Technical-Legal Confluence News

The Internet Cybersecurity Act of 2009, long title “A bill to ensure the continued free flow of commerce within the United States and with its global trading partners through secure cyber communications, to provide for the continued development and exploitation of the Internet and intranet communications for such purposes, to provide for the development of a cadre of information technology specialists to improve and maintain effective cybersecurity defenses against disruption, and for other purposes” is S 773, introduced by Sen. John Rockefeller [D-WV], govtrack reference here.

The full text is here.

The bill has been criticized as allowing the government too much potential discretion in shutting down harmless portions of the Web and Internet.

“111st Congress:

“This is a bill in the U.S. Congress originating in the House of Representatives (”H.R.”). A bill must be passed by both the House and Senate and then be signed by the President before it becomes law.

“Bill numbers restart from 1 every two years. Each two-year cycle is called a session of Congress. This bill was created in the 111st Congress, in 2009-2010.

“The titles of bills are written by the bill’s sponsor and are a part of the legislation itself. GovTrack does not editorialize bill summaries.” (from Govtrack)
2009-201

HR. 1 is called H.R. 1: “The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009″, govtrack link here.

The Congressional Research Survey is here.

The full text of the bill is here.

My expertise focuses in two major areas.

The first area is mainframe business systems, particularly in areas like life insurance, health care, accounting and credit reporting. I spent over thirty years in the “bread and butter” mainframe culture of batch cycles with careful testing, implementation, and capability for on-call production support. A lot of emphasis in my career focused on absolutely accuracy, recovery, production scheduling, and reliability. Most of this experience was on IBM mainframes with a heavy emphasis on MVS JCL and some of the common databases (IMS. IDMS, DB2) and teleprocessing monitors (including CICS, mostly command level). Toward the end, I migrated into “client server” with a heavy emphasis on end user telephone support.

I “retired” from this 31-year career at the end of 2001, as part of a corporate downsizing.

I have also spent, since retirement and actually dating back a few years before retirement, a lot of attention on web publishing, particularly researching the novel legal and ethical issues posed by the Internet and the World Wide Web. There are many unresolved and developing problems including security, censorship (and protection of minors), labeling, online reputation, spam, and political participation. Technological developments including the semantic web and social networking present both challenges and solutions.

I came to become interested in these problems because of the confluence of three or four factors. First, for about 19 months I worked for a small health care policy consulting firm just before 1990, and learned something about how the public policy research business works. Then, for reasons at least partly related to unusual personal history, I became involved in the unsatisfactory attempt to lift the ban on gays in the military in 1993, resulting in the policy known today as “don’t ask don’t tell”, and that led me into writing my own book and learning about the publishing world. Finally, as I moved into Internet publishing, I delved into a number of related problems, and became a plaintiff in at least one censorship case (COPA). Along the way, I worked on a National Change of Address project, with enough component exposure to see how it could form the centerpiece of a strategy to improve consumer security. All of this history leads me to the view that policy problems are interconnected, like “dots to be connected” in intelligence circles. Although the short term job market (and political climate) often favors people with narrowly focused expertise, it leads to economic dead ends when professionals “win battles” but then “lose wars” because of lack of longer term understanding and focus.

I want to work on problems in such a way as to bring long term dependable and sustainable freedom and prosperity. In the mainframe area, I would be interested in projects related to restoring financial ability or improving consumer security. I am an analytical person, who would rather solve problems (and implement solutions) than build lists of people to sell stuff to, or simply become the salesman for someone else’s agenda. The economic events in recent history may justify this approach.

There is a blog posting regarding protection of confidentiality and privacy in normal business relations with others (including but not limited to employment), here.

Linked-In Profile link is here.

The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (link here
is part of the Security and Accountability for Every Port Act of 2006.
That bill (short name “the Safe Port Act”) was passed by the 109th Congress, was signed by President Bush and carried the number HR 4954, govtrack reference here.

The Gambling Act seems to be an extension of the Interstate Wire Act of 1961, link here.

Exceptions to the gambling ban include horseracing and fantasy sports.

The Insterstate Horseracing Act (1978, 2000) is here (at Cornell).

A Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP) is a lawsuit filed against a defendant (often called “frivolous” or “barratry”) where the aim is not necessarily to win a case but to burden a speaker with unreasonable legal costs in defending what is normally viewed as a First Amendment right. SLAPP cases have occurred all over the world and tend to occur with relatively specific circumstances involving specific corporations or entities or sometimes outlier religious or advocacy groups. From the details of cases in the past posted vy First Amendment advocacy groups, they tend to be relatively narrow in content. Sometimes they deal with local issues. All this considered, SLAPP suits are considered an existential threat to effective free speech, and, if not contained, could drive most political process back into the control of special interests.

In the United States, 25 states have anti-SLAPP statutes. One of the most important is in California.

The main advocacy organization in California is the California Anti-SLAPP project.

Here is the history page for California statues. (link).

The basic law is Sect 425.16, link here.

Sect 425.17 curbs reported abuses of 425.16, link.

Sect 425.18 has to do with recovery of damages by SLAPP victims, link.

Sections 2007.1 and 2007.2 deal with challenging subpoenas, link.

Section 47 has to do with privileged broadcast, here.

These states have anti-SLAPP laws: Arkansas, Arizona, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Guam, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Utah, and Washington. Colorado and West Virginia have court opinions dealing with SLAPPs.

Unsuccessful SLAPP suits may result in the “Streisand Effect” where the alleged problem is exposed more with the public. SLAPP’s have sometimes occurred in situations where plaintiffs believe that the media are not as likely to be interested in the problem or sympathetic with the defendant.

Problems like SLAPP and “spamigation” have led to calls for general tort reform, including “loser pays” type systems.

A particularly interesting narrative of a SLAPP case occurs in “The Spam Diaries” blog, here.

Govtrack has published several comparisons of the various Emergency Economic Stabilization bills as PDF documents in the form of line-by-line file-to-file compares. The link is here.

The Senate bill to be voted on tonight is actually a revision of HR 1424, amending section 712 of the Employment Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, link here.

There are some provisions that may seem unrelated, such as amending the Alternative Minimum Tax, although exclusion of income from housing losses seems important, as would changes in preferred stock rules.

HR 1424 is actually the Genetic Non Discrimination Act, link here.

It’s disturbing to see so many unrelated bills linked this way.

Here is the House of Representatives press release for the “Bailout” announced yesterday. The Short Title of the new bill is “The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008″.

Here is the source complee text for the “Big Bailout” written in an extraordinary weekend session Sunday (Sept 28) at the Capitol, on the House of Representatives website: link.

The bill is an “indirect amendment” to HR 3997 and here is the text in PDF format: link.

Here is the house “executive summary”: link

The Section by Section analysis is here, including a discussion of the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), link.

H.R. 3997 is the “Defenders of Freedom Tax Relief Act of 2007”, link here. I am not yet able to find the new addition on govtrack with the additional necessary links.

It is not clear why Congress connected this new Act to HR 3997.

There is an earlier bill, H.R. 6076, the “Home Retention and Economic Stabilization Act of 2008”, introduced by Doris Matsui (D-CA with 44 cosponsors).

The main govtrack reference for that is here.

Nothing in the bill yet seems to affect businesses outside the financial sector directly (such as law and Internet issues), although there could be regulations about Internet trading later. I will keep close tabs on this possibility.

The “Combating Child Exploitation Act of 2008”, S. 1738, was introduced into the 110th Congress by Senator Joe Biden (D-DE), with 19 cosponsors. It is also called the “Protect our Children” Act.

The govtrack link is here.

The bill would set up a Special Counsel for Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction within the Office of the Deputy Attorney General and would bolster the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.

The summary is here. Note the expansions in what child pornography law would cover, such as expanding the definition of “visual depiction” for purposes of child exploitation crimes to include data capable of conversion into a visual image transmitted by any means, and prohibiting the alteration of a visual depiction of an identifiable minor child so that it depicts child pornography.

The full text is here.

Oprah Winfrey has supported this bill. It is scheduled to vote in the Senate before Sept. 26, 2008.

Filial responsibility laws, on the books in about 28 states, could require adult children to support their parents (and, more rarely, other relatives) in case of impoverishment. The largest practical danger is that states could start enforcing these laws in relation to Medicaid nursing home stays when the adult children have assets.

Although not literally a “technical-legal” topic, it certainly has a bearing on the capacity of adults to run their own lives, so I’m providing a quick rundown here.

Here are some typical state laws:

California:
Family Law: link.

Indiana
Duty to furnish support for parents: link

Iowa:

“Parents and children liable” link

“Remote relatives: link

Maryland:
Family Law: link

Massachusetts:

“Neglect or refusal to support parent” link

Ohio:
“Non Support or contributing to non-support of dependents” link

Pennsylvania:
Position paper by parent: discussion of move from welfare code to family code .

South Dakota:

“Adult child’s duty to support parent when necessary” link

Adult child’s right of contribution from brothers and sisters for support of parent link

Utah:
Order in which relatives are liable: link

Virginia
Support of parents by children: link

There are also some laws that govern how many years back a government can look back when some who goes into a nursing home doles out money in advance. They are pretty complex, and they were tightened recently.

Medicaid Lookback Period: Sect 6011 here, Sect 6011.

The “Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008”, H.R. 4279, has this link on govtrack. http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-4279 , introduced in the 110th Congress by John Conyers (D-MI).

The Congressional Research Service gives this summary.

There are multiple provisions, including some strengthening of administrative procedures to protect trademark, establishment of an IP czar (“Executive Office of the President the Office of the United States Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative (IP Enforcement Representative)”) , providing a “safe harbor” provision in copyright registration, and increasing penalties for introducing instrumentalities into foreign commerce that encourage copyright infringement.

The full text of the bill is here.