Sometimes the poacher turned gamekeeper system works. Probably won't in this case, but sometimes it does work.
Anyone else find it weird that the bloke tasked with probing tech giants for antitrust abuses used to, um, work for the same tech giants?
The man heading up any potentially US government antitrust probes into tech giants like Apple and Google used to work for... Apple and Google. In the revolving-door world that is Washington DC, that conflict may not seem like much but one person isn't having it: Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) this week sent Makan Delrahim a …
COMMENTS
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Thursday 13th June 2019 22:46 GMT Anonymous Coward
I'm shocked, shocked, that gambling is going on in this establishment!
You mean like when the person Obama appointed to investigate AT&T, used to work for AT&T?
Or the people Obama appointed to investigate the oil companies, all were former executives of oil companies?
Or the person Obama appointed to investigate...
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Friday 14th June 2019 09:31 GMT Kabukiwookie
Re: I'm shocked, shocked, that gambling is going on in this establishment!
I am shocked. Shocked I tell you!
The standard bearer of Freedom and Democracy(tm) ousted as a corrupt banana republic type oligarchy.
Do you mean that all this talk about fatcats regulating themselves doesn't work (at least not in the way as the publicly stated intention is concerned).
Who'd have thunk it?
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Friday 14th June 2019 07:32 GMT Anonymous Coward
"Sometimes the poacher turned gamekeeper system works"
Only when there's no longer any incentive to please his former masters, or to return to his old life.
Here we have people who could easily return to being lobbyists or lawyers, where they could even earn a lot more - legally - exploiting knowledge and networks built when they worked for the government. A big incentive.
It may be he's now disgusted of his old work - and decided to become an antitrust champion, but you'd need to know him very well personally to be sure of that. Good policies would require him to stay away from the investigation.
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Friday 14th June 2019 08:06 GMT Anonymous Coward
Correct. If he didn't have valid industry knowledge they would round rings around him and he would have some nice helpful point contact person assigned to assist him to help him navigate his way around a complex organization. The point contacts true purpose is to manipulate and steer him in whatever way the corporate desires.
AC because "point contact" was a job I was called on to do several times. It's actually a fun job because as well as manipulating the regulator you also end up manipulating the corporation because the regulator has to come up with "some" findings.
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Friday 14th June 2019 12:52 GMT Anonymous Coward
AC - again.
The golden rule it that you always answer the question and you never lie. With the exception of irrelevant detail, you also never voluntarily divulge anything not pertinent to the direction you want things to go. Fortunately no one ever asked me "what don't you want me to know", though my response would have been lots and lots of true but irrelevant detail.
I didn't deal with the Inland Revenue. A colleague of mine did as it was his speciality. He knew the tax regulations about 100 times better than any team HRMC ever assembled so everything was to the letter of the law. He just explained to them how little tax we were paying based on their myriad of rules and our corporate structure that was designed to follow all the rules whilst minimising tax liability. Every big multinational will have people like him.
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Friday 14th June 2019 15:54 GMT Stoneshop
David Boies was the lawyer
He was also on the wrong side of SCO vs. Novell (and IBM and a fair lot of the rest of the Linux arena).
The SCO lawyers went from repeatedly shooting their feet to machinegunning their knees with gay abandon after nothing substantial was left in the pedal department, and only lack of funds to buy ammunition stopped them from deploying their groin-pointing Gatling.
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Monday 17th June 2019 01:35 GMT Claverhouse
To be fair, Mr. Boies is a solid Democrat and Mr. Weinstein, who is certainly innocent until proved guilty --- and maybe even then, since trial verdicts don't ever establish the truth, but reflect what those in the court thought on the day --- remains one of the Democrats' golden boys, a massive donor, and a dear good friend to the Clintons.
Not that the two things are necessarily related, the Clintons no doubt have many poor lower-class friends; plus which he could always make Bill and Hillary laugh, regaling them with tales of Hollywood glamour.
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Friday 14th June 2019 14:03 GMT Bruce Ordway
poacher turned gamekeeper
Sadly, I don't think that there are many tigers who have really changed their stripes.
If someone really has "turned" I'd be grateful if they would work on my behalf.
I'm not aware of modern examples but.. I'm sure there are some around. Any names to share?
From US history, Franklin Roosevelt comes to my mind.
At least I was taught that his own social class felt betrayed by him.
Intimate knowledge their systems & practices resulted in his political effectiveness.
But....I'm sure not everyone was taught this same history.
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Thursday 13th June 2019 22:36 GMT Chris G
Re: Anyone surprised?
I'm not sure it matters who is in the Whitehouse, who is Prime minister, Chancellor ir whatever, modern politics and democracy go hand in hand with these kind of appointments. Look at the several individuals who have been working in British government and then gone on to work for the parties they previously worked with.
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Friday 14th June 2019 10:34 GMT A.P. Veening
Re: Anyone surprised?
Not a USian myself, but it seems like Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard are fairly ok.
Only in comparison with the rest of the more well known, but actually they are just a little less bad. Even so, probably the lesser evil is the least bad of the choices. The real solution begins with a complete replacement of Congress (all members) and mandatory retirement for members of SCOTUS at the age of 70.
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Friday 14th June 2019 14:25 GMT DJO
Re: Anyone surprised?
What would help is (fatally) severing the link between lobbyists and representatives. Allow them to speak in debates but they must abstain on any votes relating to any industry they've received payment from.
If they screw up once they have to pay as a fine of 2x the lobby fee, screw up again and 10x their fee and a lifetime ban on holding any public office.
Draconian? Yes but people who hold any public office should be held to a far higher standard than mere proles.
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Friday 14th June 2019 08:50 GMT naive
Re: Anyone surprised?
There is more to this.
Anyone knows the tech giants, who control what most people see and which news items they are presented with, are under full control of the leftist fifth column, poisoning the minds of so many with a constant stream of self defying non-sense.
The considerable economic power they possess, is abused it for political purposes, trying to fix the leftist defeat of 2016 in order to lay the red carpet for whomever will compete with president Trump in 2020.
This crusade only serves the purpose to cause that liberals stay in power to grant them the special tax exemptions they enjoy for decades.
President Trump better starts making some miles here, and don't let this get in the hands of Democrats, who have all the incentives to keep these monopolies in existence.
Until then we will have to live with the unprecedented censorship and digital book burning like it is 1938 by the likes of YouTube and others to "remove non leftist content " and introduce "authorized news media ", i.e. CNN and the George Soros funded Vox Media outlet.
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Friday 14th June 2019 14:20 GMT Paul 195
Re: Anyone surprised?
@naive
What a strangely appropriate moniker. The people running Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc probably see themselves as "liberals", but nobody could mistake them for "leftists". They are good old-fashioned capitalist monopolists. And Youtube and Facebook are by now well-known for basically showing people what they think they want to see. YouTube's unpleasant habit of showing more and more extreme material to viewers means that by now I would imagine your feed consists of flat earth videos, Klan rallies, and the occasional cute kitten.
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Friday 14th June 2019 15:38 GMT Kabukiwookie
Re: Anyone surprised?
Directors bragging about changing elections in Central America.
Is that why most democratically elected governments have been overthrown by right-wing nuts then?
Oppressively leftist.
Leftist usually means something different is the US. For European standards the Dem party is quite far to the right.
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Friday 14th June 2019 15:20 GMT DJO
Re: Anyone surprised?
Wibble....
"leftist defeat of 2016"
A: There are no "left" wing parties in America, the Democrats are what the rest of the world would call "Right Wing", the Republicans are what the rest of the world would call "Insane".
B: If you mean the Republican "victory" in '16, you do know the Republicans have not won the popular vote for over 40 years, they only get power due to the anti-democratic (in all senses of the phrase) Electoral College.
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Friday 14th June 2019 10:11 GMT jmch
Re: Anyone surprised?
"Typical Trump Whitehouse. The rich get richer, and the rest of us get shit on"
I'm far from being a Trump fan, quite the opposite in fact. But "The rich get richer, and the rest of us get shit on" is pretty much baked into modern democracy / capitalism. It isn't limited to Trump, nor to just the Republicans, or even just the USA.
The Reagan / Thatcher years, while necessary to break an excessively socialist model (especially in UK), pushed things too far the other way, and they've only been accelerating that way ever since.
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Friday 14th June 2019 16:42 GMT Stoneshop
Re: Anyone surprised?
I think anybody who wants to be Prez or PM should automatically be removed from the race.
The major problem - one of the major problems, for there are several - one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well known fact, that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.
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Thursday 13th June 2019 22:17 GMT adnim
He knows ya know,
he knows ya know, he knows ya know,
He's got experience, he's got experience, he knows, you know
But he's got problems, problems, problems
Light switch, deciet forever, crawling from a corp to corp
Singing psychedelic praises for the good that the lies has wrought
You've got venom in your stomach, from all the lies you're fed
You shouldn't have listened to the Jobs at the confession
When he offered to give you head
He knows, you know, he knows, you know
H e knows, you know, but he's got problems
Fast geed, corporate fever, swarming through a fractured mind
Chilling truths they freeze emotion, it's best to keep them blind
You've got Google in you stomach, you've got Apple in your head
When your conscience whispered, the vein lines stiffened
You walked off with the bread
He knows, you know, he knows, you know, he knows, you know
He's got experience, he's got experience, he knows, you know
But he's got problems, problems, problems
etc.
A good choice for the position maybe? Depends how easy he can be manipulated or his honesty buried.
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Friday 14th June 2019 16:32 GMT DCFusor
Came here to say the same thing. I wasn't a fan of the guy who appointed him, and as I recall most of the denizens of tech boards and commentators were scared to death of what he might do.
But then he turned out a hero.
Exception that proved the rule? I don't have a clue about that or this new guy. I'd just say that there isn't 100% correlation between the revolving door and corruption.
Sometimes people have a change of heart and so on - and it's EXTREMELY valuable to have such a person now in charge of regulating those who they used to work for - especially if they know what skeletons are on those closets.
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Friday 14th June 2019 00:19 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: The fix is in
Depends. Despite the snarky tone of the article and my utter lack of knowledge about who this guy is, the evidence for him to recuse himself appears to be that he got well paid for some lobbying work over 12 years ago. It all depends on how he really feels now and what relevant contacts he has retained since then.
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Friday 14th June 2019 10:07 GMT sabroni
Re: The fix is in
It's got nothing to do with how he feels or acts. The law states he should recuse himself if a reasonable person might have suspicion of a conflict of interest.
You could argue that everyone who is suspicous in unreasonable, but that's still nothing to do with him or what he feels.
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Friday 14th June 2019 06:36 GMT T. F. M. Reader
Cooler heads called for
There may be a reason for the gentleman to recuse himself from investigating Google and Apple. I wrote "may" because I think it is customary to take into consideration whether or not there actually is a conflict of interest. For instance, he worked for Apple and Google in 2006-2007. It's 2019 now, last time I checked. That's quite a "cooling period". Nevertheless, I completely agree that the question should be raised, and quite possibly he would do well to announce that he won't take any active part in investigating Google and Apple even if just to keep the appearance of propriety.
Having said that, I have clicked on the link and read the speech he made in Israel, and I don't see anything improper there. It is hardly a "blueprint of attack" as The Reg alleges. It is very general and discusses some historical cases. I saw nothing there that would cause me to think, "Oh, hell, now Google and Apple will be much better prepared - there was no way they would be aware of this were it not for this speech!"
On top of that, the whole premise that an antitrust investigation is a kind of military campaign where the D-Day plans must be kept absolutely secret from the enemy is, I believe, false. We are talking about a government department enforcing the law and official regulations. It is incumbent on the government to make the regulations and the associated criteria as clear and transparent and widely known as possible. So I would actually expect the government to tell the public - and any company that is a potential target of a regulatory check - what is going to happen. Keeping that information vague or under a veil in order to increase the chances that an investigation would find something is no way to govern. Among other things, it is also a conflict of interest, given that the people running such an investigation stand to get a lot of positive publicity if they are actually seen as successful guardians of public interest against evil corporations that are not supposed to do evil.
So I found the rather sarcastic "No, he won't do that" tone of the article quite unwarranted, even as the point about the Assistant AG recusing himself is valid.
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Friday 14th June 2019 13:34 GMT JohnFen
Re: Cooler heads called for
"I think it is customary to take into consideration whether or not there actually is a conflict of interest."
No, the customary (and required) line is if there is an appearance of a conflict of interest. Whether there actually is or not isn't the important bit.
This is because it's important to the public to be able to have some measure of trust.
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Friday 14th June 2019 20:06 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: appearance of *potential* conflict of interest
"the customary (and required) line is if there is an appearance of a conflict of interest. Whether there actually is or not isn't the important bit."
There are well known UK companies wishing to do big corporate business in (or in relation to) the US. Some of them have been required to atone for their prior sins by forcing their workers to take and pass US-originated "ethics training".
I've been through this process now with three different UK companies, I think the phrase used in the usual training is more like
"if there is an appearance of a *potential* conflict of interest".
Further reading:
https://www.oge.gov/web/OGE.nsf/Resources/Analyzing+Potential+Conflicts+of+Interest
http://www.ala.org/tools/ethics/conflictsofinterestqa
I.e. not only must the people be squeaky clean, they must do their best to keep away from things which may be misnterpreted as not quite in line with US policy.
Now obviously rules like this are only for the little people, same as taxes are only for the little people.
https://www.navexglobal.com/en-gb/products/training/
When's Guy Fawkes day this year in the UK?
Is there a US equivalent?
France has one quite soon doesn't it?
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Friday 14th June 2019 18:15 GMT scepticat
Re: Cooler heads called for
Funny, that's exactly the way the FDA works! They create vacuously verbose regulations, wait for you to submit how you will comply with those regulations, and then tell you what is not in compliance. They will not, however, tell you how to be in compliance. After all, that's what former FDA inspectors turned consultants are for.
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Friday 14th June 2019 07:14 GMT Michael H.F. Wilkinson
I am sure everything is perfectly above board
After all, the powers that be would never put anyone incompetent or corrupt in such an important position, would they?
Yes, thank you nurse, I have had my medication this morning, and am feeling totally calm and reasonable, so I don't think I will need my special coat with the extra long sleeves today
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Friday 14th June 2019 07:59 GMT Roland6
"You reported an estimated $100,000 in income from Google in 2007"
Given what it is claimed he was doing and his status in the US political arena, this doesn't seem very much. The lack of information and phrasing of the attack seems to imply that earnings from Google in other years was significantly lower or non-existent.
So this does seem like a continuation of the modern obsession with digging over politicians pasts and making a mountain range out of a single mole hill...
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Friday 14th June 2019 10:10 GMT TheSmokingArgus
STATE Supremacists Salivating at Thought of Re-Consolidation of Media
This is of course how the Corporatist Regulatory STATE functions. The entire deplatforming/censorship crisis proven to be being waged by old-media FCC licensed dinosaurs such as Comcast through their new-media proxy shill Vox or NBC's Axios against unlicensed, individual content creators is precisely designed to result in the creation of a new federal "Internet Speech Equity Bureau" or similar thereto.
Precisely a textbook example of the Hegelian Dialectic.
Thus once passed you can guarantee Zuckerberg, Schmidt, Dorsey et al, or their lawyers/lobbyists will receive appointments to the new STATE Supremacist bureaucracy.
Thereafter, you will see a bevy of regulations similar to the ruse of GDPR, "Adult Content Identity verification" and pre-filtering copyright capital equipment outlays, which then raises barriers to entry as only the old-media hacks have the phony monopoly fiat to endure such an expenditure.
Thus if you think consolidation to six mega-corporations being in control of 95% plus of everything read, seen, or heard is due to anything other than the licensure schemes from last century, then you are not well-read unto history.
Marx spelled it out pretty clearly the path authoritarians seek to control communication:
Plank 6.) Centralization of the means of communication and transportation in the hands of the state. - Communist Manifesto 1848
So downvote away Marxists, the Remnant see your spots leopard, we are more than happy to willfully nullify any & all attempts at packaging up the internet to hand back over to the oligarchs. And well we don't plan on surrendering either Free Speech or Private Firearms to bitter unable to compete, failed post-modernists.
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Friday 14th June 2019 12:46 GMT disgruntled yank
well,
FDR appointed Joseph Kennedy as head of the SEC, apparently on the assumption that Kennedy knew exactly how the underhanded stuff got done. But on the other hand, Kennedy had his own sources of income, and wasn't going to go off and work for J.P. Morgan. (Work with him, perhaps, but not work for him.)
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Friday 14th June 2019 18:54 GMT Mark 85
Take the king's shilling, do the king's bidding.
It does apply and not just here in this instance. Pai comes to mind as he's much in the El Reg news. Every member of Congress and most state legislators. They all take the shillings in the form of "campaign contributions". This has been going on for a long time even back to the early days of this country.
For those not believing, go back and read history about such things as the bribes paid to the Secretary of the Army by suppliers of crap supplies, tainted food, etc. It was going on even during the Revolution. Yes, corrupt CongressCritters were available to the highest bidders back then.