Wong gets White House tech role

The Obama administration has appointed Twitter lawyer Nicole Wong to a new senior advisory position to focus on Internet and privacy policy, a White House official said on Thursday.

Wong will work with federal Chief Technology Officer Todd Park, and will join the White House as US President Barack Obama focuses more attention on fighting hackers.

Her appointment comes as the Obama administration grapples with issues that arose from the US government's surveillance of internet and phone communications in its anti-terrorism effort.

Rick Weiss, a spokesman for the White House Office of Science and Technology, said Wong is joining as deputy US chief technology officer and will work with Park on Internet, privacy and technology issues.

"She has tremendous expertise in these domains and an unrivaled reputation for fairness, and we look forward to having her on our team," Weiss said.

Wong, who was legal director at Twitter, has testified before the US Congress about her concerns about internet censorship in countries around the world.

In 2010, when she was Google Inc's vice-president and deputy general counsel, Wong told a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that the US government should make internet freedom a key part of foreign policy.

At Google, Wong was nicknamed "the Decider", because part of her job was deciding whether to remove content from YouTube and links from Google that governments objected to.

(China Daily 06/22/2013 page8)