With controversies on three fronts – the Internal Revenue Service, the administration’s explanation of last year’s Benghazi attack and the Justice Department’s seizure of the Associated Press’ phone records – White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer pushed back against suggestions that Obama was under a cloud of scandal.

“I think we’ve seen this playbook from Republicans before,” Pfeiffer said on NBC’s “Meet The Press.”

“What they want to do when they are lacking a positive agenda is try to drag Washington into a swamp of partisan fishing expeditions, trumped-up hearings and false allegations. We’re not going to let that happen.”

Republicans are pressing for investigations and congressional hearings and have kept up a stream of criticism of the White House over the three issues, forcing the administration to repeatedly defend its actions.

For the time-being, Obama appears to be weathering the storm. A CNN/ORC International poll released on Sunday showed 53 percent of Americans approve of the way Obama is doing his job, with 45 percent saying they disapprove.

More than six in 10 respondents said the president’s statements about the IRS scandal are completely or mostly true, with 35 percent disagreeing. On the handling of the attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya last September, only 42 percent of respondents were satisfied, according to the telephone survey of 923 adults conducted on Friday and Saturday.

The White House has repeatedly expressed outrage about the conduct of the IRS in focusing on conservative political groups for additional scrutiny and Obama has said he first learned about it this month. Still, that has not dampened Republican criticism.

“There is a culture of intimidation throughout the administration. The IRS is just the most recent example,” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said on “Meet The Press.”

Republican lawmakers said they still do not know who was responsible for the tax authority’s targeting of conservative groups and want further investigation. The Senate Finance Committee and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will hold hearings on it this week.

Senator Rob Portman, a Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said on ABC’s “This Week” that a special counsel may be needed to investigate “because it has to be independent of the White House.”

Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller was fired last week and Obama has pledged new checks and safeguards to prevent anything similar from happening again.

“Given the trend line we’re seeing here in so many different instances, it’s an unfortunate culture I think in the administration that it’s OK to cover these things up,” Senator John Cornyn, a Republican, said on the CBS program “Face the Nation.”

Pfeiffer acknowledged it was important to try to repair the damage caused by the IRS scandal.

“This was a breach of the public trust. And we have to work together to rebuild that trust. That’s going to require Republicans to do this in a legitimate, serious governmental way and not play politics with it,” he said on NBC.

Republicans are also aiming criticism at Sarah Hall Ingram, the official who previously ran the IRS’ tax-exempt division during the time that an audit by the Treasury’s inspector general said the targeting of conservative groups began. Since December 2010, Ingram has headed the IRS division handling the implementation of the Obama administration’s healthcare reform.

The White House said it was important to wait until the facts were determined.

“This individual was not named in the inspector general’s report. No one has suggested she’s done anything wrong yet,” Pfeiffer said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“Before everyone in this town convicts this person in a court of public opinion with no evidence, let’s actually get the facts and make decisions after that.”

Bob Woodward, who investigated the Watergate scandal as a reporter at the Washington Post during Richard Nixon’s presidency, said likening that to the current furors was not accurate.

“People are making comparisons to Watergate. This is not Watergate. But there are some people in the administration who have acted as if they want to be Nixonian,” he said on NBC.

(Additional reporting by Paul Simao; editing by Christopher Wilson)

Be discerning, be suspicious, and be very paranoid, advised top government and private-sector computer security experts at the Reuters Cybersecurity Summit this week.

“There are two types of people: those who’ve been hacked and those who don’t know they’ve been hacked,” said former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, sharing an adage commonly repeated in cybersecurity circles.

In their professional lives, cybersecurity experts use the latest technological innovations to defend computer networks from attack. But when it comes to personal protection, many employ surprisingly low-tech tactics.

Chertoff, who formed The Chertoff Group security consultancy after leaving government in 2009, says he did not use email while in office to cut off one channel of access to his networks. Current Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano does not use email either.

Eugene Kaspersky, whose company makes one of the top-selling anti-virus programs, uses a six-year-old Sony Ericsson cellphone as it is more difficult to hack into than the latest Internet-enabled smartphones.

“I’m a conservative man,” said Kaspersky, whose Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab has conducted some of the most in-depth research on the Stuxnet virus and other malicious software. “I am paranoid … I suspect every link and every email.”

Other cybersecurity wonks caution people to keep critical data off hard drives, avoid putting sensitive information in writing and post little personal data on social media.

But not everyone listens, sometimes not even family members.

“My sister is a Petri dish for malware… When I go home to New Jersey, I have to play tech support,” said George Kurtz, chief executive of security firm CrowdStrike.

He added, “Yeah, I’m pretty paranoid at home and even firewall off my kids.”

FBI Executive Assistant Director Richard McFeely said his daughter, who recently returned home after graduating from college, asked him to look at a link she was sent that urged her to download something in order to watch a YouTube video.

“I made a call and sure enough, it’s phishing,” McFeely said, referring to a common online scam in which users are sent plausible-looking links, which when clicked will infect computers with malicious software. “My daughter easily would have done that if I was not sitting there.”

McFeely said his daughter’s Facebook postings have in the past led to the hacker group Anonymous publicizing her college house address to get at him and his family.

PHISHING TEST

Phishing is one of the most common tools used by hackers. It was through a phishing campaign that hackers managed to break into the Twitter account of the Associated Press and send a fake message last month about explosions at the White House, briefly driving down financial markets.

To avoid such attacks, the North American Electric Reliability Corp, which oversees the security of the electric grid, tests its 200 employees with a fake phishing email every quarter, according to CEO Gerry Cauley.

Anyone who clicks on the link has to undergo an hour of training with the IT department and the CEO himself.

“I explain to them how really important it is. It’s the predominant path into any network security,” Cauley said. He added that 20 employees had clicked on the fake link when he first ran the test, and only eight did in the latest test.

Several experts highlighted the importance of being careful about putting personal information online, though there was also a recognition that social media is here to stay.

“If you’re living in the modern world … if you’re not in the social media, you don’t exist,” said Kaspersky. “But please, keep your mind switched on, don’t post personal stuff.”

Then again, social media can aid cyber investigators as well as crooks. CrowdStrike said it has managed to build profiles of many hackers, including their photographs, thanks to social media.

“We often bemoan, outside of cybersecurity, that we don’t have privacy anymore, that Google (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Facebook (FB.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) know so much about us,” said CrowdStrike Chief Technology Officer Dmitri Alperovitch.

“That’s true for the adversaries, too, right? They’re all on social networks, they’re all on Twitter, accumulating a digital trail that often goes back years.”

(Reporting by Alina Selyukh; Editing by Tiffany Wu and Tim Dobbyn)

With top intelligence officials warning that cyber attacks have replaced terrorism as the leading threat against the United States, the White House and lawmakers have spent months discussing how to improve the flow of information between the government and the private sector.

A second go-around for the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) was approved by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives in a bipartisan vote on April 18, though the White House has again threatened to veto the bill unless more protections for privacy and civil liberties are added.

Still, senior Obama administration officials say behind-the-scenes talks with lawmakers this time around are constant, more serious and more productive.

“I actually think that the outlook is significantly better than it was last year,” the White House cybersecurity policy coordinator, Michael Daniel, told the Reuters Cybersecurity Summit in Washington this week. “What has impressed me has been the willingness of everybody involved to actually continue having those discussions and to continue that extensive level of dialogue trying to find some solutions.”

While Daniel cautioned that it is never easy to get the divided House and Senate to agree to anything, he predicted that final cyber legislation might be seen by the fall.

“A lot of us are concerned about getting a good piece of cybersecurity legislation before something really bad happens. As a general rule, legislation that is produced immediately after a crisis is not as good as the stuff that can be done when it’s more thought-out,” he said.

Last year, the Senate failed to pass a comprehensive cybersecurity bill that combined information-sharing provisions similar to those in the current CISPA with voluntary cybersecurity standards for businesses that control critical U.S. infrastructure.

Since then, President Barack Obama has signed an executive order that directs government officials to set voluntary standards to reduce cybersecurity risk and offer incentives to private companies to adopt them.

A series of high-profile cyber attacks – such as repeated disruptions of the online banking sites of major U.S. banks, or markets plunging on a fake message on the AP Twitter feed about a White House bombing that never happened – have built momentum behind cyber legislation.

SEPARATE BILLS

The Senate does not plan to vote on CISPA, but is expected instead to take up its own cyber-related bills. On Wednesday, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, said her panel was drafting a version of an information-sharing bill.

Congressional aides said staff and lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are constantly meeting on the issue. One Senate aide said it was a collaborative process to agree on multiple key elements to make the overall law stronger.

Representative Mike Rogers, chairman of the House intelligence committee and CISPA co-author, said key senators including Feinstein were “completely all in” on the need to pass a cybersecurity law. The Michigan Republican predicted that House and Senate lawmakers could work out an agreement on at least an information-sharing bill.

“I think we’re finally coming to the consensus here that hey, let’s pass what we can pass and take another bite. This isn’t the end-all cure-all,” Rogers told the summit.

He said a meeting was scheduled this week – with more to come – between the House and the Senate to discuss in detail the elements of cyber legislation and see where compromise could be reached, without starting completely from scratch.

Rogers predicted that if a bill could pass through both houses of Congress, Obama would sign it despite the veto threat.

URGENT NEED

Top administration officials have underscored the urgent need for laws that would complement Obama’s executive order and help ensure the government and the private sector are on the same page when it comes to threats posed to critical U.S. infrastructure.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said many lawmakers received classified briefings last year on cyber threats, and better education on cyber risks means “we’re starting from a much better base” on legislation.

“There’s a lot of work going on behind the scenes,” Napolitano told the summit. “There are many fewer concerns than there were last time around.”

But officials acknowledge that hurdles remain. For example, some senators, like Homeland Security Committee Chairman Tom Carper, prefer a more comprehensive bill.

“While information sharing is an important part of our efforts, it is only one of many elements needed to properly bolster our cyber defenses,” Carper, a Delaware Democrat, said in a statement.

Other issues he says he would like to address in legislation include protections for critical infrastructure, security of federal agency networks, cyber workforce development and notification of data breaches.

Some private industry security experts were skeptical about the prospects for broad legislation, as well as the effectiveness of such laws in preventing cyber attacks. Shane Shook, chief knowledge officer at cybersecurity services company Cylance Inc, suggested the private sector should organize information sharing itself.

“Comprehensive legislation is never going to happen that can be effective over all 18 sectors,” Shook told the summit.

Ira Winkler, president of the Information Systems Security Association, said he was skeptical that any meaningful legislation would pass this year, barring a major cyber attack that damaged U.S. infrastructure.

“We hear about wake-up calls, but people keep hitting the snooze button,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Andrea Shalal-Esa and Thomas Ferraro; Editing by Tiffany Wu and Mohammad Zargham)

“It takes a small number of crews with explosives and you’ve created not only an outage over an area or a city, but smoke and fire and flash-type stuff,” Gerry Cauley, chief executive of the North American Electric Reliability Corp (NERC), told the Reuters Cybersecurity Summit.

“It’s much more complicated, it’s much more technically difficult” to destroy equipment virtually, he said.

NERC is a non-profit agency whose mission is to oversee and ensure the reliability of the bulk power system in the United States, Canada and parts of Mexico. It brings together members of the industry, including municipalities, utilities, power producers and transmission operators.

The U.S. public became more aware of cyber threats against critical infrastructure after President Barack Obama said at the State of the Union address in February that enemies are “seeking the ability to sabotage our power grid, our financial institutions, and our air traffic control systems.”

Cauley said that while hackers have used computer viruses to spy on electric plants and steal documents, NERC members have yet to find malicious software in their networks that is capable of causing physical damage to a plant.

“You hear a lot of that in this city (Washington), to be frank, that we’re the bullseye,” he told the summit held at Reuters’ Washington offices. “But I don’t think we’re the bullseye yet.”

Cauley, a lead investigator of the wide-ranging U.S. Northeast blackout in 2003, pointed to an incident in San Jose, California, on April 16 as an example of physical threats.

In that case, an unknown person or persons fired a high-powered rifle at electric transformers owned by PG&E Corp’s (PCG.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) Pacific Gas and Electric utility, prompting requests for residents to conserve power. Vandals also cut nearby underground fiber optic cables, disrupting telephone service, in an apparently related incident.

“We don’t do ourselves a favor if we only concentrate on cyber. Physical security is a concern for us as well,” Cauley said.

About 20 percent of NERC’s budget goes to security, of which 80 percent is spent on cyber, he said. But he called the attempts to virtually hack into the power systems “not that overwhelming.”

“Anyone who is smart enough to do those kinds of things has better things to do than shut the lights out,” Cauley said.

(Follow Reuters Summits on Twitter @Reuters_Summits)

(Editing by Ros Krasny and Philip Barbara)

“It takes a small number of crews with explosives and you’ve
created not only an outage over an area or a city, but smoke and
fire and flash-type stuff,” Gerry Cauley, chief executive of the
North American Electric Reliability Corp (NERC), told the
Reuters Cybersecurity Summit.

“It’s much more complicated, it’s much more technically
difficult” to destroy equipment virtually, he said.

NERC is a non-profit agency whose mission is to oversee and
ensure the reliability of the bulk power system in the United
States, Canada and parts of Mexico. It brings together members
of the industry, including municipalities, utilities, power
producers and transmission operators.

The U.S. public became more aware of cyber threats against
critical infrastructure after President Barack Obama said at the
State of the Union address in February that enemies are “seeking
the ability to sabotage our power grid, our financial
institutions, and our air traffic control systems.”

Cauley said that while hackers have used computer viruses to
spy on electric plants and steal documents, NERC members have
yet to find malicious software in their networks that is capable
of causing physical damage to a plant.

“You hear a lot of that in this city (Washington), to be
frank, that we’re the bullseye,” he told the summit held at
Reuters’ Washington offices. “But I don’t think we’re the
bullseye yet.”

Cauley, a lead investigator of the wide-ranging U.S.
Northeast blackout in 2003, pointed to an incident in San Jose,
California, on April 16 as an example of physical threats.

In that case, an unknown person or persons fired a
high-powered rifle at electric transformers owned by PG&E Corp’s
Pacific Gas and Electric utility, prompting requests for
residents to conserve power. Vandals also cut
nearby underground fiber optic cables, disrupting telephone
service, in an apparently related incident.

“We don’t do ourselves a favor if we only concentrate on
cyber. Physical security is a concern for us as well,” Cauley
said.

About 20 percent of NERC’s budget goes to security, of which
80 percent is spent on cyber, he said. But he called the
attempts to virtually hack into the power systems “not that
overwhelming.”

“Anyone who is smart enough to do those kinds of things has
better things to do than shut the lights out,” Cauley said.

(Follow Reuters Summits on Twitter @Reuters_Summits)

(For more summit stories, see )

(Editing by Ros Krasny and Philip Barbara)

Musk leads one of the world’s best known “green” companies, electric carmaker Tesla. A Tesla spokeswoman told Reuters on Friday that the South African-born entrepreneur preferred not to elaborate on his reasons for leaving FWD.us.

Zuckerberg announced the formation of FWD.us last month, saying it was focused on bipartisan policies to bring about comprehensive immigration reform and improvements in the U.S. education system.

Fwd.us bankrolled three television ads on behalf of senators who have been playing a key role in the immigration debate.

The ads were focused not on immigration but rather on the senator’s general positions, including one’s support for the Keystone XL pipeline, which has created a backlash among some progressive groups. Backers say the pipeline project would boost North American energy security and provide thousands of construction jobs. Opponents argue that it would lead to higher releases of greenhouse gases.

The spots quickly drew the ire of liberal and environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and MoveOn.org, who earlier this week pledged to pull ads from Facebook for two weeks.

The Fwd.us website removed Musk’s name on Friday after a Reuters inquiry. It was unclear how much Musk, who also chairs solar-energy company Solar City, had donated.

David Sacks, founder of business networking site Yammer and a former colleague of Musk’s at payment service PayPal, also dropped off the list of the FWD.us backers on Friday. FWD.us spokeswoman Kate Hansen earlier confirmed that a second funder had withdrawn support but declined to elaborate. Sacks did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“We recognize that not everyone will always agree with or be pleased by our strategy – and we’re grateful for the continued support of our dedicated founders and major contributors,” FWD.us spokeswoman Hansen said in a statement.

“FWD.us remains totally committed to supporting a bipartisan policy agenda that will boost the knowledge economy, including comprehensive immigration reform.”

A Facebook spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A DIFFERENT APPROACH

FWD.us boasts an impressive list of backers, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, though it operates as a special type of non-profit group that does not have to disclose its donors. Run by Zuckerberg’s old Harvard roommate, Joe Green, FWD.us’s political operation is managed by a group of Washington insiders with leadership roles in both Republican and Democratic organizations.

It joins other technology groups and alliances lobbying Congress for more H-1B visas for high-skilled workers and easier hiring of foreign math, science and engineering experts.

Rather than directly representing the companies its backers are involved with, FWD.us is funded by individuals who have personally attached themselves – and their cash – to the cause. Zuckerberg has become the group’s public face, among more than three dozen big-name supporters.

Politically, Zuckerberg has carved out bipartisan credentials, visiting the White House and hosting a town hall for President Barack Obama but also staging a fundraiser for Chris Christie, the Republican governor of New Jersey who some see as a 2016 Presidential hopeful.

The latest controversy was sparked by ads for Republican Senators Marco Rubio from Florida and Lindsey Graham from South Carolina as well as Alaskan Democrat Mark Begich. FWD.us helped fund two separate entities to run the ads.

Rather than focusing on raising public awareness over immigration reform and its benefits for the technology sector, the FWD.us ads promote lawmakers who the groups thinks will be key players on the issue.

In doing so, the ads highlight a number of positions held by the senators, including supporting the controversial Keystone XL pipeline in Graham’s case, and drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Preserve in Begich’s.

The ads could help inoculate the lawmakers against challenges from within their parties as a result of their stand on immigration reform. Graham and Begich are up for re-election in 2014.

Fwd.us co-founder Jim Breyer, a venture capitalist at Accel Partners, defended the group’s efforts.

“Our advertising decisions are being made by a very smart team of political operatives who know that passing major reform will require some different and innovative tactics,” Breyer said in an emailed statement.

For the most part, donors have stayed out of the nitty gritty of how FWD.us operates.

“It’s a really gnarly, gnarly thing having to deal with Washington,” venture investor and Fwd.us co-founder Chamath Palihapitiya said at a conference last month. “I’m glad that other people other than me are dealing with it who have the patience and the resolve to figure it out.”

(Reporting By Sarah McBride and Alina Selyukh; Editing by Ros Krasny, Mary Milliken and Claudia Parsons)

Musk leads one of the world’s best known “green” companies,
electric carmaker Tesla (TSLA.O: Quote, Profile, Research). A Tesla spokeswoman told
Reuters on Friday that the South African-born entrepreneur
preferred not to elaborate on his reasons for leaving FWD.us.

Zuckerberg announced the formation of FWD.us last month,
saying it was focused on bipartisan policies to bring about
comprehensive immigration reform and improvements in the U.S.
education system.

Fwd.us bankrolled three television ads on behalf of senators
who have been playing a key role in the immigration debate.

The ads were focused not on immigration but rather on the
senators’ general positions, including one’s support for the
Keystone XL pipeline, which has created a backlash among some
progressive groups. Backers say the pipeline project would boost
North American energy security and provide thousands of
construction jobs. Opponents argue that it would lead to higher
releases of greenhouse gases.

The spots quickly drew the ire of liberal and environmental
groups, including the Sierra Club and MoveOn.org, who earlier
this week pledged to pull ads from Facebook for two weeks.

The Fwd.us website removed Musk’s name on Friday after a
Reuters inquiry. It was unclear how much Musk, who also chairs
solar-energy company Solar City, had donated.

David Sacks, founder of business networking site Yammer and
a former colleague of Musk’s at payment service PayPal, also
dropped off the list of the FWD.us backers on Friday. FWD.us
spokeswoman Kate Hansen earlier confirmed that a second funder
had withdrawn support but declined to elaborate. Sacks did not
immediately respond to a request for comment.

“We recognize that not everyone will always agree with or be
pleased by our strategy – and we’re grateful for the continued
support of our dedicated founders and major contributors,”
FWD.us spokeswoman Hansen said in a statement.

“FWD.us remains totally committed to supporting a bipartisan
policy agenda that will boost the knowledge economy, including
comprehensive immigration reform.”

A Facebook spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a
request for comment.

A DIFFERENT APPROACH

FWD.us boasts an impressive list of backers, including
Microsoft (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) founder Bill Gates and LinkedIn LNKD.O
founder Reid Hoffman, though it operates as a special type of
non-profit group that does not have to disclose its donors. Run
by Zuckerberg’s old Harvard roommate, Joe Green, FWD.us’s
political operation is managed by a group of Washington insiders
with leadership roles in both Republican and Democratic
organizations.

It joins other technology groups and alliances lobbying
Congress for more H-1B visas for high-skilled workers and easier
hiring of foreign math, science and engineering experts.

Rather than directly representing the companies its backers
are involved with, FWD.us is funded by individuals who have
personally attached themselves – and their cash – to the cause.
Zuckerberg has become the group’s public face, among more than
three dozen big-name supporters.

Politically, Zuckerberg has carved out bipartisan
credentials, visiting the White House and hosting a town hall
for President Barack Obama but also staging a fundraiser for
Chris Christie, the Republican governor of New Jersey who some
see as a 2016 Presidential hopeful.

The latest controversy was sparked by ads for Republican
Senators Marco Rubio from Florida and Lindsey Graham from South
Carolina as well as Alaskan Democrat Mark Begich. FWD.us helped
fund two separate entities to run the ads.

Rather than focusing on raising public awareness over
immigration reform and its benefits for the technology sector,
the FWD.us ads promote lawmakers who the groups thinks will be
key players on the issue.

In doing so, the ads highlight a number of positions held by
the senators, including supporting the controversial Keystone XL
pipeline in Graham’s case, and drilling in the Alaska National
Wildlife Preserve in Begich’s.

The ads could help inoculate the lawmakers against
challenges from within their parties as a result of their stand
on immigration reform. Graham and Begich are up for re-election
in 2014.

Fwd.us co-founder Jim Breyer, a venture capitalist at Accel
Partners, defended the group’s efforts.

“Our advertising decisions are being made by a very smart
team of political operatives who know that passing major reform
will require some different and innovative tactics,” Breyer said
in an emailed statement.

For the most part, donors have stayed out of the nitty
gritty of how FWD.us operates.

“It’s a really gnarly, gnarly thing having to deal with
Washington,” venture investor and Fwd.us co-founder Chamath
Palihapitiya said at a conference last month. “I’m glad that
other people other than me are dealing with it who have the
patience and the resolve to figure it out.”

(Reporting By Sarah McBride and Alina Selyukh; Editing by Ros
Krasny, Mary Milliken and Claudia Parsons)

((sarah.mcbride@thomsonreuters.com)(415 677 2547)(Reuters
Messaging: sarah.mcbride.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))
Keywords: USA IMMIGRATION/TECHNOLOGY

(C) Reuters 2012. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of
Reuters content, including by caching, framing, or similar means, is
expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters
and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of
the Reuters group of companies around the world.

The influential Republican’s bill, dubbed the Television
Consumer Freedom Act, comes at a time when cable prices are
rising and pressure is mounting for programmers to stop forcing
consumers to pay for subscriptions to lower-rated cable networks
in order to watch more popular channels.

The move drew criticism from a leading cable trade group,
which has long opposed “a la carte” programming. The industry
has fought with regulators for years to protect the right to
bundle, arguing that it offers customers the best value.

McCain, a long-time critic, called it “unfair and wrong”
that consumers must choose between paying for dozens of channels
they might not watch, or not getting a cable subscription at
all.

“For over 15 years, I have supported giving consumers the
ability to buy cable channels individually … to provide
consumers more control over viewing options in their home and,
as a result, their monthly cable bill,” McCain said.

Prospects for the legislation are unclear, but the bill has
re-focused a debate that has for years consumed broadcasters,
programmers and distributors, caused headaches in Washington,
and led to some high-profile court cases.

In one current case, Cablevision Systems Corp is
accusing Viacom Inc of forcing cable providers and
subscribers to buy channels they do not want. Viacom has asked
the court to throw out the lawsuit.

Cablevision founder Charles Dolan and Charlie Ergen, the
billionaire chairman of Dish Network Corp, have
advocated for an “a la carte” model. But Ergen, asked about the
bill on an earnings call on Thursday, sounded skeptical.

“There are six big or five big groups that probably have
enough clout in Congress” to stop the legislation, Ergen said,
adding, “we’ll see.”

The National Cable & Telecommunications Association fired
back at McCain.

“A government-mandated a la carte system is a lose-lose
proposition,” the group said in a statement. “As countless
studies have demonstrated, subscription bundles offer a wider
array of viewing options, increased programming diversity and
better value than per channel options.”

In a nod to the high-profile debate over online TV service
Aereo, McCain’s bill would strip operation licenses from
broadcasters that decide to take their programming off free
airwaves to be offered to cable subscribers only.

Last month, News Corp’s Fox TV network threatened
to become a cable channel if courts do not shut down Aereo,
which offers cut-rate TV subscriptions by capturing broadcast
signals over thousands of antennas at one time.

The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday started
deliberations on a proposal that would offer a new type of
in-flight broadband service promising U.S. fliers higher Wi-Fi
speeds and better connections.

The proposal, which has been pushed for years by wireless
equipment maker Qualcomm Inc, seeks to open up more
radio airwaves for airborne Internet access.

Some satellite companies have opposed Qualcomm’s plan as
they worry that new broadband services would interfere with
their networks.

At Thursday’s open commission meeting, the last for outgoing
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, the four remaining
commissioners voted to begin gathering public comment on how the
airwaves should be licensed and shared with incumbent users.

“The world simply does not wait for us to get off the plane.
We expect information at our fingertips at all times,” said
Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat. “Air travel stands
out as one of the few places where we can’t always rely on a
connection.”

U.S. air travelers can already access the Internet on some
flights but the speed of such service, which either relies on
connections with antennas on the ground or satellites, is
slower.

Qualcomm, whose proposal has received backing from U.S.
airlines, welcomed the vote.

“This proposal takes the technology to the next level,
allowing passengers to use their smartphones, tablets and other
mobile broadband devices in the air with very high speed, high
capacity mobile broadband connectivity, just as they do on the
ground,” Qualcomm’s Senior Vice President for Government Affairs
Dean Brenner said in a statement after the vote.

Internet access for now would exclude takeoff and landing,
when U.S. passengers are required to shut down their electronic
devices. The FCC is working with the Federal Aviation
Administration to study the impact of possibly relaxing that
rule.

Genachowski said at the meeting that his last day at the FCC
will be May 17. Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, the senior Democrat
will take over as interim chair while the Senate considers the
nomination of telecommunications veteran Tom Wheeler, President
Barack Obama’s pick to replace Genachowski.

Google’s Transparency Report pages showed traffic to Google services pages from the country, embroiled in a civil war that has lasted more than two years, suddenly stopping shortly before 3 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT). Google traffic reports continued to show no activity there about four hours after the drop-off.

“We’ve seen this twice before,” said Christine Chen, Google’s senior manager for free expression. “This happened in Syria last November and in Egypt during the Arab Spring.”

It is virtually impossible to definitely determine the cause of such disruptions unless a party claims responsibility, experts said. In the past, Syria’s government and the rebels fighting to topple it have traded blame.

Google’s data showed traffic disruptions limited to Syria and spanning the entire country. Shutting an entire nation from the Internet is possible because IP addresses, individual connections established by each device, are geographically specific and the government has control over the country’s Internet service providers.

The vast majority of websites within Syria were rendered unreachable as well, other experts said, as the county appeared to shut itself off. As during Arab Spring disruptions, Google said its Speak2Tweet service, which broadcasts voice messages, was up and running in Syria for people with access to a phone.

“Effectively, the shutdown disconnects Syria from Internet communication with the rest of the world. It’s unclear whether Internet communication within Syria is still available,” wrote Dan Hubbard, chief technology officer at infrastructure services firm OpenDNS.

“Although we can’t yet comment on what caused this outage, past incidents were linked to both government-ordered shutdowns and damage to the infrastructure, which included fiber cuts and power outages.”

Hubbard wrote on an OpenDNS blog that a similar Internet blackout in Syria occurred in November and lasted three days. About 80 Internet pathways normally are listed by Syrian providers, but only three were being advertised to machines searching for connections late on Tuesday.

Jim Cowie, chief technology officer at Renesys, a U.S. company that tracks global Internet traffic, said the outage looked similar to the one seen last November.

“The outage took place very quickly, was seen throughout the world, and (with a few small technical exceptions) covers the entire Syrian Internet,” Cowie said in an email to Reuters.

“We don’t see any effects in neighboring countries, and we don’t see anything to suggest that the outage was caused by damage to one or another of the several cables that connect Syria with the outside world,” he added.

Neither Syria’s ambassador to the United States nor the country’s envoy to the United Nations could be reached for immediate comment.

No comment was immediately available from the Pentagon.

The Center for Democracy & Technology in December condemned the previous network shutdown in Syria, calling it an “indefensible violation of human rights” and a “dangerous and desperate interruption of the free flow of information.”

(Additional reporting by Louis Charbonneau in New York; Editing by Paul Simao)