SIIA Urges U.S. Trade Representative to Promote Digital Trade & Protect IP

SIIA filed comments today with the United States Trade Representative (USTR) urging the agency to use the negotiations for a new International Services Agreement (ISA) to lower barriers to trade in digital services and to maintain a high degree of intellectual property protection and enforcement. In our comments, SIIA pointed out that sustainable growth in the 21st century economy relies upon the unrestricted flow of information and data, as our domestic IT businesses reach across the globe. Therefore, removing barriers to the establishment and delivery of digital IT services will enhance economic performance.

Specifically, SIIA’s comments urged USTR to maintain the following two objectives in the services agreement: (1) governments should not prevent businesses that supply services in other countries, or customers of those suppliers, from electronically transferring information domestically or across borders, accessing publicly available information, or accessing their own information stored in other countries, and (2) Strong IP protections for software and digital content have been an essential element in fostering explosive technology growth and a wider variety of educational materials and information products that increase productivity, effectiveness and knowledge. Read more on SIIA’s Digital Discourse blog.

Legislation Introduced to Prevent Abusive Patent Suits

Today, bipartisan legislation was introduced in the U.S. House to take on the persistent issue of patent trolls, one of the major challenges to the U.S. patent system that was not addressed in the recently enacted America Invents Act. The Saving High-Tech Innovators from Egregious Legal Disputes Act (SHIELD Act), sponsored by Reps. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) and Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) seeks to limit cases brought by trolls by shifting the legal fees to the losing party when patent trolls lose their patent infringement cases. SIIA welcomed the legislation with a strong statement of support. Read more on SIIA’s Digital Discourse Blog.

House Panel Considers Federal IT Reform

As promised by chairman Darrel Issa (R-CA), the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is moving forward on this issue, holding a hearing today. The legislation, the Federal IT Acquisition Reform act (known as FITARA), still in draft format, seeks to reform the Federal IT acquisition process and would be the first major Federal IT update since the E-Government Act was enacted more than ten years ago. SIIA supports reforms that would enable the government to more efficiently acquire innovative IT products and services, and we are working closely with Chairman Issa as he seeks to introduce this legislation in the next couple of weeks. Read more on SIIA’s Digital Discourse blog.

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.

Cyber Debate Heats Up with Executive Order, Federal Legislation and EU Proposal

Cybersecurity has generated a lot of attention for several years, but an Executive Order (EO) by President Obama and proposals on the Hill and in Europe have officially set heavy policy discussion in motion for 2013 and beyond.

Last week, President Obama called-out cybersecurity as a priority in his State of the Union Address on Tuesday, announcing the release of the much anticipated Executive Order (EO) on cybersecurity.  The EO is focused specifically on critical infrastructure protection, calling for a NIST-led multistakeholder process to identify existing consensus standards, practices and procedures that can become the basis of a voluntary “Cybersecurity Framework.”  In announcing the EO and corresponding guidance and initiatives, the President has labeled the EO as a “down payment” for legislation, which in his view is still very necessary to address many of the key cybersecurity priorities, most notably improving information sharing from companies to the government, and for creating incentives for broad adoption of the voluntary cybersecurity framework. SIIA issued a statement in response commending the President for prioritizing cybersecurity, seeking to preserve innovation and reiterating the need to avoid applying regulations around what will be developed as a voluntary framework.

Also last week, Reps. Mike Rogers (R-MI) and Dutch Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD) reintroduced the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), bipartisan cybersecurity legislation to enhance sharing of cyber threat information between the public and private sectors. Last year CISPA received more than 100 bipartisan cosponsors and was passed by the House with strong support.  In response, SIIA joined with other leading trade associations in support this legislation.  The House Intelligence Committee followed-up with a hearing on the legislation Thursday.

These developments in DC last week came on the heels of the European Commission (EC) publishing a cybersecurity strategy and a draft directive on network and information security (NIS).  In response, SIIA issued a statement expressing concern that the proposal is too prescriptive and overly broad.

New Legislation Supports Technology Readiness for Digital Learning and Online Assessment

U.S. Representative George Miller (CA) recentlyintroduced“The Transforming Education Through Technology Act” (H.R. 521), legislation to help ensure the nation’s elementary and secondary schools have access to the technology infrastructure, applications and professional support needed for digital learning and online assessment. Congressman Miller is Ranking Democrat on the U.S. House Education & the Workforce Committee, coauthor of the No Child Left Behind Act, and was recently recognized for his leadership in education technology. In response to the bill’s introduction, SIIA issued a statement of support of the legislation as an important step forward in providing our students and educators with the technology supports they need for success in school and in the workplace.  SIIA also joined with a coalition of organizations endorsing the bill, representing K-12 teachers, technology officers, administrators and high-tech companies. Read more on SIIA’s Digital Discourse Blog.

Obama on Patent Reform:  We’re Not Done Yet, Patent Trolls Need to be Reined In

Last week, President Obama took the opportunity in a public video chat to urge for more work to be done to stop abusive patent lawsuits.  Noting that recent patent reform efforts were “only a partial fix to the patent troll problem,” President Obama went on to say that “there’s a delicate balance between protecting intellectual property and making sure people aren’t ruined financially by patent trolls. What we need to do is pull together additional stakeholders and see if we can build some additional consensus on smarter patent laws.” Read more on SIIA’s Digital Discourse blog.

SIIA’s CloudGov Conference Features Lively Discussion on Emerging Federal IT Issues

SIIA’s Cloud/GOV 2013 conference held last week played to a packed house of federal IT employees, contractors, IT companies and policymakers. Event attendees were treated to keynote addresses from Federal CIO Steve VanRoekel, DOD DCIO Dave DeVries, and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA). They also heard a variety of perspectives on topics ranging from how the convergence of cloud and data analytics can make government more effective, to the latest on FedRAMP, and how to choose the right cloud solution. Making news was the announcement by GSAs Kathy Conrad that there is an RFI in the works to look at privatizing the management of the FedRAMP 3PAOs. GCN has a good roundup on the FedRAMP discussion, and video of the event is available online for those that missed it.

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.

SIIA Cloud/Gov Conference to Focus on Federal IT Reform

SIIA is excited to announce that Federal CIO Steven Van Roekel has been added to the Cloud/GOV agenda as our opening keynote speaker next Tuesday, Feb. 12. VanRoekel joins an already impressive lineup of government and industry speakers, including Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and many high-level federal IT officials. The event will provide a comprehensive look at recent and proposed federal policy changes that promise to greatly alter the Federal IT landscape, including focuses on emerging Cloud and FedRAMP-related issues, and the convergence of the cloud and “big data” analytics.

If you haven’t yet done so, register, or contact Mike Hettinger with questions.

In Wake of WCIT, Internet Governance Returns to Capitol Hill

Today, three House subcommittees hosted a joint hearing on Internet governance. Specifically, the focus of hearing was the fallout from the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) last December, where there was strong support among many nations for a proposal to bring the Internet within the regulatory purview of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a United Nations agency. Despite the refusal of the USG and 54 other nations to sign the treaty, Chairman Walden has correctly framed the WCIT as the “start, rather than the end, of efforts to subject the Internet to international regulation.”

Also a topic of the hearing is draft legislation proposing to make it the policy of the United States to promote a global Internet free from government control. While SIIA strongly supports the intent of the legislation, President Ken Wasch sent a letter to the Subcommittee leaders urging modification to the draft legislation to clarify that it’s regulation from unelected bodies like the ITU that needs to be avoided, rather than establishing the Internet as a “government-free zone.”

FTC Weighs in on Mobile Privacy

Last Friday, the FTC issued another staff report on mobile privacy, making recommendations for mobile platforms (operating system providers), app developers, advertising networks and analytics companies, and app developer trade associations, mainly aimed at providing enhanced privacy disclosures about the data they collect and how the data is used. This comes a day after the NTIA-led multistakeholder discussions concluded its ninth meeting, where significant progress appears to be emerging in a cooperative effort towards a voluntary code of conduct. In response to the report, SIIA posed a reminder to the FTC that the increase in “mobile” devices doesn’t represent a shift to the increase in personalization of devices.

It’s hard to tell how these recommendations will impact the ongoing multistakeholder discussions, if at all. But perhaps more important was the settlement announced by the FTC the same day with social networking provider, Path. In the Settlement Path agreed to settle FTC charges that it deceived users by collecting personal information from their mobile device address books without their knowledge and consent. Most importantly for companies providing mobile apps is the FTC’s victory in charging Path with “misleading” practices and not providing customers with meaningful choice regarding collection of their personal information, because the app – contrary to notice provided to users – automatically collected and stored personal information from the users mobile device address book even in the absent of consent.

Once again, the FTC is demonstrating that it will aggressively enforce its current authority by charging companies that are misrepresenting, or at least believe to be misrepresenting, their data collection practices.

EU Cybersecurity Strategy Reportedly Imminent

Reports suggest that the European Commission will be releasing its cybersecurity proposal on Thursday, February 7, and that it will impose strong new requirements on all entities doing business in Europe. The proposal will be backed by the Commission’s directorate general for foreign policy and defense, technology and telecommunications, and home affairs. The basic rational for the new regulatory proposal is market failure. The draft document concludes: “The current situation in the EU, reflecting the purely voluntary approach followed so far, does not provide sufficient protection against network and information security incidents and risks across the EU.”

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.

Digital Trade Become Key Areas of Focus in 2013

Reflecting the importance of digital products & services in international trade, there have been several key developments over the past couple weeks.

First, on January 8th, the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) announced the launch of two investigations into the role of digital trade in the U.S. and global economies. Requested by Senate Finance Committee in 2012, the investigations are intended to explore how digital trade has increased rapidly in recent years and is an increasingly important activity within the global economy, and to explore the challenges that policymakers are facing, balancing the need to keep digital trade open while protecting and securing data and privacy. In conjunction with the investigations, the USITC will hold a hearing and in early March and has been tasked with producing two reports for Congress describing the nature, opportunities and challenges of digital trade, and how it can be harnessed for U.S. economic growth broadly and by various sectors.

And on January 15th, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) formally notified Congress that it intends to begin negotiations for a plurilateral services agreement within the next 90 days. In its notification, USTR outlines several key objectives, including negotiation of a deal that covers new Internet-based services. The negotiations are expected to include discussions on permitting the free flow of data across borders, as it has in the context of the negotiations for a Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement.

Key House Committee to Explore Privacy/Data Security

Last week, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton indicated that he will soon release a list of priority issues and initial hearings for the Committee, with the theme being “a smaller, modernized government that is geared for the innovation era — where obsolete programs are shed for fresh approaches that foster growth and advancement in all sectors of our economy.”

On privacy, new Commerce Subcommittee Chair Lee Terry (R-NE) indicated last week that the Subcommittee would soon return to the online privacy and data security debates that took place under former Chair Mary Bono Mack (R-CA) in 2012, and that the focus on data security will likely use her Secure DATA Act as a “starting point” but will make modifications. More broadly on privacy issues, Chairman Terry will also use the hearings and discussions of the last two years and build from there, and he is considering the creation of an online-privacy-focused task force comprised of members of the Subcommittee.

SIIA Supports USPTO’s Proposed Improvements to Patent Ownership Rules

Last week, SIIA filed comments with the USPTO strongly supporting the Office’s proposed new requirements for recording real-party-in-interest (RPI) information in patent cases. In its comments, SIIA explained that under the present system it is too easy for RPIs to hide behind legal fictions, making it very difficult to determine what patents a company owns. A requirement by the USPTO that make available complete, current and accurate RPI information will improve the efficiencies of licensing, transparency of the patent system, litigation and patent prosecution.

SIIA Kicks off President’s Second Term with Ed-Tech Ball

SIIA helped host the NCTET Bytes & Books Inaugural Ball featuring an award to Rep. George Miller (CA), ranking Democrat on the House Education & Workforce Committee, and remarks by U.S. Under Secretary of Education Martha Kanter. SIIA’s Mark Schneiderman is president of NCTET (National Coalition for Technology in Education & Training) delivered remarks to the 400+ education, public policy and high-tech leaders in attendance. Distinguished guests included NY Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, US DoED Assistant Secretary Deb Delisle, and Special Assistant to the President for Education Policy Roberto Rodriguez. Event supporters included the National Education Association, PBS, SMART Technologies, Pearson, Pearson Foundation and, of course, SIIA. The event celebrated the Inauguration of President Obama, the election of the 113th Congress, awards to six distinguished education leaders, and the role of technology to improve education.

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.

Patent Policy Starts 2013 on Front Burner

Out of the gate in 2013 there has been a heavy focus on patent policy in Washington. Beginning with a rare joint statement, the U.S. Justice Department and the Patent and Trademark Office on Jan. 8th spoke out against lawsuits over standards-essential patents as a threat to competition and a harm to consumers. The statement was targeted at the International Trade Commission (ITC), which considers requests from companies to block products from the market over patent infringement and has a legal mandate to consider the effects on the public. According to the agencies, the Commission could deny a request or delay an order to give companies more time to negotiate a license agreement if they perceive potential harm to the public interest.

And on Monday, President Obama signed into law H.R. 6621, which amends provisions of the America Invents Act enacted in September 2011. While the America Invents Act was an effective first step in addressing the problem of abusive patent litigation by trolls, SIIA joined with other leading technology groups late last year warning that patent trolls continue to damage the economy, hurt America’s tech industry, and threaten innovation. In the letter, SIIA formally called on Congress to enact legislation that provides more safeguards to prevent the economic and consumer harm caused by abusive patent lawsuits. Read more on SIIA’s Digital Discourse Blog.

Europe Preparing to Launch Cybersecurity Strategy and Legislation

While we await an expected executive order on cybersecurity from President Obama in the near future, the EU is seeking to release a Cybersecurity Strategy and Directive to harmonise cybersecurity across Member States. The cyber proposal, which the EC hopes to release in late January, would require increased preparedness and improved cooperation among States, and require operators of critical infrastructure and public administrations to adopt common guidelines to manage security risks and report serious threats.

Although the Directive recognizes that Member States will ultimately be responsible for their own cybersecurity, it would establish a common high level of protection across all the Member States through the proposal of specific, EU-level activities to enhance the EU’s overall performance. Similar to U.S. proposals, the EC drafts made available are ambiguous with respect to specific definitions of critical infrastructure and baseline security requirements, but the proposal is likely to raise similar concerns from companies for being too prescriptive and stifling cybersecurity innovation.

CFAA Reform Gets Boost from Schwartz Suicide

An issue that already had momentum in the last Congress, efforts to reform the 1986 the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) has received increased attention in the wake of Aaron Schwartz’ recent suicide. Schwartz was facing charges under the CFAA for unauthorized access to the MIT website, where he downloaded academic articles from its online archive, called JSTOR, and made them publicly available. The CFAA was the subject of several proposed legislative reforms in 2012, and SIIA has been engaged, seeking to preserve the ability of SIIA members to use the CFAA to deter and prevent unauthorized access to or misuse of databases, subscription services and cloud services. While we knew this issue was going to remain ripe for debate again in 2013, Swartz’ recent suicide has likely increased support among policymakers to reform the CFAA sooner, rather than later.

For SIIA policy updates including upcoming events, news and analysis, subscribe to SIIA’s weekly policy email newsletter, Digital Policy Roundup.

FTC Initiates Data Broker Study, Will Release Revised COPPA Rule Tomorrow

Finishing up a very busy year on the privacy front, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) today announced that it is initiating a study on the “Data Broker Industry’s Collection and Use of Consumer Data.” The Commission issued orders requiring nine “data brokerage companies” to provide the agency with information about how they collect and use data about consumers, and it will use the responses it receives to prepare a study and to make recommendations on whether, and how, the data broker industry could improve its privacy practices.

And the Commission announced that the much-anticipated revisions to the COPPA Rule, providing regulations for Internet sites and services directed towards children, will be released tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Data Broker Briefing Reveals Complex Data Ecosystem

Last week, in a briefing convened by the Congressional Privacy Caucus, co-chairs Ed Markey (D-MA) and Joe Barton (R-TX) explored the roles of “data brokers,” along with two chief regulators from the FTC, Chairman Jon Leibowitz and Commissioner Julie Brill. The briefing and discussion was wide-ranging, and if anything, it seemed to raise more questions than provide answers.

If there was one single over-arching takeaway for me, it was that there exists a very complex data ecosystem that includes consumers, businesses and governments, and it’s increasingly difficult to label entities for purposes of creating new laws and regulations. I have written a blog post summarizing the key themes I took out of this briefing at the SIIA Digital Discourse blog.

SIIA Calls for Legislation to Fight Patent Trolls

Last week, SIIA joined with several other trade associations to issue a formal call on Congress to enact legislation that provides more safeguards to prevent the economic and consumer harm caused by abusive patent lawsuits.

Although the America Invents Act was an effective first step in addressing the problem of abusive patent litigation by trolls, patent trolls continue to damage the economy, hurt America’s tech industry, and threaten innovation. In calling on Congress to do more, SIIA has outlined a specific proposal, which was articulated in the joint letter to congressional leaders, for legislation that would help address this problem. Read more on SIIA’s Digital Discourse Blog.

State Department Refutes Global Cloud Myths, Defends U.S. Providers

In early December, U.S. Ambassador to the European Union, William Kennard, addressed Forum Europe’s 3rd Annual European Data Protection and Privacy Conference, and responded to the myth that the U. S. system of government access to information is a threat to the privacy rights of citizens of the other countries. He was especially effective in rebutting concerns directed at cloud computing, where the misconception has developed that information stored in cloud computing servers can be accessed by the U.S. government without any effective privacy controls. This very welcome effort to refute false barriers to U.S. cloud providers was also accompanied the release of State Department white paper that dispels the misconceptions about the U.S. legal system and government access to information. While SIIA is a leading proponent of policy changes to better enable U.S. cloud providers to compete around the world, this strong defense of current U.S. policies and practices of U.S. cloud providers is a very helpful for alleviating many of the misperceptions that currently serve as a barrier in global markets. Read more on SIIA’s Digital Discourse Blog.

FTC Active on Children’s Privacy and Comprehensive Online Tracking

Amidst broad expectations of a looming vote to finalize proposed revisions to COPPA. The basic conclusion of the Report is the lack of significant progress in addressing privacy concerns for children, which coincided with the Commission’s announcement that it has opened investigations into whether some of the apps had violated the law. Together, the pending COPPA Rule revision, the new Report and formal launch of investigations should serve as a very clear warning that the FTC will aggressively police the children’s app market.

And last week, the FTC held its long-anticipated Workshop on “comprehensive data collection,” an event that went well beyond looking at privacy issues around behavioral advertising, stretching the focus to much more complex data uses, going as far as to explore deep packet inspection. As articulated by FTC Commissioner Bill in her opening keynote, the Workshop’s goal was largely for the FTC to explore whether the Internet “data collection ecosystem” is “just a continuum, or are there bright lines that differentiate some from others.”

Discussions throughout the day revealed broad agreement among academics, industry representatives and regulators that data presents significant opportunities for businesses and users, and that policies should be technology neutral and harm must be better defined. But there were also very significant disagreements and open questions about the need for new policies and the role of regulators. The FTC opened the door on this discussion when it released its comprehensive Privacy Report earlier this year. With this workshop, they demonstrated that the door is wide open.

Hill Continues to Consider Location Privacy and Talk “Data Brokers”

The Senate Judiciary Committee last week postponed voting on a bill require app providers to seek affirmative “opt-in” consent from consumers before using their location information. Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) is planning to resume consideration of the bill, the Location Privacy Protection Act of 2011 (S.1223), this Thursday with the hopes of amendments that could garner bipartisan support. In anticipation of the Committee action last week, SIIA released a call to lawmakers to give the ongoing voluntary multistakeholder process more time to address needed transparency in mobile privacy.

Meanwhile, on the House side, the bipartisan Privacy Caucus will hold a briefing on Thursday morning on “data brokers,” with expected participation from FTC Commissioner Julie Brill and a wide range of industry representatives.

Administration Patent Conference Highlights

The FTC and DOJ held a joint workshop yesterday on the impact of patent trolls on the economy, where FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz made it clear that he fully understands the damaging effect of PAE’s (aka patent trolls) and is concerned with their impact on competition and American innovation. The Chairman went so far as to say that we may be driving off a patent cliff that could stifle intellectual property innovation and competition. In response to the Workshop, SIIA issued a statement of support, expressing our concern about the “patent cliff” and applauding Chairman Leibowitz for making such a strong statement about the significance of the problem.

While there were no direct outcomes of the Workshop, SIIA and other key stakeholders can remain hopeful that coming out of the workshop, all parties–including the FTC, DOJ and Congress–will work together for sensible changes that allow America’s technology industry to thrive.

EU Announces Copyright Initiative. Endorses Digital Freedom Strategy

On December 5, the European Commission announced that it would begin an initiative to modernize European copyright for the digital economy. The initiative has two parallel processes. The first is a series of stakeholder meetings to begin in early 2013 which will focus on “six issues where rapid progress is needed: cross-border portability of content, user-generated content, data- and text-mining, private copy levies, access to audiovisual works and cultural heritage.” The second process focuses on the medium term and will result in a decision on whether to table legislative reforms in 2014. It will focus on four issues: “mitigating the effects of territoriality in the Internal Market; agreeing appropriate levels of harmonisation, limitations and exceptions to copyright in the digital age; how best to reduce the fragmentation of the EU copyright market; and how to improve the legitimacy of enforcement in the context of wider copyright reform.” Some informative reactions from different interested parties can be found here.

More detail on the proposed topics of the review can be found in this background document.

And today, the European Parliament endorsed by a large majority the first Digital Freedom Strategy in EU foreign policy, setting out concrete points of action to be incorporated in EU trade and development policies. The measure contains a large number of policy statements ranging from net neutrality to digital arms embargoes. It specifically endorses the flow of information across borders as a goal of EU trade policy, thereby potentially putting this issue on the table for EU-US trade negotiations. You can find the report here.

White House Shoots Key Message during Heart of Global Internet Conference

During the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai that began last week, the United Arab Emirates, Russia and China announced their intention to introduce a proposal that would explicitly give the ITU authority over the Internet, a move that the US delegation, civil society and business groups oppose. An ITU spokesperson later announced that the proposal had been withdrawn. Similar proposals are possible before the WCIT conference ends Friday. Today the White House released a blog post urging that the “WCIT should be about updating a public telecommunications treaty to reflect today’s market-based realities — not a new venue to create regulations on the Internet, private networks, or the data flowing across them.”