Cyber Porn
Bush Vows To Address 'Obscenity And Danger' On Web
     President Bush said this week that the Internet has been responsible for exponentially increasing children's access to pornography and exposure to sexual predators, and he urged the Senate to pass legislation targeting child pornography. "A technology that brings us knowledge also brings us obscenity and danger," Bush said. Although he devoted much of the speech to praise for law enforcement officials, Bush also attacked the Democratic-controlled Senate for failing to pass legislation that would ban computer-generated child pornography. "The Senate needs to get moving and join with the House to help shut down this obscenity and crimes against children," he said. The House in June passed an anti-child-pornography measure drafted by the Justice Department, but it has languished in the Senate. The impetus for the bill, H.R. 4623, came with the Supreme Court's April ruling in Free Speech Coalition v. Ashcroft, which struck down a 1996 version of the law on the grounds that it infringed upon free speech.

Security
Bush Signs Defense Spending Bill Including Tech Provisions
     President Bush signed a $355 billion defense-spending bill that aims to boost military "transformation" in fiscal 2003 while giving U.S. troops high-tech tools to combat terrorist threats. The legislation, H.R. 5010, increases total defense spending by $37 billion over fiscal 2002. It earmarks $58 billion for research and development programs to help build what Bush called "the next generations of weaponry." The legislation also eliminates weapons systems that Bush said would not "meet the needs of the future," such as the Crusader program. Bush also signed a bill to fund military construction in fiscal 2003 and called on Congress to complete action on 11 remaining appropriations bills. He also urged the Senate to pass legislation creating a Homeland Security Department.

Cyber Security
Commerce Official Favors Transfer of Computer Security Division
     Despite opposition to the idea from the technology industry, a senior Commerce Department official voiced support for a proposal to transfer the Computer Security Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology to the Homeland Security Department. "There's no doubt that the new ... department will require technical competence and the encryption of computer information," Deputy Secretary Samuel Bodman said in an interview, noting that the division specializes in those areas. "Therefore, having that group -- or a group that does that kind of work -- as part of a Department of Homeland Security makes every sense and probably should take place." The House-passed homeland security bill, H.R. 5005, would block the transfer, and industry lobbyists have argued that the Senate version should be amended to do the same. In a recent letter to Senate leaders, Business Software Alliance President Robert Holleyman said the transfer is unnecessary.

Intellectual Property
Tech, Movie Industries Propose Technical Anti-Piracy Body
     Technology and motion picture industry executives jointly proposed the creation of a technical body to find ways to stop consumers from making illegal copies of digital movies. Speaking on behalf on computer companies and Hollywood studios generally, officials representing Apple Computer and AOL Time Warner made the proposal at a monthly meeting of the Copy Protection Technical Working Group. Historically, the working group has been devoted to developing technologies that keep consumers from copying and redistributing digital movies. It was responsible for developing the digital videodisc (DVD) format. More recently, the group became enmeshed in the congressional debate over technology mandates after its Broadcast Protection Discussion Group endorsed a copy-protection technology called a "broadcast flag" for installation in all digital TV receivers. The Federal Communications Commission is studying the idea.

On The Hill
Lawmaker Plans To Significantly Alter File-Swapping Bill
     Rep. Howard Berman intends to "significantly redraft" his legislation designed to curb illegal copying on peer-to-peer (P2P) computer networks "to accommodate reasonable concerns before re-introducing the bill" in the 108th Congress, his top counsel said. Speaking on a panel at the Heritage Foundation devoted to the bill, H.R. 5211, legislative counsel Alec French said Berman, a California Democrat, is open to changes to his measure that would exempt copyright owners from anti-hacking laws, "as long as they are consistent with the goal of stopping P2P piracy." Gary Shapiro, president of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), challenged French on issues, including the proper length and scope of copyright law, and whether the success of the digital videodisc owed more to the technology industry or to the entertainment industry. Shapiro also said CEA filed a "friend of the court" brief on the side of Grokster, StreamCast Networks and Kazaa, P2P services that are being challenged by the recording industry for allegedly contributing to copyright infringement.

Labor
Report: Program Nets Tech Jobs, More Wages For U.S. Workers
     Money raised through a Labor Department visa program for worker training has helped many Americans get new jobs in the computer field and boost their wages, according to a new General Accounting Office report. However, a complete picture of the program's effectiveness is not available because Labor does not adequately collect information about the program, the report said. Under the H-1B program, which enables foreign-born, highly skilled workers to live and work in the United States for six years, employers pay $1,000 per visa, of which 55 percent goes to Labor's worker-training program and 22 percent to the National Science Foundation to distribute in the form of scholarships for low-income students. Employers, particularly those within the high-tech sector, used the H-1B program heavily during the economic boom of the 1990s because companies were unable to find U.S.-born workers to fill jobs. One of the goals of the worker-training program is to educate U.S. workers so they can fill the positions.

E-Commerce
Multinational Officials Unite On Cyber Security, E-Commerce
     Senior government officials and industry leaders from the United States, Europe, Japan and elsewhere will meet next week in Brussels, Belgium, to address cyber security and the promotion of e-commerce worldwide. Monday's U.S.-European Union Information Security Forum will address security and confidence online and e-government initiatives. It will include one-on-one industry availability with individual EU chief information officers. On Tuesday, the larger Global Business Dialogue on E-Commerce (GBDe) will host panel discussions on consumer confidence, cyber security, digital convergence, intellectual property rights, taxation, e-government, trade, the "digital divide" and harmful Internet content. The GBDe is an organization of company CEOs who are committed to addressing issues of global concern to industry.

Lobbying
AeA Sees High-Tech Issues Heating Up At State Level
     The head of the electronics trade group AeA said many of his organization's members anticipate that an increasing number of high-tech policy issues affecting their fiscal health will occur in statehouses next year. Representatives from AeA member companies who met in San Jose, Calif., last week for their first board meeting of the association's fiscal year generally agreed that environmental and tax issues affecting the high-tech sector are likely to surface in state legislatures next year and will be closely watched. "We took a stance at the board meeting that threats to company bottom lines are coming [increasingly] from statehouses," group President William Archey said in an interview. For example, three or four states in the past year seriously considered online privacy legislation, which AeA lobbied heavily to defeat. Minnesota was the only state to pass legislation specifically on the issue of online privacy protections.