With help from Steven Overly, Emily Birnbaum and Pieter Haeck
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— On the Hill: Lawmakers on the Senate Finance Committee will use today’s hearing on tech competition and privacy to go after Amazon and data brokers.
— Gig week: Officials on both sides of the Atlantic are turning their attention to whether gig workers should be classified as contractors or employees.
— Lots to catch up on: European Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager is in town. She’ll meet with top tech and trade officials on issues from emerging tech to competition.
IT’S TUESDAY, DEC. 7. WELCOME TO MORNING TECH! I’m your host, Benjamin Din. What are your music listening habits? I usually find a few songs I like that I play on repeat until I’m sick of them.
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BREAKING OVERNIGHT — Meta is trying to preempt this week’s congressional hearing on Instagram by announcing new safety provisions for teen users, Rebecca reports for Pros this morning. But Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) was not impressed.
SENATE FINANCE TAKES ON TECH — Lawmakers on the Senate Finance Committee’s fiscal responsibility panel will hold a hearing today that is expected to focus on competition and privacy in the tech sector. Some themes to watch for:
— Going after Amazon: Chair Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has long called for breaking up big tech companies, making it a major part of her platform when she ran for president. But she’s been particularly vocal against Amazon, and that will likely continue at the hearing.
Today’s witnesses include Courtenay Brown, who Warren’s office described as the first Amazon worker to testify before Congress about the ways “Big Tech” can harm workers. She will be joined by D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine. According to a copy of his opening statement, Racine will testify about the antitrust lawsuit he filed against Amazon, alleging the company “is illegally controlling prices through restrictive agreements” with both third-party sellers and wholesalers. (Amazon has denied those accusations, saying sellers can set their own prices.)
“People should get paid for entrepreneurship and hard work,” Racine will say. “But when companies use their market power to reduce competition and take advantage of consumers under the guise of creating efficiencies, regulators must step in.”
Barry Lynn, the executive director of the anti-monopoly group Open Markets Institute, will focus on how monopolies, especially those in tech, have contributed to the ongoing supply chain crisis.
— Data broker focus: Ranking member Bill Cassidy (R-La.) will ask questions about the “shadowy data broker industry and how data brokers collect and monetize American citizen personal information to the detriment of individual privacy and U.S. national security,” spokesperson Ty Bofferding said.
Lawmakers are expected to explore concerns about the collection and sale of information on groups like military personnel to U.S. adversaries, along with ways that seemingly anonymous location data can be de-anonymized through the use of other datasets.
To that end, they’ll hear from Samm Sacks, a cyber policy fellow at New America, and Justin Sherman, who directs research on data brokerages at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy. Stacey Gray, senior counsel at the Future of Privacy Forum, used her written testimony to urge lawmakers to pass comprehensive data privacy legislation and support the FTC’s efforts to go after unfair and deceptive trade practices — both by increasing the agency’s staff and by establishing a dedicated privacy bureau, as proposed in Democrats’ social spending package.
ALL EYES ON THE GIG ECONOMY — Gig work will be a focus of one panel at today’s workshop on competition in labor markets, hosted by the FTC and the DOJ’s antitrust division, as debates over worker classification and unionization efforts at gig-work companies like Uber and Lyft rage on.
— Notable name: Jennifer Abruzzo, general counsel for the National Labor Relations Board, will participate in the discussion on collective bargaining in the gig economy. Abruzzo spent more than two decades at the NLRB before joining the Communications Workers of America as special counsel for strategic initiatives in 2018. She rejoined the NLRB this year, following a tie-breaking vote by Vice President Kamala Harris to confirm her.
— Meanwhile, across the Atlantic: Vestager and fellow European Commission Executive Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis are expected to unveil Wednesday the EU’s latest proposal related to the working conditions of gig workers. Top executives at gig companies, including Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, have met with EU officials in recent days.
The companies warn that reclassifying their workers as employees, rather than allowing them to remain contractors, could lead to job losses. One study commissioned by a coalition of ride-hailing companies, including Uber, found that a change in employment status for drivers could result in “a reduction in employment” of 136,000 EU workers.
And Uber suffered a blow Monday in the U.K., when a judge ruled that operators of such private for-hire car services — not their drivers — must enter into a contract with passengers, adding another layer of complexity to the question of how drivers should be classified.
— Back in Washington: White House competition adviser Tim Wu, a key architect of President Joe Biden’s competition order from this summer, will deliver an afternoon keynote at today’s workshop on competition.
TRANSATLANTIC TECH AND TRADE ISSUES IN FOCUS — Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo will convene tech companies, industry groups and civil society organizations for a discussion this afternoon that’s expected to focus on how the U.S. and Europe approach emerging technologies and the digital economy. Vestager will join her.
The EU official has a full calendar during her visit to Washington. She will meet with U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai on Wednesday, with discussion of the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council expected to be on the agenda. She also plans to huddle with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to talk tax policy.
— Meetings and more meetings: Market competition could be one area of possible regulatory alignment between the U.S. and EU. Vestager will meet today with the Biden administration’s senior antitrust officials, FTC Chair Lina Khan and the Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for antitrust, Jonathan Kanter. The trio are expected to discuss so-called killer acquisitions
— deals in which big companies buy smallers ones to stamp them out — and other concerns about tech giants like Google, Amazon and Facebook.
European regulators have historically taken more aggressive action against American technology companies than their U.S. counterparts, at times imposing billion-dollar fines that U.S. officials have then criticized. But Khan and Kanter’s concerns about Big Tech’s market dominance and its effect on consumers have been well-documented, so Vestager will likely find them to be more friend than foe in her yearslong crusade.
HANDS OFF MY ANTITRUST ENFORCEMENT — As progressives gain sway at the country’s antitrust agencies, the Global Antitrust Institute, an influential tech-funded think tank, is planning an event geared toward influencing the courts, according to an invitation obtained by Emily. The Texas event, scheduled for March 13-18, will focus on digital markets and mergers, seeking to convince judges that it’s better to take a hands-off approach to monopoly enforcement. The institute typically does not publicize its events, but it has successfully injected its more conservative views on antitrust enforcement into the mainstream through events like these for years.
MT MEA CULPA — Monday’s MT misstated details about the Discovery-WarnerMedia merger. AT&T would receive $43 billion in the deal to spin off its WarnerMedia assets.
THE FINAL COUNTDOWN — The Senate will vote at 11:30 a.m. today on FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel’s nomination for another five-year term at the agency, just weeks before she would have been required to leave. The Senate voted 64-27 Monday night to cut off debate on the matter, a bipartisan tally that bodes well for her prospects today.
That’s in contrast to the barrage of GOP criticism aimed at fellow FCC nominee Gigi Sohn,whose past tweets have given her Republican detractors something to latch onto. Keep in mind: While Rosenworcel’s confirmation will prevent Republicans from gaining the FCC’s majority in January, it won’t be enough by itself to let Democrats overcome the agency’s existing 2-2 partisan deadlock.
Garrett Ventry, Rep. Ken Buck’s chief of staff and an instrumental player in negotiations on tech antitrust legislation in both chambers, has left the Colorado Republican’s office. He plans to announce his next gig early in 2022. … Geoff Burgan will be comms director for the Democratic Attorneys General Association. He was previously comms director for Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.).
Michael Pauls Jr. is joining USTelecom | The Broadband Association as senior director for government affairs. He was most recently a legislative affairs and communications confidential assistant at the White House Office of Management and Budget and is a Rep. Donald Norcross (D-N.J.) alum. … Julie Carlson, a former FTC senior economist, has joined the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. She is the associate director of antitrust and innovation policy for ITIF’s Schumpeter Project on Competition Policy.
Jennifer Mitchell has joined BakerHostetler as a partner with the firm’s privacy governance and technology transactions team. She was most recently VP for privacy and legal compliance at Sony Pictures.
Shakeup at Samsung: Jong-Hee Han has been promoted to vice chair and co-CEO at Samsung Electronics, where he will lead a newly merged division that encompasses mobile and consumer electronics. He will continue to head the visual display business. Kyehyun Kyung, the CEO of Samsung Electro-Mechanics, has been named co-CEO of Samsung Electronics. He will lead the device solutions division.
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration will host public virtual listening sessions for the five new broadband grant programs included in the bipartisan infrastructure package.
Paying attention: “Apple’s Treatment of Roblox in Spotlight in DOJ Antitrust Probe,” The Information reports.
Going in: Biden administration officials met with Silicon Valley executives Monday to talk over how the private sector can help stop cyberattacks, POLITICO’s Eric Geller writes this morning.
Data dump: “The Popular Family Safety App Life360 Is Selling Precise Location Data on Its Tens of Millions of Users,” via The Markup.
Pushed back after pushback: The White House is delaying the launch of the Alliance for the Future of the Internet, via Protocol.
Behind the scenes: “Inside Tesla: How Elon Musk Pushed His Vision for Autopilot.” More from NYT.
Deal with it: The FTC posted its Nvidia-ARM complaint. Meanwhile, EU regulators are pausing their investigation into the deal as they await more information, Reuters reports.
What to look for: The Digital Trust & Safety Partnership released the “Safe Framework,” the methodology it will use to assess the trust and safety practices of member companies like Google, Meta, Microsoft and Twitter.
That’s a no: The American Civil Liberties Union panned the Department of Homeland Security’ “quite unnecessary” request for feedback on its use of AI and facial recognition. “Rather than gather self-justifying survey data, DHS should cease all efforts to expand deployment of facial recognition technology, and take to heart the already well-known concerns about the technology,” it said.
Comeback kid? Max Rose, a New York Democrat who was active on tech issues while in Congress, is looking to take back his Staten Island House seat, BuzzFeed reports.
Tips, comments, suggestions? Send them along via email to our team: Bob King ([email protected]), Heidi Vogt ([email protected]), Emily Birnbaum ([email protected]), John Hendel ([email protected]), Rebecca Kern ([email protected]), Alexandra S. Levine ([email protected]), Leah Nylen ([email protected]), and Benjamin Din ([email protected]). Got an event for our calendar? Send details to [email protected]. And don’t forget: Add @MorningTech and @PoliticoPro on Twitter.
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