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Campaigns
Candidates For Majority Leader Strong On Tech Issues
by Randy Barrett
With the House majority leader contest running white hot between Republican Reps. John Boehner of Ohio and Roy Blunt of Missouri, the technology industry can stay cool. Both contenders have strong records on high-tech issues.
According to the Information Technology Industry Council, the lawmakers received a 100 percent rating for 10 key tech-related votes in the 108th Congress. Boehner enjoys a 98 percent lifetime voting record with the group. ITI tags Blunt with an 84 percent rating. The votes ranged from support of a national defense authorization bill to a yea for legislation to modernize the fee structure at the Patent and Trademark Office.
"I'm not sure there's much difference between them from the technology-industry standpoint," said Ralph Hellman, ITI's vice president of government relations. "We can't lose."
Blunt is a member of the House High-Tech Working Group and formerly sat on the Energy and Commerce Committee. He was required to leave the committee post in October when he became temporary majority leader. That committee handles many tech issues, including key issues related to the telecommunications and cable industries.
In the 109th Congress, the tech working group has pledged to support the research and development tax credit, reduce trade barriers, reform the patent system and protect intellectual property, among other areas.
Hellman said Blunt met with tech players in a series of informal meetings in 2001 before becoming majority whip. Blunt also was instrumental in gaining passage of the tech-supported free-trade agreement between the United States and some Central American nations.
Boehner has spoken to ITI's board and has been a strong advocate of improved math and science education, Hellman said. The lawmaker is uniquely positioned on the issues as chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee.
Boehner sponsored an education bill, H.R. 609, that would cover the interest on education loans for college students who commit to teaching math and science for five years. The measure also calls for grants for math and science coordination councils.
"We need to do a much better job educating our children," Boehner wrote in a Jan. 9 campaign letter to fellow House Republicans. "We spend more on education per student than any country in the developed world, yet our children's performance on international science and math tests is at best mediocre."
"As [Federal Reserve Board Chairman] Alan Greenspan told my committee in March of 2004," Boehner continued, "in today's world, we'll need not just to set high standards for our schools and meet them, we'll have to constantly raise those standards and constantly meet those higher expectations."
Improving math, science and engineering education is a major goal of leading tech officials, many of whom worry that American universities are not producing enough to remain competitive with Asia.
In a related development, Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., is running for majority whip. Cantor has been strong on health information technology, Hellman said. "Our industry is probably closest to [him]." Also gunning for the job are Mike Rogers of Michigan and Todd Tiahrt of Kansas, but neither have the support Cantor enjoys, since he is already chief deputy whip, said Hellman.
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Telecom
Technology Changes 'Decency' Landscape For The FCC
by Drew Clark
Editors' Note: This story is the latest in a multipart series on the federal and state policy implications raised by technological convergence and the "indecency issue." Technology Daily will feature stories on the topic throughout January.
In 1973, the FCC censured a New York City radio station for airing a monologue by comedian George Carlin about "seven dirty words."
When the Supreme Court reviewed the case, FCC v. Pacifica in 1978, it said that while the monologue was not obscene, it was patently offensive and indecent. More significantly, the court ruled that the pervasiveness of broadcast television and radio, and its easy accessibility to children, justified the FCC's authority to impose indecency limitations.
More than 25 years later, the FCC is again actively enforcing indecency law -- but in a vastly altered communications landscape. It is a new world where broadcasting is supplemented by cable television, satellite radio, videocassette recorders, and digital videodiscs, video recorders and music players.
The FCC defends its action by reference to children and families. Now the agency is attempting to expand the enforcement to cable television.
"Parents who want to watch TV together find they have too little to watch," FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said in November at a Senate Commerce Committee forum on decency. "TV has become less family friendly."
And while there are many cable television channels that feature children's programming, such as the Disney Channel, Nickelodeon and Noggin, "parents cannot subscribe to these channels" alone, he continued. "They are forced to buy the channels they don't want to get the channel they do want."
In January 2003, Martin first offered his ideas for a family tier on cable. He also proposed a family viewing hour on broadcast television. Since becoming chairman in March 2005, Martin assiduously has promoted the family tier over the objection of the cable industry.
In the November remarks, Martin went further. If the cable industry would not support a family tier, he said, it should have to sell its programming "a la carte," or channel-by-channel. Consumer groups and social conservative support that solution.
Failing the per-channel approach or a family tier, Martin said, Congress should amend the indecency law to cover cable. In a speech in Las Vegas on Friday, he said "that indecency obligation, to not put on indecent material, doesn't transition over to the cable services."
"We concur that indecency regulation does not apply to cable, which is a similar conclusion to what a recent Congressional Research Service report concluded," said National Cable and Telecommunications Association Vice President Brian Dietz.
Cable industry players hate indecency law, but believe that the Supreme Court would protect them. In 2000, the high court struck down a law limiting the hours that the Playboy Channel could cablecast sexually explicit programs.
That is why the giant cable operators told Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, that they would not oppose a cable indecency law as long as it did not mandate the per-channel approach or a family tier. Stevens and ranking Democrat Daniel Inouye of Hawaii declined the deal.
The cable industry is concerned over those proposals because they say the plans would undermine their business model of assembling a package of niche channels such as news, sports, music videos, learning, science fiction, and local programming.
Meanwhile, the FCC has not totally abandoned extending indecency rules to the satellite sector. In a Friday interview, Martin said the commission conceivably could reverse a decision last year that said satellite was exempt.
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Telecom
Indiana Senate OKs Phone Deregulation, Broadband Rules
by Michael Martinez
An Indiana Senate committee on Tuesday advanced a sweeping proposal to deregulate the state's telephone market.
The Homeland Security, Utilities and Public Policy Committee approved the measure, S.B. 245, on an 8-2 vote, sending it to the full Senate for action that could come as early as next week.
The bill would let telephone companies set their own prices by 2009 and hike their rates by $1 each month until that date, if they provide high-speed Internet services to more than half of their customers in areas with increased prices.
The legislation would empower the state with franchising authority for video programming and would create strict rules for municipalities seeking to deploy broadband networks.
Testimony on the measure lasted more than five hours. The witness list included representatives from the office of Gov. Mitch Daniels, AT&T, Comcast, FreedomWorks and Verizon Communications.
Supporters of the bill, including Daniels, a Republican, have argued that relaxed rules would bolster competition. FreedomWorks co-chairman and former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, said that consumers would benefit from the bill and that existing franchise laws stifle competition.
"Unfortunately, franchise regulations continue to keep new technologies out of the hands of ordinary Americans," Armey said in written testimony.
But the bill's critics said it would do the opposite. Speaking on behalf of the Indiana Association of Cities and Towns, Linton Mayor Tom Jones and Bluffton Mayor Ted Ellis, said the proposal's stringent requirements for municipal broadband projects would deny citizens access to developing technologies. Linton is one of two Indiana cities with its own broadband network.
"It sets up unreasonable hoops and barriers so that it's basically impossible for municipalities to take this matter into their own hands," association spokeswoman Andrea Johnson said. "For years there were places the telecom industry hasn't invested and haven't deemed it's worth their while."
A House proposal to restrict municipal broadband networks died in committee last year.
John Koppin, president of the Indiana Telecommunications Association, was among 19 witnesses who could not testify at the hearing because of time constraints. In a phone interview, he said he and the group's member companies are pleased with the regulatory flexibility and franchising adjustments included in the measure.
The legislature began its 10-week "short session" last week. All bills must be approved by the chambers where they were introduced by early February for further consideration.
Jay Kenworthy, a spokesman for the Senate Majority Caucus, said language addressing tax incentives for broadband deployment would be taken out of the bill so that it can move through the Senate more quickly. He said he expects the provision to be reintroduced in the House if the bill makes it that far.
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Crime
Internet, Other Tools Being Used To Launder Money
by Greta Wodele
Criminals and terrorists are taking advantage of financial services such as online payments and prepaid consumer cards to move vast amounts of dirty money, according to a new government assessment of money laundering.
The analysis, the first government-wide study of money laundering in the United States, found nine areas of the U.S. financial sector that criminals and terrorists exploit to transfer billions of dollars in illicit funds. The list included banks, insurance companies, casinos, online payments, money orders, wire transfers and prepaid consumer cards.
Bush administration officials said Wednesday that as law enforcers target traditional money-laundering tactics, violators look to new services that do not require identification, like money orders from Western Union and the U.S. Postal Service. In a review of suspicious activity reports from 2002 to 2004, money-service businesses were cited in more than 73 percent.
Consumer cards are an alternative to cash and money orders, and officials said the cards are being used to smuggle cash. For example, law enforcers have found drug dealers who loaded large amounts of cash onto prepaid cards and send the cards to their drug suppliers outside the country. The drug suppliers then used the cards to withdraw money from automatic teller machines.
Officials said they would use the government study to draft a comprehensive strategy to combat money laundering but declined to establish a deadline for completing a proposal. "We'll work on it as aggressively as we can," a Treasury Department official said.
The official added that until then, agencies will take steps to combat vulnerabilities. Three ways to measure success, officials said, are the number of seizures and arrests; changes in patterns of money-laundering tactics; and evidence that criminals are being pushed out of the U.S. banking system and into constricted tactics.
To combat money laundering, the FBI is developing computer software to visualize financial patterns, and to link and analyze distinct criminal activities. The agency also plans to deploy an advanced file-management system to help investigators analyze and share intelligence about criminal activities.
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Digital Television
Firms Endorse Cable Platform Despite Technical Issues
by Drew Clark
Cable operators are making inroads in their quest for electronic manufacturers to use their OpenCable Application Platform, a technology that the Consumer Electronics Association calls "simply not acceptable for competition."
At a press conference last Thursday in Las Vegas, at CEA's largest Consumer Electronics Show ever, six major cable operators joined with top technical officials from LG Electronics, Panasonic and Samsung to endorse the technology known as OCAP. The companies signed the cable industry's licensing agreement in order to move forward in developing OCAP-compliant products that will allow two-way communication between cable operators and customers.
OCAP is a basically a programming language that resides on set-top boxes approved by the cable industry's Cable Labs division. To utilize OCAP, electronics companies must license the cable cards. CEA finds the license agreement unacceptable.
At last week's trade show, Panasonic released a set-top box based on OCAP and announced a deal to sell 250,000 of those boxes to Comcast. Panasonic is using OCAP to break into the set-top market, which has been dominated by Motorola and Scientific Atlanta.
The company's boxes include 250-gigabyte hard drives for use as digital video recorders. Yoshi Yamada, chairman and CEO of Panasonic, touted OCAP at a press conference in Las Vegas.
One of the technology's capabilities is a single remote control for the entire audio/video system. Using OCAP "will unleash the creative potential of cable and the [consumer electronic] industries for home entertainment," Yamada said.
Speaking at the Thursday event, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said Comcast would deploy Panasonic's OCAP-compliant box this year. Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt displayed a Samsung system for interactive games on cable television.
Asked why the cable operators could not simply connect to existing Internet technology, Britt and Roberts said OCAP is a necessary form of "middleware" because it works with all existing cable systems.
"There are 300 million analog TVs," Britt said. "Half of our customers have no set-top box. We need to have technology that serves all customers."
"To have a common language is a huge consumer benefit," Roberts added.
"You are less susceptible to problems like virus" with OCAP than with Internet-based services, said Woo Paik, the president and chief technical adviser for LG Electronics. Paik invented the digital, high-definition TV technology. "Also, cable has to sell Internet separately," he said.
In a November filing with the FCC, CEA blasted OCAP's licensing restrictions: "Such applications can take control of product resources and disable applications that are part of the product or were installed by the owner. Arbitration of [computing] resources is a critical issue."
"By contrast," the group added, "the [consumer electronics] side believes that the goal in supporting competitive products is to offer consumers a better-integrated experience, bridging both their cable and non-cable services in a single device."
"The fact that companies are developing things does not mean that [OCAP] is stable or guaranteed to work, or is a slam-dunk from any point of view," an industry source said.
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Security
Administration To Expand Foreign-Language Program
by Danielle Belopotosky
The United States is taking a new approach to diplomacy by teaching Americans a lesson in cultural and language appreciation.
President Bush last week announced a foreign-language program designed to strengthen national security. Bush, who spoke at the Summit of U.S. University Presidents on International Education, said the best way to spread freedom "is to have those of us who understand freedom be able to communicate in the language of the people we're trying to help."
He said "the war on terror" is not over. "There is still an enemy that lurks," and therefore, the United States must have "a language-proficient military" and intelligence officers and diplomats who can speak the language of those who want to hurt the United States or nations that it helps.
To meet that need, Bush announced the National Security Language Initiative. The program will focus on language areas of critical need, including Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Hindi and Farsi. Bush will request $144 million in fiscal 2007 to fund the effort.
Under the program, the secretaries of the Defense, Education and State departments, along with the national intelligence director, will develop a plan to expand foreign-language learning from kindergarten to universities. The State Department also will provide scholarships to students to study abroad and short-term opportunities for up to 3,000 high-school students by summer 2009.
The program also aims to increase the number of language teachers. It would establish a National Language Service Corps to recruit government workers and civilians to voluntarily teach. The State Department plans to expand its Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant Program to attract native speakers of what are considered critical languages.
The program "will press forward to bring people into the Foreign Service and into the Defense Department and into our intelligence agencies who are competent in those languages," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said at the summit.
To attract international students to study science and technology, Karen Hughes, undersecretary of State for public affairs and diplomacy, announced last week the creation of a Fulbright science and tech scholarship. It will be awarded through a worldwide competition and will offer foreign students an opportunity to study at a "top-flight" U.S. science institution, she said.
Bush also noted at the summit that "it's in our national interest that we solve visa issues." Speaking to the concern by universities that new visa policies have delayed or hindered access of foreign students to attend U.S. institutions, Bush said, "I fully understand some of your frustrations, particularly when you say the balance wasn't actually calibrated well, but we're going to get it right."
Meanwhile, Congress approved language in the fiscal 2006 funding law for the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education departments to support programs for college students who are participating in advanced foreign-language training abroad in areas critical to U.S. national security. Bush signed the bill into law Dec. 30.
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E-Government
Animal ID System Moves Without Federal Money
by Jerry Hagstrom, CongressDaily
NASHVILLE -- The Agriculture Department is moving forward with a national identification system for meat animals but does not plan to pay or even analyze the costs of reporting animal movements, a department official said here this week.
John Clifford, the chief veterinarian of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, told the American Farm Bureau Federation at its national convention here that the purpose of the ID system is to protect animal health and avoid the spread of disease.
Scientists have sought such a system for years for fear of foot-and-mouth disease in cattle. But it took greater pressure generated by the discovery of a case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, in Washington state in 2003 to make things move. That discovery prompted other countries to close their markets to U.S. beef. Japan only reopened its market last month, and other countries maintain the ban.
Under the ID plan announced last year, producers, stockyards and processors would report the movement of animals to a private entity. The department proposed a private system partly because meat producers feared that competitors and anti-meat activists might gain access to information held by the government. But producers had expected the government to pay the costs.
Clifford said the department would create and pay for a "metadata" system that would function like an Internet search engine to give the government access to any private animal ID systems, but producers and meat businesses will have to pay for the equipment to make their reports.
He said Agriculture believes it does not need to estimate the cost of the ID system because producers would report the information to a private entity.
Clifford said the federal and state governments would need access to the data at all times, but neither would pay for access to the system. He also said the initial system would be voluntary, but the department can mandate the system under authority in a 2002 farm law. Other countries have made such systems mandatory in order to get information on 100 percent of their meat animals.
Conflicts over the structure of the system and how to pay for it were apparent at a panel discussion at the convention.
Cattle producers are the most interested in an ID system. The National Cattlemen's Beef Association has a system that could be the recipient of data for all meat animals. NCBA lobbyist Jay Truitt said the organization may turn that system over to a consortium of several groups as soon as Wednesday.
But other meat groups and the Ranchers and Cattlemen Legal Fund-United Stockgrowers of America, a competitor to NCBA, are wary about placing sensitive information with an entity started by NCBA. National Pork Producers Council Vice President Kirk Farrell said there should be a separate approach for each species and noted that pork producers already have a system for tracking the movement of pigs and hogs in groups.
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Defense
Coast Guard Modernization Work Could Move Faster
by Jenny Mandel, Government Executive
The Coast Guard's long-term modernization program known as Deepwater could be dramatically accelerated from the current 25-year schedule if adequate funding is provided, contract officials said this week.
The program, aimed at upgrading aging equipment used more than 50 miles offshore, has drawn criticism for its long timeframe and unwieldy budget almost since its inception in the late 1990s. A joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman called Integrated Coast Guard Systems in June 2002 won a $17 billion, 20-year contract to manage the program, but the timeframe has grown to 25 years.
"We would welcome an acceleration, and it would achieve more economical production rates," Leo Mackay, the president of ICGS, said during a presentation to the press on Monday. He declined to say how much faster the program could be completed, deferring to existing studies on the subject and noting that funding is the main limiting factor.
"Deepwater is a state-of-the-shelf program, not a state-of-the-art program," Mackay said. The manufacture of assets depends on the pace of funding and production rather than technological innovation, he said. One exception lies in vertical, unmanned aerial vehicles, which he said face additional design and regulatory hurdles.
One of the program's key accomplishments has been the 11-year acceleration of plans to develop a fast response cutter, a multi-purpose vessel designed to replace the Coast Guard's aging patrol boats, Mackay said.
The Coast Guard awarded the initial Deepwater contract based on assessments before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and since has seen a significant increase in counter-terrorism responsibilities. An April 2004 report by RAND, a nonpartisan research organization based in Santa Monica, Calif., concluded that an acceleration of the program, combined with the purchase of more assets, would help the Coast Guard meet the expanded mission.
Last spring, Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., called for Deepwater to be completed in as little as 10 years. In promoting the accelerated schedule, the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee leaders argued that the "nation simply cannot afford to wait until 2024 or later" for more effective and reliable assets.
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Today's Feature:
International Roundup
The European Union remained the largest importer of Chinese goods in 2005, according to China's Ministry of Commerce. Trade between China and Europe last year is expected to top more than $200 billion, up 23.6 percent from the previous year.
Every Wednesday, read the International Roundup by Danielle Belopotosky
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E-briefs
E-Government: The Government Accountability Office has published a Web site to allow easier tracking of Antideficiency Act reports. The database summarizes reports that federal agencies and the mayor of Washington send to Congress to comply with the law. The act prohibits making or authorizing an expenditure in excess of the amount available in the appropriation or involving the government in any obligation to pay money before funds have been appropriated for that purpose. A recent Bush administration decision applied the law to the e-rate. The e-rate fund provides Internet subsidies for schools and libraries. Last year, Congress renewed for another year a law that temporarily exempted the e-rate and its parent, known as the universal service fund, from the Antideficiency Act. Other agency compliance reports are to be listed in the report on the GAO Web site.
E-Government: The FTC has launched a new Web site to help consumers avoid getting scammed online. At www.onguardonline.gov, visitors can learn about the latest exploits to steal personal information via unsolicited commercial e-mail, secretly installed computer "spyware" and "phishing" that relies on official-looking but fraudulent e-mails. The site recommends seven guidelines: protect personal information; know the sources of your interactions; use anti-virus software and a firewall; install computer-operating systems correctly; protect passwords; backup important files; and know who to contact if something goes wrong. "With awareness as your safety net, you can minimize the chance of an Internet mishap," the site said.
Courts: The Federal Circuit Court on Monday affirmed a lower court's decision against interactive television technology provider SeaChange International in a patent infringement case. The Federal Circuit affirmed a Delaware federal district court's jury judgment against Maynard, Mass.-based Seachange International. It ruled in favor of State College, Pa.-based Ncube. Ncube is now doing business as C-Cor. The jury had found that SeaChange International had willfully infringed upon several elements of one of C-Cor's patents on interactive television technology, and awarded C-Cor double its actual damages and two-thirds of its attorney fees.
Intellectual Property: Forthcoming court rulings in the lawsuits pitting the book publishing industry and authors against technology giant Google could set important precedents in copyright law, according to a December Congressional Research Service report. The Author's Guild and the Association of American Publishers have filed copyright infringement lawsuits against Google over its Google Print program. "The arguably unique question presented is whether apparent prima facie infringing activity that facilitates an arguably legitimate us is indeed a fair one," wrote Robin Jeweler, author of the report. A prima facie case is a lawsuit alleging that the facts are adequate to prove the underlying conduct supporting the cause of action and so should prevail.
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