Sessions seems impotent

They probably figure he's not going to be around much longer.

Officials from 13 states and the District of Columbia gathered at the Department of Justice Tuesday morning. Entering without an official public agenda, it was unclear what the meeting would actually be about. Just this past weekend, reports of a leaked memo suggested that the Trump administration might be gearing up to instruct the Department of Justice and other federal agencies to investigate online platforms like Facebook and Twitter for anti-trust violations. Speculation leading up to the meeting strongly suggested that the Department of Justice would hone in on the potential of anti-trust actions against big tech on the basis of conservative bias, accusations that have been a repeated refrain from Republican lawmakers and the president in recent weeks.

But, according to one attorney general at the meeting, it seemed like Sessions was the only person who wanted to talk about political bias, with the majority of the attorneys general instead deeming the path “too dangerous.”

“He repeatedly mentioned that concept of political bias without calling it that,” Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh, one of the few Democrats in attendance, tells Mother Jones about Sessions opening remarks. “’There are forces that are surreptitiously using forces to influence public opinion,’ [Sessions] said, and I highly doubt he was referring to the Russians.”

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According to Frosh, when Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson suggested the conversation focus on issues with more agreement, including consumer privacy, Sessions retorted, “What are we supposed to do about it, just ignore it?”

  Mother Jones

I think they're ignoring you, Jeff.

As for the question of anti-trust issues, attorneys general in attendance didn’t rule out the possibility as one of many avenues of creating better legal accountability for an increasingly powerful tech industry.

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The meeting comes at a crucial time when federal lawmakers are playing catch up to efforts being made at the state level to enshrine consumer privacy. In June, California passed data privacy legislation which gives consumers basic rights, including the ability to opt-out from companies selling their data to third parties and the right to know what data about them is being collected. Conversations on the federal level, on the other hand, have moved more slowly since the wake of hearings brought on by Cambridge Analytica.

[...]

“I think it was pretty clear that there was a willingness among the state [attorneys general] to work together,” Frosh says, “and perhaps to work together with the Justice Department about abuses of economic market powers—but I couldn’t determine if that was of interest to the Justice Department.”

Let me guess.

“I think the key takeaway is the Justice Department, at least, is still thinking about changing what is written or spoken on social media platforms and make it more to their liking,” says Frosh. “That’s very dangerous to free speech.”