The Hill reports that the Senate Commerce Committee will be holding a hearing on driverless cars on Wednesday to take a look at all of the issues currently surrounding the technology. The hearing will touch upon safety benefits, the risks associated with driverless cars, and what impact, if any, legalizing driverless cars will have on current policies.

Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller told the Hill that the hearing will focus on making sure driverless cares are safe:

“It’s vital that Congress understand the safety benefits, but we must make sure that these systems are reliable and secure, and don’t add to the numerous distractions already in cars. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration also must have the capabilities to oversee the safety of new vehicle technology.”

Driverless cars won’t be the only technology brought up either. The Committee will take a look at the recent trend of smartphone integration into vehicles. Some are concerned that having access to Pandora and other smartphone apps in cars will lead to more distracted driving – an already dangerous habit of many American drivers.

There’s no word yet on who’s going to be represented at the hearing, but it’s a good bet that somebody from Google’s driverless car program will be present. The company has been investing quite a bit into the technology over the past few years, and has even managed to legalize the cars in California, Nevada, Florida and Texas. It would appear that Congress wants to ascertain the safety of the vehicles before they become legal in more states.

We can only hope that somebody will bring up Google’s almost spotless track record during the hearing. The cars have driven over a collective 300,000 miles, and have only been involved in two accidents. Furthermore, those two accidents were caused when human control was introduced.

The Hill reports that the Senate approved the Marketplace Fairness Act by a wide margin (69-27) with plenty of bi-partisan support. The passage was met with applause from retail organizations, including the National Retail Federation. The organization’s president and CEO Matthew Shay said that passage in the Senate is a “significant step for sales tax fairness.”

Now the bill must go before the House where it is expected to meet far more resistance from representatives opposed to any new tax legislation. Anti-taxation groups and small online businesses will also be doubling their efforts in the House to ensure that the bill doesn’t pass, or that it at least contains some protective measures to ensure small businesses aren’t hurt by it.

Despite these challenges, the NRF says it’s not worried. In a statement, Shay said that he’s looking forward to working with the House to ensure the bill’s passage:

“This bill and its companion in the House will level the playing field for all retailers – both online and off – while safeguarding states’ rights. And the bill does it all without raising taxes, new government mandates or adding to the deficit. NRF and our broad cross-section of members will work closely with our bipartisan sponsors in the House, Reps. Womack and Speier, and Chairman Goodlatte to ensure that efairness is debated honestly and on its merits. When brought to a vote, we believe the House will pass the bill and it will be signed into law.”

The NRF might have its way as well considering that the Marketplace Fairness Act has the support of the President, and more importantly, the support of many prominent Republican governors around the country. Their support may go a long way in convincing those currently opposed to the bill that it might not be such a bad idea after all.

Either way, the debate over online sales tax is going to get a lot more interesting in the coming months. The House is noisier than the Senate, and there’s going to be a lot of political grandstanding on both sides of the issue. You might as well break out the popcorn now.

The Hill reports that the White House has formally announced its support for the Marketplace Fairness Act. The newfound endorsement was a key factor in the Senate voting in favor of the bill during a procedural vote on Monday evening.

Do you support an online sales tax? Do you think small online businesses have anything to fear? Let us know in the comments.

The idea of an online sales tax is nothing new. Retail stores, represented by the National Retail Federation, have been pushing for an online sales tax bill for years after the Supreme Court ruled in Quill Corp v. North Dakota that a state could not levy sales tax against a company if it had no physical presence in the state. Numerous online retailers use this to get around sales tax, and retail stores say this gives them an unfair advantage.

The White House completely agrees. In a statement to the press on Monday, White House press secretary Jay Carney said the bill would level the playing field for brick-and-mortar stores and online retailers:

“This administration has carefully considered the legislation, and our team has met with a broad array of people on the issue. And we have heard overwhelmingly from governors, mayors and the business community on the need for federal legislation to level the playing field for our businesses and address sales tax fairness.”

The Nation Retail Federation isn’t the only group pushing for the Senate to pass the Marketplace Fairness Act. Governors around the country, including Chris Christie of New Jersey and Rick Snyder of Michigan, have voiced their support for the bill. States are hurting for revenue, and they feel that a national mandate on sales tax will bring billions of revenue back to the states. Carney echoed the governors by saying that the potential tax revenue would help states fund “K-12 education, police and fire protection, access to affordable health care, and funding for roads and bridges.”

Even if the bill is able to pass the Senate during a final vote later this week, it faces plenty of opposition. The Republican-controlled House is just one of the many challenges the Marketplace Fairness Act faces as it progresses through the legislature. Obviously online businesses are coming out against it. Ebay has been especially hostile towards the legislation, and has even started recruiting its sellers to protest the bill.

The common complaint from Ebay and other businesses opposed is that the bill would put undue burdens on online retailers. The current tax system has created a symbiotic relationship between online companies and the states. The states attract online companies to set up a physical presence in a state through a number of perks while the company brings tax revenue and jobs to the state in question. A universal online sales tax destroys that relationship by making online companies collect sales taxes for states that they receive no benefit from.

The current legislation offers sales exemptions to online businesses that make less than $1 million annually. Ebay is currently lobbying Senators to add an amendment that would up this exemption to $10 million.

One company that’s already benefiting from that symbiotic relationship has come out strongly in favor of the bill though. Amazon, which has a number of distribution centers across the country, says that it favors the bill because it creates a unified national framework for tax collection.

Despite the Senate’s overwhelming support of the bill, TechDirt points out that Sen. Ron Wyden has come out strongly against it saying that it negatively impacts innovation.

Another group standing in the bill’s way is Wall Street as it argues that the legislation, as it stands, could negatively affect financial transactions. One group in particular, the Financial Services Roundtable, says that a sales tax on financial transactions would hurt just about everyone:

“A transaction tax on financial services products will hurt retail investors, retired Americans, and small businesses, effectively making it more expensive for them to invest and plan for the long-term. Without hearings, these implications and others will not be properly addressed.”

Do you agree with those in favor of the bill? Or the opposition? Let us know in the comments.

It should be noted that the Marketplace Fairness Act isn’t a done deal in the Senate. Monday’s vote was only procedural. Now the Senate will get to work on adding amendments to the bill with a final vote scheduled for Thursday or Friday.

Unless something disastrous happens, the bill will probably pass the Senate without much of a fight. A glowing endorsement from the White House has made sure of that.

During the debate in the Senate and the House, you’re likely to see the following argument – Do we even need an online sales tax bill? Is there any real reason to throw a bone to the retail businesses that implement stupid strategies like a $5 window shopping fee.

One compelling argument is that retail stores should find ways to better compete with online businesses. The retail store still has a few advantages over online businesses, but are they really capitalizing on those advantages?

At this point, it’s too early to tell exactly what kind of damage, if any, the Marketplace Fairness Act would cause. It could possibly do nothing, but some are right to fear that it would legitimately hurt the operations of online retailers.

Do you think that retail stores need a level playing field? Will the Marketplace Fairness Act negatively affect small online businesses? Let us know in the comments.

After two previous votes that saw the legislation move forward, the Senate voted one final time in favor of ending the debate on the bill. The 63-30 vote ensures that the bill will finally move to a final vote on the Senate floor. That vote won’t come for another week, however, as the Senate also agreed to delay the vote until after they return from a weeklong recess on May 6.

The Hill notes that support for the bill has dropped considerably as the Senate has rejected an open amendment process. Many senators who would be in favor of an online sales tax bill are now opposed for this very reason. That doesn’t mean that the bill will suddenly be stopped in its tracks, however, as a number of influential Senators and the White House both stand in favor of the bill’s passage.

The Marketplace Fairness Act will most likely pass a floor vote in the Senate on May 6, but the bill still has a very uncertain future. The House is hostile to any legislation that would increase taxes. The bill’s supporters will likely have to make a few compromises in the House to see it passed.

One of those compromises, suggested by Sen. Ron Wyden, may very well show up in the House. Wyden argued that states should be able to opt out of collecting online sales tax from retailers. The argument is that states sales tax should be decided by the states, and that the federal government has no right to force states into collecting sales tax.

That being said, states seem to have no problem with the legislation as many governors have voiced support for the bill. States feel that they are losing out on billions of dollars in tax revenue ever year in untaxed online revenue.

We’ll continue to follow the Marketplace Fairness Act as it heads for a final floor vote on May 6. Don’t expect any major surprises out of the Senate, but we’ll keep an eye on it just in case.

US News reports that the Senate has decided not to take up CISPA. In short, CISPA is dead. The bill that would have given companies full legal immunity when sharing your personal information with the government will have its remains scattered on the winds of history yet again.

It seems that CISPA’s death can be largely attributed to two factors. For one, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, chairman of the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, came out against CISPA saying it lacked privacy protections. Rockefeller holds considerable sway in the Senate, and his committee would have had a lot of say over CISPA. Secondly, President Obama’s veto threat most likely played a major role in the Senate’s rejection of CISPA.

We can relax now that CISPA is dead, right? Unfortunately, the answer is a little unclear at this point. An unnamed representative on Rockefeller’s committee says that “issues and key provisions” of CISPA will be divvied up and made into separate bills. In other words, CISPA will be broken up into smaller, separate bills in the Senate. The problem with this approach is that some of the less vile, but still damaging, provisions of CISPA can make it through as they won’t be attached to the really bad stuff.

Of course, there’s always the possibility that the Senate will craft a handful of bills that narrowly target the areas not covered by President Obama’s cybersecurity executive order without sacrificing civil liberties. It would certainly be nice, but the Senate’s past attempts at writing cybersecurity legislation certainly don’t inspire confidence.

Either way, we won’t be seeing any cybersecurity legislation out of the Senate for a while. The unnamed representative says the Senate currently has its hands full with a number of other bills that take priority over cybersecurity, including the controversial Marketplace Fairness Act.

Last week, Sen. Patrick Leahy said that the Senate Judiciary Committee would be marking up an update to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. The decades old bill allows law enforcement to obtain emails without a warrant as long as said email is 180 days old.

The Hill reports that both the Senate and the House will be taking up their respective email privacy bills today. The Senate Judiciary Committee will be taking a look at Leahy’s bill – S. 607 – that simply requires the police to obtain a warrant when accessing any electronic communication, including email.

In the original announcement of the mark up, Leahy said that ECPA must be updated to counter concerns over the “growing and unwelcome intrusions into our private lives in cyberspace.” Those concerns certainly came to a head earlier this month when documents obtained by the ACLU revealed that the IRS told its agents that they could obtain emails without a warrant. The agency also said that “Internet users do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy.”

Since then, IRS Commissioner Steven Miller said that his agency always obtains a warrant before searching emails. Miller also said that his agency never snoops through email during civil investigations. It wasn’t exactly reassuring, but an updated ECPA would ensure that the IRS, or any government agency for that matter, would never be able to obtain emails without a warrant.

It should be noted that the House will be making a mockery of itself this week by discussing an update to the ECPA after passing CISPA. The House Judiciary Committee will be discussing whether or not the ECPA should be updated to require that law enforcement obtain a warrant before accessing geolocation data. The irony here is that CISPA, in its current form, would allow mobile carriers to share geolocation data with the government without a warrant. Even if the carrier was found in violation of an updated ECPA, it would enjoy full legal immunity under CISPA.

Even so, we’ll continue to follow both discussions and keep you up to date on any changes. The Senate seems to have made an updated ECPA a priority so we may see a final vote as early as next week. That is, of course, if the Senate doesn’t run into any problems with its current controversial bill – the Marketplace Fairness Act.

The Hill reports that the Senate voted in favor of the Marketplace Fairness Act yet again in a procedural vote that saw 75 senators come out in favor of the legislation compared to the 22 opposed. It should be noted that today’s vote was only procedural and does not represent the final vote. Still, the vote represents the bill’s overwhelmingly popularity in the Senate.

Sen. Dick Durbin, one of the bill’s many sponsors, continued to preach the advantages of a national online sales tax bill:

“Internet retailers have an advantage over brick and mortar retailers. This has caused many stores on Main Streets to face competition that is unfair … so we’re trying to level the playing field.”

Despite the overwhelming support from many senators, lawmakers from states without a sales tax are voicing opposition to the bill. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire says that the bill will increase the tax burden on small businesses around the nation. Shaheen’s opinion was echoed by many of the comments in yesterday’s article regarding the bill.

Despite the opposition, it seems likely that the Marketplace Fairness Act will get through the Senate before the end of the week. Then the bill will move on to the House of Representatives where it’s expected to meet much tougher opposition at the hands of a Republican majority that’s incredibly hostile to the idea of any new taxes.

To recap, CISPA is a proposed bill that aims to boost the government’s ability to respond to cyber threats and cyber attacks by sharing private customer information between itself and companies. Its opponents claim the bill is a massive invasion of privacy that serves no use in combatting cyberattacks, but rather will be used to spy on American citizens by granting immunity to those companies that share information.

With CISPA’s passage in the House, the EFF vows to take its fight to the Senate:

“This bill undermines the privacy of millions of Internet users,” said Rainey Reitman, EFF Activism Director. “Hundreds of thousands of Internet users opposed this bill, joining the White House and Internet security experts in voicing concerns about the civil liberties ramifications of CISPA. We’re committed to taking this fight to the Senate and fighting to ensure no law which would be so detrimental to online privacy is passed on our watch.”

If history repeats itself, the EFF won’t have much of a fight in the Senate. CISPA died in the Senate last year as its members argued over its own law – the Cybersecurity Act of 2012. It was a marked improvement over CISPA, but it did have its own issues. The bill died after it failed a Senate floor vote and CISPA was never taken up.

For this year, the Senate will be debating the Cybersecurity and American Cyber Competitiveness Act of 2013. Like CSA, it’s a bit better than CISPA, but its lack of bipartisan sponsorship doesn’t bode well. It also doesn’t help that the bill still hasn’t even been picked up by its respective committee yet.

So, what happens if CISPA somehow makes its way through the Senate? It has to get signed into law by the president, and his administration just recently threatened to veto CISPA if it makes it to his desk. The administration suggested a number of common sense additions to CISPA that would make it far more pro-privacy, but the House ignored those suggestions. Now its up to the Senate to decide if it will actually listen to the thousands of people who are against CISPA.

The Hill reports that IRS Commissioner Steven Miller was present at a congressional hearing today where Sen. Chuck Grassley grilled the commissioner on the agency’s email policy. Miller said that his agency obtains a search warrant before requesting emails, and even went further by saying that the agency never requests emails during civil investigations.

Miller also said that his agency follows the ruling set in United States v. Warshak, a Sixth Circuit Court decision that said the government must obtain a warrant before requesting emails from a service provider. The decision is only binding in the Sixth Circuit, but the IRS says it applies the ruling to operations nationwide.

What’s interesting here is that the documents obtained by the ACLU suggests the IRS does the exact opposite. The documents never explicitly state that the IRS snooped through emails without a warrant, but everything points to this conclusion. Even when taking United States v. Warshak into account, the IRS reportedly said that it only needed to worry about a warrant in the Sixth Circuit.

Of course, senators brought up this disparity during the hearing. Miller said that his agency will work on clarifying its procedures, but still insisted that it obtained a warrant when snooping through emails. Unfortunately, Miller said that he couldn’t say the same thing for other online communications like Facebook messages, but that’s only because he didn’t know the agency’s specific warrant requirements for these new types of communications.

Today’s hearing precedes the Senate Judiciary Committee’s planned markup of the decades old ECPA law on Thursday. Currently, the ECPA lets law enforcement obtain emails with only a subpoena if the email in question is over 180 days old. The bill going before Committee on Thursday will require law enforcement to obtain a warrant when obtaining emails and other online communications regardless of its age.

The Hill reports that the Senate Judiciary Committee plans to mark-up Sen. Patrick Leahy’s ECPA amendment on Thursday morning. S.607 would require law enforcement to obtain a warrant when requesting emails as part of an investigation. The current law under ECPA requires a warrant only if the email is less than 180 days old. An older email, or one that’s already been opened, only requires a subpoena under current law.

Sen. Leahy issued the following statement today in regards to the mark-up:

“Like many Americans, I am concerned about the growing and unwelcome intrusions into our private lives in cyberspace. I have long believed that our government should obtain a search warrant — issued by a court — before gaining access to our email and other private communications. This week the Senate Judiciary Committee will begin consideration of legislation that I authored with Republican Senator Mike Lee to reform the Electronic Communications Privacy Act to make sure that this occurs, and that the overall privacy protections for our email and other electronic communications are strengthened. Safeguarding Americans’ privacy rights is not a Democratic issue or a Republican issue — it is something that is important to all Americans, regardless of political party or ideology. I hope that all members of Congress share this view and will support this timely and significant legislation that upholds Americans’ privacy rights.”

Sen. Leahy’s proposed ECPA amendment was introduced in late March, but one event in particular may have forced his hand to push ECPA reform faster than he may have planned. The ACLU obtained a number of documents from the IRS that suggested the agency obtained emails without a warrant, and said that Internet users “do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy.”

In response, Rep. Charles Boustany sent a letter to the IRS asking the agency to explain its email policy. It’s highly unlikely that the agency would answer all of the questions posed by Rep. Boustany, but it did say that it “treats taxpayers with respect” and “does not use emails to target taxpayers.”

Sen. Leahy’s bill is a great first step to updating the decades old ECPA, but a House vote this week could be a different first step in making an updated ECPA a moot point. CISPA, a bill that would let companies share you private information with the government, will go to the House floor for a vote this week. If it somehow makes its way into law, it would allow companies to share your emails and much more with the government while enjoying total immunity in the case the government uses that information for anything illegal. Fortunately, the White House has serious reservations, but it didn’t go so far as to issue a veto threat.

We’ll keep following both ECPA and CISPA as they make their way through the legislature over the coming months. We can only hope that the former makes its way all way through, and the latter is treated to the same ignoble death its predecessor was dealt last year.