Facebook Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly will be announcing his candidacy for the office of Attorney General of California, we’ve heard from multiple sources. He’ll be running in the 2010 election as a Democrat, and will be leaving Facebook (or taking a leave of absence) in June 2009 to focus on his campaign.
Three others have already declared their candidacy, including San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris, Torrence assemblyman Ted Liu and Pittsburg assemblyman Gerald Canciamilla.
This puts Facebook in an awkward position, as Kelly has led the team that represents the company in their ongoing negotiations with Attorneys General around the U.S. They’ll need to hire a replacement for Kelly, fast.
As Facebook grows it continues to draw fire from the government and various privacy advocates, and things are going to get worse over time, not better. Concerns range from too much private information getting into the hands of third parties to Facebook becoming a platform for the spread of computer viruses. Reports of terrorist and hate groups using the site to draw recruits have recently popped up. And Facebook, like many online services, wages a relentless war against spammers.
It will be interesting to see if voters think of Kelly as a man in the trenches who understands privacy and security issues, or the guy who’s defended Facebook’s various slip ups over the years as the company has experimented with new privacy-pushing products like Beacon.
Kelly is a former attorney who worked at Baker & Mckenzie and Wilson Sonsini. He also served as an education advisor in the Clinton Administration. He wouldn’t comment on this article (nor would he comment on the “latte incident“).
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TechCrunch: A place for politics
We live in a free country where anyone can do anything now dont we….stripper running for office…tis truly the land of the free…
I think it is high time that Silicon Valley started asserting leadership at the state level on California.
And, more importantly, I think that having Chris Kelly as Attorney General would finally mean that important issues around privacy and tech policy got addressed by someone who understood them at their core - and not as an adjunct to some DA job.
It’s time for Silicon Valley, and the technology business to take the field. Chris as Attroney General should be the first step in folks from our industry asserting their rightful place at all levels of state elected government.
Why should we, as the electorate, be stuck with some class of permanent state government employees as our elected officials, instead of the folks who have helped build and operate the companies that power the state’s economy?
(I used to work with Chris, and have nothing but good things to say about him personally, as well). With regard to his working as Facebook’s privacy officer — having a real world knowledge of the give and take of making commerce and privacy work within a company is just valuable in my opinion.
From startup to politics - interesting career change.
This points ou the power of social media, if it even needed to be pointed out anymore. It’s not just the fact that an employee of Facebook is running for a governmental office, it’s the name recognition he automatically has because of it, especially with the younger generation, which is a much desired voting demographic.
are you joking? do you think any regular user of facebook has heard of this person? i use facebook everyday and visit techcrunch daily and had no idea who this person was by his name.
Correct!
@scott,
This guy is no celebrity. And remember, 75% of the US population doesn’t care about Facebook.
One more thing… why is he leaving Facebook to start with? It’s not like he’s got the AG position locked up.
Thanks MA for keeping TC informative as of lately (seriously! Great posts recently)
As far as Kelly for AG…nodda gonna happen!
In order to earn my vote, a candidate needs to have more success in their prior work experience than CK has had.
Having known Chris and worked with him a few times, I look forward to this race. He is a stand up real person, maybe too normal to actually be elected. He will be a great servant to the people of California.
Hello Madam / Sir.
I made a big mistake. i wanted to my friends say something about me and i forgot to change the message. so you deleted my account.
i am very very sorry because of it. Can you active my account again please?
That is the warning “Your account has been disabled by an administrator. If you have any questions or concerns, you can visit our FAQ page here.”
What can i do to be activated my account again?
Regards…
name Dalaman güzel
mail dalamanfanclub@hotmail.com
isn’t myspace in california? why doesn’t himanshu nigam, that chief security guy at myspace run? isn’t he the guy who actually prosecuted bad guys 4 a living…someone should call him
I would be thrilled to have someone like Chris for California AG. He has done great work with Facebook and internet privacy in general and has been a true advocate for Silicon Valley on many issues. Anyone reading this article would be silly not to vote for someone who would have the tech industry’s ideals at heart.
Oh and to everyone ranting about experience - Arnold has been such a popular governor with only bodybuilding experience, so I’m sure that with Chris’ track record and operational experience, he would do just fine…
Just what we need, a bureaucratic hack that’s done a masterful job of dropping the ball on serious issues of pornography and unlawful solicitation, while penalizing average users that try to add too many “friends” at once. I hope he does run so FaceBook can hire someone a little more aware and we can watch him lose.
Anyone other than Kamala Harris would be better. She has been a complete joke as SF DA. When the state’s electorate finds out that she has provided sanctuary for illegal aliens from being prosecuted for capital crimes she will lose. Plus facts of the high crime rate and poor conviction rates in SF will make everyone turn away from her.