No lawyers nor economists need apply: The Tipline for 9 August 2019

Most of the non-administrative staff at the Federal Trade Commission are lawyers or economists. Our latest statistics in Rating Enforcement – coming soon in print and online! – state that nearly 71% of such staff are lawyers, and another 16% are economists. But soon to join that remaining 13% is a technology fellow for the tech task force, who is specifically not supposed to be a lawyer nor an economist, but rather “an experienced software, process, or privacy engineer, product manager, executive or academic computer scientist”. With the exception of Neil Chilson, who became a lawyer after earning a master’s in computer science, most holders of the old “chief technologist” role were academic computer scientists.