OVERNIGHT TECH: Tech industry applauds Obama's address

THE LEDE: President Obama's inaugural address on Monday has so far won positive reviews from the tech community.

Trade associations that represent Google, Apple and Cisco said they were encouraged by the themes covered in the president's inaugural address.

"From innovation to immigration, from the power of technology to transform our society to the power of our imagination to find solutions to long-standing challenges, the President’s inaugural address spoke to the heart of our sector’s shared priorities," Tom Gavin, vice president of external affairs at the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI), wrote in a blog post.

The tech sector has crafted proposals for the issues that Obama touched on during his address, Gavin said, and these proposals have earned bipartisan support.

While the president gave a high-level overview of the policy issues he aimed to address, he made a brief mention about high-skilled immigration reform — a top priority for tech trade associations.

The Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) lauded Obama for promoting tech initiatives over the years and said Obama's inaugural address aligned with its policy agenda for the year.

In a statement, TIA President Grant Seiffert said the president indicated that "he is committed to using technology to remake government, reform education and empower citizens" in his inaugural address.

"He deserves praise for advancing this commitment and recognizing the incredible economic and societal value of technology," Seiffert said. "Many of the goals he expressed today are shared in our own innovation agenda, and we look forward to working closely with the Obama administration over the next four years."

State of the Net begins: Lawmakers, tech executives and lobbyists will discuss this year’s tech policy agenda at the annual State of the Net Conference, beginning on Tuesday morning at the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill.

The opening speakers will be Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Victoria Espinel, the intellectual property enforcement coordinator.

In the afternoon, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick will speak with House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.).

Officials from Microsoft, Google, Netflix, Pandora, Neustar and the Federal Trade Commission will also speak on issues including privacy, rewriting the Telecom Act and online music royalties.  

Oversight panel to investigate wasteful IT spending: The House Oversight Committee will hold a hearing on Tuesday to investigate wasteful federal spending on information technology products and services.

Steven VanRoekel, the White House chief information officer; Chris Niehaus, Microsoft’s director of civic innovation; and Tom Davis, the former chairman of the Oversight Committee, are scheduled to testify.

In a video posted on Monday, the committee estimates that the government wastes about $20 billion every year on IT.

"Why? There are too many people in charge of buying things and not enough accountability," a narrator says in the video.

Obama calls for increased high-skill immigration: President Obama made a brief mention about the need for high-skilled immigration reform during his inaugural address at the U.S. Capitol on Monday.

"Our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity; until bright young students and engineers are enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country," Obama said.

Privacy groups lobby EU to crack down on Web companies: A coalition of privacy advocates wrote to the European Union on Monday, urging it to ignore the advice of the U.S. government and push ahead with proposed data privacy regulations of Web companies like Facebook and Google.

Representatives from the American Civil Liberties Union, the Consumer Federation of America, the Center for Digital Democracy and the Friends of Privacy USA met with EU officials on Monday in an effort to counter the lobbying of the U.S. government.

1.1 million tweets sent during inauguration: Twitter said on Monday that 1.1 million people tweeted messages during President Obama's second inauguration.

The figure easily surpassed the 82,392 tweets sent during the inaugural ceremony four years ago.

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