Lawmakers will begin the busy month of March with a series of hearings on internet freedoms, privacy rights and broadband expansion.

Here are a few to follow this week:

The Senate Judiciary Committee will convene its Human Rights and the Law subcommittee on Tuesday for a hearing on global Internet freedoms. The meeting -- the second such hearing on the matter this year -- arrives days after an Italian court sanctioned three Google executives for a video a third-party user posted on its Web site, and weeks after Google and China butted heads over a cyberattack. Among those testifying will be Google Deputy General Counsel Nicole Wong. When: Tuesday, March. 2, 10 a.m. Where: Dirksen 226

This Wednesday, the House Homeland Security Committee will flex its oversight muscles and examine the Department of Homeland Security's new science and technology plans. Joining the panel will be Dr. Tara O’Toole, the department's under secretary for Science and Technology, who will field questions about "the activities of the Department’s Science and Technology Directorate (S&T)." When: Wednesday, March 3, 2 p.m. Where: Cannon 311, streamed online.

Lawmakers on the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet will then inquire on Thursday about the White House's broadband stimulus progress. That money, passed as part of the 2009 federal recovery act, has encountered a series of administrative obstacles over the past few months -- problems that have created so many delays that it is unclear whether federal officials can spend their broadband grants before their authorization expires. When: Thursday, March 4. Where: 10 a.m. Where: Rayburn 2123.

Military members across ranks and stations will now have access to popular social networking sites, including Facebook and Twitter, under a new policy announced by the Pentagon on Friday.

Previously, those Web sites had been blocked on most service members' computers, in part out of concerns that social networking could consume too much of the military's bandwidth or present serious security risks to U.S. interests. Read more...

Independents--the largest political group in America today with 34 percent of adults-- are more likely than Democrats or Republicans to say they want certain topics to get more attention from news organizations. Independents say they want more coverage of science, health and medicine, their local communities, U.S. domestic policy and international news.

This was among the results of the Pew Research Center's study on the changing news environment released today (see previous post).

Political ties tend to determine the preferred point of view of the media coverage, the study found.

Liberals and Democrats are more likely to say big news organizations do a good job on subjects that matter to them, while conservative and Republicans are the group most likely to see coverage as biased.

News seekers without strong political ties (i.e. Independents) are also more likely than partisans to want their news reported straight, without a particular point of view.

Republicans and conservatives were found to be disproportionately likely to seek out news sources that match their own views.

By contract, Democrats and liberals are more likely than other groups to seek out news that either supports their own views of differs from their own views, as opposed to seeking out news coverage that has no particular point of view.

Democrats and liberals are most likely to get news from:
    --a news organization or individual journalist they follow on social networks, such as Facebook
    --the Twitter posts of individuals who are not journalists and organizations other than major news organizations
    --the websites of international news organizations
    --websites of radio news, such as NPR
    --news podcasts from NPR and the New York Times

Republicans and conservatives are more likely to make daily visits to websites of major TV news organizations. They are also more likely than other online news users to use just one or two Internet news sources on a typical day.

The Internet is now the third most popular news platform, falling behind local and national television outlets, according to the latest Pew Research Center report to be released today.

Online news sources now surpass national print newspapers, local print newspapers and radio as the primary way Americans receive their news. About 92 percent get their news from multiple platforms and about 60 percent get news from both online and offline sources.

Only 7 percent of adults get their daily news from a single media platform--and those that do typically rely on either the Internet or local TV news, the Internet & American Life Project, in conjunction with the Project for Excellence in Journalism, revealed.

The results come at a time when policy makers are trying to find ways to bolster the ailing journalism industry. Newspapers have suffered major advertising losses due to the migration of content to the web, and TV stations have also seen a large drop in advertising revenue due to the economic recession.

WEEKEND TECH ROUNDUP:

Live tsunami viewing? It'll be on UStream - Caroline McCarthy, CNET
Google sets up tool to help find missing relatives affected by Chile earthquake - New York Times
Redrawing the route to online privacy - Steve Lohr, New York Times
Spies and hackers exploit world cyber rule void - Reuters
Twitter plans search ads like Google's - Wired
How we hate NBC's Olympics coverage - Eric Schonfeld, TechCrunch
Google may spend 'hundreds of millions' on broadband - Brian Womack, Bloomberg

OTHER STORIES

Obama administration blocks Reid's plea for broadband stimulus extension - The Hill
DISH, DirecTV licenses set to expire due to hold-up in the upper chamber - The Hill
Cybersecurity bill to give president new emergecny powers - The Hill

The broadcasting industry is seizing the chance to point out the importance of television and radio stations in delivering public safety instructions to Hawaii residents as officials prepare for the first tsunami in 16 years.

The industry's lobbying group says the tsunami warnings reinforce the dangers of proposals in Washington to reclaim their airwaves for mobile broadband services.

Earlier today, President Barack Obama directed residents and tourists to "carefully heed the instructions of state and local officials." At 6 a.m. local time this morning, sirens wailed on the coast to alert people to turn into TV and radio stations for instructions.

TV and radio broadcasters often play an integral role in in relaying evacuation information and weather updates during natural disasters.

The Federal Communications Commission says it needs some of those airwaves to roll out more robust wireless broadband services. Last week, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski announced voluntary auctions in which broadcasters could sell some of their airwaves to free up 500 megahertz of spectrum over the next decade. The auctions will be recommended to Congress in the FCC's National Broadband Plan.

"Spectrum--our airwaves--really is the oxygen of mobile broadband service," Genachowski said.

But the National Association of Broadcasters has fought back against proposals to take spectrum away from stations, arguing that the services provided over their airwaves are more important than ever.

"New apps for iPhones are fine, but in times of crisis, there is no service that comes close to providing timely and potentially lifesaving information better than free and local broadcasters," said Dennis Wharton, NAB executive vice president of media relations.

Rural viewers who rely on DISH and DirecTV for their satellite TV service may be missing a few channels come Monday morning.

The president would have the power to safeguard essential federal and private Web resources under draft Senate cybersecurity legislation.

The Federal Communications Commission's National Broadband Plan has caught the attention of every telecommunications, digital media and technology firm.

As the business world waits for the plan to be released next month, many are speculating about what it will include and how they should react.

IBM surveyed 8,000 consumers and 60 telecom company executives to get a sense of Internet-related trends over the next decade, showing that broadband will continue to evolve and expand while traditional communications infrastructure--those copper lines we've used to make phone calls for decades--will rapidly disappear.

IBM predicts that the use of land lines will decrease by 95 percent in the next five to 10 years. Conversely, usage of mobile and wireless broadband will increase by 98 percent during the same period.

The company also found that consumers will demand open platforms, where they can access content on all types of devices. In fact, 70 percent of those surveyed said they want to access content on any device-- a computer, TV, phone or netbook--from any provider.

Interestingly, IBM found that 65 percent of consumers expect their telecom provider to maintain their role as simply providing Internet and wireless services. Only one in five consumers expect telecom providers to have a role in the retail and delivery of online content services. (Hmmm...we wonder what that says about the proposed Comcast-NBC merger?)