No joke: FTC boss goes on the Daily Show and is told Apple tried to block her
- Reference: 1712086554
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/04/02/ftc_boss_apple_daily_show/
- Source link:
Khan was welcomed onto the TV show, chaired once again by Jon Stewart, with cheers from the crowd - again not something many US government officials hear. The exception to this is possibly Rob Joyce, the former White House cybersecurity coordinator and recently [1]retired NSA cybersecurity director, who got a [2]standing ovation at the Shmoocon infosec conference after a presentation on how he hacks Christmas tree lights for fun.
In the 20-minute interview, Khan gave details on an ongoing lawsuit against Amazon's behavior - notably allegedly spamming search results pages and hiking fees on small businesses, which she said was "harming customers."
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You can replay her appearance on the show below.
[4]
[5]
[6]Youtube Video
It was going to be a tough fight, she said, since her watchdog agency has just 1,200 staff and Amazon has "monopoly money," and can throw ten times that number of lawyers at the case. "We're pretty out-gunned but not out-matched," she asserted.
[7]
But then Stewart dropped his bombshell: After a two-season podcast series with Apple he told Khan he wanted to get her on the show but Cupertino really wasn't keen.
"Apple asked us not to do it, to have you. They literally said 'please don't talk to her'... I didn't think they cared for you," Stewart said. Khan made an admirable, and nearly successful, attempt to keep a straight face.
Stewart also alleged that Apple refused to let his team make jokes about AI. He quit the podcast abruptly last October, reportedly citing Apple's heavy handed approach to censoring certain topics and guests.
[8]
"This just shows the dangers when you concentrate so much power and so much decision-making in a small number of companies," she argued.
"Going back all the way to the founding there was a recognition that in the same way that you need the Constitution to create checks and balances in our political sphere, you also needed the antitrust and anti-monopoly laws to safeguard against concentration of economic power because you don't want an autocrat of trade in the same way you don't want a monarch."
[9]FTC asks normal folks if they'd like AI impersonation scam protection, too
[10]Date set for for epic Amazon-FTC antitrust showdown
[11]Blackbaud settles with FTC after that IT breach exposed millions of people's info
[12]FTC drills into Amazon, Microsoft, Google over billions pledged to OpenAI, Anthropic
The amount of consolidation in the tech industry is harming competition, she argued. The FTC's case against Meta ( [13]started before Khan got the top job) was a case in point - Facebook realized it couldn't defeat Instagram and WhatsApp, so just bought them, she asserted.
So, how's that working out? Pretty good it seems
When Khan [14]was appointed FTC chair in 2021 it must have sent shivers down the spine of many in the tech industry, particularly in Seattle.
Her 2017 [15]paper [PDF] titled "Amazon's antitrust paradox" lays out the case that too few players exert a disproportionate amount of power in the tech industry.
And while traditionally monopolies were thought of as a single company dominating the industry ( cough , Microsoft in the 1990s), customers are still shafted if even a few businesses corner a market.
As an immigrant to Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area it is astonishing to this humble vulture that this free-market nation is anything but in so many areas. Though it depends on where one lives, good luck getting a decent, healthy choice of ISP or cellphone carrier. And for a region that is a major tech hub of America the internet speeds and prices came as a rude shock.
Coming from Europe where telcos fight for your business, the change was remarkable. This hack may have been somewhat terse with a Verizon staffer trying to tell me that paying for text messages (an engineering function that carries the most minimal of data loads) was cheap at the price of just $5 a month. But with so little choice such predatory pricing is possible.
So far, the FTC appears to be getting much more muscular in going after alleged monopolistic practices, and it's about time. Frankly it's insane that an agency with such an important role in ensuring fair and open markets has such tiny staffing levels and funding.
But while the regulator is small it does have legal powers, and is increasingly asserting them. The question is how far can they be pushed, and with what consequences.
On The Register , when folks get fined we generally cite the sometimes large figures involved as a proportion of current profit, to give some perspective. When the FTC imposed a $5bn fine on Facebook back in 2019 over the [16]Cambridge Analytica scandal , for example, that amounted to one percent of its market cap. Zuckerberg must have been shaking in his sneakers.
And this was the point Khan made: "Over the last couple of decades we've seen how businesses can just treat fines as a cost of doing business. And we need to make sure we're actually deterring illegal behavior."
The Tl;dr: Businesses only obey the bottom line. ®
Get our [17]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.nsa.gov/Press-Room/Press-Releases-Statements/Press-Release-View/Article/3681065/national-security-agency-announces-retirement-of-cybersecurity-director/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2018/01/22/rob_joyce_hacking/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Zgx-@RZmru3mME3t5sGiXgAAAI8&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Zgx-@RZmru3mME3t5sGiXgAAAI8&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Zgx-@RZmru3mME3t5sGiXgAAAI8&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaDTiWaYfcM
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Zgx-@RZmru3mME3t5sGiXgAAAI8&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Zgx-@RZmru3mME3t5sGiXgAAAI8&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/16/ftc_ai_fakes/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/14/amazon_ftc_antitrust/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/02/ftc_blackbaud_settlement/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/25/ftc_ai_inquiry/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2020/12/09/facebook_crushed_competitors_to_maintain/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/16/lina_khan_ftc/
[15] https://www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/e.710.Khan.805_zuvfyyeh.pdf
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2019/07/12/ftc_facebook_settlement_proposal/
[17] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
USA Free Market
The USA fought a war to be free from UK monarchy rule
They then instigated a whole system to LOCK its people down and install a new monarchy of money.
But tech are just the latest overlords and the final beauty is that the government is now $32 to in debt which can never be repaid.
As the USA collapses those money people will just head elsewhere.
Americans get your house in order get your country back.
It has taken a women from the EU to start the ball rolling.
Re: USA Free Market
But tech are just the latest overlords and the final beauty is that the government is now $32 to in debt which can never be repaid.
32 bucks, eh? I think I can cover that.
That should qualify me for the Secretary of the Treasury position in a tRump administration, I wot.
"Businesses only obey the bottom line"
Except in China, where businesses obey the party line because otherwise the CEO disappears for a few months and comes back very humble indeed.
There is some good to be said about Chinese government . . .
Not surprising at all
The FTC having such a small budget and workforce isn't surprising if you take into account that Republicans don't want it to exist, and Democrats are beholden to corporate overlords for campaign money. The former is the same reason the IRS has such a small enforcement division, even though every dollar spent on enforcement returns almost three in owed taxes.
This is all more evidence that we need to move to exclusively public funded elections to help minimize the grossly outsized influence of the top 1% of earners in the US.
Land of the Free
With the best justice and laws money can buy!
It is very true that for all the hullabaloo about "capitalism good, socialism bad" and how the US is a bastion of the free market and all that nonsense from some quarters, you're hard pressed to find it in action. The SF Bay Area is one of the few in the country where you can actually find more than one ISP serving the same area, though usually it's a duopoly instead of a monopoly, so it's not a huge improvement. It's kind of ironic that for all the talk about how Europe is this evil bastion of socialism, it's more of a capitalist free market than the US. We're more of a Machiavellian state, where might equals money. Certain rich assholes, who shall remain nameless but one happens to own a failing social media company, can afford to fling lawsuits at people who do things they don't like all day long. Even if they all end up getting tossed out, it still requires the other party/parties to pay for their own legal counsel and respond. They may get reimbursed, but it'll likely be months, even years later. For some, that may be a death sentence for the organization.
Even worse is that roughly half the population is so brainwashed they have a sort of Stockholm Syndrome about the whole thing and actually believe that their getting screwed over by rich assholes is a GOOD THING. They'll fight tooth and nail to preserve the status quo, even though that status quo is what keeps them and their children in a perpetual state of poverty, and are actually suspicious of rich people who don't use their wealth to grind others under their boot heel. It's basically neo-feudalism, except feudal serfs had at least a few basic rights. The lord of the land was at least ostensibly responsible for protecting them from ne'er do wells and things of that nature. We don't even really have that anymore, especially if your skin doesn't happen to be white and/or your accent isn't one commonly associated with this country. Unless your rich, of course, then it's all just fine. You can buy your citizenship without having to go through all the usual hassle everyone else does.
IMO, the FTC needs to add to their list forcing Apple and Amazon to spin off their content production arms. AppleTV+ and Amazon Prime Video should be required to be independent of the parent company. There needs to be a firm firewall between different arms of companies, like how we (used to) demand banks clearly separate money people deposit into their savings vs that in investment accounts where a degree of risk is assumed.
Re: Land of the Free
Nicely stated and a good all round summing up of the situation !!!
You will now be downvoted to hell and back !!!
:)
Not surprised
That is just the country which loves scammers more than you might expect. It is just accepted as normal - you get scammed, you live with it, it is part of the freedom definition.