Jeff Flake Featured on I-10 Billboard: 'He Voted to Let Them Sell Your Web History'
Friday, May 5, 2017 at 1:30 p.m. By Antonia Noori Farzan
Jeff Flake's wildly unpopular decision to sponsor a bill repealing the Federal Communications Commission's rules for broadband privacy is coming back to haunt him.
This week, a billboard splashed with Flake's face and office phone number appeared at I-10 and Baseline Road in Phoenix. It points out that Flake accepted more than $185,000 in campaign donations from telecom companies over the course of his career, before voting in March to let them sell users' browsing history without permission.
[graphics added for this post on the blog site.
Not in original report]
The billboard was paid for by a crowdfunding campaign organized by Fight for the Future, a nonprofit group that advocates for internet freedom and online privacy.
The Verge has a list of all 265 Republicans in Congress and the Senate who voted to pass it, along with how much money they received in campaign contributions from telecom companies during the last election cycle.
"Senator Flake was the sponsor of SJ Res 34, so he was a natural target for our first round of billboards, since he did perhaps more than any other member of Congress to sell off his constituents' right to use the internet safely and securely," Evan Greer, Fight for the Future's campaign director, explains.
"The other lawmakers that we targeted were ones that had taken large amounts of money from the telecom industry. Rutherford was picked because there were constituents in his district that were particularly upset and wanted to help make a billboard happen there, and we wanted to make sure that every member of Congress knew that they could be targeted if they vote against their constituents' interests."
Phoenix New Times
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