27 April 2009

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear President Obama:

As representatives of leading consumer, privacy, and other public interest organizations, we respectfully urge you to appoint a new Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission who will uphold that agency’s mandate—too often ignored in the recent past—of “protecting America’s consumers.” The new Commissioner should have a distinguished record of achievement in consumer affairs, with a demonstrated commitment to protecting the public from all manner of unfair, deceptive, fraudulent, and non-competitive monopolistic/oligopolistic business practices. Given the key role the FTC plays in protecting the public, especially children, in such crucial sectors as finance, health, privacy, and marketing, as well as competition, it is essential that your nominee have an unassailable record of supporting the interests of the public. Appointing a Commissioner with recent consulting or employment ties to the corporate sector would undermine consumer confidence in the agency.

New NAI “Principles” Fail to Ensure Online Privacy of Consumers

As Privacy Groups Meet with Pres.-elect Obama’s FTC Transition Team Today, the Message is that Revised Principles Underscore Failure of Self-regulation

Privacy of Financial and Health Information and of Adolescents at Risk

Under pressure from federal policymakers, privacy experts, and consumer advocates, the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI)—whose members include Google, Time Warner (Tacoda), and Yahoo—has revised its self-regulatory guidelines originally developed in 2000. But these refurbished principles fail to meaningfully protect consumers, primarily relying on the same weak and obtuse disclosure model (privacy policies that experts and consumers alike know have been ineffective).

Dear Chairman Majoras and Commissioners:

On behalf of the Center of the Digital Democracy, I respectfully urge you to impose
conditions designed to protect competition in the matter of Google and DoubleClick.
Since the planned acquisition was announced last spring, we have provided competition
bureau staff with information concerning both the overall competitive conditions of the
interactive advertising marketplace and specific materials related to the two companies
themselves. We have brought in a distinguished professor and one of the country's
leading experts on digital marketing—Professor Joseph Turow of the Annenberg School
at the University of Pennsylvania—to meet with competition staff. We also offered to
provide additional analysis and information, but the staff has not requested such data.
I am alarmed by reports that the commission is about to approve the merger without
imposing any of the conditions required to maintain a semblance of competition in the
interactive advertising market. Given the scale needed to compete with a combined
Google/DoubleClick, there will be insurmountable barriers to entry in the interactive ad
market.

[to read the entire document, download the PDF below]

28 Groups Tell FCC That Digital TV Rules Lack Public Benefit

August 2007

Over the past 12 years, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has repeatedly failed to redefine broadcasters’ public interest obligations in light of the nation’s ongoing transition to digital television, a coalition of 28 groups said in a filing at the FCC today. The groups echoed the warnings of FCC Commissioner Michael Copps that this “record of inaction” may “go down . . . as the Commission’s major failing in its efforts to move the digital transition forward.”

The groups’ filing came in the FCC’s third periodic review of the conversion of the nation’s broadcast television system from analog to digital television (“DTV”). The DTV transition will increase efficient use of the spectrum, expand consumer choice for video programming, and increase the amount of spectrum available for public safety and other wireless services. Analog TV broadcasts are to end February 17, 2009. In its rulemaking, the FCC proposed procedures and rule changes necessary to complete the transition, but once again failed to address broadcasters’ obligations to serve local communities’ educational, informational, civic, minority, disability and emergency information needs – or how these services should be disclosed to the public.

“Congress and the courts have been clear,” said Benton Foundation Chairman Charles Benton, “that the rights of viewers are paramount in broadcasting. The FCC has worked long and hard to help broadcasters make the transition to digital TV technology, a transition that could greatly increase the value of their businesses. The Commission must now do the work to define the benefits of the transition for the public, a transition that could make their airwaves more valuable to them.”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE July 17, 2007

Contact: Kathryn Montgomery, American University202-494-1501
Jeff Chester, Center for Digital Democracy, 202-494-7100

Statement from
Kathryn Montgomery, PhD
Professor, American University

Co-author, “Interactive Food & Beverage Marketing:
Targeting Children and Youth in the Digital Age”
Available from www.digitalads.org

Note to Journalists covering tomorrow’s FTC/HHS Forum on Marketing, Self-Regulation, & Childhood Obesity: Professor Kathryn Montgomery of American University is a panelist who will summarize her recent research on digital food marketing targeting children and youth. In the expectation of several industry announcements, she is releasing this statement: