Biden's FTC Chair SHAKING After Jim Jordan Details Her Threats Against Witness

Fields The Butt President Admits to Himself Madam President, why are you harassing Twitter? Congressman, thanks for the question, as you know, the FTC's work on Twitter goes back a decade, back in 2009. I'm not talking about a decade, I'm talking about now. 12 demand letters in 10 weeks 300 over 350 separate requests you demanded from Twitter why are you harassing them? Twitter has a history of lacking security and privacy policies. The PR you have requested for every Elon-related communication should not be communicated. sent to someone or some communications, Reed, but every time he mentions that it actually seems more than harassment, it seems almost an obsession, why the F, why, why such an intense focus?

Then, the congressman again discovered that Twitter's lack of privacy policies allowed unauthorized people. users to cooperative Twitter accounts, including that of Fox News, Twitter subsequently voluntarily entered into a consent order with the FTC UNC Madam Speaker. This is what she wrote in December. Identify all journalists and other members of the media to whom Twitter has granted access since Musk's purchase. The company wants to know the name of every journalist a private company has spoken to. I think that's consistent with the First Amendment congressman. As a former journalist, I take the valuable work they do very seriously and I understand that there may be cases where that the government's action is unfair, Madam President, if I could, if I could intervene, especially in the context here, I want to say that it is bad enough that the government asks a private company who are the journalists they are speaking to, name to four of them and say what we want. the other names of any journalist you may or may actually be communicating with is bad enough and I think it is a threat to First Amendment freedom of the press, but in the context of giving us information about how the government had suppressed speech in these platforms, that is the context. what you're asking for, I think that's particularly troubling, don't you, Congressman?

The consent decree that we have prohibits Twitter from sharing personal information with third parties when we read in the newspapers, like everyone else, that Twitter may have granted access to third parties, that's what Our teams were looking for information again about this is a company whose story with the

chair

woman of the FTC, ma'am, we have limited time, ma'am, madam

chair

, who is, uh, David Rog, could you repeat that? Congressman David Rog, r o qu, who is David Rog, I'm not familiar with him. who removed him last month, June 21, 2023, David Rook is the independent partner for Eron Young's independent evaluation of the Twitter program that is part of this consent decree, do you know what Mr.

Rog said in that statement? I don't know, okay, let me read it. so, because I think it is very important that Mr. Rog testify again in front of his attorneys, you removed him and testified that the FTC's conduct made you feel as if the FTC was trying to influence the outcome of the compromise before it began , said in some of the discussions we were having with the Federal Trade Commission expectations were conveyed about what those results should be before we had even begun any proceedings, so they are the independent evaluator in this consent decree that the FTC has with Twitter and you're telling the guy who the person is he's the guy he's Joe the accountant who's going to get this information you're telling him you're putting your finger on this scale telling him what you want the result to be and it's supposed to he is the independent FactFinder Why are you doing that, Congressman?

I'm not familiar with them because I just introduced them today, but we are. This was presented in court today and this is his statement. I'll be happy to see you closer and get back in touch. You say it's a general matter, we want to make sure that the assessors and auditors responsible for monitoring compliance are doing their job, you say Mr. Roes said what he testified here, what was presented in court today, that there were suggestions of what they would expect from the It turns out that they being the FTC there were suggestions of what they wanted him to look for in their independent assessment of the degree of consent uh uh agreement between the FTC and Twitter again.

I'm happy to take a closer look and we can return. contact you about that allegation, but our staff are consummate professionals. When they conduct these investigations, they focus on determining was it after, was it after, is it his attack on Twitter? The harassment on Twitter is based on the fact that all kinds of Democrats have asked you to do this and, frankly, some of the things you've written about how to deal with misinformation, quote-unquote, have something to do with that. Lady Congresswoman, we only make independent determinations about whether there were violations of the law, um the president's statement nler the statements in the letter the press release in the Seven Democratic Centers letter that had no impact on that's not why you're doing it not at all, we looked very closely at the specific issue at hand again 12 demand letters in 10 weeks telling the independent evaluator hey, put your finger on the scale, these are the results we want, that's not harassment and had nothing to do with the fact that every Democrat in this town seemed to tell you to go after Twitter.

Our focus is to protect people's privacy and security. Twitter has sensitive data on 150 million Americans, including private messages, we need to make sure, especially given its history dating back to 2010, we are doing everything we can to make sure Twitter complies with the order, okay, don't put your finger on it. balance and don't attack the first amendment on journalists' rights, gentlemen, thank you to the gentleman for deferring to Ms. KH earlier and I think the gentleman from Arizona mentioned this. He said people's privacy is paramount. I couldn't agree more and as we talked about before, I think there is bipartisan support for dealing with this data collection that's going on and what's even scarier is the FBI buying that data. of utmost importance, but I would say that the first amendment is also of utmost importance, do you absolutely agree?

And then the gentleman from California, Mr. Mento, asked you what misinformation is and you said you don't really have an opinion on it. That's the fair assessment of your answer. As part of our work at the FTC, we focus on deception and fraud and that sort of thing, well, you wrote a couple of years ago in a law review article about digital companies like Twitter. discredit its users by facilitating the spread of disinformation what were you talking about there? So what is misinformation? and scams can sometimes proliferate on these social media websites. We have launched an investigation to try to understand why some of these crypto scams are actually proliferating on these sites and what we can do.

These are the first two sentences of the introduction. from the article you wrote again just a couple of years ago digital companies like Twitter disparaged their users by facilitating the spread of disinformation who decides what is disinformation from the FTC's perspective it's deception, deception and fraud, that's fine, you can continue using synonyms, but I want to know who decides what is hoax who decides what is fraud who decides what is disinformation in this case he is talking about social media companies and what is published on their platforms who decides what is disinformation what is so congressman again At the FTC we are focused on fraud and deception, there is a legal standard for what constitutes fraud.

It's about this again, but you didn't say fraud or deception, you said misinformation and my concern is that my concern is again and probably the third time I've spoken about this, but the sustained attack on Twitter when the ownership there changed on the platform was compromised. to not remove speech, not to remove posts that would allow sharing of information, uh, and not to censor information, and we just received an important decision last week from a court in the Louisiana Federal Court in Louisiana, where they said that the government was in fact putting pressure on big tech companies to censor and big tech companies were willing to go along with it.

Now we have a change there and we are going after the only company that has changed the way they do things. Which worries me especially in light of the fact that you just wrote about this a few years ago saying this is what happens, Congressman. I'm glad to have the opportunity to clarify some issues here, so we at the FTC have no opinion on who. should you own a business or not all we care about is that the business complies with the law that's really our approach we've covered that ground I want to know I want to know about disinformation and who decides what is disinformation do you think the government should decide that the congressman, in my view, are the concentrations of economic power, including the platforms of expression and the platforms of communication, which is that concentrated power and the ability to choose who is heard and who is not to make these types of decisions what I think is This is concerning for all of us and the FTC's job is to promote.

Do you know what kind of speech was being censored? Do you know what the Court said last week? What type have you read the opinion? you know what kind of speech was being censored you know what the court said conservative speech conservative speech what was all that suppression practically every conservative this is not Jim Jordan speaking this is not the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee speaking this is the federal judge who had the facts , 86 pages of facts and laid them out, put the facts and the law together in this opinion, a strong opinion that said it was conservative speech that was being censored and labeled has misinformation, so Congressman, I completely understand why given the extreme concentration of power over some of these speech platforms why would people be afraid and worried about censorship.

I couldn't agree more that when you have a handful of people making decisions about what is seen, what is not seen, what is seen, what you think. The remedy for this is for the government to decide what is disinformation and what is not. FTC congressman, our job is to promote competition. More competition means more people making these decisions, and I think that may alleviate some of the concerns about censorship that you share. The gentlemen's time has expired, President. I Rec gentem of Florida is recognized for how timely you are, a brilliant woman with a tremendous ability to impact the way consumers are going to interact with the digital world for a long time and I want to reach those areas. okay, but there's something ugly we have to deal with now, y'all, putting the names of reporters in a correspondence to Twitter was based solely on anonymous news sources, right, it was based on reporting that right and we would agree that anonymous reporting is not a sufficient predicate to target, you know, send letters about journalists who are your critics, right, Congressman?

Yeah, I mean, you know the target was third parties, but this is a good answer for us, we want to make sure that we don't do it in any way. suggesting that we are interested in you knowing that affecting the work of journalists is really a matter of privacy and security, so I really appreciate you recognizing that that is not the way we should do things, since you know someone who has seen ugly government actions emerge from anonymous reporting maybe I'm a little sensitive to that but I'm glad you made that acknowledgment let's move on to the important work you're doing millions of Americans have doorbell cameras and your agency recently said that He published them recently. um to uh a correspondence saying a quote over a three-month period in 2017, a Ring employee watched thousands of videos of female users in their bedrooms and bathrooms, including videos from Ring employees themselves.

According to the FTC, there was also an unauthorized tunnel in Ring that allowed a Ukraine-based contractor to access consumer videos. An incident in which a Ring employee gave information about a client to his ex-husband was also something you discovered. It also claims that bad actors at Ring took advantage of the camera's two-way communication functionality to harass and threaten people using Ring cameras. There was a case where an 87-year-old woman at an assisted living facility was propositioned for sex. through Ring's two two-way functions. The children were subjected to racial slurs. A hacker broke in and threatened a family with. physical damage if they didn't pay a Bitcoin ransom and a hacker even communicated via the two-way feature to a client that they had already killed the client's mother and quote tonight you die, what's happening in the ring, so, As you noted, we recently tooklaw enforcement actions precisely because of these very serious data privacy failures that endangered Americans in their daily lives.

Overall you know looking at some of these surveillance devices and how they can be misused and abused is a major area of ​​focus for us because people's privacy is paramount yeah I thought when people were getting the ring it was to improve his personal security, so that his 87 year old relative in an Alf wouldn't proposition his children sexually so they would insult them and then tell them they were They will kill them if they don't pay the Bitcoin ransom, so thanks for that effort, let's go to another evil company. Coava Coava is one of those data brokers that searches, that's right, and the American people should do it.

I know that Kochava Geo locates where people go to church and then they sell that data to commercial companies, right, that's really creepy, No? I think most people would have that reaction. Yes, yesterday I spoke to the director of the FBI about his creepy body. activity and now we have coava literally selling to people oh well, this is a baptist, this is a method, this is someone who goes to the temple, are you going to catch these people and stop them? So we have a pending lawsuit, we filed it last year. the court dismissed it, they gave us the opportunity to refile, we just refiled an amended complaint and we think it is urgent to hack here because you know the types of stigmatization and harm that can come from being able to track and sell sensitive geolocation information of people.

It's just critical that we be taken care of, we didn't like it when the FBI wanted to infiltrate Catholic churches and I don't know if I want data brokers to do the same and by the way, we've even seen how the FBI is using data brokers to take down the Fourth Amendment, so I really want to encourage your work in this space and I hope that your litigation against Kochava is something that you think is worth it and you know what if there has been criticism? of some of your losses in court, but we, as sophisticated lawyers, sometimes know that a motion to dismiss an initial complaint can create a path to an amended complaint to achieve relief and, therefore, if the laws are insufficient to stop data brokers from selling information about where voters worship and if the laws are insufficient to stop these activities, I really hope they work with us to change those laws and all of M Mr Bucks' points are really central to this because if the Congress is bought if people simply come here to beat you up for the email account you use or the trip you took to Europe.

I think they miss these things that are much more important to the lives our constituents lead. Thank you for your work, Congressman when I had It is an honor to work for this committee. I fulfilled all the document requests that the HR people requested, including documentation about the fact that when I checked your registration status this morning I learned that you are not up to date with the new New York Bar. is listed as delinquent, which means he has not filed his banal records and means he has not been paying his bar fees to complete his continuing legal education and maintain his La license.

Recognize the gentle lady from Wyoming like other federal agencies the FTC has a designated agency ethics officer known as Deo on April 18, 2023 you testified before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce in the hearing chair Rogers asks if there are cases where you have not followed the deo's advice, end the quote, you responded no and you went on to say that you have consulted with deo and taken steps that are consistent with the legal statements that Deo has ended the appointment on June 16, 20123 a Bloomberg reporter published a leaked memo written by Deo from the FTC analyzing Cher's ability to sit as a judge in the FTC's review of the meta acquisition by M of a company convened in accordance with ethics memoranda that recommended Deo's appointment you refused to avoid an appearance of concern about bias in accordance with federal ethics regulations do you believe he was completely honest and contacted Congress when he asked if there was, quote, any case where he had not followed the deo's advice and he answered no, yes or no, yes.

Congressman, okay, in the letter she sent to this committee yesterday afternoon she stated that she had only received oral advice from the Deo, but I never saw the memo leak until you decided not to recuse yourself first. It's amazing to me that you haven't asked for written ethics advice on this particular topic. admits that he has written. has received. has written ethics advice. on other issues, but on this issue you claim that you did not see the written memo, instead you want us to believe that you only received oral advice and not specific oral advice, but just general advice on listing, understanding the legal framework, the end of the date, did Deo give you advice? that's different and what was written in the memos thanks for the question congressman so my work before joining the commission was focused on assessing the power of big tech.

I need you to answer the question I asked. Did you receive oral advice different from what was written in Deo's memos? Very simple question, so I consulted with the ethics officer, as stated in the memo you cited, although I did not receive that memo. He pointed out that the final framework for cases where someone has no financial conflicts of interest, did he give him oral personal advice than what was in the written memos? Legal framework for the employee to determine for himself whether or not he should recuse himself. That was, did he give you different advice than you had? was it orally than what was in the written memos yes or no Congressman as noted in the written memos there was no ethical violation created by my participation in you did not follow the advice of of could you have recused yourself at any time?

No? I followed the determination that there were no ethics. Could you have recused yourself at any time? Couldn't you? There was no violation under the ethics laws because I don't have a penny in financial stocks or a penny and the financial interest gave you the advice to recuse yourself and you didn't do it properly, congressman, as noted in the memo, as I noted in the I'm going to move on since you are not willing to answer my question, um, I read your four page letter which was nothing but an affront. to their obligations of honesty, integrity and candor before this TR court that every public servant should and would like to refer to part 2635 of the code of federal regulations that describes their standards of ethics.

I want to point out that the ethics standards are actually higher than an Ed. by lawyers, which brings me to my next point: do you expect FTC lawyers to follow federal ethics rules? Of course, everyone in the Federal Court. Do you expect FTC lawyers to be active and in good standing members of a US state bar association? If they are practicing as lawyers, they must be up to date with the relevant bar rules. I understand that you were admitted to the New York Bar on July 16, 2020, but in 2019 and 2020, according to your Senate questionnaire, you sat for Counsel.

To Democrats on this same committee, you use this title but are not licensed to practice law. counsel is a term reserved for attorneys, licensed attorneys, and in Wyoming, a person who is somehow deemed competent to practice law without a license to do so. is guilty of unauthorized practice of law. I believe the law in the district of Colombia where you stayed away is similar. Do you think it is appropriate for non-lawyers to claim the title of councilor? Congressman when I had the honor of working. For this committee I fulfilled all the document requests that the HR people requested, including documentation of the fact that I verified their registration status this morning.

I found out that you are not in good standing with the New York Bar. Your license is listed as delinquent, which means. you have not submitted your banal records and it means you have not been paying your attorney fees to complete your continuing legal education and maintain your L license. I believe it is shown on the screen, it also means you are subject to referral for disciplinary action I believe this situation is surprising and a reflection on its ethics with that I give in