Democratic lawmakers will start developing proposals to update the 1934 Communications Act in June, according to a statement from four prominent committee chairmen on Monday.

Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Rick Boucher (D-Va.), along with Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.), announced Monday that they will start the process to update the Communications Act by inviting stakeholders to take part in a series of meetings beginning in June.

The Communications Act of 1934 established the Federal Communications Commission and established its jurisdiction over radio and wireless communications. The 1996 Telecommunications Act overhauled the original bill and attempted to bring it up to speed with modern telecommunications technologies.

Now Democrats will attempt once again to update the act, likely with an eye towards determining exactly which regulatory body has jurisdiction over the various aspects of the Internet. The FCC's authority to regulate broadband access was called into question by an April federal court decision ruling the Commission had overstepped its bounds when attmepting to enforce net neutrailty on an Internet service provider.

“Our economic future depends upon getting all Americans connected to broadband, and that cannot happen unless the FCC acts fast. The 1996 Act took more than five years to enact, and the most recent attempt to rewrite the law produced no results," said S. Derek Turner, research director for the nonprofit Free Press.

"We cannot wait for Congress to act to protect consumers and carry out the National Broadband Plan. We hope that the public will have a seat at the table during this process, and that any draft legislation will put the needs of Main Street before the demands of Wall Street." 

Update: A spokesperson for Sen. Kerry sends the following:

"Senator Kerry believes that this process is complimentary to the efforts at the FCC, not a substitute for them. The deliberative process, both here and at the agency, will help inform and enhance our respective responsibilities to write and execute law and regulation that encourages innovation, inclusion, and consumer protections."

Senate Republicans voiced their displeasure Monday with the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) plans to reclassify broadband Internet access as a telecom service.

37 Republican Senators signed a letter to FCC chairman Julius Genachowski decrying his "third-way" plan for regulating broadband access, arguing the approach would discourage private investment and harm consumers. In the letter the Senators reject the FCC's basis for reclassifying broadband as a telecom service and claim that doing so would not increase broadband deployment as promised.

"The reality is that what you are seeking is a major shift in FCC policy that is highly controversial and has been previously rejected by Congress and both Democratic and Republican administrations," the letter states. "Turning 21st century broadband networks into 'dumb pipes' is not what will draw investment to grow jobs in the communications sector and bring high-speed broadband to every home in America."

The letter states that rather than relying on fact-based analysis as promised, the FCC's efforts "appear to be solely relying on the unsubstantiated fear that broadband service providers may harm consumers at some future date." It also charges the FCC with "operating under the misguided notion that there is a lack of competition among broadband service providers."

The FCC has sought to regain its authority to regulate broadband access since a federal court ruled in April that the Commission had overstepped its bounds when it attempted to enforce net neutrality on Comcast, one of the nation's largest Internet service providers. Since then Genachowski has sought to have broadband reclassified as a telecom service, placing it under the FCC's jurisdiction.

The plan has drawn opposition from providers as well as lawmakers; Senate Republicans were quick to point out the FCC found as recently as 2007 that broadband competition was robust and further regulations were unnecessary, criticizing the Commission for failing to provide evidence to the contrary.

"There is scant evidence that the broadband market lacks competition or that consumers have been harmed in a manner that would warrant the heavy-handed 19th century regulations you seek to impose on a highly competitive 21st century communications marketplace."

The letter closes by referring back to the court decision and urging the Commission to change course and abandon its planned changes.

Search giant Google has begun rolling out a service that will allow users to protect their searches from snooping by other users.

Searches from the company's home page will soon make use of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption, according to a blog post published Friday. The technology allows users to protect any information transmitted between the user and the site they are browsing and is usually denoted by lock icon or a web address starting with "https".

Google already uses SSL encryption on many of its products and services, including Gmail and Google Docs, but like many of its new product releases the encryption technology will be nominally treated as in the beta testing phase. SSL searches will also differ from traditional searches in some ways; for instance, the search results won't include links to results from Google Images or Google Maps.

"Also, since SSL connections require additional time to set up the encryption between your browser and the remote web server, your experience with search over SSL might be slightly slower than your regular Google search experience," said the posting.

The ability to encrypt search data will appeal to customers concerned about online companies that compile data on their browsing habits or search results, something Google itself has been accused of doing in the past. Google writes that it will still keep logs of searches but that information will continue to be anonymous.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates officially established the U.S. Cyber Command on Friday by announcing National Security Agency chief Keith B. Alexander as its first commander.

The announcement came after a ceremony at Fort Meade, Maryland, to award Alexander, an Army General, his fourth star. The command will be based at Fort Meade and tasked with safeguarding the nation's critical networks as well as coordinating all offensive cyber attacks. 

"Given our increasing dependency on cyberspace, this new command will bring together the resources of the department to address vulnerabilities and meet the ever-growing array of cyber threats to our military systems," Gates said.

According to the Air Force, Cyber Command will be charged with "pulling together existing cyberspace resources, creating synergy that does not currently exist and synchronizing war-fighting effects to defend the information security environment."

According to Pentagon officials, the command keeps with the Department's mission to protect and defend U.S. national security, and is not an expansion of the Department of Defense's mission. Some critics have argued otherwise, however, particularly since Alexander was named commander. The skeptics say Alexander's positions as head of an influential intelligence operation will give him unpredecented access to and control over the nation's networks.

The Pentagon hopes that Alexander's visibility and influence will help raise the profile and effectiveness of the new command. The new command is expected to be operational by October.

The nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission chairman last week requesting a probe.

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An effort on Capitol Hill to call attention to China's record on copyright theft has evoked the ire of Beijing's top officials.

China's Foreign Ministry on Saturday took aim at the announcement that Beijing ranked atop the U.S. Trade Representative's latest list of habitual intellectual property abusers. A spokesman told China's state-run media this weekend that the allegation was "groundless."

"The involved U.S. Congress members should respect the fact and stop making groundless accusations against China," a Ministry spokesman said, perhaps also referring to last week's news that the Congressional Anti-Piracy Caucus likewise disputed China's copyright record.

China's retort arrives just as its top diplomats sit down with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for the latest round of strategic talks.

Those negotiations, which span Monday and Tuesday, will center primarily on the country's trade and currency practices, with special emphasis on copyright infringement, according to U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, who filled reporters in on the meeting's agenda last week.

Also on tap will be China's widely disputed "indigenous innovation" rules. Those restrictions essentially force Chinese government agencies to purchase tech equipment only from businesses that develop and register their intellectual property patents locally.

A growing number of tech groups have decried the rules as protectionist, especially since the Chinese government represents one of the world's largest markets for new technology. So, too, have lawmakers from both parties and chambers recently slammed China's "indigenous innovation" rules as affronts on uninhibited trade.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg published an op-ed in The Washington Post Monday in response to a slew of negative publicity regarding the popular social network's opaque privacy settings.

In the op-ed Zuckerberg promised the site's privacy controls would become easier to use and said Facebook will never sell users' personal information to other sites. He also acknowledged the public backlash over Facebook's decision to make user information public by default.

"The biggest message we have heard recently is that people want easier control over their information. Simply put, many of you thought our controls were too complex. Our intention was to give you lots of granular controls; but that may not have been what many of you wanted. We just missed the mark."

The 26-year-old Zuckerberg founded the site in his Harvard dorm room in 2004 and has seen Facebook's membership grow exponentially to over 400 million users since. Early versions allowed college students to share only their contact information and class schedules; now users can share almost any type of information or media and access a wide variety of applications via the platform.

One of the features that helped propel Facebook's early adoption was the use of closed networks such as colleges or workplaces, allowing users to share their information only with people they feel comfortable with online. Users have complained about the recent changes, which some say make it too difficult to control which information is available for anyone to see. Zuckerberg promised to address that complaint in the coming weeks.

"We have heard the feedback. There needs to be a simpler way to control your information. In the coming weeks, we will add privacy controls that are much simpler to use. We will also give you an easy way to turn off all third-party services."

Zuckerberg also reinforced that Facebook does not sell users' personal information to advertisers and doesn't share it with any unauthorized sites or applications. He also promised that the service would always remain free and would always allow users to control access to their own information.

What we're following on the morning of Monday, May 24... 

House Democrats this week will try for a third time to advance a $42 billion package of science and technology research programs. Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.), with the backing of his party's leadership, hopes to bring the bill back to a floor vote using a yet-to-be-determined rule limiting debate and amendments. That approach follows two previous, failed attempts by Gordon and his colleagues to shepherd the America Competes Act to passage. The first try ran head-first into a GOP front, which packaged an effort to return the bill to committee with an amendment that would ban federal dollars from funding employees who look at porn on federal computers. The second try, brought up under the suspension process to nix amendments, tripped over the procedure's two-thirds vote hurdle for passage. Democrats will try for a third time later this week, though the specifics of how and when they will do so remain unclear. Either way, the issue has become exceptionally political, as top Democratic leaders have painted the legislation as a jobs proposal that Republicans have blocked to the detriment of voters.

From Facebook, answering privacy concerns with new settings (WaPo) — Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg promises changes to the 400-billion strong social network's privacy settings, after weeks of criticism. He writes: "We have heard the feedback. There needs to be a simpler way to control your information. In the coming weeks, we will add privacy controls that are much simpler to use. We will also give you an easy way to turn off all third-party services. We are working hard to make these changes available as soon as possible. We hope you'll be pleased with the result of our work and, as always, we'll be eager to get your feedback. ... We have also heard that some people don't understand how their personal information is used and worry that it is shared in ways they don't want. I'd like to clear that up now. Many people choose to make some of their information visible to everyone so people they know can find them on Facebook. We already offer controls to limit the visibility of that information and we intend to make them even stronger."

MEANWHILE: Social networks capitalize on Facebook privacy fears (NYT) — Jenna Wortham reports: "It sounds like a kamikaze mission: an upstart with a meager number of users and no capital squaring off against Facebook, a social networking juggernaut with more than 400 million members and a $15 billion valuation. ... But despite those odds, a handful of start-ups are eyeing the social networking industry with renewed interest. ... The newfound infusion of confidence comes, in part, from the recent scrutiny focused on Facebook over revisions to its platform and privacy policy that encourage its members to make personal information accessible to anyone on the Internet."

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Online gambling supporters are betting high that the federal government's current cash crunch will help turn the table again in support of legalization.

While all agree a scheduled ban on online gambling will still enter effect on June 1, many point to this week's hearing before the House Ways and Means Committee as an early sign that lawmakers might nix their Internet gambling prohibition in favor of a plan that would heavily tax and regulate the industry.

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