Issa's bill targets a program that has the backing of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Dozens of House lawmakers joined together on Wednesday to introduce legislation that would bar employers from asking for their workers' passwords to Facebook or other social media accounts.

The Password Protection Act, authored by Reps. Ed Perlmutter (D-Colo.) and Peter Welch (D-Vt.), would protect both current employees and job applicants. 

The lawmakers pushed similar legislation last year, and Reps. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) and Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.) have introduced their own bill on the issue, which would also apply the restriction to colleges and universities asking for student information.

Facebook announced on Wednesday that it has joined the Global Network Initiative (GNI), a human rights group made up of Internet companies, nonprofits and academics.

The social media giant is the sixth company to join the initiative, following Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and others. 

GNI issues principles and guidelines to companies for responding to government requests in a way that protects free speech and privacy. Companies that join the coalition agree to independent assessments of their compliance with the standards.

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European leaders will discuss how to combat tax avoidance by companies like Amazon, Google and Apple, Reuters writes.  Read more...

The deal was a coup for the tech industry, which had been lobbying aggressively behind the scenes.

THE LEDE: Apple CEO Tim Cook fended off accusations of corporate tax dodging at Tuesday's Senate hearing and put forward his own plan for comprehensive tax reform.

"Unfortunately, the tax code has not kept up with the digital age," Cook said during the hearing of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. "The tax system handicaps American corporations in relation to our foreign competitors who don’t have such constraints on the free flow of capital."

Cook urged lawmakers to slash the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to the mid-20s and to adopt a single-digit tax rate on foreign earnings that companies bring back to the United States. He said tax reform legislation should also eliminate corporate tax expenditures and be revenue-neutral. 

He said those steps would encourage companies to invest in the United States, boosting economic growth.

Subcommittee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) pressed Cook on whether he would refuse to bring the company's profits back to the United States unless Congress cut the corporate tax rate.

Cook said he has "no current plan" to bring the company's billions in cash to the U.S. under the current rates.

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A compromise on a package of amendments by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) on H-1B visas was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday during its markup of the Gang of Eight's immigration bill.

Hatch had been involved in negotiations with Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), a member of the Gang of Eight and Judiciary Committee, over the past several days to reach a compromise on his proposed changes. The deal struck on the amendments is intended to make the process for granting H-1B more palatable to tech companies.

The Utah Republican said he would vote for the sweeping immigration bill out of committee after the compromise language was approved by the Judiciary panel. Hatch's support is seen as key to securing more Republican support for the bill when it heads to the floor. 

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Few electric utilities are complying with voluntary measures to protect against the Stuxnet virus, according to a survey sent by two lawmakers to 150 firms.

The report found that less than a quarter of investor-owned utilities and less than half of municipal and cooperation-owned utilities followed through with voluntary standards issued by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission after the Stuxnet worm struck in 2010.

It found that the electric grid is the target of daily cyber attacks, with one utility reporting that it was the target of approximately 10,000 attempted cyber attacks each month. No utilities reported any damage from the attacks.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), who with Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) released the study, called the findings “sobering.”

"We pay all the taxes we owe, every single dollar," said Tim Cook, defending his company's corporate tax practices.