Sandra Fulton

In response to the massive outcry from people like you, we have a last-ditch effort for real, robust surveillance reform. But this won’t happen unless we continue to make a lot of noise. On Jan 11, the House will vote to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Unfortunately, the underlying bill is terrible and would actually work to expand government surveillance.

[Commentary] Recently, a broad coalition of civil rights, civil liberties, privacy and immigrant-rights groups met with representatives from the FBI and Justice Department to demand more transparency around the use of an increasingly popular law enforcement tool: facial recognition technology. The meeting was in response to a recent report from the Georgetown Law Center on Privacy & Technology that found that law enforcement agencies across the country are adding this technology to their arsenal of investigatory tools.

While the report found that the practice affects over 117 million people, agencies across the board have failed to put in place safeguards to protect our privacy. Worse yet, while the technology potentially threatens the rights of everyone in America, the report uncovered damning racial biases within the systems.

Oct 27 marks the one-year anniversary of the “We the People” petition calling on the Obama Administration to publicly affirm its support for strong encryption. The petition platform, which is run by the White House itself, promises a substantive response within 60 days if petitioners can garner 100,000 signatures within 30 days. This is no easy lift, but with the support of nearly 50 organizations, the petition reached its goal last October.

Disappointingly, the White House has stayed silent and failed to hold up its end of the deal. Today Free Press joined a broad coalition of organizations calling on the administration to fulfill its promise, and explaining that while the president has remained silent over the past 365 days, misguided and dangerous efforts to undermine encryption have escalated.

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.