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Thursday, December 4, 2014

National Journal Tech Edge Update 12/4

National Journal
Tech Edge

Dec. 4, 2014

Brendan Sasso (@BrendanSasso), Dustin Volz (@dnvolz), Laura Ryan (@NJLJRyan), and Billy House
Silicon Valley will soon have to decide whether to continue to seek comprehensive immigration or settle for piecemeal legislation. A cohort of 30 Republicans failed to convince House Speaker John Boehner to support an online sales tax—but he did promise to revisit the issue early next year. Sen. Dianne Feinstein plans to introduce drone legislation to ensure safety protections are properly enforced, and President Obama gave shout-outs to patent reform and cybersecurity legislation as workable priorities in 2015.

TOP NEWS

TECH MAY DITCH PUSH FOR COMPREHENSIVE BILL: With Republicans about to take control of the Senate, comprehensive immigration reform is dead for the foreseeable future. Republicans are, however, signaling they may pass piecemeal legislation that helps U.S. businesses—so long as it doesn't give a path to citizenship to the millions of people already in the country illegally.
Now Silicon Valley companies will have to make a decision: Will they push for legislation that advances their interests even if it leaves poor immigrants behind? (Sasso, NJ)
ONLINE SALES TAX DEAD—FOR NOW: A last-ditch push by about 30 Republicans to convince House Speaker John Boehner to allow lame-duck action on an online sales-tax measure failed Wednesday, but those attending the closed meeting said he is promising to revisit the issue early next year.
"We had a robust discussion, and everybody knows how everybody feels," said GOP Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas as he exited the meeting, which he'd organized. Womack has taken the lead in the House on pushing for action on such a bill.
Rep. Mark Amodei of Nevada said there was a promise that the issue will be considered early next year, he believed as early as February. A Boehner spokesman had no comment on the meeting. (House/Sasso, NJ)
FEINSTEIN PLANS TO INTRODUCE DRONE LEGISLATION: The senator from California sent a letter to FAA administrator Michael Huerta alerting the agency of her intention to unveil legislation soon that would "codify and expand the moratorium on private drone use without specific authority from the FAA that is already in place." Feinstein, long a drone skeptic, also asked Huerta to ensure safety laws are being enforced, a request that comes just a week after media reports revealed that drones have been involved in 190 "near miss" incidents with aircraft this year.
"It is clear we have a serious potential safety problem which could cause a serious threat to life," Feinstein wrote. "Yet, very few of these incidents resulted in FAA enforcement actions, according to reports, even though the drones' operations appear to have been plainly illegal."
NEW COALITION TAKES ON COMCAST: Opponents of Comcast's bid for Time Warner Cable are ramping up their campaign to convince regulators to kill the deal. Dish Network, Public Knowledge, Writers Guild of America West, and other groups launched the "Stop Mega Comcast Coalition" on Wednesday. "Allowing a single company to dominate 50% of our nation's broadband wires is not only a recipe for disaster, but it also runs counter to our antitrust and communications laws," Public Knowledge President Gene Kimmelman said in a statement.
"There's no real news here," Comcast spokeswoman Sena Fitzmaurice said, claiming that the arguments of the "special interest" groups have already been discredited.
Also on Wednesday, the FCC restarted the 180-day clock on its review of the merger, as well as AT&T's bid for DirecTV. The agency had paused its review of the deals because of disputes over access to confidential information.
OBAMA WANTS TO MOVE ON PATENT REFORM AND CYBERSECURITY IN 2015: President Obama ticked off a list of 2015 priorities during a brief presser Wednesday, and he didn't forget to throw tech a few bones. After discussing the usual desire to move on immigration and tax reform, Obama said during a Q&A at the Business Roundtable headquarters that there are a few issues he's hoping to jump on "that we haven't really talked about. ... Patent reform, there's still more work to do there. Cybersecurity, an area that is of great interest to a lot of people in this room."
Obama has given nods to both issues before (notably calling for patent reform during last year's State of the Union). But he indicated both could be starting points for breaking Washington's gridlock as "areas that shouldn't be ideological at all [or] don't require huge expenditures of money."

TOP LINES

THE SONY HACK IS REALLY BAD: The data dump includes employee criminal background checks, salary negotiations, doctors' notes, and the script to an unreleased pilot written by Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan. (Tora Gara and Charlie Warzel, Buzzfeed)
SONY BLAMES NORTH KOREA: The entertainment company and cybersecurity firm Mandiant have determined the recent hack came from North Korea, possibly as retribution for the upcoming film The Interview. (Arik Hesseldahl, Re/code)
GOOGLE HAS PLANS FOR THE 12-AND-UNDER CROWD: Starting next year, the search giant will offer kid versions of some of its popular products, such as YouTube and Chrome. (Marco della Cava, USA Today)
IBM'S NEW WAY OF FIGHTING EBOLA: "IBM has teamed with scientists at Scripps Research Institute in southern California on a project that aims to combine the power of thousands of small computers, to each attack tiny pieces of a larger medical puzzle that might otherwise require a supercomputer to solve." (Brandon Bailey, AP)
KIM DOTCOM WANTS TO BRING HIS INTERNET PARTY TO THE U.S.: The German-born tech mogul's political ambitions stumbled in his home country of New Zealand, but he promises he is "Hillary's worst nightmare in 2016!" (Kaveh Waddell, NJ)
TWITTER JOINS COMPTEL: The advocacy group also includes Netflix, Amazon, and a number of small and medium-sized network operators.

THE DAY AHEAD

  • The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on sports blackouts with testimony from Sen. John McCain at 10:15 a.m.
  • Republic 3.0 will hold a panel discussion on rewriting the Communications Act with former Rep. Rick Boucher at noon.
  • The Georgetown University Law Center will hold a conference on the future of cybercrime beginning at 8:30 a.m.
  • Sens. Kelly Ayotte, Brian Schatz, and Deb Fischer will speak at a Center for Data Innovation event on the Internet of things at 1 p.m.
  • Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller is set to give his farewell speech on the Senate floor at about 3 p.m.
  • Brian Krebs will talk about his new book, Spam Nation: The Inside Story of Organized Cybercrime—From Epidemic to Your Front Door, at Politics and Prose at 7 p.m.
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