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The rapid migration by U.S. government agencies to cloud-based architectures is producing radical, and potentially beneficial, changes to these agencies' management structures. Costs are coming down, and as some agencies are just now realizing, security and resiliency could be going up. But the very concept of cloud infrastructure is something that legislators have yet to become familiar with.

So another long-debated piece of cybersecurity legislation will enter the next round of what has become an annual event: As The Hill reports this morning, Sen. Joe Liebermann's (I - Conn.) cybersecurity bill is likely to make another appearance this week in the Homeland Security Committee which he chairs.

One of the co-authors of the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate has said that he will make a manager's amendment to the bill to strike out the section where Internet Service Providers will be required to block a foreign website found to be infringing on copyrighted content. The bill's sponsor, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D - Vt.), said yesterday that the DNS blocking portion of the bill may be stricken before it comes to a vote on the Senate floor Jan. 24. While this could be a big win for SOPA/PIPA opponents, there is still plenty in the bill that is detrimental to the Internet ecosystem.

The hacking group Lulzsec broke into the U.S. Senate's website and stole information. On its site, it posted which it reposted "a small, just-for-kicks release of some internal data from Senate.gov."

The Senate's Deputy Sergeant at Arms, Maria Bradford, told Reuters that the group penetrated the public side of the site only and has not created a lasting security problem.

At a hearing subtitled "Putting Humpty Dumpty Back Together Again," lawmakers got their punches in on the proposed AT&T - T-Mobile merger. The core issue isn't just the merger of the companies. It's also about wireless spectrum allocation, competition and service to rural America.

On AT&T's side, CEO Randall Stevenson told lawmakers that the merger will give the company the "block of clear, unadulterated spectrum" it needs to roll out its Long Term Evolution (LTE) 4G service. The opponents at the hearing say AT&T has more than enough spectrum already and that innovation and competition of the entire wireless industry would be stifled by an AT&T/Verizon duopoly.

We noted last year, that many believe U.S. President Obama's push for governmental transparency has been a failure. Whether that's true, the overall tendency toward access continues to gather momentum.

The U.S. House of Representatives has announced a public hearing to explore making publicly-funded research open to the public. Legislators in both the House and the Senate have already introduced bills calling for this. If they pass, the implications could be significant and might result in an economic jump.

The state legislature in the U.S. state of Louisiana has passed a law adding extra time for committing a crime with an online map. Senate Bill 151 adds at least one year to the sentence of any criminal found guilty of using an "Internet, virtual, street-level map" like Google Maps with Street View to commit a crime.

"'Internet, virtual, street-level map' means any map or image that contains the picture or pictures of homes, buildings, or people that are taken and dispensed, electronically, over the Internet or by a computer network, where the picture can be accessed by entering the address of the home, building, or person."

The National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) announced Tuesday that it delivered letters signed by over 1,700 members of the entrepreneurial community to each U.S. Senator in hopes of raising awareness of potentially harmful legislation. The Senate is considering financial reforms that could eliminate capital gains tax incentives for venture capital carried interest, which the NVCA says could lead to a severe decline in VC investments.

United States lawmakers have spent a year preparing draft legislation for a law that would define and limit privacy for advertisers and Internet companies. The legislation will govern methods of taking information from users online and using that information to target advertisements to them. On Tuesday, they will present the draft legislation.

The timing is good for such an announcement given the worry over, among other things, Facebook's recent changes that have caused fresh worry over privacy.

Today is an important day in the history of politics and technology - the US Senate voting record is finally available in machine-readable XML (extensible markup language) format. Mashups, vote tracking and comparison applications, will now be welcomed in the front door of Congress as first class technologies.

On May 1st South Carolina's Senator, Jim DeMint, officially asked the Senate Rules Committee to make the data available and just four days later the feed is here. Not everyone is happy about about the information being made publicly available like this, however.

Just in time for the the opening of the 111th U.S Congress, YouTube today announced that is is now hosting two new channels that will make it easier to find video updates from U.S. Senators and Representatives. YouTube's Steve Grove promises that these channels will feature both floor speeches and behind-the-scenes footage.

Many Senators and Representatives already have their own YouTube channels, and these two new sites aggregate the content from these. Over time, we hope to see more elected officials on YouTube, though we also hope to see more than just clips from local TV news shows.