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[sanrico AT highdesert.com]

First, let me apologize for the unusual length of this submission. I'm 
sending it
in its entirety because it deals with several internet issues we've been
discussing lately - RFID tags, internet security, internet taxation, etc.
If you guys have nothing better to do with your weekend, well, hey!...enjoy!
Sandy
(It's pretty much written in the first person - however, I'm not that first
person. Picture the whole thing in quotes, ok?)

This is from a US-based newsletter for lawyers.

It's interesting that data retention and access to internet records for 
ordinary
policing (where the powers of the Patriot Act may not applicable) are not 
even on
the caucus' list, except perhaps as one way of addressing items 2 and 3 - 
dealing
with crime.  I read recently that the US Attorney General is pushing for quick
adoption data retention laws.  That may mean that this isn't a complete list, 
and
that there are more threats to users' privacy rights lurking in the weeds 
across
the border.   
-------------------------------------

GREGORY MILLER, INSIDE LOOK: THE CONGRESSIONAL INTERNET CAUCUS PLANNING AGENDA

Greetings TechnoLawyers,

For those legal professionals here who are interested or have clients 
potentially
affected by legislative initiatives concerning the Internet, this may interest
you. Some of you may have already seen a similar post of mine to a pair of ABA
forums on this.

CONGRESSIONAL INTERNET CAUCUS PLANNING AGENDA

I returned the week of November 27th from the Congressional Internet Caucus
Advisory Committee meeting in D.C. where we began the process of helping the 
CIC
form their agenda for the new session of Congress beginning in January. The
following is a recap of the proposed Agenda items.

Bear in mind this is only the proposed list. My coverage below is at best a
reconciliation and impression reconstructed from my handwritten notes and
doodling. Most of this was articulated from the Congressional Staff panel, and
the balance came in post presentation discussion, and then post meeting 
chatting
with leaders.

At the annual "State of the Net" Conference hosted by the CIC in January, we 
will
endeavor to produce the final agenda — a difficult process because arguably
everything here (save some interest in IPv6) is worthy of Congressional
consideration.
I am not a big fan of regulation in general except where its clearly called 
for,
and of the Internet in particular. But the CIC and certainly the Advisory
Committee (ICAC) and the Internet Educational Foundation (IEF) are not just 
about
advancing legislation. Our charters are about education — raising awareness,
knowledge, and consideration of the issues of the Internet. You can learn more
about CIC and ICAC at www.netcaucus.org.

>From my POV, the Congressional Internet Caucus is one of the larger, better
organized, and significantly influential caucuses on Capitol Hill.

BACKGROUND

Senator Leahy and Reps Boucher, Goodlatte, and Honda are co-chairs. Clearly 
the
headline here is that Congress definitely recognizes the Internet as an 
essential
facility of communication, commerce, and democracy.

And the public interest isn't waning either. Typically this planning session
would have 2-3 dozen ardent members of the Advisory Committee (which numbers a
couple of hundred). Today, however, I hand-counted close to 100 attendees —
compressed standing room only (while the room had seats for 64.)

AGENDA ITEMS 

The issues up for consideration, and to be vetted in more detail in January at
the 3rd Annual "State of the Net" Conference in D.C. (as best as I could take
notes standing there) include:

1. RFID TAGS — their application and use and implications on privacy and
security. This issue is slated for "study" and education in the Caucus and no
immediate legislative initiative is planned. There is an interesting
cross-connect here with other agenda items including Internet Governance, 
Social
Networking, and Location-based Services (see below), and that x-connect is an
abstract concept they intend to study, but down the list of priorities known 
as
an "Internet of People" (whereas today we largely have an "Internet of 
Devices.")
It was brought up by an attendee, but the Staff seized on it. It's tangential 
of
course because RFID tags, depending on application, could essentially gather 
and
disseminate information about individuals.

2. IDENTITY THEFT & FRAUD — this issue, as you know, has seen a lot of 
activity
and initiative but nothing has come of it yet. There should be considerable
attention in a host of committees, and as such the CIC will be working to 
provide
the informational framework (education, studies and support of hearings).
Interestingly, the CIC has elevated their foresight on this issue to expand 
their
scope of interest from theft of individuals' identities to the theft and 
fraud of
component identity as well; that is, they will be examining domain name
hijacking, DNS poisoning, IP address spoofing and the like. Good on them, 
IMHO,
to at least get up to speed on such nefarious activity.

3. CYBER-CRIME — another hot issue that will see significant attention and
encompasses all the issues of malware, spam, viruses, intrusion, host 
hijacking
(e.g., botnets); and other tasty tortuous behavior. This is x-linked with
IDENTITY THEFT & FRAUD (see supra).

4. UNIVERSAL & ASSURED ACCESS — this category covers a group of topics and
issues, and is more or less my summary way of grouping a number of related 
things
discussed today. Among the topics include: universal network access including
WiFi, WiMax, and WiLANs; municipal broadband services, VoIP applications in 
that
setting; and old universal service reform. It also is supposed to address 
growing
concerns about unauthorized use of services in wireless settings.

5. INFRASTRUCTURE — A couple of things here. First, Congressman Goodlatte
expressed interest in the implication of IPv6 or next generation Internet
protocols. Having noodled around in Internet protocols for over 20 years, I 
admit
that IPv6 is a reservoir of promise in capabilities, but why on earth it is of
interest to the CIC outside of awareness is beyond me.

2nd, was the issue of network resilience, but since it was called out a 
couple of
times by different Congressmen (staff) I will separate it below, but suffice 
for
this category that there is concern about the so-called backbone of the 
Internet
and including things like root servers, DNS services, etc., and what role
government should have in ensuring availability, if at all.

3rd, and a small issue of more academic interest to them at this point that 
came
up in post meeting chat with Sen Leahy's Staff, but one I know interests a 
couple
of you ... was the concept of certified time. Without dropping into a rat-hole
(and for some readers on a X-posted list, this is already well understood),
within a digital economy there is a need for authenticated time stamping. How 
are
time services provided, secured, verified, authenticated, etc.? Again this is 
an
issue for which they are only expressing early interest (at this time) in
education and examination. They do NOT see any legislative issue, but do have 
the
foresight to recognize that certified time is akin to a necessary gear in the
machinery of the Internet. At NT&D we agree; ironically we were approached by 
a
prospective client last week with a nifty venture in this very area, on which 
I
cannot comment further, but the timing is weirdly coincidental (no pun 
intended).

6. NETWORK RESILIENCE — this topic is related to homeland security and 
critical
infrastructure. The issue is that Congress now appreciates that the Internet 
is
approaching the status of "essential service" similar to electricity and 
water.
The concern is related to cyber-crime and/or cyber-terrorism; that is, are the
things in place to provide for fault tolerance, incident and crisis response, 
and
recovery in the event of severe outage caused either by nonfeasance or
malfeasance?

7. INTERNET TAXATION — this is nearly a "res ipsa" matter, but of course it 
goes
most tactically to the issue of the expiration of the moratorium, while 
begging
the more strategic issues of long term structures.

8. INTERNET GOVERNANCE & ITS COUSIN: 'NET NEUTRALITY — this issue and its
relative have been in the news and on the minds of Congress (more the latter
issue of Neutrality than the former of Governance), catalyzed by the efforts 
in
reforming the Telecommunications Act. Rep Boucher is making this one of his 
top
priorities for the next session to get resolved, largely b/c this topic of
Neutrality is diverting limited attention and resources away from other 
matters
on this Agenda. Network Neutrality is a highly religious, and somewhat
complicated matter. Unfortunately, it has become unnecessarily complicated and
religious. There are also issues of preemption emerging as states are taking
matters into their own hands (where they see real matters existing).

The over-simplified essence of Neutrality debate is that the telecom and cable
companies' primary business is providing the "pipes" of the Internet, if you
will. And of course they would like to add value to that wherever possible,
including content, applications, and services. Perhaps more importantly, these
bandwidth providers would also like to offer tiers of service (toward 
"measured
service") such that they can provision for higher-bandwidth traffic (e.g., 
audio,
video, etc.) compared to lower bandwidth (e.g., e-mail, Web traffic, certain 
data
processing demands, etc.) Seems like a good idea, but on the other side are 
the
Internet application and content providers. And you can guess where this is
going: The question is that with the reformation of the telecommunications act
should there be provisions in place to ensure that due to the desire to add 
value
to their offerings as well as offer tiered services, the telecom and cable
providers do not discriminate against the application and content providers 
(e.g.,
Google, Yahoo, hec, even ABA CLE services), in favor of their own new 
services?
And further, does the offering of tiered service discriminate against those
smaller players who cannot afford the higher bandwidth (faster) channels? Of
course, giants like AT&T quipped earlier this year that there was no way they
should allow Googles of the world to piggyback on their pipes for free in 
order
to make their own money. Of course, that argument is flawed because Google 
pays
handsomely for huge amounts of bandwidth already, and you and I pay for our 
own
broadband access too. So, this issue is messy and does need to be resolved. 
And
yet, this kind of regulation is really the tip of a larger iceberg. Segue.

The more interesting point (or the rest of the iceberg), IMHO is Internet
Governance. And it's finally come up on the radar of the Congressional 
Internet
Caucus this year. I believe it should be the heart and soul of their 
existence.

The net of this is, while the U.S. argues amongst itself about Neutrality and
other matters on this Agenda, the International arena is marching full speed
ahead on determining not whether, but HOW to govern and regulate the Internet 
as
a global (not U.S. centric) medium of communications, commerce, and 
democracy. I
find this unsettling and in need of significant U.S. engagement (and 
diplomacy)
and less of an arrogant, go-it-alone, "we're in charge because we invented it"
attitude. Like it or not, the Internet is a global phenomena and for the sake 
of
communications, commerce, and democracy it must be. (Sorry for the editorial.)
The issues of ICANN, ISOC, the roles of IANA and other elements are in play in
the minds of E.U. politicians. Perhaps concerning to some, is the potential 
for
the U.N. to presume to take jurisdiction over the Internet. But the potential
worst-case outcome, frankly, is balkanization. So, it's potentially a 
political
Pandora's box.

If my Blog ever comes out of hibernation due to some technical and business
complications, a colleague and I have been covering these issues a little 
more in
depth ... but right now there are lots of resources and blogs out there that 
are
giving exhaustive treatment to Internet Governance & Regulation produced by 
some
whip-smart folks in this arena. We can recommend a couple if interested.

9. DATA MINING & PRIVACY — this issue concerns the fact that in a digital
economy, increasingly content is the currency and the value of information on
individuals is growing astronomically. All the issues of privacy, security, 
and
integrity of data mining are in play here. This is also an area of 
examination,
education, and study, but legislative initiatives are on the horizon and 
related
to problems such as data loss and unauthorized or accidental disclosure. This 
is
wrapped up with the next agenda point below, and also has implications in the
international arena as the digital economy is global by (Internet) design.

10. INFORMATION SECURITY & PRIVACY — this is related to several of the agenda
items above (the previous one in particular) and a couple of Congressional
Staffers mentioned interest and intentions to examine whether legislation with
teeth needs to be put forth to increase the requirements for information 
systems
security (in addition to privacy assurances) and recourses for breaches. This 
has
been a record breaking year for data security breaches, and that has not been
lost on Congress.

11. IP & INNOVATION PROTECTION AS IT APPLIES TO THE INTERNET — contained in 
this
category are matters of digital protection of IP (e.g., watermarking, digital
signing, et al); the implication of new mash-ups presented as novel services 
on
the 'Net; certainly patent reform; snippets, YouTube style derivative works, 
etc;
and the Web 2.0 phenomena of individuals as simultaneously consumers and
producers of content.

IMPRESSIONS

If you read this far, thanks, and as you can see there is a lot there. To
summarize (as I've pounded the keys enough here) this is an aggressive agenda 
and
I cannot imagine CIC, let alone Congress getting through even a fraction of 
the
issues. Of course, at the CIC State of the Net Conference next month, the ICAC
and CIC will engage in the difficult process of prioritizing.

It's worth remembering that the CIC is in place to inform Congress and
legislative initiative and to ensure there is leadership in Congress who are
reasonably informed, as much as possible in light of everything they must
address, on matters of the Internet and a digital society. So this is an 
on-going
and evolving agenda and there isn't a mandate of addressing everything here or
crafting legislation on every point. Some of this is simply the process of
building awareness and knowledge through the help of the Advisory Committee.

There is something in there for everyone, and I hope their Web site continues 
to
expand and improve on handling these issues. Have a look at 
www.netcaucus.org. To
that end, we're working with CIC staff to make that happen.

I hope this has been informative and good fodder for the interests of the
TechnoLawyer community. Cheers,

Gregory Miller JD
Member: Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee

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