The cable industry's top lobbyist in Washington isn't convinced that Google will actually follow through with its plans to provide super-speedy broadband service given its lackluster track record for building networks.

Kyle McSlarrow, head of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, also said that Google may have a tough lesson to learn when it comes to regulation.

He said Google is a "very sophisticated company" that has become a real force in Washington.

"My one disappointment is that they don't perceive to the extent that I wish they did that when you try to regulate everyone else--they just haven't learned the lesson that eventually they will come for them too," he told me today during a taping of C-SPAN's The Communicators program. "But unfortunately, that will happen."

In 2005, Google partnered with Earthlink to build a city-wide Wi-Fi network in San Francisco but pulled the plug when it proved too expensive. In 2007, Google said it would bid for valuable airwaves if the Federal Communications Commission attached open-access rules to them. Google ended up not purchasing any airwaves in that auction. The company has now said it wants to build new broadband networks at speeds of one gigabit per second--more than 100 times the speeds available to most consumers today.

"Google, the last couple of episodes, either failed to do it, in the case of San Francisco and the Earthlink experiment, or they backed away, in the case of the 700 megahertz auction," McSlarrow said on C-SPAN.

Followers of the White House's Twitter accounts could someday discover they are in fact part of the federal government's official archives.

The longstanding Presidential Records Act of 1978 -- which requires White House staffers to preserve all communications -- could apply to public replies and private messages that voters send Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and other members of the Obama administration's communications team, Gibbs said Tuesday.

He added the law is "intended to preserve the paper and records of the administration."

Initially, the White House's communications shop was unable to join such platforms as Twitter, mostly because federal guidelines lagged years behind advances in online social networking.

Until recently, most White House computers did not even allow access to those Web sites, Gibbs said Tuesday.

But the press secretary noted the "computer guys" had recently finished "whatever the computer guys do," and now he and his colleagues are able to communicate freely on Twitter -- all the while having their tweets and messages recorded and archived, as required by law.

Still, the arrangement has called into question whether other Twitter users' "at-replies" and direct messages to Gibbs and other White House staffers might also qualify as records slated for preservation.

According to the White House website's own description of the rules:

"Pursuant to this statute, emails or messages sent to a White House email account, information submitted via WhiteHouse.gov, and comments posted or messages received via an official White House page on a third-party web-site (such as an official White House profile on a social network) will be treated as presidential records and may be permanently archived"

That would seem to include Twitter -- and with it, messages to Gibbs, and tweets he posts in reply. But Gibbs was unable to answer directly whether that was the case on Tuesday, primarily because he said he is still unfamiliar with the service.

An e-mail to the White House for further clarification was not immediately returned on Tuesday.

However, the press secretary did say the likelihood those replies might be saved has hardly deterred some users from posting incredibly critical comments.

"Judging from some of the criticism I've read, it's not," the press secretary said of the rule.

The Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday set an ambitious target to deliver 100 megabit per second Internet connections to more than 100 million households.

The plan is part of the agency's comprehensive broadband report, due in full to Congress next month. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski outlined the proposal during a speech Tuesday morning, stressing such incredibly high-speed data lines were essential to small businesses and job growth.

Interestingly enough, Genachowski's broadband announcement this week follows another important industry development: Google's decision to enter the Internet service provider market.

The company unveiled last week a plan to create high-speed Internet "test beds" in select U.S. cities -- a move many initially interpreted as an attempt to compel the FCC to follow suit.

Nevertheless, Genachowski praised Google's latest Web foray, noting in his speech that its high-speed lines would drive growth. He later called on other Internet service providers to follow suit.

"We need others to drive competition to invent the future," he said.

Broadband access jumped by 13 percent over the past two years but seniors, minorities and consumers with low incomes and low education levels continue to lag behind other groups, according to a broadband adoption report released today by the Commerce Department. 

Overall, 64 percent of households have broadband access compared to 51 percent in October 2007.

They're the first findings from data collected by the Census Bureau in October. About 50,000 households were surveyed.

A few other findings: Read more...

Washington public interest group Public Knowledge has proposed a new Copyright Reform Act.

The five-part discussion draft is intended to "update copyright law for the digital age," said Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn.

Congress has been under pressure revamp copyright laws to better suit the flow of digital media over the Internet while also protecting copyright holders. That endeavor has proved difficult, though, because there's no clear path that lawmakers can agree on.

Now that Public Knowledge has submitted concrete proposals, it may prompt other stakeholders to more seriously take part in a conversation about copyright.

Washington D.C. hopes to be a test market for Google's ultra-fast broadband network.

District Councilwoman Mary Cheh is circulating a petition around the city and is urging residents to contact Google for more information about the project. Cheh, who oversees the District's Office of the Chief Technology Officer, said the CTO is also interested in pursuing the opportunity.

"The proposed fiber-optic network proposed by Google would allow consumers to access data at speeds of up to one gigabit per second, which is over 100 times faster than the connections that many utilize today," she said. "In addition, this network would offer additional choices to internet consumers."

Google said last week it would build broadband networks in several testbed areas, serving anywhere from 50,000 to 500,000 consumers. Read more...

Space entrepreneurs see President Barack Obama's proposal to cancel NASA's manned space flight program as the perfect opportunity to expand their Washington presence.

The X-Prize Foundation, a non-profit organization that awards prizes of at least $10 million to private teams that successfully complete space travel missions, has hired lobbying firm K&L Gates to gin up more congressional support for the competitions.

K&L Gates lobbyists Paul Stimers's job is to help convince skeptical lawmakers that privatizing space travel will spur innovation and create jobs. Obama's plans to end the half-century-old "Constellation" program has evoked anger and uncertainty in the aerospace industry.

And senators whose states risk losing jobs have also questioned the decision.

Sen. Richard Shelby, (R-Ala.), for example, vowed to keep the program alive. Alabama is home to NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), who has Kennedy Space Center's interests at heart, said he wants to explore continuing the development of the Ares 1 spacecraft to replace the retiring space shuttle in case the commercial sector falls flat.

Electronic privacy laws are "woefully outdated" and must be revised in a way that balances Americans' rights with law enforcement agencies' needs, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said Friday.

As the Justice Department heads to court this week to defend its right to tap cell phone locations, Leahy noted many of the laws to be argued before that forum fail to reflect the dawning "Information Age" — a time when new technologies, like BlackBerrys, create both new opportunities to communicate and new privacy challenges.

"The use of cell phone locational information impacts Americans across the nation and from every walk of life," Leahy said in a statement. "The question of how best to protect these digital communications, while providing law enforcement with the tools that it needs to keep us safe, has no simple answer." 

The renewed focus on electronic privacy laws arrives just as the Justice Department launches its opening arguments in a case that could have serious implications on cell phone data and privacy.

The trial centers on an investigation last year by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATF). The agency requested to tap suspects' cell phone data to determine where a likely drug deal might occur, but a federal magistrate ruled the bureau lacked sufficient evidence to merit the request.

Ultimately, the judge told the Justice Department it needed a search warrant to obtain those records, and that it had to satisfy strict tests of probable cause to gain access to information that the court deemed incredibly private. However, the Justice Department has since appealed that ruling, claiming users on cell phones have "no reasonable expectation of privacy."

That argument has set off a firestorm of criticism, as many privacy rights groups argue law enforcement agents could obtain location data without customers' consent.

Leahy did not take a side in that still-unfolding case, though his statement hints at the challenges to judges and investigators.

" ... [W]hat is clear is that our federal electronic privacy laws are woefully outdated," the senator said. "Congress must work with the Justice Department, privacy advocates and the technology industry to update and clarify the law to reflect the realities of our times."

A coalition of Senate Republicans is urging the White House to enlarge and extend a high-tech research tax credit, which could expire at the end of this year.

President Barack Obama's latest budget, released earlier this month, would make that tax break permanent -- a move Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and nine other Republicans praised in a letter to the White House on Friday. But they also called on the administration to enlarge the tax credit, citing its potential to stimulate job growth in the tech sector.

"We realize that your budget calls for a permanent extension of the credit, for which we commend you," they continued. "However, we believe that in order to gain the full effect of the incentive and to keep the U.S. as the premiere location for research in the world, we must improve the credit as well as extend it."

Predictably, the tech community has long celebrated the federal government's research tax credit, and it has repeatedly called on the White House to extend it, at the very least.

A bipartisan jobs bill previewed in the Senate this week would have done just that, in accordance with the president's budget request. However, Senate Democrats have since scrapped that version of the jobs legislation --  and with it, the research tax credit extension.

But support for the credit persists on Capitol Hill, as Republican lawmakers, at least, maintain it could contribute about $90 billion in annual economic growth. Ultimately, Hatch and others not only called on Obama to continue fighting for that proposal, but to enlarge it, as it would create "a strong research incentive to keep us first in the world" in tech research.

They also implored the Obama administration to cancel its proposed tax increase on businesses that do most of their work overseas. While the White House maintains that fee is an attempt to recoup money it loses when firms use international locations to skirt domestic tax laws, Hatch and his colleagues said it was simultaneously stifling innovation.

"In reality, U.S. firms compete on a global scale, and our current worldwide system of taxation often leaves our companies at a serious disadvantage to those based in other nations," they wrote. "We urge you to abandon these proposals and join us in moving in the other direction by lowering our corporate tax rates, which are among the world’s highest, and making other changes that would make our international tax system more competitive, not less."