President-elect Barack Obama has named two telecom industry and policy veterans and a leader of Google’s philanthropy arm to craft the new administration’s high-tech policy priorities. The policy working group on Technology, Innovation and Government Reform will “develop proposals and plans from the Obama Campaign for action during the Obama-Biden Administration,” according to the president-elect’s transition web site www.change.gov. The authors of what could be sweeping changes in broadband rules, privacy and government transparency include: –Blair Levin, a telecom investment analyst at Stifel Nicolaus and former chief of staff to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Reed Hundt.
Leading Democrats on Tuesday attacked the Bush administration’s broadband policy and the technology track record of GOP presidential hopeful John McCain, while leading tech companies pushed for a more tech-savvy and innovative federal government. “The Obama campaign is the broadband campaign and the McCain campaign is the dial-up campaign,” said Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on telecom and the Internet. Markey and other members of Congress were on hand at the Democratic National Convention in Denver for several technology panels hosted by the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and the Silicon Flatirons Center at the University of Colorado. “On McCain’s watch, the U.S.