Solutions and government strategies for fostering greater consumer identity privacy and online trust can’t emerge without significant involvement from the private sector, government officials said in keynotes at a TechAmerica conference in Washington. The private sector will be responsible for the vast majority of solutions for better security, said Phil Reitinger, deputy under secretary at the Department of Homeland Security. “The pace and investment in the private sector and information technology generally dwarfs what we can do in government."
The Office of Foreign Assets Control has issued a final rule, effective November 4, 2010, which adds a new Part 510, the “North Korea Sanctions Regulations” to 31 CFR.
The President is continuing for one year the national emergency with respect to Sudan, which continues, among other things, blocking the property of and prohibiting transactions with the Government of Sudan due to certain policies and actions of the government that violate human rights.
The fiscal-year 2011 budget must include $1.5 million for the FCC’s Emergency Response Interoperability Center (ERIC), FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski told appropriators in an Oct. 15 letter released last week. He was responding to questions submitted by the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government after its June 9 hearing. “ERIC has been staffed with existing resources, and current staffing levels will not provide sufficient resources for ERIC to fully perform its important role after this fiscal year,” Genachowski said. The current commission budget doesn’t account for travel expenses required for ERIC to work with public safety, equipment vendors and federal partners, he said. Genachowski defended the FCC budget request’s call for 75 additional staffers (CD Aug 8 p6), also in the response. They are needed to implement the National Broadband Plan, increase the agency’s “openness and transparency” and strengthen the agency’s role on cybersecurity, he said. They would include engineers, attorneys, economists, statisticians, business and market analysts, and data analysts and architects, he said. None of the commission’s current workforce of 1,830 can be retasked, Genachowski said.
The Communist Party of China’s Central Committee has proposed guidelines for China's development over the next five years, saying the transformation of economic growth mode should be the priority, and called for the development of seven industries.
Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA) technology will be wed to pay TV operators through the first half 2012, before expanding to include Internet-capable high-end HDTVs and a “very robust” dongle market for delivering streaming services, Entropic CEO Patrick Henry said a in conference call.
The President is continuing the national emergency with respect to the situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, declared in Executive Order 13413, beyond October 27, 2010 for another one year period. Among other things, EO 13413 blocks the property and interests in property of persons contributing to the conflict in the DRC.
New York City, Seattle and others that received FCC waivers in May to build local public safety networks in 700 MHz spectrum, but were left out when the NTIA awarded Broadband Technology Opportunities Program money, told the commission they're re-evaluating what to do next. The NTIA gave grants to Los Angeles County, the San Francisco Bay area, Mississippi and a few others, but most of the 21 waiver recipients were left empty-handed. Waiver recipients were required by the FCC to provide updates on progress in building systems.
Shortly before to its adjournment for the November 2010 elections, the Senate had been considering S. 3454, its National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011.
The Open Internet Coalition (OIC) said the time has come for the FCC to finalize net neutrality rules and provide certainty for industry. OIC was one of the main parties during failed negotiations on net neutrality rules hosted by the FCC (CD Aug 6 p1). The comments came in response to a Sept. 1 FCC public notice seeking input on “two underdeveloped” issues -- application of the rules to mobile wireless and the impact of emerging specialized services offered by carriers.