FTC gets new chief technologist

Carnegie Mellon University Professor Lorrie Faith Cranor is taking over as the Federal Trade Commission’s chief technologist in January. 

She is replacing Ashkan Soltani, who joined the commission late last year after doing a stint with The Washington Post, where he worked with reporters on stories about secret National Security Agency surveillance programs revealed by leaks from Edward Snowden. 

{mosads}Soltani is winding up his work with the commission this month. The agency’s previous chief technologist stayed for about a year as well. 

“In addition to his role in the agency’s enforcement and policy work, Ashkan has been also instrumental in attracting new tech talent to the agency,”  FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez said in a statement.

The FTC touted Cranor as an author of more than 150 papers on online privacy and security. She helps lead Carnegie Mellon’s Privacy Engineering masters’ program and directs the university’s Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory. 

“Technology is playing an ever more important role in consumers’ lives, whether through mobile devices, personal fitness trackers, or the increasing array of Internet-connected devices we find in homes and elsewhere,” Ramirez said in a statement.

The FTC’s enforcement has increasingly focused on technology in recent years. About 8 percent of enforcement action dealt with technology from 2010 to 2014, according to statistics. And it has challenged a number of high-profile companies, including Apple, Google, Amazon, Snapchat, Yelp, AT&T, T-Mobile and others for various alleged abuses.