White House OSTP Hires Privacy Expert Soltani To Advise US CTO Smith

The White House confirmed it hired Ashkan Soltani, a privacy expert who until recently was the FTC's chief technologist (see 1512030034) and before that helped with The Washington Post's coverage of NSA document leaker Edward Snowden (see 1410290060). The Office of Science and Technology Policy hired Soltani as senior adviser to U.S. Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith, who used to work for Google and tweeted about Soltani's hiring. "Ashkan will focus on consumer protection, big data, and privacy issues, including algorithmic accountability, data ethics, and data discrimination," an OSTP spokeswoman emailed Thursday. "Ashkan will also help with capacity building for technologists in government, including working with agencies to build career paths for technologists across government."