New pressure on tech giants?
A meeting of the country’s top law enforcement officials could prompt a series of investigations.
WASHINGTON — A meeting of the country’s top federal and state law enforcement officials Tuesday could prompt a series of sweeping, new investigations of Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google and their tech industry peers, stemming from lingering frustrations that these companies are too big, fail to safeguard users’ private data, and don’t cooperate with legal demands.
The gathering at the Justice Department had been designed to focus on social media platforms and the ways they moderate online content.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions opened the meeting by raising questions of possible ideological bias among the tech companies, and sought to bring the conversation back to that topic at least twice more, according to Karl Racine, attorney general for the District of Columbia.
But the discussion proved far more wideranging, as attorneys general from nine states — and officials from five others — steered the conversation toward the privacy practices of Silicon Valley. Those in the meeting did not zero in on specific business tactics but did cover issues ranging from how companies collect user data to what they do with it once the information is in their hands.
“We were unanimous. Our focus is going to be on antitrust and privacy. That’s where our laws are,” said Jim Hood, Mississippi’s attorney general.
Most in the meeting agreed that the Justice Department would likely play a role in any legal action against the tech industry. Still, much of the group’s momentum now appears to be driven by an emerging multistate inquiry — not the Justice Department — with Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson expected to coordinate the attorneys general conversation.
“(The) AGs are really focused on understanding more as to what consumers are truly consenting to and what they may not know is going on with their data,” Racine said.
For months, tech giants such as Facebook, Google and Twitter have weathered brutal criticism in the nation’s capital for their business practices — from the ways they safeguard their data to their preparedness to combat misinformation online ahead of the 2018 midterm elections. As these companies have faced pressure to actively monitor the content on their platforms, however, they’ve opened themselves to new political attacks from Republicans who believe Silicon Valley’s policies result in the silencing of conservatives. The criticisms have even come from the White House, where President Donald Trump most recently accused Google of producing “rigged” search results — and his administration has floated regulating the industry in response.
Attorneys general from both parties seemed reluctant to use antitrust law to address allegations of online bias. Hood said there are issues with the way tech companies moderate their platforms, adding, “We AGs don’t want to wade off into that battle.”
Another attorney general — Democrat Brian Frosh of Maryland — said there was little basis for using antitrust law to prosecute allegations of ideological bias.
Whether state and federal officials have the legal tools under antitrust law to regulate the tech industry’s data practices was a major question for the group.
Citing previous cases in which the government intervened against anticompetitive behavior, the officials considered the dominance of Standard Oil, the Justice Department’s breakup of AT&T’s telephone monopoly and the quest to take apart Microsoft.
Few in the meeting seemed ready to seriously discuss breaking up Silicon Valley’s most dominant players. But those cases represented “pivot points” in the nation’s history that could prove instructive to policymakers, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said.
“All of those cases and situations inform you when it comes to a conversation about this new sector,” he told reporters Tuesday.