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posted by azrael on Sunday August 17 2014, @07:11PM   Printer-friendly
from the privacy-not-our-priority dept.

The Washington Post reports on U.S. Deputy CTO Nicole Wong leaving the White House:

U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer Nicole Wong, who focused on privacy and big data issues, is leaving the White House a little more than a year after joining the Obama administration. Wong's last day is Friday; she will return to California where her family lives, the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy said in a statement.

Prior to joining the Obama administration, Wong was director of legal products at Twitter and deputy general counsel at Google. At Google, she earned the nickname "The Decider" - a reference to the role she took in helping to determine when to censor results on the company’s search engine or clips on its YouTube video service that governments claimed ran afoul of local laws.

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by VLM on Sunday August 17 2014, @07:58PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Sunday August 17 2014, @07:58PM (#82363)

    "a reference to the role she took in helping to determine when to censor results"

    So she's merely a human implementation of the /usr/bin/yes command?

    That's pretty much what I've heard about the response at the corporate level, they're just a bunch of Winston Smiths, so I'd assume as a part of that, she isn't exactly confrontational. Oh you say "we've always been at war with Eastasia.", OK thanks for letting us know we'll "adjust" search results to match.

    Given that, if she's out of the administration, is it much of a loss? Or rephrased, could the situation get any worse?

  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 17 2014, @08:05PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 17 2014, @08:05PM (#82365)

    Obama appointed a former Google employee as the first "privacy-focused" tech aid to the White House. Kafka's got nothing on him.

    As much as I would like cut some slack for the guy being the first "black" (hehe, note Clinton) president dealing with the teabaggers, in the end, he's just another lawyer trained in the dirty ugly-ass Chicago school of politics.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Sunday August 17 2014, @08:16PM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Sunday August 17 2014, @08:16PM (#82367) Journal

    They created the position as a CYA for the Snowden revelations. As such, no serious person would have taken that job unless they thought adding the Whitehouse to their resume would help them. There was never any chance the person in that job would have been allowed to actually exercise any real authority, so it would have been an exercise in futility from the get-go.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 3, Funny) by zocalo on Sunday August 17 2014, @08:49PM

      by zocalo (302) on Sunday August 17 2014, @08:49PM (#82380)
      So, you're saying she was the Wong person for the Wong job?
      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
    • (Score: 3) by FatPhil on Sunday August 17 2014, @09:34PM

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Sunday August 17 2014, @09:34PM (#82389) Homepage
      It can't have been a PR move to create her role, if it was a PR move she'd have been called the "Privacy Tsar" or something like that.
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
      • (Score: 5, Interesting) by frojack on Sunday August 17 2014, @11:28PM

        by frojack (1554) on Sunday August 17 2014, @11:28PM (#82410) Journal

        It was purely a PR stunt.

        Tsars/Czars (not an official term by any means) have some actual power and are given authority over some parts of government. They are typically "Director of an Office", or "Assistant Secretary" of a cabinet level agency. Rarely are they powerless go-between guys.

        Being appointed "Deputy Chief Technology Officer" was our first clue she would have no power at all, and it took her a year to realize she was just wall-paper.

        Oh, and the life long NDAs that come with such a job are guaranteed to keep her mouth shut.

        --
        No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.