Supporting the Call for Racial Justice

The Center for Digital Democracy supports the call for racial justice and the fight against police violence, against the systemic injustices that exist in all parts of our society – inferior educational opportunities; lack of affordable equitable health care; an unjust justice system; housing and employment discrimination; and discriminatory marketing practices. 

Joint civil society statement: States use of digital surveillance technologies to fight pandemic must respect human rights 2 April 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic is a global public health emergency that requires a coordinated and large-scale response by governments worldwide. However, States’ efforts to contain the virus must not be used as a cover to usher in a new era of greatly expanded systems of invasive digital surveillance.

Contact:

Jeffrey Chester, CDD, jeff@democraticmedia.org, 202-494-7100

Josh Golin, CCFC, josh@commercialfreechildhood.org, 339-970-4240

Children’s privacy advocates call on FTC to require Google, Disney, other leading companies to disclose how they gather and use data to target kids and families

Threats to young people from digital marketing and data collection are heightened by

Contact:

Jeff Chester, CDD (jeff@democraticmedia.org; 202-494-7100)

David Monahan, CCFC (david@commercialfreechildhood.org; 617-896-9397)

Groups Praise Sen. Markey and Google

for Ensuring Children on YouTube Receive Key Safeguards

EMBARGOED UNTIL DECEMBER 5, 2019 AT 12:01 AM

Contact:

Jeffrey Chester, CDD, jeff@democraticmedia.org, (202) 494-7100

Josh Golin, CCFC, josh@commercialfreechildhood.org; 617-896-9369

Leading child advocacy, health, and privacy groups call on FTC to Investigate Children’s Digital Media Marketplace Before Proposing any Changes to Privacy Protections for Children

Subject: Which digital privacy proposals in Congress make the grade?

Nov. 21, 2019

Contact: David Rosen, drosen@citizen.org, (202) 588-7742

Susan Grant, sgrant@consumerfed.org, (202) 387-6121

Caitriona Fitzgerald, fitzgerald@epic.org, (617) 945-8409

Katharina Kopp, kkopp@democraticmedia.org, (202) 836-4621

I played a key role helping get the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) passed by Congress in 1998 (when I was executive director of the Center for Media Education). Since then, I have tried to ensure that the country’s only federal law addressing commercial privacy online was taken seriously.

For years, consumer and privacy advocates attempted to get the Federal Trade Commission to act responsibly when it came to ensuring that the digital giants treated the public fairly, including their privacy.  Since the mid-1990's, when I first started working to press the commission to be more responsive to the threats to autonomy and fairness triggered by the unrelenting and stealth gathering of all of our personal information (often working with EPIC), I was confronted by an agency which was so cautious, it blinded itself to the problems.  The agency has never been able to address the rol