On Wednesday, the US Senate approved a vote to allow Alvaro Bedoya, a privacy expert, to join the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Foreign media pointed out that this result ensures that the Democratic majority government under Biden can be in a favorable position in the investigation of violations against large technology enterprises such as Google But before vice president Harris cast her vote, the Senate happened to be in a 50 vs 50 impasse.
Screenshot (from: ftc.gov website)
It is reported that Alvaro Bedoya will replace Rohit Chopra, a former Commissioner who left the FTC Consumer Financial Protection Bureau last year.
Before her new appointment, Bedoya was a law professor at Georgetown University. In addition to his deep academic accumulation in the field of privacy act, he also founded the school's privacy and technology center in 2014.
In her academic career, Bedoya has explored many topics, such as how surveillance tools have a disproportionate impact on minorities (especially technical disputes such as facial recognition).
Last September, bodoya received the nomination of members of the Committee for the first time, but the subsequent finalization process was still stalled due to opposition from Republicans.
The good news is that after the FTC hearing and voting were cancelled and rescheduled for many times last year, the Senate Commerce Committee pushed the motion for the removal of majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) with a result of 14 vs 14 in March this year, thus successfully promoting the final vote in the Senate, which has broken the deadlock recently.
Screenshot (from: Georgetown Law)
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Last month, Axios reported that the American Chamber of Commerce had urged lawmakers to postpone the identification of FTC expert members of Alvaro Bedoya.
On Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (r-ky) continued to press Congress against the appointment and urged the White House to withdraw his nomination.
It argued that the FTC's selection of Bedoya was a "stupid" choice and would try to unite opponents on both sides to prevent the bad nomination so that the president could reconsider and appoint a more suitable candidate.
As the Senate voted to approve Alvaro Bedoya's appointment, the FTC is also strengthening its review of the technology industry led by Lina Khan, chairman of the agency.
FTC has promised to restrict the unreasonable "maintenance right" policy, and it is said that the committee is investigating whether the VR Department of meta (formerly Facebook) has potential antitrust violations.
Finally, in a statement on Wednesday, Lina Khan said: "Alvaro Bedoya's expertise, experience and energy will become an important force of the Federal Trade Commission in our work.".