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On The Hill
Dueling Wireless Bills Spark Confusion, Surprise
by David Hatch
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens and Sen. George Allen view communication issues as paramount, but there appears to be a lack of communication between their offices.
Each lawmaker's office announced separate wireless broadband measures in press releases e-mailed minutes apart on Feb. 17.
"We didn't realize that they were going to introduce their own bill until that afternoon," a staffer for Allen, R-Va., said. "It suddenly just appeared." But the chairman's staff strongly denied assertions by observers that Stevens sought to pre-empt Allen's efforts.
The bills are intended to spur the deployment of wireless broadband by utilizing unassigned or unused broadcast television spectrum called "white space." The measures would let unlicensed service providers operate on the frequencies before and after the nation's transition to digital television.
"We did say to Sen. Allen that we had no objection to him introducing a bill and welcomed his involvement," Commerce Committee Staff Director Lisa Sutherland said. She said Stevens, R-Alaska, circulated his measure to Allen and other lawmakers on Feb 10. In addition, the Alaskan's bill reflects changes suggested by Allen's office, she said.
Allen staffers, however, said they thought they had received a "green light" from the chairman's staff for their boss to offer his bill first and take the lead on the issue. Allen tried unsuccessfully to convince Stevens to co-sponsor his legislation, according to Allen staffers.
Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.; John Kerry, D-Mass.; and John Sununu, R-N.H., co-sponsored Allen's bill. Stevens' measure was filed without co-sponsors, though discussions were held with committee ranking Democrat Daniel Inouye of Hawaii.
"The bill was provided to us shortly before they introduced it," Inouye spokesman Andy Davis said. "There wasn't enough time before introduction to review it."
It should have been clear to Allen's office that Stevens would offer a bill, Sutherland said. The chairman, who had been drafting his measure since August, wanted to add it to the budget package enacted earlier this year but the broadband language was not considered germane.
Sutherland said discussions would continue with Allen and other committee members to develop "a common approach and work toward a bipartisan consensus." Allen's office plans to discuss the matter with Stevens' staffers.
Sutherland noted that multiple bills with varying approaches on a subject are not uncommon. The bills differ on how they would tackle potential interference with TV signals, a key concern of broadcasters.
"Our legislation will enable entrepreneurs to provide affordable, competitive, high-speed, wireless broadband services in areas that otherwise have no connectivity," Allen said last week. He noted that white space is "a valuable public resource."
In a press release, Senate Commerce said the chairman's bill would free spectrum to provide communities with wireless broadband and home networking services.
Microsoft applauded both measures. "Both bills are a great step forward for innovation and for delivering broadband to rural parts of the country," Jack Krumholtz, the software firm's associate general counsel, said in a statement.
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Privacy
Report: Tech Adoption, Privacy Losses Are Intertwined
by Sarah Lai Stirland
Americans have paid for their love affair with modern technologies by surrendering privacy rights, and Congress, the courts and technology companies should take action to restore them, the authors of a new report said Wednesday.
"Our message is that technology changes have eroded privacy protections and require redress and new protections," said Jerry Berman, founder and president of the Center for Democracy and Technology.
The group released a 40-page report on how technologies have eroded legal principles that previously protected American citizens from unreasonable government searches and seizures.
The Constitution's Fourth Amendment guarantees that protection in the privacy of homes, and criminal law has evolved to establish the rules for government investigations. Congress tried to extend Fourth Amendment rights to electronic communications in 1986 to protect information flowing through electronic networks. But privacy experts have said the law needs to be updated.
CDT's report examines emerging technological trends and says they have made Americans more vulnerable to government investigations. The report focuses on the explosion in cheap storage technology and its impact on people's habits of saving data, on the government's ability to use "keystroke logging" to capture information, and on location awareness technology.
Keystroke logging refers to programs that can be installed on computers to track users' keystrokes and commands. Location awareness technology can track people via their cellular telephones and devices such as car navigation devices.
"We're all wedded to our cell phones, but it's essentially a tracking device," said Jim Dempsey, CDT's policy director and the primary author of the report.
CDT's concern is that the traditional legal standards that government criminal and anti-terrorism investigators must meet in regular investigations are not applied to the digital world.
The group recommended a multi-pronged fix: Technology companies should build products with privacy principles in mind; courts should apply Fourth Amendment principles in disputes over the government efforts to spy on citizens; and lawmakers should enact a statute to heighten legal standards for government investigators.
Congress and the Bush administration should convene a task force to enable the private sector and policymakers to discuss issues confidentially, Berman and Dempsey said. That would foster frank discussions and let policymakers enact workable and consistent legal standards, they said.
In the past year, Congress has shown ambivalence about increasing legal standards for terrorism investigators. Numerous polls also have shown that Americans are ambivalent about their privacy rights. The polls revealed that the populace is evenly split when asked whether they are angry about a wiretapping program without warrants conducted by the Bush administration.
But Dempsey said he is encouraged by a string of judicial decisions in the past few years that upheld strict Fourth Amendment standards against government requests to track people via their cell phones.
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Health
Policymakers Ponder Next Move To Fight Avian Flu
by Danielle Belopotosky
As avian influenza spreads, Congress is beginning to prepare for the reauthorization next year of a bioterrorism measure aimed at addressing key public health initiatives.
A 2002 law that aims to coordinate national monitoring, response and reporting in the case of bioterrorism or health emergencies is up for reauthorization in 2007. But since its enactment, the Homeland Security Department has been charged with the surveillance and detection of bioterrorism attacks. And in 2004, the Health and Human Services Department launched its health information technology initiative, which includes the monitoring of and response to public health emergencies.
"We are trying to look at all of those [efforts underway] to determine how they are or are not integrated," Jennifer Bryning said Wednesday during a Capitol Hill briefing, where experts also demonstrated tools for health emergencies. Bryning works on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Bioterrorism Subcommittee.
Since a 2003 Government Accountability Office report, there has been concern that HHS and Homeland Security are duplicating efforts. The report concluded that preparedness for a bioterrorism attack varies across state and local jurisdictions.
The federal government's clumsy response to Hurricane Katrina in August has highlighted the idea of situational awareness, Bryning said. And given the growing threat of an avian flu outbreak, there is a heightened need to think about animal health surveillance, she added.
The World Health Organization on Monday confirmed 171 cases of avian flu, of which 93 people have died. Since then, new cases have been confirmed in Indonesia and Iraq. As a result, Bryning said the HELP subcommittee will focus on three overarching areas: leadership, the role of local health officials, and hospital preparedness.
The subcommittee will review the leadership roles in the national response plan. While HHS is responsible for public health, "there was confusion about how the plan was implemented" by different agencies, she said.
As Congress tackles the broad issues, there are many who are testing new ways to better detect and respond to emergencies. The Army is working with college laboratories to develop air, water and wind sensors that gather data, which is transmitted to mesh networks in real time.
And the National Library of Medicine is moving data from an Internet-based database of toxic chemicals to a wireless information system where emergency responders can receive information on handheld devices in the field, said Jack Snyder of the National Library of Medicine.
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Domains
Latest .com Deal Spurs Outrage In Internet Community
by Randy Barrett
With a public comment period officially over, industry response to a revamped settlement between VeriSign and the Internet's governing organization for oversight of the .com domain is decidedly chilly.
VeriSign and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers have been trying to reach a settlement that would end years of litigation over stewardship of the .com domain. But key provisions of the deal -- already renegotiated once -- continue to irk domain-name retailers known as registrars.
Topping the list of complaints is language that would give VeriSign exclusive rights to run the lucrative .com domain in perpetuity. As well, critics are unhappy with an arrangement that would let VeriSign raise its prices over four of the six years of the contract.
One commenter dubbed the settlement "whipped cream on a road apple." "With the eight biggest registrars opposing this settlement, and the grassroots domain owners also opposing it, how can ICANN be so arrogant and negligent to approve this deal?" Hal Meyer of Rhode Island asked.
Last week, the eight companies -- BulkRegister, GoDaddy, Intercosmos Media Group, Melbourne IT, Network Solutions, Register.com, Schlund+Partner and Tucows -- urged rejection of the proposed settlement. Together, the registrars manage 25 million .com domains.
"In its present form, the proposed agreement still puts the entire Internet community at needless risk by eliminating competition for the .com registry and allowing VeriSign to raise registration fees without cost justification," Network Solutions CEO Champ Mitchell wrote in a comment.
ICANN's board, led by Vint Cert, is expected to address the revised deal on Feb. 28, but few expect any final decision will be made at that meeting. "The board is considering all comments," an ICANN spokesman said.
VeriSign calls the deal its "best and final offer," but there are indications that the company may be willing to continue negotiations. "We're waiting for a vote from the ICANN board," said Tom Galvin of 463 Communications, which represents VeriSign. "That's the next appropriate step."
In an unusual letter to Cerf released Feb. 20, Verisign CEO Stratton Sclavos refuted criticism from Network Solutions and others, and urged the ICANN board to approve the settlement.
"The secure and reliable operation of the .com registry and the domain-name system are too important to the international and Internet community to be placed at risk by delaying the approval of the proposed .com registry agreement or yielding to the threats of a few who may be willing to place their interests ahead of those of the larger Internet community," Sclavos wrote.
To do so, ICANN will have to buck the almost unanimous condemnation of the deal from industry players and even its own former CEO, Michael Roberts.
"ICANN Board Chair Vint Cerf now works for a company whose motto is, 'Do no evil,' " Roberts wrote. "So how could Vint and his fellow board members be engaged in a massive capitulation to the enterprise greed of dot-com operator VeriSign?"
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White House
Bush Outlines Areas Of Cooperation With India
by Winter Casey
President Bush on Wednesday outlined five areas where the United States and India are working together, including information sharing, the outsourcing of jobs to other countries, security and research. He also hailed the countries' overall cooperation and aligned national goals.
U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies have been working with India on a regular basis "to make air travel more secure" and to secure cyberspace, Bush told the Asia Society.
He also said U.S. investments in India have helped make American companies more competitive globally. Americans benefit "when U.S. companies establish research centers to tap into India's educated workforce," he said.
As an example, Bush referenced Texas Instruments. He said the firm currently employs 16,000 U.S. workers and gets more than 80 percent of its revenues from sales overseas.
"More than 20 years ago, Texas Instruments opened a center in Bangalore, which is India's Silicon Valley," he said. "They did so to assist in analog chip design and digital chip design and related software development. The company says that their research centers in countries like India allow them to run their design efforts around the clock."
Bush added, "We look to India to continue to lead as we work together for an ambitious agreement on services and manufacturing."
Dana Robert Dillon, a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, also touted the future of U.S.-India relations. The nations' relationship has "blossomed" since the end of the Cold War, Dillon said. "It is absolutely headed in a good direction."
The president specifically hailed cooperation in trade and democracy. "India is now one of the fastest-growing markets for American exports, and the growing economic ties between our two nations are making American companies more competitive in the global marketplace," Bush said.
A number of U.S. lawmakers and officials have spoken against outsourcing. And while Bush noted that some Americans have lost jobs as companies have shifted operations to India, he said the best response is educational polices to foster a highly skilled workforce in the United States.
"The outsourcing of some of the technical aspects such as computer programming and other tech-oriented positions has been very helpful to the United States," Dillon said. Less regulation in India also helps U.S. companies benefit, he said.
Bob Cohen, a spokesman for the Information Technology Association of America, called the net effect of outsourcing "very beneficial to the U.S. economy."
The global marketplace demands low barriers so jobs and businesses can come to the United States and so companies can continue to pursue business opportunities overseas, he said.
India still has work that needs to be done, Bush said. "India needs to continue to lift its caps on foreign investment, to make its rules and regulations more transparent, and to continue to lower its tariffs and open its markets to American agricultural products, industrial goods, and services."
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Today's Feature:
International Roundup
World Trade Organization Director-General Pascal Lamy fielded nearly 200 questions during an online chat on Tuesday.
Every Wednesday, read the International Roundup by Danielle Belopotosky
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E-briefs
Intellectual Property: Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez on Wednesday bashed China for failing to stop massive government use of pirated computer software. In an interview with AP, Gutierrez said the United States is considering a challenge against China at the World Trade Organization, where both nations are members. "The one thing that demands more attention from the worldwide community is this software piracy,'' Gutierrez said. "It doesn't reconcile with a country that is going to host the Olympics to be procuring software that is pirated.'' Last week, the Bush administration announced the creation of an enforcement task force within the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to focus on Chinese intellectual property violations.
Intellectual Property: Research in Motion on Wednesday disclosed that the Patent and Trademark Office has issued a final rejection of two of the nine patent claims at issue in an infringement lawsuit surrounding the BlackBerry communications device. NTP has sued RIM, which makes the BlackBerry, for infringing on NTP patents. NTP still can appeal the PTO decision at the agency and then in court. The announcement comes two days before the two companies are scheduled to appear before a federal district judge. He is scheduled to decide whether to issue an injunction against BlackBerries and what damages to award NTP over the patents in question. Several documents unearthed by NTP's lawyers through a Freedom of Information Act request on Tuesday show that the Canadian embassy actively lobbied both PTO and the Commerce Department on RIM's behalf.
Privacy: Lawmakers in the European Union on Tuesday approved a law for retaining communications data for law enforcers, several news sources from Brussels, Belgium, report. The legislation will force telephone companies and Internet service providers to store certain aspects of their customers' communications and make them available to law enforcers. The directive requires companies in EU nations to store their data for six months to two years. The law covers the originating and destination numbers and not the contents of messages themselves, according to the stories. EU countries have 18 months to implement the rules, according to the Web site EUObserver.com.
E-Government : The Justice Department on Wednesday announced the launch of an interactive program to educate criminal-justice employees about the science of DNA analysis. The program, which was developed by the National Institute of Justice, features 15 separate training modules to provide instruction on the biology of DNA and the history of forensic DNA analysis, as well as tips on how to understand a DNA laboratory reports and to conduct research using DNA databases. President Bush announced a five-year initiative in 2003 to award more than $1 billion to facilitate the use of DNA analysis in the criminal-justice system. "As more crimes are solved using DNA evidence, it is important for prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, juries and other criminal-justice professionals in the courtroom to understand the science behind DNA analysis when it is presented as evidence," Assistant Attorney General Regina Schofield said in a statement.
Spectrum: Radio spectrum is inefficiently used and poorly administered by the federal government, according to a new analysis from the Technology CEO Council. The group recommends that Congress require the FCC and Commerce Department to conduct a band-by-band analysis to find underutilized portions of the spectrum. Once found, the agencies should improve utilization or transfer the spectrum to the private sector via public auction. "We need to encourage the use of more efficient technologies, allow greater flexibility in the use and transfer of spectrum, [and] inject free-market discipline into spectrum policy," said the report, which is scheduled to be released Thursday.
E-Government: The chief information officer for the U.S. intelligence community said Wednesday that he wants to make it easier for corporations to obtain government certification for their products and services, GovExec.com reports. Dale Meyerrose, who moved into his post two months ago, said that changing the certification process for new intelligence technologies is one of his top priorities. "In some sectors that process takes about 42 months and costs in the millions of dollars, which automatically eliminates the innovation of small companies and corporations," Meyerrose said at an Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association conference. "We can surely do better than that, particularly since our information technology refresh cycle is somewhere between seven and 18 months." Meyerrose, who works for the director of national intelligence and is the first CIO for the intelligence community, said he wants standardization across agencies. He said some current certifications are more lenient than others.
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