Three years into his term, President Barack Obama unveiled a Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights, a set of principles aimed at guiding both consumers and companies that handle private information.

The bill of rights specifies that "consumers have a right to secure and responsible handling of personal data.”

When the White House introduced the document in February 2012, it said that the U.S. Commerce Department would bring together companies, privacy and consumer advocates, technical experts and academics to establish specific practices or codes of conduct. The goal is for those codes to become legislation, but that hasn't happened yet.

Other aspects of the cybersecurity debate -- such as how to protect power grids and computer networks from sabotage -- have gotten stuck in Congress. In July, a Senate cybersecurity bill fell eight votes shy of the 60 votes needed to move past a Republican filibuster, and subsequent attempts to bring it back for consideration also failed.

But already, personal data protection and cybersecurity are shaping up as priorities in the next Congress.

Congressional Quarterly Today reported in September that Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., introduced two bills that address consumer privacy and Internet governance issues. One of the measures lays out proposals "to update electronic privacy law that predates the Internet so that consumer emails and electronic data are protected from unwarranted government surveillance.”

CQ said that Lofgren acknowledged the bills were unlikely to pass this year and she plans to reintroduce them in the 113th Congress.

Lacking action by the current Congress, however, Obama has reportedly drafted an executive order governing an array of cybersecurity issues. The move has drawn criticism from some Republicans, but it's a sign that tackling Internet privacy and protecting the nation's computer networks remain a high priority. We'll watch for more solid progress on this front and leave the needle at In the Works.