

Nicole Wong, former top lawyer for Google and Twitter, is the new deputy US CTO - mr_spothawk
http://qz.com/98582/the-most-important-person-entering-us-government-youve-never-heard-of/

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spikels
This article reads like a press release - completely uncritical. I wonder how
much of this was independently researched by the reporter and how much was fed
to them by the White House press handlers. It even quotes Jay Carney the
master propagandist who leads these efforts.

It is clearly targeted at the tech community. This is in hen originally
announced on June 20th very similar articles appeared in CNET, All Things
Digital, SF Chronicle and the Register. After SOPA they are paying special
attention.

By itself this appointment does nothing but give the impression of reform for
a news cycle or two. The basic strategy is lie and delay the delay and lie
until the public moves on to something else.

If they really want to have a debate about the balance between security and
privacy lets have it. The first step is to state your position by revealing
exactly what you are doing today instead of continued lies, stalling and
doubletalk.

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diminoten
"This doesn't conform to my current view of the US government, so I will now
baselessly criticize and flag this submission!"

\- Hacker News 2013

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walshemj
How does a lawyer have any business being a CTO - this is just like hiring
Jill Finney as COO for nominet (.uk registry) when she has zero technical
knowledge about IT or the DNS system.

For non UK people MS Finny was involved in a dodgy cover up of mum and baby
deaths in the NHS.

FFS I would make a better C level exec for nominet I have worked for a
registry before.

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DanielBMarkham
E-gads, an article that is trying to convince me that adding a good person to
a totally screwed up system is a good move.

Some context the article overlooks. Number of CIOs in the federal government:
over 250. Number of agencies keeping private or sensitive data on citizens:
well over 200. Procedure to change policy on privacy or anonymity: byzantine
at best, impossible for most mortals. Who is actually in charge of privacy
policy: that's a good one. I'd go with Congress instead of some executive-
branch person, but you'd probably need participation of both _in each agency_
to make a difference.

Wong is probably a great person, and I congratulate her willingness to
sacrifice her time for the public good, but the problems we face are not due
to the lack of some special position or magic person coming into office. At
best, this is a fluff piece on Wong, which is fine. At worst, it's propaganda.
It eliminates important context and supports a narrative that's terribly
unrealistic. Farcical even.

~~~
dllthomas
I don't see why any of this makes it not a good move. I agree that the article
overstates things, and we should absolutely not lose sight of the larger
picture, but I have some hope she will make things better not worse.

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greenyoda
_" Beyond that, Weiss wouldn’t elaborate on what Wong will be doing."_

So here's someone who is appointed to a non-classified position in the
government and paid with taxpayer dollars, and the government isn't even going
to tell us what she'll be doing? As a taxpayer, I find that to be disturbing
and insulting. Let's have some of that much-touted transparency here.

~~~
LoganCale
There is no transparency except for carefully crafted releases that make the
administration look good.

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irickt
"Nicole Wong, dubbed by many as the US’s first chief privacy officer"

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mpyne
Note for those skipping the article, the 'important person' is not a Karl Rove
or Darth Cheney work-alike, you might in fact be pleasantly surprised.

~~~
WalterSear
"At best, it's a fluff peice, at worst, propaganda."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5966222](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5966222)

