Senate Confirms Alvaro Bedoya to FTC

The U.S. Senate has confirmed Professor Alvaro Bedoya to the Federal Trade Commission. President Biden nominated Bedoya, the founding director of the Georgetown Center on Privacy & Technology, to serve as member of the FTC last year. EPIC and coalition of organizations called for Bedoya to be confirmed in November. As a legal scholar and advocate, Bedoya has exposed the harms and biases of facial recognition technology and argued for legislation that would prevent predatory and discriminatory targeting of online ads. Bedoya is the author of Privacy as a Civil Right, in which he details how “the burdens of government surveillance have fallen overwhelmingly on the shoulders of immigrants, heretics, people of color, the poor, and anyone else considered ‘other’” and argues that privacy must be understood as a “shield that allows the unpopular and persecuted to survive and thrive.” Bedoya previously served as Chief Counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law. Bedoya’s confirmation restores the FTC to a full complement of five commissioners.