Encryption
But Next Week Bill's Boys Will Be Here
After a strong push from Republicans to finish work on its Y2K liability bill, the Senate leadership suddenly postponed a final vote on the bill until next week - when 16 major high tech corporate leaders, including Microsoft's Bill Gates, will be visiting Washington to lobby for industry issues. Both Democrats and Republicans have been trying to use the bill, S. 96, to score points with the high-tech community. "We've been told over and over that this bill is so important it can't wait," said an exasperated Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle. Gates and the other CEOs will be in town for the Business Software Alliance's fourth annual CEO forum June 16.

Encryption
White House Snubs Export Legislation
The Clinton Administration announced its opposition to legislation, sponsored by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain, R-AZ, that would loosen some controls on encryption exports but does not go as far as a House bill. The Senate Commerce Committee held its first hearing on encryption since the 105th Congress, when the panel approved legislation sponsored by McCain that was widely rejected by the high-tech industry. That bill provided limited relief from export controls and promoted the use of encryption products that would enable a third party to gain access to a "key" needed to unscramble encrypted data. McCain has since shifted his position and moved closer to that of the high-tech industry. His latest bill, S. 798, would increase the strength level of encryption products, allow exports of generally available encryption products over 64 bits to U.S. allies, and establish an advisory board. Commerce Department Undersecretary for Export Administration William Reinsch cited several problems with the bill, including that aspects of the advisory board may compromise national security. Sen. John Ashcroft, R-MO, said that the advisory board would not be able to keep up with the pace of technology, a concern echoed by Rep. Bob Goodlatte R-VA, who testified at the hearing. He is the sponsor of a House bill, H.R. 850, that goes further than S. 798.

Export
Amendment Calls For The Ends Justifying The Exports
The House without dissent approved a measure that would require the president to seek an agreement from the Chinese to verify the end users and end uses of U.S.-made high- performance computers exported to China. The computer provision was offered by the leaders of the select House committee on technology transfers to China as of a broad amendment to the fiscal 2000 defense authorization bill HR 1401. The amendment, approved 428-0, included many of the recommendations made in the committee's report, which alleged China used legal and illegal means including espionage to gain access to U.S. technology to help its nuclear weapons program. The provision was not as strong as some lawmakers would have liked to see offered.

Cyberterrorism
Chemical Reaction On The Hill
A White House proposal to keep chemical plant information off the Internet has put House Republicans in the unusual position of being forced to defend the Clinton Administration against Democratic attacks. Commerce Committee chairman Tom Bliley, R-VA, introduced H.R. 1790 "by request" of the administration. The bill would preclude the Environmental Protection Agency from publicly disseminating so-called "risk management assessment" plans for the 66,000 chemical plants electronically. Although public disclosure of the information was required by the 1990 Clean Air Act, it was only last fall that the FBI, the CIA and other law enforcement agencies began raising questions of the EPA's stated goal of posting the assessments – including worst-case scenarios – on the Internet. The FBI was concerned that an electronic, searchable database would pose a threat to national security.

Telecom
AT&T Smoked In Broadband Pipe Decision?
Advocates for open high-speed cable networks reveled in a federal judge's Friday decision saying that AT&T and TCI must make their broadband pipe available to competing Internet service providers, while AT&T continued to downplay the ruling. Greg Simon, co-chairman of OpenNet, said the ruling by the U.S. District Court in Oregon would force the Federal Communications Commission to finally address the issue. So far, FCC Chairman William Kennard has taken a wait-and-see attitude on the topic, saying market forces should play out before the government steps in. "I think it lets them know they can't duck the issue," Simon said Monday.

Privacy
Working For A Clamp Down
Internet privacy issues appear to have killed a Republican proposal to restrict the sale of sexually-explicit and violent material to minors before that measure could get off the ground. House Republican leaders are pushing to clamp down on violence in the entertainment industry with several amendments to the chamber's juvenile justice bill, H.R. 1501. On Tuesday, Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde, R-IL, was set to consider a proposal that would have required Web site operators to disclose whether they sell lists of users' e-mail addresses. Together with separate proposals to require lyrics of CDs and tapes to be made available on demand, the Internet measure were an attempt to restrict the promulgation of sexually explicit and violent material to minors. Hyde said House leaders had decided that a series of amendments on the juvenile justice bill& including gun restriction measures& would be considered directly on the House floor instead of through the committee. But behind closed doors, Internet Caucus co-chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-VA, expressed opposition to linking the measures, and Hyde yanked them back.

Privacy
BBB's Online Code Of Honor
Responding to Commerce Secretary William Daley's call for industry help in boosting consumer protection on the Web, BBBOnline announced Tuesday that it plans to develop a code of online business practices. The group, which has developed a self-regulatory system to ensure Internet sites are protecting individual privacy, is developing the voluntary code to ensure Web sites that conduct business on the Web take steps to make the electronic marketplace fair and honest for consumers. BBBOnline, the Internet arm of the Better Business Bureau, is seeking input from a wide range of groups with an interest in electronic commerce including industry and consumer groups. The group hopes to have the code in place before the end of the year, said Russell Bodoff, BBBOnline's chief operating officer.

Privacy
Banks, Not Comments, Kept Private
Saying that privacy advocates need to "step back a little from paranoia," Sen. Robert Bennett, R-UT, accused three members of the House of Representatives of fear-mongering about financial privacy in a Senate Banking Committee hearing. "It isn't automatic that a government regulator wants to use information to be Big Brother," Bennett lectured Rep. Ron Paul, R-TX, after Paul had criticized any legislation that would regulate businesses while promoting his own efforts to scale back government data-collection. "It is not automatic that a business or insurer wants to use information to rip off a customer," Bennett said, adding that three-and-a-half years of working on medical privacy had led him to suspect such arguments. "If we did what the privacy advocates want, we should shut down and destroy medical research."

Intellectual Property
Independent Investors Slam Bill
Patent office critics are beginning to voice complaints that independent inventors are the losers in a patent reform deal, which unanimously passed the House Judiciary Committee, brokered between long-time antagonists in the House of Representatives. Critics of the American Inventors Protection Act, H.R. 1907, the compromise patent measure that brought together House Judiciary Committee Chairman Howard Coble, R-NC, and former opponents of his patent reform measure, claim the bill amounts to a "betrayal" of independent inventors by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-CA, and Rep. Tom Campbell, R-CA. The latter pair opposed Coble's proposed measure last year. And they are particularly concerned about a letter released Friday by Rohrabacher's office that urged the speedy passage of the measure under "suspension of the rules," a procedure generally employed only for non-controversial bills.

Business
Industry Wants To Raise The Roof On H-1B Caps
High-tech industry groups facing labor shortages called on Congress and President Clinton to again raise the cap on the number of H-1B visas granted to highly skilled foreign workers. Congress and the White House last year agreed to raise the caps on the number of H-1B visas for three years to give businesses more time to train American workers for those high tech jobs. But the FY99 cap of 115,000 already has been reached, according to the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Meanwhile, Sen. Phil Gramm, R-TX, is putting the finishing touches on legislation to raise the annual H-1B visa cap to 200,000 per year "indefinitely," an aide said, adding that Gramm plans to introduce the legislation soon.

Lobbying
High-Tech Convergence On Capitol Hill
High-tech executives converged on Capitol Hill this week to lobby for causes close to their companies. CEOs from Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Sun Microsystems and other computer companies pushed policymakers to loosen controls on the export of high-performance computers. A group of executives met with House GOP leaders, including House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-IL, and were visiting with other leaders on the Senate side as well. They also were scheduled to be entertained by White House Chief of Staff John Podesta and others. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Phil Gramm, R-TX, said this week that his committee is grappling with defining the term "mass-market" to make sure that any rewrite of the Export Administration Act doesn't include computers that can be bought from a local store.

Campaigns
Yes, They Take Credit Cards
The Federal Election Commission ruled 6-0 Thursday that political campaigns collecting contributions over the Internet may receive matching funds for the donations. The decision, taken in response to an appeal by Democratic presidential candidate Bill Bradley, requires a change in FEC regulations that specifically forbid the government from matching donations made with credit cards. The regulatory change, expected to be promulgated next week, will go into effect within 30 legislative days& provided that Congress and the president do not object. The commissioners decided to permit matching funds for contributions made since Jan. 1, 1999 although the money will not be disbursed until January 2000. Normally, the first $250 of each individual contribution is eligible for public matching funds.

Domains
Register.com Registering
Network Solutions' monopoly over the domain name registration business officially ended Monday, when one of five initial companies chosen to introduce competition into the process began registering domain names. No longer having to act as middleman, register.com began taking registrations and entering them into the shared registry system after midnight. The company is the first of the five organizations chosen in April by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to participate in a test aimed at introducing competition into the top-level domain name registration business to begin competing with NSI. The four other test participants are America Online, Melbourne IT, France Telecom's Oleane and the Internet Council of Registrars.

E-Commerce
A New Kind Of Customer Service
Two studies released Tuesday found most Web sites surveyed do not provide key information, such as whether a shopper can return a product, that would help consumers deal with problems they encounter while purchasing items over the Internet. The Federal Trade Commission released its findings during a conference on consumer protection in the global electronic marketplace. Details of a separate study conducted by Consumers International and paid for by the European Union also were released Tuesday. The FTC found that most of the 200 Web sites in 18 countries it surveyed provide helpful business information such as the company's phone number or postal address but failed to include details about their refund policies, cancellation terms and warranty information.

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