Andrew McLaughlin

CEO of Digg and Instapaper

Former Director of Global Public Policy at Google

Andrew McLaughlin is the former CEO of Digg and Instapaper, and is the current President & COO of Assembly OSM and venture partner at betaworks. From 2009 to 2011, he was a member of Obama’s senior White House staff, serving as deputy chief technology officer of the U.S. and responsible for advising the president on Internet, technology, and innovation policy. Previously, he was director of global public policy at Google, leading the company’s work on issues like freedom of expression and censorship, surveillance and law enforcement, privacy, and Internet regulation. McLaughlin has lectured at Stanford Law and Harvard Law and held fellowships at Stanford’s Center for Internet & Society, Princeton’s Center for IT Policy, and Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. He helped launch and manage ICANN, the Internet’s technical coordination organization, and has worked on Internet and telecom law reform projects in a number of developing countries. After clerking on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit, he started his career as a lawyer in Washington, D.C., where he focused on appellate and constitutional litigation.

Debates Featuring Andrew McLaughlin

The U.S. Should Adopt the 'Right to Be Forgotten' Online

With Andrew McLaughlin, Paul Nemitz, Eric Posner, Jonathan Zittrain

March 11, 2015

In 2014, the European Union’s Court of Justice determined that individuals have a right to be forgotten, “the right—under certain conditions—to ask search engines to remove links with personal information about them.” It is not absolute, but meant to be balanced against other fundamental rights, like freedom of expression. In a half year following the Court’s decision, Google received over 180,000 removal requests. Of those reviewed and processed, 40.5% were granted. Largely seen as a victory in Europe, in the…