The White House plans to unveil a broadband report and recommendations Sept. 21, said Jeffrey Zients, director of President Barack Obama's National Economic Council, in a blog post. Zients said Obama had created the Broadband Opportunity Council and directed all federal agencies "to think creatively and develop new ways to promote broadband investment, deployment, and competition." The White House has received the agency input, and Sept. 21 "will share a formal report and recommendations to improve broadband across the country," Zients said Friday. The BOC also received comments from other interested parties in June (see 1506120049).
The Chinese government has “increasingly pursued policies” to obstruct U.S. industry access to the Chinese information and communications technology (ICT) sector over the past nine months, said 19 associations in a recent letter to President Barack Obama. BSA | The Software Alliance, CEA, Computer & Communications Industry Association, Information Technology Industry Council, Semiconductor Industry Association, Telecommunications Industry Association, U.S. Chamber of Commerce and others urged Obama to pressure Chinese President Xi Jinping to ease those barriers during a bilateral September summit in Washington. Chinese national security policy, as well as other motivations, have led to “a new program to acquire or indigenize U.S. semiconductor technology,” “new restrictions on cross-border data flows” and several other restrictive measures, said the Aug. 11 letter. “The United States and China should reaffirm their commitment to open markets, particularly in the ICT sector, recognizing the significant benefits that both countries enjoy from integration into global ICT industry value chains.” The groups want other ways to strengthen cooperation among the two countries. The letter said China adopted the restrictive measures since Jinping's last visit to Washington in November 2014.
President Barack Obama signed an executive order Monday making the Presidential Innovation Fellows Program a permanent part of the federal government within the General Services Administration, a White House news release said. The program brings executives, entrepreneurs, technologists and other innovators into government and teams them with federal employees to improve federal programs, it said. “My hope is this continues to encourage a culture of public service among our innovators, and tech entrepreneurs, so that we can keep building a government that’s as modern, as innovative, and as engaging as our incredible tech sector is,” Obama said.
Fifty-three journalism and other groups asked President Barack Obama again (see report in the July 14, 2014, issue) to stop what they contend is near-censorship by some federal agencies in dealing with the media, and to issue an executive order "prohibiting restrictive public information policies." Their letter dated Monday and released Tuesday to Obama asked him to bar prohibiting agency staff from communicating with journalists unless spokespeople are involved. He should also bar "speaking only on the condition that the official not be identified even when he or she has title of spokesperson," wrote the American Society of News Editors, the Center for Media & Democracy, Demand Progress, Government Accountability Project, iSolon.org, the NewsGuild-Communications Workers of America, the Online News Association, the Radio Television Digital News Association, the Society of Professional Journalists, Sunlight Foundation and others. "Shift the federal government away from secrecy toward transparency and accountability." It's not too late for Obama to meet his promise of being the most transparent U.S. president, the groups wrote. The White House had no comment Wednesday. Our and others' research, including some letter signers like SPJ, have found that many agencies have more work to do to fulfill Obama's commitment (see report in the Oct. 18, 2013, issue).
Harvard Law School professor Larry Lessig, an active voice in tech policy, is weighing a run for the Democratic nomination for president. “Today we've launched a kickstarter-like campaign, to raise the funds necessary to make a run plausible,” Lessig said in a Huffington Post column Tuesday. “If we hit our target of $1 million by Labor Day, then I will give this run every ounce of my energy.” His campaign would prioritize campaign finance overhaul, as he highlights on his 2016 website. “President [Barack] Obama should get Congress to shut down the FCC and similar vestigial regulators,” Lessig proposed in a December 2008 column for Newsweek. He has backed the net neutrality protections of the FCC under Title II of the Communications Act. “Title-II-light is the right regulatory home,” Lessig said in a different Huffington Post piece in February, lauding the White House for its advocacy and FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler for his interpretation of the statute. “Unlike the old days with utility regulation, the FCC will not regulate rates, or impose tariffs, or undue administrative burdens.”
Several major Republican presidential candidates spent time during a Fox News debate Thursday criticizing recent Chinese and Russian cyberattacks against U.S. federal agencies, with Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, blaming Russia for a July data breach that hit the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s email system. Reports on the breach began surfacing in the hours before the Fox News debate. The Department of Defense didn’t comment on the attack’s origin. Cruz also went after China, saying that nation’s government is “waging cyber warfare against America.” Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker referenced attacks attributed to Russia and China, saying the two nations’ governments “know more” about emails stored on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s private email server during her tenure as secretary of state “than does our U.S. Congress, and that’s put our national security at risk.”
The White House Tuesday said that President Barack Obama’s TechHire initiative, which seeks to empower Americans with the skills they need for tech jobs through universities and community colleges, “coding bootcamps,” and high-quality online courses, is expanding to 10 new cities and states. Obama’s goal is to bring the initiative to 40 cities and states by year end, and with the addition of 10 new locations, he is halfway to achieving his goal, a White House news release said. The 10 new TechHire locations are Akron; Birmingham; Cincinnati; Lynchburg, Virginia; New Orleans; Oakland; Pittsburgh; San Jose, and the states of Maine and Rhode Island, the release said. More than a dozen major technology companies including Amazon, Box, Microsoft and Xerox announced new actions to ensure diverse recruitment and hiring, the release said.
President Barack Obama won't pardon former NSA contractor Edward Snowden for disclosing intelligence information, the White House said in a statement Tuesday in response to a "We the People" petition to the White House to pardon Snowden. “Mr. Snowden's dangerous decision to steal and disclose classified information had severe consequences for the security of our country and the people who work day in and day out to protect it,” said Lisa Monaco, the president's adviser on homeland security and counterterrorism, in the statement. Snowden should have challenged the NSA’s activities, spoken out, engaged in a constructive act of protest, and “accept[ed] the consequences of his actions,” Monaco said. “He should come home to the United States, and be judged by a jury of his peers -- not hide behind the cover of an authoritarian regime,” she said. The U.S. faces “grave security threats like terrorism, cyber-attacks, and nuclear proliferation that our intelligence community must have all the lawful tools it needs to address,” Monaco said. Balancing security and civil liberties deserves robust debate by those willing to engage in it in the U.S., she said.
Secretary of State John Kerry and senior White House officials hosted 13 of the nation's largest companies that “are standing with the Obama Administration to launch the American Business Act on Climate Pledge,” including Apple, Google and Microsoft, a White House news release said. “No corner of the planet and no sector of the global economy will remain unaffected by climate change in the years ahead,” which is why “hundreds of private companies, local governments, and foundations have stepped up to increase energy efficiency, boost low-carbon investing, and make solar energy more accessible to low-income Americans,” the release said. Specifically, Apple pledged to “bring an estimated 280 megawatts of clean power generation online by the end of 2016 through investments in Arizona, California, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon and Sichuan Province, China”; Google pledged to power its operations with 100 percent renewable energy, use Google shuttles and corporate electric vehicles and reduce single occupancy vehicles, reduce water consumption, and continue to “develop products and platforms that can help reduce emissions and bring the power of cloud computing to climate science”; and Microsoft pledged to maintain carbon neutral operations, buy 100 percent renewable energy to operate its data centers, offices, labs and manufacturing facilities, and offset 100 percent of emissions from business air travel by supporting carbon offset projects.
President Barack Obama praised the commitments of other stakeholders involved in the ConnectHome initiative he launched this week (see 1507150053), devoted to putting affordable or free broadband in low-income households in 28 communities. “Now, I want to give credit where credit is due,” Obama said Wednesday evening during a speech in Durant, Oklahoma, where one initiative beneficiary -- the Choctaw tribal nation -- is based. “This is not something government does by itself. I’m proud to say that folks around the country are stepping up to do their part. So businesses like Cox are providing low-cost Internet and devices. Best Buy is committing [to] free computer education and technical support so that folks learn how to make the most of the Internet.” A higher percentage of the people in South Korea have access to high-speed broadband than they do in the U.S., Obama said. He framed ConnectHome as a part of a broader administration goal: “So that’s why my administration has made it a priority to connect more Americans to the Internet, and close that digital divide that people have been talking about for 20 years now,” he said. “We’ve invested so far in more than 100,000 miles of network infrastructure; that’s enough to circle the globe four times. We’ve laid a lot of line. We’ve supported community broadband. We’ve championed net neutrality rules to make sure that the Internet providers treat all web traffic equally. And then we launched something called ConnectEd, and this was targeted at making sure that every school was connected and classrooms were connected. And we’re now well on our way to connecting 99 percent of students to high-speed broadband in their classrooms by 2018, and that includes here in Durant.” House Commerce Committee ranking member Frank Pallone, D-N.J., issued a statement Thursday praising ConnectHome as “an important step.”