Warning: Political Virus Alert

[Robert Weissman <rob@essential.org>]

The high-tech sector had its Washington, D.C. coming-of-age-party this
past week. 
	
Watch out, because the newly minted millionaires of Silicon Valley are on
track to be major political players.
	
They have graduated from the adolescent view that they could ignore
government to the more "mature" understanding that they should take
advantage of the fact that money and economic power translates easily into
political power and influence on Capitol Hill.
	
The first venue for the Silicon soiree was a "High Tech Summit" organized
by the Joint Economic Committee. A series of high-tech execs paraded
before the Senators and Representatives to offer hosannas for emerging new
computer technologies, to plead for particular legislative preferences and
to encourage the government to maintain its "light hand" in intervening in
the high-tech sector.
	
Senator Connie Mack, R-Florida, offered a warm embrace, suggesting that
"We are now faced with the challenge of De-inventing Government -- to get
it out of the way before it stifles the Innovation Economy that has made
America the world's preeminent economic leader."

Microsoft King Bill Gates addressed a fawning and deferential panel of
Members of Congress on the second day of the High Tech Summit. It would be
an understatement to say he faced softball questions from the Members --
it was more like he was hitting of a tee.

The tech execs stayed in town after testifying to lobby Members of
Congress. Congressional staff reported that the executives have learned a
lot in recent years, and now understand how to relate to elected
officials.

The proof lay in the second venue for the coming out party: the Senate
floor. The upper chamber waited for the High Tech Summit to pass the Y2K
immunity bill -- legislation that would give special protections from
lawsuits related to computer systems' inability to process Year 2000 dates
properly. 

The business rationalization that protection from lawsuits would encourage
and enable companies to take Y2K preventative action is hard to take
seriously. The fear of litigation is what prompted many companies to
address Y2K in the first place. And with Y2K problems set to arrive in
only six months time (and potentially earlier for companies who begin the
fiscal year early), federal legislation comes too late to spur much
remediation.

No one can be sure how severe the Y2K problem will turn out to be. But
victims of Y2K problems -- whether they are consumers whose VCRs stop
working, small businesses who find special software programs fail to
function, or communities who are forced to evacuate due to chemical
releases -- deserve the normal right to file suit against the perpetrators
of harm against them. 

These rights are vastly limited in the Senate legislation, however. The
bill would hinder consumers from filing class actions, limit victims'
ability to win punitive damages and put burdens on victims when more than
one party (a software company and a chemical company, for example) was
responsible for the computer harm they experienced. An earlier bill that
passed the House is even more onerous.
 	
The third scene in High Tech's triumphant week occurred not in Washington,
but in Tennessee, with Al Gore's formal announcement of his presidential
candidacy. The Gore-Tech connection is as tight as can be. The clearest
manifestation of GoreTech is Gore's inner circle of advisers -- which
prominently features men like Peter Knight, Roy Neel, Tony Podesta and Tom
Downey, all of whom have cashed in on close ties to Gore by taking out
consulting contracts to represent computer and other advanced technology
companies.

Of course, High Tech's week of passage did not come without extensive
preparatory work. The computer industry is beginning to escalate its
political contributions, which totaled about $9 million in the 1997-1998
federal election cycle. And they have forged a powerful lobby force,
TechNet, headed by former Netscape General Counsel Roberta Katz. Made up
of computer execs, TechNet specializes in bringing politicians to Silicon
Valley and wowing them with their latest innovations.
	
With the computer sector growing into an ever larger portion of the
economy, and with more and more commerce likely to head to the internet,
the nation, and ultimately the world, face huge and sometimes difficult
public policy questions. How will privacy be protected? How should
antitrust and pro-competition rules be deployed to prevent monopolistic
dominance of critical computer technologies and to facilitate free
software and similar movements? How should traditional liability rules
apply to the computer industry? How can consumer protections be maintained
on the Internet? 
	
Perhaps even more than other industries, High Tech's proclivity is to
answer every question with, "Let the market take care of it," or "We'll
self-regulate." 
	
Those who want to garner support for proposals that are more responsive to
the public interest can count on confronting a political virus of
ever-growing strength.

Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime
Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based
Multinational Monitor. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The
Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common
Courage Press, 1999, http://www.corporatepredators.org).

(c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

For more on Y2K legislation, check out Public Citizen's web page,
<http://www.citizen.org/congress/civjus/y2k/actionalert43099.htm>

For more on the High Tech Summit, check the Joint Economic Committee's web
page, http://jec.senate.gov/techsummit

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