U.S. online marketing companies are pioneering the dramatic expansion of data collection throughout the world, as they gather, analyze, and make actionable all of our information.  Giants such as Google and Facebook effectively become “private NSAs”—tracking us on social media, mobile devices, search engines, online games, and increasingly even when we are in the grocery or department store.  Telephone companies involved with the NSA’s “bulk” data-collection program are expanding their own data gathering on the Internet and mobile devices as well.

Earlier today, the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) sent an email to the WC3 Tracking Protecting list withdrawing from the group.  Its email, along with one from the IAB and from former WC3 co-chair Peter Swire, follows CDD's statement:

Washington, DC: A report released today by the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) criticizes the Obama Administration’s recent effort to establish new privacy safeguards for the Digital Era. The more than yearlong proceeding led by the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to further the Administration’s proposed “Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights” failed to ensure that the public can be protected from the array of sophisticated mobile “app” data-gathering practices.