President Obama to Appoint Twitter's Legal Director as White House Chief Privacy Officer

Reason 24/7

Another advisor/czar will join the Obama White House, this time in the newly created position of "chief privacy officer."

From CNET:

President Obama has picked Nicole Wong, Twitter's legal director, to be the White House's first chief privacy officer, CNET has learned.

Wong previously was a vice president and deputy general counsel at Google at its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters, where she managed a team of lawyers that worked with the company's engineers to review products before they launched. The reviews included privacy, copyright, and removal requests, which earned her a nickname of "The Decider"—as recounted in a 2008 New York Times Magazine article.

CNET reports Wong will actually be a senior adviser to the White House's "Chief Technology Officer," who is, presumably, an advisor to the president.

Follow these stories and more at Reason 24/7 and don't forget you can e-mail stories to us at [e-mail] and tweet us at @reason247.

Comments

[#HOLO YOLO]

Was this supposed to be on H&R?

[#HOLO YOLO]

Magic!

[The Late P Brooks]

Chief Privacy Circumvention Officer

[Almanian!]

I was thinking, “Why does the Administration need to be even MORE private…I thought it was a ‘public’ office?”

I guess they’re looking at the position differently than I.

[Geoff Nathan]

Actually, Chief Privacy Officers are in charge of making sure that customers’ data is kept private once it’s been provided to the website in question.

And I’m sure the federal government is very good at keeping our data private.

Or it isn’t…

I feel the need of a super-sarcastic emoticon, but don’t know of any.

[Live Free or Diet]

We’re “customers” of the government? Where do I cancel my subscription?

[Scarecrow Repair]

Life member. Non-un-renewable.

[Fist of Etiquette]

We can look forward to her frustrated announcement that she’s stepping down to spend more time with the family.

[Brandon]

She’s going to take the blame for Benghazi.

[Pro Libertate]

They’ve had positions like that before. Peter Swire was Chief Counselor for Privacy at the OMB and was supposed to have global oversight for privacy, and that was back during the Clinton years.

[db]

The “Ministry of Privacy” is guaranteed to be devoted to finding legal ways to destroy the concept of privacy.

If you really believe in a human right, you don’t create a government agency to regulate it. You prosecute people and agencies for violating it. Period.

[kibby]

A thousand times this.

[Episiarch]

Ah yes, Twitter, the great Facebook level success story that went public …oh wait. That’s the Obama administration: making sure competence is their number one priority.

[Ranter]

Wait, they must be paying her PEANUTS, because of the horrible amount of budget cutbacks due to the Ssssssequestration, right?!?!?

So basically, they’re just adding another meaningless manager into their organizational structure, who probably won’t do a goddamn thing. But it’s one more thing to impart the appearance that they give a shit and are being ‘open & transparent’…

[Eduard van Haalen]

If she’s Wong, I don’t wanna be right…hubba hubba!

http://bit.ly/12ee1eb

[SeaCaptain(Yokeltarian)]

“The Decider”

I read that as “The Derider”

[Anonymous Coward]

You spelled “The Derp-rider” wrong.

[Agammamon]

Why would you pick someone from a company whose entire reason for existence is servicing people who can’t keep anything to themselves.