This Week in Tech: NSA on the chopping block

All eyes will be on President Obama when he announces which measures he supports to reform surveillance from the National Security Agency (NSA) and other agencies.

Obama will deliver a speech on Friday in response to the 300-page list of 46 recommendations he received from a White House advisory board in December. The  panel suggested that the NSA stop collecting bulk data about almost all phone calls, and that instead, private phone companies or another third party should collect that information, with the government able to search the information with a court order.

The president could also address spying on foreign leaders, government attempts to tap into tech companies’ data lines and other practices revealed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

The Obama administration will likely be able to implement some of the reforms on its own, though Congress will be needed for others.

Lawmakers will likely highlight the areas where they could act at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday. The panel will hear from the five members of the White House advisory panel and analyze suggestions made in their report.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) has been an advocate of reform and introduced the USA Freedom Act, which would put limits on many NSA practices, along with Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.).

The House Energy and Commerce Committee is starting work on the multi-year effort to update the federal law regulating telephone, Internet and television communications.

The subcommittee on Communications and Technology is holding a hearing with three former Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairmen on Wednesday, its first in the effort to overhaul the Communications Act. Lawmakers on the panel will hear from Richard Wiley, Reed Hundt and Michael Powell.

The foundational 1934 law created the FCC and outlines it powers, but has not been modernized since 1996. Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), who leads the Communications subcommittee, said that the law needs an overhaul to keep up with rapidly changing technology.

Last week, the committee released its first white paper criticizing the “siloed” nature of the FCC’s regulations.

The Senate Commerce subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet is holding a hearing on location accuracy issues for wireless 911 callers on Thursday. Most 911 calls from cellphones allow emergency dispatchers to locate the callers, but that technology is not always accurate.

Safety advocates have pointed out that the location service can be a challenge if 911 calls are made indoors or in densely populated urban areas. A safety coalition has asked the FCC to adopt location requirements for calls made indoors.

On Wednesday, the Senate Commerce Committee will hear from Federal Aviation Administrator Michael Huerta about the future of drones in the U.S. “The hearing will include consideration of safety and privacy issues surrounding the operation of drones in the United States,” the committee said.

Representatives from the American Civil Liberties Union, Yamaha and Duke University’s humans and autonomy lab are scheduled to testify.

A House Judiciary subcommittee will look at copyright laws and “the scope of copyright protection” on Tuesday. The hearing continues Chairman Bob Goodlatte’s (R-Va.) effort to comprehensively review U.S. copyright law, which began last year.