Washington, D.C. — Today, President Joe Biden nominated Alvaro Bedoya to be a commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Bedoya is a leading expert on privacy and civil rights and is the founding director of the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law School. Following the announcement, Ben Olinsky, senior vice president of Structural Reform and Government at the Center for American Progress, released the following statement:
Biden is making an inspired choice by nominating Alvaro Bedoya, who is an unimpeachable voice for protecting American consumers from privacy and civil rights harms online. I had the privilege of working closely with him when he served as the first chief counsel of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law. In that role and since, he’s proved himself to be a visionary public servant dedicated to standing up for all Americans and skilled at working across the aisle to raise awareness of online harms, notably including how communities of color are disproportionately harmed by surveillance and data abuse. His foundational work establishing privacy as a civil right makes him a strong and timely choice to not only help the FTC tackle the multitude of digital threats to consumers but also support a new era of FTC leadership on a range of urgent competition and consumer protection challenges. We urge his swift confirmation as well as congressional support for the House Committee on Energy and Commerce proposal to increase FTC funding to work specifically on the privacy and data protection matters on which Alvaro is an expert.
For more information or to speak with an expert, contact Julia Cusick at [email protected].