Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) and Lee Terry (R-Neb.), co-chairs of the Rural Telecommunications Task Force, are hosting a briefing for colleagues and staff Monday afternoon to discuss the challenges facing rural broadband deployment.

The FCC is delivering a National Broadband Plan to Congress in March, which will include recommendations for expanding broadband access to even the most rural of areas.

Rural broadband providers will be on hand to present to staff and discuss policy changes Congress should consider, according to the invitation circulated by the offices.

--National Telecommunications Cooperative Association
--Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Small Telecommunication Companies
--Western Telecommunications Alliance
--Independent Telephone and Telecommunications Alliance.

The briefing will be held Monday at 2 p.m. in room 1300 of Longworth.

For some technology trade groups, picking a side on the net neutrality debate can be tricky. They are responsible for representing--on Capitol Hill and at the FCC--the interests of all of their members, many of whom sit on opposite sides of the fence.

That is the case for the Information Technology Industry Council, whose 43 members include Microsoft, Ebay, Intel, Apple, Qualcom, Adobe and Cisco--all of whom would be affected differently by net neutrality regulations under consideration at the FCC.

After months of debating where the organization should stand on the additional two priniciples proposed by Chairman Julius Genachowski, ITI's members were finally able to reach a consensus, said president and CEO Dean Garfield.

"We've gone to a place in dealing with the final two principles that the group that the group has never been able to get to before," Garfield said in an interview. "Our members are looking for certainty."

Sen.-elect Scott Brown’s (R-Mass.) Web guru, Rob Willington, has become one of the country’s most sought-after online political strategists overnight .

Willington's inbox was flooded with requests for his expertise before Brown's victory in the Massachusetts Senate race on Tuesday night was even official.

“I'm getting lots of requests to do workshops for other organizations and campaigns,” said the 31-year-old Willington, who managed online outreach for Brown, a Republican who snagged the Democrats' all-important 60th Senate seat in what was thought to be a liberal bastion.

A former political director for the Massachusetts Republican Party, Willington had both campaign and social media know-how.

The Senate Judiciary Committee just announced it will hold a hearing on "Combating Cyber Crime and Identity Theft in the Digital Age," on Wednesday, Feb. 10.

Witnesses will include Ari Schwartz of the Center for Democracy and Technology, Lanny Breuer of the Justice Department and Vincent Weafer of Symantec.

Cybersecurity concerns are back in the spotlight on Capitol Hill after high-profile attacks on U.S. networks, including assaults on Google's infrastructure in China. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in her speech today that cybersecurity is a national priority.

The Washington technology community is praising Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's speech indicating that Internet freedom has become a top diplomatic priority for the administration.

"Secretary Clinton’s inspiring remarks are a compelling argument for the power of Internet freedom to promote economic opportunity and the rights of all people," said FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.

Free Press executive director Josh Silver tied Clinton's remarks to net neutrality.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on Internet companies to "take a principled stand" against countries that restrict online communications and free speech.

In a much-anticipated speech on Internet freedom Thursday morning, Clinton expressed support for Google's announcement last week that it would consider pulling out of China after detecting cyber attacks aiming to obtain the personal information of human rights activists.

"We look to Chinese authorities to conduct a thorough review of events that led Google to this announcement," she said. "I hope competitors and foreign countries will pay close attention to this trend."

Microsoft executives were on Capitol Hill Wednesday to publicize a new bill it is proposing to update privacy and security laws for one of Washington’s biggest buzzwords: cloud computing.
 
Although most people have never even heard of it, the government and consumers are increasingly using the technology on a daily basis. Cloud computing refers to storing documents, email and photos on remote servers run by Google or Microsoft, and people can access that data through the Internet. If you have a Gmail or Hotmail account, you’re a cloud computing customer.
 
But there are still big privacy and security concerns with the technology. The government is especially concerned with protecting sensitive or even classified information in a “cloud” that could be vulnerable to hackers.

Scott Brown’s majority-grabbing win  of the Massachusetts Senate seat Tuesday night is another tribute to the power of the Web in elections.
 
Brown consistently received more than twice the amount of search interest as his Democratic opponent Martha Coakley, according to Google statistics. And he had more than three times the number of followers on Twitter, more than five times the number of fans on Facebook, and more than nine times as many views of his YouTube videos than Coakley.
 
It wasn’t an accident. Brown spent around 10 percent of its media budget on online advertising—a new record for a political campaign (although that number is just an initial estimate). Some of that money ($145,000, to be exact) paid for Google’s “network blast” tool to spread ads everywhere Massachusetts Internet users went online since last Thursday.

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts and NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker will testify at a hearing Feb. 4 by the Senate Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights subcommittee.

Sen. Herb Kohl, chairman of the committee, announced the hearing today. He said it will examine the deal's consequences for broadcast TV, cable services and Internet programming, and its impact on consumer options for the services.

This is the first of several hearings lawmakers have pledged to hold to examine the proposed merger, which some say would give one company too much power in the creation and distribution of media content.