Privacy
Privacy Likely To Resurface As Top Tech Issue In Congress
     After lying dormant for the past year, privacy is expected to resurface as one of the high-tech industry's key lobbying issues in the 108th Congress, reflecting the expected appointment of Alabaman Richard Shelby as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee after Republicans won control of the Senate this week. Shelby, a former Democrat who switched to the GOP after the 1994 election, said last month that financial privacy is of "intense interest" to him. In response, high-tech lobbyists expect to expend a lot of shoe leather on educating lawmakers about privacy standards and e-commerce in 2003. Shelby co-founded the Congressional Privacy Caucus in 2000, along with former Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., and Reps. Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Joe Barton, a Texas Republican.

Campaigns
Lott's Priorities For Senate Include Tech-Friendly Issues
     Fresh from electoral victory, top Senate Republican Trent Lott of Mississippi outlined an agenda for the 108th Congress that includes several policy items that should please the high-tech sector. He pledged to move quickly to create a Homeland Security Department and to develop an economic stimulus package by next spring. With the tech economy still mired in a downturn, high-tech lobbyists would welcome any efforts by the government to boost the industry. "It's going to be really important for the Republicans to turn around the economy over the next two years," said Rick White, head of the bipartisan lobbying group TechNet, "and we plan to work very hard with both parties to help them develop tax incentives that could garner bipartisan support."

White House
White House Urges Quick Approval Of Homeland Bill
     President Bush called on Congress to pass legislation establishing a Homeland Security Department in the post-election "lame duck" session that begins next week. "The single-most important piece of unfinished business on Capitol Hill is to create a unified Department of Homeland Security," Bush said at a White House news conference. "It is important that the Congress sends me a bill that I can sign before the 107th Congress ends." Bush also urged the lame-duck Congress to pass the terrorism insurance measure that he said would help spur construction projects and create thousands of jobs. While acknowledging that the session, which starts Tuesday, offers little time for action on a wide range of issues, Bush also expressed hope that Congress might also tackle unfinished fiscal 2003 appropriations bills that maintain "fiscal responsibility."

Antitrust
Antitrust Official Defends Microsoft Deal, Criticizes Prosecutors
     Charles James, the outgoing assistant attorney general who likely will be remembered for orchestrating the Justice Department Antitrust Division's settlement with Microsoft, criticized nine state attorneys general who continued a lawsuit against Microsoft that James said was destined to fail. James used the opportunity of his final speech in office, given at an American Bar Association antitrust forum, to strike at critics who said the settlement is unnecessarily light on Microsoft. And he cited long segments of last Friday's ruling by federal District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly that praised the settlement agreement and dismissed the states' case. James said that with its June 2001 opinion, the D.C. Circuit of Appeals had undermined most grounds of liability animating a prior district court decision ordering a breakup of Microsoft and stiff remedies against the firm for antitrust violations. After being criticized for striking the settlement with Microsoft in November 2001, James said he told himself, "I must be missing something; I must be the only person who read this opinion."

Civil Liberties
Council of Europe Approves Internet 'Hate Speech' Protocol
     The foreign ministers of nearly 50 governments reached agreement to outlaw racist and xenophobic speech on the Internet as an extension of the international cyber-crime treaty completed last year. The ministers of the Strasbourg, France-based Council of Europe approved the so-called "hate speech" protocol after rejecting amendments by the council's elected officials. One rejected proposal would have criminalized hosting of abusive messages on the Internet. The protocol could lead to liability challenges against U.S. Internet service providers (ISPs) in Europe, according to Peter Csonka, principal administrator at the COE division of economic crime. But he said the threshold for proving that hate speech is intentional is "extremely high," and that the 15-nation European Union's e-commerce directive offers a liability exemption for ISPs if they are a "mere conduit" for the information.

Telecom
FCC Paves Way For Growth In Advanced Wireless Services
     The FCC took steps to provide more spectrum for advanced wireless services and considered a proposal that would overhaul the way spectrum is managed. "Access to new spectrum is not a cure for today's financially ailing wireless industry, but it is a key pre-condition to the long-term health of the industry," FCC Chairman Michael Powell said upon unanimous approval to allocate an additional 90 megahertz of spectrum for commercial wireless use, increasing the frequency allocation by one-third. The spectrum was identified this summer after years of negotiations between government and industry. The military uses some of those frequencies and voiced national security concerns, among other things, but the wireless industry wanted the "beachfront property" to provide advanced, or third-generation, services.

Security
Information-Sharing Partnerships Seen As Anti-Terror Model
     Information-sharing partnerships that helped the federal government and the private sector combat cyber attacks such as the "Code Red" and "Nimda" viruses have served as a valuable model for protecting other critical infrastructures from potential terrorist attacks, a top cyber-security official said. "Prior to [September 11, 2001], we really focused in on cyber threats," Ronald Dick, director of the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center, said during the first annual conference of the Infrastructure Security Partnership. Dick noted that when the Code Red virus spread rapidly across the Internet in 2000, the FBI, the CIA, the National Security Agency and the Secret Service worked with software giants such as Microsoft and Cisco Systems to identify system vulnerabilities and determine ways to mitigate the threat. "Code Red was a great example of how we were able to bring together all of those resources, make public statements about what the vulnerability was ... and get a message out as to what to do," Dick said.