HR-2642, known as “the farm bill,” passed the House 251-166 on Wednesday. It contains provisions about rural broadband deployment, including a provision regarding gigabit network pilot funding. The Senate has yet to take up the already-conferenced bill.

All five members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee Feb. 12, the committee announced Wednesday. The hearing will be at 10 a.m. in 226 Dirksen. PCLOB delivered recommendations on surveillance earlier this month, recommending significant curbs.

The House Judiciary Committee scheduled its surveillance hearing for Tuesday at 10 a.m., said the committee’s website (http://1.usa.gov/1fx7noR). The hearing’s title is “Examining Recommendations to Reform [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] Authorities.” Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., has repeatedly asserted his committee’s primary jurisdiction over FISA matters, and in late January said this hearing’s goal will be “to review the various recommendations recently made by President [Barack] Obama, the President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, and the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.” The committee is also reviewing several pieces of legislation that would update surveillance law, including the USA Freedom Act. A committee spokeswoman confirmed witnesses were finalized as of Wednesday afternoon. They will testify in two panels. First will be Deputy Attorney General James Cole, presidential review group member Peter Swire and PCLOB Chairman David Medine. Second will be Dechert’s Steven Bradbury, Dean Garfield of the Information Technology Industry Council and the Georgetown University Law Center’s David Cole.

The House Commerce Committee does plan to post comments it receives as part of its effort to update the Communications Act, a Republican aide told us. Comments responding to questions in the committee’s first white paper (http://1.usa.gov/1iVVvBE), issued earlier in January, are due Friday. The committee expects to release more white papers on the overhaul process, the committee leaders have said. The aide declined to specify how soon the comments may be posted.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler must restore net neutrality rules, said an Iowa candidate for Senate who’s currently a member of the House. Rep. Bruce Braley, a Democrat, launched a petition this week directed at Wheeler, asking people to sign the letter he plans to send. “Net neutrality is an important aspect of the Internet -- and it must be protected,” Braley said in the letter on his Senate campaign website (http://bit.ly/1f7Ucf5). “In light of the recent court decision striking down net neutrality rules, I urge you to take immediate action on new rules designed to protect net neutrality.” He’s running for the Senate seat of fellow Democrat, Tom Harkin, who has said he will retire at the end of his current term.

The House Commerce Committee should investigate phone scams, two top Democrats told the committee’s Republican leadership. “Fraudulent telephone schemes have increased in recent years, as technology has enabled swindlers to initiate millions of phone calls at once, often tricking people into turning over sensitive information or shutting down important phone systems,” wrote committee ranking member Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and House Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairwoman Diana DeGette, D-Colo., in a letter released Tuesday (http://1.usa.gov/1dLHIFO). “These schemes are widespread because they are lucrative, easy to initiate, and inexpensive to carry out.” The committee should hold a hearing looking at “the prevalence and impact” of such schemes, how they affect older Americans, how they influence the delivery of essential public services, and “statutory changes, best practices, or educational campaigns, if any, needed to help federal agencies, other public sector groups, and individuals protect themselves against these schemes,” according to the letter.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., replaced former Rep. Mel Watt, D-N.C., as the ranking Democrat on the House Intellectual Property Subcommittee, said a spokesman for Nadler (http://1.usa.gov/Mb4Szu). A Tuesday release said the selection “is expected to be ratified” at the next full Judiciary Committee meeting. The subcommittee oversees copyright and patent laws and policy on information technology. “These laws are at the core of how we consume media, from watching TV and listening to music to enjoying a movie or sharing photos,” Nadler said in a statement. “We will seek to strike the right balance between how artists, authors, musicians, photographers and other content creators are compensated for their work with the desire of technology companies to provide new and innovative ways for consumers to access this content like never before.” Watt recently left Congress to become the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

The Senate Commerce Committee will hold what it called a summit on distracted driving Feb. 6, it said Tuesday. The summit will start at 10 a.m. in 253 Russell. There are three roundtable discussions planned, it said: First a talk on the state of the issue, with “representatives from the automobile, consumer electronics, and wireless industries, as well as government agencies and safety groups,” then a talk on the state of the technological solutions, then a final talk led by Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., on possible best solutions. The second discussion is set to begin at 11:15 a.m. and the third at 2:30 p.m.

Fire Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, six members of the House told President Barack Obama in a letter Monday. Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., led among the letter’s signatories -- all Republicans except Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla. -- and released it (http://1.usa.gov/1i4SfkL). “The continued role of James Clapper as Director of National Intelligence is incompatible with the goal of restoring trust in our security programs and ensuring the highest level of transparency,” the members wrote. Clapper is guilty of “lying to Congress, under oath, about the existence of bulk data collection,” the members said. They called Internet freedom indispensable and mentioned with concern details of the U.S. government’s phone and Internet surveillance. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has denied this charge of lying, with General Counsel Robert Litt stating in early January that Clapper had no intention to lie or misrepresent the government surveillance programs (CD Jan 7 p8).

Two House Democrats released draft legislation Monday that would update how the federal government handles “mission-critical” information technology systems. Communications Subcommittee ranking member Anna Eshoo, Calif., and the Oversight Committee’s Government Operations Subcommittee ranking member Gerry Connolly, Va., are responsible for the draft, called the Reforming Federal Procurement of Information Technology (RFP-IT) Act. “Our draft bill puts proven best practices to work by instituting a White House office of IT procurement and gives all American innovators a fair shake at competing for valuable federal IT contracts by lowering the burden of entry,” Eshoo said in a statement. Connolly emphasized that there’s a lot of waste in procurement despite small improvements in recent years. “Our RFP-IT discussion draft recognizes that transforming how the federal government procures critical IT assets will likely require bolstering ongoing efforts to comprehensively strengthen general federal IT management practices with targeted enhancements that promote innovative and bold procurement strategies from the White House on down,” Connolly said. The proposed bill would create an office in the executive branch to assess big IT projects early on and allow smaller businesses to bid on federal IT contracts without the significant sums associated with compliance. In a provision intended to give small businesses simplified acquisition procedures, with less paperwork and fewer layers of approval required, the purchase threshold that triggers higher requirements would be raised to $500,000 from $150,000, the members said in a press release (http://1.usa.gov/1cmN8vb).