Deeplinks

Tonight at 9 pm eastern, President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney will participate in the first of three presidential debates before the election on November 6^th. Both Democrats and Republicans gave a general nod to Internet freedom in their party platforms for the first time this year, but we have yet to hear many specifics from either candidate.

Below are 14 questions—three for President Obama, three for Governor Romney, and eight for both candidates—we’d like to see answered in detail. Also, do not forget to go here and register to vote for Internet freedom on November 6^th.

Questions for Barack Obama:

Fast-growing online payment provider Stripe announced on Friday that they were embracing transparency around government requests. When the company receives a legal request to shut down a user’s account, Stripe will send a copy to the transparency website Chilling Effects, a site maintained by EFF and law school clinics that accepts and publishes take down notices from across the web. Stripe is the first payment provider to participate in Chilling Effects. Stripe’s actions will help ensure that attempts by the government to silence sites by shutting down their revenue source will be open to public scrutiny and debate.

Former New York Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald’s new book, published last week, provides yet more details about how the the NSA’s unconstitutional warrantless wiretapping program came about, and confirms that even top Bush Administration lawyers felt there was a “strong argument” that the program violated the law. “Officials might be slammed for violating the Fourth Amendment as a result of having listened in on calls to people inside the country and collecting so much personal data," Eichenwald wrote, and “in the future, others may question the legality” of their actions.