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*Updated: Mr. Guillot AKA yankprintster (4225) responded and is interested in answering some questions. Ask him your questions below in the comments*
B.J. Guillot is one of three candidates currently seeking to represent Washington's 2nd Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. Mr. Guillot is also a reader of SoylentNews. In a recent interview with CoinTelegraph about his enthusiastic support of cryptocurrency, Mr. Guillot was asked "When did you first hear about Bitcoin, and when did you get into it?" He explains that he got turned on to Bitcoin while reading a certain news for nerds site, and then mentions:
Since I have the floor, let me just state for the record, the new Slashdot web design and user experience is really poor. I've since moved on to SoylentNews.org for my daily science and tech news.
Perhaps Mr. Guillot would be kind enough to answer a few questions about his positions on topics of particular concern to the SN community. I invite him to answer directly in the comments below, or if he would prefer, I will collect and forward the highest-modded comments to Mr. Guillot, and then submit a new story with his responses.
According to his campaign website, Mr. Guillot holds a B.S. in Computer Science and Mathematics, and has software development experience.
The Crypto Crimson reports that while many politicians are "quick to jump on the bitcoin bandwagon" following the U.S. Federal Election Commission's recent opinon declaring that political committes may accept contributions in the form of Bitcoin, unlike these other politicians, Mr. Guillot is an active miner who "currently achiev[es] a hashrate of five Terahash per Second - certainly the fastest bitcoin mining politician".
The top item to appear in the "Issues" section of Mr. Guillot's campaign website is "NSA Spying". Mr. Guillot's stated positon on this issue is: "The Federal Government needs to immediately stop its spying and metadata collection of its citizen's phone calls and emails. It's also time to discontinue the Patriot Act. No more extensions!".
On his campaign website, Mr. Guillot also states his positions on: "Internet Freedom", "Patent Reform", "Bitcoin", "National Debt", "FairTax", "Military", "Second Amendment", "Energy", and "Education".
(Score: 5, Informative) by yankprintster on Tuesday July 08 2014, @03:44AM
I typed up these responses as quickly as I could, as I have other events I need to prepare for, so please excuse any typos. I thank everyone for being civil and asking a lot of really great questions. You guys don't throw any softballs! We will not always agree on everything, but a nice, civil debate is always a good thing.
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Q: redneckmother (3597) - I am curious about his stance on campaign finance reform.
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A: In General, I think the system in place now is OK with one exception: SuperPAC's should be required to release donation records within days of receipt, rather than keeping them anonymous for long periods of time.
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Q: A.C. who lives in Whatcom County 5 miles outside of my district -
What type of foreign policy do you support?
Would you support removing Federal Military bases from WA state?
If you were President, what would you do about the USSR and Ukraine?
What kind of relationship should we have with Cuba?
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A: Regarding foreign policy, I believe we need to have a major change of attitude. I don't support engaging in military conflicts unless the homeland or our military bases are attacked. So, the only legitimate wars in recent history would have been World War II (Pearl Harbor attacked) and, initially, the conflicts in Afghanistan (due to 9/11); however, all the troops should have been pulled out of Afghanistan once Bid Laden was eliminated. (I know he was found in Pakistan.) Keeping troops deployed in war zones for long periods of time hurts morale and is bad for families. We do need to maintain a strong military, but it should be a rare event that we need to use it. I don't support sending money to other countries (no foreign aid) at this time. If we ever pay off the National Debt, then it could be re-considered, but in my opinion, with a $17.5 trillion debt, it doesn't make sense to be giving away money in foreign aid to other countries, or to be spending money on unnecessary wars. I do not support removing Federal Military bases from WA State. The bases are a big part of the local economy and it would be have a devastating impact to families here. The Ukraine situation is troublesome, but there's no need for us to get involved militarily. Pressuring with diplomacy and sanctions is the correct approach. It also serves as a wakeup call to the military and NASA that we shouldn't be relying on Russian hardware (RD-180 engines) to get our space assets launched, nor relying on Russian spacecraft (Soyuz) to get our personnel launched to the International Space Station. I think it's time to bury the hatchet with Cuba, and we should open it up so that American companies can start trading with them and that American tourists can more easily travel there.
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Q: Phoenix666 - I'm in Brooklyn, not in Washington, but the most important question I have for anyone running for Congress is, where do you stand on the NSA's mass-surveillance of the American citizenry?
That question is followed very closely by these two:
1) Should we prosecute financial companies and their officers when they break our laws, or are they too important to jail or offend?
2) Is climate change a real concern and, if so, should we do anything about it?
My final question for those running for office now is, wouldn't you rather run for Congress after the imminent Second American Revolution rather than before it?
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A: I hate the fact that the NSA has been conducting mass-surveillance on Americans. It needs to stop immediately--and that includes stopping collection of metadata, too. If someone breaks the law, then yes, people need to be held accountable and prosecuted. That applies to the officers, too, if they are found to be involved (either in terms of issuing the orders, approving the orders, or knowing about it and looking the other way). Yes, climate change is a real concern. I love science, and the scientific evidence is overwhelming. I personally believe the only realistic way to combat it is a comprehensive energy plan involving both renewables and nuclear power. Renewables are nice, but they have their limits. If I did the math right, you could theoretically replace all coal power plants in the US with just 170 Generation 3 new 1.1 Gigawatt nuclear reactors like the Westinghouse AP1000. The US currently has about 100 nuclear reactors (in use at about 66 different plants). You could reduce the 170 number by adding in wind farms, solar farms, geothermal, etc. To do it without adding nuclear power capacity I think it just not realistic in any timeframe that would help. I think the odds of another American revolution happening anytime soon are very slim.
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Q: jackb_guppy (3560) - If corporations are "persons", why are corporations not prosecuted and jailed when found guiltily? Instead of the current method of buying their way out and still doing business in the same area, they could not do without cheating before. If not the corporation, then the board and senior management be the ones held for the corporation's misdeeds. Examples of current issues: Home Loan "Fraud" and High-Speed "Insider" Trading.
Per resent court ruling, a corporation can have religious views, who actually has to have those views, if a corporation is deemed has them? I have yet to see a corporation in church. :) All the shareholders? Just the board? CEO only? Should then public be blocked taking a job in that corporation, if they do not hold the same views? Or should the public be a second class citizen not getting what they believe in because they live in area where all/major of corporations have the same view?
When does a corporation "talk"? As in the 1st Amendment or is all speech by a corporation always advertising (marketing), so truth in advertising laws kick in?
When is the CEO speech (or any top management), NOT corporation speech? When the CEO is not announced as the CEO. Can Bill Gates ever have free speech again since he is tied so tightly to Microsoft and Bill and Melisa Gates Foundation?
Why does the government (for the people and by people - both cases humans) not step in and control boil-plate and click-though agreements? Since these agreements are now "ALL" made out to prevent the public from helping reform the corporations, by blocking the use of the courts and class-actions, let alone the ability to change the agreement at will without input from the other party (us, humans). Voting with your dollars do not help when all telco/cable do the same time. So, no choice but to accept.
Are the wires (last mile) owned by the people or telco/cable corporations, which seem to be also content provider? Should the last mile or actually all wires, be owned by not-of-profit companies that do not provide any content, but working for the public to insure we have good, if not better, service? In this way, we can choice who want to interconnect to different ISP and/or content providers.
Should the providing company also be liable for false or misleading things, if they are verifying that they work and user is forced to download from the company's "wall garden" for their devices. Example here is could be a blood pressure app that is not reviewed by the FDA but if they fail or give wrong readings can affect the costumer badly.
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A: If corporations commit crimes, then those people responsible in the corporation should be tried criminally. Regarding the recent court ruling, my understanding is that it only applies to privately held companies, and not public companies. A company can't refuse to hire someone based on their religious beliefs; however, a person can certainly choose not to work at a company if they disagree with the companies official positions on such issues. I'm not really sure where you are trying to go with your questions about free speech. Interesting idea about the click-through agreements. I generally oppose government regulation, but that might be something worth looking into. However, I'm not aware of click-through agreements really being able to prevent court or class-action lawsuits if you have a good attorney. For the ownership of the last-mile, that's probably more a matter for your local city or county to take up with whatever franchise agreements they have in place with the telco providers. In the future, the last mile stuff probably won't really even be as relevant, as we continue to transition to faster wireless services. Depending upon where you live, you may have multiple choices in Internet: local telco provider (DSL), local cable provider (cable modem), local microwave provider (though don't see too many of these companies), satellite provider (with less than ideal ping times), or pay to get commercial grade wired service (T1, MetroE, etc.). Regarding walled gardens, the providers of the stores are providing a service to the application developers in testing that their applications to meet minimum usability standards to comply with the store's guidelines. I don't think they do testing of arithmetic algorithms, or claim that they do. If you have an app cause you harm, and you want to go after someone, I think it makes much more sense to go talk to the developer. The people running the store probably only spent a few minutes testing the application.
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Q: BlackHole (530) -
1. What is your position on the NSA's activities abroad? Specifically, if elected, would you support legislation to limit the NSA's surveillance of the citizens and government officials of other countries, including those of America's allies? To be as concrete as possible, in your opinion, what should be required to authorize such surveillance, and, if authorized, what should be the scope of the surveillance.
2. Given the grave impact recent disclosures will likely have on American business interests (e.g., pictures of U.S. government employees intercepting Cisco hardware for the purpose of implanting surveillance equipment/software), would you support legislation to end these practices?
3. Would you support legislation to reform the FISA court, and if so, in what way do you think it should be reformed?
4. What is your position regarding letters that include a gag order (e.g., National Security Letters (NSLs) or equivalent)? When, if ever, should these be used? What do you think of the disappearance of Lavabit, Groklaw, etc.?
5. Would you support a clemency agreement for Edward Snowden?
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A: Once you aren't spying on Americans inside the US, it's fair game for the NSA to spy on people outside the US. That's what they are supposed to do. And other countries are supposed to try to do the same to us. It's the spy game. The NSA should try to help Americans protect their privacy to prevent other countries from snooping on us. They used to do that that, helping improve encryption algorithms. But then they started going down a dark path, allegedly adding potential backdoors into the newer encryption algorithms. I don't support the NSA putting backdoors into American products because those products could easily end up back in the US to spy on us. Also, it hurts the American companies' reputations (whether they knew about what was happening or not) and can lead to lower revenues. People should be able to buy a Cisco product without having to worry about whether it's been tampered with. Yes, the FISA courts need to be reformed. Some of the ideas in the FISA Court Reform Act of 2013 could have been useful had it had advanced. NSL gag orders violate the 1st Amendment. I can't think of a legitimate use for it. When sites like Lavabit go away, it just means other sites in other parts of the world where the US government has no jurisdiction will go up to pick up the slack. It doesn't really do anything to protect national security--it's just security theater. Compelling someone to give up their private keys is just plain wrong. Yes, I'd support a clemency agreement for Edward Snowden. Before his relegations, people just joked about the government spying on us, but we never knew for sure. Because of Mr. Snowden, we now know the truth turned out to be even worse than we ever imagined.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Tuesday July 08 2014, @04:36AM
Then I suppose you will accept as fair the following consequences:
* creation of regional specific IT services, in which US companies will be forbidden to participate (starting with networks which avoid US soil/jurisdiction, to regional clouds)
* any relation involving US interest will be "distrusted by default, unless controlling mechanisms are defined"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 08 2014, @06:16AM
Outside the United States, the NSA would essentially be under rules like those that bind the CIA. They can spy on people like Angela Merkel if the information they gain is more valuable to the national interest than the fallout from the international incident that would result if they were caught. She would ask herself and her ministers the same questions before directing the Bundesnachrichtendienst to conduct a similar operation against Barack Obama. Doing such a thing should thus be subject to a cost-benefit analysis.
(Score: 3) by jasassin on Tuesday July 08 2014, @05:25AM
I'm not sure if you really are a plotician. You answered all the questions asked, and intelligently nonetheless. I liked every answer. If I lived in your jurisdiction you'd have my vote. I'm sad to say you might be overqualified.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Tuesday July 08 2014, @10:25AM
I agree - I live in the UK and I'd vote for you if I could, mainly because you were asked a direct question and gave a direct answer, and that just never happens! A truly blog-worthy incident if I ever saw one!
(Score: 2) by No.Limit on Tuesday July 08 2014, @12:19PM
Yea, if you're ever going to run for election in Switzerland, you got my vote!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 08 2014, @04:32PM
Really? Most of it was alright, be he opened up with
If this is the only problem he sees, we have issues. I see the system as it stands as inherently corrupt, and I couldn't vote for any politician who is "OK" with it.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/461/take-the-money-and-run-for-office [thisamericanlife.org]
(Score: 2) by jackb_guppy on Tuesday July 08 2014, @11:08PM
May want to read up about the Supreme Court:
Supreme Court: AT&T can force arbitration, block class-action suits
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/04/scotus-rules-att-can-force-arbitration-block-class-action-suits/ [arstechnica.com]
In a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court disagreed with the lower court's decision. In his majority opinion, Justice Scalia argued that the purpose of the FAA was designed to promote arbitration over more costly and lengthy litigation. Quoting an earlier ruling by the court, Scalia explained that "[a] prime objective of an agreement to arbitrate is to achieve ‘streamlined proceedings and expeditious results,'" and that requiring the class-action litigation to proceed would be at odds with the intent of the FAA and the benefits that arbitration agreements ostensibly provide.