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First Privacy-Focused US Technology Officer Leaves Office

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

AnonTechie writes:

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: 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.

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  • (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?
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  • (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.
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    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by frojack on Sunday August 17 2014, @11:28PM

      by frojack (1554) Subscriber Badge 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.

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