Facebook Makes Privacy Policy Hires Amid Calls for Regulation, Messaging Merger Plans
Facebook hired new privacy policy professionals—and critics of the company—from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Open Tech Institute. The hirings come after a year of Facebook privacy scandals and calls for regulation.
January 29, 2019 at 08:10 PM
3 minute read
After a year of data breaches and scandals, Facebook has hired two new privacy policy managers.
Nate Cardozo, a longtime senior information security counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Robyn Greene, senior policy counsel at the Open Tech Institute, separately announced they would soon join Facebook as privacy policy managers.
Cardozo will be the privacy policy manager for WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook. An early stage proposal to merge Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram's messengers was reported this week by The New York Times. WhatsApp messages are currently encrypted by default.
“I'm really excited to be joining the team,” Cardozo told Corporate Counsel.
He's worked at Electronic Frontier Foundation for six and a half years, joining in 2012 as a staff attorney, according to his LinkedIn profile. Cardozo also spent a year as an EFF open government legal fellow, in between associate roles at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman and Drinker Biddle & Reath.
His first day at Facebook will be Feb. 19.
“If you know me at all, you'll know this isn't a move I'd make lightly,” Cardozo wrote in a Facebook post Tuesday. “After the privacy beating Facebook's taken over the last year, I was skeptical too. But the privacy team I'll be joining knows me well, and knows exactly how I feel about tech policy, privacy, and encrypted messaging. And that's who they want at managing privacy at WhatsApp. I couldn't pass up that opportunity.”
Greene joins Facebook after four and a half years at Open Tech Institute. Prior to that position, she worked as a legislative assistant for the American Civil Liberties Union. She holds a J.D. from Hofstra University, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Greene posted Tuesday about her new role on Twitter.
“I'm thrilled to share that next week I'll join @facebook's incredible team as a privacy policy manager on law enforcement access and data protection issues!” Greene tweeted.
Both she and Cardozo have criticized Menlo Park, California-based Facebook before. In 2015, Cardozo wrote an op-ed in The Mercury News against Facebook's copious data tracking. The Information reports Greene called on Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg to testify in front of Congress before he did so last year.
Facebook has faced scrutiny from a number of legislative bodies in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the proliferation of fake news and hate speech on the platform, contributing to election interference and a genocide in Myanmar. Last year, the company reported a data breach impacting around 30 million users, leading to an ongoing investigation by the Irish Data Protection Commission.
The company did not respond to immediate request for comment.
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