Al Franken's Blog, page 58

Grand Forks Herald: OUR OPINION: Privacy laws needed amid cars’ tech boom

Having trouble understanding what the big deal is about “black boxes” in cars collecting crash data?

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Northland’s News Center: Sen. Franken meets with Duluth East robotics team

U.S. Senator Al Franken made a stop in Duluth to talk robots.

The senator joined students from Duluth East’s Daredevil Robotics team at Archer Brothers Auto Shop.

The Daredevils are in the process of putting together a design for this year’s round of robotics competitions.

Franken who sits on the Senate Education Committee, says the First Robotics program is important part of providing students with tools for future technology.

“This is an amazingly brilliant competition and it’s building and building and building every year. They’re building on their knowledge, you cant help but be unbelievably impressed with these kids,” said Franken.

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KDAL: Senators Want Heating Assistance Funding Increased

Minnesota Senators Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken released a report that shows a county by county breakdown of funding levels for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) in 2012. In the wake of dangerously low temperatures in recent weeks, the senators say they will continue to push for an increase in funding levels for the program…

The report shows St. Louis County with 11.7 million dollars in program funding last year.

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U.S News & World Report: Al Franken Hosts Secret Santa, Marco Rubio Gets Coal

Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., has brought the ho-ho-hope of bipartisanship to Capitol Hill with his annual Senate Secret Santa for three years now, and on Tuesday evening, the senators once again exchanged gifts.

“Anything that brings Democrats and Republicans together and builds relationships is a good thing,” Franken told Whispers via email. “That’s why three years ago I came up with the idea to hold a Secret Santa in the Senate and I’ve been doing it ever since.”

This year, Franken drew his Democratic colleague Sen. Joe Donnelly, Ind., and gifted him a hand-drawn map of the United States, which paid particular attention to the states that played a role in Donnelly’s life.

Some senators gave favorites from their home states. For example, Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., gave his colleague Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., some jam and jellies made by House of Webster in Rogers, Ark. Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., showed off his home state’s red clay by gifting Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., a “Georgia Clay Bread Warmer.” And Sen. Kay Hagan, D-N.C., gave a hat tip to a local charity by giving Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., dog treats made by arcBARKS, a program out of Greensboro for the developmentally and intellectually disabled.

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KSTP: Sen. Al Franken Discusses College Affordability at Apple Valley Event

U.S. Sen. Al Franken talked about how students can save money on college tuition during an event at Apple Valley High School Wednesday.

Franken was joined by 20 Apple Valley High School students as well as officials from the Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan School District, the University of Minnesota, and Normandale Community College as they talked about the College in the Schools program. The program allows students to earn college credit for taking advanced courses at their school.

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Huffington Post: College Textbooks Could Be Free Under Legislation Introduced In Congress

Legislation introduced in Congress could make buying expensive textbooks a thing of the past.

The bill sponsored by by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Al Franken (D-Minn.) would create a grant program for colleges and universities to “create and expand the use of textbooks that can be made available online” and offered with free access to the public. Students — and anyone else for that matter — would have access to digital textbooks and not be bound to buying the latest edition stocked in a campus bookstore.

The bill, named the “Affordable College Textbook Act,” was filed by Durbin and Franken earlier this month. A complementary bill was drafted in the House by Reps. Rubén Hinojosa (D-Texas) and George Miller (D-Calif.).

Durbin cited the success of a $150,000 grant to the University of Illinois for its Open Source Textbook Initiative. Thanks to the grant, UI faculty were able to develop a book that’s available to anyone for free and can be updated when new information becomes available. Similar results were achieved at the University of California-Davis as a result of a $250,000 grant from the National Science Foundation.

“This bill can replicate and build on this success and help make the cost of attending college more affordable,” Durbin said in a statement.

One of the problems with traditional textbooks is that an added chapter can render an edition worthless, preventing students from saving money by buying used copies.

The cost of college textbooks increased 812 percent since 1978, or three times the rate of inflation, according to data from the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics analyzed by University of Michigan economist Mark Perry. A Government Accountability Office report found college textbook prices went up 82 percent in just the past 10 years.

As a result, seven out of 10 undergraduates admit to skimping out on purchasing at least one textbook, according to a 2011 survey by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

The legislation also calls for a report from the U.S. Department of Education to the Senate’s education committee by mid-2016 detailing adoption of open textbooks and how much it saves students. By July 2017, the Comptroller General of the United States would have to submit a report on what has caused changes to price of college textbooks and the impact open textbooks would have on the cost of regular, traditional ones.

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Aitkin Independent Age: Franken welcomes delayed mental health guidelines

U.S. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) welcomed the release of long-delayed federal guidelines that require insurance companies to cover mental health care to the same extent as other medical services. He also called for a careful review of the new rules prior to their implementation to ensure that millions in Minnesota and across the country can start gaining access to critical mental health services.

The Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, which was passed in 2008, requires group health plans to cover mental health and substance use disorder services to the same extent that medical and surgical benefits are covered. The lack of final regulations made the full implementation of the law extremely difficult, if not impossible.

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National Journal: College Textbooks Are Ridiculously Expensive. Two Senators Are Trying to Change That.

Everyone knows that college tuition costs have been skyrocketing. But, it turns out, it’s nothing compared to the growth in college textbook costs.

The American Enterprise Institute shows just how much they have risen since 1978.

The 812-percent growth in textbook prices is far greater than the percent growth for college tuition and fees over about the same period. Prices have gone up 82 percent in the last decade alone. The average college student is now paying about $1,200 a year on textbooks and supplies.

For students and their families, the rising cost of college textbooks is a serious problem. Democratic Sens. Al Franken of Minnesota and Dick Durbin of Illinois have just introduced a bill to begin to fix it.

The Affordable College Textbook Act, introduced by Durbin and Franken this month, aims to lower book costs by promoting the use of open-source textbooks. Open books, as defined by the bill, are texts that are “licensed under an open license and made freely available online to the public.”

Open-source textbooks aren’t radically new. Rice University already offers nearly a dozen textbooks for free online through its OpenStax program, and aims to expand the program to 10,000 students. Boundless, an open educational-resources start-up, offers digital textbooks along with an app complete with flash cards and quizzes.

Franken and Durbin are hoping to speed up the open-source trend. Their bill would set up a competitive grant program to support pilot programs at colleges and universities “that expand the use of open textbooks in order to achieve savings for students.”

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MinnPost: Klobuchar, Franken pleased with Senate filibuster overhaul

Large-scale filibuster reform came to the Senate on Thursday, even if it was a bit later than reform advocates like Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken would have liked.

Stung by a series of Republican filibusters on President Obama’s judicial and administrative nominees, Sen. Harry Reid asked the Senate to change its rules Thursday and require only a majority vote to end debate on those nominations going forward. In the past, majority party senators faced a 60-vote hurdle for breaking a threatened filibuster, and Democrats only hold 55 seats. Changing the rule itself needed a majority vote, and 52 Democrats, including both Minnesotans, voted to do so.

It was the long-threatened “nuclear option” finally come to fruition — over objections from every Republican, some of whom helped broker a compromise and preserve the filibuster just four months ago, Democrats changed the rules and set themselves up to approve most of its president’s nominees no matter what the minority has to say about it.

Minnesota Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken have long backed filibuster changes, although their proposals were often more nuanced than just slashing the 60-vote threshold for these types of nominees. But both said Thursday the changes were justified, given how Republicans have blocked Obama nominees, from a member of the House picked to lead the federal housing agency to three nominees to the powerful D.C. Circuit Court this month.

Of the 47 executive branch nominations ever blocked by Senate filibusters, more than half have come during Obama’s tenure, according to Reid’s office.

“There is a reason for the minority in the Senate to have certain rights, but with those rights comes responsibility, and they were not exercising that responsibility at all,” Franken said.

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MinnPost: Franken pushes surveillance transparency bill as Congress weighs its options

Months after massive government surveillance programs came to light, Minnesota Sen. Al Franken said we still don’t know enough about how much data national security entities are collecting in their counter-terrorism efforts.

Franken has introduced a bill to provide more transparency to the system, and convened the year’s first hearing of his technology privacy subcommittee on Wednesday to hear from administration officials, privacy groups and the tech industry on the matter.

After heavy backlash following revelations about American surveillance programs over the summer, the federal government has begun releasing a little bit of information about those programs, but it’s been a slow process and privacy advocates say they haven’t gone far enough. Franken said the government has been working in “good faith,” but said something needs to be codified into law to maintain proper transparency standards going forward.

“There’s nothing in the law about this, there’s nothing permanent,” he said.

Government says it’s doing enough

Franken’s bill, formally titled the “Surveillance Transparency Act,” would take two main steps to provide more oversight of the government’s spying programs:

It would require officials to disclose how many people are targets of government surveillance programs, an estimate how many of them are Americans, and how many people’s communications the government actually collects under the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

And it would lift a gag order preventing communication or technology companies from discussing the amount of information they give the government under FISA. Companies are currently unable to acknowledge what’s been, by now, widely reported, that the government has asked them to provide information from their users under federal intelligence laws. (A Google lawyer, under direct questioning Wednesday, said he was barred from providing a number.)

“Americans still have no way of knowing whether the government is striking the right balance between privacy and security, or whether their privacy is being violated,” Franken said at the hearing. “There needs to be more transparency.”

The bill has support from both privacy advocates and the communications industry, which says it has a financial stake in releasing their government surveillance orders. Google’s law enforcement and information security director Richard Salgado, for example, said tech companies have heard from potential users who are concerned about the security of the private data they provide.

Government representatives appearing before Franken’s committee weren’t hostile to the idea behind his bill, but they said they’ve already taken steps to provide more information about the programs. Office of National Intelligence general counsel Robert Litt said the government is planning to release the number of its various FISA orders and the number of individuals targeted by them. Companies will also be able to release the number of “law enforcement and national security legal demands made each year,” though not specifically the orders they received under FISA.

But Litt said the bill raises some “operational or practical problems,” saying the government simply doesn’t have the technical power to identify how many individuals’ communications are picked up by surveillance programs even if they aren’t the target of an investigation. Privacy advocates contend the government has the ability to do just that.

As for allowing communications companies to discuss their FISA involvement, Litt said any specific disclosures about the prevalence of FISA orders “could provide our adversaries a detailed roadmap of which providers or which platforms to avoid in order to escape surveillance” because it would show which companies provide the most information to the government.

Franken dismissed that concern. He compared his bill’s FISA disclosure standards to an annual report from the Department of Justice on its wiretapping practices. In New York City, he said, the report showed prosecutors secured 48 wiretap orders in Manhattan last year, but only five in Brooklyn.

“Nobody is arguing that criminals in Manhattan are reading the wiretap report and fleeing to Brooklyn because they’re less likely to get their phones tapped there,” he said.

After the meeting, Franken said he was skeptical about the government’s opposition to the bill.

“I didn’t think these objections canceled out the positive impact of transparency,” he said.

Where Franken’s bill fits in

Franken’s bill has won bipartisan support and Judiciary Committee members, including its chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, were quick to cheer it Wednesday.

It’s one of a dozen or so bills introduced so far this year to respond to the steady stream of spying concerns caused by leaker Edward Snowden, who first reveled the extent of the government’s surveillance programs this summer. The technology industry has lined up to support several of the bills, especially those related to transparency efforts.

Kevin Bankston, the director of the Free Expression Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology, said there are two main bills his group is watching at this point:

The first, from Leahy, would completely overhaul the NSA surveillance program, ending the practice of so-called “bulk collection” of communication records by requiring the government to justify the records’ relevance to terror investigations. Privacy groups like the bill and it’s received bipartisan support on the hill. (Wisconsin Republican James Sensenbrenner, who wrote the Patriot Act, introduced the House version.) Bankston called the bill a “collection of very meaningful reforms,” and the tech industry is generally supportive as well.

The other bill, from Sen. Diane Feinstein, has received far fewer plaudits. Her bill would codify the NSA’s surveillance programs but attach some transparency provisions to it. Privacy and tech groups from the ACLU to the Electronic Frontier Foundation have slammed the bill, but the Senate Intelligence Committee approved it last month.

(The Washington Post put together a good story looking at the differences between these approaches, either signing off on the spying program or undoing it.)

There is a smattering of other surveillance bills, on everything from improved transparency to creating an office of advocates to challenge the government before the FISA court.

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