Ron Paul may be the president of the Internet, but the next occupant of the brick-and-mortar White House will also influence the future of that vast series of tubes. Last week, representatives for Barack Obama and John McCain addressed the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference on topics ranging from NSA surveillance to net neutrality to the competitiveness of American workers in the new economy.

The clearest contrast between the candidates emerged over the geek hot-button of net neutrality. Chuck Fish, an attorney for the McCain campaign and former Time Warner executive, warned against using regulation to impose any broad network model on service providers, especially in advance of any evidence that discriminatory packet switching is causing pervasive harm. Instead, he suggested existing antitrust law could be used to address specific instances of misbehavior. But Daniel Weitzner, an MIT computer scientist and technology adviser to the Obama campaign, insisted that this was "not enough." "Openness is more important than bandwidth," said Weitzner, referring to the argument that "tiered" networks providing faster access to content providers who can pay could spur investment in fatter pipes. "I'd rather have a more open Internet at lower speeds than a faster Internet that has all sorts of discrimination built in. We've lived with tiny narrow little pipes and done extraordinary things with them." Fish later countered that we "now we have unduly low expectations of our infrastructure needs."

On the question of retroactive immunity for telecoms that participated in warrantless surveillance by the National Security Agency, Fish sought to reassure the civil libertarian–leaning audience that McCain did not support "indulgences" (an allusion to the medieval church's practice of selling absolution for sins) and surprised many by saying that hearings should be conducted to determine the scope and extent of NSA acquisitions. (The campaign later walked back from that position, leaving it unclear just where Fish was coming from.) Weitzner, by contrast, took a retrospective approach, suggesting that Obama's commitment to civil liberties was evident in his voting record, including his opposition to telecom immunity and to the confirmation of Gen. Michael Hayden as Director of Central Intelligence.

Fish was substantially more vague on the question of what sort of checks and oversight should be imposed on future surveillance, and reiterated McCain's condemnation of Democrats in the House for "fail[ing] to address" the problem of reforming the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. (The House has, in fact, twice passed bills reforming FISA, both of which have been deemed unacceptable by the White House.) He did, however, articulate a more general philosophy of "privacy as security." This, he explained, meant that "just as liberty is not licentiousness [sic]," privacy should not be conceived as absolute control over personal information, but rather as protection from harms accruing from the use or disclosure of information. Weitzner expressed skepticism about this formulation, in part because subjects would often remain unaware of privacy violations (and so unable to allege harm) but also because the standard of "harm" seemed question-begging, as "you've got to decide what harms you're recognizing."

In terms of the candidates' broader philosophies on tech issues, Weitzner primarily relied on Obama's lengthy white paper. He stressed Obama's commitment to using technology as a means of promoting greater openness in government, and touted his plan to name a federal government–wide Chief Technology Officer to coordinate policy across the alphabet soup of federal agencies. Playing to the civil libertarian crowd, he also stressed Obama's anti-censorship approach to child protection, centered on prosecution of child exploiters and technological empowerment of parents.

Fish outlined the four core principles that would guide a McCain administration's approach to technology. First, ensuring the availability of risk capital in order to promote investment and innovation. Second, creating a skilled work force, by means of education, but also tax and immigration policy. (On the latter front, Fish claimed that for each H1-B visa hire, 20 domestic jobs are created. I have only been able to find a study supporting the far more modest claim that H1-B visa requests are correlated with 5–7 new domestic jobs, which may simply indicate that expanding firms hire more workers, both local and foreign. Fish did not respond to an e-mail seeking a source for his claim.) Third, Fish stressed the importance of a employing a light regulatory touch and respecting open markets. He noted that misregulation can impede innovation, and invoked what he called the "futility principle": There are some genuine problems that are only made worse by attempts to meliorate them. Finally, he stressed McCain's "commitment to discovery," and noted that while we currently spend some 2.7% of GDP on research and development, "more can be done."

And in case you were wondering, Fish reassured us that McCain "does know how to use e-mail... and a few other modern conveniences."