January 2015

In one part of the State of the Union, President Barack Obama mentions the Internet in the same breath as other forms of US infrastructure. This is a bigger deal than you might think.

"21st century businesses need 21st century infrastructure — modern ports, stronger bridges, faster trains and the fastest Internet," the President said. "Let’s pass a bipartisan infrastructure plan that could create more than 30 times as many jobs per year, and make this country stronger for decades to come."

Lumping the country's Internet onramps in with roads and bridges is a significant rhetorical move, laying a kind of governmental claim over these types of commercial conduits. It helps justify Obama's recent calls for new rules on Internet providers and his proposal that federal regulators have a role to play in helping cities build and sell their own Internet service.

President Barack Obama still has plans to change US spying programs, he maintained in the State of the Union address, even as many of the concerns about surveillance have slipped from the headlines.

“While some have moved on from the debates over our surveillance programs, I haven’t,” he said. “As promised, our intelligence agencies have worked hard, with the recommendations of privacy advocates, to increase transparency and build more safeguards against potential abuse. “As Americans, we cherish our civil liberties -- and we need to uphold that commitment if we want maximum cooperation from other countries and industry in our fight against terrorist networks,” he added. In the speech, President Obama announced that the White House would issue a report next month “on how we’re keeping our promise to keep our country safe while strengthening privacy.” The new report is expected to detail progress the Obama Administration has made to curtail some of the most controversial programs at the National Security Agency

Network neutrality is bubbling back to the top of Capitol Hill's agenda.

Committees in both houses of Congress hold hearings Jan 21 on proposed legislation designed to protect the open Internet. The hearings come just weeks before the Federal Communications Commission is expected to vote on its own net neutrality rules. All this activity comes because the FCC's previous set of rules were tossed by a federal court in January 2014.

Congressional Republicans aim to achieve an open Internet by updating communications law to prohibit blocking, throttling and paid prioritization of data. The bill would also sidestep the need for the FCC to use Title II of the Communications Act of 1934 as its authority to regulate the Net. Not all Internet-related businesses agree that the planned legislation, as drafted, solves the problem. The legislation unnecessarily weakens the FCC, said Paul Misener, vice president for global public policy at Amazon.

Fifteen more companies, including Google and the Khan Academy, have signed on to a pledge to protect student privacy.

The pledge was highlighted in a speech by President Barack Obama, in which he also said he will introduce legislation to protect data collected in the classroom. The two companies, both major players in education technology, are among second wave of 15 that signed on to the pledge on Jan 19; 75 signed the agreement earlier. The document holds companies to several data privacy tenets, including promises not to sell student information or to use behaviorally targeted advertising on education products. It also promises to make it easy for parents to see their students' data and to be transparent about how those data are collected and used.