Do Harris, Trump have a plan to protect Americans online? 

On Jan. 5 of this year, a door blew out midair on a Boeing 737-9 MAX, just minutes into an Alaska Airlines flight. No one was sucked out of the fuselage or even injured, and the terrified crew managed to land the plane safely. 

Within 24 hours, U.S. federal regulators had swung into action to protect the American people from further risk. The Federal Aviation Authority grounded 171 of the aircraft that operated in U.S. territory, and halted its further production. Within a month, the FAA had directed Boeing “to develop a comprehensive action plan to set a new standard for safety and how the company does business.”  

By comparison, the U.S. is losing about 22 teenagers every week to fentanyl poisoning. That’s the equivalent of a Boeing 737-9 MAX full of kids crashing into a mountainside every 10 weeks.  

Data shows that most teens are connecting with drug dealers on social media apps, in particular Snapchat and Instagram, in order to buy the dangerous pills that kill them. But unlike the FAA’s swift and justifiable response to Boeing in the wake of a string of safety lapses, no federal agency has stepped in to take either Snapchat or Instagram offline, or demand that the companies present plans for making their systems safer. 

And fentanyl is just one of many issues negatively impacting the health, privacy and safety of the American people that gets amplified by social media platforms. Social media is infested with scammers, child sex abuse content, sextortion rackets, extremist activity and disinformation.  

I’ve researched, written about and advised governments about organized crime for decades. Five years ago, I co-founded the Alliance to Counter Crime Online to address the alarming increase in crime and exploitation that the Internet — and particularly social media — enables. As Americans gear up to elect our next president, there are distinct differences in each candidate’s track record on tech, and in the ways that Democrats and Republicans say they plan to govern the web going forward.  

We conducted an analysis on where each candidate comes down on key issues.  Unfortunately, neither Vice President Kamala Harris nor former President Donald Trump is addressing the systemic reforms that the U.S. ought to be making to our policies, laws and institutions in order to protect people’s safety, privacy and freedom both online and in real life.  

These include legal reforms to define the difference between illicit conduct and protected free expression. We should also clearly delineate parameters between free speech and harmful speech, such as incitement, harassment and bullying.  

In an age of catfishing and “deep-fake” technologies, there’s a need to update outdated laws on forgeries and impersonation. And we should consider giving Americans the “right to be forgotten,” as Europeans already enjoy.  

There are also important discussions we as a nation ought to have about privacy, data ownership and how to best respond to the thorny trade-offs around encryption technologies. On top of that, our law enforcement procedures, government agencies and federal grant programs need to be updated for the Digital Age.  

The rapid pace with which new technologies have rolled out onto the market in recent decades contrasts dramatically with the plodding pace with which the U.S. government and Congress have worked to address the myriad harms these technologies can cause. It’s time for that to change. 

I urge both candidates to pledge to appoint a Digital Tsar who will direct a systemic effort to work with Congress and our federal agencies toward a future where our laws and policies are comprehensively reformed to protect the privacy, health and safety of the American people.   

It’s important to remember that computer code is just ones and zeros. How we code systems to operate is up to us. Policies and laws should set the framework, not #BigTech billionaires. 

Gretchen Peters is executive director of the Alliance to Counter Crime Online.