Tuesday's State of the Union address will stream live on Amazon, White House Chief Digital Officer Jason Goldman said in a blog Sunday. "Our job in the Office of Digital Strategy has been to find new or expanded ways for the American people to engage with the President's address," he said. "That means meeting people where they are [and] recognizing the massive shift in the American media diet toward on-demand video." The Amazon Video streaming will be in addition to streaming on the White House's YouTube channel and on wh.gov/sotu, said Goldman. Amazon also will make the speech available on demand Wednesday through the end of the week, and the company has made President Barack Obama's previous State of the Union addresses available, Goldman said. As in past years, real-time video excerpts of the speech will be available on Facebook and Twitter, he said. Amazon didn't comment Monday.
President Barack Obama’s final State of the Union speech, to be delivered Tuesday night, is “a marker for his last year in office and... a reference point (and foil) for candidates on both sides of the 2016 presidential race,” Information Technology and Innovation Foundation President Robert Atkinson said in a blog post Monday. He flagged ITIF’s policy wish list for 2016 contenders, a set of priorities “to foster innovation, boost productivity, and make the United States more competitive in the global economy,” and hoped to hear those same issues raised Tuesday: “So the State of the Union speech that ITIF would hope to hear the president deliver and the campaign stump speech we would hope to hear his would-be successors deliver are one and the same.” CTA President Gary Shapiro wrote a Monday blog post stressing his own policy goals for Obama’s speech -- the president should “set his sights” on the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal awaiting congressional approval; “renew his call for congressional passage of patent reform legislation to stop patent trolls”; and “push for regulations that help promote disruptive innovation,” including a repeal of Department of Labor rules on overtime-pay thresholds. The Software & Information Industry Association sent Obama an open letter advocating its own priorities. The administration must recognize the value of IoT and the “new U.S.-EU Safe Harbor Framework must be finalized and new trade agreements should build upon the data flow provisions in the Transpacific Partnership Agreement,” SIIA said. It also urged patent litigation overhaul and “support for strong encryption.”
Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and other federal officials were still meeting with executives from Google, Twitter and other tech companies at our deadline Friday to push those companies to improve their methods of combating terrorists’ use of social media as a propaganda and recruitment tool. The meeting in San Jose, California, began at 11 a.m. PST, an industry lobbyist told us. Several communications and Internet industry trade groups confirmed that trade associations weren't participating in the meeting. Spokesmen for Google and Twitter confirmed their firms’ involvement but didn’t comment on what would be discussed during the meeting. Executives from more than a dozen tech companies were invited, an industry lobbyist said. Federal officials planned to discuss how to “make it harder for terrorists” to use the Internet “to recruit, radicalize and mobilize followers to violence,” and how the U.S. “can help others to create, publish and amplify alternative content that would undercut” the Islamic State group, said an agenda we obtained. Federal officials also planned to discuss ways to “use technology to help disrupt paths to radicalization to violence, identify recruitment patterns” and ways to “make it easier for law enforcement and the intelligence community to identify terrorist operatives and prevent attacks.” The meeting came following pressure from Congress in December for the federal government to combat terrorists' use of social media. The Combat Terrorist Use of Social Media Act (HR-3654), which the House passed in December (see 1512160022), would require federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies to coordinate their strategies for combatting terrorists’ messaging and recruitment efforts online. The Requiring Reporting of Online Terrorist Activity Act (S-2372) would require technology companies to inform law enforcement about terrorists’ activities on social media platforms (see 1512080070).
President Barack Obama plans to propose his FY 2017 budget Feb. 9, Office of Management and Budget Director Shaun Donovan said on Twitter. He urged people to check out the OMB website that day to find the appropriations proposal, which will include funding for the FCC, FTC and NTIA. The top-line budget figures for FY 2017 were already established in a two-year budget deal enacted in the fall, and some believe this year could feature appropriations by regular order and lead to more focused lobbying of appropriators (see 1512290031). Congress will develop its own appropriations measures after the administration proposal.
The Obama administration “strongly opposes” the Sunshine for Regulatory Decrees and Settlements Act (HR-712), a GOP-backed bill the House plans to vote on later this week (see 1601050048). The legislation would affect agency enforcement and “would impose unnecessary procedures on agencies and invite wasteful litigation” and “would impose additional, unnecessary procedural requirements that would seriously undermine the ability of agencies to execute their statutory mandates,” the White House Office of Management and Budget said in a message Tuesday. Senior advisers to President Barack Obama would recommend he veto the bill if presented with it, the message said.
President Barack Obama will visit Germany in late April to attend the annual Hannover Messe industrial technology trade show, the White House announced Wednesday. Obama, who will be the first sitting U.S. president to attend the show, plans to showcase “American innovation and ingenuity” and tout the U.S. as a sound investment destination. Obama also plans to discuss advancement of negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the White House said.
Two contenders for the GOP presidential nomination blasted net neutrality regulation in videos posted last week by a group called Protect Internet Freedom. The group’s website doesn’t list its funding or details of its formation. “The net neutrality rules promulgated by this administration along with the big businesses that stand to benefit are as good an example of crony capitalism as any,” former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina said in one video. “Net neutrality proponents did a masterful job of marketing all this with the help of late night hosts and political spin, arguing it would level the Internet playing field. The truth, however, is that it will insert Washington bureaucracy and control into the 21st century’s greatest success story.” She argued that only big companies can handle the imposition of such regulations. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., also criticized the FCC’s February order. “Calling it a utility or getting the government involved is exactly the wrong thing to do,” Paul said in another video. “I’m absolutely opposed to having the Internet considered to be a utility. I would undo every bit of it that’s done through executive order and I would try to keep the government’s tentacles and overreach out of the Internet.” Paul also criticized rival candidate Donald Trump for recently saying he's open to shutting down parts of the Internet for national security reasons. “The Internet’s about speech, and I don’t think we ought to be considering any candidate that wants to put impediments to freedom of speech,” Paul said.
The White House confirmed it hired Ashkan Soltani, a privacy expert who until recently was the FTC's chief technologist (see 1512030034) and before that helped with The Washington Post's coverage of NSA document leaker Edward Snowden (see 1410290060). The Office of Science and Technology Policy hired Soltani as senior adviser to U.S. Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith, who used to work for Google and tweeted about Soltani's hiring. "Ashkan will focus on consumer protection, big data, and privacy issues, including algorithmic accountability, data ethics, and data discrimination," an OSTP spokeswoman emailed Thursday. "Ashkan will also help with capacity building for technologists in government, including working with agencies to build career paths for technologists across government."
White House staffers seemed attentive during a Dec.10 meeting about concerns of more than a dozen nonprofit groups and technology companies about law enforcement access to encrypted devices, but Electronic Frontier Foundation Activism Director Rainey Reitman said the staffers didn't seem to share those views. "They maintained that President [Barack] Obama’s position has not changed in the last few months," she wrote in a Thursday blog post. "While they seemed well aware of our concerns about the technical infeasibility of inserting backdoors, they didn’t necessarily share them. That worried us a great deal." Rainey told us in an email that EFF wasn't represented in the meeting, which was attended by representatives from Access Now and New America's Open Technology Institute. The meeting happened after a We the People petition on strong encryption drew more than 100,000 signatures (see 1512090074). Concerns remain about increasing calls from law enforcement officials, including FBI Director James Comey (see 1512100032), for back-door access to end-to-end encrypted devices in terrorism and criminal investigations. The groups, which have said granting such access would undermine everyone's security and privacy, made several specific requests, Reitman wrote in the post, saying the White House is likely to issue a response by the end of the year. A National Security Council spokesman confirmed in an email that the meeting occurred but declined to comment on who attended or what was said beyond the White House's response to the petition.
The Obama administration is willing to discuss transparency with journalists and others, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said in a Society of Professional Journalists news release Tuesday, shortly after he met with representatives of SPJ, the American Society of News Editors and the Society of Environmental Journalists. "This Administration isn't just committed to the principle of transparency, we've committed to engaging advocates and journalists to discuss legitimate ideas that advance it. We look forward to continuing this conversation." SPJ said among issues discussed in the hourlong meeting were "anonymous background briefings" and "other policies that prevent information from flowing to the public." Agencies such as the FCC routinely hold such briefings with groups of reporters, sometimes more often than on-the-record media events (see 1511200019). The White House didn't comment Wednesday.