President Joe Biden will nominate Georgetown University law professor and prominent privacy advocate Alvaro Bedoya to be a commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission, according to two people familiar with the plan.
Bedoya would be the independent agency’s third Democratic commissioner at a time of bipartisan antipathy toward Big Tech companies such as Facebook and Google because of their controversial data gathering practices and treatment of users’ privacy.
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The trade commission is one of the key agencies in charge of regulating the Big Tech companies when it comes to issues related to antitrust, data privacy, and security.
Bedoya, who founded the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown, has been at the forefront of research into how facial recognition technology and other surveillance tools have been used by the government and tech companies to discriminate against immigrants and people of color.
Bedoya previously worked as a staffer for Democratic Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota on the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on privacy, technology, and the law.
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If confirmed, Bedoya would strengthen the Democratic majority at the FTC by giving them a 3-2 advantage during commission votes. Current Democratic commissioner Rohit Chopra is expected to leave the agency in the coming months to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
