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Lofgren Hires Chief Of Staff
by Bara Vaida
Silicon Valley Democrat Zoe Lofgren has made some staff changes in her House office over the past several months, including the naming of a new chief of staff.
Lofgren named David Thomas to that top slot, replacing John Flannery, who decided to pursue other personal interests. Thomas most recently was director of congressional relations at the FTC and before that was deputy director of legislative affairs for former Vice President Al Gore. At the FTC, which he left in June 2001, Thomas worked on online privacy, the marketing of violent entertainment to children and merger reviews.
Lofgren also hired Andrew Kugler as a legislative assistant, counsel and chief staff member on technology issues. Kugler recently left Los Angeles, where he worked as an entertainment and intellectual property attorney at O'Melveny & Myers for two years and at Greenberg & Glusker for two years before that. Kugler moved to D.C. because "I was interested in working on public policy and technology issues." Kugler said he also had two summer jobs in D.C, one working at the FTC and the other at the Energy Department.
Susan Lindauer also is new to Lofgren's office, serving as the communications director.
The Ins And Outs At The FCC
Robert (Doc) Mirelson has been named deputy chief of the FCC's Consumer and Government Affairs Bureau, where he will focus on consumer outreach. Most recently, Mirelson was associate with Booz Allen Hamilton, where he worked on their national security team. There he developed public information politics and managed public affairs, training education and communication projects for client such as the National Imagery & Mapping Agency, the Pentagon and the IRS. Prior to that, Mirelson was a colonel in the U.S. Army and a senior public affairs officer.
Jack Zinman, meanwhile, has left the FCC to become the senior adviser to Nancy Victory, director of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), as of May 1. Zinman has been working at the FCC since 1997, most recently in the Common Carrier Bureau on universal service issues and, before that, in the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau on spectrum issues.
Guardian Of The Children
J. Robert Flores, a former member of the panel tasked with protecting children from harmful material on the Internet, has been confirmed as the Justice Department's administrator of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
Flores served on the COPA Commission, which was formed under the Child Online Protection Act. As head of juvenile justice, he will support states and localities in their efforts to develop and implement prevention and intervention programs. Flores most recently was vice president and senior counsel for the National Law Center for Children and Families, and he serves as legal counsel to the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.
Moving On And Up
Rob Smith is leaving Sun Microsystems after spending two years as federal affairs representative on tax, trade and technology issues. Smith is joining Venable Baetzer & Howard's legislative practice, where he will continue to work on technology and trade issues. Before working at Sun, Smith was the legislative director for Rep. Wes Watkins, R-Okla., a legislative assistant to Joel Hefley, R-Colo., and intern for Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla.
Elsewhere, after two-and-a-half years as director of government relations, Matt Tanielian has been promoted to vice president of government relations at the Information Technology Industry Council. Previously, Tanielian was chief counsel on business and technology issues for Sen. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., and the Senate Judiciary Administrative Oversight and the Courts Subcommittee. He also has served as a staff attorney at the Federal Election Commission.
In other industry news, the Computer Systems Policy Project (CSPP) said two new CEOs have joined its coalition of high-tech CEOs. They include EMC's Joseph Tucci and Intel's Craig Barrett. Barrett replaces Intel chairman Andy Grove and also will assume leadership of CSPP's trade committee, which focuses on passing free-trade policy in Congress.
GOP Touts Poll Favoring Rep. Morella
Maryland Republican Constance Morella, a former chairwoman of the House Science Subcommittee on Technology, is doing well in the polls despite an expected tough challenge from Democrat Mark Shriver this November, according to an April 9 press release from the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC).
The NRCC said that a Feb. 5-6 American Viewpoint poll showed Morella would win the race 50 percent to 29 percent. It also showed Morella with a favorable rating of 75 percent.
Elsewhere On Capitol Hill, IBM, which has invested about $1 billion in open-source software products, hosted a Tuesday morning briefing on the Linux operating system and its impact on intellectual property for Senate high-tech staffers. IBM's vice president of emerging business opportunities spoke about how open-source software is developed and what its security advantages are. He also addressed intellectual property challenges and other policy issues.
Who You Callin' A Spammer?
An e-mail snafu erupted earlier this month between the public relations firm Fleishman-Hillard and Declan McCullagh, a Wired reporter and Politech e-mail list editor, and the squabble caused the public affairs firm's e-mail communications to be blocked on Internet servers.
The confusion reportedly began when Fleishman-Hillard e-mail administrator Chuck Magner gave a new employee the same e-mail address as a previous employee who had subscribed to McCullagh's Politech list. When the new employee could not unsubscribe because of an internal Fleishman-Hillard technological problem, Magner charged that McCullagh's e-mail list is spam and said he would report the list to anti-spamming lists.
That sparked a flurry of e-mails from Politech members and McCullagh supporters, some of whom blocked e-mails from Fleishman-Hillard and advised anyone on the list not to hire the company to handle technology public affairs work. The confusion was cleared up last week when McCullagh received a call from Michael Busselen, Fleishman-Hillard's senior vice president and general manager, who apologized and ordered a fix of the technical problems.
While love may be lost between Politech fans and Fleishman-Hillard, romance may be in the air for a House lawmaker and a technology guru. Roll Call Daily reports that Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., reportedly has found romance with Tatiana Gau, a philanthropist and senior vice president of integrity assurance at AOL Time Warner, where she specializes in consumer protection and privacy. Gau, who once worked at the CIA, was Kennedy's guest at the opening of the new Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis exhibit at the Corcoran Gallery last week.
And the Winner Is ...
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has chosen this year's winners of the Pioneer awards for people who have made a significant impact on developing computer-mediated communications.
The honorees include: The Mercury News columnist Dan Gillmor, for his commitment to accurate and cutting-edge reporting on tech issues; Privacy Rights Clearinghouse founder and director Beth Givens, for her work in fighting for consumers' privacy rights; and teenager Jon Johansen, for pioneering software work that enabled fair use of copyrighted material. Johansen has been indicted by Norway for developing the DeCSS software that cracked the copy-protection system for digital-videodisc players.
Clarification
In response to last week's People Column item about concern in the science community about House Science Committee majority staffer Peter Rooney's contributions to Democrats, Rooney said the committee's work is nonpartisan, so his donations are a non-issue. "I've always worked for Republicans and Democrats, and I don't consider it an issue," he said. "When I worked for Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn. and John Rockefeller, D-W.Va. [as executive director of the Forum on Technology and Innovation], this was never an issue."
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