Mountaineers can’t be free with ongoing collusion between Big Tech and government

Montani semper liberi: Mountaineers are always free. That’s our state motto, and we’re rightly suspicious of a government that grows too powerful and has so much information about you that it can control your life, your choices, and your thoughts. 

George Orwell’s “1984,” a high school literature standard, is a book that describes a society with such control. This year is the 250^th anniversary of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, and West Virginians should chafe at that type of government, whether it involves what people can own guns or what we decide about our healthcare.

The crazy thing is that over the last 25 years, we’ve given that control to Big Tech, which then linked arms with the federal government. Now both know what you do and where you do it, what you purchase and from whom, what information you access, and how the people around you react. They use and sell that information to push addictions—anything that takes your attention, time, or money—not caring what that does to your kids’ mental health, your friendships, your relationships, or your savings.

Big Tech is cooperating with big government, providing Americans’ personal information to strengthen its surveillance system. They bend the knee to help identify immigrants and critics of our current presidential administration, and they suppress content the government doesn’t want you to see.  

As an American, an immigrant, and a dad, this centralized power and cooperation scares the shit out of me, and it should scare the shit out of you as well. 

Four years before I was born, there was a revolution in Iran. When the Islamic fundamentalists had overthrown the Shah of Iran, they came after pro-democracy students, one of whom was my uncle. They used the power of the state and cooperated with industry to find and arrest those students. It was a reminder that once a government creates a precedent to use power one way, it can use that power in all different sorts of ways in the future. In other words, today, it’s immigrants. Tomorrow, whether under this political regime or another, it’s you.

So, what are we going to do about this? If elected to represent you in West Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District, I will check every level of unchecked data-related power in the same way our founders checked different levels of government some 250 years ago—by having clear bills of rights:

1.  A Government Data Bill of Rights: No government under any presidential administration or political party, Democrat or Republican, should have unfettered access to your data. This is especially important as artificial intelligence makes access to that data easier and more dangerous. There should be clear checks and balances on executive authority—whether that’s a president, a governor, or a mayor—when it comes to how your data is accessed and used. America was founded on freedom from excessive government control. Let’s not give it away so easily.

2. A Big Tech Bill of Rights: Government is not the only entity aiming to control you. There’s also Big Tech. Right now, the default with any big tech-supported system is that there are no walls between what they can do with your data and how they can manipulate you with their algorithms. 
   

   Big Tech benefits from long, complex systems of fine print that their lawyers can maneuver. You benefit from clear, transparent standards and protections. I’ll work for you, not Big Tech. I’ll fight to make sure Big Tech cannot sell your data to the government or any other entity, and I’ll ensure that requests to share your information are made in clear language—not endless pages of fine print—and required to be re-asked periodically.

3. Stop the Collusion: There should be very strict lines of separation between government and Big Tech, whether that’s under a Democrat or Republican party. Let’s make strong walls between what tech and government can do together with the data they have on you.

Back in 1838, Abraham Lincoln noted that the greatest threat to our democracy wasn’t a foreign power: 

“At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” 

Let’s create a system that allows us to live free for all time, regardless of who is in power.