Online Biz Lobby Expands in DC, inc. Google, Facebook, Yahoo. Privacy on its radar screen

One sign of the success of my CDD and our privacy, consumer protection and civil liberties allies is the dramatic growth of lobbyists working for the online marketing industry in DC (and around world).  Google, Facebook, Yahoo and others are fearful that the Congress and FTC will weigh in and protect the public.  That's why the digital giants have opened up their sizeable wallets to help them buy the influence and professional assistance they require.  Politico has a very good article on these latest developments.  Which I excerpt below because it should be on the public record, as the work to place the individual citizen ahead of the interests of a few large data collection companies peaks.
from:  Facebook generation joins K Street.  By Jonathan Allen and Jennifer Martinez.  March 25, 2012
 
Silicon Valley has a new formula for #winning.

The tech companies pluck top Gen X talent from the White House and Capitol Hill and assemble A-teams of lobbyists — or "evangelists," as some of them are known — who are super-connected inside the Beltway and geek chic enough to fit in at the West Coast enclaves of the industry's titans...These Washington whiz kids are the vanguard in an evolution of Silicon Valley’s approach to Washington, where the twin threats of privacy and piracy regulations are waiting around every Capitol corner. Their companies, burned in the past by a libertarian-bent and an above-it-all attitude toward Washington, have come to the realization that the right D.C. hands can save their bottom lines...The transformation already has paid dividends: A fractured industry found common cause in defeating landmark anti-piracy legislation earlier this year in part because the close-knit young lobbyists determined that Silicon Valley rivals could collaborate in Washington.
... Yahoo’s Margaret Nagle, who was an aide to former Vice President Dick Cheney, and Google’s Katherine Oyama, a former aide to Vice President Joe Biden, formed tech’s top tag team on the Hill. Despite coming from warring political parties and companies, they plotted together at coalition strategy sessions and lobbied arm-in-arm around Washington. The combined effort led to the young, scrappy tech industry scoring a landslide policy victory against the deeply entrenched Hollywood lobbies...While most of the companies have some veteran industry lobbyists on their payroll, a younger generation is now making its name on K Street — and in some cases moving out West to advise on Washington....The crop includes White House veterans: In addition to Oyama and Nagle, who also worked as Sen. Rob Portman's liaison to Congress when he was director of the Office of Management and Budget, Joel Kaplan, a top policy hand for President George W. Bush, leads Facebook's D.C. office. And Sarah Feinberg, a confidante of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel through several jobs in Washington, joined the soon-to-be-public company's West Coast team.  There are former Hill aides: Seth Webb, who headed floor operations for Speaker Dennis Hastert, is a leading Google lobbyist; Steve Wymer left Sen. Mike Johanns for a California job at TiVo, and Myriah Jordan, most recently of Sen. Richard Burr's office, is now at Facebook.  And then there are “The Adams”: Kovacevich at Google, Sharp at Twitter and Conner at Facebook, all young Democrats. Kovacevich, who worked for Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, helped Sharp, a veteran of C-SPAN and Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office, land his gig at Twitter. Sharp repayed the favor by mentioning Wymer to TiVo.  Facebook last week added Greg Maurer, who ran member services for Speaker John Boehner before his wife succeeded him in that job, and Yahoo acquired April Boyd from the Commerce Department. At 36, Maurer is both young for a K Street macher and still nearly a decade older than his company's CEO, 27-year-old Mark Zuckerberg.

"They're hiring everybody and anybody. They're just hiring as if getting ready for a massive battle, and the number of bodies they've got inside might be getting comparable to what the AT&T's have," said a veteran media executive.