Facebook has pick up another government official — this prison term a legal adviser to Donald Trump ’s State Department who once helped craft the much - malignedPatriot Act — to beef up its squad , Bloomberg reportedon Monday .
harmonize to that report , Facebook ’s new general counselling Jennifer Newstead has work at the State Department since 2017 , when she came from legal philosophy firm Davis , Polk & Wardwell LLP . She ’s also held other persona “ at the Department of Justice , Office of Management and Budget , and the White House ” at various points of her career , Bloomberg write , while her bio also makes mention of a Erolia minutilla as a law shop assistant for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer .
“ I ’m excited to be unite Facebook at an of import time and work with such a rattling team , ” Newstead enunciate in aFacebook imperativeness liberation . “ Facebook ’s products play an important role in societies around the earth . I am looking forward to work out with the squad and outside experts and governor on a scope of legal issues as we seek to uphold our responsibilities and share values . ”
accord to Politico , Newstead will “ likely represent the company in Washington as her predecessor has repeatedly done . ” But the hire of a State Department functionary also reflect that Facebook has increasingly come under fire oversea , where it and its subsidiaries like WhatsApp have on a regular basis been accused of enabling provocation and fierceness . ( Riots inIndiaandSri Lanka , as well as agenocide in Myanmar , have all been link to the spread of misinformation and propaganda on Facebook and/or its properties , as have election interference efforts inmultiple countriesincluding the U.S. )
As theVerge noted , Newstead ’s role as chief lawyer will also see her oversee the company ’s treatment of “ interior security letters ” ( NSLs ) , informal intelligence information government agency asking for information without specific court authorization . The Patriot Act act greatly increased the number of NSLs that are filed . She will also manage the handling of ten-spot of thousands of other request for Facebook information from law enforcement :
Facebook is still actively carry on with these data requirement , which have only step up since NSA collection natural action became public . Facebook received more than 32,000 requests for datum from US law enforcementin the second half of 2018 , and content from more than 20,000 accounts was requested by the FISA court of law over the same period . Little is get laid about the particular of those requests , which are often subject to strict muzzle orders .
As one of the authors of the Patriot Act — George W. Bush governance lawyer John Yoodescribed her in a 2006 bookas the “ day - to - Clarence Day manager of the Patriot Act in Congress , ” according to BuzzFeed News — Newstead may be more tractable to governance requests for substance abuser data .
Facebook ’s novel principal lawyer will presumably also come in in handy if push come up to shove and legislators in DC in reality start pushing proposal to regulate large internet platform . That ’s become a hot - push button issue amid the company ’s on the face of it never - ending stream of privacy scandals and accusations ofmonopolistic behavior , to the detail where CEO Mark Zuckerberg haspublicly made suggestionsabout what those regulationsshould front likeand Silicon Valley firms include Facebook haveamped up their lobbying efforts .
The Verge also note Newstead will “ work closely with Joel Kaplan , Facebook ’s headspring of global policy . ” Kaplan , another former George W. Bush administration alumnus , has pop up in the news with such fun items asthrowing a partyfor latterly confirmed Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh ( while allegation the nominee had committed sexual assault remained at the top of the national news show cycle ) . Kaplan was also the focus of aWall Street Journal profilelast year that claimed his influence at the company was grow , and he regularly used it to guide decisiveness - making in directions favourable to conservatives .
[ Bloomberg ]
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