As we all know, we’re entering the end-of-Congress “silly season” during which time scoring rhetorical and political points takes precedence over reason and deliberation; and our transparent, open legislative process often gives way to stealth lawmaking and backroom deals.

This election year, with control of Congress hanging in the balance, the range of troubling and outright dangerous bills that could be shoehorned through the process is daunting. We’ve identified nine serious legislative efforts that could have long-lasting negative impact if passed.

To highlight the dangers posed by these efforts, CDT today released its “Internet Watch List. ” For us, the list is a tool to talk to lawmakers, journalists and the public about the some of the bills we’re particularly worried could make their way into law in the waning days of Congress. We hope you find it useful as well in your work to defend the Internet, privacy protections and civil liberties from these daunting threats.

For those who didn’t get a chance to read our paper on Internet Neutrality, we’ve synopsized our findings in a Policy Post published earlier today.

In a related development, BusinessWeek columnist Stephen H. Wildstrom gave a favorable nod to our position in his latest column on the topic, which will obviously be in the news for some time.

The Senate Commerce Committee yesterday concluded its marathon 3-day consideration of a broad package of telecommunications reform legislation with an animated debate on the question of Internet neutrality. The bill before the panel featured language to prevent broadband providers from outright blocking of content or applications, but the language does not appear to prevent discriminating among them in terms of speed or service quality. The debate focused on whether to add a nondiscrimination requirement. In the end, the vote deadlocked at 11-11, which meant the nondiscrimination amendment was not added to the bill (a majority vote is required to adopt an amendment).

The debate made several things clear. First, proponents of neutrality legislation are not likely to be satisfied with provisions that simply prevent content from being blocked. Second, neutrality proponents appear sufficiently concerned about this issue to create significant doubts about the bill’s overall prospects in the Senate. Third, the issue is growing increasingly partisan: all of the committee’s 10 Democrats voted to include nondiscrimination language, and 11 of the 12 Republicans (Senator Snowe of Maine was the only exception) voted against it.

CDT’s view, set forth in a recent paper, is that legislation should include some carefully crafted nondiscrimination requirements — but that they should be narrow in scope, leaving network operators free to experiment with a variety of arrangements on the non-Internet portions of their networks. Further serious dialogue between interested parties to this debate could help in developing appropriate language. Unfortunately, much of the public rhetoric around this issue has been misleading, and adding a politically partisan overlay is not likely to help prompt sober and substantive consideration, particularly in the midst of a highly charged election year.

Opponents of Internet neutrality legislation have some substantial arguments that need to be taken into account. But the full-page ad they are running in today’s Washington Post is a remarkable effort to obfuscate the real issues by demonizing Google and waving the banner of garage-based innovators. It gets the whole matter precisely backwards.

The ad shows a picture of the new facility Google is building in Oregon and says that Google’s massive server farms are intended to give it an edge on the competition. It goes on to ask, “what about the next Google? The guys in the garage with the next big idea for the Internet, but without billions of dollars in infrastructure?” According to the ad, “smart networks” will empower these guys in the garage to compete — if Google doesn’t succeed in convincing Congress to “declare smart networks illegal.”

In fact, concern for small innovators — the next Google, if you will — is precisely what led CDT to come out in favor of narrowly targeted neutrality legislation, in a paper released yesterday. The neutrality of the Internet has meant that anyone can start offering a service without having to ask permission of or cut a deal with the big network operators. The guys in the garage come up with their idea, buy Internet access with which to deliver their new service, and they’re up and running, with the instant ability to reach Internet users everywhere.

In short, innovators benefit from a neutral Internet. They don’t need a “smart” network, where “smart” means that the network operator treats traffic differently depending on the identity of the sender. On that kind of Internet, Google and other big players will be able to strike deals for favorable treatment, and it is the small innovators who will get left out.

Yes, Google is building server farms. Yes, it wants to be able to store and sift through huge quantities of data faster than any potential competitors. But that’s no threat to innovation. The real risk — and the real focus of the neutrality debate — is whether network operators should be allowed to abandon the neutral Internet for a model in which they act as gatekeepers.

It is not going to be easy to have a serious conversation about this crucial issue and the difficult policy questions it raises if parties are going to run ads that twist the debate beyond recognition.

Following a lengthy process that included discussions with industry and advocates on all sides of the issue, CDT today issued a major paper on the subject of Internet Neutrality. In it, we call on Congress to enact narrowly tailored legislation to preserve the essential neutrality and openness of the Internet. We believe firmly that if there is a telecom bill this year, Internet neutrality needs to be part of it.

Given the amount of energy and effort that went into crafting this document, I’ll simply suggest that you read it, rather than attempt to synopsize it here. Suffice to say, we feel our approach makes a crucial distinction between Internet neutrality and the more amorphous concept of “net neutrality,” and strikes a vital balance between preserving the essential neutral nature of the Internet, without unduly impinging on the ability of broadband companies to experiment with alternative business models on the non-Internet portion of their networks.

In the paper we also encourage all stakeholders in this process to engage in a serious dialogue about the future of the neutral Internet. We need buy-in from everyone involved in this issue to ensure that we get it right the first time.

You can also read our press release and a separate paper on the topic we commissioned from CDT board member Daniel Weitzner. The Associated Press also has a good story out on our announcement.