CTA President Gary Shapiro criticized Senate Intelligence Committee leaders Wednesday for pursuing controversial legislation as a means of addressing the ongoing encryption debate, saying the bill as currently written “is dangerously overreaching and technically unsophisticated.” Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., and committee Vice Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., publicly released a discussion draft Wednesday of their bill, the Compliance with Court Orders Act. The bill would require providers of electronic communications, storage or processing services, and software or hardware manufacturers to comply with court orders to decrypt encrypted data of its users.
The federal government must take some action to regulate digital currency to provide the sector with some certainty, said House Monetary Policy Subcommittee Vice Chairman Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., during a Cato Institute event Tuesday. “We simply cannot help ourselves to do something” given moves at the state and international level to regulate digital currency businesses, Mulvaney said. Coin Center Executive Director Jerry Brito said it “may be time for Congress to begin to consider federal pre-emption” of state-based money transmission service licensing laws on regulation of digital currency businesses in the absence of progress in harmonizing state-based regulation of those businesses. Mulvaney told us he's "not averse" to Congress exploring legislation to pre-empt state laws on digital currency, but "I'm not sure what it would look like yet."
Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood said Monday that his office will “re-evaluate” how to proceed with enforcement of its subpoena looking into Google’s search practices. A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a 2015 U.S. District Court ruling in Jackson, Mississippi, which granted Google a preliminary injunction against Hood. Several parties supporting Google told us they view the 5th Circuit’s Friday ruling as only a procedural victory that requires Hood to enforce his subpoena before a federal court can adequately evaluate the company’s claims about the AG’s investigation.
Cybersecurity stakeholders said they are closer to deciding what deliverables will result from NTIA's multistakeholder process on vulnerability research disclosure. But leaders cautioned Friday that any recommendations aren't likely to include one-size-fits-all solutions. A working group on increasing adoption and awareness of vulnerability disclosure best practices appeared to be the furthest along in gathering information to aid its recommendations, based on presentations at the meeting. A working group focusing on vulnerability disclosures that affect public safety only recently rebooted its information gathering process amid concerns from the group's stakeholders about publicity about their disclosure practices. Working groups on vulnerability disclosure incentives and multi-vendor disclosure best practices indicated their stakeholders were divided on philosophical issues underpinning potential recommendations.
There is little chance the House Judiciary Committee's Copyright Act review will result in legislation that can pass both the House and Senate before the end of the 114th Congress, House IP Subcommittee GOP Counsel Joe Keeley said during an American Bar Association event Thursday. House Judiciary has been going through a comprehensive Copyright Act review since 2013, concluding its formal meetings with stakeholders last year with a series of roundtables to supplement earlier hearings (see 1509220055 and 1511100063). House Judiciary members must now “figure out where they'd like to go” on legislation to address the myriad copyright issues the committee explored in hearings, Keeley said.
ICANN stakeholders are in the early stages of reviewing draft revisions to bylaws, and initial analyses indicate the draft largely tracks with provisions included in the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition plan and a related set of recommended changes to ICANN’s accountability mechanisms, said stakeholders in interviews. ICANN tasked its in-house and outside legal counsel last month with rewriting its bylaws to conform with the IANA transition-related plans. ICANN’s board approved both plans last month and sent them on for an NTIA review (see 1603100070). Some issues that affected negotiations on recommendations from the Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability (CCWG-Accountability) resurfaced in CCWG-Accountability members’ review of the draft ICANN bylaw revisions, but those concerns are unlikely to result in major changes to the draft, stakeholders told us.
A potential legal challenge to the new trans-Atlantic “Privacy Shield” data protection framework creates legal uncertainty for stakeholders in both the U.S. and Europe, but that shouldn't prevent both the parties from moving forward on the framework, said FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez and European Commission Article 29 Data Protection Working Party Chairwoman Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin during an event Tuesday. The Article 29 Working Party is set to release its views on a draft version of the Privacy Shield during a plenary meeting next week, feedback that will influence the EC's decision on whether it supports the framework. Members of the European Parliament and privacy advocates have questioned whether Privacy Shield would hold up in European courts given the European Court of Justice's standards in striking down the old safe harbor framework (see 1603170028).
A last-minute campaign by Fight for the Future raised the public profile of the Copyright Office’s study of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s Section 512 ahead of Friday night's deadline for public feedback on the study. CO reported Monday that it collected more than 91,000 comments. Fight for the Future claimed credit Monday for generating more than 86,000 of the Section 512 comments via users who used its TakeDownAbuse.org website, which the digital rights group said had affected the performance of the federal government’s Regulations.gov website. Fight for the Future is planning to send the CO an additional 11,000 Section 512 comments collected after the filing deadline via a petition. The CO didn’t comment Monday.
The Copyright Office is likely to encounter both praise and criticism of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's Section 512 in comments on the CO's ongoing study of Section 512, stakeholders said in interviews. Comments were due after our deadline Friday on the CO's study, which will assess the effectiveness of Section 512's safe harbor provision and the current notice-and-takedown process. The study will also examine Section 512's counter-notification process and legal standards related to the section (see 1512300039). The CO said Friday it's extending the deadline for parties to file to participate in the office's planned Section 512 roundtables in New York and Stanford, California, to April 11. The New York roundtable is set for May 2-3 at the New York University School of Law, while the Stanford roundtable is set for May 12-13 at Stanford Law School (see 1603180059).
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., on Wednesday criticized a DOJ proposal to alter its Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41 to allow federal judges to issue warrants for remote searches of computers outside their jurisdictions. Rule 41 currently severely limits federal judges' ability to issue search warrants outside their court districts. Wyden said at AccessNow's RightsCon summit that he will work via the Senate “to block plans that would threaten to weaken strong encryption,” calling both Justice's proposal and expected legislation from Senate Intelligence Committee leaders that would require tech firms to decrypt data under court orders “lose-lose” propositions.