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Bond Lures House Aide To Commerce
by Bara Vaida
Ben Wu, counsel at the House Science Environment, Technology and Standards Subcommittee, has left the Hill to join the Commerce Department as deputy undersecretary for the Technology Administration. In that position, he will work closely with Phil Bond, the undersecretary for the Technology Administration.
"One of the reasons I decided to leave the Hill to join the administration is the great personal respect I have for Phil Bond," said Wu, a Maryland native who first started working in Congress for Rep. Constance Morella, R-Md., 13 years ago. Wu said the focus of the Technology Administration is to be the high-tech community's "portal" into the Bush administration.
Between 1996 and 2000, Wu worked on the House Y2K Task Force that led legislative efforts to create a national strategy for addressing the Y2K computer threat.
In other administration news, Nina Shafran was named deputy chief of the FCC's Audio Services Division in the Mass Media Bureau. She joined the FCC from the law firm of Dow Lohnes & Albertson, where she specialized in broadcast matters.
Before that, Shafran worked in the Washington office of the law firm of O'Melveny & Myers, and in the D.C. office of the law firm of Weil Gotschal & Manges. Before practicing law, Shafran specialized in international trade matters and worked at Commerce.
Looking For Security
The Senate Republican High-Tech Task Force hosted seven companies, a member of Carnegie Mellon's Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) and the Electronic Industries Alliance in a discussion on cyber security last Thursday afternoon.
The session focused on educating lawmakers about cyber threats. The list of corporate attendees included: Bill Connor, CEO of Entrust Technologies; Bill Gravell, director of information assurance at TRW; Kevin Nixon, chief security officer at Exodus Communications; Ronald Sable, senior vice president of Guardent; Ty Sagalow, chief operating officer of American International Group; Howard Schmidt, chief security officer at Microsoft; and Jeffrey Smith, CEO of Tumbleweed Communications.
Senators who attended the session included: Wayne Allard, R-Colo.; George Allen and John Warner, both Virginia Republicans; Robert Bennett, R-Utah; and Gordon Smith, R-Ore.
The companies urged lawmakers to pass an exemption to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that they say would help foster private-sector sharing of information about computer-security threats with the government.
Tech Fundraising Still Going Strong
Illinois Republican Jerry Weller, chairman of the New Economy Republicans in the House, said he raised $400,000 for the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) last Thursday at events in Silicon Valley and San Diego. The bulk of the money was raised at a reception in the home of Dan Cooperman, senior vice president and general counsel at Oracle.
Ten lawmakers, including NRCC Chairman Tom Davis, R-Va., joined Weller for the reception. TechNet, the bipartisan lobbying group based in Silicon Valley, helped organize the event.
The event, which had been organized in two weeks, surpassed expectations, though Weller declined to be specific. "We are finding strong support from the high-tech sector," Weller said when asked if there has been a weakening in campaign donations from the high-tech sector.
Donnie Fowler, TechNet's Democratic political director, said it is getting harder to squeeze funds out of the high-tech community but added that fundraising also has remained strong in the Democratic community. "As the technology community develops, the donations will naturally move upward," he said.
According to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, donors from computer and Internet companies gave $4.99 million to Republican and Democratic candidates and parties this year, compared with $9.5 million for the 1998 election year, which was the last mid-term election.
On Nov. 19, TechNet's cofounders, venture capitalist John Doerr and Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers, are hosting a fundraiser for Democratic Calif. Gov. Gray Davis in Woodside, Calif. Also that day, TechNet is scheduled to host a fundraising luncheon for Rep. Jennifer Dunn, R-Wash. And next month, TechNet is helping to raise funds for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee at two receptions.
Chambers Honored For Overcoming Disability
Cisco's Chambers was in Washington this week to receive an award on Monday evening from the The Lab School of Washington. Chambers was among three others, including attorney David Boies, who are being honored for achieving success despite growing up with learning disabilities.
Both Boies, who argued the Justice Department's case against Microsoft, and Chambers suffered from dyslexia. Chambers only arrived in Washington to attend the awards ceremony and returned to Cisco's headquarters in San Jose immediately following the event, a company spokesman said.
The Promise Of High-Tech Campaigns To Come
Chris Kelly, the former chief privacy officer at ExciteAtHome, has gone on vacation since losing his bid to become a member of Palo Alto's City Council. In a close race, that required a recount, Kelly lost by 186 votes to Jack Morton.
"I'm going to take a few days off before making a final decision about where to go from here, but it's looking like we'll be planning another race in a few years," Kelly wrote in an e-mail to friends.
In other campaign news, the Sioux Fall Argus Leader reports that former Republican Sen. Larry Pressler, who served in the Senate between 1979 and 1997, "came home to Humboldt to say the same thing he said 27 years ago: He would seek the Republican nomination to the House of Representatives."
While in the Senate, Pressler helped shape the 1996 Telecommunications Act. He was defeated in 1996 by Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., who himself faces a tough re-election fight next year.
It's Academic
Albert Tramposch, a senior official at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) until July of this year, has been named co-director of the Intellectual Property Program at George Mason University. Tramposch joins co-director John Witherspoon, who has built the George Mason program.
A registered U.S. patent attorney, Tramposch serves as counsel for the Alexandria, Va., intellectual property law firm of Burns, Doane, Swecker and Mathis. He is a former director of the Center for Intellectual Property Law at The John Marshall Law School in Chicago and a former judicial clerk for U.S. Circuit Judge Pauline Newman.
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