| People & Appointments |
5/2. The Senate confirmed Brenda Becker to be
Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Theodore Kassinger
to be General Counsel of the Department of Commerce.
5/3. The USTR announced
several staff appointments. Naotaka Matsukata will be
Special Assistant for Policy Planning. He previously was on
the staff of Sen. Joe
Lieberman (D-CT). Dayna Cade will be a Deputy
Assistant USTR for Congressional Affairs. She previously
worked on the Bush Cheney campaign. Before that she was the
Director of Government Affairs for the Airports Council
International (ACI). Matt Niemeyer will be a Deputy
Assistant USTR for Congressional Affairs. He was previously
the Deputy Political Director for the American Israel Public
Affairs Committee. Prior to that he worked for the Independent
Insurance Agents of America, for former Rep. Gerald Solomon
(R-NY), and for Sen. John
McCain (R-AZ). Heather Wingate will be an Assistant
USTR for Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Liaison. She was
previously Chief of Staff to Sen. Sam Brownback
(R-KS). Before that she worked for the NRA. Richard Mills
will be Press Secretary. He was previously Communications
Director for House Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier (R-CA).
Before that he worked as Press Secretary to the Senate Banking
Committee. See release. |
|
|
| Rambus Patents |
| 5/4. The U.S. District Court (EDVa)
dismissed Rambus' claims
for patent infringement against Infineon involving SDRAM
and DDR SDRAM technology. Rambus stated that it will appeal.
See, Rambus
release. |
|
|
| New Bills |
5/3. Rep. Ralph
Hall (D-TX) introduced HR 1693, which is described in the
Congressional Record as a "bill to improve science,
mathematics, and technology education in elementary and
secondary schools, advance knowledge on the effective uses of
information technologies in education, increase participation
in science, mathematics, and engineering careers by groups
underrepresented in those fields, provide for more effective
coordination of public and private sector efforts to improve
science, mathematics, and technology education, and for other
purposes." It was referred to the House Science Committee,
and the House Education and Workforce Committee.
5/3. Rep. Howard Berman
(D-CA) and Rep.
Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) introduced HR
1707, a bill to give the Commerce Department jurisdiction
over exports of commercial satellites. The State
Department currently has this authority. The bill was referred
to the House International Relations Committee and House Armed
Services Committee. See, Berman release. |
|
|
| Satellite Privatization |
5/3. May 3 was the deadline to submit comments to the NTIA
regarding "the advantages accorded signatories of the INTELSAT,
in terms of immunities, market access, or otherwise, in the
countries or regions served by INTELSAT, the reason for such
advantages, and an assessment of progress toward fulfilling a
pro- competitive privatization of that organization." The
NTIA published copies of comments which it received in its web
site.
PanAmSat submitted a
comment in which it stated that it and other private satellite
operators face market entry barriers. Motient, which operates a
mobile satellite service (MSS) system in L-band, stated that Inmarsat has
not complied with ORBIT Act.
In contrast, INTELSAT stated that its "privatization
process continues apace" and "in a manner consistent
with the ORBIT Act." Lockheed Martin
stated that International Satellite Organizations (ISOs) have
no competitive advantages that negatively impact the satellite
market. See, comments of ITSO,
Lockheed
Martin, Motient
Services, and PanAmSat.
See also, copy
of notice requesting comments. |
|
|
| New Documents |
GAO:
report
on Gramm Leach Bliley Act, 5/3 (PDF, GAO).
Berman:
HR
1707 a bill to transfer authority over satellite exports
to the Commerce Department, 5/3 (HTML, LibCong). |
|
|
|
| Financial Privacy |
| 5/4. The GAO
released a report
[PDF] titled "Financial Privacy: Too Soon to Assess the
Privacy Provisions in the Gramm- Leach- Bliley Act of
1999." The report, which was mandated by the Act,
concluded that "As of March 31, 2001, federal regulatory
and enforcement agencies had not taken any enforcement actions
or prosecuted any cases under this law. FTC staff have begun
to monitor firms' compliance with the statute's provisions and
have several pending nonpublic investigations. However, FTC
staff and Department of Justice officials told us that until
they have fully prosecuted cases under the statute, they would
lack the necessary experience to assess the effectiveness of
Subtitle B provisions. The federal financial regulatory
agencies are still in the process of taking steps to ensure
that the financial institutions that they regulate have
reasonable controls to protect against fraudulent access to
financial information. ... Lastly, we found that there are
limited data available to indicate the impact of Subtitle B on
the prevalence of fraudulent access to financial
information." |
|
|
| Crime |
| 5/3. The U.S. Attorney (DNJ) charged two
individuals and one company by criminal complaint with
conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The complaint alleges that
Hai Lin and Kai Ku, citizens of the People's Republic of
China, while working at Lucent,
conspired to steal source code and software associated with an
Internet server developed by Lucent, and to transfer the
stolen technology to a company owned by the PRC. The FBI also
arrested Lin and Ku, and a third individual, and executed
search warrants at their homes. The complaint also charged
ComTriad Technologies, Inc., a New Jersey corporation founded
by Lin and Ku. The U.S. Atty also stated that "It is
expected that the matter will be presented to a grand
jury." See, release. |
|
|
| Napster News |
| 5/6. Napster released a statement
in Q&A format about "acoustic fingerprinting", a
technology for blocking the copying of copyrighted music
files. |
|
|
| Trade and Fast Track |
5/3. Sen. Max Baucus
(D-MT), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee,
and a leading free trade advocate, gave an address in the
Senate on trade. He stated that "despite a strong feeling
in the Congress that we need to continue the aggressive
pursuit of trade liberalization and market opening around the
world, we have made no progress at all this year." He
said that progress is being held up by the dispute over how to
deal with environmental labor standards in trade agreements,
and specifically, with the U.S. Jordan Free Trade Agreement.
He concluded: "We need to delink Jordan from the rest of
our trade agenda."
5/4. Sen. Robert Byrd
(D-WV), a leading protectionist in the Senate, gave an address
in the Senate on trade and fast track trade negotiating
authority. He stated that "The administration wants fast
track. The administration says it needs this deviation from
the traditional prerogatives of Congress in order to negotiate
multilateral trade agreements. ... Under the Constitution,
which I hold in my hand, Congress has this responsibility. We
ought to read it. ... we don't need fast track. We need to
live by this Constitution which I hold in my hand." |
|
|
| CALEA |
| 5/4. The FCC published a
summary
in the Federal Register of its Second
Order on Reconsideration [PDF] in its CALEA
proceeding (CC Docket No. 97-213). It adopted this order on
April 9, 2001, and released it on April 16, 2001. See, story
in TLJ
Daily E-Mail Alert of April 17, 2001. The FCC rejected two
FBI petitions for reconsideration which asked the FCC to
impose further "personnel security obligations" upon
carriers, and to require carriers to generate an automated
message that would permit LEAs "to confirm periodically
that the software used to conduct an interception is working
correctly and is accessing the equipment, facilities, or
services of the correct subscriber." However, the FCC did
make minor revisions to §§ 64.2103 and 64.2104 of its rules
to clarify the arrangements telecommunications carriers
subject to CALEA must make to ensure that LEAs can contact
them when necessary, and the interception activity that
triggers a record keeping requirement. The new rules go into
effect on June 4, 2001. |
|
|
| Network Security |
| 5/5. The FBI's National
Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC) released an advisory
regarding potential DDoS attacks. It stated that
"The NIPC has received reliable information indicating
ongoing attempts to disrupt web access to several sites. The
activity has been seen from several networks, and consists
entirely of fragmented large UDP packets directed at port 80.
Analysis indicates that this activity may be intended to
bypass standard port/protocol blocking techniques, as certain
major routing equipment manufacturer's products will block the
first fragment of a large UDP packet, but may not block
subsequent packets, thereby permitting the denial of service
to continue." |
|
|
|
| Today |
First day of two day workshop hosted by the Federal Trade Commission on
competition issues that arise in connection with business to
business (B2B) and business to consumer (B2C) e-commerce. See,
release.
Deadline to submit written comments and rebuttal comments to
the USTR on
further actions against Ukraine for its denial of adequate
protection of intellectual property rights. On March 12, the
USTR designated Ukraine as a "Priority Foreign
Country" under the "Special 301" program. See, notice
in the Federal Register, April 6, 2001, Vol. 66, No. 67, at
Pages 18346 - 18348. See also, USTR
release of March 13.
Deadline to file reply comments with the FCC regarding
its annual report to various Congressional committees
regarding the progress being made under the ORBIT
Act in promoting competition in satellite
communications services, and in privatizing INTELSAT and
Inmarsat. See, FCC
notice.
Day one of a three day conference hosted by the Electronics
Industry Alliance (EIA). See, EIA conference web
site and agenda.
Location: Grand
Hyatt Hotel, 1000 H Street NW, Washington DC.
9:00 AM - 5:00 PM. The EIA and the Telecommunications Industry
Association (TIA) will jointed host a seminar titled "New
Agendas for Emerging Technologies," See TIA
release.
12:00 NOON. Sen. Bob
Bennett (R-UT) will address a luncheon at the EIA
conference.
5:30 - 7:30 PM. The Association for
Competitive Technology (ACT) will host a reception titled
the Third Annual "Let's Talk Privacy" Kick-Off
Reception. RSVP to Susan Blank at 202-331-2130 (ext.107) or by
email at sblank@ACTonline.org.
Location: United States Capitol, Mansfield Room, Washington
DC. |
|
|
| E-Mail Privacy Policy
Update |
Tech Law Journal has added language to its privacy policy
regarding this Daily E-Mail Alert to cover communications with
subscribers' coworkers regarding "bounce" messages.
Original Statement: No information other than an e-mail
address is required to subscribe. Tech Law Journal uses the
BCC (blind carbon copy) option of an e-mail application to
address the Daily E-Mail Alert. Tech Law Journal does not
sell, rent, or transfer the distribution list to any third
party.
Additional Language: Tech Law Journal (TLJ) may
disclose the name of a subscriber, an e-mail address, or both,
for the purpose of resolving a non-delivery message. The
disclosure would be made to a co-worker of the subscriber.
After TLJ sends the Daily E-Mail Alert out each morning a
number of copies are returned as non-deliverable; that is, the
e-mail "bounces back" to TLJ. This can occur for a
number of reasons. The subscriber's e-mail box may be full.
The subscriber may have moved to a different office or
employer. The e-mail may have been blocked. There could be a
temporary technical problem. Or, TLJ may have erred in
entering the e-mail address of a new subscriber. TLJ
periodically attempts to ascertain the reason for non-delivery
messages in order to determine whether the e-mail addresses
involved should be deleted from the subscription list,
corrected, or maintained on the list as is. TLJ does this by
contacting the subscriber by e-mail or telephone. If the
subscriber is not available, TLJ may communicate with someone
else at the subscriber's office or company. This is usually
the subscriber's secretary, a member of the IT staff, or a
telephone receptionist. |
|
|
| About Tech Law Journal |
Tech Law Journal is a free access web site
and e-mail alert that provides news, records, and analysis of
legislation, litigation, and regulation affecting the computer
and Internet industry. This e-mail service is offered free of
charge to anyone who requests it. Just provide TLJ an e-mail
address.
Number of subscribers: 1,486.
Contact: 202-364-8882; E-mail.
P.O. Box 15186, Washington DC, 20003.
Privacy
Policy
Notices
& Disclaimers
Copyright 1998 - 2001 David Carney, dba Tech Law Journal. All
rights reserved. |
|
|