Brandi Collins

Color Of Change and Free Press joined a group of civil rights and racial justice advocacy organizations supporting the Federal Communications Commission’s efforts to adopt strong privacy safeguards for Internet users. “Throughout our nation’s history, the privacy rights of communities of color have too often gone unprotected,” reads the coalition letter. “Information about our communities has been used to target, exploit and harm the people who live in them.”

In the digital age, these harms are amplified by the speed and stealth with which the collection of information takes place. Internet service providers have a nearly unencumbered view of what people do online. They can track the websites we visit, the messages we send, even our physical location if we’re using mobile devices. Such a detailed view reveals such sensitive information as a person’s race and ethnicity, religious and political views — even address and income level. While privacy is important to everyone in the United States, it’s vital to those communities who are most often exploited via predatory marketing schemes. The FCC should move forward with its proposal and adopt the strongest online safeguards for these communities.