The right to free expression is under attack, according to a leading Republican in Congress, through an incremental approach that begins with federal regulators and trickles down to the private sector.
“They begin with the end in mind, and they incrementally walk toward their end,” Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn told the Washington Examiner on Monday. “We know that is how they operate.
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“Bearing that in mind, you know what they are doing is seeking ways to encroach on your privacy and freedom of speech, and then they want to tax it and regulate so that they control priority and value to content,” Blackburn added. “Working with Google and Facebook, they’re able to get into that … business.”
Blackburn was referring to the Federal Communications Commission’s effort to regulate Internet service providers. Over objections from its two Republican members, the agency ruled last year that those providers have no right to First Amendment protections
Commissioner Ajit Pai has criticized the agency’s work, and in February he told the Examiner he was concerned about an even broader subsequent attack on the “culture of the First Amendment” from entities like Twitter and college campuses.
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Blackburn echoed Pai’s sentiment. “If the FCC exercises overreach, there are other entities that feel as if they can exercise overreach,” she said. “That is something that concerns me. I think that Ajit referred very adeptly to what he called the culture of the First Amendment. That is something we need to be careful about.”
Blackburn also criticized a vote the FCC will hold on Friday over whether to regulate the privacy practices of Internet service providers. Critics have said those rules could help tech giants that tend to favor Democrats in Washington, like Google and Facebook, by granting them a monopoly on the collection of personal data.
Blackburn agreed that the rules were concerning, and took particular aim at Democratic FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. “The FCC has no jurisdiction in privacy,” she said. “This is another form of cronyism … It would be something that favors the companies that he favors, like Google and Facebook, to have that privacy jurisdiction.
“I find it so curious that he wants to regulate privacy, but he wants to keep his order secret, and not have the other commissioners out talking about his order on privacy. If it were not such a serious issue, it would be laughable,” she added.
Wheeler did not immediately return a request for comment.
The public is not permitted to view the text of the FCC’s proposed rules until the agency has voted on them. As a result, commissioners are generally prohibited from talking about them in detail, even to members of Congress.
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“I find the overreach of this commission with Chairman Wheeler, and of course the two other Democrats … to be frightening for the cause of free speech in this nation,” Blackburn said.
