Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama would reverse most of the Bush Administration's technology policies and make Net Neutrality a priority under his administration, according to a sweeping tech policy agenda that the candidate unveiled today ahead of a visit to Google's campus in Mountain View. 
"I will take a backseat to no one in my commitment to network neutrality," reads an excerpt of Obama's prepared remarks released Wednesday. "Because once providers start to privilege some applications or web sites over others, then the smaller voices get squeezed out, and we all lose. The Internet is perhaps the most open network in history. We have to keep it that way."
Obama, as well as his rival New York senator and Democratic presidential front runner Hillary Rodham Clinton, are both co-sponsors of S. 215, a Senate bill introduced earlier this year that would amend the 1934 Communications Act to "ensure Net Neutrality."
The Obama campaign has more detail about his tech agenda here.
Obama has previously stated his support for the concept, but today was the first time that he unveiled a laundry list of tech policies that he would implement as president.
The list looks like a Silicon Valley wish-list, ranging from the Net Neutrality item to an unusual comprehensive immigration reform policy that calls for the examination of "our ability to increase the number of permanent visas we issue to foreign skilled workers."
Here are the areas it addresses:
IMMIGRATION: The immigration policy also calls for more flexibility for those workers, suggesting that the visas, which are usually tied to an employer, allow those workers to have more freedom. "Obama will work to ensure immigrant workers are less dependent on their employers for their right to stay in the country and would hold accountable employers who abuse the system and their workers," reads the agenda.
Obama's also calls for boosting the education levels of domestic workers so that they can fill the positions.
BROADBAND: Obama wants the Federal Communications Commission to redefine "broadband." But he fell short of providing any more detail apart from saying that "200 kbps" is an "astonishingly low" speed definition for broadband. Other than the revamped definition, Obama's agenda says that "he will create incentives for smarter, more efficient and more imaginative use of government spectrum and new standards for commercial spectrum to bring affordable broadband to rural communities that previously lacked it."
Vigorous antitrust enforcement and funding
Updated and interoperable radio networks for public safety officials
Tougher trade agreement enforcement policy under World Trade Organization agreements
Patent reform
Protecting US intellectual property abroad
Making the R&D tax credit permanent
Implementation of new tools and processes to bring more transparency to the executive branch
A mandate to build technology to protect children from inappropriate content online
Reforming health care information technology
Creation of a fund to explore green energy.
While covering much of the same ground as Clinton, Obama's Wednesday announcement is less sharp in its rhetoric against the current administration over the issue of science and technology. Many in the science and technology community have criticized the Bush administration for several of its science and tech policies (or lack thereof) -- especially in the realms of global warming, lax anti-trust enforcement and roll-out of affordable universal broadband.
Obama's positions on privacy in the digital age are far less detailed than Clinton's, although he has been slightly more prominent as a senator on key privacy issues such as opposing renewal of the USA PATRIOT Act in the form advocated by the Bush administration at the end of 2005.
Obama proposed using Web 2.0 applications to increase government transparency, and appointing a chief technology officer to head its e-government initiatives. Apart from the use of the applications, the appointment of a CTO isn't a new idea. These kinds of issues are currently handled in the White House' Office of Management and Budget. Karen Evans handles those issues.
The Illinois senator is scheduled to speak on these issues Wednesday afternoon on the Google campus, where Google CEO Eric Schmidt will moderate questions in a town hall meeting with Google employees.
He received a slew of endorsements Wednesday from those in the policy community whose ideas and policy positions he has adopted. They include former Clinton administration FCC chiefs Bill Kennard and Reed Hundt, Google's Schmidt, AOL's former chief Jonathan Miller and progressive tech policy advocates such as Public Knowledge's head honcho Gigi Sohn, Stanford Law School professor Larry Lessig, New York Law School's Beth Noveck and the UC Berkeley economics professor and former Clinton Administration FCC and DOJ antitrust economist Joseph Farrell.
Obama has the support of his former Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe, whose work ironically played a key role in merger review proceedings between AT&T, SBC and MCI in 2006. Tribe, along with Kirkland & Ellis' Kenneth Starr, did an analysis challenging the constitutionality of the Tunney Act. That work was used by telecom company lawyers to persuade DC District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan to quickly approve the merger.
__Update: __Here's an interesting commentary on Tribe and Network Neutrality.
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