Former copyright lobbyist is Obama’s top pick for US Attorney

The more things "change", the more they stay exactly the same. Yet another Lobbyist for our criminal and chief Jokerman... Hey Barry, what ever happened to you pledge about no lobbyists? (A promise that went out the window as soon as he stepped into the white house...


Former copyright lobbyist is Obama’s top pick for US Attorney

[link to rawstory.com]

In yet another sign that the Obama administration’s opposition to hiring lobbyists is weakening, a Justice Department official who once worked as a copyright and cyber-security lobbyist for companies like Microsoft and IBM is now the top candidate for a US Attorney position.

Deputy attorney-general Neil MacBride, who was listed in 2007 as a lobbyist with the Business Software Alliance, has been named by the Washington Post as the most likely candidate to fill the role of US Attorney in the Alexandria, Va., office.

As one of his first acts in office, President Barack Obama signed an executive order forbidding hiring people to work on projects if they had worked as lobbyists on similar issues in the previous two years. But, contrary to popular opinion, the order did not actually forbid the hiring of former lobbyists.

In MacBride’s case, it’s not clear if his appointment indicates a willingness by the Obama administration to get tough on copyright issues such as peer-to-peer file-sharing, but the decision is certain to alarm digital privacy advocates who are already worried that the Obama administration has too many officials who are sympathetic to crackdowns on individuals who share files online.

According to Declan McCullagh at CNET News, MacBride was a “top anti-piracy enforcer” for the BSA, and was “responsible for the BSA’s program that rewarded people for phoning in tips about suspected software piracy.”

Wrote McCullagh: “For his vice president, Barack Obama chose Joe Biden, a senator with a long history of aiding the Recording Industry Association of America. Then Obama picked the RIAA’s favorite lawyer, Tom Perrelli, for a top Justice Department post.”

The Post notes that Vice-President Biden is “pushing for MacBride’s appointment.”

According to the Post, though, the Alexandria US Attorney’s office is more interested in being a major player in the prosecution of high-profile terrorism cases.

“Alexandria is now competing with the US attorney’s office in Manhattan for the opportunity to prosecute Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and his accused co-conspirators,” the Post writes.

Obama campaigned for the presidency on promises to reduce the influence of lobbyists in Washington. But within days of his inauguration, his administration was criticized for appointing numerous former lobbyists. According to the Center for Media and Democracy, Eric Holder, Obama’s attorney-general, once lobbied for Global Crossing, a high-tech firm.

Perhaps most controversial was Obama’s decision to appoint William Lynn as deputy secretary of defense. Lynn was once a lobbyist for Raytheon, a major defense industry manufacturer. According to Time magazine, Raytheon is the US military’s fifth-largest supplier, and was paid $10 billion last year for the delivery of missiles and missile shields.

However, the Obama administration has shown more willingness to uphold its rules against lobbyists when those lobbyists have not come from the business community. In particular many human-rights activists were upset at the White House’s decision to pass up Tom Malinowski, a high-ranking official at Human Rights Watch, as the administration’s human rights chief.

The Obama administration was also criticized recently for its decision to continue the Bush-era policy of keeping secret White House visitor logs. MSNBC reported:

Despite President Barack Obama’s pledge to introduce a new era of transparency to Washington, and despite two rulings by a federal judge that the records are public, the Secret Service has denied msnbc.com’s request for the names of all White House visitors from Jan. 20 to the present. It also denied a narrower request by the nonpartisan watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which sought logs of visits by executives of coal companies.

That decision caused concerns among government watchdogs that the influence of private-sector lobbyists on the executive branch of government would continue without public oversight.