In the Media

By Tim Wu and Stuart A. Thompson
“Big tech” companies like Google and Facebook are, in reality, the products of hundreds of mergers. Each root below represents a company acquired by a tech giant at a particular moment in its history. A vast majority of these acquisitions, funded by public markets, have received minimal media coverage and limited regulatory scrutiny. But that is changing, given new concerns about consolidation in the tech industries.

AARTI SHAHANI: Tim Wu figured Facebook would hire someone who was the opposite of Newstead.
TIM WU: I was a little shocked, taken aback.
SHAHANI: Wu, a law professor at Columbia University, once met the incoming Facebook lawyer at a party. They'd both clerked for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, and he was the host. Wu is a privacy advocate. He says Facebook needs to clean up its reputation, prove to users the company wants to protect them - by bringing in a Patriot Act architect.

By Tim Wu
Mass privacy is the freedom to act without being watched and thus in a sense, to be who we really are — not who we want others to think we are. At stake, then, is something akin to the soul.