Overnight Tech: Tech listens for clues at Sessions hearing | EU weighs expanding privacy rule | Senators blast Backpage execs

SESSIONS AND TECH: During a marathon confirmation hearing to be attorney general on Tuesday, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) fielded questions on two issues important to Silicon Valley: immigration and privacy.

Sessions reinforced his opposition to DACA or the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which defers deportations for some undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and makes them eligible for work permits.

Sessions has previously called for overhauling a program used to bring high-skilled immigrants that is favored by Silicon Valley.

During his hearing Tuesday, Sessions said he would like to

reform America’s immigration system reformed from being family based to skills based.

“The immigration flow from almost all of our countries frankly is based on family connections and other visas rather than a skills based program like Canada has today,” Sessions told lawmakers.

“I’d like to see it more skills based.”

Sessions didn’t specify how he’d implement those changes.

At another point in the hearing, he spoke broadly about his concerns over the effect immigration has on the labor force.

“I think if you bring in larger flow of labor than we have jobs for than it does impact adversely the wage prospects and the job prospects for American citizens,” Sessions said.

Sessions’s testimony also gave privacy advocates reason to be hopeful. Questioned by privacy advocate Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), Sessions said he is open working with lawmakers on “the right of individuals to protect data they believe is private.”

“I do not have firm and fast opinions on the subject,” Sessions said.

Sessions’s previous stances on privacy issues sparked concern in Silicon Valley.

The Alabama senator previously opposed Apple’s decision not to comply with FBI requests to unlock an iPhone used by the San Bernardino shooters.

Sessions also opposed the USA Freedom Act which stopped the bulk collection of phone records by the NSA and has questioned legal challenges to surveillance programs.

For The Hill’s live coverage of Sessions’s confirmation hearing, click here.

WHAT ABOUT RUSSIAN HACKING?: Sessions deflected questions regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election, something President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly denied affected the outcome. The nominee declined to offer firm positions on the matter saying that he had not been briefed nor spoken with intelligence and that he only seen media reports. The Hill’s Joe Uchill has the full story. 

MERGERS: Sessions’s hearing also touched on mergers, another area tech interests are eyeing closely this year.

Trump on the campaign trail said he would oppose the proposed AT&T-Time Warner merger, claiming that it would concentrate too much power in the hands of too few.

But Sessions took a more cautious approach during the hearing.

“It would be wrong to further some other separate discrete agenda that is not reasonably connected to the merger itself,” Sessions told lawmakers.

Reports claim Trump still opposes the $85 billion merger.

Please send your tips, comments and stray observations  to Ali Breland (abreland@digital-stage.thehill.com) and Harper Neidig (hneidig@digital-stage.thehill.com) and follow us on Twitter: @alibreland, @hneidig  and @HilliconValley.

LOAN QUESTIONS: Federal regulators slammed Wall Street banks in regard to a $1.15 billion loan that they helped set up for the ridesharing company, Uber, reports Reuters. A group of banks including Goldman Sachs, Barclays, Citi and lead by Morgan Stanley helped the company access the leveraged loan market according to sources. Morgan Stanley focused on courting investors by highlighting the company’s sky-high valuations instead of its losses in China and India.

EU RULES COULD POSE THREAT TO ONLINE ADS: New proposed rules from the European Union would stipulate that users have to consent to website cookies. If approved websites like Facebook and Google, whose ad products take advantage of such cookies could be negatively impacted. “Transparency is important. People must know whether information stored in their devices is being accessed or whether their online behavior is tracked,” the European Commission said in a press release regarding the rules. Harper explains here.

HOUSE PASSES BILL EXEMPTING SMALL BIZ FROM NET NEUTRALITY RULES: The House passed the Small Business Broadband Deployment Act by unanimous voice vote today. The bill is intended to exempt smaller internet service provider from the net neutrality rules. The bill would extend a waiver from the FCC’s net neutrality rules for five years to providers with fewer than 250,000 customers. The bill also passed the House last year.

THUNE ANNOUNCES GOP SUBCOMMITTEE ROSTERS: Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-S.D.) announced the Republican subcommittee members today. The Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, Innovation, and the Internet, which will be chaired by Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), will be filled out by Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), Todd Young (R-Ind.), Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), Dean Heller (R-Nev.) and Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.).

ON TAP: 

9:30 a.m.: New America’s Open Technology Institute hosts “A #Netfreedom Agenda for the 45th POTUS.”

9:30 a.m.: Day 2 of Sen. Jeff Sessions’s (R-Ala.) confirmation hearing.

10:00 a.m.: The Information Technology Innovation Foundation and the Brookings Institution are holding an event on tech transfer and commercialization featuring Reps. Randy Hultgren (R-Ill.) and Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.)

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:

Spent the day watching Sessions’s hearing? Here’s what you missed.

Senators of both parties took aim at Backpage.com on Tuesday during a Homeland Security subcommittee hearing in which the site’s executives refused to answer lawmaker questions.

David Plouffe, former Uber and Obama staffer will join Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s Chan-Zuckerberg initiative.

After revelations about massive data breaches last year, Yahoo announced in SEC filings yesterday that it would be changing its name to Altaba and that Marissa Mayer would be leaving the company’s board

Reuters reports that the European Union is considering a proposal to apply telecom privacy laws to include online messaging services like Gmail and WhatsApp.

Uber is releasing some of its data to city officials, urban planners and researchers.

James Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the DNC denied the FBI access to its hacked servers.

Sixty-four percent of American voters think that Trump should delete his personal Twitter account when he takes office, a Quinnipiac University poll found. Just 32 percent said he should keep it.