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TechnologyDaily Mobile
Executive Summary
Week Of July 19, 1999
Bit by bit, Rory J. O'Connor explains in his Politechs column why it didn't take long for the United Nations report that discussed the Internet to draw fire from legislators when they discovered the recommendation of an international Internet tax. The Issue of the Week looks at the bipartisan support on another taxing topic - the R&D tax credit. People discovers why a group of senators zipped up to Maryland this week and reports just who is responsible for combating cyberterrorism for the White House. States has a few tales to tell when it comes to the challenges of online voting.
In This Week's News:
Encryption
Armed Services Hands Off On SAFE
The House Armed Services Committee voted to dramatically weaken legislation that would lift most controls on the export of generally available encryption. Before approving the bill by voice vote, the committee, the last of five to take up the measure, adopted a substitute amendmenton a 47-6 vote to the so-called SAFE encryption bill, H.R. 850, that scales back its export provisions. The amendment, offered by Rep. Curt Weldon, R-PA, and others, would allow the president to deny the export of any encryption product on national security grounds. But high-tech industry representatives and their allies in Congress are downplaying moves by two House committees to scale back the export provisions of legislation loosening controls on encryption exports, saying they are confident they can keep such amendments off the base bill sent to the House floor.
Encryption
SAFE Bill Gets Coverage From All Corners
White House Chief of Staff John Podesta met with House Democrat Leader Richard Gephardt and the chairs of his high-tech advisory group week to discuss technology policy, including the Security and Freedom through Encryption Act. Part of the discussion, which included Reps. Anna Eshoo, D-CA, and Zoe Lofgren, D-CA, focused on what the House leadership could do to reverse the administration's current opposition to the SAFE bill, a House Democrat leadership source said. Lofgren is a primary co-sponsor of the SAFE bill, H.R. 850, along with Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-VA. Both Gephardt and Lofgren are also co-sponsors of the bill. The Clinton Administration however, remains in a "listening" mode with supporters of SAFE and feels that there are many obstacles to overcome before it can support the bill. SAFE threatens "the balance" among national security, foreign policy, privacy and electronic commerce, Commerce Undersecretary William Reinsch testified before a House Armed Services Committee hearing July 13.
Taxes
Not So Fast
The Senate Finance Committee voted to make the research and development tax credit permanent during consideration of a GOP tax cut bill that would have provided a five-year extension of the tax credit. The committee approved the amendment by voice vote to the tax-cut bill offered by committee Chairman William Roth Jr., R-DE. Roth said that he could only afford a five-year extension and still include other priorities in his $792 billion tax cut plan. The next day, the House voted down a Democratic tax cut proposal that would have provided industry with a permanent extension of the R&D tax credit. High-tech industry leaders, however, did get some positive news from the Senate side when the Senate Finance Committee approved an amendment, offered by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-UT, and others, to tax-cut legislation to make permanent the R&D tax credit.
Privacy
Getting The Wording Just Right
House Banking Financial Institutions Subcommittee Chairwoman Marge Roukema, R-NJ, urged that language included in the House financial services modernization bill safeguarding consumer medical information should be included in whatever modernization measure ultimately is enacted. Roukema promised there would be a "number" of hearings on financial, medical and Internet privacy issues, and warned that it would be "most unwise" to strip the bill of language chiefly requiring insurance companies that affiliate with a bank to keep confidential customer health and medical information. Approved in committee, that proposal was offered by Banking Chairman Jim Leach, R-IA, and Rep. Bruce Vento, D-MN, after a more sweeping proposal offered by Jay Inslee, D-WA, to restrict the sharing of a customer information among affiliates of a financial holding company, failed.
Privacy
GAO Says Health Care Data Needs More Protection
The agency responsible for the largest collection of health care data is not properly safeguarding the confidentiality of those medical records, according to a General Accounting Office report released Tuesday. The report faults the Health Care Financing Administration of the Department of Health and Human Services for inadequate security for the computers that hold medical information for 39 million Americans. It also cites the agency for failing to properly make necessary legal disclosures to individual Medicare recipients when it shares portions of those records with other agencies or businesses. Prepared in response to a request from Rep. Bill Thomas, R-CA, chairman of the Health subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee, the report also criticized HCFA for failing to check whether outside organizations are living up to their agreements to protect the confidentiality of personally identifiable information.
Privacy
Health Privacy Laws Deemed Behind The Times
State laws on health privacy are "weak and incomplete" and do not take into account recent strides in information technology, according to a new study by Georgetown University's Health Privacy Project. Authors of the state-by-state breakdown, unveiled as part of an organized push to get Congress to meet its self-imposed deadline for passage of comprehensive health privacy legislation, argue that state laws do not cover the areas the federal government is striving to regulate. There is also growing concern that as government agencies share more databases, technology will outpace the hold on private information. "Integrated delivery systems…and the establishment of statewide health information databases have created new demands for data that push well beyond the limits originally anticipated by states," the study reads. For example, physicians in some states may be obligated to report a patient with epilepsy to the Department of Motor Vehicles, which in turn could revoke the patient's driver's license, they say.
Privacy
Coping With COPPA Proves Problematic
Web-based businesses and privacy advocates squared off at a Federal Trade Commission workshop about whether e-mail is an adequate method for parents to offer their consent for children to submit on-line information about themselves. With the FTC in the midst of drafting rules for implementing the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), the question of whether parents can offer consent via e-mail, need to call an 800 number, or fax back a form, has proven particularly controversial. Although the FTC's proposed rules permit e-mail consent only when accompanied by a digital signature, the agency is considering whether there are other e-mail-based mechanisms for obtaining "verifiable" consent. Consumers perusing the Web generally loathe to stop their surfing to fax a form or attend to other means of verifying their consent, particularly when a household has only one phone line.
Privacy
Parental Permission Put At The Wayside
A study of Web sites that cater to children found that the vast majority are not seeking parental consent before obtaining personally identifiable information, a practice that will be illegal once the Federal Trade Commission promulgates its rules on the subject. In two surveys of children-oriented Web sites released Monday, the Center for Media Education documented a trend that its officials called "startling and disturbing." Less than seven percent of Web sites that collect personal information from children under 13 seek to obtain parental consent, a requirement of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act Congress passed last October. The top 80 children's sites fared better in a separate CME survey, with 25 seeking parental consent. An even smaller number — less than three percent — of the sites obtained prior "verifiable" consent using a method of obtaining a signed note of permission sent through the mail or over a fax, or receiving it over the phone with a 1-800 telephone number. Among the top 80 sites that collect information, 13 percent opt for "verifiable" consent.
Cyberporn
Whose Child Is This.com?
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-TX, joined former Christian Coalition director Ralph Reed and Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center to endorse a new Internet service provider dedicated to screening out sexually explicit, racist, and violent Web sites. The launch of www.this.com combined the concerns of conservatives about on-line smut with liberals' fears that hate crimes are being facilitated by individuals influenced by the Internet. "It doesn't happen everyday that I am at a press conference with the former head of the Christian Coalition," said Cooper, "but I don't see this has anything to do with anyone's political or religious orientation." But all of them agree that the private sector must take the lead in protecting children from what company supporter and former drug czar William Bennett called "poison." However, some media outlets quickly reported that this.com's embedded search engine, GoTo, makes it possible to view pornographic material without ever leaving this.com.
E-commerce
E-sign Bill Could Create New World For Investors
A House commerce subcommittee unanimously approved provisions in larger database protection and electronic signature bills that aim to update stock market regulations for the digital age. The House Commerce Finance and Hazardous Materials Subcommittee approved the securities portions of H.R. 1714, the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act, and H.R. 1858, the Consumer and Investor Access to Information Act, with little debate. The so-called "e-sign" bill would allow investors to open brokerage accounts and conduct other electronic transactions and would make electronic signatures binding in interstate commerce transactions. The securities portion of the database protection bill would allow stock exchanges to pursue individuals who pirate market information without a contract in federal court. It does not however, grant the exchanges a property right over stock information — a key difference between the Thomas Bliley, R-VA, bill and another database protection bill moving through the House Judiciary Committee offered by Rep. Howard Coble, R-NC.
Net Governance
Bill Restricts Info About Chemical Disasters
The House of Representatives passed an environmental bill that attempts to balance the concerns of law enforcement officials, the inability to control information over the Internet, and the public's right to know about chemical worst-case-scenario disasters. The legislation that passed in the House by unanimous consent was an amended version of a Senate compromise, S. 880, worked out between Senate Environment and Public Works chairman John Chaffee, R-RI, Environment and Public Works, Clean Air, Wetlands, Private Property and Nuclear Safety Subcommittee Chairman James Inhofe, R-OK, Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-NJ, and Sen. Max Baucus, D-MT. The measure, which passed the Senate on June 23, slaps a one-year moratorium on the release of the chemical disaster information. The bill is in response to concerns raised by national security agencies, lawmakers and others to a 1990 Clean Air Act provision that requires the nation's 66,000 toxic chemical facilities to report on potential fatalities from chemical disasters and make the information public.
Domains
Abraham Agrees To Sub Cybersquatting Bill
Bowing to concerns that his anti-cybersquatting bill was overly broad and could have criminalized legitimate protest Web sites, Sen. Spencer Abraham, R-MI, agreed to a substitute version incorporating many of the criticisms offered by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-VT. In addition to eliminating criminal penalties for cybersquatting, the substitute version will permit trademark holders to seek the forfeiture or cancellation of domain name identifiers with their trademarks, a provision that Abraham said would "reinforce the central characteristic of this legislation — its intention to protect property rights."
Domains
ICANN Hearing Puts NSI On Hot Seat
After encouraging members of Congress to examine ICANN's actions, Network Solutions Inc. found itself on the defensive during a House hearing over what some lawmakers described as the company's attempts to delay competition and hold on to its domain name registration business monopoly. The hearing before the House Commerce Committee's oversight panel was supposed to shed light on the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names Numbers and controversial moves it has made since being tapped last year by the federal government to take over administration of the Internet and help introduce competition into the top-level domain name registration business "The impact that ICANN's actions could have on the Internet and e-commerce is huge," said Commerce Committee Chairman Tom Bliley, R-VA. But it was NSI who came under the most scrutiny, particularly by the subcommittee's Democrats who questioned the company's refusal to recognize ICANN or sign the same accreditation agreement with ICANN as the competing registrars. Additionally, a lawyer for ICANN urged the Justice Department earlier this year to push the Commerce Department to be more aggressive in its negotiations with NSI over issues related to the transition to competition in the domain name registration business.
Internet Access
FCC Steps Into Broadband Mire
Warring factions in the ongoing broadband debate were both pleased and "astonished" by the Federal Communications Commission's decision to insert itself into a federal court case that will rule on whether localities can require high-speed cable networks to open up to competing Internet service providers. "We are astonished that a high public official would put the federal government in service of a giant communications corporation as [FCC Chairman] William Kennard has done," said a spokeswoman for OpenNet, a coalition spearheaded by America Online that has lobbied for open cable networks. "Why is Kennard so strident in his active legal defense of AT&T?" Kennard said Tuesday that he's directed the FCC's general counsel to file a friend-of-the-court brief to the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in a cable access case between Portland, OR, officials and AT&T. Later in the week, FCC Cable Services Bureau Chief Deborah Lathen reiterated the agency's position, saying cities and counties shouldn't be drafting policies requiring high-speed cable networks to open up to competing Internet service providers.
Net Governance
We Did A Good Job, FCC Says
Thirty years of 'unregulation' of data services by the Federal Communications Commission has fostered the hyper growth of the Internet, concludes a report by FCC staff released early this week. While the current path has served the telecommunications industry, the working paper by the FCC's Office of Plans and Policy warns that the convergence of data, video and phone services pose a challenge for the agency.
We welcome your feedback; please e-mail comments to Managing Editor Sharon McLoone at smcloone@nationaljournal.com.
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