A tip to members of Congress: if you are going to ship an angrily-worded letter to a know-how CEO, ensure they’re nonetheless working on the firm. A gaggle of 11 Home Republicans has sent letters to the leaders of 13 tech firms threatening authorized motion in the event that they adjust to a request for records associated to the January sixth Capitol assault. Nevertheless, there’s one main downside. The letter to Yahoo (Engadget’s father or mother firm) is addressed to Marissa Mayer, who hasn’t been CEO of the corporate since 2017. That is 4 years in the past, of us — she’s not precisely a current departure.
The representatives’ different letters seem to have been freed from snafus on their solution to Amazon, AOL (which Apollo acquired alongside Yahoo), Apple, AT&T, Fb, Google, Microsoft, Snap, T-Cell, Twitter, US Mobile and Verizon (Engadget’s former father or mother). Nevertheless, the congresspeople look like barely behind the instances as nicely. Not one of the letters went to Reddit, Telegram, TikTok and different key corporations requested to provide information. The record seems to be a who’s-who of tech from a number of years in the past.
We snort, however the slip-up can also be a reminder that Congress’ common lack of tech information creates issues, whether or not it is a letter to a long-gone CEO or proposed law changes that might produce easily foreseen complications. The subsequent mistake may price much more than embarrassment and wasted paper, and that sadly will not change any time quickly.
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