In the last few days before November 4, taxes and the economy have become the most pressing topics of the 2008 presidential campaign.
Bob Barr
But knowing where the candidates stand on high-tech topics like digital copyright, surveillance, and Internet regulation can be revealing, which is why we've put together this 2008 Technology Voters' Guide.
Included are answers to questions we asked presidential candidates. We received replies from Republican Sen. John McCain, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, Libertarian candidate Bob Barr, and independent candidate Ralph Nader.
Read on for responses from Libertarian candidate Bob Barr, or check out the rest of CNET News' election coverage.
Q: Politicians have been talking for years about the need for high-speed Internet access. Should this be accomplished primarily through deregulation and market forces, or should the federal government give out grants or subsidies, or enact new laws?
Barr: The development of high-speed Internet services should be left to the marketplace. Government subsidies and government-provided services almost always are both inefficient and politicized.
Moreover, the government rarely gives money without attaching strings. We all are better off with a less regulated and thus more flexible Internet, as well as an Internet more insulated from government control. As chairman of the House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law in 2001 and 2002, I led the effort to keep the Internet tax-free.
Congress has considered Net neutrality legislation, but it never became law. Do you still support the legislation that was re-introduced in 2007 (S 215), which gives the FCC the power to punish "discriminatory" conduct by broadband providers?
Barr: "Net neutrality" is a misnomer for government regulation and control. No one in or out of government knows how the Internet and Internet access will or should evolve. Private providers should be left with the freedom to experiment on forms of services offered and at what prices.
There is no evidence of any market failure, and we have extensive experience with the harmful effects of government controls, however well intended they may be. The most important role for government is to stay out of the way, allowing a vibrant competitive marketplace free of political manipulation to evolve.
Telecommunications companies such as AT&T have been accused in court of opening their networks to the government in violation of federal privacy law. Do you support
giving them retroactive immunity for any illicit cooperation with intelligence agencies or law enforcement, which was proposed by the Senate Intelligence Committee this fall (S 2248)?
Barr: No, I would not have. The government spying program violated the law and the Constitution. Private companies that aid government officials in violating the law should be held accountable for their actions. We will remain a free society only if we enforce the law against everyone.
The 1998
Digital Millennium Copyright Act's section restricting the "circumvention" of copy protection measures is supported by many copyright holders but has been criticized by some technologists as hindering innovation. Would you support changing the DMCA to permit Americans to make a single backup copy of a DVD, Blu-ray Disc DVD, HD DVD, or video game disc they have legally purchased?
Barr: Yes. It is important to protect intellectual property from piracy, but not all copying is unfair or deprives owners of a reasonable return on their work. The exact rules and regulations governing copyright must be a matter of balance, and allowing the creation of a single backup copy offers a reasonable accommodation for purchasers.
The Department of Homeland Security has
proposed extensive Real ID requirements restricting which state ID cards can be accepted at federal buildings and airports. Do you support those regulations as written, would you want to repeal Real ID, or would you prefer something in between?
Barr: I believe that the Real ID law should be repealed. We do not need a de facto national ID card, which would not make us safer. But the Real ID program threatens people's privacy and places an undue burden on the states. I have been proactively fighting against the Real ID Act since it was enacted in 2005, and I will continue to do so.
The U.S. Department of Justice currently is reviewing the proposed advertising deal between Google and Yahoo, and the Federal Trade Commission approved the merger of Google and DoubleClick. Should the federal government take a more or less regulatory position on antitrust and high-tech firms?
Barr: Government has a very poor record in regulating fast-moving and rapidly evolving industries, such as computers, software, and technology. In general, we will all benefit if government takes a hands-off stance.
Recently, there's been a lot of talk about sex offenders using social-networking sites. What, if any, new federal laws are needed in this area?
Barr: Legislation in this area should primarily originate with the states and be directed against sexual predators. I do not believe that broad federal prohibitions against minors accessing social-networking sites, represented by, for instance, the misnamed Deleting Online Predators Act, are justified, and would be effective in protecting children.
The Bush administration has supported legally requiring Internet service providers, and perhaps search engines and social-networking Web sites as well, to keep logs on who their users are and what they do. Do you support federal legislation, such as HR 837, to mandate data retention?
Barr: No. We must never forget that it is a free society that we are defending. In general, the broader the assault on people's privacy, the less valuable the law is as a tool of law enforcement. We must not treat the entire population as if it were guilty in an attempt to find a guilty few.
Do you support enacting federal laws providing for any or all of the following: a) a permanent research-and-development tax credit, b) a permanent moratorium on Internet access taxes, and c) an increase in the current limits on H-1B visas?
Barr: a), rather than making the R&D tax credit permanent, I am committed to broad-based tax reform to both reduce current rates and simplify the law. I favor consideration of either a flat-rate income tax or a consumption tax.
b), as president, I would encourage Congress to pass a permanent prohibition on Internet access taxes.
c), I believe that all Americans benefit when highly educated and skilled workers come to work in the United States. I would prepare legislation for Congress to increase the number of H-1B visas. Additionally, as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law in 2001 and 2002, I led the effort to keep the Internet tax-free.
We have to know: what's your favorite gadget?
Barr: My BlackBerry.
Libertarian Party presidential candidate Bob Barr talks up privacy last week at a political conference in Las Vegas, saying there's little difference between Barack Obama and John McCain on the topic.
(Credit: Declan McCullagh/News.com)LAS VEGAS--Bob Barr hopes his enthusiasm for electronic privacy will boost his Libertarian Party campaign for the White House. Call it a long-shot bid for the geek vote.
Absent Barack Obama and John McCain found in flagrante delicto with, say, Osama bin Laden and a 12-year old, Barr will not be the next president of the United States. But he is polling surprisingly well, with a Zogby poll last week putting him at 6 percent nationally, meaning he could siphon away enough limited-government votes from McCain to affect the November election.
Barr was a GOP member of Congress best known for leading the floor battle to impeach President Clinton. After losing his Georgia congressional seat in 2002, he became an ACLU consultant and privacy activist, and won the Libertarian presidential nod after a pitched floor battle in which some delegates angrily accused him of being more right-wing than right-thinking.
Speaking here at a political conference on Friday, Barr focused almost exclusively on privacy and eavesdropping--and argued that both major parties are far too surveillance-happy. "Both of them will continue down the same track," Barr said, noting that both McCain and Obama supported last week's bill to immunize telecommunications companies that illegally opened their networks to government snoops.
Congress' legislative rewrite of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is "not about surveilling al-Qaida," Barr said. "It's about surveilling U.S. citizens in America." He added, for good measure: "This administration is the most anti-privacy, the most anti-individual freedom, in our nation's history, certainly in my lifetime."
This is hardly a Bush-McCain species of Republican speaking. It underlines Barr's appeal: If you're a traditional conservative who disagrees with the big-government policies, the surveillance, the inflation, the deficit spending, and the wars of the Bush administration, vote for me. I was one of you, once.
It might work. More precisely, it might work well enough--think a Republican equivalent of Ralph Nader--to make a difference in states that would have tilted toward McCain otherwise. It's certainly a more attractive message than that of the Libertarians' 2004 candidate, a telemarketer-turned-programmer.
Rep. Ron Paul, a Texas Republican with a libertarian bent who made an unsuccessful bid for the 2008 presidency, represents one argument for the theory of a third candidate potentially hurting McCain. More than 10 percent of the Republican electorate, and far more in some states--like Idaho, where he won 24 percent of the primary vote--share his libertarian view. Plus there's the remarkable post-primary success of Paul's book (No. 1 on The New York Times bestseller list and at or near the top of the lists on Amazon.com).
Barr would surely do anything, except perhaps shave his prominent mustache, if he could lure those tech-savvy, Internet-donating Paul-istas. But his arch-conservative voting record could be a hindrance.
Barr, a former CIA employee and federal prosecutor, voted for the Patriot Act; he voted for the Iraq War resolution; he voted for a 2002 warrantless surveillance bill called the Cyber Security Enhancement Act; he tried to restrict the practice of Wicca in the military; he wanted to ban a subset of computer-generated porn. On each of those votes, Paul went in the opposite direction.
For his part, Barr says he has become an honest-to-goodness convert to the cause of electronic privacy and limited government. He said a long time ago that he regrets voting for the Patriot Act; he wants an Iraq withdrawal "without undue delay"; the head of the Marijuana Policy Project formally nominated Barr at the Libertarian convention; Barr even endorsed a Libertarian presidential candidate in 2004. He founded a group called the American Freedom Agenda that opposes the White House's policies in the so-called war on terror, and his supporters note he embraced a wealth of privacy measures while in Congress (see our coverage from 2002).
"Electronic privacy has been his forte for a long time," said Brad Jansen, an ex-Paul staffer turned Barr enthusiast who runs a group advocating greater financial privacy. "It was his signature issue with the ACLU, and is topical now with the FISA ruling last week. He certainly differentiates himself from both McCain and now Obama on the issue."
It's true that under the we-absolutely-must-recapture-the-White-House theory, many Democrats will vote for Obama, no matter that he flip-flopped on retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies. (He voted for an unsuccessful amendment stripping it out, but then for the entire bill with it included.) But some progressive bloggers are finding that decision impossible to forgive.
McCain's position on wiretapping and retroactive immunity has been mostly, but not entirely, consistent--see our tech voters' guide from January. That makes the Arizona senator a more stationary target for Barr. "Sen. McCain has made very, very clear that he basically embraces the notion of unfettered executive power," Barr said.
Barr also likes to swipe at the Real ID Act, a law creating a federalized identity card that's effectively on hold until December 31. "It was passed by the Congress not as a national ID, which it is in every way except a name," he said. "It is a national ID for the first time in our nation's history...If certain people were elected president, it would not go into effect."
During the Libertarian Party's presidential debate in Denver, the candidates were asked what they'd do about Real ID and the Patriot Act. Barr's reply was captured on video by C-SPAN: "Fear has become the driving force behind all public policy in our country...(For the Patriot Act), I'd drive a stake through its heart, shoot it, burn it, cut off its head, burn it again, and scatter its ashes to the four corners of the world."
The Zogby poll released last week puts Obama at 44 percent, McCain at 38 percent, and Barr at 6 percent--a combination that hands Obama a handsome electoral college majority.
"Bob Barr could really hurt McCain's chances," pollster John Zogby said. "McCain can't afford the level of slippage to Barr we found among conservatives in this polling...Bob Barr has some juice among conservatives and is hurting him in several states."
On one hand, Barr's breadth of support doesn't seem to be an aberration: a Rasmussen poll released May 18 also gives him 6 percent of the nationwide vote, including 7 percent of Republicans and 5 percent of Democrats. On the other hand, support for third parties tends to wane as the November election nears, as pollster Mark Blumenthal points out on NationalJournal.com.
For now, Barr seems enthusiastic about positioning himself as the candidate who most supports digital privacy.
"The best way to control the populace is to take away their privacy," he said. "The digital age, and what will come after that, makes it much, much easier for the government to abuse those powers and erode the Fourth Amendment."
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