TPP Negotiators Convene in Dallas
Negotiators for the nine countries committed to a Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement met in Dallas starting on May 8 for a new round of discussions aimed at opening trade and encouraging investment among the countries that border the Pacific Ocean. SIIA had a presence at the stakeholder event held by the US Trade Representative (USTR) on May 12, which allowed interested parties to interact directly with the negotiators working on their issues. SIIA is supported a TPP agreement that would contain strong copyright enforcement provisions, measures to protect trade secrets and prevent the disclosure of software source code, and provisions allowing the cross-border flow of information and prohibiting mandated localization of cloud computing servers. A significant development at the discussions was the suggestion from several countries that some of the provisions of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) be substituted for the corresponding provisions in the US proposal on intellectual property. In addition, some countries raised privacy objections to the US proposal on cross-border data flows.
OMB Workshop on Voluntary Consensus Standards
Today, NIST hosted an OMB workshop on Federal Participation in the Development and Use of Voluntary Consensus Standards. The workshop explored agency experiences in the implementation of OMB Circular A-119, public and private sector discussion regarding challenges associated with referencing private sector standards in federal regulations and industry case studies from their perspective on federal use of private sector standards and conformity assessment mechanisms. The Workshop is another step in an ongoing exploration of the Government’s participation in standards development, including a recent Federal Register Notice requesting public comment on whether or not OMB should consider supplementing the existing OMB Circular A-119, a memo earlier this year and proposed policy recommendations in October 2011.
FTC Settlement with MySpace has Implications on Syncing
On May 8, the FTC released a settlement with MySpace that has implications for companies that synchronize (“sync”) or link data through unique identifiers. The FTC charged that MySpace broke its privacy promises to consumers by making it possible for an ad network to connect MySpace’s user identifier with the ad network’s own user identifier . As a result, the two data bases of user information could be merged into a single record. In his post on the topic, the FTC’s chief technology officer, Ed Felton, issued a general warning to firms in this area: “If your product syncs pseudonyms or identifiers with third parties, or makes such syncing possible, you might want to ask yourself which information flows, if any, are enabled by the syncing, and whether those information flows are consistent with your privacy obligations.”
Cyber Continues to Slip in Senate
Senate leaders recently confirmed that consideration of comprehensive cybersecurity legislation will not take place this month, but they’re still hopeful this will now happen in June. Additionally, a planned bipartisan discussion among key Senators that was originally scheduled for today has also been pushed back to next week. These most recent setbacks follow major substantive opposition revealed last week when a coalition of civil-liberties groups urged the Senate to reject the legislation because it would allow military spy agencies to gain access to people’s personal information.
ICANN Announces Date to Reopen Applications
The latest from ICANN is that they are targeting May 22 to reopen its application system for new Web gTLDs, with the anticipated new deadline for submitting applications to be May 30.
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David LeDuc is Senior Director, Public Policy at SIIA. He focuses on e-commerce, privacy, cyber security, cloud computing, open standards, e-government and information policy.