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Television
McDowell: FCC To Act On Video Rules Next Month
by Heather Greenfield
ASPEN, Colo. -- Federal Communications Commissioner Robert McDowell said his agency's action to protect cable firms from "unreasonable" demands by county governments is coming soon. He said he expects the FCC to take action next month to give cable operators the same protections it gave telecommunications companies at the end of last year.
In December, the FCC approved a video-franchising order designed to foster new entrants into the video market. It put local governments on a "shot clock" in which they have 90 days to approve or reject video-franchising applications.
The goal was to streamline the video-franchising system and speed the entrance of telecom companies into the TV market to create more competition. At the Progress and Freedom Foundation summit here, McDowell said in an interview with Tech Daily that the order also was designed to prevent county governments from imposing onerous requirements on would-be cable competitors, such as helping build recreation centers.
In March, the FCC agreed that it should consider the same protections for existing cable firms. During questions at PFF, Comcast government affairs director Sena Fitzmaurice asked McDowell when that would move forward.
McDowell said his agency's Media Bureau is writing a draft order to be circulated about Sept. 5. "We should see that order apply the same deregulatory relief to incumbents," he said.
The commissioner acknowledged that states have sued the FCC for the earlier ruling about new video providers. They say that only Congress has the authority to make rules about the demands the FCC can place on video franchises.
But McDowell said, "We're confident in our legal position" and are willing to go forward and expand the agency's order.
McDowell offered more of his thoughts and leanings on high-speed Internet expansion in a Wall Street Journal article last month, in which he wrote, "When it comes to broadband policy, let's put aside flawed studies and rankings, and reject the road of regulatory stagnation."
He said he believes there will be "a tremendous explosion of entrepreneurial brilliance" in the broadband market -- "if the government doesn't micromanage" it with too much regulation.
In Aspen, he elaborated on his views by saying: "Regulation is for market failure. Competition obviates the need for regulation." He said he sees his role as helping "create competition both within and among platforms."
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Intellectual Property
Experts Share Thoughts On Pending Patent Plans
by Heather Greenfield
ASPEN, Colo. -- With Congress expected to debate patent legislation next month, people who live and study patent issues gathered here Monday at the Progress and Freedom Foundation's annual summit to debate what type of patent reform favors innovation.
Michael Meurer, a law professor at Boston University, showed charts of patent costs versus benefits for companies, which illustrated sharp increases in litigation costs since the mid 1990s. "The cost of defending a lawsuit is a tax on innovation," Meurer said. "We think the current patent system is burdening innovators with unnecessary regulation."
He also tried to calculate the value of a patent for a business, saying the average value across various industries is $78,000. For the chemical industry the average patent is worth $333,000, and the average software patent is worth $55,000.
What he found odd, though, was that 65 percent of firms surveyed said they did not conduct patent searches before initiating product development. While he likened it to building a skyscraper without verifying who owns the land, he said it is sometimes a challenge for technology companies to do searches because patent holders often are from other industries.
Bronwyn Hall, a University of California at Berkeley economics professor, sees the patent system "as something designed to encourage innovation by granting temporary monopolies." She also said companies across an industry sector probably could benefit financially from agreeing not to patent in some cases.
F. Scott Kieff, a law professor at Washington University, said he is concerned about proposed reforms before Congress aimed at allowing more flexibility in determining the value of patent claims. He said he inherently worries when there is so much bipartisan agreement on anything.
"To me, there is a good chance they're right and a good chance you should check your wallet [when] the big guys agree," Kieff said.
He said the proposed reforms would allow judges, bureaucrats or patent officers to consider what was happening in the industry when patents were issued. "The problem with flexibility is there's a big Achilles heal because with lobbying and political pressure, that's where the big guys win," Kieff said.
Mark Chandler, the general counsel for Cisco Systems, joked that he does not have the academic credentials to discuss patent reform -- he just lives patent problems on a daily basis. He said Cisco will spend $45 million on patent litigation this year and $10 million for cases that go to trial.
Chandler said companies often face an incredibly broad range of damages -- sometimes anywhere from $5 million to hundreds of millions. "The spread of damages is so huge and the risk of willfulness and treble damages high so, we have no choice but to settle [most cases]," he said.
He hopes Congress makes three changes to the patent system -- better mechanisms to review patent quality, a ban on shopping for favorable courts, and reduced leverage on damages.
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Privacy
Civil Libertarians Laud End To TALON Surveillance
by Andrew Noyes
The Defense Department will close its controversial anti-terrorism database known as TALON and preserve the data collected in accordance with intelligence oversight requirements, officials said Tuesday.
The five-year-old system, whose acronym stands for Threat and Local Observation Notices, was established by then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to gather and assess possible threats to the U.S. military and civilian workers at military bases domestically and overseas.
TALON will be closed effective Sept. 17 because reporting to the system had declined significantly and it was determined to no longer be of analytical value, Army Col. Gary Keck told the American Forces Press Service.
To ensure a mechanism to document and examine potential threats, Assistant Defense Secretary Paul McHale plans to propose a new, streamlined reporting system that can better meet the Pentagon's needs, an agency press release said. In the interim, Defense Department officials will send information pertaining to protection concerns to the FBI's Web-based threat tracking system.
The American Civil Liberties Union lauded TALON's closure, saying that the department strayed from its intended mission and expanded the database to include reports by local law enforcement agencies and military security personnel about nonviolent demonstrations and anti-war protests.
"It was high time for this program to be shut down," ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said. "There should have been no place in a free democratic society for the military to be accumulating secret data on peaceful demonstrators exercising their First Amendment rights."
In December 2005, media reports claimed that TALON was storing information on peace groups, many of which were protesting the Iraq war and holding anti-recruitment events. Several months later, the ACLU filed multiple Freedom of Information Act requests seeking records relating to Pentagon surveillance under the TALON program.
When the Pentagon failed to respond, the watchdog group filed a lawsuit in a Pennsylvania federal court, which resulted in the release of hundreds of pages of documents revealing details about the military's surveillance of lawful, non-violent activities.
A June 2007 report by the Defense Department's inspector general found that counterintelligence officials "maintained TALON reports without determining whether information on organizations and individuals should be retained for law enforcement and force-protection purposes."
Of the 1,131 TALON reports reviewed, 117 originated outside the United States and did not contain information on U.S. people, and 263 were related to protests and demonstrations. More than 70 of the protest-related reports involved criminal actions that resulted in arrests, court appearances, violence, destruction and police intervention.
"There is still too much that remains unanswered about the Pentagon's surveillance activities in this country," ACLU top lobbyist Caroline Fredrickson said in a statement. TALON could be "the tip of the iceberg" and a further congressional investigation is critical, she said.
Steven Aftergood, who runs the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy, said TALON's closure leaves several questions, including what Defense's counterintelligence field activity will be doing now.
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Privacy
ACLU Decries Video Surveillance In California Cities
by Michael Martinez
California cities and counties have been spending millions of federal dollars on anti-crime surveillance systems that threaten the privacy of citizens, according to a new report.
In a study released Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union's California affiliates warned that government-funded surveillance programs at the state and local levels will do little for safety at the expense of privacy. The ACLU found that 37 California cities already have some type of video surveillance system and that police actively monitor the cameras in roughly half of them.
Dozens of cities across the country have used grant money from the Homeland Security Department to build surveillance networks since the 2001 terrorist attacks. Law enforcers in New York grabbed nationwide headlines this summer when they announced plans to build a $90 million camera system in Lower Manhattan.
Some of the California cities studied by the ACLU already are testing facial-recognition technologies and software applications that allow law enforcers to monitor camera feeds for suspicious activities. The report specifically noted a $30 million test program at San Francisco International Airport, where camera-monitoring software has been deployed, and a facial-recognition field test administered by the Los Angeles Police Department last fall.
The ACLU said all of the California programs are constitutionally suspect. It added that lawmakers have paid little attention to how surveillance records should be treated under the state's public-records law.
The report found that footage generated by government surveillance cameras would "almost certainly" be considered publicly accessible under that statute and that people could make legitimate records requests and gain access to those devices for invasive purposes.
"It is particularly troubling that while the technology has improved along with the government's ability to infringe on constitutional rights, the legal landscape has not kept pace," the report said.
The ACLU found fault with the expanded surveillance initiatives, concluding that only 11 of the cities that have deployed surveillance systems also have adopted policies regulating camera use. The report blasted lawmakers in several cities, including San Francisco, for widening the scope of test programs without thoroughly examining their effectiveness in deterring crime and for doing so without open debate.
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom said in a radio interview last week that his city's cameras are part of a broader effort to "take back" neighborhoods that have been overridden by crime. He acknowledged being cool to the idea at first but said the city has begun a positive debate about how these types of technologies can be used to make it a safer place.
The ACLU said those cities would have been better served by investing money in lighting, foot patrols and community-based anti-crime efforts. The report said former Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, now the state attorney general, was wise to reject a pair of video surveillance proposals in the 1990s for those very reasons.
"Rather than investing money [into] invasive systems with marginal effectiveness, local governments must look at programs with proven results and that protect Californians' constitutional rights," the ACLU said.
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Budget
Funding Boost In The Works For Justice's Watchdog
by Andrew Noyes
The Justice Department arm that conducts independent probes of agency personnel and programs to identify waste, fraud and abuse would get a multimillion-dollar funding boost in fiscal 2008 under House and Senate appropriations bills.
The inspector general's office at the department has been in the spotlight after a series of scandals prompted calls from Capitol Hill for added oversight. The House bill, H.R. 3093, would give the IG $74 million, while the Senate measure, S. 1745, would supply about $1 million less. The office received $70 million in fiscal 2007, and the White House has requested $3 million more.
Glenn Fine, who has been the agency's chief examiner since 2000, testified before Congress several times this year. Most recently, he came before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to discuss his job as an agency watchdog.
At the July hearing, he said current law should be amended to increase his office's authority because it prevents him from "investigating an entire class of misconduct allegations" and gives that power to the professional responsibility office, which is not statutorily independent.
Fine's other appearances before the House Intelligence Committee and House and Senate Judiciary committees were in response to government agents' use of secret administrative subpoenas known as "national security letters."
A report he issued in March revealed widespread failures in the implementation of the letters, which let agents get telephone, e-mail and financial records without judicial approval. His audit found 22 possible breaches of internal FBI and Justice Department rules, some of which appeared to be illegal.
The House Appropriations Committee report accompanying the spending bill notes that members were "deeply troubled over the administration's political interference in the work of the [department]." That document and a similar one from the Senate asked that the budget boost go to fund further investigations into that issue and others.
Administration critics agreed that the IG's power and budget should be bolstered, especially after the congressional uproar over the security letters, anti-terrorism surveillance without warrants, and the firings of U.S. attorneys last year.
The Justice IG is "getting a workout" because Congress is increasingly relying on the office to expose abuses that have been concealed by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, said Gregory Nojeim of the Center for Democracy and Technology. "Given the demands on the IG now, and the demands one could reasonably expect next year, it's not at all clear that this level of funding will be adequate," he added.
Lisa Graves, deputy director of the Center for National Security Studies, said the IG needs more funding because Fine's is "one of the only offices left in the federal government that is trusted by Congress to have any independence from corrosive corruption of this administration."
But the IG's work, no matter how independent and thorough, is no substitute for the vigorous oversight needed from Congress, representatives from the center and the American Civil Liberties Union said. The ACLU's Caroline Fredrickson said Fine has "little ability to actually change the practices inside the administration," but Capitol Hill can.
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Budget
Chambers Split Over Use Of UAVs On The Border
by Chris Strohm
House and Senate lawmakers are divided over spending tens of million of dollars more to buy aerial drones for border patrol, with appropriators in one chamber saying the investment is badly needed and those in the other questioning the price tag.
In a last-minute bid in late July, the Senate boosted its version of the homeland security spending bill for fiscal 2008, S. 1644, by $3 billion. The Homeland Security Department is expected to use a portion of those funds to buy and deploy four unmanned aerial vehicles within two years for use along the U.S.-Mexico border.
"The debate we had a few weeks ago on immigration reform should not deter Congress from doing what is still needed to secure our borders and reduce illegal immigration," said Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., a leading advocate of the additional spending. "We should take what we learned from that debate -- that the American people want enforcement -- and put it into workable legislation. That's exactly what we've done here."
House lawmakers, however, want to apply the brakes to spending on UAV technology. They did not include the additional $3 billion in their budget bill, H.R. 2638, and instead moved to prevent Customs and Border Protection from buying new UAVs until the agency "certifies that they are of higher priority and more cost effective than other items in the air and marine strategic recapitalization and modernization plan."
House lawmakers did, however, include $10.6 million to cover recurring costs to support CBP's existing UAVs.
The two chambers will have to resolve their differences in conference when Congress returns from recess. The department recently announced that it wants to buy three new UAVs in 2008 and a fourth in 2009.
The debate over whether UAVs are a good investment for border security has been waged for the past few years but has no immediate end in sight. A 2005 Congressional Research Service study, for example, listed advantages and disadvantages of the technology.
"The use of UAVs on the northern and southern borders could potentially act as an important force multiplier by covering previously unpatrolled areas or more effectively
surveilling areas already patrolled," the report stated. "The benefit of increased coverage, however, may not be so significant when terrorists ... can and have entered the country through more easily accessible official ports of entry."
Border Patrol officials announced last March that a Predator B UAV was used to detect and track six suspected illegal aliens along the Arizona border with Mexico. Agents apprehended the group, discovering that one was wanted for raping a child in Washington.
House lawmakers, however, noted that the Coast Guard's developmental vertical UAV has experienced a series of setbacks and might never be procured.
Appropriators wrote in the report accompanying the House bill that "the Coast Guard recently chartered a research study to investigate the viability of the VUAV and explore alternatives to fill the VUAV 'gap' if the project is not continued." To that end, the House bill would provide up to $5 million to begin researching an alternative.
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Digitocracy Digest
Robert Steele: From CIA To E-Government Visionary
by Aliya Sternstein
Once a CIA case officer and later the second-ranking civilian at the U.S. Marine Corps intelligence department, Robert David Steele now champions a form of e-government that amasses online intelligence from citizens worldwide to drive policy decisions.
His goal of so-called collective intelligence differs from the concept popularized by New Yorker columnist James Surowiecki in "The Wisdom of Crowds." Surowiecki's book argues that large groups of citizens are smarter than a small group of experts. But Steele said, "I am the only one seeking to connect subject-matter experts with proven reputations to readers at the local level who can serve as blogger scouts."
He added: "[The] FBI is stupid to be recruiting 2,000 informants. They have the wrong model. Bloggers, not informants, rule."
Steele's model, dubbed the Earth Intelligence Network, aims to overcome the greatest threats facing the world, like poverty and infectious disease, by sharing information openly on the Internet. "E-Government means less of a physical government footprint," he said, adding that e-government should rely more on self-governance and real-time democracy, and less on bureaucracy and personnel.
Online education is complementary and critical to e-government's evolution, he added. "E-education means all education online in all languages for free, with national educational help desks that teach entire villages of illiterate adults one question at a time via cell phone. Powerful stuff."
However, powerful obstacles remain in the way of achieving e-government and e-education. A paucity of open standards and the large amount of old and current information still in analog form, for example, are impediments.
Steele has long urged that public information-sharing, rather than secret intelligence, be used to overhaul U.S. intelligence-gathering. He was one of the first government officers to devise advanced information technology applications for clandestine operations.
The Earth Intelligence Network is building a wiki -- a Web site that anyone can edit -- for the world's top threat experts to contribute information. Each specialist will be given a home page to let others deposit unpublished research and analysis, thereby cultivating a "world brain."
Steele argued that the United Nations and non-governmental organizations, not the U.S. government, are going to be the true global pioneers in e-government.
The amount of money the United States has spent on the war in Iraq could have been better spent by giving a cell phone to every one of the 5 billion poor, Steele said. "We need to give them the tools to create their own stabilizing wealth."
Money also is necessary to get the Earth Intelligence Network off the ground. Steele said he grosses $2.2 million through the global intelligence think tank OSS.Net, which he founded in the early 1990s. He devotes $50,000 of that sum to the network, as an OSS contribution.
Part of e-government, according to Steele, is transparent budgets. His plan calls for a digital network of citizen watchdogs and anonymous, digital whistleblowers to increase the detection of fraud, waste and abuse.
"My mission in life is to connect the 5 billion poor, as well as our own middle and working class, to all information in all languages, all the time," he said. "That will create moral democracy and unlimited wealth."
Susan Cannon, co-chair of the project and an expert in integral studies -- a field that looks at human systems and different ways of understanding knowledge -- said Steele is attempting to integrate the disciplines of information technology, philosophy, education, social activism and politics "in a way that I haven't found elsewhere."
He is engaging people from disparate fields -- like serious games, fundraising and citizen advocacy -- and disparate values, "and actually producing something from those [conversations]," she said. "He's quite audacious, and I don't understand everything he's doing," Cannon added, but the larger trajectory continues to hold her interest.
Government secrecy researcher Steven Aftergood, who is from the Federation of American Scientists and not involved in the project, said: "Robert Steele has been an energetic and resourceful font of new ideas for many years now. The health of our democracy is enriched by the kinds of experiments that he has conceived and carried out."
Steele's proposal is certainly visionary, but "so far, it seems disconnected from any existing political reality," Aftergood said. "I think there is value in considering alternate political structures and experimenting with new approaches. But you have to start where you are."
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Today's Feature:
People Column
Kathryn Wagner has been signed as the new vice president for the National Music Publishers' Association.
Every Tuesday, read the People Column by Heather Greenfield.
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E-briefs
Education: Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus wants to give mathematics and science majors a free ride at the colleges of their choosing, AP reports. As part of a $25 billion education proposal, any graduate majoring in the so-called STEM fields of science, technology, engineering or math would receive a full scholarship under the Montana Democrat's plan. All recipients would have to work or teach in a related field for at least four years after graduation to qualify. Another measure would create merit-based scholarships for education students who promise to teach STEM subjects. The aim is to get more U.S. students into college, thereby fueling competitiveness with countries like China and India. "I think the challenge is fierce, and I think we have a real obligation to go the extra mile and redo things a bit differently so we leave this place in better shape than we found it," Baucus said.
Antitrust: Federal Trade Commissioner William Kovacic told people gathered at the Progress and Freedom Foundation's annual summit in Aspen, Colo., that the "standards for what dominant firms can and can't do is the single-most important issue for the world today." Kovacic recapped U.S. antitrust history, saying that U.S. policy was "far more intervention-minded" from 1945-1970 than any the world will ever see. Today, he said the United States is one of the most permissive countries, and he credits, or perhaps blames, attorneys trained at laws schools at the University of Chicago and Harvard University for the shift. As to his thoughts on having more government regulation up front or after potential antitrust issues emerge, Kovacic said he thinks "a sensible competition policy involves both tools."
Competitiveness: The United States needs to invest technologies so needed innovations will continue to become available, said Dawn Bonnell, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. The United States needs a level of investment that is consistent with the innovations it requires, Bonnell said during a Center for American Progress event on U.S. infrastructure. She said technologies such as sensors for bridge safety need to be available before problems with bridges like the one that recently collapsed in Minnesota arise. Bonnell said tools such as "smart" systems with wireless communications and emission sensors could be included in infrastructures for monitoring. Valerie Wilson, a senior scholar at the National Urban League Policy Institute, said investing in updated and structurally sound infrastructure is a means of supporting economic stability and security.
People: The American Bar Association has named Microsoft's former top lawyer as president of the organization for a one-year term. William Neukom, a partner in the Seattle office of K&L Gates, assumed the post at ABA's annual meeting in San Francisco earlier this month. Neukom was Microsoft's general counsel for nearly a quarter-century. Previously, he was the firm's lead counsel while working as a partner at Preston, Gates & Ellis. At Microsoft, Neukom led efforts to establish, distribute and protect intellectual property rights. He was instrumental in securing the landmark legal victory in Apple Computer v. Microsoft, a copyright case that spanned seven years. Neukom also led Microsoft's antitrust defense in the United States and European Union, which led to settlements in 1994 and 2001. His chief initiative as ABA president will be a multidisciplinary, multinational initiative aimed at fostering human well-being by advancing the rule of law.
Privacy: Boxes of documents containing personal information from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research were supposed to be shredded but instead surfaced last week in a trash bin, police said. AP reports that a resident of a suburban Washington neighborhood near the research campus found the boxes Friday and alerted Montgomery County, Md., police. The files were research study records, said Cynthia Vaughn, a public affairs officer for the U.S. Army Medical Command. An investigation is under way to determine precisely what information they held and why they appeared off base, Vaughn said Monday. Police said most were from the late 1990s and were likely placed in the bin on the same day they were discovered. Police said they do not believe anyone other than the person who found the records had access to the information.
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