E-Commerce
Both Sides Claim Win In WTO Ruling On Net Gambling
     The World Trade Organization has found that the U.S. government's attempt to ban the tiny Caribbean country of Antigua and Barbuda from offering cross-border online gambling services violates international trade law. But in its long-awaited ruling, the WTO dispute-settlement panel also reversed an earlier WTO decision, thus supporting U.S. claims that its laws, including the 1961 Federal Interstate Wire Act, are "necessary to protect public morals or maintain public order." The ruling "means that the United States denied Antiguan operators market access" for "recreational" activities in violation of the WTO General Agreement on Trade in Services, said Mark Mendel, an attorney representing Antigua and Barbuda. The United States said of the interpretation of the ruling that "this win confirms what we knew from the start: WTO members are entitled to maintain restrictions on Internet gambling," acting U.S. Trade Representative Peter Allgeier said.

Intellectual Property
Panel Weighs Issues Surrounding Digital-Music Formats
     The fights between technology companies over incompatible digital-music formats and their impact on consumers received a public hearing before a key House panel, but two of the biggest players in the debate were notably absent. During a hearing before the House Judiciary Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property Subcommittee, representatives of Apple Computer and RealNetworks did not testify. Subcommittee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, issued a stern warning to Apple, the maker of America's most popular portable music device, the iPod. He called the company's decision not to testify in a hearing about interoperability of digital-music systems "a mistake," noting that Apple holds a 75 percent market share in this field.

Privacy
Lawmaker Wants Homeland Security To Probe ChoicePoint
     The top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee has asked the chief privacy officer of the Homeland Security Department to investigate how an alleged criminal ring was able to buy personal information from the ChoicePoint data brokerage. Mississippi Democrat Bennie Thompson said he would like Nuala O'Connor Kelly to "identify vulnerabilities" in collecting sensitive personal data for security activities and note lessons from the scandal that could become "best practices" for the department's activities. ChoicePoint reported in February that personal data such as military records, names, addresses and Social Security numbers were bought from nearly a half-million accounts. The criminal ring that bought the data had operated for more than a year before the company detected the error. Homeland Security and agencies like the CIA and FBI mostly access the company's 19 billion records.

Cyber Security
Lawmaker Wants To Link Agency Funding, Cyber Grades
     Government agencies that receive failing grades for computer security should suffer cutbacks in federal funding, House Government Reform Committee Chairman Tom Davis said. "I think ultimately these [grades] will have to be tied to funding," Davis, R-Va., said during a hearing before his panel. "That's the only thing people understand." Davis warned government officials testifying at the hearing that "all you need is one bad, adverse cyber event and people will be all over this ... asking the questions we're asking now." He added that "threats to government systems could result in identity theft and subsequent financial damage ... as well as diminished trust in government IT capabilities and electronic government programs." The hearing focused on improving the government's overall D-plus grade in 2004 for computer security. Seven departments, including Commerce and Homeland Security, flunked.

Security
House Begins Its Oversight Of Use Of Anti-Terrorism Law
     The debate over the anti-terrorism law known as the USA PATRIOT Act moved to the House side of the Capitol, with the Judiciary Committee beginning its series of eight hearings on the statute. The meeting follows by a day the start of a similar series of hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee. The House hearings will examine the 16 expiring provisions of the law, which has garnered significant criticism from a wide spectrum of civil-liberties advocates, conservatives, city councils and state legislatures across the country. House Judiciary members asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales a series of questions that ranged from how they could explain the necessity of the law to their constituents to requests for concrete examples of how the PATRIOT Act has stopped terrorist activity on U.S. soil.

Security
Senate Panel Rebuffs Push For Driver's Licensing Standards
     The Senate Appropriations Committee has rebuffed a House effort to mandate minimum requirements for state-issued driver's licenses. The panel dropped the proposal from an $80.6 billion emergency spending bill for fiscal 2005. The full Senate still must consider the bill, but if the language is not reinserted, it could revive last year's House and Senate showdown over the issue. The House-passed spending bill contains language from a separate measure, H.R. 418. Known as the Real ID Act, that legislation would give the Homeland Security Department the authority to unilaterally set technical and issuance standards for driver's licenses and scrap the current negotiated process of the Transportation Department. The bill also contains numerous provisions on immigration policy, such as new terms for granting political asylum to immigrants.

Broadband
Officials Clash Over Meaning Of U.S. Broadband Ranking
     At a panel at the National Cable and Telecommunications Association convention in San Francisco a collegial discussion between three sitting FCC commissioners and a Bush administration telecommunications policy official took a partisan turn over the question of America's high-speed Internet availability. "I think we have a problem, and the government needs to face up to that fact," Michael Copps, one of two Democrats on the FCC, said after noting that the United States ranks 13th in global broadband penetration, according to the International Telecommunication Union. Although he said "the private sector must lead" the deployment of broadband, Copps called for "creative cooperation" with the government. Michael Gallagher, head of the National Telecommunication and Information Administration, took issue with Copps' characterization of broadband availability. He said the United States has 200 million Internet users -- twice as many as any other nation -- and 34 million broadband users. The country also is the leading nation in e-commerce, with 47 percent of transactions conducted domestically, he added.

Budget
'Pork' Opponents Decry Tech-Related Earmarks In Report
     Two Republican lawmakers have criticized their colleagues for padding federal spending bills with billions of dollars in special-interest provisions. Flanked by two snorting pot-bellied pigs and a staffer dressed in a hot-pink pig costume, Sen. John McCain and Rep. Jeff Flake, both Arizona Republicans, joined Citizens Against Government Waste to unveil the group's annual "Pig Book," which highlights what CAGW considers to be the most egregious pork-barrel spending. "The situation is dire and it's getting worse," Flake said. The fiscal 2005 earmarks for specific projects in lawmakers' states or districts "dwarf everything that we've seen in the past."