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 and David Moon

Author:David Segal, Patrick Ruffini, and David Moon
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Bisac Code 1: POL035000
ISBN: 9781939293060
Publisher: OR Books
Published: 2013-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

Meeting With a Skeptic on Capitol Hill

Only a very small number of people in Congress were actually hardcore supporters of SOPA and PIPA. A substantial majority of staff were skeptical about the effectiveness and the constitutionality of the proposals. The challenge here, though, is that true courage on Capitol Hill is scarce—particularly if the public is silent. This is not the fault of any staffer or legislator, because I think most of us tend to conform to what seems to be inevitable. Rather, a lot of Capitol Hill operates on a “safety in numbers” mentality because it is politically safer to be with a group. That is why it is so rare to see individual senators stand up on any particular issue (with some rare exceptions).

Congressional staffers are also responsible for both informing their boss and protecting their boss on a multitude of issues. In debates where the public is silent, the issues the players in these offices often concern themselves with are determined by the influence lobby and campaign money that is prevalent in the political system. If they do not have the confidence that the public will have their back in a tough election—especially in the age of Super PACs—because they did the right thing, they will almost always do the wrong thing. During the months of PIPA, I met with countless Congressional staffers who were concerned about the national security implications of DNS filtering and the First Amendment concerns raised by the free speech community. However, given the fact that the politics looked extraordinarily one-sided, many staffers and their bosses fell into one of two spaces: a) If so many other offices cosponsored the bill, then maybe our concerns were unwarranted, and b) why should they stick their neck out against a bill that seemed all but certain to pass?

Some may wish the system worked differently and that Members of Congress, on their own accord, would always do the right thing for the public. But I will tell you that this will never happen in a representative democracy if the public itself does not stay informed and engaged with their government. This is why the only players that want you to believe you do not have the power to make your Congress work for you are the very players in Washington D.C. who rely on your silence. The deaths of SOPA/PIPA are proof.

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