Tech News from The Hill

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Thursday will consider a rule at to set aside radiofrequency spectrum for wireless medical devices that can monitor a patient's body.

The monthly meeting of the FCC will be the first for new commissioners Ajit Pai and Jessica Rosenworcel, who were sworn into office this week. It will also be the first time the FCC will have all five commissioners at a meeting since April of 2011.

The FCC will consider providing airwaves for low-powered sensors that will allow doctors to remotely monitor a patients' medical data, such as temperature and respiratory function, in real time. The technology could allow more patients to receive medial care at home.

Following months of hype and excitement, Facebook's stock was essentially flat after the first day of public trading Friday.

The Federal Communications Commission on Friday released its final plan for revising or eliminating outdated regulations.

A federal judge has overturned a Utah law that would have required content providers and social network users to label content if it could be “harmful to minors.”

Two public interest groups told the Federal Communications Commission on Friday that if it grants Dish Network a large block of spectrum for free, it should come with conditions meant to ensure the grant serves the public interest — by keeping the company from selling it to AT&T or Verizon.

Public Knowledge and the New America Foundation filed comments with the FCC in a proceeding that Dish hopes will result in the FCC granting it a block of spectrum that has an estimated value of between $4 billion and $6 billion.

Dish is asking the FCC for a waiver that would allow it to use some of the same 2 GHz spectrum that it uses to communicate with satellites to operate a mobile network. 

Mark Zuckerberg's status update Friday on Facebook was: “Mark Zuckerberg listed a company on Nasdaq.” 

It's official — Facebook set its initial public offering price at $38 per share, the company announced late last night. 

The company celebrated with an all-night "hackathon" starting out with a massive standing ovation for its CEO, soon-to-be-billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, VentureBeat reports.

Meanwhile, Fast Company has a story on Steve Jobs's apparent dream to design an "iCar" — something Google apparently beat his company to.

Hewlett-Packard is considering massive, massive layoffs on the orders of CEO Meg Whitman — as many as 25,000 jobs, as Bloomberg reports.

And The New York Times has a piece on how Verizon's unlimited data plans will die a "slow death" instead of being "grandfathered" for current users.

Newspaper ads displayed on a wall in Lawrence Strickling’s office herald a technological revolution. 

THE LEDE: Lawmakers applauded Twitter on Thursday for becoming the first social media company to allow users to opt out of online tracking and urged other companies, such as Facebook and Google, to follow suit.

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) said Twitter's announcement "proves that exercising respect for people’s choices on how, when, and where to have their information collected is something that responsible, competitive companies can do. I hope others will follow."

The United States is woefully unprepared to counter a “catastrophic cyber-attack” that's expected within 12 to 24 months, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) said Thursday.

The House has been doing its part, Rogers said, easily passing his cybersecurity bill last month while his own committee on Thursday adopted its spending bill for fiscal 2013 by a unanimous 19-0 vote. But the White House, citing privacy concerns, has issued a veto threat against the legislation that would allow the government to inform private companies about impending cyber-attacks.

“We are today involved in a cyber war,” Rogers said in remarks at a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace event marking the launch of The Hill's Global Affairs blog. “Our challenge is … can we prepare ourselves quickly enough?”

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, on Thursday warned that wealthy expatriates seeking to renounce their American citizenship is a sign that the tax code needs to be fixed.

Eduardo Saverin, a co-founder of Facebook, renounced his citizenship last year in news that broke last week. Senate Democrats charged Saverin with tax dodging at a press conference earlier in the day, but Hatch's spokeswoman said they missed the "root cause of the problem."

Comcast had come under fire for allowing exceptions to the cap for the Xfinity TV app on Xbox 360.

Twitter announced Thursday that it will allow its users to choose not to have their online activities tracked.

The company said it will not monitor which websites users visit if they select the Do Not Track option in their Web browser.

Social media companies like Twitter and Facebook are able to collect page visit information from other sites that feature their tools, such as the "tweet" and "like" buttons.

The policy will initially apply only to Mozilla's Firefox browser, but Twitter is expected to expand the policy to the other major broswers.

The chairman of a Senate antitrust panel is raising fresh questions about Verizon’s proposal to buy spectrum from cable providers following the company’s decision to stop offering DSL Internet as a standalone service. 

In a letter sent Thursday to Verizon General Counsel Randal Milch, Sen. Herb Kohl (R-Wis.) said he is concerned about "the potential harm to both competition and consumers that could result" from the decision to only offer DSL in a bundle with other products. 

Kohl questioned whether the decision undermines Verizon’s promise that the company’s plan to purchase spectrum from cable companies won’t limit consumer choice. 

Schumer is offering a bill to push people who renounce their citizenship to avoid paying taxes.

Law enforcement and civil libertarians clashed Thursday over a GOP-backed bill to limit how law enforcement can track individuals using their mobile phones.

Howard A. Schmidt, the White House's cybersecurity coordinator, said Thursday he will step down and return to private life.

He will be succeeded by Michael Daniel, who has served for 17 years in the Office of Management and Budget's National Security Division.

Schmidt worked with federal agencies to improve the security of their networks and oversaw the development of the administration's first cybersecurity legislative proposal.

Schumer, Casey bill would prevent people from renouncing citizenship in order to dodge U.S. taxes.

Facebook founder Eduardo Saverin, who gave up his U.S. citizenship recently, ostensibly for tax purposes, is profiled in today's New York Times.

Saverin is coming under criticism for renouncing his U.S. citizenship just as he's about to become a billionaire from Facebook's IPO. That's raising hackles, since Saverin won citizenship after emigrating to the United States to avoid kidnapping plots in his native Brazil. 

ABC News reports on a new proposal by some senators, dubbed the Ex-Patriot Act, that would prevent situations like the one created by Saverin.

Netflix yesterday launched a new online video player, says GigaOM.

The Pirate Bay returns after a denial-of-service attack took the file-sharing site down for days, ZDNet reports.

And Fierce Wireless reports that Verizon plans to roll back unlimited data plans, even for customers who already are on them.

THE LEDE: Rep. Jim Langevin (D-R.I.) is continuing to push the House to pass mandatory cybersecurity standards for critical infrastructure, such as electrical grids and gas pipelines, despite the fact that House leaders oppose the regulations.

Langevin offered an amendment on Wednesday to the Defense authorization bill that would require critical systems to meet security standards. His amendment is based on the language in Rep. Dan Lungren's (R-Calif.) Precise Act, which cleared a House Homeland Security subcommittee earlier this year.

Lungren stripped out the mandates from his bill in a bid to win over House leaders, who had indicated they would not allow a floor vote on the regulations. Despite the concessions, the Precise Act has still not made it to the floor.