Twitter has joined the Washington’s influence economy to form PAC(Political Action Committee). On Friday Twitter became the official member of the Association by forming its Political Action Committee and appointment of its first registered lobbyist.
According to the reports the 7 year old private company is planning to put a bigger priority on its interaction with Congress members as they get entangled in the political issues to have a free speech on the internet, government surveillance of communication and copyright and patent law reform.
Twitter #PAC would be the name of the PAC of the company and all the campaign of its policy objectives will be handled by the in-house lobbyist. The PAC will permit the firm to make any pool donations for some cause. The Twitter spoke person Jim Prosser claimed in a statement that they don’t expect to continue to play an active role in speaking up on issues related to Internet freedom, government access to user data, patent reform and freedom of expression.
With the support from Google and other Tech giants the company has demanded greater transparency from federal spy agencies. The company criticized the secrecy shrouding the requests the government makes of tech companies even when the officials want them to assist in surveillance efforts and saying that non-disclosure rules should be lifted.
With over 200 million active users the company thinks itself as the “Digital Town Square”. Its hinting the old media that’s its a better platform for breaking news and express virtually anything by providing a forum for people provided that they type in 140 characters. But Twitter has invited high level criticism from Britain and other nations claiming it to be too permissive of hate speech.
Twitter has always been and yet supporting open Internet policies at the Federal Communications Commission and actively fought against the 2011 legislation that claimed to hold companies liable for pirated content that appears on their sites. Other tech giants like the Microsoft, Facebook and Google are a step ahead as they already have active PAC’s that have helpd them to widen their network efficiently with members of Congress.
According to the data from Centre for Responsive Politics, The Microsoft’s PAC’s total donation to the politicians was $2.2 million in 2012 and Facebook’s was $277,000 in 2012 which has been drawn by the officials from the former Obama and Bush administration for its Washington Office. Google’s PAC donated $313,500 to the Republican majority members of the house and the Democrats received $262,000. Being resistant to form a PAC in the 2000-2002 ,and later opting for the same the firm hired former congresswoman Susan Molinari (R-N.Y.) to head its lobbying and policy operations last year.
Yet Twitter has a small operation in Washington. William Carty is claimed to be the registered lobbyist after formerly working as a Policy Manager for Twitter and continue to work from the firm’s D.C. office. Nu Wexler was named as Twitter’s D.C.-based spokesman on policy and political issues last Friday. Company’s precise role in the government is yet to clarified. The firm also claimed that back in 2011 it had told the Justice Department officials that it won’t be handing over information about users related to a government investigation of Wiki Leaks without a court order. But the firm also faced criticism over its privacy practices.
Back in 2010, Twitter had reached a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission based on the charges that it failed to protect the privacy of its users after account passwords were hacked.