President Barack Obama said Thursday that he will renominate FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez. She has held the position since March 4, 2013. Before then, she served as a commissioner since April 5, 2010.
The White House is reportedly reviewing what may be a “close-to-final” draft of a conference cybersecurity information sharing bill, two industry lobbyists told us Wednesday. Behind-the-scenes negotiations on legislation have ramped up in recent days following the circulation over the weekend of the House and Senate Intelligence committees’ preferred language on the bill (see 1512070056). Congress’ Homeland Security and Intelligence committees have been grappling with how to reconcile the Senate-passed Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (S-754) and two House-passed bills -- the Protecting Cyber Networks Act (HR-1560) and the National Cybersecurity Protection Advancement Act (HR-1731). House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said in a statement Tuesday that he and the leaders of Congress’ Intelligence committees have been making progress in their negotiations. McCaul had apparently raised concerns about the degree to which the Intelligence committees’ earlier text had shifted the center of gravity in an extended information sharing apparatus too far away from the Department of Homeland Security in favor of intelligence and law enforcement agencies, a lobbyist said. It was unclear at our deadline whether the White House was likely to agree to the current conference text since some issues remained under negotiation, but that the text was at a point where it could receive White House review is “definitely encouraging,” a lobbyist said. The White House didn’t comment. Meanwhile, Fight for the Future and 18 other digital rights and privacy groups jointly sent a letter Wednesday encouraging House and Senate leaders to oppose the current conference bill. The current language “is the result of secret negotiations between the House and Senate intelligence committees at the expense of critical expert input from the House Committee on Homeland Security, and it loses any advantages and improvements” that resulted from the DHS-centric HR-1731, the groups said in their letter. The House inserted HR-1731’s language into HR-1560 before sending the bill to the Senate.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest agreed to journalists' request (see 1407140043) to meet with him on media groups' concerns about lack of government transparency for interviews and information from experts, the Society of Professional Journalists said. SPJ said he will discuss "press access with a small group of SPJ and Society of Environmental Journalists representatives" Dec. 15. "We view the meeting as one more step in a long battle," SPJ's website said in a post dated Thursday. "Policy change and a more open government are what we hope to achieve by sharing our concerns with Mr. Earnest and others in the White House." The White House didn't comment Friday.
Contenders for the GOP presidential nomination would dismantle parts of the federal government relevant to telecom if elected, they said Tuesday during a Fox Business Network debate. “On the regulatory side I think we need to repeal every rule that Barack Obama has in terms of work in progress, every one of them,” said Jeb Bush, a former Florida governor. “And start over. For those that are already in existence, the regulation of the Internet, we have to start over, but we ought to do that.” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, a member of the Commerce Committee, touted his plan to ax many parts of the government. “Today we rolled out a spending plan,” Cruz said during the debate. He outlined “$500 billion in specific cuts -- five major agencies that I would eliminate.” He would kill the Department of Commerce and the CPB, the latter of which he said should be privatized. “For decades, the Commerce Department has funded useless projects,” the Cruz campaign website said in one explanation of the plan. “That said, there are several functions that should be retained through other departments or agencies, including the functions of the … U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the National Institute of Standards and Technology” and NTIA. Cruz also promised to aggressively pursue a smaller federal government: “A Cruz Administration will institute a freeze on the hiring of new federal civilian employees across the executive branch,” he said on his campaign website. “For those agencies in which it is determined that a vacant position needs to be filled, I will authorize the hiring of a maximum ratio of one person for every three who leave.”
Harvard Law School professor Larry Lessig, a strong net neutrality advocate and observer of Internet policy, on Monday ended his ambitions to compete against other Democratic contenders for the 2016 presidential nomination. He blamed Democrats for changing the rules and instituting provisions that wouldn't allow him any chance to compete in the second Democratic primary debate against such candidates as Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. “I must today end my campaign for the Democratic nomination and turn to the question of how best to continue to press for this reform now,” Lessig said in a video, referring to his focus on campaign finance overhaul. Lessig announced his interest in the nomination in August (see 1508110050). He didn't rule out the possibility of running as an independent.
GOP presidential contender Carly Fiorina slammed the FCC’s net neutrality order Wednesday during a debate among Republican candidates. “Government causes a problem, and then government steps in to solve the problem,” said Fiorina, former CEO at Hewlett-Packard and a former AT&T executive. “This is why, fundamentally, we have to take our government back. … Government trying to level the playing field between Internet and brick-and-mortar creates a problem. The FCC jumping in now and saying ‘we’re going to put 400 pages of regulation over the Internet’ is going to create massive problems. But guess who pushed for that regulation? The big Internet companies. This is what’s going on. Big and powerful use big and powerful government to their advantage.”
The Electronic Frontier Foundation and other privacy advocates opposed to encryption back doors reached their goal Tuesday of receiving more than 100,000 signatures needed on their White House petition (see 1510260029). The groups will now receive an official White House response on their petition, which demands secret doors not be incorporated into technology.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation and other privacy advocates opposed to encryption back doors have three days left to obtain the 100,000 signatures on their WhiteHouse.gov petition (see 1509300059) required to receive a White House response, EFF tweeted Monday. The petition had close to 97,700 by our deadline.
President Barack Obama and Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif “affirmed that international cooperation is essential to make cyberspace secure and stable,” the White House said Thursday. “Both leaders endorsed the consensus report of the 2015 UN Group of Governmental Experts in the Field of Information and Telecommunications in the Context of International Security.” Obama and Sharif also pledged to continue to engage and discuss on cyber issues as part of the U.S.-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue, it said.
Hillary Clinton backs enforcement of strong net neutrality rules, she said Tuesday in a commentary on business policy posted on the website Quartz. Clinton, campaigning for the Democratic nomination for president, criticized what she considered loopholes in the current system. “Closing these loopholes and protecting other standards of free and fair competition -- like enforcing strong net neutrality rules and preempting state laws that unfairly protect incumbent businesses -- will keep more money in consumers’ wallets, enable startups to challenge the status quo, and allow small businesses to thrive,” Clinton said in her column. Clinton indicated backing for the FCC’s direction on net neutrality, including reclassification of broadband as a Communications Act Title II service, earlier this year. Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Bill Nelson, D-Fla., has told us he doesn’t see the administration position shifting under a Clinton presidency (see 1504160034), and open Internet advocate Marvin Ammori has also expressed his confidence in Clinton on the issue (see 1507210050). No Republicans running for president back the FCC net neutrality order, and some have prioritized dismantling it. Clinton also intends to “prevent concentration in the first place by beefing up the antitrust enforcement arms of the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission,” she added. “I will direct more resources to hire aggressive regulators who will conduct in-depth industry research to better understand the link between market consolidation and stagnating incomes. Ultimately, this will foster a change in corporate culture that restores competition to the marketplace.”