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Edward Snowden called into a Russian state television program and asked President Vladimir Putin about whether Moscow has surveillance programs similar to those exposed by the former government contractor.

The exchange between Putin and Snowden appeared to be a piece of theater designed to embarrass the Obama Administration amid heightened tensions between the US and Russia over Ukraine.

“I’ve seen little public discussion of Russia’s own involvement in the policies of mass surveillance,” Snowden, a former government contractor facing espionage charges in the US, told Putin via video message. “So I’d like to ask you: Does Russia intercept, store or analyze in any way the communications of millions of individuals? And do you believe that simply increasing the effectiveness of intelligence or law enforcement investigations can justify placing societies, rather than subjects, under surveillance?”

In response, Putin said that bulk collection programs “cannot exist’ under Russian law. “We don’t like a mass system of such interception,” Putin said, according to a translation from state-run broadcaster Russia Today. He said that the government has “some efforts like that” to track “criminals and terrorists,” but that was highly regulated and did not amount to "mass scale" surveillance.

A new report claims that the Commerce Department’s voluntary cybersecurty framework could end up undermining the online protections it seeks.

The report from George Mason University’s Mercatus Center claimed that the plan amounts to “opaque control” of the Internet, which could undermine the “spontaneous, creative sources of experimentation and feedback that drive Internet innovation.”

Companies, the authors wrote, “already have intrinsic incentives to develop cybersecurity solutions” without a formal government plan. Those standards, in fact, are based on industry norms and market trends which “are more robust, effective, and affordable than state-directed alternatives,” they added.

The voluntary framework released by the Commerce Department in February outlines how financial services firms, power companies and other critical infrastructure businesses can beef up their protections against cyberattacks. Supporters have said that the guide is a step towards safer networks and critical protections against a future impending cyberattack.

Lawmakers and administration officials have warned of a “cyber Pearl Harbor” for which the US is currently unprepared. But study authors Eli Dourado and Andrea Castillo say that that kind of rhetoric is overblown and serves as a distraction from the steady stream of data breaches and cyber spying that authorities should be going after.

Sen Al Franken (D-MN) is asking Netflix to weigh in on the proposed merger of Comcast and Time Warner Cable. In a letter, Sen Franken asked Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, who recently took to his company's blog to slam Comcast, to "gauge the risks posed by this deal."

Sen Franken has been one of Congress's most vocal opponents of a deal to combine the country's top two cable companies, which is currently being evaluated by the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

In a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing and television appearances, Sen Franken pushed back on the companies' claims that a merger would help them compete against telecoms like AT&T and Verizon and Internet media companies like Netflix. Instead, Sen Franken said the merger would add to Comcast's market share, giving it too much leverage over customers and Internet content providers.

In his letter, Franken noted the "extensive programming portfolio" -- which Comcast acquired when it purchased NBC Universal in 2011 -- that makes it a competitor to Netflix. A Netflix spokesman said the company has "received senator Franken's letter and plan[s] to respond to his inquiry."

AT&T is threatening to sit out the Federal Communications Commission’s highly anticipated spectrum auction in 2015, which will sell billions of dollars’ worth of airwaves.

As the FCC plans the auction, it is considering "complicated and unnecessary" restrictions on large companies, AT&T Vice President Joan Marsh said. “Such restrictions would put AT&T in an untenable position, forcing AT&T to reevaluate its potential participation in the auction,” Marsh wrote.

AT&T’s filing pointed to the auction’s x-factors, including where the FCC sets the revenue benchmark. The proposal in front of the agency -- which will be voted on at the FCC’s May meeting -- “does not define the threshold for initiation of the restrictions, instead deferring this determination to a subsequent order,” Marsh wrote. She urged the FCC to set the benchmark “at a significant and material level” to keep the small wireless carriers from getting the airwaves “at a discount that the FCC cannot afford to give in this auction.”

Marsh also noted the uncertainty around how much of their airwaves broadcasters will be willing to sell back. If they’re only willing to sell back 60 MHz or less, AT&T and Verizon will be forced to split the available three 10-MHz blocks.

“The restrictions would thus put AT&T in an untenable and unacceptable position,” the filing said. “AT&T could either participate in the auction, accepting that it will likely obtain only a fragmented and inefficient 600 MHz footprint, or it can choose to withhold its capital for other investments and sit out of the auction entirely.”

A host of news outlets and privacy rights groups are urging a federal appeals court to keep the anti-Muslim video “Innocence of Muslims” on the Internet.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Democracy and Technology and other groups filed a brief with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals asking it to reverse a decision to take down the contested video, which was partially blamed for the 2012 attack at a US diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.

“Whatever may be said about the merits of ‘Innocence of Muslims,’ it has unquestionably become part of the historical record,” the groups wrote. If the current ruling is left to stand, they added, it “is likely to harm online expression.”

The Washington Post, National Public Radio, Los Angeles Times and other news companies filed a similar friend-of-the-court brief, arguing that the decision to take down the disputed video “failed to adequately consider the impact its decision could have on core First Amendment rights” and “could empower putative plaintiffs to bypass well-established constitutional protections against restraints on speech...”

The groups are protesting the court’s 2-1 February decision ordering Google, which owns YouTube, to take the video offline. They are looking for a new decision from a slate of 11 judges on the panel, known as an en banc review.

The head of the House Judiciary Committee is asserting his panel’s jurisdiction over any legislation to reform surveillance programs at the National Security Agency (NSA) and elsewhere.

“This is the jurisdiction of the Judiciary Committee,” Rep Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) said. “Obviously the Intelligence Committee has an interest in how intelligence is gathered, but because of the civil liberties entailed that must be protected under our Bill of Rights, this is very clearly the jurisdiction of our committee,” he added.

Analysts have raised questions about which of the two panels would be given primary jurisdiction over the issue, a decision that could determine how far reform legislation will go. Rep Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), a member of the Judiciary Committee and fierce critic of the NSA programs, said he was “deeply concerned” about the decision. Rep Goodlatte declined to back any specific piece of legislation to rein in the NSA.

The United States is pushing for a United Nations resolution in support of international bans on texting while driving.

UN Ambassador Samantha Power said in a speech the push to outlaw texting while driving in many US states should be replicated in other nations.

“Worldwide, six out of seven people have access to cell phones and more than a billion cars are on the road,” Power said. “In crowded conditions, with narrow roads and poor infrastructure, bicyclists and pedestrians are at particular risk. Too many drivers simply don’t understand the danger of taking their eyes, even briefly, from the road. And while drinking is episodic, the use of hand-held devices is chronic. No one should die -- or kill -- because of a text message.”

Forty-three US states have passed bans on texting while driving, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

Privacy and civil liberties advocates are pushing regulators and the Obama Administration to support an end to warrantless searches of people’s emails.

The American Civil Liberties Union, Heritage Action for America, Americans for Tax Reform and the Center for Democracy and Technology called out the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for making “contradictory or misleading statements” about its work to oppose an overhaul of current law. The SEC has been one of the most vocal opponents of an update to the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), which allows law enforcement officials to get emails and other documents without a warrant once they have been stored online for more than 180 days.

Legislation to overhaul the law has gained momentum in both chambers of Congress, but the SEC has feared that an update would interfere with the way it conducts investigations. In a letter to the commission, the groups said the agency was trying to confuse people about its investigation processes. They also agreed to a proposed amendment meant to satisfy SEC concerns, developed with Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT). That measure, they said, would make sure that "ECPA cannot be used to shield data in the cloud from ordinary discovery techniques" by allowing the SEC and other regulators to use a subpoena to obtain information held by third-party service providers during the course of an investigation.

Comcast has hired a new team of high-powered lobbyists as it fights for approval of its proposed merger with Time Warner Cable.

The company added The Normandy Group to its advocacy roster, according to recently filed lobbying disclosure forms, and will have former Rep Henry Bonilla (R-TX) working on its behalf. It’s the second lobby shop Comcast has hired since announcing its intention to merge with Time Warner in February, and it brings the company’s total tally of lobby firms to 35, forms filed with the Senate indicate.

The Normandy Group will “work on Comcast's pending acquisition of Time Warner Cable and related Congressional hearing on the transaction,” according to the paperwork. Also on the account are Krista Stark, who served as legislative director to Rep James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-WI), when he was chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Louis Dupart, a veteran of Capitol Hill, the Defense Department and the CIA.

Sen Mike Lee (R-UT) said he is worried that the proposed $45 billion merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable could lead to a clampdown on conservative media.

The deal would put one massive cable and Internet provider in 27 of the top 30 markets in the country. But perhaps more importantly, that resulting cable giant would also own NBC Universal and its slew of subsidiary channels, which Comcast has owned since 2011. That could lead to unfair treatment of some content, Sen Lee warned, including shows appealing to the conservative right.

“I’ve heard some concerns expressed that the emerging Comcast, the post-merger Comcast, might have the incentive or even the predilection but certainly an enhanced capacity, due to its larger size, to discriminate against certain types of content, including political content,” he said at a hearing with Comcast and Time Warner Cable executives.