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2000 Tech Politics

31st
2

It’s elec­tion sea­son in the United States. This week, the Repub­li­can party is hold­ing its con­ven­tion, which will be fol­lowed by the democ­rats’ in the next cou­ple of week. But the big ques­tion to those of us who work in the Inter­net field has been, what do those guys stand for in terms of the tech­nol­ogy sector.

Since no sin­gle source has been offer­ing a com­plete run­down of both can­di­dates’ posi­tions on tech issues, I’ve decided to do the research myself and share it with you. You might notice that it is not an exhaus­tive list. The main rea­son for this being rel­a­tively short is that I only posted infor­ma­tion I could get from more than one source. I’ve tried gath­er­ing the infor­ma­tion directly from the can­di­dates’ web­sites or their party websites.

If a claim was made and I could not sub­stan­ti­ate from more than 2 sources, I decided not to include it, nor did I include claims made by non-accredited news sites (think Drudge Report and the likes).

Issues Bush Gore
Online Taxes Calls for mora­to­rium until 2004. Believes that gov­ern­ment should not tax online busi­ness right now but that the issue should be reassessed at a later time. Sup­ported the Inter­net Tax Free­dom Act that extended the Inter­net tax mora­to­rium through 2002. Favors inter­na­tional agree­ment to make cyber­space a duty-free zone.
Pri­vacy Favors hands-off approach, opt-in approach, let­ting peo­ple decide whether they want their pri­vate infor­ma­tion col­lected and shared. Was blasted by sev­eral pri­vacy groups ear­lier this year for not car­ry­ing a pri­vacy pol­icy on his site and for post­ing a page with the names of contributors.Opposes use of Car­ni­vore with­out a con­gres­sional over­sight committee. Sup­ports cur­rent FTC rec­comen­da­tion to reg­u­late online pri­vacy. Believes that opt-in approach will not work and that it’s time for Inter­net com­pa­nies to be reg­u­lated, espe­cially when it comes to kids.Supports use of car­ni­vore as a way to fight ter­ror­ism and cyber-terrorism.
Free Speech Favors pol­icy to curb inde­cent mate­r­ial on the Internet. Believes that the first amend­ment extends to the Inter­net but favors some level of pro­tec­tion for chil­dren. Was blasted in 1996 for his sup­port of the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Decency Act.
Open Access Believes that gov­ern­ment should not inter­vene or set prices and that the indus­try will self-regulate on this matter. Wants to avoid a dig­i­tal divide and believes in gov­ern­ment sup­port of open access ini­tia­tives. Wants to wire every class­room, clin­ics, and libraries, to the Internet.
H1B Visas Has not made any state­ments on H1B visas in par­tic­u­lar but the the Texas Repub­li­can plat­form calls for curbs on immigration Talked in sil­i­con val­ley about increas­ing the num­ber of H1B visas in cer­tain cases but favors edu­cat­ing Amer­i­cans to fill those positions.
Encryp­tion No stated position Sup­port cur­rent relax­ation of encryp­tion pol­icy and pos­si­ble declas­si­fi­ca­tion of encryption’s list­ing as arma­ment in cer­tain cases.
Sup­port­ers John Cham­bers, CEO, Cisco Sys­tems
Michael Dell, CEO, Dell Com­put­ers
Andy Grove, Chair­man, Intel		 John Doerr, part­ner, Kleiner Perkins
Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple and Pixar
Kim Polese, Chair­woman, Marimba
Oops When ques­tionned about a par­ody site, said “there ought to be lim­its to free­dom on the Internet.” When asked about his tech­ni­cal savvy, answered that he “was present at the cre­ation of the Internet.”

While I man­aged to get a fair amount of infor­ma­tion from both politi­cians sites, I was sur­prised not to find it more eas­ily. One would think that in this day and age, tech­nol­ogy would be a big plat­form issue but it still isn’t. I would urge mem­bers of the tech press on this list and in gen­eral to start press­ing the can­di­dates to see what tech­nol­ogy agenda is shap­ing up. After all, it is some­thing that will affect all of us to some extent dur­ing the next few years and it would be nice to have clearly stated posi­tions on such issues as future Inter­net devel­op­ment, tax­a­tion pol­icy, etc… I’d also like to hear what each can­di­date has to offer in terms of help­ing net com­pa­nies get more qual­i­fied work­ers and fill some of the cur­rent gap in recruit­ing. Will we see some gov­ern­ment spon­sored retrain­ing pro­grams or some gov­ern­ment help in terms of get­ting kids to study com­puter sci­ence? Those are issues of crit­i­cal impor­tance to the Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy com­mu­nity and I would love to hear each can­di­dates’ stance on this. After all, who­ever wins this elec­tion will lead US pol­icy and, as a result, affect world-wide pol­icy about the Inter­net. It would be nice to get a bet­ter idea as to what that will look like so we can pre­pare for it.

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2 Comments

  1. 1Election 2000: The Net and Politics — July 15, 2008 at 3:27 pm

    […] of inter­est is the fact that each can­di­date has artic­u­lated his posi­tion on a num­ber of Inter­net issues. It’s the first time each can­di­date has pre­sented what can be con­sid­ered a net agenda and […]

  2. 2Dean Campaign names internet brain trust — January 11, 2009 at 12:19 pm

    […] cam­paign. I sus­pect that other groups will fol­low suit. Dur­ing the last elec­tions, I put together a list of tech­nol­ogy issues and where the can­di­dates stood. I was sur­prised at the time that no news orga­ni­za­tion had gone through the trou­ble of compiling […]

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