Big telecom has succeeded in handcuffing the Federal Communications Commission for two solid years, blocking President Joe Biden’s imminently qualified nominee Gigi Sohn. The latest tactic, though the telecoms will deny they’re behind it, is absolutely disgusting.
Right now, there are just four members of the FCC, deadlocking. That means that Biden’s ambitious agenda for expanding broadband, protecting consumers with aggressive anti-trust measures, and restoring net neutrality can’t effetely move forward. The FCC can’t even take any regulatory actions because it’s deadlocked. That’s exactly how big telecom likes it—they don’t want their activities—and profits—to be closely examined or curtailed.
So a smear campaign—that’s NBC News’s characterization, by the way—has popped up, attacking her for her work on board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a prominent nonprofit that has worked to protect user privacy, fight for net neutrality, and champion freedom of expression. The campaign suggests that EFF, and by extension Sohn, are champions of sex trafficking, oppose anti-sex tracking initiatives, and are beholden to a dominatrix.
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The EFF opposed FOSTA/SESTA, the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, and the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, which were enacted by Congress in 2018, misguided and heavy-handed laws intended to address online sex trafficking. They have yet to prove effective and even detrimental. The Government Accountability Office reported in 2021 that “gathering tips and evidence to investigate and prosecute those who control or use online platforms has become more difficult” since the laws’ enactment, “due to the relocation of platforms overseas, platforms’ use of complex payment systems, and the increased use of social media platforms.” It’s also made sex work more dangerous, shutting down online platforms sex workers could use to screen clients.
Ironically, the FCC has nothing to do with enforcing FOSTA/SESTA—it’s entirely out of the agency’s jurisdiction, and Sohn has never commented on it one way or the other. Because while she was working for the FCC’s then-Chairman Tom Wheeler, it didn’t have anything to do with the FCC.
This is an “obviously coordinated campaign fronted by such right-wing enterprises as Fox News, Breitbart and the Daily Mail,” writes the LA Times’ Michael Hiltzik, obvious in its coordination because it is so ridiculous and disgusting.
To put this in context, Sohn is an out lesbian and would be the first openly gay FCC commissioner, so the hints of “grooming” that have arisen in the far-right are a strong undercurrent in this campaign. The accusations spurred 22 LGBTQ advocacy organizations to demand Senate leadership move the confirmation and to condemn the attacks.
“That cannot stand,” the groups wrote. “Homophobic and sexist fearmongering should have no place in the consideration of Gigi’s qualifications. It’s morally corrupt and antithetical to the high virtue of the Chamber.”
The tactic has appalled industry insiders, including Preston Padden, a former president of ABC Television Network and a founding executive of Fox Broadcast Co. “The press stories ginned up by Ms. Sohn’s opponents are beneath scurrilous and are beneath the dignity of this Committee,” Padden wrote to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.
He told NBC News he was shocked but the stories. “I’m old. I started doing legal lobbying work in the industry in 1973,” Padden said. “And I have never seen anything like this. I’ve never seen anything like the micro targeting of senators to try to defeat a nomination. And I’ve never seen anything like this smear campaign.”
Democrats need to stand against this, says Evan Greer, director of the digital rights organization Fight for the Future. “If they remain silent and complicit, this will become a go-to strategy to tank LGBTQ nominees to any public position,” they told Hiltzick. “Democrats can’t claim to support LGBTQ rights while failing to stand up to blatant bigotry targeting one of their own nominees.”
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