Updated: Lina Khan Named Chair of Federal Trade Commission

Lina Khan was confirmed to the Federal Trade Commission by the U.S. Senate and named chair of the Commission by President Biden today. Khan received bipartisan support, with senators voting 69-28 in support of her confirmation. Khan is an expert on antitrust enforcement and served as counsel to House Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman David Cicilline during the Subcommittee's groundbreaking investigation last year. She has written extensively on the problems of concentrated power in the context of digital markets and said during her confirmation hearing that "I worry that some of these companies may think it's just worth the cost of business to actually violate privacy law." EPIC has long argued that the FTC is not doing its job to protect privacy and that the U.S. needs a Data Protection Agency. "Commissioner Khan has a tremendous opportunity as Chair to transform the FTC at a moment where anticompetitive and invasive business practices have proliferated," said Alan Butler, Executive Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). "Large tech companies have increasingly infiltrated our lives to the most minute level, and it will take a keen and aggressive regulator to ensure that these powerful entities don't monopolize our markets and our data."