Election 2016: Where the would-be leaders of the free world stand on tech
The two American political parties are in search of a new leader — the Democrats for someone who can reinvigorate a cynical and promise-weary electorate, the Republicans for one who can recast the party as one that fosters positive progress, rather than simply opposes negative progress.
There are bigger, sexier issues than tech — financial reform, immigration, the War on Terror — but in a general sense, every modern candidate has to have a battery of positions on tech-related issues. These topics are of great importance to an increasingly large proportion of the population, especially younger people who are psychologically equipped to understand how seemingly abstract new issues stand in for more traditional ones, like free speech and economic competitiveness.
The Issues
Surveillance/Encryption: Where does the candidate stand on modern NSA surveillance policy, as well as the related but separate issue of cryptographic backdoors? Note that backdoors would be legally mandated weaknesses in encryption schemes, theoretically exploitable only to the government so that investigators could get at information when they are in possession of an individualized warrant. That makes it distinct from dragnet, warrantless surveillance, and it’s why some candidates are divided on these seemingly related issues.
Net Neutrality/Free speech: Do you support legally mandated net neutrality? With Title IInow in effect in the US, this is a less-important issue, but an anti-neutrality President could also do a lot to undo this progress. Meanwhile, the fight to protect online free speech in the face of corporate- and social justice-minded censors continues.
Copyright/TPP: Intellectual property law could be one of the most economically important areas of policy over the next few decades, and the next President will almost certainly have to address it. The Trans Pacific Partnership is a wide-ranging trade deal that many will weaken intellectual property law.
Climate Change/Energy: Only Republican candidates question man-made climate change, but even they mostly have big plans for the American energy sector. A candidate’s beliefs about climate change track pretty much directly with how they see the future of renewable energy.
Democrats
Hillary Clinton
Clinton basically defines the Democratic status quo; she is an establishment candidate down to her toes. As such, while she has decent liberal bona fides overall, we can also see a basic unwillingness to rock the boat too hard. Clinton is a very pragmatic candidate, and so it’s not enough to figure out what she thinks, but also what she thinks will move her agenda forward. If giving up on a tech issue over here can get her a win on some other issue over there, there’s every reason to think she might take that bargain. She doesn’t see compromise as a dirty word — and if you’re a fundamentalist on these tech issues, that could be a bad thing.
Surveillance/Encryption: Clinton makes statements about protecting the rights of Americans, but in general she refuses to make any real condemnation of invasive surveillance. She voted for the Patriot Act multiple times, and for the slightly toned-down Freedom Act which followed. She’s said that CISA, the Cyber Information Sharing Act, “didn’t go far enough,” and her recent statements on the subject are incredibly vague. On Snowden, she’s clear enough: He’s a thief, he aided the enemy, and he should be brought to trial. Again, she is an establishment candidate, and it’s unlikely she’d take away too many tools that the NSA told her it needed.
On encryption, Clinton wants an “urgent dialog” on encryption, but will not make any strong statement either in favor of privacy or the needs of law enforcement. Whatever she believes, she probably sees it as too controversial to bring up. The question is whether that’s because she’s for cryptographic backdoors, which would be controversial, or against, which would be controversial, too.
Net Neutrality/Free speech: She’s for it. Not much nuance here — net neutrality has become a pretty entrenched partisan issue and so as the anointed Democrat, Hillary has a no-nonsense take on net neutrality. She’s also always had an odd relationship with free speech, having formerly been a big proponent of censoring video games and today of battling online harassment through censorship.
Copyright/TPP: On the TPP, she’s gone from being an outspoken supporter, to being evasive, to being outright against it. So, she’s against the TPP now — but not necessarily due to digital rights issues. Her reasons for converting have much more to do with her beliefs about its impact on the labor market. On copyright and intellectual property, she was notably mum while in the Senate, despite that her co-New York Senator Chuck Schumer held the issue dear. She recently made an off-hand comment that patents should be suspended until companies pay all their US taxes — but that’s hardly a reform of the core logic of copyright. Again, Clinton is not a generally revolutionary candidate, and so if she gets into office it’s unlikely she’ll cause a big upheaval she’s yet to hint at. Real intellectual property reform would be that big upheaval, and so it’s probably not coming.
Climate change/Energy: Clinton has characteristically reasonable and achievable goals when it comes to combating climate change — which will either inspire you or not, depending on how alarmed you want your politicians to be acting on this issue. She’s put out a plan for the US to generate a third of its energy from renewables by 2027, and theoretically wants to remove fossil fuels entirely by 2050, though that’s lacking conviction compared with someone like O’Malley. She’s also positioned herself as a big friend to solar power development. She was one of the people responsible for the success (and thus responsible for the eventual failure) of the Copenhagen climate summit, which is widely viewed as partially due to lacking US enthusiasm for a deal.
Bernie Sanders
Bernie Sanders is all about money: big banks, taxes, and the redistribution of wealth. As such, tech issues don’t define him, and his positions are often implied rather than explicitly stated. We know Bernie’s against rampant government surveillance because of course he is, but the fact is that he doesn’t talk about it all that much. And while he may be energetic, he’s still 74 years old; his team has likely tried to steer him away from tech issues so he can avoid seeming like a confused old coot. It’s also worth noting that Sanders has somehow managed to make himself a critic of NASA through his focus on domestic (Earthly) issues first. It’s a bit thin for a presidential candidate, but here’s what we can glean about Sanders’ tech stances from the statements he has made.
Surveillance/Encryption: Sanders voted against the USA Freedom Act, as well as the Patriot Act before it, and he has been a reliable critic of dragnet surveillance. On the issue of warrants and eves-dropping, the logic of which haven’t changed too much with the progress of technology, Sanders has clear views: He wants the government to have to get warrants to collect information about Americans, and he wants the NSA to go back and delete the information they’ve already collected. No waffling here. On Snowden, he says he “doesn’t care” but, like Clinton, he has also said that he would prosecute the whistleblower if given the chance.
On encryption, and the prospect of government-mandated backdoors, there’s virtually no concrete information. When the topic came up at the most recent Democratic debate, he just went on about how much the government and private corporations know about you — which I hope is a dodge, and not a statement that he doesn’t know the difference between backdoors and the general privacy debate. In general, backdoors are a tough issue for older candidates, because it’s viscerally difficult to accept that civil rights could completely trump law enforcement’s abilities.
Net Neutrality/Free speech: Like Clinton, Sanders is strong on net neutrality. As to other issues, like online censorship, it’s unclear.
Copyright/TPP: If you don’t like the TPP, thank Sanders — it’s almost certainly the threat posed by his candidacy that pushed the Clinton campaign to turn against the deal. He’s been an outspoken opponent for as long as he’s known about the thing, mostly because he thinks it will benefit large corporations. As to intellectual property, again, his purity as a candidate makes him a bit boring on this. Our only real inroad to understanding his thinking on this would be through his thoughts on pharmaceuticals: He wants Americans to be able to import less expensive, off-brand drugs. We can only assume that the patent reform that would be necessary to allow this would reach much further than just the pharmaceutical industry. On artistic and digital property rights, it’s unclear.
Climate change/Energy: Sanders has a lot to say about climate change, but it’s all pretty general. He’s gotten a couple of nice greenfield endorsements, however. Specifically, Sanders says he’ll eliminate tax breaks and institute new emissions taxes that will encourage fossil fuel companies to transition toward green technologies. Climate change isn’t Sanders’ big thing, but he’s been explicit about bowing to those who know more than him, and about not shying away when those advisers (including the world scientific community) tell him that big changes are needed.
Martin O’Malley
I’m not breaking any new ground by pointing out that O’Malley is the increasingly awkward third wheel of this Democratic race. However, he’s also probably the most tech-focused candidate in either party — not that it seems to be helping him too much. As Governor of Maryland, he made a name for himself as a re-builder who would be hard-nosed when necessary, but compassionate when possible, and that has come to a large extent through investment in infrastructure. He’s generally quite outspoken about the need to modernize government through tech, and to protect rights as they take new digital forms. But how does that philosophy play out, issue by issue?
Surveillance/Encryption: O’Malley has been an outspoken critic of mass surveillance and the NSA in general in recent years, having voted against the Patriot Act and its derivations. He has solid credentials on most privacy issues, though he has joined Clinton in condemning Snowden. When it comes to enforcing cryptographic backdoors for police, however, things get less clear. Little wonder O’Malley was the partial inspiration for The Wire‘s Tommy Carcetti — his answer to the backdoor question at the most recent Democratic debate was brilliant political double-speak: “I believe whether it’s a back door or a front door that the American principle of law should still hold that our federal government should have to get a warrant, whether they want to come through the back door or your front door.” Note that the issue of encryption backdoors is all about coming in the back door with a warrant — so while it seems he was standing up for liberty, he was in reality saying that he is in favor of cryptographic backdoors. Good to know.
Net Neutrality/Free speech: As with the other Democratic candidates, this is fairly uncontroversial. Coming out strongly for neutrality won’t evoke a charge of being “soft on [whatever]” by a Republican come the real race, and so there’s no need to equivocate. He has been quite involved in the campaign to use the law to end online bullying, however, which puts him at odds with some free speech groups.
Copyright/TPP: O’Malley is against the TPP, and has made quite a bit of political hay out of the issue of the secret negotiations that led to its provisions. There’s not much information about his wider beliefs about intellectual property and the digital economy, but since he’s generally always talking about the importance of rapid innovation and his love of the collaborative tech space, it would be pretty surprising if he didn’t at least partially oppose the creep of conservative intellectual property reform. But, we really don’t know, specifically.
Climate change/Energy: Welcome to O’Malley’s wheelhouse. He wants to transition the United States to a one-hundred-percent green energy sector over the next 30-40 years. That’s technically the same goal as Clinton, but rather than just mentioning it, O’Malley has made it a centerpiece of his campaign. He has the most detailed plans for revamping the energy sector, and he says all the right things to convince environmentalists he truly believes that the future of the nation, and the world, is on the line.
Republicans
Ted Cruz
Ted Cruz would have been considered the far-right conservative candidate, if not for Donald Trump (at least for many of the latter’s positions). The establishment wanted Rubio, Walker, or Bush to dominate, and figured Cruz would be just another in the line of too-right-for-the-White-House conservative runners. However, on a spectrum where Trump defines the right extreme, Cruz ends up seeming almost centrist. On tech issues, however, he’s about as one-dimensional as Republicans come.
Surveillance/Encryption: Cruz voted for USA Patriot and Freedom Acts, and spends a good portion of his campaign time attacking Democrats for being soft on terror, and soft on security. He has attacked Marco Rubio for failing to support the USA Freedom Act, arguing that it was a good thing because it expanded NSA powers, rather than limiting them. He went so far as to say that, under the new provisions, the NSA has access to many times more American phone numbers than ever before — which may very well have been classified information. Whoops!
For Cruz, encryption isn’t a touch decision, and he doesn’t so much as dismiss the tech industry’s many statements that strong encryption is necessary, as he ignores them. He’s tough on security, thus he’s against backdoors. That those two things aren’t nearly as connected as Republicans would like you to believe is largely forgotten.
Net Neutrality/Free speech: Cruz infamously called net neutrality the “Obamacare for the internet,” which really isn’t quite as nonsensical as people think — they’re both initiatives that force private industry to make decisions those industries don’t see as being in their own financial best interests, because the services they provide are too fundamentally important to society to allow purely self-interested decision making. So, the metaphor works, a bit. Anyway, Cruz hates net neutrality, seeing it as government meddling, and is against basically any restriction on the behavior of ISPs.
Copyright/TPP: This isn’t really what Cruz likes to talk about — he’s more about social conservatism and national security than which YouTube videos are illegal. But he did have a lot to say about the TPP — he’s actually against it, ostensibly for reasons of national security and immigration, though undoubtedly also because it’s simply something the Obama administration wants. This is another place Cruz and Rubio have battled, as Rubio has expressed some basic willingness to consider the TPP, also known among conservatives as Obama Trade.
On copyright in general, there is the rather surprising fact (at least to me) that Cruz has actually an intellectual property case before the Supreme Court, back when he was a lawyer. He certainly knows the law — he just doesn’t necessarily think that the law is good. He wants to make intellectual property law more robust, but in many cases that takes the form of protecting American IP from foreigners, rather than small Americans from large ones. In general, this views are that copyright needs to protect the innovator and creator, rather than prioritize fair use and cultural relevance.
Climate Change/Energy: Hoo-boy. So, we’re not dealing with a Trump or Carson level of delusion here, since Cruz does accept the simple empirical fact that the world is warming. However, he does deny that there is sufficient evidence to say the the human race is at least largely responsible or this change — which of course informs his ideas about how certain US and international industries ought to be operating in the future. His repeated clashes with the scientific community are too strident for him to appeal to anyone who cares about real science — but not nearly strident enough to capture the totally anti-science Trump crowd. As to energy: fossil fuels, fossil fuels, fossil fuels. He would end the ban on crude oil exports, among many other things, and quite likely reverse quite a bit of progress for renewables — though, his big beef with the Iowa “renewables” lobby is a bit misleading, since corn ethanol isn’t quite on a par with wind and other green techs in terms of its ecological effect.
Marco Rubio
Surveillance/Encryption: To the moderate Republican, Rubio was supposed to be the chosen one. But Rubio seems to have decided that digital security and NSA surveillance will be the issue on which he stakes out his conservative credentials, and he’s really gone for it in the recent past. He put forward maybe the most astonishing proposal in the history of the NSA debate — to make wide-ranging domestic spying a permanent facet of the government, negating the need to re-approve it at regular intervals. He voted against the USA Freedom Act, which followed on the defunct Patriot Act, but only because it wasn’t invasive enough for his liking.
Rubio has been outspoken about the need to break cryptography in the name of the law, often making the (rather legit) point that you can’t venerate the warrant as the ultimate control on justice if warrants are being made technologically irrelevant by encryption. Again, while he may be the chosen candidate for Reasonable Republicans, this is the area on which he has decided that the right shall define his position.
Net Neutrality/Free speech: Rubio wants to repeal “Obama’s Net Neutrality takeover of the internet,” and to remove any and all regulation of internet companies. The idea is that net neutrality will hamper innovation and raise costs for internet users — which are, of course, the exact same arguments being made in favor of net neutrality legislation.
Copyright/TPP: Rubio has historically supported TPP, which has made him unpopular with anti-Obama Republicans and pro-TPP Democrats. From the perspective of tech innovation, though, Rubio’s opposition means little; it was a stance based largely on the economic implications, rather than anything to do with digital rights protection. Rubio is a bit of a centrist candidate on this, having been willing to at least play ball by voting to continue the conversation on the TPP, but the level of criticism he’s been getting for that stance has probably changed it. Rubio has no strongly stated views on intellectual property, specifically, but will almost certainly take the party line if pressed.
Climate change/Energy: Like Jeb Bush, Rubio is considered a fairly moderate candidate on this stuff — but that’s nonsense. He has said that climate science is real, but has also vote against a Senate amendment that would have said that climate change is at least partially man-made in nature. Rubio believes that trying to address the real problem of climate change could tank the US economy, and he’s taken some especially harsh criticism for waffling on climate change while hailing from Miami, one of the American cities that could be hit hardest by rising sea levels. He wants to deregulate oil and gas, despite some nods toward renewables, again due to his solar-friendly Florida heritage.
Donald Trump
He. This one is tough, since Trump has never been elected to anything, and only ever run for amorphous positions like President of the United States. What does he believe about the nuances of intellectual property law? Your guess is as good as mine, and it’s very possible he believes nothing at all. Making matters even more difficult is that Trump will pick an issue or two (the TPP, some tax rates) and decide that he’s going to defy expectations, and take a traditionally liberal stance, for non-traditional reasons. In any case, here’s what we can know about the Trumpeter and his Trump-y ways, based on his statements in this and past bids to run the world.
Surveillance/Encryption: Edward Snowden is a “grandstander” and American security is locked to the efficacy of online spying. Donald doesn’t have much to say on international politics — other than pointing out how much better he would have done in the Iran Nuclear Deal — but on surveillance he knows what he believes: We need the NSA to be looking in on our lives, or those lives will be in danger. Privacy? Don’t be such a whiner.
Net Neutrality/Free speech: Donald (or, whoever tweets from his account) once said that, “Obama’s attack on the internet is another top down power grab. Net neutrality is the Fairness Doctrine. Will target the conservative media.” That means he’s against. For the record, net neutrality is basically the exact opposite of the Fairness Doctrine, which explicitly tells corporations what sort of content they must broadcast.
Copyright/TPP: The Donald has odd views here. You’d think he would be dogmatically pro-free trade, but he’s actually got an extremely protectionist view of economics — Trump is attempting to recast leftist views on trade as savvy American self-interest. It all comes down to the anti-immigration stance. Trump could never come out against intra-American competition, but can easily rally his supporters against international trade like that facilitated by the TPP. So, Donald is against the TPP — but not for any digitally based reason.
Let’s remember that Trump is the one who has trademarked the phrase “Make America Great Again” — despite the fact that Ronald Reagan also used to have that as one of his slogans. Though he hasn’t made too many specific statements about intellectual property, we can go ahead and assume that his positions are the opposite of all those of the EFF.
Climate change/Energy: Donald Trump is the only remaining candidate with significant support, from either party, who totally denies the reality of climate change. Even Cruz doesn’t go that far. As far energy policy, it’s time to start throwing America’s weight around, and that means doubling down on its natural resources.
Others
The Republican field is ridiculously huge this year (although it’s recently shrunk a bit), so here is a quick look at some other, less popular candidates that are worth noting on tech for some reason.
Rand Paul: Paul is an odd sort of liberal darling within the Republican set, but on certain tech issues he is actually very conservative. He sees net neutrality as government meddling — a true observation, but hypocritical given Paul’s support for other, long-standing pieces of anti-competitiveness legislation.
Ben Carson: He denies climate change. Not man-made climate change, but climate change overall. Only Trump has that kind of conservative gusto, but at least Trump is popular. To be fair, as a surgeon he did operate on baby brains. So give him some credit, I guess.
Jeb Bush: Despite the associations with his name, Bush is a fairly centrist Republican. He accepts man-made climate change is real, and even has a bit of a plan to fight it. Cool! Plus, as a totally irrelevant aside, Bush also wins Best Joke of the Campaign, for his response upon learning that rapper Pit bull had gotten his name while en route to a pit bull fight: “Well, good thing you weren’t on the way to a cockfight.”
Notably absent
What you won’t hear much talk about in all this are things like autonomous war tech, cyber-war policy, or government data security — because these topics haven’t been the basis for a major disaster, yet. When an out-of-the-blue American cyber-attack is discovered and unexpectedly throws American diplomacy on its ear, or when we suddenly learn that the first autonomous robots have finally taken to a real battlefield, it will by then be too late to start those conversations. Tech issues are supposed to look forward, by definition, yet all the biggest right now have to do with addressing the problems of the past.
Tech is a big part of this election. Virtually everybody has made some sort of reference to a major prior scientific advancement; whether it’s the Manhattan Project or the moon landing, everybody seems to agree that it’s time for a huge national push toward… something. What’s our big thing going to be? Digital security? Cancer research? Green energy?
We’ll have to wait and find out.