Okay Geek Farm
AT&T Bothered by White House Comments
Ricardo Trejo
It's no secret that the ISP's of America have been having an old fashioned sandbox fight like a couple of 5 year olds over what to do with Net Neutrality - being non-partial to all content on the internet, regardless of affiliation, beliefs, internet speed, or geographical location (as long as its legal content). Well, in the latest spat At&t called foul on some comments made by President Obama's deputy chief technology officer Andrew McLaughlin, who went on to say this about web censorship in a panel discussion moderated by the Post Tech Blog of the Washington Post:
"If it bothers you that the China government does it, it should bother you when your cable company does it.”-Andrew McLaughlin, White House Deputy Chief Tecnohology Officer
Not mentioning any ISP in specifics McLaughlin did open a can of worms with his comments, though not pointing the blame on any one provider. But apparently that was enough for AT&T's James Cicconi, Senior Executive Vice President-External and Legislative Affairs to get all up in arms over the comment. Cicconi, who used to be under former Presidents' George H. Bush and Ronald Reagan's past administrations had this to say about the matter:
"It is deeply disturbing when someone in a position of authority, like Mr. McLaughlin, is so intent on advancing his argument for regulation that he equates the outright censorship decisions of a communist government to the network congestion decisions of an American ISP. There is no valid comparison, and it's frankly an affront to suggest otherwise."
-James Cicconi, At&t Senior Executive Vice President-External and Legislative Affairs
However, McLaughlin's main point wasn't about the actual battle between the FCC and the ISP's, but instead was talking about foreign policy and how the US needs to set the standard for the "rules of the web", so to speak, before it can go out and expect others to do the same.
So all in all the main point he was trying to get at was this, 'we need to fix our own internet problems here at home first before we go out and try to mandate it or preach it', but I can see the correlation between what At&t is saying.
It also should be noted that McLaughlin formerly was the executive of Global Public Policy to Google, who has had its own slap fights with At&t in the past over Google Voice.
