition technology, iris patterns, and digital photographs of scars, tattoos and other physical markings. To read more, click here.

Visa Inc. said on Wednesday that it has new technology that will let US customers receive and send funds to any eligible Visa credit, debit or prepaid account, anywhere in the world.

"The breakthrough service extends the utility of Visa's network from enabling payments at the point of sale, to enabling consumers to pay one another," the company said in a statement.

"The new Visa personal payments service, which eliminates the inefficiencies of cash and checks for payments between individuals, was made possible through technical enhancements to VisaNet, Visa's global payments processing network, and through the introduction of a new Visa transaction type that allows financial institutions to accept incoming funds," the statement reads.

Visa also announced announced strategic product agreements with CashEdge Inc. and Fiserv, Inc, both of which provide electronic person-to-person payment, account transfer and bill payment services to U.S. financial institutions. "Through the agreements, CashEdge and Fiserv will have access to VisaNet, enabling them to integrate the Visa personal payment service into their respective person-to-person platforms - Popmoney® and ZashPay," Visa said.
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"This will allow a participating bank's customers to send money directly to a Visa account."

A key Commerce Department official is expected Wednesday to call on Congress to enact baseline privacy legislation that would establish a "consumer privacy bill of rights."

In his written testimony for a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on online consumer privacy, National Telecommunications and Information Administration Administrator Lawrence Strickling said Americans need stronger privacy protections than are currently provided by the self-regulatory based approach the United States has relied on in recent years.

Strickling said the department came to the conclusion that legislation was needed after reading the comments submitted on a draft privacy report Commerce released in December.

"Having carefully reviewed all stakeholder comments to the Green Paper, the department
has concluded that the U.S. consumer data privacy framework will benefit from legislation to establish a clearer set of rules for the road for businesses and consumers, while preserving the innovation and free flow of information that are hallmarks of the Internet," Strickling said in his prepared testimony obtained by Tech Daily Dose.

He added, that "an overarching set of privacy principles on which consumers and
businesses can rely could create a stronger foundation for consumer trust in the Internet by providing this broadly applicable framework."

Strickling said privacy legislation should include three key elements including a "consumer privacy bill of rights," which would incorporate the Fair Information Practice Principles embraced by many countries. These include providing consumers with notice about the information being collected about them, choice, access to the information and security to ensure the data is protected.

Commerce embraced the idea of a consumer privacy bill of rights in its December report but called for public input on whether legislation providing baseline privacy protections was needed.

He also said legislation should grant the Federal Trade Commission with authority to enforce the bill's baseline protections. In addtition, legislation also should provide incentives for industry to develop codes of conduct and other innovative solutions aimed at bolstering consumer privacy. Such incentives could include allowing the FTC to grant a safe harbor to companies that implement approved codes of conduct.

"This statutory framework is designed to be flexible, to keep its requirements well-tailored, and to provide a basis for greater interoperability with other countries' privacy laws," according to Strickling's testimony.

The legislative proposals called for by the department are similar to some of the provisions included in legislation introduced in the House by Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., and in a draft privacy measure being crafted by Senate Commerce Communications Subcommittee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass.

The Senate Commerce Committee will begin debate Wednesday on consumer online privacy as one of the panel's key members works on legislation that would require firms to tell consumers more, and offer more choices, about what information is being collected about them.

Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz and Lawrence Strickling, administrator of the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration, are among those scheduled to testify. Strickling is likely to give the Obama administration's backing for privacy legislation by Congress, according to several sources following the issue.

Collared at a conference Tuesday sponsored by the Direct Marketing Association, NTIA Associate Administrator Daniel Weitzner would not comment on whether the administration would come out in support of privacy legislation.

In its draft privacy report released in December, the Commerce Department did not take a stand on whether lawmakers should enact privacy legislation and instead called for comment on the issue. In earlier drafts of that report, however, the department did call for legislation but that language was dropped after inter-agency consultation on the report, according to industry sources.

The FTC in a separate staff privacy report issued a few weeks before the Commerce report was released also declined to take a stand on whether Congress should enact baseline privacy legislation, also leaving the issue up for public input.

The FTC, however, did endorse creation of a do-not-track mechanism giving consumers a way to opt out of being tracked while they surf the Web, an idea that has been staunchly opposed by online advertisers and marketers.

A handful of privacy bills have been introduced this Congress. Senate Commerce Communications Subcommittee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., is currently drafting his own privacy bill that is similar in many ways to a measure introduced last month by Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill.

According to the latest draft of the Kerry measure, obtained by Tech Daily Dose, the bill would require firms to provide more details about what information is being collected and how it is used; ensure the information is well secured; and allow consumers to opt out of having personally identifiable information collected and used.

It would require an opt-in for the collection and use of sensitive information such as financial or health data and for the transfer of information to third parties except for those that participate in an FTC-approved self regulatory program.

Unlike the Rush bill, the draft Kerry measure treats Internet protocol addresses differently from other personal information and does not apply all the bill's provisions to IP addresses. Another key difference from the Rush bill is that the Kerry draft does not grant the FTC as much rulemaking authority and does not allow consumers to sue firms that violate the bill's provisions.

The current Kerry draft is supported by such firms as Intel, which along with Microsoft and eBay have called on Congress to pass baseline privacy legislation. Microsoft Vice President and Deputy General Counsel Erich Andersen is among the private sector witnesses slated to testify at Wednesday's hearing.

"What industry needs is federal privacy legislation that sets forth baseline privacy protections for transparency, consumer control, and security that are not specific to any one technology, industry, or business model," Andersen said in his written testimony for the hearing. "Privacy protections that apply across sectors would provide consistent baseline protections for consumers, and simplify compliance for businesses that increasingly operate across those sectors."

The Obama Administration is calling for greater law enforcement authority and tougher penalties, including prison in some cases, for people convicted of copyright infringement.

The White House's Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, Victoria Espinel, submitted 20 recommendations to Congress on Tuesday aimed at cracking down on copyright infringement on items ranging from drugs to music and military equipment.

Espinel urged Congress to make illegally streaming copyrighted content online a felony offense in some instances.

Online piracy and counterfeiting, her report notes, are "significant concerns" for the White House. Such infringement causes "economic harm and threaten the health and safety of American consumers," Espine report reads.

"Foreign-based and foreign-controlled websites and web services raise particular concerns for U.S. enforcement efforts. We are aware that members of Congress share our goal of reducing online infringement and are considering measures to increase law enforcement authority to combat websites that are used to distribute or provide access to infringing products."

The list suggests that Congress enact longer sentences for many counterfeiting offenses, including selling fake military or law enforcement items, trade secrets, or bogus drugs. The White House also calls for wiretap authority in counterfeiting and trademark investigations.

The recommendations gathered praise from a range of groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which urged the administration to make the U.S. a "miserable place for counterfeiters and pirates."

"We are particularly encouraged to see several of our top legislative priorities covered by the white paper, especially the issue of rogue websites," said Rob Calia, senior director for Counterfeiting and Piracy at the Chamber's Global IP Center. "The paper makes clear that the Administration shares Congress' commitment towards combating websites dedicated to the sale or distribution of infringing products."

The Motion Picture Association of America also lauded Espinel, the first White House IP enforcement coordinator ever, for "recognizing the danger posed to our workforce by theft, both in the online and physical marketplace, and by making the protection of the creative workers and their craft a top priority."

Espinel included a proposal to charge radio stations royalty fees for playing live music performances, a move that drew support from the Recording Industry Association of America Tuesday.

"We appreciate the administration's recommendation that Congress enact a performance right which would finally close a longstanding and unfair loophole in copyright law that denies compensation to artists and record labels when their music is played over terrestrial radio," said RIAA Chairman and CEO Mitch Bainwol in a statement.

The National Association of Broadcasters was predictably irritated.

"This is hardly a new policy position from the White House," NAB Executive Vice President Dennis Wharton said in a statement.

"NAB remains unalterably opposed to legislation creating an onerous, jobs-killing fee on America's hometown radio stations without offsetting provisions and benefits that recognize the the unparalleled promotional value of radio airplay."

The Federal Trade Commission announced Tuesday that it has barred Westborough, Mass.-based Chitika, an online advertiser, from misleading consumers about its privacy policy. The company allows Internet users to opt out of being monitored online when they clicked on ads that Chitika places on websites. But the FTC found that from May 2008 to February 2010, the promised opt-outs lasted only ten days, instead of the promised 10 years.

The agency has now barred Chitika from misleading consumers and forced it to destroy any personal data that it collected using deceptive practices. The settlement with the FTC occurs as the Senate Commerce Committee prepares to hold a Wednesday hearing about online privacy, and as Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and John McCain, R-Ariz., ready major legislation in this area.

In a statement, Chitika claimed that the 10-day expiration was the result of an error that it never noticed for nearly two years until the FTC brought the matter to its attention. Reinforcing a concern raised by watchdogs -- that Web users rarely bother to opt out of being tracking online -- Chitika said it averaged a meager 30 opt-out requests per month over an international ad network that attracts more than 450 million consumers.

For more on the FTC settlement, click here

To learn more about Chitika, which according to its website means "snap of the fingers" in Telugu, a South Indian language, click here

States struggling to close growing budget deficits are likely to take greater aim at online sales firms that do not collect sales taxes, an official with the Direct Marketing Association said Thursday.

Legislation signed last week by Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn is just one of many attempts by states to deal with a loophole left by a 1992 Supreme Court decision that found companies are not required to collect sales taxes from customers in states where the firms do not have a physical presence. While the ruling applied at the time to catalog sales, online retailers like Amazon.com have used the loophole to their advantage.

Since then, states have complained that they are losing billions of dollars a year in sales taxes from online transactions. At the same time, brick-and-mortar retailers argue that they are being placed at a competitive disadvantage.

While states have been pushing Congress to close this loophole, they also have been taking matters into t heir own hands. The Illinois bill, which is similar to a New York state law that has been challenged in court by Amazon, would require online retailers who contract with an affiliate in Illinois to collect sales taxes on customer purchases there.

"States have targeted this industry. Over the next 12 to 18 months, we will get a clearer definition of where the battle lines are drawn," George Isaacson, tax counsel for the Direct Marketing Association, said during a policy conference sponsored by the group. The DMA has challenged a Colorado law that would require online retailers and catalog companies to turn over the names and purchasing information of their customers to state revenue officials. A federal district court recently issued a preliminary injunction barring enforcement of the law.

Meanwhile, states have found some allies in Congress. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., is expected to introduce a bill possibly as soon as this week aimed at giving states authority to mandate that online and catalog firms collect sales taxes from customers in states where those companies do not have a physical presence.

Isaacson and other critics of such efforts say their concern with such proposals is with the burden of having to comply with the different sales tax regimes of the more than 7,500 state and local taxing jurisdictions throughout the country.

Scott Peterson, executive director of the Streamlined Sales Tax Governing Board, agreed with Isaacson and other critics that the current sales tax system is far too complicated. His group has been working with about two dozen states to try to simplify their sales tax regimes, which would make it easier for firms to collect taxes on remote sales. Noting that e-commerce is "the future," Peterson said he is trying to work with online retailers to improve the current sales tax regime.

"We have from the very beginning been dependent on multistate retailers to tell us what" we are doing wrong, Peterson said in an interview after the conference.

But he added that some retailers themselves are the ones pushing states like Illinois and New York to pass laws like the online affiliate measure enacted in Illinois last week. The Illinois Retail Merchants Association endorsed that state's affiliate tax law, describing it in a statement as "restoring fairness."

Former GOP Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell has been tapped to head the National Cable & Telecommunications Association.

Powell, who served as chairman from 2001 to 2005, currently works as a senior adviser for a media investment firm and serves as honorary co-chair of Broadband for America, according to an NCTA statement. He fills a spot vacated earlier this month by Kyle McSlarrow, who left for a top lobbying job with Comcast.

Beyond managing NCTA operation, Powell will be the cable industry's "leading advocate, spokesman, and representative in its relationship with the U.S. Congress, the Administration, the FCC, and other federal agencies," according to the association.

"Michael Powell is one of the most well respected and influential visionaries in all of telecommunications, and we're so proud to have him join the cable team," said Patrick J. Esser, chair of the NCTA Board of Directors and president of Cox Communications.

President Bill Clinton nominated Powell to the FCC in 1997. He was appointed as chairman by President George W. Bush in 2001. Powell's tenure as chairman was marked by a bitter battle over his efforts to relax media ownership rules and the flap over Janet Jackson's Super Bowl "wardrobe malfunction." Before his time at the FCC, Powell worked at the Department of Justice's antitrust division.

Current FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell issued a statement congratulating Powell and said he is looking forward to working with him.

"Michael has always exhibited the best attributes of leadership," McDowell said. "His intellect and vision will serve NCTA and its members well as the cable industry faces increasing competitive and regulatory challenges."

The advocacy group Free Press, meanwhile, issued a statement calling Powell a perfect fit for the job, and not necessarily in a good way.

"Former Chairman Michael Powell is the natural choice to lead the nation's most powerful cable lobby, having looked out for the interests of companies like Comcast and Time Warner during his tenure at the Commission and having already served as a figurehead for the industry front group Broadband for America," said Free Press managing director Craig Aaron. "Thanks in no small part to the policies he pursued at the FCC and to the cable lobby's unyielding fight against any real competition in the broadband market, the digital divide is still with us."

NCTA's members provide service to about 90 percent of America's cable subscribers.

Military units operating in Japan face bandwidth shortages and network limitations that inhibit communications and command and control, Defense sources told Nextgov.com. Misawa Air Base, located on the northeast tip of Honshu, warned its personnel on a blog post Friday that the Defense Switched Network, which handles voice calls, was in backup mode and had only limited capacity, a fact confirmed by a Pentagon source Monday.

The blog post added, "We have a number of connectivity issues. Internet has been up and down due to our connections through other places in Japan. For example, Yokota [Air Base] and several other locations are having issues because we all have power and connectivity issues right now."

The Pentagon also took the extraordinary step of blocking access to a range of commercial websites to ensure that its networks have enough bandwidth to support mission-essential communications, Nextgov.com learned. This move, a military source told Nextgov.com, possibly indicates one or more undersea cables used by military networks were damaged by the earthquake.

To read more of this article, visit Nextgov.com.

Opponents of rules that force companies to provide equal access to Internet bandwidth got a bipartisan boost to their argument late on Monday.

Democratic Reps. Collin Peterson of Minnesota and Dan Boren of Oklahoma joined Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Oregon, and Subcommittee Vice Chair Lee Terry, R-Neb., in a "Dear Colleague" letter urging support of a resolution overturning the controversial Federal Communications Commission network neutrality rules.

"The Internet is an open and thriving marketplace and job creator, thanks in no small part to the historical hands-off approach to regulation from the federal government," the congressmen wrote. "However... the Federal Communications Commission intends to change all that with recently passed rules to impose unprecedented job-destroying rules on the Internet. The Internet has been open and free - and should stay that way."

The full House Energy and Commerce Committee is now considering the GOP-led effort to overturn the regulations.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., said the FCC resolution is expected to come up for a floor vote before the Easter recess. The net neutrality rules "have the potential for significantly harmful effects for job growth and that is why we believe it should be the business of Congress to remove those impediments," he said Monday.

During Monday's markup, Walden dismissed assertions that major Internet companies are satisfied with the regulations. "While some of my Democratic colleagues acclaim larger providers like the order, they are actually damning the rules with faint praise," he said.

On the Senate side, Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) said he will introduce a bill that would make net neutrality violations a crime to be prosecuted under antitrust law.

'I'm introducing a new bill that would call violations of net neutrality out for what they are-anti-competitive actions by powerful media conglomerates that represent violations of our anti-trust laws. We don't allow big corporations to use their size to bully their competition, and my bill would make it clear that this applies to telecoms that use their power to control the Internet," Franken said in a speech to the South By Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas.

The most effective way to target foreign Websites that illegally stream copyrighted material may be to cut off their funding, Maria Pallante, acting register of copyrights, told a House subcommittee Monday.

"The parasites who operate so-called rogue websites build businesses on piracy, counterfeiting and other unlawful activity, in part based on the expectation of weak enforcement," Pallante told the House Intellectual Property, Competition, and the Internet Subcommittee.

"These parasites could be cut off from payment mechanisms and advertising revenues in the United States. This could combat their very existence, or at least substantially decrease their impact on the market for legitimate copyrighted content."

To effectively target foreign websites, American authorities need to cooperate with other governments, David Sohn, senior policy counsel for the Center for Democracy & Technology, said. "While such cooperation undoubtedly takes some effort, it ultimately offers the most effective approach, because it is the only way to ensure that the bad guys and the computer servers they use are actually taken offline for good," he said.

Lawmakers at Monday's hearing were largely united in their criticism of such "rogue" websites, which stream pirated movies, music, sports events, and other copyrighted material without permission, but some of the committee members expressed concern that enforcement efforts could compromise website operators' rights and that current measures are not working well enough.

"Internet piracy is so profitable and pernicious that is discourages investments, innovation and licensed content from legitimate companies," said Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas. "It is clear that existing laws are inadequate, and we must do more to confront the problem."

Some witnesses, however, said current efforts are not only inadequate, but potentially cause more problems. Sohn said that domain-name blocking and seizures, which have been criticized for crippling legal sites, "are certainly not the answer; codification and widespread use of this tactic would carry costs and risks that would far exceed its minimal impact on infringement."

He went on to urge Congress to look beyond the controversial practices. "Any enforcement measures that aim to sidestep normal judicial process would, at a minimum, need to be narrowly tailored and contain carefully crafted procedural safeguards," Sohn said. "Without such safeguards, there would be a risk of impairing lawful websites and speech," he added.

Frederick Huntsberry, chief operating officer for Paramount Pictures, described an "online shadow economy" that "steals from the U.S. economy and enriches thieves."

"The same technology that will enable consumers to enjoy motion pictures and other forms of copyrighted content in new and exciting ways is being used in the online shadow economy to steal that content," Huntsberry said. "Unless the rule of law is effectively applied to online distribution platforms - and it currently is not - that technology will not reach its promised potential."

Huntsberry urged lawmakers to "level the playing field" and crack down on offenders, including going after foreign websites.

The online hacker group Anonymous, which is not affiliated with Wikileaks, released emails Monday morning that allegedly prove that Bank of America committed mortgage fraud. The bank has denied the allegations.

The leak comes from an anonymous former employee of Balboa Insurance, which was acquired by BoA in 2008 and sold to QBE Group. Balboa is a leader in insurance tracking and "forced-place insurance." That means if a homeowner falls behind on premiums, the insurance company buys a new policy on their behalf so that the home stays insured.

The source claims that the bank scrambled or deleted numbers used to identify loan insurance accounts, allegedly to help them foreclose on home loans. In the first of the leaked emails, which can be found online here, a asks for a group of tracking numbers to have their "images removed" from the insurance tracking system.

It is not clear in the emails, or in the early analysis of the emails, why the images were removed or whether the bank tried to deliberately confound auditors by deleting file numbers on insurance accounts.

In one leaked email, a Balboa employee asks about "huge red flags" for auditors over a change in record keeping, writing, "It just doesn't seem right to me."

Telecom lobbyists are driving efforts in the House to overturn rules aimed at guaranteeing equal speed for all on the Internet, Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) said on Monday.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee is beginning consideration of a Republican-led effort to change the Federal Communications Commission regulations, with a vote scheduled for Tuesday.

Franken has introduced legislation with Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) to make net neutrality law and not simply an FCC regulation, and said he has introduced a bill that would allow violations of net neutrality to be prosecuted under antitrust law.

Franken attacked the companies that he says support the changes so they can make more money.

"We have net neutrality right now. And we don't want to lose it. That's all. The fight for net neutrality isn't about improving the Internet. It's not about changing the Internet at all. It's about ensuring that it stays just the way it is," Franken said in a speech to the South By Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas.

"And the big telecom companies make lots and lots of money off their ownership of the Internet-but they've figured out a way to make more."

Franken said this so-called paid prioritization would create a "high-speed lane" for corporations that can pay for it. "This would make these corporations gatekeepers of the Internet, with the power to decide what content can get to its intended audience in the high-speed lane and what content gets stuck in traffic, depending on what makes the most money for their shareholders," he said.

"And just as you pay extra to get HBO or Showtime on your cable package, we've seen reports that telecom companies might consider dividing the Internet into tiers the same way-you'd pay a base fee for a few sites, and more if you want to be able to get to others."

Internet providers have denied this but Franken said they plan to do so.

"Unfortunately, one thing the big corporations have that we don't is the ability to purchase favorable political outcomes," he said. "All industries have lobbyists-but the big telecoms have lots of them, and good ones, too. On top of that, last year's Citizens United Supreme Court decision allowed corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money on campaigns without disclosing any of it."

Franken said the lobbyists are out-shouting supporters of net neutrality.

Comcast said Franken incorrectly named that company in his remarks. "Comcast is not lobbying to change the FCC net neutrality rules and in fact is bound by the Comcast NBCUniversal FCC transaction Order to abide by the Open Internet (net neutrality) rules for 7 years even if the rules are overturned in court," Sena Fitzmaurice, vice president for government communications for Comcast, said by email.

This FCC transaction order was issued in January as part of Comcast's merger with NBC Universal and requires the company to maintain fair Internet access.

The full House Energy and Commerce Committee will consider a GOP-led effort to overturn federal regulations that restrict Internet providers from blocking websites that use too much bandwidth.

Committee members will give opening statements Monday with an actual vote on the Resolution of Disapproval scheduled for Tuesday. Members will be able to speak on both the net neutrality resolution and a measure targeting the Environmental Protection Agency.

House Republicans introduced a Resolution of Disapproval that cleared a subcommittee last week and, if approved by the Senate and President Obama, would block the Federal Communications Commission's net neutrality rules enacted in December.

The resolution cannot be amended, but House Democrats registered their disapproval with a string of amendments that were ruled non-germane. The measure is not expected to gain support from either the Democratic-controlled Senate or Obama.

Local news may be going mobile more than ever, but those new technologies have yet to translate into significant revenue for news organizations, according to a study by The Pew Research Center.

Just 10 percent of adults who use mobile apps for local news and information, or about 1 percent of all adults, pay for that access, according to the report released Monday. Thirty-six percent still pay for some kind of local news, most of it in the form of local print newspaper subscriptions. Almost 20 percent of respondents said they would be willing to pay $10 a month, but about three-quarters of adults aren't willing to pay anything for local news, the study found.

"Many news organizations are looking to mobile platforms, in particular mobile apps, to provide new ways to generate subscriber and advertising revenues in local markets," said Lee Rainie, director of The Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project, in a statement. "The survey suggests there is a long way to go before that happens."

And the bad news doesn't stop there. Thirty-nine percent of respondents said the loss of their local newspaper would have no impact on their ability to stay informed on local information. Twenty-eight percent said losing their paper would have a "major" impact, according to the study.

But it's not all doom and gloom for local news providers. Almost half of all American adults get at least some local news and information on their cellphones or tablet computers. And 65 percent say they think it is easier to stay informed today than it was five years ago.

"Tablet penetration is growing so rapidly--as quickly as any device we have seen to date--it will be fascinating to see whether that changes whether people will pay for content online, but for now it hasn't happened," said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The study is the result of 2,251 phone interviews (at least 750 by cellphone) with American adults. The results have a margin of error of +/- 2 percentage points.

Reps. Edward Markey, D-Mass., and Joe Barton, R-Texas, cochairmen of the Bipartisan Privacy Caucus and longtime members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, don't agree on much. But after Google was caught last month collecting Social Security information from children who took part in its annual doodling contest, the lawmakers set aside their differences. In a scathing joint statement, they called the action "unacceptable," National Journal reported.

The rebuke was just the latest in a series from lawmakers in both parties, and it highlights a deeper problem for the online giant: Its star is falling fast in Washington. Long the darling of the technology community, Google had carefully cultivated an image of corporate responsibility with its "Don't Be Evil" motto and its mission "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." But in recent years, the company has distanced itself not only from the motto but also the principles behind it, say experts who monitor its business practices.

On Friday Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, joined the chorus of lawmakers calling for antitrust hearings on Google.

Lee, ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee, called for the oversight hearings in a letter to the subcommittee's chairman, Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wisc., who said Thursday his panel will probe complaints about the search giant.

"The powerful position Google occupies in the general search arena creates myriad opportunities for anticompetitive behavior," Lee wrote. Pointing specifically to Google's plan to acquire ITA, Lee said "Google's position as the preeminent search engine may be abused to as to disadvantage competing vertical search sites to the detriment of advertisers and Internet users."

To read more of David Hatch's take on Google's "tarnished chrome," please visit Nationaljournal.com.

There's nothing like a good old fashioned turf battle to unite Democrats and Republicans. While they welcome the new Senate Judiciary subcommittee on privacy, the top members of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee say authority over privacy issues lies squarely with their committee, according to a letter obtained by Tech Daily Dose.

In the letter to Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Ranking Member Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, Commerce Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D- W.V., and Ranking Member Kay Baily Hutchison, R-Texas, say they are "concerned about the description of the (Judiciary Privacy Technology and the Law) Subcommittee on the Judiciary Committee website and are puzzled insofar as the jurisdiction described appears to be beyond the scope of the jurisdiction of the Judiciary Committee."

They insist that privacy legislation is solely covered by the Commerce Committee. "In this Congress members of the Commerce Committee have made consumer privacy issues a priority," the letter reads. "The Commerce Committee is actively engaged in overseeing privacy interests in the commercial realm, and in protecting consumer interests in this regard."

The Commerce letter ends with a cordial assertion that "Consumers can benefit from vigorous oversight by both our committees, and we want to be sure that - as the Senate rules provide - our committees do not duplicate efforts in this area." But they warn, "we will carefully follow the work of the Judiciary Committee and its new subcommittee."

A Judiciary Committee aide said the committee has received the letter and is reviewing it. "The Judiciary Committee has worked on privacy related issues - criminal, civil and consumer protection - for decades, including Sen. Leahy's data privacy legislation," the aide told Tech Daily Dose. "We've also coordinated with the Commerce Committee on these issues for decades" and Leahy plans to continue to collaborate.

Leahy announced the new privacy subcommittee, chaired by Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., in February. The website description of the committee's jurisdiction is included below:

"(1) Oversight of laws and policies governing the collection, protection, use and dissemination of commercial information by the private sector, including online behavioral advertising, privacy within social networking websites and other online privacy issues; (2) Enforcement and implementation of commercial information privacy laws and policies; (3) Use of technology by the private sector to protect privacy, enhance transparency and encourage innovation; (4) Privacy standards for the collection, retention, use and dissemination of personally identifiable commercial information; and (5) Privacy implications of new or emerging technologies."

New documents show that Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., questioned last year whether the White House helped write controversial net neutrality rules enacted in December.

The Federal Communications Commission released a 2009 letter sent to the agency after FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski unveiled his plan to restrict Internet providers from blocking websites that use too much bandwidth, Issa asked about potential collaboration between the Obama administration and the FCC officials who drafted the proposal. The letters, as well as the FCC response, were released Thursday.

Issa argued that such collaboration could have violated disclosure rules. Issa, now chairman of the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform, also wrote a letter after the regulations were approved in December.

President Obama and Genachowski both announced support for net neutrality regulations on Sept. 21, 2009, Issa observed.

"Alone, the timing of this announcement went unnoticed, but in light of the recent media reports, questions have arisen surrounding the coordination and involvement of the White House in crafting the proposed regulations," he wrote.

But in a written response to Issa in February, Genachowski said the law does not prohibit "communications between commissioners and commission and staff and members of the administration." The FCC's general counsel is "not aware of any potential violations" of the rules.

Republicans are trying to overturn the rules through legislation, as well as defund any attempts by the agency to enforce the regulations.

The Government Accountability Office this week overturned the Homeland Security Department's award of a department-wide financial management system to CACI, sources familiar with GAO's decision told Nextgov.com. GAO spokesman Chuck Young confirmed the agency's decision in an e-mail.

The audit agency is recommending that DHS issue a revised solicitation that better reflects its actual needs, accept modified proposals and conduct a new competition, the sources said.

Global Computer Enterprises, which had provided the Transportation Security Administration and the U.S. Coast Guard with Web-based financial management services, protested the contract award in November 2010, about a week after the department selected CACI for the work. The contract has a potential value of $450 million.

For more on this story, click here.

There are two people in America with Situation Rooms -- and one of them was honored Thursday night at a gala dinner at the Ritz Carlton. CNN's Wolf Blitzer received the Leonard Zeidenberg First Amendment Award from the Radio Television Digital News Foundation (formerly the Radio Television News Directors Foundation) at the group's annual black tie dinner.

Blitzer quipped that only he and President Obama have Situation Rooms -- the cable star, of course, was referring to his afternoon news round-up on CNN. Noting that he's been attending the dinner for many years -- which has honored luminaries such as NBC's Brian Williams, CBS's Bob Schieffer and ABC's Cokie Roberts -- Blitzer asked the audience of mostly TV executives and journalists: "What about me? What's been taking so long?"

Other media personalities at the head table included ABC's Ann Compton and Martha Raddatz, CBS's Byron Pitts, NBC's Rehema Ellis, NPR's Melissa Block and CNN's Jeanne Meserve.

Russ Mitchell of CBS News served as the evening's Master of Ceremonies.

While there was plenty of jocularity and self-congratulation, the evening began on a serious note with an emotional remembrance of the chaos on Sept. 11, 2001 -- and the yeoman's work that TV and radio broadcasters carried out to cover the tragic terror attacks on that fateful day.

Various speakers reminded the audience of the importance of free, over-the-air broadcasting -- and the risks to local news coverage if TV signals are diminished. The Federal Communications Commission wants to shift some TV airwaves to wireless broadband companies to accommodate surging demand for high-speed Internet connectivity.

Photo: Blitzer honored at gala dinner; Credit: David Hatch, National Journal

Members of a House Judiciary subcommittee probed experts on patent law Thursday as the House prepares to introduce its own version of patent reform legislation.

Earlier this week the Senate passed a bill aimed at finally overhauling a patent system which hasn't been significantly changed in almost 60 years. House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, has said he anticipates a House bill sometime this month, and at Thursday's hearing, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., shared his confidence.

"I'm optimistic that we can get a bipartisan, bicameral bill on the president's desk in the near future," said Goodlatte, chairman of the Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition, and the Internet.

The subcommittee called three witnesses to testify on recent judicial rulings on patent cases. Some observers have said parts of the current patent legislation are unnecessary because of case law developed by courts, and at least some witnesses agreed.

"It is clear that the courts are addressing these issues, using the tools and the guidance that Congress has provided in the patent statute in order to adapt the law to the current needs and concerns of innovators," wrote Dan Burk, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, in his written testimony. "The process of adoption takes some time, but the necessary tools to make the needed changes are already provided in the statute as it exists today." In fact, he said, often only the courts are dynamic enough to respond to changes in innovation and the economy.

Dennis Crouch, an associate law professor at the University of Missouri, said patent law is much less detailed than copyright law, and therefore gives courts more leeway for interpretation. And, he added, "I certainly don't see that as a problem."

But does that amount to judicial activism? "By no means," Burk said. "If anything, it appears the courts may sometimes be overly cautious in exercising the latitude that they have been granted under the current statute."

Some confusion has arisen in the past because courts haven't followed Congress's direction, said Andrew Pincus, a partner at the Washington, D.C.-based firm Mayer Brown, who testified on behalf of the Business Software Alliance. But despite past "imbalances" in the law, he said, "as a result of this judicial activity, the legal standards governing patent litigation are in a much better state than they were when this committee first led the charge on patent reform."

While courts have established some precedent on issues such as venue, damages and willfulness, the witnesses stressed that only congressional action can decide many of the patent system's issues, including funding for the Patent and Trademark Office and moving to a first-to-file system.

Top privacy regulators agreed Thursday that the United States and the European Union are moving closer in their approaches to protecting consumer privacy. But they still remain at odds over whether a U.S. national law is needed to ensure companies follow widely agreed upon privacy principles.

During a discussion on the U.S. and European approaches to privacy protection at the International Association of Privacy Professionals conference, EU Data Protection Supervisor Peter Hustinx agreed with Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz that the two sides are moving closer but noted one key difference remains: the Unites States still lacks a broad privacy protection law.

"I see more convergence than divergence," Leibowitz said.

The European Commission is currently in the process of reviewing its broad privacy framework, which includes the EU's 1998 data protection law. Hustinx said among the issues it plans to address include trying to reduce the "diversity" in how the law is applied among the EU's 27 member countries and ways to make the privacy law more effective.

The EU review comes as the FTC is sifting through the nearly 450 comments it received on a staff report released in December on proposals for boosting consumer privacy. Leibowitz noted that British and French data protection authorities were among those who submitted comments on the FTC report and they noted that many of the concepts in the it are "ones being stressed in the new regulatory framework in the EU."

Hustinx said he was glad to see a recognition in the FTC report that the "status quo in the U.S. is not satisfactory."

The FTC, however, does not have the authority to impose rules implementing the proposals in its privacy report, power that Congress would need to grant the agency by passing privacy legislation.

While the FTC has endorsed a controversial proposal calling for the creation of a "do-not-track" system to allow consumers to opt out of Internet tracking, the commission has not taken a stand on whether Congress should pass baseline privacy legislation, Leibowitz noted after the event.

The issue of whether the United States' privacy laws are up to par with the EU is more than a philosophical exercise. The EU's privacy directive bars the flow of data from the EU to countries that do not have "adequate" privacy rules.

The U.S. mix of industry self regulation and sector-specific privacy laws does not meet this standard on its own and as a result the Commerce Department negotiated a safe harbor with the EU in the late 1990s for those U.S. firms that agree to abide by a set of principles on how they will treat consumer privacy, which include notice, choice, security and data integrity.

Both Hustinx and Leibowitz were asked whether the United States would meet this adequacy standard if the United States finally passed a broad privacy law. Hustinx said that the "trend is moving in the right direction if the principles [in the report] are delivered as binding, baseline binding principles." But he added that "whether this is adequate in a technical sense may not be so decisive."

During a later discussion, Daniel Sepulveda, a staffer who works on privacy and other tech issues for Senate Commerce Communications Subcommittee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., also discussed the issue. In responding to claims by two industry officials that the EU is becoming more open to self regulation, Sepulveda said without a "backstop" in law, the U.S. system of protecting privacy will not be found to be adequate by the EU.

Sepulveda's boss is working on his own privacy legislation. The Senate Commerce Committee plans to hold a hearing next week on privacy at which Leibowitz is set to appear as well as other government and industry officials.

The world needs independent, non-profit organizations to oversee a set of binding Internet privacy standards which would be more dynamic than laws, but stricter than the in-house rules of individual corporations, said HP's Vice President and Chief Privacy Officer Scott Taylor Thursday.

He told reporters that although congressional action is badly needed, laws and regulations alone will not be able to keep up with emerging technology and practices.

Taylor advocated a combination of overarching laws and a binding corporate code of conduct that would cross jurisdictions.

"We need a global set of trust agents who can provide objective evaluations of a company's compliance with privacy rules," he said. "A patchwork of laws across the country and around the world makes it very difficult to manage a global company."

Taylor said he envisions international non-profit organizations that would be certified by governments and give consumers recourse for privacy complaints.

He said he supports legislative action and is "encouraged" by provisions included in a yet-to-be introduced privacy bill from Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.

He said any rules need to address how information is used, not necessarily how it is gathered.

"There are places where tracking is vital, like for fraud prevention," Taylor said. "But there are certainly places where people should have a choice. I think most concerns are about how information is used. We'll just have to accept that it's being gathered."

The traditional mode of "notice and choice," which often involves lengthy legal notices, is outdated, he said. A notice system should be more based on consumer-friendly labels like those for nutritional information on food, Taylor said.

The U.S. government is leaving American companies out in the cold, undermining their ability to compete in a global marketplace, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation President Robert Atkinson said Thursday.

Atkinson said as opposed to many other countries, the U.S. government does not support its businesses enough. "Where's Uncle Sam?" he asked. For American companies to compete in the world, the U.S. government needs to take a more active role, Atkinson asserted.

Atkinson said lawmakers need to overcome partisanship and unite behind American businesses.

Speaking at the ITIF's Competitiveness Conference, Atkinson painted a bleak picture of America's place in the world. He cited a 2009 study that showed the U.S. was now sixth in the world for innovation according to a number of indicators.

For the first time, research and development spending has declined in the U.S., as have college attainment levels and the number of scientists and researchers, Atkinson said.

And in the rate of improvement in such innovation indicators, the U.S. ranks dead last out of the 40 countries surveyed. "In short, the U.S. is falling behind in the race for global innovation advantage," Atkinson said.

Atkinson called for more government investment in R&D and education; less regulation; a tax overhaul to lower taxes and create permanent R&D tax incentives; increased high-skill immigration; full funding for federal regulatory agencies; and tougher enforcement of trade agreements.

Atkinson criticized government officials for emphasizing environmental issues or human rights in trade negotiations, but not business concerns. He acknowledged the importance of such issues but said it is a waste of time without incorporating more economic focus.

"We harangue China on human rights but we don't harangue them on intellectual property rights," Atkinson said.

Smaller wireless companies called on the Federal Communications Commission Thursday to hurry up and update the nation's wireless roaming rules to include data services to reflect the growing use of mobile phones for far more than just voice communications.

They want the FCC to act on a rule that would ensure their customers can access data networks operated by other providers when outside their own network area at fair rates and terms. Companies such as Cricket Communications, Sprint and T-Mobile held a news conference to call on the FCC to include a proposed rule mandating data roaming on its April agenda.

"Regarding data roaming, there is no question that there is a severe market failure," Rural Telecommunications Group General Counsel Carri Bennet, whose group represents small wireless operators, said in a statement.

She said the rule is needed to help meet the Obama administration's goal of ensuring 98 percent of Americans have access to wireless broadband in five years. "RTG's members are willing to move forward with such deployments, provided they can assure their rural consumers that their devices will be able to access data networks outside of their rural areas on fair and equitable terms, Bennet said. "Without these data roaming agreements or assurances that these data roaming agreements will be forthcoming, President Obama's vision will not be realized."

The firms argue that AT&T and Verizon Wireless, the nation's biggest wireless providers, currently have a duopoly in providing nationwide service and that the FCC needs to step in with rules to help ensure that as they migrate to new technologies, customers of other providers can access those networks when needed. Tom Sugrue with T-Mobile argued that his firm and others "are asking for the FCC to help when we can't reach agreements on roaming."

"The current FCC roaming regulatory regime ... is still rooted in the legacy circuit switched voice environment," Sprint Vice President of Government Affairs Charles McKee said in a filing last week with the FCC. "If the commission fails to update its roaming policy and adopt a data roaming obligation that reflects this fundamental shift in the mobile marketplace, its current framework may not only become irrelevant, but may actually impede IP broadband deployment and innovation."

If the FCC fails to move forward with its rule, Bennet suggested that smaller wireless operators may need to appeal to lawmakers to act or to the Justice Department, to examine whether Verizon and AT&T are engaged in anti-competitive practices.

They've already gotten the help of some lawmakers in prodding the FCC to move forward on data roaming rules. In a letter last month to the FCC, Senate Appropriations ranking member Thad Cochran, R-Miss., noted the success of the FCC's voice roaming rules in ensuring consumers have mobile access throughout the country.

"It is now important that the FCC implement policies which would guarantee the same reliable roaming coverage with regard to data services," Cochran wrote. "Americans currently use voice and data services interchangeably, and citizens may experience critical interruption in business and personal communications when data roaming is unavailable."

In a filing Monday with the FCC, Verizon argued that "market forces" are working and those firms arguing for commission action have yet to show a "market failure exists."

"Market forces continue to work to ensure that carriers that want data roaming agreements, including data roaming agreements for broadband services, are able to enter into such agreements," Verizon said in its filing.

The Federal Communications Commission is putting the kibosh on rumors that Chairman Julius Genachowski is angling to become the new Commerce Secretary.

Josh Gottheimer, senior counselor the chairman, issued this statement Thursday: "Chairman Genachowski is very happy at the FCC and is focused on harnessing the opportunities of the communications and technology space. He has no intention to leave his position."

Rumors have been swirling in tech policy circles in recent months that Genachowski, a Harvard Law School buddy of President Obama who took the reins at the agency in June 2009, wants to move on to new challenges. The rumors intensified when news broke earlier this week that Commerce Secretary Gary Locke would be tapped as U.S. Ambassador to China, sparking speculation about possible replacements. President Obama officially nominated Locke on Thursday.

The Hill ran stories on Tuesday and Wednesday that cited "tech-industry sources and prominent Democrats close to the White House" as saying that Genachowski is on Obama's list for the Commerce job, though other news outlets did not include him in the mix of candidates. The FCC has not commented on whether Genachowski is (or was) on the list.

The White House is enlisting some media help in a new campaign against schoolyard bullying, including Facebook and MTV.
Facebook says it will release two new safety features in the coming weeks: a re-designed Safety Center with multimedia, expert resources and downloadable information for teens. A new "Social Reporting" system allows members to report content that violates Facebook policies so that it can be removed, while notifying parents or teachers.

In 2008, Lori Drew of Missouri was convicted of cyberbullying after she created a phony account on another social networking site, MySpace, and harassed her teenaged daughter's rival into committing suicide.

The MTV network said it would launch an anti-digital discrimination coalition to fight bullying and intolerance online. MTV will work with the National Council of La Raza, Anti-Defamation League, Council on American-Islamic Relations, and anti-gay-discrimination group GLAAD). MTV also announced a feature film inspired by the case of 19-year-old Abraham, who had bipolar disorder and webcast his suicide after being egged on by online followers.

The do-it-yourself online survey tool SurveyMonkey said it had created a dedicated page for bullying detection. It includes a 10 question survey that students can use.

Another social network, Formspring, is working with the Massachussetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab to develop new approaches to detect online bullying, and develop interfaces to help prevent it, using artificial intelligence.

And the White House is launching its own website, StopBullying.gov, to provide information on what bullying is, its risk factors, its warning signs and its effects.
President Obama shared his own experience having been bullied. "As adults, we all remember what it was like to see kids picked on in the hallways or in the schoolyard. And I have to say, with big ears and the name that I have, I wasn't immune," Obama told a White House event. "I didn't emerge unscathed."

The White House estimates that nearly one-third of all school-aged children are bullied each year, which adds up to 13 million student or more. "Students involved in bullying are more likely to have challenges in school, to abuse drugs and alcohol, and to have health and mental health issues.," the White House said in a statement.

This just in from the Federal Communications Commission:

"Chairman Genachowski is very happy at the FCC and is focused on harnessing the opportunities of the communications and technology space. He has no intention to leave his position." -- Josh Gottheimer, Senior Counselor to the Chairman.

The Agriculture Department revved up its time machine Thursday and announced that more funding will soon be in the pipeline to support broadband deployment in rural areas. But here's the kicker: the money stems from the 2008 Farm Bill.

During a conference call with reporters, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said that "several hundred millions of dollars" worth of loans would soon be available to help rural communities, including businesses, schools, hospitals and homes, connect to high-speed Internet service. He was not able to provide a more precise figure at this time.

But why wait three years to make the announcement? Distribution of the funding was stalled after the 2009 economic stimulus program required Agriculture to help disseminate $7.2 billion in broadband-related loans and grants, Vilsack said. Agriculture also needed time to address concerns raised by the department's Inspector General that the criteria for eligibility under the 2008 program needed to be tightened to ensure the money would reach areas that are truly rural, and have few or no other service providers.

Vilsack said his department has made the necessary changes, and incorporated lessons from the 2009 stimulus program, and is ready to proceed. Using seemingly contradictory terms, he said the new "interim final" rules would be open to public comment, with submissions due by May 14. Nevertheless, parties can begin applying for the funding now, he emphasized.

For more information on the Farm Bill broadband loan program, click here

A Senate Democrat attacked the Obama administration for holding up passage of cybersecurity legislation that has been subjected to a more than yearlong interagency review process, Nextgov.com reported.

At a congressional hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., secured a commitment from the Homeland Security Department secretary, under oath, to provide him with a near-term deadline for finishing negotiations.

"We need input from the executive branch to sort out the differences between the different committees," he said at the Senate Judiciary Committee session. "There's no point in sorting it out if we don't know where the executive branch is going to stand. . . . We're kind of on hold now, waiting."

The chairmen of the multiple Senate committees with jurisdiction over computer security have signaled they want to pass a comprehensive bill that would address 10 elements of cyberspace, among them the security of government networks; private sector incentives to protect commercial networks; safeguards against online identity theft; and law enforcement authorities to investigate cyber crimes. To read more, click here.

The House Energy and Commerce Communications and Technology Subcommittee has voted 15-8 to overturn the FCC's net neutrality rules.

After a contentious hearing Wednesday, the subcommittee approved a resolution to overturn the Federal Communications Commission's rules that prevent Internet providers from blocking access to websites that use too much bandwidth.

The net neutrality regulations are designed to prevent Internet providers from blocking websites that use a lot of bandwidth, such as video-streaming sites like Netflix.
Republicans say net neutrality rules are unnecessary and were enacted without the proper authority.

"There is no crisis warranting intervention," Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., said in his opening statement. "The reality is, if the FCC was truly weighing the costs and benefits of its actions, the agency would not be attempting to regulate the Internet."

Although a resolution filed under the continuing resolution keeping the government running cannot be amended, Democrats registered their protest to the process by proposing a string of amendments that were each ruled non-germane during the markup that immediately followed the hearing.

Wednesday's hearing took the net neutrality debate to a level not seen in the House's first net neutrality hearing last month, which featured the FCC chairman and commissioners.

Members of both parties engaged in sometimes testy exchanges with witnesses, taking the debate up a notch after the mostly cordial first hearing.

Democrats objected to an assertion by RapidDSL & Wireless President Tom DeReggi, who argued that it is Internet providers' right to block content that violates their agreements. Republican members of the committee said the rules allow the FCC to "pick winners and losers" and give web companies an unfair advantage over Internet providers.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., joined other Republicans in criticizing GoLoco CEO, and Zipcar co-founder, Robin Chase for asserting that the net neutrality rules would protect small startups.

"Why should the FCC allow your company to innovate and not others?" Blackburn asked. When other GOP committee members accused Chase of using government regulations and taxpayer money to establish her companies, she replied "I don't think we have sucked at the government tit in any case."

Republicans on the panel also argued that it is "inappropriate" for Free Press and other groups that have lobbied for stricter net neutrality laws to say they represent consumers.

"In this country you elect your representatives," said Rep. Brian Billbray, R-Calif., who went on to compare "unelected" advocacy groups to authoritarian leaders in the Middle East and North Africa.

Despite the sometimes heated back-and-forth, the hearing largely rehashed familiar arguments by all sides.

The resolution now goes to the full House Energy and Commerce Committee. GOP senators have also introduced an identical resolution on their side, but the Senate is not likely to consider it until summer.

After winning regulatory approval in January to combine with NBC Universal, Comcast will soon add more lobbying muscle to its Washington office with the hiring of Kyle McSlarrow, who steps down March 31 as president and CEO of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association. McSlarrow, who reached his sixth anniversary at NCTA on March 1, will fill the newly created position of President of Comcast's Washington office in early April.

While it's unclear whether he'll be a registered lobbyist for Comcast, he would oversee the company's regulatory and congressional strategy, spokeswoman Sena Fitzmaurice said. NCTA is searching for a successor but hasn't disclosed any details about potential candidates.

McSlarrow will help guide the new Comcast as it integrates operations with NBCU and navigates the regulatory waters in Washington, where a long line of critics is closely watching for any indication that it has failed to fulfill its promises -- and a multitude of conditions imposed on the transaction.

McSlarrow served as the national chairman of the 2000 presidential campaign of former Sen. Dan Quayle, R-Ind., and as deputy chief of staff and chief counsel for former GOP Sens. Bob Dole of Kansas and Trent Lott of Missouri. He was the Republican nominee in 1992 and 1994 for a congressional seat in Virginia, but lost both elections.

Nearly 60 executives from TechNet are working the town this week, meeting with leaders in Congress and the Obama administration.

TechNet, a network of technology CEOs, will be lobbying to improve education; provide incentives for competitiveness, including tax breaks; and increase investment in clean energy technology.

"To win the future, America must invest in innovation and the future discoveries that will create good paying jobs for more of our people," Rey Ramsey, president and CEO of TechNet, said in a statement. "To reach this goal, we must make the smart policy choices on R&D, education, comprehensive tax reform, high skilled immigration and protecting intellectual property. These are fundamental kitchen table issues that will help grow jobs here in America. Our message to our policy leaders is that we will work with you to ensure that America remains the world's center of innovation and economic growth."

While in Washington, D.C., the group of executives will push for changes in the tax system, including a permanent R&D tax credit, more access to foreign markets, and protections to increase access to Internet and keep it "safe, secure, and free."

Also on the agenda are tax incentives and federal investment for clean energy, as well as efforts to modernize the country's electrical infrastructure.

The group will also urge policymakers to invest in a quality workforce by improving science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education, and overhauling the immigration system to allow more highly skilled workers.

The executives will meet with a range of government officials, including, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers Austan Goolsbee, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling and Office of Management and Budget Director Jack Lew. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski and Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz were also on the schedule.

The space shuttle Discovery landed safely on Wednesday after its last mission. The shuttle and its crew of six landed in Florida after spending 13 days on a construction mission at the International Space Station.

It was Discovery's 39th and final voyage.

Democrats and Republicans both came out swinging on Wednesday morning as the House Energy and Commerce Communications and Technology Subcommittee opened its second hearing on keeping the precious Internet bandwidth available to one and all.

Congressional Republicans have introduced resolutions of disapproval to recall regulations enacted by the Federal Communications Commission in December. The regulations are designed to prevent Internet providers from blocking websites that use a lot of bandwidth, such as video-streaming sites like Netflix. Republicans say rules are unnecessary and illegal.

Democrats called Republican efforts to overturn the FCC's net neutrality rules destructive and said the GOP-backed resolution of disapproval isn't based on facts.

"My concern is that there is an enormous disconnect between the facts and the majority's policy objectives," Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said as the hearing opened.

"There is no crisis warranting intervention," House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., said in his opening statement. "The reality is, if the FCC was truly weighing the costs and benefits of its actions, the agency would not be attempting to regulate the Internet."

Witnesses at Wednesday's hearing include representatives of AT&T, Free Press, RapidDSL, and Buzzcar, as well as Strategic Choices and Northwestern University.

In his prepared testimony, Free Press Research Director Derek Turner said that rather than overreaching, the FCC rules do not go far enough.

"Allowing gatekeepers to erect barriers to speech and commerce is an unacceptable outcome, and public policy should be used to prevent it," Turner wrote.

AT&T's Vice President for Legislative Affairs James Cicconi will reiterate his company's position that although the rules are not perfect, they are better than the alternatives. This puts AT&T at odds with other major telecom carriers like Verizon, which has launched a lawsuit against the regulations. Cicconi will argue that the prolonged debate over net neutrality rules simply creates uncertainty for the marketplace.

"For far too long, the question of net neutrality has hamstrung the Federal Communications Commission and our industry and prevented needed action on far more urgent, and real, problems... but more important than the distraction has been the investment uncertainty created by the extended and public debate over whether the FCC should adopt net neutrality rules, and if so, how far they should go," Cicconi wrote in his prepared remarks.

In written statements provided to the committee, Steve Largenty President and CEO of CTIA, the wireless association, repeast his argument that "we do not believe that net neutrality rules are necessary for the wireless industry" while National Cable and Telecommunications Association President and CEO Kyle McSlarrow reasserts that "such rules were a solution in search of a problem".

"We would much rather see (and believe it would be more equitable to have) a light regulatory touch for everyone in the Internet ecosystem than a heavy and counterproductive regulatory regime on part or all of the Internet ecosystem," McSlarrow said in the statement.

After adjourning for a speech by the Australian prime minister, the subcommittee will reconvene to hear testimony, and in a markup scheduled for immediately after the hearing, vote on the resolution. Democrats have complained that because the resolution cannot be amended, they have no meaningful input.

The House of Representatives will introduce its own version of patent reform legislation sometime this month, said House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas.

Smith said the House legislation will be "similar" to the bill passed Tuesday night in the Senate and expressed support for many of that bill's provisions.

"Adopting a first-inventor-to-file standard creates certainty about patent ownership and makes it easier for American innovators to apply for patents around the world," he said in a statement. "The post-grant review process helps to reduce frivolous lawsuits filed by holders of weak or overbroad patents. And allowing for the third party submission of prior art helps prevent bad patents from being granted in the first place. These are just a few of the many provisions for which there is widespread support."

A variety of groups also weighed on the passage of the Senate legislation, sponsored by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. A roundup of the responses is included below.

From IBM:

"As the top U.S. patent recipient for the past 18 years, IBM believes that S. 23 will enable significant improvements to a system that has not kept pace with dramatic changes in technology and innovation over the last half century. IBM urges the House to complete its work on patent reform legislation and to act quickly to help preserve American innovation leadership and spur economic growth."

From the Coalition for 21st Century Patent Reform:

" As amended, S. 23 answers the call of American innovators because this bill will give the USPTO the tools and funding it needs to process patents in a more effective and efficient way. Accordingly, this legislation will make our nation more competitive in the global marketplace and set in place rules that will benefit the next generation of inventors."

From Innovation Alliance:

"The Innovation Alliance applauds the efforts of the Senate to date. Although we remain neutral on S. 23 as passed, we recognize that great strides have been made. We will continue to be a constructive voice in the ongoing debate, which we hope will result in the enactment of a bill the Innovation Alliance can support."

From the Coalition for Patent Fairness:

"The Senate process improved S.23 by removing the damages, venue, and willfulness provisions before the final vote; however, we continue to have concerns about the bill and could not support its passage at this time. The Coalition for Patent Fairness believes that additional changes need to be made to the bill in the House to reflect the concerns of America's leading technology innovators and job creators as they continue to drive the economic recovery."

NPR President and CEO Vivian Schiller has resigned, one day after news broke that another senior NPR executive made controversial remarks, the company announced Wednesday.

NPR's David Folkenflik told Morning Edition that "I'm told by sources that she was forced out." He also tweeted that she was "ousted."

For more on this story, please visit Nationaljournal.com.

A government study published on Wednesday indicates that the daunting task of implementing electronic health information systems across the country may not be a lost cause, Nationaljournal.com reported.

The review of 154 other studies about health information technology, or health IT, found that 92 percent were positive overall, researchers with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology found.

The read more of this article, visit Nationaljournal.com.

Who says bipartisanship is dead? After years of debate and failed attempts, the Senate passed patent-reform legislation on Tuesday evening by a 95-5 vote, approving a bill that was at the top of President Obama's innovation agenda.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who sponsored the legislation, touted it as a model of how Congress could come together to stimulate the economy.

The bill gathered wide, bipartisan support in the Senate, but the path ahead remains unclear. Several powerful business groups, as well some conservative activists, are opposed to some of the measure's provisions.

The Republican-controlled House, which now takes up the patent issue, has not fully outlined its plans. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who helped author the Senate bill, said he expects the process to go to conference.

If enacted, the legislation would be the first major overhaul of the patent system in more than half a century.

A coalition of technology and business groups called for tax credits, not regulations, to motivate companies to protect vulnerable Internet networks in the United States.

In a 20-page white paper released Tuesday, the Internet Security Alliance, Business Software Alliance, Center for Democracy & Technology, TechAmerica and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce argue for a market-based approach to cybersecurity, with a public-private partnership, rather than government mandates.

"Regular and meaningful collaboration between the public and private sectors is the essence of a strong partnership," the report concludes. "A strong framework for promoting cybersecurity through a public‐private partnership is already in place, and industry and government have devoted substantial resources to it. There is no need to create a new one, or to replace the existing partnership model with a system of government mandates that would erode trust, threaten privacy and undermine voluntary cooperation. This would be a setback for cybersecurity."

The report represents the first time civil liberties advocates and software users and providers have come together to push for a comprehensive approach to cybersecurity.

"The paper rejects heavy-handed government mandates in favor of a strengthened partnership between industry and government," said CDT Senior Counsel Gregory T. Nojeim. "Cybersecurity needs not--and should not--trump privacy and other civil liberties, nor should it stifle innovation."

Building on some of the conclusions of President Obama's Cyberspace Policy Review, the groups call for "market incentives" to motivate companies and ask for greater industry involvement in responding to cyber attacks.

"This is not just a tech issue," said ISA President Larry Clinton, in an interview. "There are many other factors, including the fact that right now, the economics favor the attackers. We need to turn that around."

A partnership should be used to create a National Cybersecurity Research and Development Plan and increase education and awareness about cyber threats, the report urged.

Federal officials as of Monday afternoon were still investigating the cause of a Thursday cyber incident that knocked offline the public website of the CIA and its unclassified e-mail system, Nextgov.com reported.

Some cyber experts say the disruption may have been caused by a denial of service attack perpetrated by pranksters to show off their skills, rather than a terrorist act committed by a foreign government.

To read the rest of this article, please click here.

President Obama spoke about his "DARPA for education" plan in Boston on Tuesday, alongside Melinda Gates of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

The event at the TechBoston Academy highlighted the school's successes and its potential to act as a model for other schools.

It's a tough act to follow. TechBoston Academy is a public school with a 94 percent graduation rate despite a grueling curriculum that includes including four years of science, four years of math (pre-calculus, calculus, or advanced placement calculus) and four years of technology.

Other courses offered include biotechnology, forensic science and entrepreneurship.

It was founded in September 2002 with the support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Boston Foundation.

"There is no better economic policy than one that produces more graduates," Obama said in written remarks prepared ahead of his trip to Boston. "That's why reforming education is the responsibility of every American - every parent, every teacher, every business leader, every public official, and every student."

Obama's 2012 budget calls for $90 million to create a new grant process called the Advanced Research Projects Agency - Education (ARPA-ED). The name echoes the more established Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the new program would encourage universities or other groups to bid for funding to create "dramatic breakthroughs" using technology to improve learning and teaching.

The public advocacy group Free Press announced Tuesday morning that its president and co-founder, Josh Silver, will be stepping down to head a new organization.

Silver has led Free Press since it was established in 2002. The group considers itself a nonpartisan media reform organization and regularly weighs in on media issues, including media ownership, public media, and access to communications.

Current managing director Craig Aaron will take over the top job in mid-April while Silver remains a member of the board of directors, according to a Free Press statement. Silver is taking a post as founding CEO of Democracy Fund, a new group designed to "challenge the influence of corporate lobbyists over government policy making."

Silver said his new gig will complement his work at Free Press.

"I'm not so much leaving media and technology issues, as I'm taking on a new front in the struggle for the heart and soul of our democracy," he said in a statement. "Indeed, the success of the public interest on these two fundamental issues - reforming the media and reducing the influence of the K Street lobbying juggernaut - may well determine whether our democracy flourishes or fails."

Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Communications and Technology Subcommittee are crying foul over GOP efforts to overturn federal Internet neutrality rules.

In a letter to the committee's Republican leaders, the Democrats ask that the resolution of disapproval, which was introduced under the Congressional Review Act, be reintroduced as a regular bill.

The CRA gives lawmakers a limited amount of time to try to overturn federal regulations after they are issued, but does not allow for amendments.

"The process you propose would deprive members of one of their most fundamental rights: the right to offer amendments," the letter states. "We recognize there is disagreement about the role of the Commission with respect to the Internet, but we do not believe that justifies denying us the right to amend your legislation."

A markup is scheduled immediately after a hearing on Wednesday. Although members may propose amendments, they will not be considered germane, under the rules.

House Democrats called for the hearing on the resolution of disapproval, which Republicans introduced in an effort to remove the new regulations.

Witnesses at the hearing will include a representative of AT&T, which has split from fellow telecom carrier Verizon and has said it is satisfied with the net neutrality rules as they were approved by the Federal Communications Commission in December.

Verizon, along with MetroPCS, is suing to stop the FCC from implementing the rules.
Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., introduced the resolution last month following testimony from all five members of the commission. Republicans have attacked the rules as classic government overreach into the free market.

"The recent attempts of the FCC to regulate the internet through the imposition of net neutrality rules is a solution in search of a problem," Walden said. "In the end these are issues better determined by network engineers, entrepreneurs, and consumers acting in a vigorous marketplace, not the subjective politicized judgments of a federal agency."

Witnesses scheduled for Wednesday's hearing include:

Tom DeReggi
President
RapidDSL & Wireless

Shane Mitchell Greenstein, PhD
Northwestern University

Anna-Maria Kovacs, PhD
Strategic Choices

James Cicconi
Senior Executive Vice President-External and Legislative Affairs
AT&T

Robin Chase
CEO
Buzzcar

Just hours before the Senate is scheduled to vote to end debate on the America Invents Act, Austan Goolsbee, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, took to his white board to explain patent reform as part of President Obama's innovation agenda.

"We've talked about a whole lot of ways we're going to win the future," Goolsbee said in the video. "We've got the greatest inventors in the world and it's time we give them the help they need to bring the country where it needs to be."

As his patent bill nears its final hours in the Senate, Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., touted Obama's support for the legislation, which would be the first major overhaul of the U.S. patent system in almost 60 years.

Several tech associations, meanwhile, pushed for the adoption of an amendment which would restrict the ways a patent can be challenged.

The Computer & Communications Industry Association wrote senators asking them to support the amendment, offered by Sens. James Risch, R-Idaho, and Mark Udall, D-Colo.

"We hope to see additional improvements before the bill becomes law," said CCIA President Ed Black. "The Risch-Udall amendment strikes harmful changes in S. 23, which would restrict the ability of the PTO to reexamine low quality patents. This leaves costly litigation as the only solution to low quality patents. Low quality patents weaken the entire system and serve as a roadblock to real innovation and the jobs that come with it."

Last week the Information Technology Industry Council also sent a letter calling on the Senate to strike the post-grant review language.

But other groups, including Innovation Alliance and the Coalition for 21st Century Patent Reform, have said they would oppose the entire bill if the provision is removed.

The Senate is scheduled to vote on a cloture motion after 5:30 p.m. Monday.

It is ironic that a trio of defense contractors who concocted a high-tech plan to discredit liberal critics of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce chose "Team Themis" as their moniker, National Journal Daily's Eliza Newlin Carney observed Monday.

The Greek goddess of law and order, Themis personified good governance and justice, depicted by her familiar blindfold and pair of scales. Yet the plan that the contractors proposed last month to the law firm Hunton & Williams, which represents the chamber, was arguably lawless in the extreme. It involved privacy invasions, hacking, and creating fake "insider personas" and false documents to infiltrate and discredit watchdog groups like U.S. Chamber Watch and other liberal activists.

To read the rest of this article, visit Nationaljournal.com.

The competition for skilled technology workers is going to get even more intense this year, particularly as new IT demands, talent shortages and overworked tech departments become more prevalent, according to Nextgov.com.

This month's issue of the Dice Report notes that more than half (54 percent) of hiring managers and recruiters expect that tech talent poaching will get more aggressive this year, while only 3 percent expect a let-up. The battle for techies who have some business experience also will amplify, as nearly three-quarters of corporate recruiters believe that business experience will be a firm requirement for tech positions.

To read more of this article, click here.

Internet traffic in Libya almost completely disappeared Friday in a development that mirrors events in Egypt, according to the Associated Press.

Internet access in Libya was already spotty and less prevalent than in Egypt, but the shutdown will still impact communication and information sharing as the upheaval continues.

"For the people not in Tripoli the Internet is not so central in what's become an armed rebellion," she said. "For the people in Tripoli it's going to further isolate them from people in other parts of the country and information about what's happening there," Leslie Harris, president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, told the AP.

For more on this story, click here.

In a paean to deregulation, a group of top telecommunication companies and trade associations sent a letter to the White House Friday, complaining that the Federal Communications Commission isn't doing enough to reduce federal rules.

Comcast, AT&T, Time Warner Cable and Verizon joined organizations like CTIA and Broadband for America in arguing that the FCC, which regulates all of them, is not sufficiently following President Obama's order to review, and if necessary, cut regulations.

While the group lauded FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski's pledge to review the agency's rules, current efforts are "plainly insufficient to carry out the President's vision of meaningful regulatory reform," the letter reads. The companies go on to call for a "far more rigorous and comprehensive effort to ensure that the governing regulatory framework is appropriately tailored to today's broadband marketplace, and that outdated and needlessly burdensome rules do not stand in the way of continued investment and innovation."

The FCC's regulatory framework is unsuited for a "dynamic" modern marketplace, the group asserts, and then goes on to outline half a dozen proposals to encourage broadband deployment.

The companies say the FCC should rely less on regulations and more on market forces.
"Markets adapt far more quickly to change than regulators; indeed, the FCC's rules frequently risk becoming obsolete as soon as the ink is dry," the letter states. "The FCC therefore should supplant market forces only where there is demonstrable evidence of market failure and/or consumer harm."

The companies accuse the FCC of relying on speculation rather than facts, and calls on the agency to make decisions more quickly. Also on the list? Admonitions to "embrace a renewed respect for the limits of agency authority" and "yield to more competent authorities," including a specific call for the FCC to stay out of merger processes that the Department of Justice is also involved in.

The letter concludes by urging the FCC to immediately slash regulations, including what the group calls "innovation-destroying technology mandates" and "needlessly burdensome" reporting requirements.

An FCC spokesperson declined to comment.

The letter was signed by representatives of AT&T, CTIA, Comcast, NCTA, Time Warner Cable, the U.S. Telecom Association, and Verizon. The honorary co-chairs of Broadband for America, including former FCC Chairman Michael Powell, also signed the document.

Could your beloved Blackberry become uncool?

The Nielsen Company took a look at which smartphone is the most popular based on operating system.

When it comes to consumer marketshare by operating system, Android (29%) appears to be pulling ahead of RIM Blackberry (27%) and Apple iOS (27%)," Nielsen blogs here.

"Of the three most popular smartphone operating systems, Android seems to attract more young consumers," Nielsen concludes.

Sens. Jim DeMint, R-S.C. and Tom Coburn, R-Okla., introduced a bill Friday that would end federal funding for radio and television stations.

Federal subsidies for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helps fund organizations like NPR and PBS, have long been a target for conservatives, who accuse them of taking money from liberal financiers.

"Americans struggling to make ends meet shouldn't be forced to fund public broadcasting when there are already thousands of choices for educational and entertainment programming on the television, radio and web," DeMint said.

CPB is slated to receive $430 million this fiscal year, up from $420 million last fiscal year, according to the senators.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed published earlier on Friday, DeMint criticized executive pay and outside profits at programs like PBS's Sesame Street.

"Public broadcasting can pay its presidents half-million and million dollar salaries," he wrote. "There's no reason taxpayers need to subsidize them anymore."

When announcing their legislation, Coburn said the government should "stop defending indefensible subsidies" for public broadcasters.

"The federal government has no business picking winners and losers in today's highly competitive media environment," Coburn said. "NPR and CPB will do just fine without largesse from Washington."

Last year House Republicans voted to defund public broadcasting. Like the House debate, the Senate will likely be divided by party lines as well.

Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., has defended the subsidies, saying any cuts would be harmful to broadcasting in general.

"We won't just lose 'All Things Considered' or 'Sesame Street.' We would also lose a consistent source of innovation for the broadcast industry," Udall said in a speech to the National Association of Broadcasters on Tuesday.

And public interest groups said efforts to cut the funding has nothing to do with saving money.

"This bill isn't about a budget deficit; it's yet another political witch hunt aimed at silencing serious journalism and quality programming," said Craig Aaron, managing director of the Free Press Action Fund. "Millions of Americans are already flooding Capitol Hill with calls and letters telling Congress to stop meddling with the thousands of local community stations and tens of thousands of workers who rely on these funds."

The U.S. telecommunications sector, which endured a revenue decline in 2009 due to the struggling economy, is on track for steady growth, with spending projected to climb from $985 billion in 2010 revenue to $1.2 trillion in 2014. That's according to a preview of the Telecommunications Industry Association's 2011 Market Review and Forecast, obtained by Tech Daily Dose.

The complete version of the annual report assessing the communications marketplace will be released in mid-March. TIA projects that the biggest revenue gains will occur globally due to the rapid expansion of telecom services in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America. Worldwide telecom spending (excluding the U.S.) is set to expand from $3.1 trillion in 2010 to $ 4.1 trillion in 2014, the report estimates.

A major area of growth will be in cloud computing, though some of the gains will be offset by declines in hardware purchases, since companies will be able to shift more of their operations to the Internet, the preview says. Despite the rosy forecast, stormy weather is ahead in the form of capacity shortages for communications networks, though the constraints could result in increased spending on infrastructure. And with rates for broadband service on the rise, growth in subscriptions could slow, though overall revenue for high-speed Internet service is expected to remain stable.

NASA is launching an investigation into what caused a $424 million satellite, and a key climate research tool, to crash early Friday morning.

The mission was to be the first satellite launch under President Obama's climate initiative and was supposed to "advance the United States' contribution to cutting-edge and policy-relevant climate change science," said Michael Freilich, director of NASA's Earth Science Division, in January.

The rocket, carrying a 1,200-pound Glory satellite, was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California just after 5 a.m. EST. The malfunction apparently occurred during the second stage of the launch, when officials say a protective shell on top of the Taurus XL rocket did not separate. In 2009, a previous launch of the same kind of rocket also ended in disaster when the shell did not separate, and efforts to fix the problem were declared complete last October.

"We failed to make orbit," NASA launch director Omar Baez told reporters Friday. "Indications are that the satellite and rocket ... is in the southern Pacific Ocean somewhere."

The Glory satellite was designed to measure how small atmospheric particles called aerosols affect Earth's climate. Aerosols are "the airborne particles that can influence climate by reflecting and absorbing solar radiation and modifying clouds and precipitation," according to NASA. Scientists were planning on using the craft to gather data for at least three years.

Freilich said the influence of aerosols on the Earth's energy balance is one of the "major uncertainties" in predicting climate changes identified by the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The Taurus XL rocket was also scheduled to be carrying three "nanosatellites," or small research satellites, for several universities.

Between 20 percent and 30 percent of troops who have served combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq suffer from mental health problems, but the Army currently has no way to consistently track the mental health status of soldiers deployed to the two countries and the service finds itself overwhelmed by paper records, Nextgov.com reported.

An internal message sent Jan. 11 from the Army Office of the Surgeon General obtained by Nextgov.com said Army units in the U.S. Central Command Area of Operations, which includes Iraq and Afghanistan, have become "saturated" with paper behavioral health records because mental health providers who treat these soldiers are not entering data into the theater electronic health record known as AHLTA-T.

To read the rest of this article, please visit Nextgov.com.

The Federal Communications Commission approved efforts to modernize another Universal Service Fund program, one that helps extend communication networks to low-income areas.

Under the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking passed Thursday, the commission will examine ways the Lifeline/Link-up program, initially established to subsidize phone service, can be transitioned to support other new technologies, including high-speed Internet. The proposal also calls for reducing waste, fraud and abuse in the system.

"Major technological, market, and regulatory changes - including the Commission's decision in 2005 to allow prepaid wireless resellers to offer Lifeline service - have created new challenges and pressures on the program, as well as new opportunities for consumers," said FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.

Last month the commission voted to revamp another USF program that subsidizes phone service in rural areas. Genachowski has called for the fund to be used to implement the national broadband plan and increase access to high-speed Internet.

"As we reform Lifeline/Link-Up to be a leaner, more efficient, and more effective program, we're also making sure the program meets consumer needs in the broadband age," he said.

As expected, the Federal Communications Commission made no immediate changes to retransmission rules Thursday, but the panel's members warned broadcasters and cable companies not to use the FCC's decision to review the rules as an excuse to back out of negotiations.

The commission unanimously voted to consider and seek comment on potential changes to TV retransmission rules, which govern how cable companies or other video distributors retransmit broadcast stations. Recent high-profile disputes between cable and satellite TV carriers and broadcasters have led to millions of viewers in the dark when programming is pulled. And right now a spat between Dish Network Corp. and Lin TV Corp. is threatening to cause another "blackout."

Among the potential changes to be examined are measures that would provide more guidance about good-faith negotiating requirements, improve notice requirements for consumers, and eliminating rules that provide for contract enforcement through the FCC, rather than through the courts.

Congress agreed to eliminate $20 million for network security programs in the major bill to keep the government operating through March 18, as the Republican-controlled House and Democratic-led Senate began negotiations on further cuts for the rest of the fiscal year ending in September, Nextgov.com reported.

The short-term continuing resolution signed into law on Wednesday will trim the Homeland Security Department account that safeguards critical networks and facilities far less than the $60 million cut House appropriators had proposed last month. The stopgap bill deleted earmarks -- monies requested by individual lawmakers -- for the DHS infrastructure protection and information security program. The dropped funding had not been allocated for specific projects yet, House aides said.

"Part of Congress' challenge is that a lot of programs and projects get labeled cybersecurity in order to secure funding," said Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, who oversees coordination of cyber legislation across House committees, in defending the cuts. "Our job is to sort through what is really necessary and try to see that the money that is spent is spent wisely. More money does not automatically mean more security."

The short-term continuing resolution also cuts $29 million for a broadband direct loan subsidy program operated by the Agriculture Department. House appropriators noted that the Agriculture inspector general has detailed abuses and other problems with the program. President Obama zeroed out funding for the program in his proposed budget.

As Congress begins to weigh proposals aimed at freeing up more spectrum to meet the nation's growing demand for wireless broadband devices, groups that could be impacted by those policies are beginning to engage in a lot of finger pointing over which industries are making the most efficient use of their spectrum.

The National Association of Broadcasters fired the first shot earlier this week with a letter to the House and Senate Commerce committees that accused some firms of hoarding spectrum. With calls for broadcasters to voluntarily give up some of their spectrum, NAB President and CEO Gordon Smith said in the letter that more scrutiny should be paid to how other holders are using their spectrum.

Bills have been introduced in Congress that would authorize the Federal Communications Commission to conduct incentive auctions aimed at persuading broadcasters and other spectrum holders to give up some of their spectrum in exchange for a share in the proceeds from the auction of those airwaves. The NAB has said they could live with incentive auctions as long as they are truly voluntary.

In his letter, Smith pointed to public comments from officials with satellite television provider Dish Network and Time Warner Cable to support his claim that some companies are engaged in spectrum "hoarding or "speculation" and called on the lawmakers to ask the Government Accountability Office to conduct a study into the issue.

Smith, a former GOP senator from Oregon, reiterated his claims that some users are hoarding spectrum during a discussion with FCC member Robert McDowell Tuesday at NAB's state leadership conference. During that discussion, Smith again urged the FCC to conduct an inventory of current spectrum use.

Both the Consumer Electronics Association and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association fired back in recent days. NCTA called Smith's letter "disappointing" and said claims that some cable companies are hoarding spectrum is "flat wrong."

In a separate letter Thursday to the House and Senate Commerce committee leaders, NCTA Executive Vice President James Assey noted that several cable companies, including Time Warner Cable, have invested in wireless firms deploying different types of wireless broadband technologies and hold licenses to spectrum that is in the process of being cleared of incumbent license holders.

"NAB's implied suggestion that the government - rather than even consider requiring greater efficiency from the broadcasters - should instead reclaim spectrum purchased at auction for billions of dollars and currently in full compliance with the FCC rules, is patently absurd," Assey, a former Democratic staffer on the Senate Commerce Committee, wrote.

On Tuesday, Consumer Electronics Association President Gary Shapiro also shot back, arguing that NAB is trying to "confuse" lawmakers by "comparing businesses that have paid large amounts for thin slices of spectrum with broadcasters who did not pay for broad swathes of the most desirable spectrum and who are sitting on underused spectrum loaned to them by government. The fast growth in wireless video requires that we repurpose underused spectrum."

Shapiro's group has a strong stake in the debate given that many of its member companies make the wireless devices that need the additional spectrum.

The Federal Communications Commission unanimously approved plans to provide more broadband and communications services to Native American tribal areas Thursday.

Native American tribal leaders pleaded for more help to develop modern communications networks in the rural and often remote areas where they live, and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said people had died on tribal lands after not being able to get a signal for their cell phones to call 911.

As the FCC moves forward with its national broadband plan, "We ask that you do not leave Indian Country behind," said Jefferson Keel, president of the National Congress of American Indians.

The commission approved a measure that would explore the issues related to improving communications services, including defining tribal lands, more consultation with Native Nations, and greater broadband deployment.

The FCC also approved two measures that expand spectrum use in tribal lands and increase opportunities for broadcast radio services in those areas.

"Communications services like broadband, wireless communications and radio aren't just valuable as means to deliver entertainment and diversions," Genachowski said.

"They are vital platforms for community building, cultural preservation, and the promotion of public health, education and economic opportunity in Native Nations."
Genachowski named 30 members to serve on a new FCC-Native Nations Broadband Task Force.

The House Energy and Commerce Communications and Technology Subcommittee has scheduled a hearing for Wednesday on a resolution aimed at blocking network neutrality rules approved by the Federal Communications Commission in February.

The subcommittee postponed a scheduled markup on March 2 after the panel's top Democrats called for a hearing on the resolution of disapproval, introduced by Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore. The resolution of disapproval, under the Congressional Review Act, gives lawmakers a limited amount of time to try to overturn federal regulations after they are issued.

It's the second hearing the panel has held this year on net neutrality. All five FCC commissioners appeared before the subcommittee last month to discuss the net neutrality order, which was approved on a party-line 3-2 vote in December.

While Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., an Energy and Commerce member, said Wednesday afternoon that a markup would be held following the hearing, a committee spokeswoman would not confirm that.

Energy and Commerce ranking member Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who along with Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., had requested the hearing, told Tech Daily Dose he did not have problem if the markup takes place after the hearing.

He said he is satisfied that supporters of net neutrality will have an opportunity to explain the implications of the resolution and other efforts to reverse the FCC's net neutrality order, which is aimed at barring broadband providers from discriminating against Internet content and applications.

Free Press Political Adviser Joel Kelsey, whose group strongly backs network neutrality rules, said unlike an amendment that was added to legislaiton to fund government operations, the resolution under the CRA would have much broader implications. The amendment that Walden successfully added to the continuing resolution funding the federal government for the rest of the year would bar the FCC from using its funds to implement the net neutrality rules.

Kelsey, however, argued that the resolution of disapproval would bar the FCC from enforcing any rules "tangentially" related to net neutrality and would prohibit the agency from implementing any similar rules, he said. "It's much broader and much more of a blunt object than Walden's amendment," Kelsey added.

Given the potential impact, it is unclear whether the 10 Democrats who backed Walden's amendment to the spending bill would be willing to go along with his resolution as well. Rep. John Barrow of Georgia is the only Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Communications and Technology Subcommittee who voted for Walden's amendment to the spending bill. A Barrow spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on the issue.

The FCC approved a series of measures Thursday to make it easier for disabled people to use communications devices, including one that makes it easier to for the blind to use cellphones to browse the internet and another that reinstates requirements for audio narration on television programs.

The plans call for implementing more of the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010, including reinstating rules previously overturned by a court more than 10 years ago.

"There's no longer a dispute on this central point: access to technology means access to jobs and full participation in our society and the global economy," FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said in a statement. "With access to broadband, an individual with disabilities can telecommute or run a business out of her home; receive remote health and job-related support; or gain access to online educational classes and digital books."

The FCC published a first Notice of Proposed Rulemaking seeking comment on a measure that would ensure that device manufacturers provide products that can be used by people with disabilities. The first proposal also includes efforts to make mobile phone Internet browsers accessible to people who are blind or visually impaired.

The second item approved by the commission will reinstate rules that require broadcasters to provide a minimum amount of audio narration of images in TV programs. The rules were overturned by the U.S. Court of Appeals but the FCC says Communications and Video Accessibility Act provides the FCC with the full authority to reissue such rules.

The commission also approved a measure that would explore options for subsidizing service providers who serve individuals with hearing and speech disabilities.

The Senate patent reform debate led to some unlikely allies Wednesday, with Republican leaders taking sides with the White House and Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., against efforts by top Democrats to cut the patent bill's controversial first-to-file provision, National Journal Daily reported.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., introduced a promised amendment with the support of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., that would preserve the current U.S. system of issuing patents to whoever invents an item first. Under Leahy's proposed America Invents Act, patents would be awarded to the first person to file a patent application, even if someone else invented the item first.

"It's critical, I believe, that we continue to protect and nurture this culture of innovation, and preserving the first-to-invent system that has helped foster it is essential to do this," Feinstein said. She and fellow California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer called the current legislation harmful to small businesses, startups, and other companies, especially in their tech-heavy state of California.

Although Reid has pushed for patent reform as part of a larger innovation agenda, small businesses in Nevada have pressured the majority leader, as well as Nevada's junior senator, Republican John Ensign, to oppose any attempt to transition to a first-to-file system. Ensign also signed on to Feinstein's amendment. To read more, click here. (Subscription required)

An industry group with a record of shaping federal information technology policy has established a cloud computing commission to advise the White House on outsourcing more than $20 billion worth of IT services to the Web, Nextgov.com reported.

The TechAmerica Foundation on Wednesday announced that the board will be co-chaired by the heads of two major Web services firms -- Salesforce.com Chief Executive Officer Marc Benioff and CEO Michael Capellas of VCE.

Last month, the Obama administration directed federal agencies to follow a "cloud-first" approach when budgeting computing resources. Instead of investing in new hardware and software licenses, agencies are expected to first consider paying for short-term subscriptions to computer programs, storage space and IT equipment hosted remotely on the servers of companies like Salesforce. The idea is that by consuming IT services on an as-needed basis, rather than maintaining in-house data centers, the government will boost the efficiency of its annual $80 billion IT budget. Click here, to read more.

Two key lawmakers on the Senate Commerce Committee Wednesday introduced legislation aimed at modernizing the nation's management and planning of how it uses the increasingly scarce resource of spectrum.

The growing popularity of wireless broadband services is putting more pressure on regulators to free up more spectrum. Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass, chairman of the Commerce Communications Subcommittee, and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, say their bill, a revised version of one they offered in the 111th Congress, is aimed at providing for the more efficient use of the nation's spectrum.

"Our nation's competitiveness, economic growth, and national security dictate that we address current policy shortcomings, and enactment of this vital legislation will help avert the looming spectrum crisis that could create a major barrier to national growth and innovation at this critical juncture in our economic recovery," Snowe said in a statement.

The bill would require the Federal Communications Commission and the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration to conduct an inventory of the spectrum to determine how it is currently being used and who is using it. The lawmakers recently voiced frustration in a letter to the agencies that they had yet to act on the senators' call to begin such an inventory using existing authority.

The Kerry-Snowe bill also would require greater cooperation between the FCC and NTIA on spectrum management issues, establish programs for users to share and reuse spectrum, require a cost-benefit examination of moving certain spectrum users to "more efficient bands," and also mandate that wireless hot spots be made available in all publicly accessible federal buildings.

In addition, the bill also would authorize the FCC to conduct incentive auctions, aimed at persuading broadcasters and other spectrum holders to give up some of their spectrum in exchange for some of the proceeds from the auction of those airwaves.

Senate Commerce Chairman John (Jay) Rockefeller, D-W.Va., also has included a provision authorizing incentive auctions in a bill he introduced in January that would re-allocate a controversial chunk of spectrum known as the D-block to public safety officials for a national interoperable public safety network. Rockefeller said last month that passing his bill is the committee's top priority.

A Kerry spokeswoman said the Kerry-Snowe bill is seen as a compliment to Rockefeller's measure and that their bill could be included in Rockefeller's legislation.

House Financial Services Committee ranking member Barney Frank, D-Mass., has found a new partner in his quest to legalize Internet gambling and to reverse a 2006 law that outlawed it.

Rep. John Campbell, R-Calif., plans to introduce with Frank a similar version of legislation the Massachusetts Democrat helped push through the Financial Services Committee in the last Congress. Unlike in the last Congress when he was chairman of the committee, Frank said Campbell will be the lead sponsor of his bill this year.

The measure approved by Financial Services in the last Congress aimed to counter a 2006 law that prohibited most online gambling and barred banks, credit card companies and other payment processors from processing payments for online bets.

Frank's bill would have allowed for online gambling in states where it's permitted now and set up a regime to regulate it. A companion bill was introduced in the 111th Congress by Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., that would have established a system for taxing online gaming, but that measure also died in the last Congress without any action beyond a hearing on the issue.

Supporters of legalizing, regulating and taxing Internet gambling argue the 2006 law has done little to deter the millions of Americans who already gamble online through sites based offshore. They say the bill would implement much needed consumer protections, while bringing in billions of dollars in tax revenues over the next decade.

"Clearly the prospect of new revenue has helped to draw attention to this opportunity," said Michael Waxman, who heads a group that backs legalized online gambling called the Safe and Secure Internet Gambling Initiative, in referring to the budget woes facing many states and the federal government. "I think it could help to get it over the finish line."

A spokesman for Campbell, who also sits on the Financial Services Committee and supported Frank's bill in the last Congress, said the lawmakers have not set a date for when the bill will be introduced because they are still hammering out some last details, such as what committee they want it to be referred to.

The current chairman of the Financial Services Committee, Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., staunchly opposed Frank's bill. Bachus and other critics argue that it would make it easier for children and addicts to gamble, driving up social costs that would far outweigh any of the tax benefits.

Donald Berwick, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said today that he's hopeful that Americans will embrace personalized health records -- but he recognizes the challenges in implementing high-tech tools. Speaking at a National Journal LIVE event on the effect of health care-associated infections on the quality and cost of health care delivery, Berwick said that he's personally not acquainted with iPads and iPods. Watch below.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs came back from medical leave on Wednesday to unveil his company's new and updated iPad.

"We've been working on this product for a while and I just didn't want to miss today," ABC News and other outlets quoted Jobs as telling the crowd at Apple's event in San Francisco.
Jobs, who has become increasingly thin since he was first treated for a rare form of pancreatic cancer in 2004, took indefinite medical leave in January.

He has given the public few details about his illness, to the fury of many investors, who link his health with the health of the company.

The new iPad is thinner than the first generation model, has two cameras for taking photos and video chatting, and a faster processor. Apple said it would become available in the U.S. March 11 and elsewhere by March 25.

Apple sold nearly 15 million iPads in 2010. Analysts have predicted the company will sell 30 million of the devices in 2011.

Chief operating officer Tim Cook has been in charge of Apple's day-to-day operations but it is not clear what plans Jobs has for the long-term.

The type of pancreatic tumor he had, called a neuroendocrine tumor, is more treatable than other forms of pancreatic cancer, but Jobs' continued weight loss and repeated medical leaves have worried investors.

A shutdown of the federal government would have adverse consequences for hundreds of companies that contract with the U.S. government and more than 7.6 million federal contract employees, Phil Bond, president and CEO of TechAmerica, warned Democratic and Republican leaders in both chambers in a Tuesday letter. While he applauded Congress for agreeing to a Continuing Resolution to keep the government operational for the next two weeks, he strongly urged lawmakers to pass a broader funding measure for the remainder of fiscal 2011.

"The on-again, off-again nature of the current budget debate in conjunction with the on-going, looming possibility of a government shutdown has brought business between contractors and the federal government to a virtual standstill," Bond wrote. "This climate of uncertainty has resulted in an adverse ripple effect causing the private sector and government agencies to halt or freeze advances in government services largely due to the current unresolved long-term budget situation," he added.

TechAmerica, with more than 1,200 member companies, is the largest association in Washington representing the interests of the technology sector.

House Energy and Commerce Republicans have agreed to a request from the panel's top Democrats to hold a hearing on a resolution that would block the Federal Communications Commission's network neutrality rules.

The Communications and Technology Subcommittee postponed its scheduled markup Wednesday of a resolution of disapproval, offered by its chairman, Greg Walden, R-Ore., to block implementation of the FCC's open Internet rules. The Congressional Review Act gives lawmakers a limited amount of time to pass a resolution of disapproval aimed at blocking regulations approved by federal agencies. While such resolutions are subject to the regular congressional process, they can not be amended.

A committee spokeswoman said Wednesday that the committee has agreed to a request from Energy and Commerce ranking member Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., the ranking member on the Communications and Technology Subcommittee, to hold a hearing on the resolution before marking it up. She did not say when such a hearing would occur.

During a speech Wednesday afternoon at an Institute for Policy Innovation event, Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., an Energy and Commerce member, said she expects the hearing followed by a markup of the resolution would take place on the same day next week.

The subcommittee already held one hearing last month on net neutrality featuring all five FCC commissioners during which Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., reiterated the GOP's pledge to offer a resolution of disapproval aimed at trying to block the commission's rules.

"I'm pleased the chairman has agreed to my request for regular order and a hearing," Eshoo said in a statement. "The open Internet is a vital part of our economy, and millions of jobs have been created along with thousands of new, innovative businesses because of it. Members need to hear from the job-creating businesses that rely on the Internet's openness, before any vote to eliminate the rules which protect it."

Former Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., indicated Wednesday that he is unlikely to run for the seat of retiring Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., and said he hopes that former Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine will enter the race.

Boucher was among several Democratic names mentioned as possible contenders for Webb's seat. On the Republican side, former Sen. George Allen, who was defeated for re-election to the Senate by Webb in 2006, is expected to seek his old seat.

Following a speech at the Institute for Policy Innovation's communications summit, Boucher, who was defeated for re-election in November, told Tech Daily Dose that while he's not ruling anything out, "I'm not giving any active thought" to running for the Senate seat.

He added that he is supporting Kaine, who Boucher described as the "obvious Democratic candidate." Kaine is currently the chairman of the Democratic National Committee and has yet to make up his mind whether to enter the 2012 Senate race.

Boucher, who chaired the Energy and Commerce Communications Subcommittee in the last Congress, said he is currently in talks with "individuals interested in the benefit of my views," including some law firms and will take his time in deciding on his post-congressional career. He said he will likely continue to work on telecomm and Internet-related issues.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee announced that it has postponed its scheduled markup Wednesday morning in its Communications and Technology Subcommittee of a resolution aimed at blocking the Federal Communications Commission's network neutrality rules.

The panel did not give a reason for the postponement of action on the resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act, which gives lawmakers a limited amount of time to pass legislation aimed at blocking regulations approved by federal agencies. Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., introduced the resolution to try to block the FCC's open Internet rules, approved in December, from going into effect.

On Tuesday, however, Energy and Commerce ranking member Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Rep. Anna Eshoo of California, the top Democrat on the Communications and Technology Subcommittee, called for a hearing on the resolution before the subcommittee votes on it.

The subcommittee did not give a date for when it would take up the resolution.

In what lobbyists are calling a clever move, the Senate Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a manager's amendment to Sen. Patrick Leahy's patent overhaul bill.

The Vermont Democrat included a widely praised provision that would prohibit Congress from taking fee money from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and using it to fund other government programs.

"We should be doing all we can to help PTO Director [David] Kappos and the dedicated women and men of the PTO to modernize and reform," Leahy said. "It is crazy that it takes two years for an inventor to get an initial ruling on his or her patent application, and another year or more to receive a patent."

The managers' amendment also incorporated reductions in PTO fees for small businesses, and depending on available funds, three new satellite patent offices to help handle the increased workload. An amendment proposed by Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., that would establish a pilot program to challenge business-method patents was also included.

At the suggestion of House Judiciary Committee members, Leahy dropped provisions that would have changed damages and venues for challenging patents. This move won him at least conditional approval from the Coalition for Patent Fairness, which includes companies such as Apple, Verizon and Intel.

The group, which supported previous patent bills but has been critical of Leahy's legislation, said Tuesday's changes moved the bill in a "promising direction." But the companies said they still want more changes.

Got high blood pressure? There's an app for that.

There's one for diabetes too. Another app that will watch your weight -- and report it to your doctor, Nextgov.com reported.

Smart phones, cell phones and home computers are just waiting to launch the next big revolution in health care, said Robert Jarring, senior director for government affairs at the wireless communications innovator Qualcomm Inc.

Wireless mobile devices can become an ever-present link between patient and doctor. A blood pressure cuff that connects to your cell phone can transmit blood pressure and heart rate data to your doctor's office daily if necessary. In the same way, a glucometer can transfer blood sugar level readings to a cell phone, which then calls it in to the doctor. Wireless scales work the same way.

The equipment already is available through medical supply dealers, Jarring said. "But not a lot of people know it exists."

Qualcomm and the National Institutes of Health hope to begin changing that this summer. The company and the agency are planning a weeklong summer institute on mobile health starting June 20 in San Diego. To read more, click here.

Critics of a resolution aimed at blocking the network neutrality rules approved by the Federal Communications Commission will have little recourse except to vote against the measure when it comes up for a vote in a House subcommittee Wednesday.

The House Energy and Commerce Communications and Technology Subcommittee is set to vote Wednesday morning on the resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act aimed at blocking the FCC's net neutrality rules, which were approved in December. The resolution was introduced by Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore.

The Congressional Review Act gives lawmakers a limited amount of time to pass a resolution of disapproval to block an agency rule. While such resolutions are subject to the normal legislative process, they can not be amended.

Energy and Commerce ranking member Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Rep. Anna Eshoo of California, the top Democrat on the Communications and Technology Subcommittee, Tuesday wrote Walden and Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., urging them to take up the resolution under "regular order" by holding a hearing on the measure before marking it up.

"You apparently believe that disapproving the FCC regulation will promote economic growth. There are, however, many fast-growing companies that take a different position and believe approval of the disapproval resolution would be a serious threat to our economy," Waxman and Eshoo wrote. "Members should have the opportunity to hear their perspective before voting on the resolution."

An Energy and Commerce spokeswoman noted that the committee held a hearing on net neutrality last month that featured all five FCC commissioners. Walden and other critics of the net neutrality rules, which are aimed at barring broadband providers from discriminating against Internet content or applications, say they will stifle broadband investment and innovation.

"This is just bad policy when you have a federal agency that wants to protect the Internet by freezing the Internet," Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., an Energy and Commerce member, said Tuesday afternoon at a forum on net neutrality sponsored by Tech Freedom.

In addition to the resolution of disapproval, Walden and Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., were successful in attaching an amendment to a bill passed last month by the House that would fund the federal government for the rest of fiscal year 2011 that would block the FCC from using its funds to implement the net neutrality order. Blackburn also has offered a bill that would specifically bar the FCC from implementing its order and would refer the issue back to Congress for action.

All but 10 Democrats who voted on Walden's defunding amendment opposed it. Rep. John Barrow, D-Ga., was among the 10 Democrats who did support Walden's amendment and also sits on the Energy and Commerce Communications and Technology subcommittee. A spokesman did not immediately respond to a question about whether Barrow will support the resolution at Wednesday's markup.

The Motion Picture Association of America announced today that it has selected a creature of Washington -- and not Hollywood -- as its new Chairman and Chief Executive Officer: former Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut. Dodd, who served in the upper chamber from 1981 until his retirement last year, will replace Bob Pisano, the President and Interim CEO. Pisano filled in after Dan Glickman, who served as Agriculture Secretary under President Clinton, announced he would resign as MPAA Chairman in January 2010.

The MPAA will need Dodd's firepower as its steps up its efforts in Washington to protect its members from piracy that is easily enabled by the Internet and digital technology. "I am truly excited about representing the interests of one of the most creative and productive industries in America, not only in Washington but around the world," Dodd said in a statement. "The major motion picture studios consistently produce and distribute the most sought after and enjoyable entertainment on earth. Protecting this great American export will be my highest priority." Dodd assumes his new position on March 17, St. Patrick's Day.

House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., said Tuesday that the panel will begin its examination of spectrum issues next week with a hearing.

During a speech at the National Association of Broadcasters state leadership conference, Upton said the committee wants to craft legislation that would ensure both broadcasters and wireless providers can continue to provide consumers with what they want: access to television and spectrum to meet the growing demand for wireless broadband.

"We want to design a win, win, win strategy," Upton said. "We want to have broadcasters to win, wireless [operators] to win and the public to win in terms of deficit reduction."

Among the issues policymakers must tackle include how to free up more spectrum for wireless broadband and whether to re-allocate a controversial chunk of spectrum known a the D-block to public safety officials for a national broadband interoperable network.

Upton did not give any signals as to what proposals the committee would take up, saying the hearings will help educate lawmakers on the issues.

Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., chairman of the committee's Communications and Technology Subcommittee holding the spectrum hearing next week, has voiced concern about the budget implications of reallocating the D-block to public safety officials. Under current law, the spectrum is slated to be auctioned by the FCC.

Upton also did not address calls for Congress to craft legislation authorizing the Federal Communications Commission to conduct incentive auctions, which would involve incentivizing broadcasters to give up some of their spectrum in exchange for a share in the proceeds from the auction of those airwaves.

Updated: 12:56 p.m.

Federal Communications Commission member Robert McDowell Tuesday said those seeking major changes from the commission to the retransmission consent process involving broadcasters and cable and satellite providers will likely be disappointed.

During a discussion with National Association of Broadcasters President and CEO Gordon Smith at the group's state leadership conference, McDowell was asked about possible changes the FCC may make to the process under which cable operators and other multichannel video programming distributors negotiate the fees they pay broadcasters to use their programming.

The FCC is set to take up an item at its monthly meeting Thursday that seeks comment on possible changes to the current retransmission process. But McDowell noted that major changes will have to be made by Congress.

"The commission's power is limited to looking at the good-faith dichotomy," he said. However, he noted under current law, asking one of the parties to pay more for broadcasting content does not constitute "bad-faith" negotiations.

The issue has gained new attention in the last few years as broadcasters demands for higher fees for their programming have resulted in disputes that have led to short blackouts of programming for some cable subscribers.

In a speech later in the day at the NAB event, House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., said he does not believe Congress needs to get involved at this point and would oppose legislation or FCC action requiring mandatory "carriage arrangements."

Cable firms have been pushing regulators and policy makers to require broadcasters to allow multichannel video programming distributors to continue to provide broadcasters' programming during negotiations over retransmission fees.

Both Upton and McDowell said the current process generally works and most negotiations do not end in a dispute. Upton, however, urged both sides to try to ensure that consumers are not adversely affected during negotiations.

Smith also asked about proposals to increase the amount of spectrum for wireless broadband through such proposals as incentive auctions, which involve sharing the proceeds from the auction of spectrum with broadcasters that voluntarily agree to relinquish some of their airwaves.

Smith outlined concerns broadcasters have about ensuring such incentive auctions are truly voluntary and that broadcasters who decide not to give up any of their spectrum are not harmed in the process of moving others who decide to participate in the process.

"How do you keep harmless those that don't volunteer," Smith asked.

McDowell was quick to note that Congress will craft the details of how incentive auctions will work. But added that he thinks "voluntary should be voluntary. I understand your concerns," he added, urging them to educate lawmakers about the potential impact of the proposal.

When asked about calls by the NAB and others for the FCC to conduct an inventory of all the spectrum available and how it's being used, McDowell said such a process might raise as many questions as answers. He added, however, that such an inventory could be "helpful."

Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., who sits on the Senate Commerce Committee and is also Smith's cousin, spoke at the NAB event and reiterated several times the importance of maintaining over-the-air television.

"Broadcasters rely on radio spectrum," Udall said. "We need to make sure that enough spectrum remains available for free over-the-air television to thrive. It's not something I take for granted."

Despite beating Jeopardy's top players, IBM's Watson supercomputer was no match for Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J.

During a Jeopardy-style trivia exhibition match featuring five U.S. House members Monday evening, Holt was the only one that beat the IBM supercomputer. Watson defeated the two top Jeopardy players during a match earlier this month. Rush, a physicist, is a five-time Jeopardy champion himself.

"I played a full round against @IBMWatson tonight and was proud to hold my own: the final tally was Holt $8,600, Watson $6,200," Holt tweeted Monday night.

The other players included Reps. Bill Cassidy, R-La., Nan Hayworth, R-N.Y., Jim Himes, D-Conn., and Jared Polis, D-Colo.

Despite Holt's success, Watson prevailed in the end with $40,300 to the $30,000 for the members of Congress.