Immigration Reform Debate Begins, Provides Opportunities for High-tech
The bipartisan group of Senators working to craft comprehensive immigration reform unveiled their proposal today, officially kicking-off the immigration reform debate for this Congress. While details are still just becoming available, there are several key provisions to increase the supply of highly-educated and highly-skilled workers in high demand in the high-tech sector. Among the key issues are increases in access to foreign-born graduates of U.S. universities, an increase in the number of employment-based green cards and temporary H1-B workers. Stay tuned for more on the benefits for high-skilled immigration.
House Kicks-off “Cyber Week” by passing three Measures
Today, the U.S. House passed by a strong bipartisan majority three cybersecurity proposals. One of the measures to update the U.S. Government security standards (FISMA), and two bills to increase cybersecurity R&D funding—specifically, the bills were H.R. 1163, H.R. 756 and H.R. 967. These votes set the stage for tomorrow’s House consideration of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA, H.R. 624), legislation to provide an effective framework to enable sharing of cyber threat information between the public and private sectors. SIIA strongly supports CISPA, as the most critical component of preventing and mitigating attacks.
Momentum Continues with ECPA, “Cloud” Privacy Legislation
Both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees are expected to take up the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) next week. On Thursday, the Senate Committee is scheduled to consider Chairman Leahy’s (D-VT) proposal to reform the statue to protect digital content with rules comparable to their more traditional counterparts. Meanwhile the House Judiciary Committee is expected to have another hearing on the issue on Wednesday. Given that the Senate Judiciary Committee already passed similar legislation last year, the outlook is very good that the legislation could be cleared again and sent to the full Senate later this year.
FTC Highlights Accomplishments, Identifies Priorities
Last Friday, new FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez released the agency’s 2013 Annual Highlights, highlighting recent accomplishments and specific initiatives launched in the past year, and reiterating the Commission’s goal to maintain priorities on protecting consumer privacy, fostering competition in the high-tech industries, challenging deceptive advertising and safeguarding children online.
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. Follow the SIIA public policy team on Twitter at @SIIAPubPolicy.