Should American citizens get a new Bill of Rights for the internet?
Given all the damage that giant tech companies have done of late, including the disaster of the week — a breach at Facebook that exposed tens of millions of accounts and maybe lots more — many Democrats think the answer is yes.
In an interview with me this week, Nancy Pelosi even suggested that a new agency could be created to manage tech’s growing impact. “Something needs to be done,” she told me, to “protect the privacy of the American people” and “come up with overarching values” — a set of principles that everyone can agree on and adhere to.
Call it a Bill of Rights for the internet.
Six months ago, Ms. Pelosi charged Ro Khanna — the Democratic representative whose California district is home to Apple, Intel and Yahoo — with the creation of that list. After consulting with think tanks like the Center for Democracy and Technology and big Silicon Valley companies like Apple, Google and Facebook, as well as some of tech’s biggest brains, like Nicole Wong and Tim Berners-Lee, he came up with a list of 10 principles that cover topics such as privacy, net neutrality and discrimination.
Mr. Khanna gave me a copy of the list, the full contents of which have not been reported elsewhere, and which appears at the bottom of this essay.
