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

by David Segal, Patrick Ruffini

  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

  THIS TIME, THE SYSTEM ACTUALLY MOSTLY WORKED

  PATRICK RUFFINI

  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.

  PART 3

  SOME ACTIVISM SINCE SOPA

  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.

  PROTECTING PRIVACY AND PUSHING PARTY PLATFORMS

  DAVID SEGAL AND DAVID MOON

  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 templa
te 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.

  A couple hundred thousand Facebook users shared the photo. Days later Facebook to issue a response, written in corporatese and promising that oh, goodness no, they’d never ever use the legislation to abuse their users’ privacy. How ever did you come up with an idea like that?

  “The concern is that companies will share sensitive personal information with the government in the name of protecting cyber security. Facebook has no intention of doing this …”

  Demand Progress and our members—who’ve bombarded Congress with nearly half a million emails in opposition to these bills—are standing watch, alongside many of the other groups which have contributed essays to Hacking Politics.

  Pushing for Party Platforms

  It wasn’t obvious beforehand, but the defeat of SOPA/PIPA amounted to a clear signal that the Internet had truly arrived as an issue in American politics—one that some people would even base their votes on, and certainly one that would be the basis for where campaign contributions were steered.

  Though backers of the ill-fated legislation were loathe to call their loss a victory for Internet freedom, many operatives and politicians sensed the growing benefits that would accrue to political actors who established their bona fides on Net issues. And for those of us involved in opposing SOPA/PIPA, the aftermath of the legislative battle posed an opportunity to prove that our victory wouldn’t be fleeting, but represented a true watershed: we could look for ways to help the issue vest as being of ongoing political relevance (and not just something that is good for the world). So as our flagship campaign wound down, many of us began thinking through concrete steps by which to keep building the political space for Internet freedom issues. Several organizations were trying to establish broad, high-value principles, so a number of us signed onto an effort to create a Declaration of Internet Freedom, as outlined herein by Free Press.

  We contrived to try to explicitly play the major political parties off of one another in a scramble to adopt the best positions on Internet issues: There are very few remaining “swing” political constituencies—groupings that split or oscillate back and forth between the major political parties. The prize of becoming the Party of The Internet (or, more cynically, the Party of Silicon Valley and the attendant campaign cash) is worth fighting for. The SOPA battle had already made cameos in the presidential race, and we decided to keep pushing along that axis: as the parties moved towards their quadrennial conventions, the moment was ripe try to get them to adopt robust, formal Internet freedom platform planks for the first time. (Each platform had contained but an oblique reference or two to the web in prior years—by no means seeing it exclusively in a positive light.)

  Rep. Darrell Issa was leading the Republicans’ charge towards Silicon Valley and had become one of the most outspoken SOPA/PIPA opponents—and his and other Republicans’ efforts were beginning to pay off: their pitch was resonating with adherents to the anarcho-capitalist, network utopian, “California” ideology that represents a substantial strain of belief in tech-centric communities. Political donations from tech interests were going to Republicans at a higher rate than in the past. Who could possibly blame them, given the ease with which traditional Democratic paymasters like Hollywood had that party doing their bidding during the SOPA/PIPA fight?

  Issa’s office began pitching specific language to the Republican platform drafting committee. Behind the scenes, we were also told that the GOP platform committee was full of libertarian-minded supporters of Ron Paul, and that they would be pushing for Internet Freedom language. It should be noted that in 2008, when the parties last revised their platforms, Republicans included practically no positive language about the Internet. In fact, most of the Internet references in the 2008 Republican Platform treated the online world as a terrifying space, rife with criminals, pornographers, and gamblers who needed to be restrained. The remaining Internet clauses in 2008 sought to use the web as a publishing tool for GOP policies related to taxes and immigration.

  A core group of Republicans, including our co-editor Patrick Ruffini, were clearly pushing their party leaders to adopt popular stances on Internet issues, and gain the dollars and constituencies that would come with them. We were fully supportive of this effort, but once we knew that some of our Republican allies from the SOPA/PIPA fight were already working on pushing their party to embrace Internet freedom, we had to do the same on our side of the political spectrum. In spite of the SOPA/PIPA misstep, Democrats must surely understand that they ought not cede Internet freedom as an issue to the Republicans. Their 2008 platform already included the following language: “We will protect the Internet’s traditional openness and ensure that it remains a dynamic platform for free speech, innovation, and creativity.”

  So in July and August, we started scrambling to find contacts on the Democratic Platform committee so we could have conversations in parallel with the Republicans. As luck would have it, we knew a couple of members of the committee and connected with them via email. We asked one, who was on not just the Platform Committee, but also the drafting subcommittee thereof, to consider a stronger Internet freedom plank, he replied, “You’ll be happy to know I brought up this topic at last weekend’s meeting in Minneapolis.” We’d lucked out. Our platform committee contact asked for our input on very short language for the Democratic platform. We quickly tossed him a suggestion that was intended to cover the major concerns from recent legislative fights: “The Democratic Party stands for a free, equal and open Internet, unfettered by censorship or undue violations of privacy.” In the meantime, we rounded up endorsements for the effort from numerous organizations—including many of those involved in stopping SOPA/PIPA. We buttressed the work of sympathetic party insiders and convention delegates by creating a website that would serve as the hub of the effort, and shortly thereafter several tens of thousands of people joined in the clamoring by signing petitions and sending emails asking the parties to adopt strong Internet freedom planks. Perhaps a dozen reporters took to hounding platform committee members—on both sides of the aisle—about what they were going to do to prove that they cared about online freedoms.

  The Republican Party would end up adopting a robust 2012 platform plank titled “Protecting Internet Freedom” and outlined very specific goals for resisting regulation of the Net and respecting online privacy. According to today’s Republican Party, the Internet’s “independence is its power.” A lawmaker who was abiding by it would have voted against SOPA/PIPA and against the cyber-security bills we’d be fighting. (Though they’d also abide by the party line that government-enforced Net Neutrality regulations were an undue regulatory intervention into the online space.) The platform as a whole is a bit schizophrenic, still containing language about the need for more stringent anti-obscenity law enforcement, but at least they’re with us on the days when they get up on the right side of the bed.

  On the Democrat side we were thrilled to see that the final product was more thorough and robust than before and reflected our suggestions, inclusive of privacy-protecting language which seemed critical in the wake of the cyber security fight: “President Obama is strongly committed to protecting an open Internet that fosters investment, innovation, creativity, consumer choice, and free speech, unfettered by censorship or undue violations of privacy.” For the first time, it included a broader, formal, Internet freedom-section, wedding Obama and the Party to support for online rights, and mirroring much of the sentiment expressed in the White House’s anti-SOPA statement and another which it had put out in support of privacy principles during the cyber security debate:

  Internet Freedom. The Obama administration has led the world to recognize and defend Internet freedom—the freedom of expression, assembly, and association online for people
everywhere—through coalitions of countries and by empowering individuals with innovative technologies. The administration has built partnerships to support an Internet that is secure and reliable and that is respectful of U.S. intellectual property, free flow of information, and privacy. To preserve the Internet as a platform for commerce, debate, learning, and innovation in the 21st century, we successfully negotiated international Internet policymaking principles, support the current multi-stakeholder approach to Internet governance, and oppose the extension of intergovernmental controls over the Internet.

  When we’d joined the effort to agitate in earnest for platform language, we were worried that we were a bit late to the game and prepared to be ignored, but we thought the process of educating party leaders would itself be a useful exercise. It’s hard to discern what the incremental effect was, but the success activists had in compelling the adoption and expansion of these planks was but further evidence that the Internet was now a first-tier, mainstream political issue, and that means that the growing numbers of us who prioritize Internet freedom should become more bold and confident in our policy goals. After all, getting the parties to say they’ll commit to Internet freedom is one thing, but getting lawmakers to actually behave like they believe in the cause when the rubber hits the road is another matter entirely, and will require monitoring and agitating by millions of ordinary Internet users. We think we’ll be ready, and it will help to have platform planks to point to, and to which to hold party officials to account.