WASHINGTON -- Remember all those promises that U.S. presidential candidates made last year?
Some libertarian and conservative groups sure do, and they're trying to hold Sen. John McCain to his New Hampshire pledge to oppose Internet taxes.
At a January 2000 event designed to distance himself from George W. Bush, McCain signed a Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE) declaration that says: "I will support making permanent the current ban on Internet access, sales or use taxes."
But with the current moratorium expiring in October, the Arizona Republican has quietly shifted his stand. He no longer talks about banning all Internet taxes, and he has not reintroduced his bill from the last Congress, Senate Bill 1611, which would have extended the existing moratorium.
"McCain is allowing the Internet tax cartel train to roll right down the tracks and doesn't appear willing to do much to stop it at this time," said Adam Thierer, an analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute. "I don't want to be overly harsh here, but this seems like a rather abrupt about-face on this issue, considering how hard he was nailing Bush on it during the campaign."
Currently, McCain is trying to broker a deal between the pro-tax state governments -- which say uncollected sales taxes on Internet purchases could cost them $12.5 billion by 2003 -- and a shaky coalition of online businesses and groups ideologically opposed to granting governments new powers to tax.
"We are trying to work out a bill that can not only pass the Senate, but that can become law," said Mark Buse, McCain's staff director. "Every version that Senator McCain has worked on has contained a permanent extension of the Internet tax ban."
"We're political realists," Buse said. "A pure extension right now does not have the votes to pass the Senate or the commerce committee. It probably has just 6 votes out of 22 on the committee. Instead of just posturing, we're trying very hard to work out language that will pass."
Besides, McCain may have an easy out: By signing the CSE pledge, McCain only promised to oppose taxes "if elected to the office of president."
Porn worm in Congress: Sen. Robert Bennett may be the former chairman of the Republican High-Tech Task Force and the current chairman of a GOP working group on "cyber safety and critical infrastructure protection," but you wouldn't know it by his own electronic security measures.
On Thursday, Bennett's staff received the "homepage" worm, which their Windows mail software dutifully forwarded to colleagues, contacts and journalists on their press list.
"Please accept our apology and do not open any e-mail or attachments entitled 'Homepage,'" said an embarrassed John Falls, Bennett's system administrator, in a follow-up e-mail message on Thursday evening.
"Homepage" works by randomly opening a number of hardcore sex sites using Internet Explorer. No details yet on the scene inside the Dirksen building suite of Bennett, a conservative Mormon, when the worm hit.
Echeloners snubbed: We told you recently about how a European Parliament committee studying the Echelon surveillance system was going to take a field trip to the National Security Agency.
At least that was the plan. When representatives of the 33-person committee showed up in Washington, they had friendly meetings with the House Intelligence committee, the ACLU, the Justice Department and former CIA director Jim Woolsey.
But the CIA, the NSA and the State Department decided at the last minute to back out of scheduled meetings.
"We are very disappointed by the last-minute reluctance of the CIA and the NSA to meet our delegation in spite of the advanced preparations that had been made," said Chairman Carlos Coelho in a statement on Thursday. "As a result we are cutting short our visit to Washington and returning to Europe immediately."
Free speech vs. copyright: A federal appeals court, preparing to rule on whether a DVD-descrambling utility is legal, has asked for more information on the First Amendment implications of the case.
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which heard oral arguments last week in Universal Studios v. Reimerdes et al, wants both sides to answer a list of 11 questions on whether computer code can qualify as free speech.
The unusual move by the three-judge panel cheered attorneys for 2600 magazine, which is defending a lawsuit brought by movie studios over the DeCSS utility it distributed.
"This is good news," said Kathleen Sullivan, dean of Stanford Law School, who argued the case for the hacker-zine. "It means that the court took our First Amendment arguments seriously. They are asking for very specific answers about how the First Amendment should be applied here, and we welcome the chance to tell them."
The list of questions is on the website of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is providing legal assistance to 2600.
