For people worried [Joe] Biden isn't in line with the modern views of the Democratic party, his history on tech issues are not likely to provide any comfort. -Forbes
Comcast owns MSNBC, which ... has failed to even mention Biden’s fundraiser with [Chief Comcast Lobbyist and Senior VP David L.] Cohen. -Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR)
On Friday, I wrote a diary about the $2,800 per plate fundraiser Biden attended on his announcement day, held by Chief Comcast Lobbyist and Senior VP David L. Cohen, which netted him $700,000, just enough to vault him into first place for Dems in total funds raised on the first day of a campaign. My research delved just a bit into Biden’s record, revealing that he had refused as Senator to support—and indeed, actively opposed—bipartisan net neutrality legislation in 2006-7.
Thinking that was the end of the story, I was expecting Friday’s diary to be my last words on the subject. Today, another key story broke that demonstrates that the problems with Biden on tech issues go a lot deeper than I had previously thought. So I will offer these findings, and hopefully this will be the last time I have to do this record review of Biden on net neutrality, open internet, and privacy issues.
Let’s start with the excellent Forbes piece, which goes quite a bit further into Biden’s Senate record and reveals a strong pattern of open-internet antipathy, of which the 2006-7 net neutrality opposition was merely a part:
The interest in Comcast's executive in Joe Biden? He's long been a skeptic of net neutrality rules. … In 2006, while he was serving on the Judiciary Committee, then-Senator Biden said he didn't think net neutrality rules were necessary because he believed any violation of the principles would create a massive public outcry and would require congressional hearings. A year later, he also declined to co-sponsor the Internet Freedom Preservation Act, which would have amended the Communications Act of 1934 to ban ISPs from blocking or discriminating against any internet traffic.
...He also sponsored the 2007 PERFORM Act, which would have restricted the ability to record and listen to songs streamed from satellite and internet radio services.
...Over his long career in the Senate, from 1973 to 2009, Biden has supported internet filters and advocated for monitoring peer-to-peer activity while offering staunch opposition to encryption. According to journalist Steven Levy's 2001 book Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government Saving Privacy in the Digital Age, Biden also added a paragraph in a 1991 counter-terrorism bill that would have required communications companies "permit the government to obtain the plaintext contents of voice, data, and other communications when appropriately authorized by law."
So last week’s fundraiser is nothing new for Biden. It is also part and parcel of a perennial strategy of telecom giants to seek to capture regulatory agencies and institutions like the FCC and the White House. The FCC is already captured. Its Trump-appointed chairman, Ajit Pai is the former general counsel for Verizon. In June of last year, as we all know, Pai put an end to net neutrality, reversing a 2015 FCC rule enshrining it.
Will Biden remove Pai and/or stack the FCC against him so his vote is meaningless, and then restore net neutrality? Or will he support another House-or Senate- passed bill to restore it legislatively (better option on my opinion)? The energy is clearly there to fix this issue, but not if Comcast has anything to say about it. After all, they just spent nearly $200 million in lobbying to achieve last year’s killing of the 2015 net neutrality. And Biden is no stranger to Telecom Giants’ fundraisers:
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, he took nearly $1 million from industry members between 1989 and 2009. He also accepted $84,500 from Comcast employees, making the company one of his top contributors.
Forbes’ conclusions about last Thursday’s $700,000 Comcast for Biden fundraiser should give internet freedom supporters the shivers:
Given that the prospects for the protections are hanging by a thread, Biden's proximity to a person who is effectively a lobbyist for the largest cable provider in the world is sure to cause concern. Comcast gave millions of dollars lobbying Congress on net neutrality issues between 2014 and 2017 and is likely willing to spend similarly to preserve its victory under the Trump administration. The fundraising effort led by Comcast's Cohen marks a renewed interest in Biden as he launches his presidential campaign, perhaps done with the knowledge that he has proven he can be swayed by industry forces.
(emphasis mine.)