FTC Launches New Office to Investigate Tech Companies, Seeks Tech Researchers (msn.com) 10
America's Federal Trade Commission "has long been dwarfed by Silicon Valley titans like Google and Apple, each staffed with thousands of engineers and technologists," notes the Washington Post.
"But FTC leaders are hoping combining and expanding their forces into a dedicated tech unit will help them keep up with the rapid advancements across the industry — and to keep it in check." The creation of the office will increase the number of technologists on staff by roughly a dozen, up from the current 10 — more than doubling the agency's capacity, officials said. In an exclusive interview announcing the move, FTC Chief Technology Officer Stephanie Nguyen said the unit will work with teams across the agency's competition and consumer protection bureaus to investigate potential misconduct and bring cases against violators. "Actually being able to have staff internally to approach these matters and help with subject matter expertise is critical," said Nguyen, who will lead the office.
The announcement arrives at a critical juncture. Federal regulators are dialing up investigations into tech behemoths like Amazon and waging blockbuster legal battles against Microsoft and Facebook parent company Meta. While Nguyen declined to discuss specific probes or cases, she said the new technology office will work directly on both the agency's investigative and enforcement efforts to "strengthen and support our attorneys" as they look to tackle alleged abuses across the economy. "The areas ... we will focus on is to work on cases," she said.... Nguyen said, the new team of technologists could help the agency refine the subpoenas it issues companies to get at the heart of their business models, or to strike a settlement that gets closer to "the root cause of the harm" taking place.
Republican Commissioner Christine Wilson, who Tuesday announced plans to resign "soon," voted in favor of creating the office, joining with the other commissioners in a unanimous vote.
The office's core mission will have three key areas, reports FedScoop: "strengthening and supporting law enforcement investigations, advising commission staff on policy and research initiatives, and highlighting market trends."
"For more than a century, the FTC has worked to keep pace with new markets and ever-changing technologies by building internal expertise," FTC Chair Lina Khan said. "Our office of technology is a natural next step in ensuring we have the in-house skills needed to fully grasp evolving technologies and market trends as we continue to tackle unlawful business practices and protect Americans."
Read on for more details about the new office.
"But FTC leaders are hoping combining and expanding their forces into a dedicated tech unit will help them keep up with the rapid advancements across the industry — and to keep it in check." The creation of the office will increase the number of technologists on staff by roughly a dozen, up from the current 10 — more than doubling the agency's capacity, officials said. In an exclusive interview announcing the move, FTC Chief Technology Officer Stephanie Nguyen said the unit will work with teams across the agency's competition and consumer protection bureaus to investigate potential misconduct and bring cases against violators. "Actually being able to have staff internally to approach these matters and help with subject matter expertise is critical," said Nguyen, who will lead the office.
The announcement arrives at a critical juncture. Federal regulators are dialing up investigations into tech behemoths like Amazon and waging blockbuster legal battles against Microsoft and Facebook parent company Meta. While Nguyen declined to discuss specific probes or cases, she said the new technology office will work directly on both the agency's investigative and enforcement efforts to "strengthen and support our attorneys" as they look to tackle alleged abuses across the economy. "The areas ... we will focus on is to work on cases," she said.... Nguyen said, the new team of technologists could help the agency refine the subpoenas it issues companies to get at the heart of their business models, or to strike a settlement that gets closer to "the root cause of the harm" taking place.
Republican Commissioner Christine Wilson, who Tuesday announced plans to resign "soon," voted in favor of creating the office, joining with the other commissioners in a unanimous vote.
The office's core mission will have three key areas, reports FedScoop: "strengthening and supporting law enforcement investigations, advising commission staff on policy and research initiatives, and highlighting market trends."
"For more than a century, the FTC has worked to keep pace with new markets and ever-changing technologies by building internal expertise," FTC Chair Lina Khan said. "Our office of technology is a natural next step in ensuring we have the in-house skills needed to fully grasp evolving technologies and market trends as we continue to tackle unlawful business practices and protect Americans."
Read on for more details about the new office.
The office's official web site says its technologists will "have deep expertise across a range of specialized fields. This includes practitioners and subject matter experts across security and software engineering, data science, artificial intelligence, machine learning, human-computer interaction design, and social science research relating to technology."
To that end, the agency is also trying to hire some such experts, according to a "We're Hiring" web page seeking "talented technologists" to join "a growing team of world class technologists and tech researchers who will help the FTC ensure a vibrant technology marketplace, by participating in agency law enforcement investigations, policy issues and research initiatives to help benefit consumers and promote competitions."
"We are seeking a variety of candidates with high quality experience and subject matter expertise related to software and digital product development and the tech industry that produces it, including, but not limited to: advertising technology, artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality, cloud computing, data science and data analysis, digital platforms and ecosystems, human computer interaction design, investigative research, privacy, security, product management, prototyping, social science research or fieldwork, software engineering, user experience design and user research."
[Interestingly, the page also provides more details on exactly how the office will "strengthen and support law enforcement investigations and actions."]
"These duties include serving as an agency resource to support investigations into business practices and the technologies underlying them; developing appropriate investigative techniques and craft effective civil investigative demands; aiding in the review and analysis of data and documents received in investigations; supporting the development of case theories and analysis; and aiding in the creation of effective remedies. Where appropriate, technologists will also support litigation teams by, among other things, serving as or helping to identify external expert witnesses."
IMHO FTC is also right agency for Net Neutrality (Score:2)
IMHO the FTC, not the FCC, is also the right agency for regulations and litigation to promote Net Neutrality.
FCC based solutions tend toward the technical - such as "Naive Net Neutrality": Treating ALL packets the same. (For starters, TCP-based bulk transfers and streams do NOT play well together.) The tools to fix that are also the tools that enable anti-competitive and predatory corporate behavior, and THAT behavior is the problem.
The FTC's mission, organization, and powers are exactly that sort of con
Great career advice (Score:4)
Want a job in tech at some future date? Make sure your resume shows where you ratted out your prospective employers.
Re: (Score:2)
Want a job in tech at some time in the future? Join a government agency regulating those companies and then switch over to tech to educate them on how to avoid those regulations.
Predictable Career Move (Score:2)
Seriously? (Score:2)
Creating anything truly revolutionary needs a different structure than authoritarian (all governments). I can't say which book about moonshots felt like the answer, but I've looked through a few.
They mentioned a limit of 150 people in an organization that the truly productive labs seemed to follow, like AT&T/Bell Labs or Xerox PARC. Also the reason for having a separate division for invention from maintenance and bug fixes. They need to have different limits and goals. Even for military weapons they
They are going to do nothing much (Score:2)
They sure have a high opinion of themselves for an agency which is ultimately just going to fuck around in the margins. What they need now to fix things is a determination to totally destroy the status quo, not tech researchers.
They have not solved a problem of the size of the forming Apple ecosystem monopoly since standard oil and I don't think they will before the damage is nigh on terminal (AT&T was a government sanctioned monopoly for most of the 20th century, so breaking that up was relatively easy
Re: They are going to do nothing much (Score:2)
Office of Technology Assessment (Score:5, Informative)
There used to be this department within the Congress that was called The Office of Technology Assessment. It would do, as the name suggested, provide unbiased assessment of technology and information to law makers so they can better understand the impact legislation regarding technology.
Then the back in 1995, the then Republican led congress dissolved the office and basically that was when lawmakers became puppets of the tech giants.
It's time to bring back the OTA.