Privacy
Homeland Security's Privacy Chief Leaves This Week
     Nuala O'Connor Kelly, the Homeland Security Department's first chief privacy officer, announced this week that she is resigning and leaving the department. "It's been a long time coming," she said in an interview. "I've been in the administration since 2001, and I've seen and done a lot. I've built the office, and it's up and running." O'Connor Kelly will be going to work for General Electric. Maureen Cooney will become the acting chief privacy officer as of Oct. 1. Cooney is currently the office's chief of staff and director of international privacy policy. The advocacy group Public Knowledge, meanwhile, has dismissed legal director and longtime cyber-rights activist Mike Godwin as of the end of September. The reason is financial, Public Knowledge President and co-founder Gigi Sohn said.

Net Governance
U.S., Europe Battle Over Governance Model
     Negotiators from the United States and the European Union attending a U.N. meeting on the global information society are battling over the future governance of the Internet. The United States holds a unique position in its relation to the Internet through its agreement with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The European Union proposed moving significant responsibilities currently held by ICANN to a "new model for international cooperation." The proposal said the new model "should not replace existing mechanisms or institutions but should build on the existing structures of Internet governance." But the model's essential tasks read like ICANN's core mission. The State Department's David Gross, the U.S. delegation lead, said he was "very disappointed" by the EU proposal and later said it "seems to represent an historic shift in regulatory approach with regard to the Internet."

Budget
Some Flexibility In 'First Responder' Grants Approved
     Urban lawmakers scored a victory when House and Senate negotiators agreed to give states at a greater risk of terrorism more of the funding allocated for federal grants to "first responders" to emergencies next year. The money is part of the $30.8 billion spending bill for the Homeland Security Department now before Congress. "This is a continued step in the right direction," said Rep. John Sweeney, R-N.Y. But he added that urban legislators must continue to fight for another change in the funding formula when Congress debates the anti-terrorism law known as the USA PATRIOT Act. Negotiators declined to lower the minimum percentage of federal funding each state receives for first-responder grants, which is currently mandated at 0.75 percent. But they did not move to prevent the Bush administration from distributing the remaining funds based on risk rather than population and population density. Those factors resulted in states like Wyoming receiving more grant funding than New York over the last three years.

Telecom
Rep. Upton Working On Interoperability Measure
     Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., chairman of the House Telecommunications and the Internet Subcommittee, is working with lawmakers in both parties to increase funding for emergency communications that can work across jurisdictions. The Michigan lawmaker, who is collaborating with House Energy and Commerce Chairman Joe Barton, R-Texas, said the congressmen would raise the revenue from the upcoming auction of analog television spectrum. The frequencies would be auctioned as part of the nation's transition to digital broadcasting. Barton, Upton and others are shepherding that process through legislation. Upton suggested that the funding increase would be addressed through an amendment but did not specify to what legislation.

Lobbying
FCC's Martin Engages Techies In Private Meeting
     FCC Chairman Kevin Martin told technology companies that the communications needs of public-safety officials after Hurricane Katrina raised the importance of Congress setting a firm date for the transition to digital television. Martin made the comments in a private luncheon for him sponsored by the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI), according to several individuals who attended the meeting. "He thought the DTV transition had gained momentum as the most critical wireless spectrum issue, and he recognized that public-safety needs would be at the forefront, even though the spectrum will be used for other advance commercial purposes," ITI chief Rhett Dawson said. Martin is scheduled to meet with the lobbying group TechNet next week, at the request of several of its members. It remains unclear whether Martin is making the rounds of Washington's leading high-tech associations. His office declined to comment.

Telecom
FCC Releases Orders On Broadband And Wiretapping
     The FCC released rules for the newly "deregulated" providers of high-speed Internet service over digital subscriber lines (DSL) and mandated that they and Internet telephone companies design their networks to facilitate surveillance by law enforcement. The agency issued two separate orders. One declared that broadband over DSL provided by telecommunications companies is now an unregulated "information service." The other requires all broadband services and companies capable of being linked to the public-switched telephone network to help law enforcers implement wiretaps. The FCC also announced that it will not require Internet telephone companies to disconnect customers who have not acknowledged limitations in the emergency-911 dialing capabilities of Internet telephony.

E-government
Defense Travel System Critiqued At A Panel Hearing
     Critics of the computer-based travel system for the Defense Department said the network is in jeopardy of becoming the next Virtual Case File, the FBI's failed data-management system. But Defense officials downplayed that assertion, essentially chalking up any problems with the system to growing pains. California-based The Corporate Solutions Group (CSG), which worked on the initial development of the Defense Travel System now handled by Northrop Grumman, was later hired by Defense and the General Services Administration (GSA) to audit the system. CSG found that up to 8 percent of returns from the system's flight search function did not load, partner Robert Langsfeld told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Investigations. GSA's "response was to say that the error rate of 8 percent was totally and completely acceptable," he said. CSG later was "denied access to pertinent information and [was] not allowed to see if the program was performing as the contract required."

Courts
Supreme Court Could Address Patent Reform Case
     One of the most controversial proposals to reform the nation's patent system was struck from legislation this summer, but the Supreme Court could revive the debate in its fall term. Lawyers for the online auction firm eBay and its subsidiary Half.com in July asked the high court to revisit the issue. At issue is whether federal district judges should automatically stop companies that infringe upon another firm's patents from continuing to engage in transactions related to those products. A pending House bill, H.R. 2795, initially said the law should be clarified so that judges hew closer to the current legal standard of weighing the circumstances. The measure also said judges should consider whether simply awarding monetary damages is sufficient. Those are the issues presented in eBay and Half.com v. MercExchange. In March, a federal appeals court reversed a lower-court opinion that did not automatically award an injunction against eBay and Half.com services.