Biden Pushes Soros-Linked Far Left Radical Alvaro Bedoya for FTC Commissioner

Biden's nominee for the FTC, Alvaro Bedoya
Internet Education Foundation/Flickr
Allum Bokhari

The Biden administration has selected a George Soros-linked radical, Georgetown Law professor Alvaro Bedoya, as its pick for FTC commissioner. Bedoya is backed by far-left foundations, and is a Russiagate conspiracy theorist who once suggested that Breitbart News was “blocking” a counterintelligence operation into Trump’s non-existent ties to the Russian government.

Bedoya, who will go up before the Senate Commerce Committee next week to face questions about his nomination, is the founding director of the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law.

GLASGOW, SCOTLAND - NOVEMBER 02: U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during the World Leaders' Summit "Accelerating Clean Technology Innovation and Deployment" session on day three of COP26 on November 02, 2021 in Glasgow, Scotland. It is the 26th "Conference of the Parties" and represents a gathering of all the countries signed on to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Climate Agreement. The aim of this year's conference is to commit countries to net zero carbon emissions by 2050. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

GLASGOW, SCOTLAND – NOVEMBER 02: U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during the World Leaders’ Summit “Accelerating Clean Technology Innovation and Deployment” session on day three of COP26 on November 02, 2021 in Glasgow, Scotland. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

The Center’s financial backers include a string of familiar left-wing and partisan progressive institutions: George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Media Democracy Fund, famous for pushing the “Net Neutrality” propaganda campaign during the Obama administration.

The Center also received more than $1.5 million from Luminate, one of the funding arms of PayPal founder Pierre Omidyar, who has done more than perhaps any other left-wing billionaire to push internet censorship.

In addition to funding the pro-censorship Facebook “whistleblower,” Frances Haugen, Omidyar has poured at least $100 million into efforts to fight so-called “hate speech” and “disinformation” on the internet — efforts that almost always result in conservatives and Republicans being kicked off online platforms.

Bedoya is no less partisan than his backers. He is a “Russiagate” conspiracy theorist, repeating Democrat insinuations that the Russian government had compromising information about Donald Trump. He also suggested that Breitbart News was somehow blocking a “legitimate counterintelligence inquiry” into Trump’s non-existent ties to Russia.

The law professor has also praised Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), one of the most left-wing Democrats in the House, calling her the “future of progressive politics.”

AOC

AOC (Getty Images/Alex Wong)

Many users of online platforms are concerned about privacy, Bedoya’s supposed area of expertise. But Bedoya’s privacy concerns are focused on a particular target — the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE).

Bedoya has made his intentions to hobble the powers of ICE very clear, and is particularly concerned that new technological tools might help them enforce U.S. immigration laws more effectively.

Condemning ICE as an “out-of-control domestic surveillance agency,” Bedoya also attacked the Maryland Police department for working with the agency.

During his time as director, Bodeya used the resources of the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown to make ICE’s work more difficult, subpoenaing the agency for its use of digital tools to track down people who had broken U.S. immigration laws.

Via the Associated Press:

Civil rights activists complained Monday of the potential for widespread abuse following confirmation that at least three states have scanned millions of driver’s license photos on behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement without the drivers’ knowledge or consent. Public records obtained by the Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology provided the first proof that ICE had sought such scans, which were conducted in Utah, Vermont and Washington. … “States asked undocumented people to come out of the shadows to get licenses. Then ICE turns around and uses that to find them,” Alvaro Bedoya, the center’s director, said Monday.

In a discussion with far-left activists including a representative from Color of Change, an organization that has campaigned for credit card companies to cut off service to conservatives, Bodeya worried that online surveillance meant that “undocumented” people would no longer be able to “stay in this country.”

Via Open Mic:

“Surveillance isn’t a question of cookies on browsers. It’s a question of life or death. It’s a question of, can you explore your sexuality in peace and without other people looking over your shoulder. It’s a question of whether you can stay in this country if you’re undocumented.”

At a time when the Biden administration, Democrats, and the media are waging a relentless campaign against Facebook and other tech platforms, urging them to censor even more dissident opinions, Bodeya has publicly expressed glee at the prospect of wielding greater regulatory powers for the FTC.

“[W]e *definitely* need to give the @FTC more money — and more authority — to police our tech sector,” said Bodeya on Twitter. “Whenever you hear about the FTC consent decree against Facebook, remember that it was a small group of people that made that happen. Let’s… make it bigger?”

If the Senate confirms him, Bodeya will get the authority he desires. Tucked away in the Reconciliation Bill is a giant new handful of taxpayer cash for the FTC, and for the very area that Bodeya has established himself in — privacy.

On page 671 of the bill is a provision that allocates a massive $500 million to create a new FTC privacy bureau, to be spent between 2022 and 2029.

In other words, in addition to the existing resources of the FTC, Bodeya will have a brand new $500 million budget to play with.

Even without Bodeya, the FTC has demonstrated its determination to move in a far-left direction. It recently hired Meredith Whittaker, infamous as one of the most far-left activist employees at Google, who referred to the Daily Caller as a “hate site,” accused Heritage Foundation president Kay Coles James of holding “exterminationist” views about transgender people, and has rejected any cooperation with conservatives on regulating Big Tech.

Bodeya’s confirmation would put yet another left-wing partisan in a position of enormous power over both Big Tech companies and the wider economy — power that, thanks to the Reconciliation Bill, is set to expand even further. Do Republicans in the Senate think Bodeya will use that power fairly, or wisely?

Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.

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