Many Americans know by now their private data is being monitored and collected by the National Security Agency, but many are not aware that some of those same technology giants the agency used to surveil the public have partnered with the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council lobby group.
The relationship between the online corporations and ALEC was first reported by the Daily Beast this past August when it was discovered that at least four major tech companies, including Yelp, Facebook, Google and Microsoft, had representatives on ALEC’s technology and communications force — replacing representatives from Coca-Cola and Kraft, who left the group after Trayvon Martin’s death sparked unwanted attention to the group’s push for stand-your-ground laws.
Coca-Cola and Kraft were not the only ones to leave the group. As more information became available about the extent of ALEC’s work, particularly the group’s push for NRA-backed stand-your-ground laws, about 50 corporations have opted to leave the group, including McDonald’s, Pepsi and Wal-Mart.
Upon review of ALEC’s task force information, none of these technology companies were found to be on any ALEC task force as recently as 2010, which makes sense considering the emergence of information revealing a relationship between the companies and the lobby group has emerged only in the past few years, as ALEC has attempted to connect with several Silicon Valley-based companies.
Of the tech companies, only Yelp has publicly acknowledged its relationship with the controversial group. All others have remained relatively mum, since U.S. corporations are not required to publicly disclose the political advocacy groups they fund. However, Google did eventually confirm its relationship with the group via its public transparency page, as well as Facebook via its climate czar Bill Weihl.
But the question still remains, what are these companies trying to achieve by partnering with ALEC?
Environmental mismatch
Google’s relationship with ALEC has been particularly shocking to many, since the company’s motto is “Don’t be evil.” Additionally, ALEC has several pieces of model legislation that are arguably anti-environmental, which goes against Google’s work and more than $1 billion investment in renewable energy technology.
Facebook, too, has spent a large sum of money installing solar power systems on its Menlo Park, Calif., campus, which seems pointless when joining forces with an organization that lobbied last week to keep lawmakers from passing legislation that increases the amount of energy that has to come from a renewable source.
Additionally, John Eick, ALEC’s analyst for its energy, environment and agriculture program, said the group was looking at ways to charge homeowners a fee for distributing solar power back in the grid.
“As it stands now, those direct generation customers are essentially freeriders on the system. They are not paying for the infrastructure they are using. In effect, all the other non-direct generation customers are being penalized,” Eick said. “They should be paying to distribute the surplus electricity.”
While many companies will work with legislators on both sides of the aisle in order to advance their interests, many find the technology giants’ relationship with ALEC to go above and beyond just a move to advance their corporate interests. But the companies continue to insist that just isn’t true.
In a statement to Co. Exist, a Facebook representative said “Facebook belongs to various organizations representing views across the political spectrum. The private sector members of ALEC’s technology committee have worked on model legislation on issues that directly affect our company including data security, privacy, and a free and open Internet. We want to be part of any conversation that contributes to shaping these issues and giving our users a better experience.”
But Gabriel Elsner, executive director of the think tank-watchdog Energy and Policy Institute, said “It’s definitely a reputational risk for these forward-thinking online companies like Google and Facebook and Yelp to keep their membership in ALEC.
“ALEC is an anti-clean energy bill mill that is creating model legislation to help its fossil fuel and utility members at the expense of ratepayers and the public.”
In addition to dealing with the criticism of funding ALEC, becoming a member of the advocacy group is not a cheap endeavor, as ALEC member companies pay an annual membership fee, as well as additional dues to have a seat on a task force.
Value of free speech
As part of its admittance it had joined forces with ALEC, Yelp’s director of public policy, Luther Lowe, made a presentation to ALEC’s civil justice task force this past August, in which he urged the group to adopt legislation on strategic lawsuits against public participation or SLAPPs.
A SLAPP is a lawsuit that is intended to censor, intimidate, and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defense until they abandon their criticism or opposition. Usually defamation lawsuits are brought against an individual under a SLAPP lawsuit, which makes it difficult and expensive for an individual to legally respond.
While companies themselves — like Yelp — are immune from lawsuits if someone writes a bad review of a company, the user posting the review is not. Under the First Amendment a person has the legal right to post a bad review online, but having to pay thousands of dollars in court fees may be enough of a deterrent for a majority of Americans.
According to Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University, anti-SLAPP legislation has been particularly of interest to online review websites such as Yelp, since the website doesn’t operate without reviews — whether they are good or bad.
Though the legislation doesn’t sound as destructive to Americans civil liberties as other ALEC-proposed legislation such as voter ID laws, privatization of education, and anti-abortion legislation, Lisa Graves, who runs the watchdog ALEC Exposed, says everything ALEC touches turns rotten.
Graves said based on how the groups proposed anti-SLAPP law was currently written, it contains “a Trojan Horse” that will push a conservative agenda. She scoffed at comments made by the man who runs ALEC’s task force on communications and technology, John Stephenson, who said the law was about protecting free speech, and added that the organization promotes “ag-gag” legislation that criminalizes those who record animal abuse on factory farms.
Michelle Ringuette, an official with American Federation of Teachers, agreed with Graves and called ALEC “a vehicle to move corporate and conservative interests in this country.”
While Ringuette says not every ALEC-approved bill pushes a conservative agenda, she said “money is fungible.”
“Anyone who buys into ALEC is buying a piece of voter suppression, denying women access to abortion, the privatization of education,” Ringuette said.
Unknown objectives
With the tech companies refusal to share what their main objective was for joining ALEC, many have begun to further examine the companies work, as well as legislation ALEC is working on. Though there is plenty more information to discover and comb through, it appears the companies may have been motivated to join ALEC by tax breaks and influence drone legislation.
Last week, AlterNet published an in-depth report examining Google’s relationship in particular with right-wing groups, and found that Google avoids paying about $2 billion each year in taxes to countries around the globe, thanks to creative tax shelters.
In the U.S. alone, Google has avoided paying taxes by holding more than $33 billion dollars in offshore accounts — a loophole the company can thank ALEC for creating.
According to a report from DeSmogBlog, ALEC created the State Policy Network think tank in 1992 as a way to encourage the reorganization of the Internal Revenue Service’s non-profit tax status system.
However, as documents exposing ALEC’s underground work begin to surface, the group has been under fire and has been accused of abusing its 501(c)(3) non-profit IRS charity tax status, acting as a shadow lobbying apparatus and “corporate bill mill” throughout its 40 years of existence.
ALEC also created another think tank known as the Institute for Policy Innovation to “research, develop and promote innovative and non-partisan solutions to today’s public policy problems.” But IPI is one of the most conservative organizations in the nation and is funded by corporations such as Exxon Mobil and the Koch brothers.
Another possibly enticing factor that prompted these companies to partner with ALEC was the chance to help draft model legislation related to the use of domestic drones in the United States, specifically with how privacy issues will be addressed. ALEC is already working with defense contractors on the legislation, including Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.
Legislation to regulate drones has been introduced not only on a federal level, but in more than 40 state legislatures as well as several municipalities, in preparation of the technology’s introduction to U.S. airspace in 2015.
The Federal Aviation Administration expects there to be tens of thousands of civilian drones in the skies soon, and one concern that the agency is trying to address relates to privacy. But ALEC says that enacting “highly restrictive regulations” regarding the use of domestic drones “might ultimately prevent civilian institutions from taking advantage of UAVs as a cost-effective tool to perform their duties more efficiently during a time of shrinking state budgets.”
But many civil liberties and privacy advocate groups, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, argue the privacy recommendations that have been laid out so far don’t go far enough, especially when it comes to information collected for commercial purposes being handed over to law enforcement.
“There is going to be such a huge amount of data that is gathered, that access to that information in the criminal context is going to be extremely crucial in consideration of due process,” said Mason Clutter, who is national security and privacy counsel with the National Association for Criminal Defense Lawyers.
“The amount of exculpatory information that could be available is unlimited. [Data] retention times are going to be necessary in order to allow both the defense and the prosecution access to this information. We want to be aware of the fact that [data obtained from] surveillance technology can be both inculpatory and exculpatory.”
Techie tattle-tales
The exact role tech companies had in the NSA’s Big Brother-esque surveillance continues to surface, with reports just this week saying that the agency had used the invisible “cookie” trackers from third-parties such as Google and Apple to track the whereabouts and interests of Americans.
Though normally these cookies are used by companies for advertising purposes, the NSA also found value in them.
Although Google has declined to speak on record about this most recent revelation, CEO Larry Page released a statement saying that there needs to be an end to the bulk collection of user data.
“The security of users’ data is critical, which is why we’ve invested so much in encryption and fight for transparency around government requests for information,” Page said. “This is undermined by the apparent wholesale collection of data, in secret and without independent oversight, by many governments around the world.”
But Google may not be as against spying into the private lives of American lives as they say they are.
Last year, WikiLeaks released documents that found that former CIA agents had created a piece of technology called TrapWire for a private company called Abraxas. The TrapWire technology would siphon data from surveillance cameras in stores, casinos, and other businesses to a single location where officials could analyze the tape.
Although the technology was dubbed a government and law enforcement tool, leaked memos found that several other companies expressed interest in the program, including several big-name tech firms.
According to leaked emails from the intelligence firm Stratfor, after Salesforce.com expressed interest in the program, Stratfor approached Google again about the technology. Frustrated that hackers were repeatedly trying to penetrate its network, Google officials were reportedly much more receptive to Stratfor’s repeated TrapWire pitch.
Whether Google actually invested in the product remains unknown, as the company has repeatedly denied interview requests about the topic.