Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), a senior member of the Senate Commerce Committee, wants to implement robust spectrum management policy to promote more efficient use of wireless airwaves.

She opposes exclusively relying on spectrum reallocation--i.e., taking spectrum away from broadcasters or government agencies. Instead, she wants to explore the use of femtocells, smart antennas, cognitive radios and more investment in fiber backhaul to strengthen wireless capacity.

She outlined her plans for legislation in an op-ed in today's paper.

Here's an excerpt:

"While the FCC’s National Broadband Plan makes several recommendations related to spectrum, the first step that is necessary is a thorough inventory to provide federal decision-makers with a clear, detailed and up-to-date understanding of how spectrum is currently being used and by whom — such data is essential to sound policy decisions.... Read more...

Facebook's Washington office is expanding next week. The company has hired Corey Owens to join its government affairs team.

Owens is leaving his position as spokesman for the United Food and Commercial Workers union to become a policy associate for Facebook. He will bring the company's Washington operation to 4 people.

Owens previously worked in the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union. Tim Sparapani, who joined the company last year to become its top lobbyist, also worked at ACLU.

Appropriately, Owens announced his departure on Facebook.

The White House refused to comment on a hacker who gained access to President Barack Obama's official Twitter account.

Asked about the incident on CNBC, White House Chief Technology Office Aneesh Chopra said "No, I can't comment on that."

Obama's official feed is maintained by the Democratic National Committee while the White House has it's own feed which is maintained by communications staff.

"We have a team that works with the president to make sure his message is communicated in all forms that can hear him," Chopra said.

The chief technology officer added that the White House does take cybersecurity very seriously.

"In all seriousness, we do think of cybersecurity as a key priority of our economic engine," he said.

The account was allegedly hacked by a 25-year-old unemployed Frenchman who was arrested then released from jail this week. 

Cross-posted to the Twitter Room

The United States fell from third to fifth in the World Economic Forum's 2009-2010 information technology rankings, released on Thursday.

It currently trails Sweden, Singapore, Denmark and Switzerland in the group's annual comparison of states' IT venture capital, technology rules and standards and broadband availability, among other factors (view the full report in .pdf here).

Broken down, the study confirms much of what President Barack Obama and his tech experts at the White House have long emphasized: U.S. math and science education are lagging, while government services have yet to adopt the most current and effective information technology practices.

The United States ranked somewhat dismally in both areas, typically falling into the double digits behind countries in Europe. But it did perform strongly in other measures of IT use and penetration, including the "extent of business Internet use" (2nd), online political participation (6th), "quality of scientific research institutions" (2nd) and "university-industry collaboration" in research and development projects (1st).

The 350-page plan, which took nearly a year to complete, was delivered to Congress last week.

Read more...

AT&T's top lobbyist said in a blog post this morning that Congress should decide who has authority over broadband services and that lawmakers should step in before the Federal Communications Commission tries to reclassify broadband.

Jim Cicconi, who heads AT&T's Washington office, said, "If there are questions about the authority of the FCC in the Internet ecosystem, the proper answer is not for the FCC to get adventurous in interpreting its authority, as some are urging. Instead, any question of the FCC's jurisdiction over the Internet should properly be referred to the Congress for resolution."

His blog post comes a day after Verizon executive Tom Tauke said in a speech that it is Congress' responsibility to rewrite the Telecom Act to account for the evolving technology used for communications purposes these days. He also questioned whether the FCC is the best agency to oversee the broadband industry. Instead, the Federal Trade Commission might be better suited for the job, or a new agency altogether.

"The FCC derives its authority from Congress, and if the courts say the FCC lacks the authority ti needs to do what it wants to do, the proper--and constitutionally correct--answer is to ask the Congress to address the question," Cicconi said in the blog.

"Any other answer will appear as a means-justifies-the-ends rationalization by the Commission...an action it can't reasonably expect anyone in disagreement to accept. At best, it would lead to litigation and investment uncertainty."

Tauke said that if the FCC tries to reclassify broadband as a Title II service in order to justify net neutrality regulations, the FCC would wind up back in court.

A draft international copyright treaty supported heavily by the United States would require Internet service providers to cut Web connections to those who habitually steal music and movies.

If ultimately included in that international pact, signed by the president and ratified by the Senate, the rule would mandate ISPs begin “adopting and reasonably implementing a policy to address the unauthorized storage or transmission of materials protected by copyright or related rights.”

The treaty later defines more explicitly what that policy should be: A "three-strikes" rule that would require the "termination" of the offending users' Web connections. ISPs that fail to adopt that approach could then face stiff legal penalties, including costly copyright claims in court, according to the draft document.

The controversial provision arrives by way of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) -- a multilateral treaty being drafted chiefly by the United States, European Commission, Switzerland and Japan.

Read more...

Republicans are claiming new media domination in the healthcare debate set to wrap up today.

House Republicans said that a flood of traffic and page views flowed into GOP websites this weekend, and that thousands of new followers signed up to follow @GOPLeader, the Twitter page for House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio).

"The numbers don’t lie; when the American people went looking for the straight story on Washington Democrats’ government takeover of health care online, they went straight to the GOP," said Michael Steel, a spokesman for Boehner. "This is just another example of how Republicans are dominating the field of forward-looking direct media.”

Republicans touted the numbers of views that flowed into the videos they posted on YouTube over the weekend, with 425,000 viewers flowing to one video of Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) appearing to say Democrats make up rules as they go along. (That video was posted atop the conservative Drudge Report.) Boehner's floor speech against the health bill also drew 105,000 viewers.

The GOP also said it was "crushed" but new followers on Twitter over the weekend, pointing to statistics showing them as having picked up almost 3,000 new followers between March 18th and Wednesday.

But Republicans also needled Democrats for their Twitter presence during the debate, noting: "Judging by the Leader and Speaker’s Twitter accounts – Speaker Pelosi has yet to send one tweet and Leader Hoyer follows no other users -  Democrats aren’t interested in listening at all." (Emphasis theirs.)

Update, 1:37 p.m.: A spokeswoman for the House Republican Conference emails to note the GOP.gov website has received approximately 80,000 hits since Friday, too.

Cross-posted to the Twitter Room.

Google's newly unfiltered Chinese search portal now displays select Twitter posts, in clear defiance of Beijing's long-standing ban on the social-networking site.

Some of those tweets touch upon taboo topics, including methods by which users can circumvent China's aggressive firewall, according to The Los Angeles Times, which first noticed the changes. 

Google on Thursday also published an explanation of its decision to change its China search policy in a blog post fully translated into Chinese.

The post mirrors Google's announcement earlier in the week that it could no longer comply with Beijing's Web restrictions, following a January cyberattack on the company believed to have originated in China.

Ultimately, both moves are likely to infuriate officials in Beijing, who are already apoplectic with Google's decision to circumvent its censors by redirecting users to its unfiltered Hong Kong page.

Users in China this week have reported erratic access to many of Google's reassigned pages, as Chinese censors seek to regain control of content once restricted by its so-called "Great Firewall." But Google's move Thursday could prompt state leaders to take further action against the search company, which has previously said it would leave China's search market altogether if necessary.