Hillary Clinton drew on her experience as secretary of state to frame her support for net neutrality in an appearance at tech forum Dreamforce 2014.
Maintaining an “open Internet” is a critical, asserted Clinton, going on to outline how the U.S. Department of State “kept trying to spend money to defend those rights” during her tenure as chief of the bureau.
“It became obvious that individuals, especially those with activist approaches and dissident opinions, were increasingly becoming the targets of governments,” Clinton insisted. […]
“I will tell all of you here this is an ongoing struggle, with more oppressive regimes worldwide who want more control over the Internet, shut it down and interfere with people’s freedoms,” she added, further arguing that it is “absolutely clear to me that we have to keep the Internet open.” Clinton also applauded President Obama for championing net neutrality, which is at the center of its own ongoing debate domestically.
Like President Obama, Clinton didn’t get into the deep weeds of the issue as to how the Federal Communications Commission should ensure the open internet. Last week, Obama rejected FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s proposal for a two-tiered internet, but he stopped short of endorsing the best solution for protecting an open internet—reclassifying broadband as an essential service, like phones.
These statements are fantastic, very helpful, and it’s good to know that the person most likely to be our next president is with us on this one. But the acting on it needs to happen now. President Obama said the FCC is an independent agency free to decide this issue without White House interference, but actually, the administration through various executive agencies has filed over 200 comments at the FCC on a range of topics. Net neutrality might be higher profile than the others, but there’s no reason why the administration can’t comment on it. So that’s what we’re asking President Obama to do.
