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President Barack Obama talks with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg during an event at Facebook headquarters in April 2011.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Cybersecurity would have to balance infrastructure protection, private companies' autonomy
- Consumers want privacy from digital tracking by private companies, law enforcement
- Education and immigration reform could provide more skilled tech workers
The country is facing a
shortage of qualified technology workers. Potential cybersecurity
attacks threaten the nation's power and transportation infrastructures.
Privacy advocates fear
the seemingly unchecked digital tracking of consumers by private
companies and law enforcement agencies. And the online piracy of music,
movies and other content remains a thorny issue.
Here's a look at five of the biggest tech issues facing President Barack Obama, and the country, in his second term:
Piracy
Few topics riled the Internet in 2012 as much as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), an anti-piracy bill that raised concerns about free speech and privacy online. The Obama administration opposed that doomed bill but is expected to address the piracy issue again in the next four years.
Hollywood was a major
contributor to Obama's re-election campaign, and the head of the Motion
Picture Association of America, former U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd, is
optimistic that Obama will support some sort of anti-piracy effort in
his second term.
"I look forward to
continuing to work closely with the Obama administration to ensure the
creative industries have every opportunity to thrive," Dodd said in a
statement after Obama's re-election victory. Earlier in the year, Dodd
threatened to cut off campaign contributions to politicians who did not
support SOPA.
The issue isn't limited
to people illegally downloading movies, music and TV shows in the U.S.
Hollywood is also battling rampant copyright infringement abroad, and
the administration will likely have to address ways to make other
countries respect U.S. intellectual property.
But as Washington
learned earlier this year, any anti-piracy stance would have to be
sensitive to Internet freedom and privacy concerns.
Privacy
There are two main foes
in consumers' ongoing struggle to preserve their online privacy:
companies that collect data and track people's online behavior to sell
them things, and law enforcement agencies that collect data and track
people to investigate crimes.
The rules for monitoring
modern electronic communications are ill-defined. For the government, a
warrant isn't currently required after a certain period of time for
older information -- e-mail, social networking profiles or cell-phone
location data -- stored "in the cloud" on Web servers.
Congress will likely try
to address some of these issues during Obama's second term by updating
the antiquated Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, which
dictates what types of personal information the government can access.
"We're concerned that
the administration will continue to use national security as a pretext
to undermine privacy and other critical rights," said Parker Higgins, an
activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, citing the
administration's warrantless wiretapping programs, the prosecution of
whistle-blowers and what he called an overall lack of transparency.
Civil liberties groups
and large technology companies are teaming up to lobby for reform that
would dictate what information the government can request and how. Tech
companies will also face a separate battle over how they collect data.
The Obama administration
has said it wants consumers to have control over whether companies
track their online activity. Together with the Federal Trade Commission,
the administration pushed Congress for online privacy legislation
earlier this year.
The FTC does not
currently have the power to pursue companies for privacy violations, but
it is tangling with major tech companies on other fronts. Currently it
is investigating Google for antitrust violations, claiming the company
ranked its own services higher than those of competing companies.
Cybersecurity
Sometimes it takes a
crisis to prompt action. Experts are hoping that won't be the case with a
crippling cyberattack on the nation's power plants, financial systems
or other vital industries.
"If nothing bad happens,
progress will be slow. If we do get some sort of damaging attack, it
will move much more quickly," said James Lewis, a cybersecurity expert
at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
In his first term, Obama
appointed a national cybersecurity coordinator. In his second term, he
will most likely try again to pass cybersecurity legislation. It's also
possible he will issue an executive order instead of wrestling with
Congress.
The administration's
last attempt was the Cybersecurity Act of 2012, which aimed to help
protect critical U.S. infrastructure through increased collaboration
between the government and the private sector. Private industries such
as energy, banking, telecommunications, water and transportation are all
potential targets for a cyberattack, experts warn.
But the bill was
successfully blocked in August by Senate Republicans who sided with the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce and businesses that balked at the idea of
having the government regulate their security. Private industry, wary of
government oversight, argued there was nothing the government could do
that they could not do on their own. Another sticking point was that the
process would have been overseen by the Department of Homeland
Security.
"The dilemma is that,
left to their own devices, we can't be sure companies are going to take
these steps," said Lewis. He expects the Obama administration to wait
until the 113th Congress is sworn before it tries to resurrect
cybersecurity legislation.
STEM education
College costs are
rising, as is the demand for qualified science, technology, engineering
and mathematics (dubbed STEM) professionals. Experts warn the demand for
skilled workers will increasingly outpace the number of qualified
graduates in this country.
Over the next four years, Obama will likely expand his education policies.
The $4.35 billion Race
to the Top program awards financial aid to states' K-12 school systems
that set specific goals, such as establishing standards for assessing
teachers, gathering data and finding innovative ways to improve the
worst-performing schools. The president told the Des Moines Register that he wants to continue expanding the program in his next term and focus even more on STEM education.
In July, the Obama
administration kicked off the national Science, Technology, Engineering
and Mathematics Master Teacher Corps program with $100 million in
funding. The program will start by training 50 STEM teachers, but the
plan is to increase that number to 10,000 teachers over the next four
years and to 100,000 over the next decade. The idea is that these
specifically qualified teachers will spread their skills and knowledge
to other schools and educators around the country.
When those fresh batches of science and math students are out of high school, they will face dauntingly high college costs.
During the campaign,
Obama promised to continue to increase the Pell Grant program, which
provides need-based financial aid for college. Critics claim that
raising the amount of aid doesn't help, because colleges will just
continue to raise their costs to meet the increased demand. The Pell
Grant got a large boost in Obama's first term with an influx of money
that was made available when the administration eliminated the federal
guaranteed student loan program, which went through private banks.
Immigration reform
While our school systems
adjust to produce more tech graduates, Silicon Valley will need fresh
talent. One solution is to allow qualified workers from other counties
to stay in the United States and take those jobs after college. So far,
however, the Obama administration has faced difficulty passing relevant
immigration reform.
"We need more green
cards so that all these people who are stuck in limbo, these millions of
skilled workers -- doctors, scientists, engineers, computer programmers
-- can get permanent residency," said Vivek Wadhwa, an entrepreneur and
vice president at Singularity University. "They're here legally,
they've done everything right."
One potential fix is the
bipartisan Startup Act 2.0, which would provide up to 50,000 visas to
foreign STEM students who get their master's or doctorate degree in the
U.S. The new category of visa would require recipients to work in a
science, technology, engineering or math field continuously for five
years before they can become a permanent legal resident.
The proposal would also pave the way for entrepreneurs to start businesses in the United States, which could lead to more jobs.
The bill is supported by
some tech heavy-hitters, including Google, Facebook and Microsoft, and
is currently being considered by a congressional committee.
★ Summary
1. Look at five of the biggest tech issues facing President Barack Obama : Piracy, Privacy, Cybersecurity, STEM education, Immigration reform.
2. Piracy: opposed that doomed bill but is expected to address the piracy issue again in the next four years.
3. Pricacy: companies that collect data and track people's online behavior to sell them things, and law enforcement agencies that collect data and track people to investigate crimes.
4. Cybersecurity : In his first term, Obama appointed a national cybersecurity coordinator. In his second term, he will most likely try again to pass cybersecurity legislation.
5. Immigration reform: he new category of visa would require recipients to work in a science, technology, engineering or math field continuously for five years before they can become a permanent legal resident.
★ Source
http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/13/tech/innovation/obama-tech-policy/index.html
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