With the Primary vote now one week away, most polls continue to show Dan Sullivan leading in the Republican contest for U.S. Senate. But a new negative ad is focused on his main Republican rival, Mead Treadwell. It says technology companies he founded are helping the government erode privacy. Treadwell calls the claim absurd.
The ad is from Put Alaska First, an independent superPAC working to re-elect Democrat Mark Begich. It’s spent nearly $4 million running ads against Republican challenger Dan Sullivan. The new ad takes a small swipe at Sullivan but aims at Treadwell.
“Mead Treadwell created a company that helped the government spy on people and launched another company that pushed a national ID card,” the ad says, over imagery of surveillance cameras.
Treadwell says one of his companies created the technology behind Google Street View and vehicle-mounted cameras that helped the military map Iraq and Afghanistan. Treadwell says the company doesn’t spy on Americans.
“The only surveillance that I was ever aware of that any of our cameras did is some guy threw — actually two guys at different times — threw grenades or IEDs at the Humvees carrying our camera,” Treadwell says.
Another company he founded, called Digimarc, makes identification cards, digital files and currency harder to counterfeit. It has, according to Senate records, lobbied for Real ID, which critics charge is a national ID program. Treadwell says he served as an officer of Digimarc for a year and later consulted for the company. He still owns shares worth up to $250,000. But he says he doesn’t control what the company lobbies for.
Treadwell, though, remains a director of another company he founded, called Venture Ad Astra. Treadwell acknowledges that company asked for and got a $2 million federal earmark, penned by Sen. Lisa Murkowski in 2010, even though Treadwell has been a critic of earmarks. Treadwell says an earmark wasn’t his first choice for funding. He says the company first won a competitive bid from the Air Force Research Lab for technology to enhance GPS.
“They came back to many of their contractors and said ‘We don’t have enough money in our budget. If you encourage the Congress to fund our budget at the appropriate level, the contract will go forward,'” Treadwell says.
He says the earmarking process that existed then forced companies like his into a disingenuous position.
Liz Ruskin is the Washington, D.C., correspondent at Alaska Public Media. Reach her at lruskin@alaskapublic.org. Read more about Liz here.
