Interviews/Profiles

Markey has served on the committee since 1976 and has been eligible to lead Democrats on the panel since 1999.

Peter Cleveland, Intel’s director of global public policy, is leading a charge from Silicon Valley to pass comprehensive immigration reform.

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Digital publisher and technology evangelist Tim O'Reilly on Wednesday told The Hill he's worried about the implications of lawmakers getting involved in consumer privacy.

They may not consider the potential impact on future innovation, he said: "There's a witch hunt around consumer privacy."

O'Reilly said there is a "real risk that somebody in Congress could get involved" in passing heavy-handed privacy legislation without considering that many consumers are willing to make tradeoffs with regards to sharing their private information.

For example, he said most users are OK with the online payment company Paypal sharing their name and address on eCommerce sites so they don't have to type them in repeatedly.

"That's a pretty benign, useful and consumer-friendly use of private data Paypal has access to," he said.

The government must take a page from the technology industry by learning how to measure the effectiveness of its programs, according to tech evangelist and O'Reilly Media founder Tim O'Reilly.

As a well-known digital publisher and organizer of events like the Gov 2.0 Summit, O'Reilly is a key figure in the movement to increase the federal government's use of technology to engage the public. But, he argues, the focus on getting agencies to join Twitter and Facebook is misplaced.

"There's lots of focus on social media and outreach, but that's the easy stuff. The stuff that's hard that's been really transformative for industry is to create real-time feedback loops using data," O'Reilly said during a conversation Wednesday with Hillicon Valley.

He pointed to Walmart, where inventory is automatically updated when a customer purchases something at the check-out counter. O'Reilly said Walmart and other companies like it have managed to create a central nervous system using technology that constantly tracks how they are performing. He contrasted that with government, which is heavily reliant on a top-down approach but lacks feedback from end users.

"Government programs have no feedback loops to judge their effectiveness. Things are cast in concrete before we know whether they are going to work or not," he said. As an example, he cited the Head Start program for low-income children at the Department of Health and Human Services.

"If Head Start were a startup it would be out of business. It doesn't work," O'Reilly said.

Rep. Rick Boucher's recent draft legislation aimed at protecting the public's privacy online may have landed with a thud but at least one influential group thinks Boucher's efforts must be taken seriously: the Online Publishers Association, which boasts over 60 online content companies including Bloomberg, BBC.com and The Huffington Post. OPA President Pam Horan said Tuesday her organization has spent the last three years closely tracking online privacy issues and is extremely interested in Boucher's efforts to limit web companies' use of the personal information and online behavior of their users.

Horan's team is still analyzing Boucher's draft legislation in order to provide feedback on potential consequences, intentional or not. While OPA would ideally prefer that online content providers be allowed to self-regulate, she was confident that the established relationships between the public and member companies like National Public Radio and ESPN.com would enable them to be treated differently than third-party content providers like search engines or social networks.

"Everyone is recognizing they need to be responsive," Horan said, adding that the Federal Trade Commission began a dialogue online privacy last year, making the Boucher bill a natural outgrowth of that effort. "Everyone needs to take this seriously."

Horan said as the original creators of content, online publishers believe they should be allowed to use data on visitors to tailor their user experiences. However, she said her organization believes that authority should only extend to information collected on the publisher's site and should not be shared with other web sites or advertising networks.

"Third parties like advertisers and search engines have a different relationship with consumers," Horan said. "Publishers are in the best position [to navigate the change]. We have an ongoing dialogue with the public, we can tell them how we use their information."

For its part the OPA has stepped up its lobbying presence inside the Beltway in recent years, opening a D.C. office two years ago and staffing it with Vice President for Government Affairs Michael Drobac. Drobac said he spends the majority of his time helping member companies understand and stay abreast of the latest issues, but he also spends a good amount of time educating Hill staff and lawmakers on the nuances of technology policy. Overall the organization has a staff of eight and now boasts almost 100 members, all of which have a vested interest in the publishing of original content online. Read more...

Reed Hundt is best known as the man who helped shape today’s wireless industry. Now he’s applying lessons he learned in the telecom world to his latest mission: getting clean-energy technologies off the ground.

Chief of broadcasting lobby scoffs at FCC plan, highlights lewd material available online.

Gordon Smith, president of the National Association of Broadcasters, used the organization's Las Vegas trade show as a platform to push back against proposals being considered by Congress and the FCC.

In his keynote speech today, he called the Performance Rights Act, which would require radio stations to pay royalties to singers, a "bailout of the major recording companies."  Read more...

We caught up with three Washington telecom lawyers who've been following the net neutrality issue from the beginning.

Silicon Valley executives visited Washington this week to press the White House and Congress to help spark innovation.