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Security
Democrats Streamline Security Bill For House Floor
by Chris Strohm
A massive bill to authorize programs and spending for the Homeland Security Department is finally going to the House floor for a vote, but only after Democrats removed or altered dozens of provisions caught in jurisdictional disputes between committees.
The House is expected to pass the bill Wednesday. It would authorize nearly $40 billion for the department in fiscal 2008, or about $2 billion more than the White House requested.
Democrats said, however, that the only way to get the bill to the House floor was to remove or change provisions that were in dispute between lawmakers and committees. They pledged to find other legislative vehicles to address the provisions that were removed.
"There must be a collaborative and coordinated approach to securing this nation, and I intend to work with my colleagues in other committees to ensure that these critical issues are addressed," said House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss.
Ironically, one deleted provision called for single, principal committees in each chamber to be responsible for oversight and authorization of the Homeland Security Department. The commission that investigated the 2001 terrorist attacks made that recommendation.
Democratic aides emphasized that Thompson succeeded in getting an authorization bill to the floor for the first time in two years. This is also the earliest an authorization bill has gone to the floor and the first time it has occurred before committee action on the annual Homeland Security appropriations bill.
Republicans were upset with the decision to strip provisions, saying they were not included in the negotiations. They said about half of the provisions reported out of the House Homeland Security Committee -- some of which they consider critical to homeland security -- have either been stripped or significantly altered.
"Obviously, I'm disappointed that so many important homeland security provisions were stripped out of the bill," said House Homeland Security Committee ranking member Peter King, R-N.Y. "This had been a bipartisan process from the start, but as soon as the bill got out of committee that clearly was no longer a priority." A GOP committee aide added: "It's ridiculous. I can't believe the Democrats no longer support these measures; it's really common-sense stuff."
For example, a provision requiring a test program that uses biometrics to identify illegal aliens in the country was dropped. Another provision intended to improve information-sharing among the Secret Service, other federal agencies, and state and local governments was stripped. Democrats also removed a provision governing how grants for connecting communications systems across jurisdictions can be used.
Democrats said the provisions will be addressed in other legislation.
Republicans and Democrats have proposed a few controversial amendments to the bill that the House Rules Committee will consider Monday.
One proposal would authorize the department to use the Automated Targeting System to screen foreigners seeking to enter or depart the United States. The department already is using the system, but Democrats have objected to it on grounds that it could snag innocent travelers.
Another amendment would let states pass laws that are more stringent than Homeland Security regulations for securing chemical facilities. Key Republicans and the chemical industry oppose such a provision.
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Privacy
Key Senators, Others Slam Plan For Standard IDs
by Andrew Noyes
The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday slammed proposed regulations to create national standards for driver's licenses that he said were "forced through" by the Republican-led Congress last year without adequate deliberation.
The law, known as the REAL ID Act, requires new ID cards by May 2008. Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy said at a hearing of his panel that the statute is "a good example of what happens when the federal government imposes itself rather than creating a partnership with states. The days of Congress rubber-stamping any and every idea cooked up by this administration are over."
Privacy and civil liberties concerns about the law, which have been raised by a diverse array of state and national organizations, are compounded by the potential cost, Leahy said. REAL ID is an unfunded mandate that could cost states more than $23 billion, he said.
Ranking Republican Arlen Specter also noted that REAL ID has received "a checkerboard of responses." Eleven state legislatures have filed resolutions opposing the law, two states have rejected the mandate, and 33 have indicated they will comply, he said.
One issue that hits home for the Pennsylvania lawmaker is that "REAL ID does not respect the rights of the Amish and Mennonites who wish not to have their photo taken." That belief has been recognized by the Supreme Court and state law "and we need to respect people's rights," he said, adding that "we've got some weighty issues here."
An alternative approach, backed by groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, is a bill, S.717 that would repeal REAL ID and institute what some view as more workable standards. The Leahy-backed measure is awaiting debate in his committee. He told Technology Daily that he hopes to put it on the calendar soon but wants to hear from other members first.
Allen Gilbert, executive director of the ACLU of Vermont, said the complexity of REAL ID will turn jokes about waiting in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles into a reality. "Residents are going to feel like suspects when they are required to report and show their papers," he added.
Cato Institute privacy expert Jim Harper called REAL ID "a dead letter" that would "cost more to implement than it would add to the nation's security protections."
The deadline for comments on the agency's proposed rules was Tuesday.
The Heritage Foundation's James Carafano, who supports REAL ID, said the current credentialing regime is susceptible to bad actors and akin to the "wild West."
REAL ID is a "reasonable" option because it does not create new databases or give the federal government more information about citizens, he said. The program should be funded separately, not by draining state homeland security grants, Carafano added.
Janice Kephart, the former counsel to an anti-terrorism commission, cited a recent Zogby poll showing that 70 percent of Americans support REAL ID. Contrary to critics' claims, implementation of the law will lead to greater security and privacy, she said.
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E-Government
House Panel Eyes Paper Receipts For Electronic Votes
by Michael Martinez
The House Administration Committee on Tuesday afternoon was debating the practicality of a comprehensive electoral reform bill but had not voted on the measure by press time.
The measure before the panel, H.R. 811, would require paper records of votes cast on electronic machines. The committee analyzed whether the bill would impose reasonable mandates on state and local officials responsible for conducting elections.
Republicans cited concerns from some state election officials that the legislation would be unnecessarily aggressive in requiring states to update their systems by 2008. Panel ranking Republican Vernon Ehlers of Michigan accused Democrats of attempting to rush the measure through without substantive debate.
California Republican Kevin McCarthy also warned that "election official after election official" has told him the bill is not ready.
A substitute amendment offered by Ehlers to extend the timetable for the bill was rejected. His proposal would have given states until 2010 to upgrade their voting systems.
California Democrat Zoe Lofgren introduced a substitute amendment that would waive certain states of their requirement to move to paper-based systems by 2008. It also would boost the federal aid available to states under the bill to $1 billion.
She said Congress should not allow another federal election to be conducted on flawed voting systems. A vote on her proposal had not occurred by deadline.
Michael Capuano, a Democrat from Massachusetts, said the legislation would help address some of the holes in a federal law that was enacted in response to the 2000 presidential election, when paper ballots in Florida were a point of controversy. Many voting jurisdictions purchased new e-voting equipment after the bill was enacted in 2002.
The committee postponed the markup of the e-voting bill last week to allow more time for Republican amendments to be considered. Ehlers said the extra time did not sway his opinion that the measure would impose an "unmanageable" and "unnecessary" burden on states.
He said he remains supportive of the concept of ensuring that voting machines are auditable, but he is not convinced that mandating paper records is the best way to do so.
"Paper isn't foolproof," he said.
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On The Hill
Report Urges Capitol Transparency Via Technology
by Winter Casey
House lawmakers joined citizen advocates on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to urge more transparency in Congress and technological reforms to achieve that goal.
The Open House Project, an initiative of the Sunlight Foundation, released its recommendations to make Congress a more "open, public and fully transparent organization." The report consists of 10 proposals ranging from improving access to legislative and committee information to easing restrictions on the way lawmakers can use the Internet.
House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, was among those on hand to endorse the proposals. He said that having a more open process would hold lawmakers more accountable and would result in greater citizen participation in the government.
Rep. Brad Miller, D-N.C., added that transparency can have the deterrent effect of embarrassing lawmakers who cannot explain their actions to the public.
The Open House Project calls upon Congress to make publicly available a database of all bill status and summary information, and it advocates that congressional information be archived, with long-term access.
The report also urges committees to post online all records of their proceedings, and it proposes public access to select Congressional Research Service reports. CRS reports are produced for members of Congress and typically are made available only at high prices. Earlier this year, an alliance of open-government groups called for online access to the reports.
Leslie Harris of the Center for Democracy and Technology, which is part of that alliance, urged lawmakers to make unclassified and non-confidential CRS reports available to the public online. The reports cost taxpayers more than $100 million a year and are instrumental in shaping public policy, she said.
"Although there are several companies that sell copies of these highly informative reports to lobbyists and others who are willing to pay," she added, "Congress has never made the reports available in a consistent way to ordinary citizens."
The Open House Project additionally wants the regulations that govern lawmakers' use of the Internet to be updated, and it wants video of legislative proceedings to be open to the public for distribution via the Internet and other means.
In March, after pressure from bloggers, the C-SPAN public affairs network agreed to ease its copyright policy on using video footage from the House and Senate floors. The report decried "C-SPAN's de facto monopoly over broadcast-quality and archived video," advocated expanded video coverage to all committee hearings, and called for live and archived video access to proceedings over the Internet.
The report further proposes improvements in the Congressional Record and the creation of an Online Media Gallery to give bloggers and other online writers credentials to cover Congress.
Miller said any person who wants to be called a journalist should be, and as it is increasingly hard to define what a journalist is, "we should not define it."
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Lobbying
New Search Tool Links Lawmakers, Votes And Money
by Heather Greenfield
The advice to the young journalist in "All The Presidents Men," the film about the Watergate scandal, was to "follow the money." A new tool coming online next week will help reporters and others do just that.
Campaign donations to members of Congress and how they vote are matters of public record, but linking the money to the votes involves hours of research. The bipartisan, nonprofit group MapLight.org hopes to make the process easier.
Starting next week, MapLight plans to offer an online mash-up that links every donation to every member of Congress on every vote, and the data will be searched in a matter of seconds. The project expands upon one focused on the California legislature.
"There's previously been considerable information on money given to legislators but relatively little information available on the outcome and how legislators acted," MapLight Executive Director Dan Newman said.
As a preview, Newman offered the example of last year's House vote on a broad telecommunications bill, H.R. 5252.
The measure did not include strong provisions on network neutrality to prevent telecom companies from creating a tiered pricing system on the Internet. Telecom companies like BellSouth supported the bill; some major online content providers like Google opposed it.
Of the 321 House members voting on the bill, the supporters received an average of $11,063 from telecom companies, compared with $3,874 for those voting no. The donations from online content providers were significantly less overall and more balanced. Online content providers gave an average of $1,466 to House members voting yes and $1,984 to members voting no.
"We're nonpartisan and nonprofit, so we don't draw conclusions," Newton said.
Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, which operates a searchable database on campaign contributions at Opensecrets.org, said her group periodically has studied the link between money and votes since the 1980s. One study outlined the average contributions from AT&T versus BellSouth to lawmakers for and against another major attempt at telecom overhaul.
She said MapLight's new tool does that for hundreds if not thousands of votes.
Visitors to the site can search by bill number, lawmaker name or donor name. Newman said the information on legislation comes from the Library of Congress's THOMAS Web site, and donation information comes from CRP. Linking donors to what legislation lawmakers support or oppose comes from news reports, trade association Web sites and press releases, and online tips checked by a researcher.
The database can search unofficial links, too. For example, Newman said if someone overheard at a cocktail party that the airline industry opposes a bill to tax carbon, there is a way to plug in that industry and a carbon bill number to instantly calculate donations.
Krumholz said the information is great for bloggers and average citizens but cautioned that it is important to take the information as part of an investigation. "There might be all kinds of reasons where money might appear to correlate, but it's not causal," she said.
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Television
FCC's Martin, Cable Industry Spar Over TV Violence
by David Hatch
LAS VEGAS -- FCC Chairman Kevin Martin defended his agency's recent report to Congress on television violence following a broadside Monday by National Cable and Telecommunications Association chief Kyle McSlarrow.
The document, which concludes that Congress can regulate explicit violence without abridging the First Amendment, has united the broadcast and cable sectors in opposition.
McSlarrow complained to journalists that the report ignores judicial precedent and recommends that cable outlets adopt per-channel pricing without justifying a need for such a la carte offerings.
"I think that the a la carte issues raise the least First Amendment concerns of any of the potential solutions," Martin countered after touring the exhibit floor at the NCTA conference here. Noting that cable operators already let subscribers block objectionable programs, he said per-channel pricing simply goes a step further by reimbursing viewers for blocked channels.
The FCC chairman, a Republican, spoke as the Senate Commerce Committee, prepares to hold a May 17 hearing on the topic.
In advance, panel member John (Jay) Rockefeller, D-W.Va., plans to introduce legislation permitting the FCC to target graphic programming during prime time. Commerce Chairman Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, already has expressed support for Rockefeller's efforts and has pledged to move the bill.
McSlarrow asserted during a press briefing that the report would be relegated to the "dustbin of history." He added, "To wait for a regulatory solution that's going to be invalidated and thrown out in the courts I think is a missed opportunity."
He later spoke with Technology Daily, emphasizing that "literally every court" that has reviewed the constitutionality of violent content in various contexts has said regulation "inevitably" fails a First Amendment test. "It just leaps to conclusions," he said of the document, which mentions per-channel pricing at the behest of Martin.
The cable industry opposes the concept, arguing that less popular channels that now survive as part of programming bundles would be harmed.
"It's completely disconnected to the rest of the [report]," he added. "There is literally no analysis that would lead up to the conclusion that a la carte would have anything to do with a possible solution to the problem of violence."
McSlarrow said industry stakeholders should take the lead on crafting solutions. "We know what could work: parental controls. Can they be better? Sure. Can we do a better job on ratings? Sure. There are all kinds of creative ideas, but we should be working collaboratively," he said.
Extending an olive branch to Rockefeller, cable's top lobbyist offered: "If there are ways we can improve what we're doing, we're open to discussion." But a broadcast television lobbyist dismissed unilateral steps for now, saying that "it's a little early to be thinking about something like that."
In early 2006, major cable systems voluntarily adopted family-friendly tiers in response to pressure from Washington about sexually explicit content. During his Monday keynote to NCTA, Martin left out comments praising a la carte that appeared in the written version. An aide said the omission was due to time constraints.
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Television
Cable Show Is Abuzz With Promise Of New Devices
by David Hatch
LAS VEGAS -- It's officially the Cable Show taking place here this week, but much of the buzz is about other technologies that hold greater promise for revenue expansion, from on-demand video to wireless services and high-definition video-conferencing.
With telecommunications companies like AT&T and Verizon Communications angling to claim cable's programming market share and direct-broadcast satellite also a tenacious competitor, the cable industry is seeking new frontiers.
"I don't know of any American industry that has undergone more change in the last 20 years," Kyle McSlarrow, president and CEO of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, said during Tuesday's general session. "We have created three or four new businesses."
And more could be on the way. The latest buzz is about cable companies entering the wireless arena, potentially harnessing the next generation of technology to broadcast to mobile devices.
Comcast Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts noted that in Japan and South Korea, video is routinely broadcast to cellular telephones. "That could be the TV of tomorrow" in the United States, he said.
There is a consensus among industry executives that high-speed Internet service via cable modems will continue to be a revenue driver. "I think the prospects for cable have just been exponentially enhanced by the advent of broadband," Time Warner Chairman and CEO Richard Parsons said.
Glenn Britt, president and CEO of Time Warner Cable, predicted Monday that it won't be long before more than half of the industry's revenue is generated by businesses other than video.
In the same discussion, Comcast Chief Operating Officer Stephen Burke noted that on-demand video, available whenever viewers want to watch it, is only in the "third or fourth" inning in terms of development. "It allows you to be tremendously creative with the way you deliver video programming," he said.
Underscoring the continuing potential of broadband, Roberts on Tuesday conducted a demonstration of wideband, the next generation of cable-modem service.
Using today's high-speed connections, it would take more than three hours to download all 32 versions of the Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster's Visual Dictionary. Over wideband, the data transfer took less than four minutes. "With wideband, we're going to unleash a whole new era" of video, voice and data services, he said.
Industry executives chafed at suggestions that as large corporations, they lack the adaptability of small, agile competitors. "Companies like us, like the ones you see on this stage, have had to learn to grow into the new technologies," Parsons emphasized.
"I agree with what Dick said. This is a world in which the big get bigger," said Peter Chernin, president and COO of News Corp., which owns the popular social-networking site MySpace and which last week sought unsuccessfully to acquire The Wall Street Journal.
He predicted more communications industry consolidation.
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E-Government
Federal Agencies Prep For Telecom Procurement
by Aliya Sternstein
Verizon Communications anticipates that federal agencies will begin clamoring for the company's next-generation telecommunications services this fall, with commercial businesses following suit shortly thereafter.
The company was one three providers chosen by the General Services Administration in March to provide voice, Internet, wireless and satellite services to government locations worldwide as part of the multibillion-dollar Networx contract.
Verizon Federal Vice President Susan Zeleniak said on Tuesday that the contract lets agencies pick from a range of Verizon networked services -- from converged voice-video-data communications to newer features, such as advanced security, Web hosting and multimedia call-center services.
With so-called intelligent routing, questions that citizens e-mail to agencies day or night are distributed to customer-service agents around the clock in the same manner as calls.
Each inquiry in the queue has a corresponding record containing citizen contact information and service history. That allows customer-service agents to reply via e-mail, phone, chat or mail, and eliminates the need for citizens to repeat the same information each time they contact the agency.
Agencies government-wide have expressed interest in "smart" contact centers, according to Zeleniak. The government has become "very sophisticated" in its call-center technologies, she said.
Verizon Federal Chief Technology Officer Charles Lee added, "There's an awful lot of new capabilities that were not provided in [the current federal telecom system]."
While citizens who communicate with the government will not see the changes, they will benefit from the tighter security and various enhancements supplied by Verizon and the other awardees, AT&T Government Solutions and Qwest Government Services.
"Security is huge, and it is getting larger" due to new data security rules, Lee said.
Zeleniak added, "We're seeing that agencies are transitioning to move to private [Internet protocol] networks."
In the homeland security realm, Verizon sees the federal government's desire to interact with state and local governments. GSA insisted that contractors furnish managed network capabilities and collaboration tools, Zeleniak said.
"In the end, what we've come up with is a set of products and services" that will be available to the commercial sector because of the "forward-thinking" requirements put forth by GSA.
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Digitocracy Digest
A 'Wiki' Made For Common Man And Congressman
by Aliya Sternstein
Some Internet social sites try to match singles, others attempt to connect people with employers, and then there is WashingtonWatch -- a new site that is dedicated to bridging the gap between people and politicos.
The brainchild of Jim Harper, who works separately as the Cato Institute's information policy studies director, WashingtonWatch uses "wiki" software that enables anyone with an Internet browser to add to or modify content. Using government estimates, the site expresses the costs and savings of pending bills in terms of families and individuals.
One might think that this setup would prompt nothing but vitriolic posts from the masses, and there are plenty. But there also is enlightened feedback in the form of changes to entries. Harper's hope is that back-and-forth between penny-pinchers and the penny-pinched will guide the discussion toward productive policy.
WashingtonWatch entries are segregated by popularity, newness, greatest cost and greatest savings. On Monday, one of the most popular bills -- eliciting 14 comments -- was H.R. 1591, the emergency war spending bill that President Bush successfully vetoed last week. It would have cost an estimated $1,297.35 per family.
One visitor commented, "This is mission-critical support for our troops, but the Dummycrats are doing their damndest to pull defeat from the jaws of victory."
"[Visitors] sometimes use harsh language and express strong feelings," Harper said. "Part of the frustration you see in the comments is the lack of information. That demonstrates the need for the Beltway to really, really communicate directly and openly."
He admits that encouraging Washington insiders to contribute to the wiki involves a lot of elbow grease on his part. "The Beltway is a little shy about taking on things like this."
That said, there are signs of life in Washington's Web 2.0.
Some of Harper's Hill acquaintances are resentful of the news media filter and are happy to post information on the wiki for direct distribution to the public. "They don't have to pass it through their little hometown reporter or get it into The New York Times," he said.
The idea for WashingtonWatch sprouted in the late 1990s, when Harper, a San Francisco Bay area native, was working his way up Capitol Hill at the House Judiciary Committee and watching buddies back home ride the dot-com wave.
"One of the pieces of information I thought would be useful to the public is a price in terms they can understand," he said. "People don't know what to do when they are told a certain policy will cost a certain amount over five to 10 years."
Harper began toying with a bill-to-dollar database before he arrived at Cato a few years ago. This year, he got help from fellow transparency champions at the Sunlight Foundation in the form of a $5,000 mini-grant. The money has gone toward marketing aimed primarily at policy experts, including -- full disclosure -- banner ads on National Journal Group's Web sites and wiki introductory brochures in every office on Capitol Hill.
Ellen Miller, executive director of the foundation, said: "The most intriguing part of his work is the elite wiki. Policy wonks you don't think of as participating in a wiki, so it will be very interesting to see how this works."
Margaret Anderson, creator of the free, online "stock market" Government Futures, where government and industry technology executives pool their outlooks on big questions of the day, said WashingtonWatch is visually inviting. "There are things we may certainly look at as far as the mechanics of our site," she said.
Anderson and Government Futures co-founder Bruce McConnell both agree that this kind of experiment is "really vital as we all try to figure out the best ways to use Web 2.0 and social networking to improve our democracy."
Yet, they don't know if the site's two intended audiences -- common man and congressman -- will mix well. The methodology only measures the costs and savings of legislation "in terms of the hard dollars and not the softer benefits," McConnell said. That "attracts public participants with an ax to grind."
Anderson added that "people in the know" are not necessarily going to want to be associated with the emotional rants and misspellings in some of the public comments. "We may turn out to be totally wrong on that, but that's our experience."
Harper's response: "I don't think that [kind of language] will be attractive for the insiders, but those are the people the insiders work for."
As for the site's bias? "The numbers, they come out on both sides," he said. One might think the site targets mainly Republicans interested in the bottom line, but "when you look at the bills, you see that a lot of the big numbers come from military bills," so the Democrats will be drawn to that.
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Today's Feature:
People Column
After a few stressful weeks, the creator of a much-ballyhooed grassroots Internet video has landed a new job.
Every Tuesday, read the People Column by Heather Greenfield.
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E-briefs
Intellectual Property: The online retailer Amazon.com will pay IBM an undisclosed sum in the settlement of two lawsuits for patent infringement, the companies announced Tuesday. The payment is part of a long-term cross-licensing agreement. In October, IBM filed two lawsuits alleging that components of Amazon's Web sites violated patents for technology used in interactive advertising, data storage, user-specific hypertext and electronic cataloging. Scott Hayden, Amazon's vice president of intellectual property, issued a statement that said: "IBM's patent portfolio is the largest and strongest in the IT industry. Our license to its portfolio, and specifically to its Web technology patents, gives us greater freedom to innovate for our customers."
E-Commerce: The FTC and Justice Department on Tuesday released a report on competition issues involving residential real estate that pays particular attention to the Internet's impact on the industry. The paper follows an October 2005 workshop conducted by the entities that tackled issues such as multiple-listing services, "virtual office" Web sites, discount and fee-for-service brokers, and minimum service requirements. Assistant Attorney General Thomas Barnett said the report should "inform Americans about their real-estate brokerage options and alert state legislatures and real-estate commissions about the danger of enacting laws and regulations that harm competition." The report makes recommendations that the FTC and Justice believe will promote consumer understanding of their options in the real-estate marketplace.
E-Government: The Veterans Affairs and Defense departments are far from their goal of achieving a computerized system for sharing with each other their comprehensive medical information on active military personnel and veterans, according to a report released Tuesday by federal auditors. For nearly a decade, the departments have been figuring out how to create and exchange detailed electronic health records. So far, they have built data repositories, which they are beginning to populate with limited information. Seven Defense and VA sites are now exchanging data between repositories. "Implementing this interface is a milestone toward the departments' long-term goal, but more remains to be done," the Government Accountability Office report stated. Defense and the VA still must agree on standards for the remaining categories of medical information; fill the data repositories; and finish building and transitioning to the new health information system.
People: The national security adviser and legal counsel to former House Speaker Dennis Hastert has been appointed deputy director of the Patent and Trademark Office. Margaret Peterlin also will serve as the Commerce Department's deputy undersecretary for intellectual property, a job held by Stephen Pinkos until earlier this year. In a Tuesday press release, PTO Director Jon Dudas called Peterlin "a tremendous asset" to the agency who has "an impressive track record of success across several disciplines." Her leadership will be instrumental in the PTO's efforts to enhance patent quality, he said. Before working for Hastert, R-Ill., Peterlin was general counsel to former Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas. In other news, the office of the director of national intelligence announced that California businessman Alden Munson has been named deputy director of national intelligence for acquisition.
Net Governance: Internet pioneer Vint Cerf is preparing for the end of his tenure as chairman of the Internet Corporation for Names and Numbers by urging people to join the organization to help the Internet's "continued evolution." Cerf, whose term expires in November, has led ICANN's board for seven years. In an interview posted on ICANN's blog and on YouTube, Cerf reminisced about how the Internet has become an important economic driver. The group is accepting applications until May 16 from anyone interested in being a part of ICANN. Cerf said he hopes the process will find people with "a passion for the Internet." ICANN is "an invention that I don't believe is mirrored by many other structures in the world," he said. "We are inventing new kinds of practices for the establishment of policy."
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