Hacking Politics: How Geeks, Progressives, the Tea Party, Gamers, Anarchists, and Suits Teamed Up to Defeat SOPA and Save the Internet (48 page)

In short, Internet users harnessed the very platforms endangered by the bills to spread knowledge of the legislative threat—and they brought the creative energy of dozens of web-savvy individuals to find ways to cut through the clutter. Above all else, these digital activists—whether experienced warriors or newbie agitators—seemed stunned that Congress could look at the same facts that they had and come to the impossible conclusion that the Internet deserved to be restricted and censored. Their very persistence in opposing legislation that conventional wisdom declared headed for passage proved that in a way, ignorance of Washington’s game logic allowed the rebels to achieve an outcome that many saw as unrealistic. The Internet had overcome party leaders and committee chairs, and violated norms of seniority and power in the course of defeating SOPA/PIPA.

As Kim Kardashian herself demonstrated, Internet users around the world put on their tricorn hats and went Paul Revere on the political establishment. But where the Arab Spring protests had used the Internet to take down governments, the SOPA/PIPA battles used the Internet to defend the Internet itself. After waves of public outcry, the bills were declared dead, and the politics of the Internet in the United States have not been the same since. Weeks after the legislative defeat, Democratic Rep. Jared Polis told reporters at Politico that the successful opposition was evidence of a “coming of political age.” Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz further commented, “Nobody wants another SOPA moment … The nerds are more powerful than anyone
thought.” Both lawmakers opposed SOPA/PIPA and have since seen the shifts in mindset from their colleagues.

In spite of the spectacularly public way in which SOPA/PIPA was defeated, many backers of the legislation appear confused or in denial about how this came to be. Instead of recognizing that the integration of the Internet into the lives of almost every American has led the emergence of a powerful new constituency for Internet freedom, some politicos spent the days following the SOPA/PIPA defeat bowing down to Google and congratulating the company’s lobbyists for successfully misinforming the public.

Filmmaker David Newhoff, for example, published a January 18th op-ed in
The Hill
where he took the view that tech companies manipulated the opinions of their users: “Silicon Valley’s fear campaign has worked its magic … If SOPA and PIPA are defeated not because of legal merit but because of a desire to throw off the shackles of a media oligopoly, we will only have donned the shackles of the tech oligopoly who scared us into doing their political bidding.” In this version of the story—and it was shared by a surprising number of people—the defeat of SOPA/PIPA was overwhelmingly driven by (specious) propaganda purveyed by Big Internet companies like Google. These observers had squeezed and contorted the effort to make it fit into the standard Washington paradigm: it was but another sandbox war between rival industries.

The persistence of these misinformed views keeps me hoping that
Hacking Politics
helps demonstrate just how emergent and grassroots the outcry really was. Setting the record straight is not just a matter for the history books; it is critical to ensuring that in the future Congress charts a sensible course for the Internet. Otherwise, SOPA/PIPA backers who believe that Google was responsible for their defeat will simply assume that they can negotiate with a single company to prevent problems in the future. To be fair, Google had a large presence during the Congressional debates over SOPA/PIPA, but to credit them for the win would be missing the biggest lesson—specifically, that the perspectives of Internet users now demanded a seat at the table. In fact, U.S. Senator Ron Wyden—who in the early days of the fight practically stood alone in opposition to PIPA—reflected that the citizen outpouring “was not something that anybody could have dreamed up. This was organic.” For Wyden, the successful citizen defense of the Internet was not something that hired guns could have staged and was instead evidence of potential new policymaking dynamics.

At a gathering of SOPA/PIPA opponents after the bills were defeated, Wyden quipped that his colleagues “practically had me in a corner with a dunce hat.” But that when all was said and done, he saw an example of an “extraordinarily powerful antidote to all the frustration” with Washington. What Wyden could see—and that most of his colleagues could not—was that together millions of Americans had effectively come up with a hack around Congress’ otherwise unaccountable policy process. Indeed, the story of how the SOPA and PIPA bills were defeated is really a rallying call for anyone searching for signs of hope in our political system

In the year since these events, a narrative has taken root that SOPA and PIPA fundamentally changed how Americans interacted with Congress. The process wasn’t working, until the Internet came in and fixed it. “Don’t get SOPA’d” was a directive heard in many Hill offices in the weeks and months after the bill.

In the wake of the SOPA/PIPA battle, news outlets reported that members of Congress adopted a new mantra: They’d admonish each other, “Don’t Get SOPA’d.”

Yet, there is another story here, one that may surprise the cynics: members of Congress and their staff want to do the right thing. They want to be convinced on the merits. Make a better argument, and they will listen.

An influential voice on Capitol Hill broke down why he thought our coalition was finally able to crack the inside game, in addition to bringing a phenomenal outside game.

First, SOPA and PIPA’s opponents were united. Once we had said “go,” not a single serious voice in the technology industry dissented. The fact that all the technical experts and engineers who weighed in opposed the bills was weighed heavily.

Second, we marshaled detailed arguments. Using that technical background to our advantage, we were able to present a detailed case for why SOPA and PIPA broke the Internet, laying out networking and cyber security concerns that were not initially obvious. The proponents may have been well intentioned and genuinely concerned about foreign piracy, but they did not know enough about what their bill would do. They would simply dismiss these arguments as propaganda fomented by companies like Google, ignoring how so many others from diverse backgrounds came to the same conclusion, not to mention the thirteen million Americans who took action on blackout day. Opponents were more communicative and open—something also seen in the media—and proponents more circumspect and reluctant. Staffers would ultimately notice.

Finally, we knew who our targets were. In a legislative battle, thanking those who take a risk on your behalf is just as important as excoriating your opponents. The online community had Issa and Wyden’s back from the very beginning. It effectively targeted members who were far-gone, like Lamar Smith, without alienating those in the middle. It gave those who were undecided a reason to become newly minted champions of technology and innovation, creating new social media heroes in the process.

In the end, this one time, the system worked. The traditional lobbying gatekeepers continue to have an outsized voice in the process, but were outdone by the opposition’s superior organizing hustle. When it came to saving the Internet, it turned out there was no better tool for the job than the Internet itself.

The world has kept turning even as we’ve taken some time to bask in the glory of the SOPA/PIPA victory and consider its lessons and implications for future activism. This part focuses on a few key moments of activism from the last year or so: the defeat of privacy-obliterating cyber-security legislation (at least for the time-being); the institution of formal Internet freedom planks by the major political parties; a skirmish within the influential Republican Study Committee over copyright policy; and efforts to end domain seizures by United States law enforcement
.

Activists were tested again quickly on the heels of the SOPA victory—and we rose to the challenge, as we mustered hundreds of thousands of web users to contest the passage of legislation that would have obliterated online privacy rights: the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) literally included language preempting any and all standing privacy protections. CISPA’s purported purpose was to protect Americans (and private and public infrastructure) from cyber security threats. On the House side, the thrust of the legislation was to afford the government and corporations new authorities to share information about their users with one another if it was deemed germane to neutralizing cyber security threat. Cyber security threats were defined in a typically nebulous fashion that would have allowed for obscenely expansive data collection and swapping. Even the violation of intellectual property laws was enumerated as a threat that could trigger data sharing.

Under early versions of CISPA a company that thinks you’re a cyber security threat would have been able to monitor any of your communications to which it had access and then share that and other intel on you with other corporations and the government.

Demand Progress has box seats lined up for the opening night of Joe Lieberman’s post-senatorial one-man show at the Hartford Civic Center: that guy has always had amazing comedic timing. In early 2011 Demand Progress launched a campaign in opposition to Lieberman-backed cyber-security legislation which included a so-called “kill switch” which would have effectively enabled the government to shut off the American Internet in a time of crisis. The idea didn’t gain much Joementum, as Hosni Mubarak shut down the Egyptian Internet within days of the bill’s introduction, and Lieberman was forced to back down.

Now he was back with a new cyber security bill, standing on soft footing as he was repeatedly forced to assure the Internet public that it was neither a SOPA in new clothes nor a kill switch. The House passed CISPA in late April but with much more vocal opposition than ever would’ve manifested during a pre-SOPA political dynamic. When the debate moved to the Senate a bloc of a dozen or so privacy-concerned senators, mostly Democrats, but including some Republicans, worked in concert with activist groups like ours, EFF, CDT, FFTF, and the like and succeeded in extracting several key concessions from leadership—and even convinced third-ranking Democrat Chuck Schumer (NY) to join their ranks and cosponsor a critical amendment. These privacy activists included not only some SOPA era heroes, like Ron Wyden and Rand Paul, but
also people who’d lined up on the wrong side of that bill, like Al Franken. Even more encouraging: the various amendments haven’t even become relevant as of this writing, as several privacy-concerned senators joined with the bulk of the Republican caucus to defeat a motion for cloture and prevent the bill from coming up for a vote.

Much less encouraging has been the lack of anti-CISPA participation by web-concerned firms and platforms that got active during the SOPA fight. The cyber security bills either didn’t impact them—or actually helped them by affording them certain immunities and relieving regulatory burdens—so most demurred at the opportunity to once again stand shoulder-to-shoulder with web activists. Other tech companies, like Facebook, actively supported the legislation. Here’s an excerpt from their letter to the sponsors of CISPA:

“Effective security requires private and public sector cooperation, and successful cooperation necessitates information sharing. Your legislation removes burdensome rules that currently can inhibit protection of the cyber ecosystem, and helps provide a more established structure for sharing within the cyber community while still respecting the privacy rights and expectations of our users. Through timely sharing of threat information, both public and private entities will be able to more effectively combat malicious activity in cyberspace and protect consumers.”

Demand Progress ran a campaign against Facebook, whose positions on Internet policy fit in remarkably precise correlation precisely to the firm’s business interests, and not to any higher concern for an open Internet that protects the rights of its users. One meme template that’s taken off over the last couple of years is probably the world’s most efficient mechanism for calling someone out for being a hypocrite: find a goofy photo of the antagonist, plaster the noble thing they said they’d do above their head, and note how they sold out below.