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The Week Ahead: Congress to hold cybersecurity hearings amid shutdown deadline

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The Week Ahead: Congress to hold cybersecurity hearings amid shutdown deadline

In Congress:

Congress is once again facing a deadline to pass a new spending bill, having until the end of Feb. 8 to both agree and vote on a bill in order to avoid another partial government shutdown. As was the case in January, when the government shut down for three days, lawmakers remain starkly divided over immigration.

During his State of the Union address, President Donald Trump laid out the White House's plan for immigration, which would offer a path to citizenship for 1.8 million Dreamers in the United States — beneficiaries of an Obama-era program that shielded undocumented individuals brought into the country as children from deportation — in exchange for funding for a border wall, ending the visa lottery and putting strict limits on the system by which immigrants may join family members already here. But Democratic lawmakers indicated they would not accept Trump's plan for a number of reasons, with Rep. Luis Gutiérrez, D-Ill., saying in a statement, "I am still hopeful, but I don't see this Congress and this President coming to an agreement that prevents the deportation of the Dreamers."

A number of technology, media and telecom companies have previously voiced support for a legislative solution for the Dreamers, or those covered by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. After Trump said he would end the program in September 2017, Telemundo (US), for instance, said it stood with the Dreamers "who are integral to the economy, culture and spirit of our nation." Facebook Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg, meanwhile, urged Congress to "pass the bipartisan Dream Act or another legislative solution that gives Dreamers a pathway to citizenship," and Google Inc. CEO Sundar Pichai said, "Congress needs to act now to defend DACA."

Still, most observers do not expect another shutdown. Instead, Congress is widely expected to agree on another short-term stop gap measure that will keep the government open for a few more weeks while lawmakers try to come to some kind of agreement on immigration. In terms of the Federal Communications Commission, the agency said before the last shutdown that it had enough funds on hand to remain open through at least five days without a new spending bill. Given the last shutdown lasted only three days, the agency may still have some unobligated funds left over that it can use in the event of future shutdown.

In the meantime, Congress will also be holding a number of hearings this week focused on cybersecurity. The Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, Insurance and Data Security, for instance, will convene a hearing titled "Data Security and Bug Bounty Programs: Lessons Learned from the Uber Breach and Security Researchers" on Feb. 6. The hearing will examine the October 2016 Uber data breach, when hackers stole the personal data of 57 million Uber customers from a third-party cloud-based service. While no social security numbers or credit card information was stolen, hackers did collect the names, email addresses and phone numbers of Uber customers and the driver's license numbers of hundreds of thousands of drivers.

Rather than immediately reporting the breach, Uber paid the hackers $100,000 to delete the data and did not publicly disclose the incident, either to affected customers or regulators, until November 2017. Also at the hearing, the subcommittee will hear testimony on "bug bounty" programs, where companies reward security researchers who uncover vulnerabilities in their products and alert the companies about their existence.

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Congress:
Feb. 6 The Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs will hold a hearing entitled, "Virtual Currencies: The Oversight Role of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission" at 10 a.m. ET.
Feb. 6 The Senate Subcommittee on Primary Health and Retirement Security will hold a hearing titled "Exploring the 'Gig Economy' and the Future of Retirement Savings" at 2:30 p.m. ET.
Feb. 6 The Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, Insurance and Data Security will convene a hearing titled "Data Security and Bug Bounty Programs: Lessons Learned from the Uber Breach and Security Researchers" at 2:45 p.m. ET.
Feb. 6 The House Foreign Affairs Committee will hold a hearing titled "U.S. Cyber Diplomacy in an Era of Growing Threats" at 10 a.m. ET.
Feb. 6 The House Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness, Response and Communications will hold a hearing titled "Ensuring Effective and Reliable Alerts and Warnings" at 10 a.m. ET.
FCC events
Feb. 8 FCC Chief Technology Officer Eric Burger will speak to the Federal Communications Bar Association. Burger, who serves as the senior technology expert in the agency, will discuss his work on finding a technical solution to robocalls, rural broadband deployment, and supporting the security, stability, and reliability of online networks.
Industry events
Feb. 5 Public Knowledge will hold a conversation about privacy legislation in 2018 titled "Privacy Protections in the Post-Equifax Era."
Feb. 5 The Wilson Center will host an event titled "From Bytes to Bucks: Soft Power, Policy, Tech, and Culture."
Feb. 6 The Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council will host its Broadband and Social Justice Summit. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, among others, will discuss the latest policy developments in net neutrality, the future of the FCC's Lifeline program, 5G and more.
Feb. 6 The Hudson Institute will host an event titled "A Conservative Perspective on Communications Policy" where FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly will speak.
Feb. 7 R Street will host an event titled "Design Patents and Defining the Article of Manufacture – One Year Later" focused on the impact of the Samsung Electronics Co. v. Apple Supreme Court case.
Feb. 7 INCOMPAS will host its 2018 Policy Summit featuring various members of Congress and FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn.
Feb. 8 VerveCon, a conference that aims to bring together and empower women in technology, will take place in Santa Clara, Calif.
Cybersecurity events:
Feb. 6 The Atlantic Council will host an event titled "Russia's Cyber Operations in Ukraine and Beyond," which aims to explore the lessons that can be learned from the Kremlin's cyber operations in Ukraine. The event will consider various forms of cyber aggression, ranging from disinformation campaigns to cyberattacks aimed at the power grid and other critical infrastructure.
Feb. 8 Tech in Motion will host an event titled "Tech Talk: Cybersecurity."
Earnings:
Feb. 6 Walt Disney Co. and Snap Inc. will report their earnings results.
Feb. 7 21st Century Fox Inc. will report its earnings results.
Feb. 8 Nielsen Holdings, Viacom Inc., Twitter Inc., Activision Blizzard Inc. and NVIDIA Corp. will report their earnings results.

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