Some people say that young people today are disengaged from politics, but if Oregon high school students are any indication, that just isn't so.
In Oregon this past month, Senator Wyden visited with students at Southridge, Tigard, Franklin, and Wilson High Schools. Students asked and Senator Wyden answered. Questions were thoughtful, provocative, and on a variety of issues including the NDAA, foreign and domestic policy, and access to education.
Senator Wyden appreciated and gained valuable insight by hearing policy ideas, prescriptions, and questions from the next generation of leaders. Can’t wait for the many more high school visits to come!
(Note: this letter was originally published in the Washington Post on October 28, 2012)
A federal investigation has proved that China is subsidizing its solar panels and dumping those panels in the U.S. market. The Oct. 19 editorial “A cloud on trade” said there’s a good reason to let China continue to do this. I disagree.
World trade is governed by well-defined rules. Allowing China to break those rules at the whim of certain lobbying groups would turn the rules-based trading system into one based on politics. The world tried that system before. It failed. Under that system, trade was neither free nor fair, to the detriment of the United States and global economy.
Failure to address China’s practices will undercut U.S. innovation. It will also make it more difficult for the United States to act against China’s cheating in other areas on everything from the manipulation of its currency to its export restraints on resources such as rare earth minerals.
China has been clear that it is seeking to be a dominant provider of the world’s solar panels, and it is accomplishing this by breaking the rules. To accept these actions because it is helpful to consumers (for now) is to accept a world in which China chooses the industries it wishes to dominate and the
United States is forced to take what’s left. How long after the last U.S. solar manufacturer has shut its doors will China wait to use its monopoly power to raise prices for U.S. consumers?
Ron Wyden, Washington
The writer, a Democrat from Oregon, is a member of the U.S. Senate.
Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) returned from a two-day tour of Louisiana over the weekend, where he visited energy industry infrastructure and coastal restoration efforts Friday and Saturday at the invitation of Senator Mary Landrieu (D-La.).
Wyden and Landrieu toured Louisiana’s costal marshes by helicopter and examined the web of energy industry facilities and support services at Port Fourchon, on the Gulf Coast, among other activities, during the two-day visit.
“I’m glad Senator Landrieu invited me to tour her home state– I saw a lot in Louisiana that I'm going to take back to Washington,” Wyden said. “The uniqueness of the state’s energy industry and the special nature of its coastal environment proved to me once again that we can’t rely on a one-size-fits-all energy policy.”
This past Saturday, Shepherds Flat Wind Energy project came online in Gilliam and Morrow counties in Central Oregon.
Shepherds Flat is one of the world’s largest wind farms generating 845 megawatts of power – enough to power more than 200,000 homes. The wind farm was developed by Caithness Energy and boasts 338 wind turbines made in the U.S. by General Electric which are creating emissions-free power.
“Shepherds Flat shows all of us what renewable energy in the 21st Century looks like, with electricity flowing, real steel in the ground, real jobs, and real economic growth,” Wyden said, in a statement.
This past week, Senator Wyden travelled up to Alaska where he toured several of Alaska’s energy projects and spoke of the need for comprehensive tax reform with Alaskan Senators Lisa Murkowski and Mark Begich.
Next up Senator Wyden and Senator Begich toured the Fire Island Wind Project in Anchorage and celebrated UPS’s 105th Birthday with a tour of their planes and facilities. The trip ended with Senator Wyden and Senator Begich talking about their Bipartisian Tax Fairness and Simplification Act on the Mike Porcaro show and at a roundtable hosted by the Anchorage Economic Development Corporation.
"This has been helpful," Wyden said of the trip, his first in Alaska focused on energy issues. "Alaska has been a major energy producer for decades and it’s now in transition to new energy opportunities including natural gas and renewable energy. Senator Murkowski and Senator Begich showed me firsthand how energy independence and creating more good-paying jobs go hand in hand."
U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and U.S. Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) teamed up to write the Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance (GPS) Act, which is now being offered as an amendment to the Cybersecurity Act of 2012.
Currently, laws pertaining to geolocation tracking have not kept pace with technology. Judges in different jurisdictions have issued conflicting rulings about what procedures law enforcement must follow – and how much evidence is necessary – to obtain individuals’ geolocation data from private companies. This lack of clarity creates problems for law enforcement agencies and private companies, as well as uncertainty for customers.
The bipartisan legislation creates a legal framework designed to give government agencies, commercial entities and private citizens clear guidelines for when and how geolocation information can be accessed and used.
The GPS Act requires government agencies to get a probable cause warrant to obtain geolocation information in the same way that they currently get warrants for wiretaps or other types of electronic surveillance. It also requires private companies to get customer consent before sharing their customers’ information outside the normal course of business, and outlaws “cyber-stalking” by making it a crime to secretly track someone’s movements electronically
Stay Off My Cloud puts in place several privacy protections to ensure that the government stays off your personal cloud.
Many private companies contract with government agencies to provide information services to “continuously monitor” their networks and report to the federal government agencies in “real time or near real time” cyber incidents that jeopardize the “integrity, confidentiality, or availability of information or an information system.”
The amendment makes it clear that service providers need only provide information about cybersecurity incidents if they pose a threat to the government’s information. Importantly, with respect to continuous monitoring and reporting requirements, operators of government information are allowed to use processes that will protect the privacy of individual or non-government, customer specific data.
Stay Off My Cloud prohibits individuals’ private data from being accessed by the government solely because it’s stored by a company who provides information services to a government agency.
No Binding International Cyber Treaties without Senate Approval Amendment
Title VI of the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 calls upon the Secretary of State to “develop and lead Federal Government efforts to engage with other countries to advance the cyberspace objectives of the United States, including efforts to bolster an international framework of cyber norms, governance and deterrence.”
The administration had used similar language found in the Pro IP Act of 2008 to justify entering into binding international agreements on intellectual property as part of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement without the advice and consent of the Senate. Thisamendment makes it clear that nothing in the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 shall be construed to enable the president to enter the U.S. into a binding international agreement on cybersecurity without the advice and consent of the Senate.
Like so many Oregonians, Senator Wyden made the trip to the Oregon Coast to see the state’s newest piece of property – the Japanese dock that washed ashore last month near Newport – and joined Congressman Kurt Schrader in leading a meeting of fishermen, tug boat operators and steamship operators on the hazards to navigation posed by debris from last year’s tsunami in Japan.
(Note: This editorial piece was originally posted on US News & World Report as part of their Debate Club series wherein lawmakers answered the question, "Should Probable Cause Be Required for Police to Use Cell Phone Location Data?")
Before cellphones were commonplace, law enforcement's ability to track your movements was largely limited to the natural human powers of observation. As long as tracking you around the clock meant following you around the clock, it was generally safe to assume that law enforcement would only dedicate the time, energy, and resources necessary to follow you if they had a good reason. In other words, there was little risk that overreaching law enforcement would abuse its surveillance powers to track law-abiding citizens.
Things have changed.
Thanks to technological advancements, police departments no longer have to pay overtime or divert resources from other projects to find out where someone goes. Tracking suspects or law-abiding individuals is now as easy as accessing their GPS signals or asking a cellphone company for its customers' location records.
While having access to geolocation data is clearly useful for law enforcement agencies, without the resource limitations that used to discourage the government from tracking you without good reason, the limits on when and how geolocation data can be accessed are unclear. A police department, for example, might not have the resources to follow everyone who lives within a city block for a month, but without clear rules for electronic tracking there is nothing to stop it from requesting every resident's cellphone location history.
Obviously, we expect people to see us when we step out onto the street each morning, but we don't expect those people to track all of our movements over the course of days, weeks, months, or even years. A lot can be learned from our location histories, like where we go to church, what doctors we see, what political organizations we belong to, and who we spend our time with.
Earlier this year, the Supreme Court ruled that law enforcement must to get a warrant before secretly tracking an individual with an electronic monitoring device. While it seems likely that the majority of the court would agree that secretly turning someone's cellphone into a tracking device would be similarly intrusive, law enforcement shouldn't have to go all the way to the Supreme Court every time it needs direction on how it can use tracking technology.
Clear guidelines for accessing geolocation data won't just protect the privacy rights of law-abiding Americans—much like warrant requirements for wiretaps—they will make it possible for law enforcement to use geolocation tools with confidence that the evidence they gather will be admissible in court. Clear rules will also reassure cellphone companies that they can comply with government requests without violating their customers' privacy, and the justice system can create criminal penalties for stalkers who use geolocation tools to secretly track their victims.
A lot has changed since 1986, when Congress last set rules for electronic privacy. It's time for Congress to step in and set a modern standard.
Kicking off Personal Democracy Forum 2012 (known as #pdf12 on Twitter), Senator Wyden joined his OPEN Act co-author Representative Darrell Issa on stage with PDF founder Andrew Rasiej to discuss the “Internet’s New Political Power.” In the 30 minute conversation, Wyden recalled the challenges over the past two years with legislating Internet policy—evoking COICA, PIPA/SOPA, ACTA, TPP, and CISPA. He then highlighted the lessons learned on January 18th, 2012 when 15 million Americans spoke out to protect a free and open Internet, saying “the middle men got beat.” Wyden also made news when he called for the creation of a digital bill of rights when he said, “What we need is a way to measure how the voice of networks is protected and what I hope will happen out of this meeting is that we will start a grass roots drive, really a net roots drive to create a digital bill of rights for this country..that would be a way to measure and check to make sure the Internet stays free.”
And today @RonWyden sent this tweet encouraging the convocation of an open, online digital bill of rights convention.