President Barack Obama discussed surveillance concerns with key members of Congress in the Roosevelt Room of the White House Thursday, according to the White House schedule. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., issued a statement after the meeting reiterating his backing of more transparency. “In particular, if the President believes we need a bulk collection program of telephone data, then he needs to break his silence and clearly explain to the American people why it is needed for our national security,” Goodlatte said. “The President has unique information about the merits of these programs and the extent of their usefulness,” information “critical to informing Congress on how far to go in reforming the programs” and with civil liberties at stake. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., pointed to his own surveillance bill. “During today’s meeting, I and several others emphasized the need for meaningful changes to our government’s surveillance programs, like those outlined in the USA FREEDOM Act,” Leahy said in a statement, referring to his bill that would end bulk phone surveillance. “Minor or cosmetic changes simply will not restore Americans’ confidence.” Leahy said the recommendations of Obama’s surveillance review group are consistent with the USA Freedom Act. Leahy said Obama can enact many of these recommendations now, although Leahy will still “push for support” of his own legislation in the Senate. Goodlatte said he also wants to make sure tech companies are not disadvantaged in relation to their foreign competitors. House Judiciary has “primary jurisdiction over the legal framework of these programs,” Goodlatte said. Press aides for Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and House Intelligence Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., were not yet prepared or planning to issue statements about the meeting, they told us Thursday afternoon. The White House, in its readout, confirmed the attendance of the above four lawmakers as well as Senate Intelligence Vice Chairman Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., Senate Judiciary ranking member Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Thad Cochran, R-Miss., Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., Mark Udall, D-Colo., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., House Judiciary ranking member John Conyers, D-Mich., Reps. Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-N.J., Peter Visclosky, D-Ind., Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis. Sensenbrenner authored the House version of the USA Freedom Act, now under consideration in House Judiciary. “This meeting was an opportunity for the President to hear from the Members about the work they have been doing on these issues since they last met and solicit their input as we near the end of our internal review,” the White House said. Obama is expected to announce changes to surveillance practices later this month. “All three branches of government have said the NSA has gone too far,” Sensenbrenner said in a statement. “This problem cannot be solved by presidential fiat. Congress needs to pass the USA FREEDOM Act, a bipartisan legislative solution closely aligned with the suggestions by the president’s panel.”

One House Republican sees no real danger in AT&T’s latest sponsored data program. “I understand the concerns that folks raise regarding agreements between content providers and wireless broadband carriers,” Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., told us in a statement. “But this is the kind of deal that I think has the potential to bring new and innovative options for consumers, and to which net neutrality poses a threat. Wireless and landline data usage has skyrocketed in recent years, and I think we should be encouraging creative business deals to help meet this demand, not preventing them.” Terry is a member of the House Commerce Committee, where he chairs the trade subcommittee. He had opposed the FCC’s move to vote on net neutrality rules in 2010. Communications Subcommittee ranking member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., had worried AT&T’s program created net neutrality concerns (CD Jan 9 p8). FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler discussed the new program, on the road. (See separate reports above in this issue.)

A House panel will take a closer look at copyright Tuesday, focusing on broadcast protections. The House Intellectual Property Subcommittee will hold a hearing titled “The Scope of Copyright Protection” Tuesday at 10 a.m. in 2141 Rayburn. It “will focus on the general issues of what is subject to copyright protection and what rights should be included in copyright protection,” a House Judiciary Committee aide said. “The hearing will also look at the specific new topics of whether and to what extent there should be copyright protection for broadcasts and laws, codes and standards.” Some of these questions have been at the heart of the ongoing Aereo case. No witnesses were disclosed.

FirstNet’s partnerships with the private sector and how it plans to develop the network in each state may hold “particular interest” for members of Congress, said a Congressional Research Service report released Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1ajGyEM). Those details may be an “early indicator of the viability of FirstNet in meeting the goals required by” the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012, which created the interoperable public-safety network, it said. By CRS telecom policy specialist Linda Moore, the report laid out the broad goals of the network, different deadlines and the technical and funding challenges it will have to meet. “In addition to monitoring progress in building the new broadband network for public safety, Congress may want to consider reviewing the role of commercial networks in emergency response and recovery,” it said. “Once commercial communications lines are compromised because of infrastructure failures, interdependent public safety networks are threatened and the ability to communicate vital information to the public is diminished.” NTIA has asserted powers as a supervising government agency, and FirstNet has been required to follow federal procurement rules in a way inconsistent with the intent of Congress, “and might be described as setting a course for FirstNet to become ‘another Amtrak,'” said CRS.

Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld sees as wanting the list of former FCC chairmen set to testify before Congress next week. The House Communications Subcommittee scheduled its previously announced Jan. 15 hearing on Communications Act overhaul for 10 a.m. in 2123 Rayburn, it said in a hearing notice Wednesday night (http://1.usa.gov/1ild2QW). The subcommittee has not announced witnesses but said those testifying will be former FCC chairmen. Industry officials have told us these will be Julius Genachowski, Michael Powell, Reed Hundt and Dick Wiley (CD Jan 9 p6). A committee aide confirmed to us on Thursday that Powell, Hundt and Wiley will be testifying. “Of this list, the only one who doesn’t represent carriers or possibly seek to acquire them is Reed Hundt,” Feld told us by email of the initial four rumored names. “They couldn’t ask Kevin Martin or Michael Copps? Hell, if there was ever an FCC Chair that made cable market power and retrans (as well as TV white spaces) on the agenda, it’s Kevin Martin. And Copps would provide a truly unique and powerful voice for media diversity and network neutrality.” Feld worried about the balance of such a witness list and said none of these former chairmen would be able to speak to media diversity. Martin’s “campaign against cable” would have provided a key balance to Powell heading NCTA, Feld added. Feld also pointed to Copps and Martin as the only two former chairmen who back indecency rules. While Feld personally favors a repeal of the broadcast indecency rule, he said “we should have a real debate with ardent defenders as well as those favoring repeal.” House Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., and Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., wrote a joint guest blog Thursday for Broadcasting & Cable describing their desire to update the act and pegging that to the innovation on display at CES. “Our work will be exhaustive, inviting industries and innovators, consumers and citizens to join us in an open dialogue,” Upton and Walden said (http://bit.ly/K8l6bm). “The committee’s examination of the satellite television law, for instance, has reminded us that more nuanced laws governing different forms of communication are woefully out of sync with each other.”

The USA Freedom Act (HR-3361) picked up four House co-sponsors Tuesday, bringing the surveillance legislation authored by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., up to 121 backers. The bill would end the government’s bulk collection of phone metadata, create an advocate for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and make other changes. New co-sponsors are Reps. Paul Broun, R-Ga., vice chairman of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence and chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight; Doris Matsui, D-Calif.; William Keating, D-Mass., a member of the House Homeland Security Cybersecurity Subcommittee and Counterterrorism and Intelligence Subcommittee; and Randy Weber, R-Texas.

Congress should do a fuller investigation, beyond any one existing committee, into National Security Agency surveillance, said the Electronic Frontier Foundation in a blog post Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1aFbuMj). EFF’s Mark Jaycox and Lee Tien lament the lack of information members of Congress seem to have, and the limits of what members have managed to learn from intelligence officials in hearings throughout the past half-year. “But any investigation into the NSA’s activities must include a review of the current Congressional oversight regime,” they wrote. “Since the creation of the intelligence committees in 1978, there has been no external audit or examination of how the system has performed.” They back the creation of a special congressional committee to investigate.

The House Commerce Committee’s “aggressive agenda advances” in 2014 will include work in updating the Communications Act, said Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., in a written statement Monday. He flagged the coming work, which the committee has said (CD Dec 4 p1) is expected to include hearings and white papers, in a news release touting a report about the committee’s work in 2013 (http://1.usa.gov/1ht2bH3). “We had a strong record of accomplishment in 2013, and we look forward to building upon our record of bipartisan success,” Upton said. “The committee will remain focused on promoting job creation and economic growth, transforming Washington to create a smaller, modernized government for the innovation era, and protecting families, communities, and civic initiatives.” House Commerce clocked 112 days of hearings, 29 days of markups, 22 bills and resolutions reported to the House and 13 legislative initiatives enacted into nine laws, it said. The report included a section on the Communications Subcommittee and the bills it has considered and hearings it has held. “We will keep our foot on the gas both legislatively, evidenced by the House voting on several of our measures this first week of the second session, and in our oversight work,” Upton said.

The House Communications Subcommittee will host former FCC chairmen at a Jan. 15 hearing, it said (http://bit.ly/1acG57b). The focus will be on updating the Communications Act, as top committee Republicans announced in December they intended to do. A spokesman for the committee declined to provide additional information, including which former chairmen had been asked to testify.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper didn’t intend to lie to Congress, his office’s General Counsel Robert Litt said Friday evening. Litt wrote a letter to The New York Times, also posted to ODNI’s Tumblr page (http://bit.ly/1a1tIHA), responding to the paper’s recent editorial on ex-National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. Clapper had told Congress earlier this year that the U.S. government didn’t collect content on Americans at large, which many have said was a lie, given revelations since then about the government’s bulk metadata collection program. During a hearing, Clapper “was surprised by the question and focused his mind on the collection of the content of Americans’ communications,” Litt said. “In that context, his answer was and is accurate. When we pointed out Mr. Clapper’s mistake to him, he was surprised and distressed.” The record could not be corrected due to how classified the program was, Litt said. “This incident shows the difficulty of discussing classified information in an unclassified setting and the danger of inferring a person’s state of mind from extemporaneous answers given under pressure.”