Are tech elite above the law? Columnist questions whether industry promotes lawless hubris
Do those who rule the Internet and run the technology industry intertwined with it have to follow the same rules that apply to the rest of humanity?
That question was raised by a writer for the Washington Post (reg. req.), in the wake of news that Uber Technologies executive Emil Michael had reportedly suggested at a dinner party using private information from the company’s ride-sharing logs to smear a journalist.
Uber announced Thursday that it has retained a Hogan Lovells partner, Harriett Wilson, who is a former IBM chief privacy officer, to review its policies, the San Francisco Business Journal reports.
But still unaddressed, notes Post writer Caitlin Dewey, is an Thought Catalog essay, “How to Steal from Whole Foods”, by Mahbod Moghadam, who is a Stanford University law graduate, former Dewey & LeBoeuf attorney and co-founder of the website Rap Genius. She calls the essay, which offers tips for shoplifting from the upscale supermarket, an exercise in hubris.
“Guy graduates from prestigious law school, studies in France, helps found a multimillion dollar company … and ends up moonlighting as a grocery thief, because he can’t give up the preposterously decadent lifestyle he enjoyed as a member of the tech elite,” she writes.
The mindset, she says, is “the same cultural orientation adopted by Uber executive Michael: That this food, or information, or what have you, should belong to them as a matter of course. They do not have to ask permission, and they certainly don’t have to pay.”
In a Thursday follow-up on Thought Catalog, Moghadam said he wrote the original article as a “playful” piece and didn’t really expect anyone to read it.
Hence, as a huge fan of Whole Foods, he said, he was honored to receive the following tweet from the supermarket in response to his piece: “Well that’s not very nice. Thanks for the heads up on your sneaky tricks.”
Moghadam was in the news earlier this year because of another controversial Internet posting, the Huffington Post reported in May. He resigned from his position at Rap Genius (now known just as Genius) after ValleyWag reported on tasteless online annotations Moghadam had made to a manifesto written by mass-shooter Elliot Rodger, who killed six people in May. According to Recode, these included statements by Moghadam like “beautifully written” and “MY GUESS: his sister is smokin hot.”
