In a socially distanced ceremony at a Delaware excessive college this week, presidential hopeful Joe Biden launched Senator Kamala Harris as his operating mate in the 2020 election. Adore Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Biden’s appreciate advertising and marketing campaign workers, Harris has a lengthy relationship with Silicon Valley that entails fundraisers and soliciting advice from tech leaders and workers. Her rise in political prominence in the San Francisco Bay Home coincides with the exponential development of the tech alternate and main corporations that call California home — at the side of Apple, Facebook, and Google.
Because the attorney fashioned of California and a U.S. senator for the deliver, Harris has conducted a characteristic in figuring out what constitutes on-line crime, defining on-line privateness, hammering out parameters for the critical app shops, and supporting the prosecution of revenge porn and on-line sexual harassment. She is someone who has each threatened correct motion against tech corporations and referred to them as “family.”
While this isn’t supposed as a complete checklist, we wished to glance assist at some key moments in Kamala Harris’ historic previous with Silicon Valley.
Kamala Harris runs for attorney fashioned of California against a fashioned Facebook govt
After two terms as district attorney of San Francisco, Harris ran for the U.S. Senate in 2010. One of her main opponents in the Democratic main used to be fashioned Facebook chief privateness officer and top attorney Chris Kelly.
Kelly funded his advertising and marketing campaign with millions from his personal fortune, and Harris publicly questioned whether electing the fashioned Facebook govt would be admire getting a fox to present protection to a henhouse. “If Kelly couldn’t face as much as Facebook CEO Designate Zuckerberg on behalf of Facebook customers, how on Earth can Californians belief Kelly to switch to bat on their behalf as attorney fashioned?” she asked.
A laborious-hitting Harris advertising and marketing campaign ad said: “His handiest expertise is designing a Facebook privateness policy condemned across the nation. Chris Kelly released your privateness recordsdata.”
Kelly seemed as if it would toughen his stance on Facebook privateness factors, becoming a member of MoveOn in urging Facebook to handiest share recordsdata licensed by customers. However with days to switch in the critical, Facebook CEO Designate Zuckerberg could dangle helped tilt the dimension in Harris’ prefer, in accordance to the San Francisco Legend, by indicating that he also can back an occasion to make calls for the Harris advertising and marketing campaign. In the stop, Harris won the election and Kelly came in 2nd, in accordance to Ballotpedia.
Harris speaks at Google headquarters sooner than California attorney fashioned election
Weeks sooner than the 2010 fashioned election, Harris visited Google headquarters in Mountain Be aware for an hour-lengthy dialog with company workers led by then Google chief correct counsel David Drummond. She talked about having “a obvious bravado about being a California child” and the design in which the California attorney fashioned wants to be a stir-to particular person for somebody handling cases against tech corporations in the nation.
She made it obvious in her remarks that she didn’t dangle to stand in the design in which of innovation.
It’s instructive to listen to Harris share her thoughts on how tech can make govt more efficient and to be reminded that antitrust competition laws conversations were going down at Google a decade up to now.
“That is what I supposed earlier about my satisfaction about being in California, where you perceive right here’s a rapid drive to come assist right here. That is [my] backyard — we’re family — so California AGs wants to be a frontrunner on these factors,” she said.
In that linked meeting, she discussed her ogle of taking antitrust actions against the astronomical corporations. This used to be lengthy sooner than the U.S. Justice Division, Congress, and attorneys fashioned from nearly every deliver in the U.S. filed antitrust investigations into Google, although European Union officers filed three antitrust cases against Google in November 2010.
In the context of antitrust laws, she talked about tech being very crucial to California’s financial system. It’s worth noting that Harris used to be operating whereas the deliver used to be in the midst of a prime budgetary crisis. In convey to address this financial crunch, she said, “We’re going to dangle to acknowledge we cannot stand in the design in which of alternate development and vogue and that we don’t dangle to settle for false picks. That doesn’t will dangle to be to the exclusion of helping patrons. It doesn’t will dangle to be at the exclusion of going after defective companies because defective alternate is no longer factual for factual alternate.”
Harris factors predictive policing MOU
All over her first year as attorney fashioned, Harris signed a memorandum of figuring out (MOU) giving the Los Angeles Police Division get entry to to recordsdata for predictive policing. The usage of recordsdata-driven approaches in resolution-making is at the coronary heart of Harris’ level of interest in her ebook Trim on Crime. However since then, predictive policing programs deployed in cities admire Los Angeles and Unique Orleans with attend from corporations admire Palantir dangle been accused of demonstrating racial bias or consume of racially biased recordsdata.
While AI capabilities and the sheer volume of accessible recordsdata dangle grown dramatically since 2011, Harris’ historic previous as a prosecutor and on factors admire predictive policing also can return in the flee-as much as the election. Those factors could possibly also be central to ongoing discussions around racial justice reform and calls to defund the police.
Harris strikes privateness policy style out main tech corporations
In a truly varied more or less deal, in 2012 Harris brokered an agreement between six of the biggest tech corporations with app shops at the time: Apple, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Amazon, Microsoft, and Compare in Motion. Phrases of the deal incorporated corporations designating an home for builders and companies to share their privateness insurance policies. The deal used to be reached partly to grunt companies in accordance to the California Online Privateness Protection Act, a laws that required industrial companies working on-line to post a privateness policy. This agreement used to be reached at a time when loads of corporations — at the side of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter — were chanced on to be hoovering up client recordsdata, admire address ebook contacts, most regularly without permission.
“Your own privateness also can quiet no longer be the cost of the usage of mobile apps, but all too in overall it’s,” Harris said at the time.
App marketplace regulation is quiet a disclose as of late. Apple’s App Store dominance used to be a central topic of debate in antitrust hearings in Congress closing month and made headlines closing week when Legend Games filed a lawsuit after being kicked out of Apple and Google’s app shops for iOS and Android, respectively.
Harris speaks at Facebook headquarters
In February 2015, about a month after the starting up of her U.S. Senate advertising and marketing campaign, Harris spoke at Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California alongside COO Sheryl Sandberg as part of the Safer Web Day conference. Harris and Sandberg spoke with children about on-line harassment and ways to fight cyberbullying. The occasion itself wasn’t a political earthquake, but it without a doubt produced memorable visuals of Harris and Sandberg collectively in the days sooner than Cambridge Analytica, election interference, and boycotts against the corporate’s willingness to revenue from detest.
Above: California Attorney Routine Kamala Harris, factual, and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg for the length of the Safer Web Day conference at Facebook in Menlo Park, California, on February 10, 2015.
Characterize Credit ranking: John Inexperienced/Bay Home News Group by the consume of Getty Images
That linked month, Harris held a meeting with victims of on-line harassment and representatives from Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter to discuss curbing on-line harassment and abuse. Assembly transcripts were saved confidential, but a legend eminent Harris’ ogle that what some refer to as “revenge porn” is a carry out of “cyber exploitation” and that the inability of consent separates it from consensual pornography.
Rapidly after the meeting, many main platforms began taking steps to restrict the sharing of reveal impart without consent, and Harris launched a public advertising and marketing campaign and handy resource for cyber exploitation victims with enter on address conditions of cyber exploitation on Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Pinterest, and Twitter.
Backpage.com prosecution and Part 230 of the Communications Decency Act
Weeks sooner than the 2016 fashioned election, as Harris campaigned to represent California in the U.S. Senate, Harris filed expenses against Backpage founder Carl Ferrer for pimping, pimping a minor, and conspiracy to commit pimping. Ferrer’s expenses hinged on the profits his on-line ad company made off listings for “escort companies and products” and accused him of primarily working an on-line brothel. He used to be arrested in Houston, Texas and extradited to California to face expenses. This used to be part of Harris’ endured effort to address the design in which on-line platforms enable human trafficking. Adore many other companies, at the side of astronomical tech corporations, Ferrer claimed protection from prosecution below Part 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which supplies some criminal responsibility protection to the creators of an interactive computer provider.
The Ferrer case used to be thrown out almost presently after the election. He used to be convicted of alternative expenses in 2018, but calls for reform of Part 230 for main tech corporations came lengthy sooner than Harris charged Backpage and are likely to persist in 2020 and previous.
Harris, Uber, and the gig financial system
Rapidly sooner than leaving her space as attorney fashioned, in December 2016 Harris ordered Uber to opt its self-driving vehicles off the streets of San Francisco over security concerns and said that she would scrutinize a court convey to power compliance if want be. Harris’ brother-in-laws Tony West is chief correct counsel at Uber and served as a cochair of the Harris 2016 U.S. Senate transition team and as an handbook to Harris when she used to be district attorney.
More currently, lawmakers dangle fielded calls for for gig financial system corporations admire Uber to treat workers as workers or contractors, which would possibly possibly well well confer labor protections and worker advantages. In 2019, California lawmakers provided supporters a preliminary victory in the carry out of Invoice AB 5, which Harris supports. This week, a California take dangle of ordered Uber and Lyft to originate complying with AB 5, though the corporations dangle challenged the measure. Proposition 22 will establish the closing resolution to California voters in November. If Prop 22 passes, calls for linked laws also can develop in Washington, D.C.
Harris questions Designate Zuckerberg about Cambridge Analytica
In the weeks after a few experiences shops reported that the recordsdata of 87 million Facebook customers used to be misused by Cambridge Analytica, in 2018 Facebook CEO Designate Zuckerberg came to Congress to discuss recordsdata privateness. As part of a listening to, Harris asked Zuckerberg why Facebook management chose no longer to characterize its customers when the news came to light in December 2015.
“Looking out back, that used to be a mistake, and arresting what everybody knows now we are able to also quiet’ve handled loads of issues differently,” Zuckerberg said.
Besides to to attracting attention for her inquiries to Zuckerberg, Harris garnered a popularity for her explain questioning of Attorney Routine Jeff Sessions and Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh for the length of their respective hearings.
National AI approach laws
As a U.S. senator, Harris cosponsored laws to spearhead the attain of a nationwide AI approach in 2018. The AI in Executive Act sought to offer a framework for bringing more AI expertise into govt and informed federal agencies to actively opt away barriers to incorporating AI. While the laws didn’t pass, contributors of Congress and the Pentagon dangle referred to as the formation of a coherent nationwide AI approach imperative to declaring financial and military dominance.
While Harris supports the combination of AI in govt, she has a historic previous of opposing the algorithmic bias plaguing many AI programs as of late. In 2018, she joined a team of U.S. Senators who questioned the FBI, FTC, and Equal Employment Replacement Charge (EEOC) about their consume of facial recognition technology. Harris also joined colleagues in Congress in calling for a overview of facial recognition consume in federal housing in 2019.
Monumental Tech antitrust
In loads of interviews for the length of her characterize for the presidential nomination, Harris hesitated to order that tech giants wants to be damaged up. Talking with the Unique York Times, she said her first precedence if elected would be to make optimistic U.S. patrons of route feel their privateness is no longer compromised. In an early 2019 interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Harris said breaking up Facebook is one thing that wants to be in moderation regarded as, and that the corporate had in carry out turn out to be an unregulated utility. She did no longer stir so far as Senator Elizabeth Warren, whose stance on breaking up tech giants grew to turn out to be a cornerstone of her presidential advertising and marketing campaign platform.
Harris used to be also attorney fashioned when Facebook acquired Instagram and WhatsApp in 2012 and 2014, respectively — acquisitions which dangle come up in the ongoing Congressional antitrust investigation.
Closing thoughts
A take a study Kamala Harris’ file demonstrates that lengthy sooner than she grew to turn out to be a nationally prominent flesh presser or vice presidential candidate, Harris conducted an influential characteristic in shaping tech policy throughout the final decade. She also can totally be conception to be one of potentially the most tech-savvy candidates to grace a presidential note to this level.
If Biden and Harris are elected, their administration is likely to face a range of tech-linked challenges — from the event of 5G and tech nationalism to the proliferation of man-made intelligence and cybersecurity.
Adore the deal Joe Biden struck with Barack Obama sooner than agreeing to be his operating mate, Biden currently said he wants Harris to be the closing particular person in the room when there’s a tricky resolution to make. In the occasion that they make it to the White Home, Harris could dangle a appreciable quantity of affect on the critical tech policy factors going by this nation.
