Dean Campaign names internet brain trust

In yet another change high­light­ing the Inter­net influ­ence on pol­i­tics, the Dean cam­paign has unveiled a set of Inter­net prin­ci­ples and named a very impres­sive slate of net advisers.

I hope that this will help the group for­mu­late a set of poli­cies relat­ing to tech­nol­ogy and make tech­nol­ogy in gen­eral and the net in par­tic­u­lar an issue dur­ing the pres­i­den­tial 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 such list. I was also sur­prised by how lit­tle data there was at the time. With the announce­ment from the Dean cam­paign, it is now becom­ing clear that the busi­ness of tech­nol­ogy is gain­ing the lime­light it should have had then.

Read­ing the state­ment of Inter­net prin­ci­ples, it appears the Dean cam­paign is for open Inter­net access, and is look­ing to fos­ter more free­dom online. At the cur­rent time, it’s very hazy and I hope that more details will emerge in the future as to where this cam­paign stands on crit­i­cal issues like cryp­tog­ra­phy exports, H1B visas, Inter­net tax­a­tions, peer to peer net­works, etc…

This announce­ment is a good first step and shows, once again, why the Dean cam­paign is closely asso­ci­ated with the Inter­net. The ques­tion now is how they are plan­ning to move for­ward on this.