1. I mentioned this last night, but this memo by new FTC Commissioner @chopraftc is really worth reading. It is a bad-ass and extremely important statement on corporate crime and has significant implications for Facebook. propublica.org/article/rohit-…
2. First, some context. This memo is about recidivism, or committing a crime again once you've been caught. In 2011, Facebook was caught in 2011 engaging in "unfair and deceptive" practices, and the FTC stated the company "violated federal law." Today's scandal is a repeat crime.
3. "FTC orders are not suggestions." <--- That's how law enforcer Chopra says it. And he footnotes that showing that the cost can be $41,484 per violation. Facebook has 87 million violations in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. This is a company killer.
4. @chopraftc comes close to saying Zuckerberg should be fired and Facebook broken up. Violations of consent decrees should result in firing "senior management and board directors," "outright bans on adjacent business practices, and closure of appropriate business lines."
5. What shows @chopraftc is serious and bipartisan about this is that he critiques Obama's failed law enforcement regime. He goes after the failure to do anything about HSBC for money laundering, and Wells Fargo for fraud. This is a defense of the rule of law.
6. Now, here's why this matters. The FTC almost always has unanimous enforcement opinions, which gives individual commissioners sway to shape them. This is not a random shot across the bow, it's a signal to FTC staff to really propose aggressive remedies for Facebook violations.
7. The memo is here. It's really worth reading. Clear, aggressive, not messing around. A simple message of enforce the law against what he calls 'scofflaws', especially big company crimes whose cost "can vastly exceed that caused by small-scale scammers." documentcloud.org/documents/4460…
