Hill, The

Facebook, Google, Microsoft and other top technology companies are warning the Senate not to follow the House’s lead with a compromised plan to reform the National Security Agency.

A coalition of nine major companies is planning to publish an open letter calling for the Senate to limit the NSA’s powers, the one-year anniversary of Edward Snowden’s first revelations about the spy agency. The same day, a top trade group head will warn the Senate Intelligence Committee that the spy agency’s activities could lead to “seriously damaging long-term implications” for the global economy. Together, the efforts amount to a concerted push to pressure the Senate to rein in surveillance, after the House passed a bill that many reformers thought was too weak.

“Over the last year many of our companies have taken important steps, including further strengthening the security of our services and taking action to increase transparency,” the nine-member Reform Government Surveillance coalition wrote in the letter, which will be published in The Washington Post, New York Times and Politico. “But the government needs to do more.”

The tech coalition is made up of Google, Facebook, AOL, Microsoft, Apple, Twitter, Yahoo, Dropbox and LinkedIn.The trade group includes major companies like Dell, Sony, Intel and eBay, in addition to several of the companies in the Reform Government Surveillance group.

Labor activists are accusing T-Mobile of labor violations ahead of the company's annual shareholder meeting.

They say the telecommunications company is not treating US workers fairly by discouraging them from unionizing.

"Worldwide, and especially in Germany where T-Mobile’s parent company Deutsche Telekom is based, T-Mobile workers benefit from better protections than their American counterparts because of an employee union," the activists wrote in a petition to the company.

At the shareholder meeting, the Marco Consulting Group will call on T-Mobile's board of directors to conduct a human rights risk assessment. Nearly 28,000 protesters have signed the petition demanding that the company stop violating the rights of US workers.

[Commentary] The clock is rapidly expiring on the 113th Congress. While in the rest of the world, the beginning of June signals a nearing to the midpoint of the year, in Congress during an even-numbered election year, when the calendar flips to June, it signals a mere 10 workweeks until the end of the federal government's fiscal year.

Whether Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) or Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) runs the House, this calendar remains as the July Fourth and August recesses allow members to stay connected with their constituents back home.

Everyone who has been in Washington for any length of time knows this time table. It focuses the minds of lawmakers on what can be accomplished and what cannot as the Congress draws near a close. One prime example where the clock is in danger of running out on a law is the re-authorization of the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act (STELA).

A clean bill, without controversial amendments, would very likely pass before Congress adjourns, but amendments being considered by retiring Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) could serve as poison pills to the whole process. At the urging of pay-television advocates, the Democratic majority on the committee would use the expiring law to create a new set of regulatory regimes that cripple the local broadcaster's ability to survive.

STELA is the law which, at least partially, governs the relationship between local broadcasters and pay-television providers. Unfortunately, Sen Rockefeller's committee is considering amendments to STELA which benefit pay-television providers to the detriment of those who produce local content.

Even on Capitol Hill, it should be clear that the federal government compelling a private business to provide its services to another private business without a contractually agreed-upon payment price is wrong and should be rejected. Yet that is exactly what the pay-television industry hopes to put into reauthorization language dooming the bill.

[Manning is is vice president of public policy and communications for Americans for Limited Government]

The government of the Bahamas has hired American lawyers to help with US surveillance, after a report alleged that the National Security Agency was monitoring all the island nation's calls.

A week after the report based on documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the Bahamas directed the law firm Hogan Lovells to advise and represent it on a range of government actions “that may affect or relate to [its] activities and interests... including but not limited to surveillance and privacy matters,” according to a federal disclosure document. The inclusion of surveillance matters was a new issue for the law firm.

Though it had represented the Bahamas since at least 2001, surveillance and privacy issues were not on its list of interests. In the past, the Bahamas had been more focused on trade and aviation issues with the US.

The Department of Justice has kicked off a process to review its decades-old consent decrees with the music industry’s largest licensing organizations. The move was applauded by the two organizations -- Broadcast Music (BMI) and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) -- who have protested the decrees, saying that the Justice Department’s rules to protect competition in the music licensing market have not kept up with changing technologies.

“The Department understands that ASCAP, BMI and some other firms in the music industry believe that the Consent Decrees need to be modified to account for changes in how music is delivered to and experienced by listeners,” the Justice Department wrote in its announcement of the review. The Department directed commenters to file via the agency’s website or mail by Aug 6.

The agency’s rules for BMI and ASCAP date back to the US government’s concerns in the 1940s that the music industry’s two largest licensing organizations -- which sell blanket copyright licenses to those looking to play the music publicly, such as television stations and restaurants -- were acting in anticompetitive ways.

But BMI and ASCAP -- whose consent decrees were last updated in 1994 and 2001, respectively -- say the rules haven’t kept pace with changing technology, including the proliferation of Internet radio services like Pandora, depriving songwriters and publishers of fair compensation.

A massive transformation of the nation’s medical system is underway as doctors and hospitals migrate to digital records.

The shift promises to fundamentally alter medical care in the United States by introducing standard information technology across the system.

A uniform electronic health record will give doctors a more complete picture of a patient’s medical history, including data from other clinical settings that might be missing in a paper record. But healthcare providers say they are struggling with the transition under the federal “Meaningful Use” incentive program that was designed to speed progress.

Four years after its rollout, hospitals and doctors say the electronic health records (EHRs) initiative is hampering their ability to deliver care.

“These software programs have deprived us of our efficiency, taken us away from interacting with patients and forced us to be secretaries and clerks,” said Dr Steven Stack, a past board chairman of the American Medical Association (AMA). “These are real frustrations for physicians, and they need to be addressed with a mid-course correction in the program,” he said.

The Senate needs to get a cybersecurity bill done, and the Senate Intelligence Committee is “close” to a bipartisan bill, according to Sen Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), the committee’s top Republican.

“We’re down now to just a couple of provisions that we’re still talking about that we’ve got to resolve before we bring it before the committee,” Sen Chambliss said.

Sen Chambliss said he has been working with Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) for months and has solved some of the differences between their approaches, including over real-time sharing of information about cyber threats across relevant entities in the public and private sectors.

They’re still working to solve issues of liability protections, he continued, adding that he’s “confident we’ll figure something out.” Sen Chambliss said he is hopeful the bill will come to the Senate floor once the committee considers it. “It’s a bipartisan bill,” he said. “That rings a bell in [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid’s mind as to what ought to come to the floor.”

Sen Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) said the surveillance reform bill that passed the House in May goes too far in ending some of the National Security Agency’s (NSA) sweeping surveillance programs.

“I actually think they went a little bit too far on the bulk collection side of it,” Chambliss -- the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee -- said.

Sen Chambliss said he thinks the House bill is actually too aggressive, but said he is open to discussing some changes to the surveillance programs, including increased transparency measures and shorter retention periods for data. “It’s not going to be easy” to bring together the senators on opposite sides of the spectrum when it comes to surveillance reform, he said, adding that he welcomes the debate.

Rep Zoe Lofgren’s (D-CA) Communications Director is joining the Information Technology Industry Council, the tech trade group announced.

Duncan Neasham -- who worked for the House Small Business Committee before joining Rep Lofgren’s office in 2011 -- will start at the ITI, overseeing its “media strategy and messaging through its traditional and multi-media platforms,” the group said.

ITI represents giants in the tech industry, including Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo Qualcomm and Oracle.

Rep Lofgren -- who represents part of Silicon Valley and is a member of the House Judiciary Committee -- works on issues critical to the tech industry, including surveillance reform and copyright and hacking laws.

Top Republicans are questioning whether an office within the Health and Human Services Department has the authority to regulate software applications used in the health industry and impose user fees.

In a letter to Karen DeSalvo, national coordinator for health information technology (IT) at HHS, GOP leaders questioned whether the Office of National Coordinator (ONC) has the statutory authority to regulate health IT products based on a new report and whether it has the authority to receive user fees under its budget request.

“It is not clear to us under what statutory authority ONC is now pursuing these enhanced regulatory activities, including the levying of new user fees, on Health IT,” said the lawmakers on the House Commerce Committee. They included Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI), Vice Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Health Subcommittee Chairman Joe Pitts (R-PA) and Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR).