February 2014

Technological progress should bring greater safety, economic opportunity, and convenience to everyone. And the collection of new types of data is essential for documenting persistent inequality and discrimination. At the same time, as new technologies allow companies and government to gain greater insight into our lives, it is vitally important that these technologies be designed and used in ways that respect the values of equal opportunity and equal justice.

Signatories ranging from the American Civil Liberties Union to Public Knowledge aim to:

• Stop High-Tech Profiling. New surveillance tools and data gathering techniques that can assemble detailed information about any person or group create a heightened risk of profiling and discrimination. Clear limitations and robust audit mechanisms are necessary to make sure that if these tools are used it is in a responsible and equitable way.
• Ensure Fairness in Automated Decisions. Computerized decisionmaking in areas such as employment, health, education, and lending must be judged by its impact on real people, must operate fairly for all communities, and in particular must protect the interests of those that are disadvantaged or that have historically been the subject of discrimination. Systems that are blind to the preexisting disparities faced by such communities can easily reach decisions that reinforce existing inequities. Independent review and other remedies may be necessary to assure that a system works fairly.
• Preserve Constitutional Principles. Search warrants and other independent oversight of law enforcement are particularly important for communities of color and for religious and ethnic minorities, who often face disproportionate scrutiny. Government databases must not be allowed to undermine core legal protections, including those of privacy and freedom of association.
• Enhance Individual Control of Personal Information. Personal information that is known to a corporation -- such as the moment-to-moment record of a person’s movements or communications -- can easily be used by companies and the government against vulnerable populations, including women, the formerly incarcerated, immigrants, religious minorities, the LGBT community, and young people. Individuals should have meaningful, flexible control over how a corporation gathers data from them, and how it uses and shares that data. Non-public information should not be disclosed to the government without judicial process.
• Protect People from Inaccurate Data. Government and corporate databases must allow everyone -- including the urban and rural poor, people with disabilities, seniors, and people who lack access to the Internet -- to appropriately ensure the accuracy of personal information that is used to make important decisions about them. This requires disclosure of the underlying data, and the right to correct it when inaccurate.

Politicians and human rights groups have reacted angrily to revelations that Britain's spy agency intercepted and stored webcam images of millions of people not suspected of any wrongdoing with the aid of its US counterpart.

GCHQ files dating between 2008 and 2010 reveal that a surveillance program codenamed Optic Nerve collected images of Yahoo webcam chats in bulk and saved them to agency databases, regardless of whether individual users were an intelligence target or not. The Tory member of Parliament David Davis said: "We now know that millions of Yahoo account holders were filmed without their knowledge through their webcams, the images of which were subsequently stored by GCHQ and the NSA. This is, frankly, creepy." While MP Davis said it was perfectly proper for the intelligence agencies to use any and all means to target those suspected of terrorism, kidnapping and other serious crimes, but that the indiscriminate nature of the program was alarming. "It is entirely improper to extend such intrusive surveillance on a blanket scale to ordinary citizens," he said. The Liberal Democrat MP Julian Huppert said he was "absolutely shocked" at the revelation. "This seems like a very clear invasion of privacy, and I simply cannot see what the justification is," he said.

The Media Institute has filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the Supreme Court backing broadcasters in their fight with Aereo. The First Amendment think tank, which is backed by major media companies, recruited Duke University Law visiting professor and institute advisor Rodney Smolla to make the argument that Aereo is simply using a technological contrivance"-- banks of remote off-air antennas and servers for recording programming -- that serves no purpose other than to provide legal cover so that Aereo can "traffic in copyrighted content without paying for it." "If a picture tells a thousand words, a thousand antennas tell the picture," the brief says, "Aereo's bizarre engineering, employing thousands of antennas to do the work of one, reveals to all what is really going on." Smolla also argues that the Aereo model threatens to undercut broadcasters business models, and not through the disruptive innovation that is a threat to any settled business model, but by illegal activity in the guise of that innovation.

ABC will use the Oscars telecast as a carrot to lure viewers to its Watch ABC mobile and web video services. But the network is setting up a digital velvet rope: It will let only subscribers of participating pay-TV providers in eight markets watch the full show over the Internet.

ABC also has retired its standalone Oscars app, which the network debuted in 2011 to provide live looks into the action backstage and on the red carpet. Instead, that content will be folded into Watch ABC, but will be available to anyone in the US for free. The decision to phase out the dedicated Oscars app was made to get the content “in front of the largest addressable audience without them having to download a separate app,” said Karin Gilford, senior VP of digital media for ABC Television Network.