Microsoft is rapidly expanding its surveillance advertising complex—first acquiring AT&T’s powerful Xandr targeting system last December, and adding a few weeks later the online gaming and eSports giant Activision Blizzard.

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There is a digital data “gold rush” fever sweeping the data and marketing industry, as the quest to find ways to use data to determine a person’s “identity” for online marketing becomes paramount. This is triggered, in part, by the moves made by Google and others to replace “cookies” and other online identifiers with new, allegedly pro-privacy data-profiling methods to get the same results. We’ve addressed this privacy charade in other posts.

The Trade Desk is a leading AdTech company, providing data-driven digital advertising services to major brands and agencies.

The Center for Digital Democracy and 23 other leading civil society groups sent a letter to President Biden today asking his Administration to ensure that any new transatlantic data transfer deal is coupled with the enactment of U.S. laws that reform government surveillance practices and provide comprehensive privacy protections.

The Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) and CDD filed comments with the UN’s Special Rapporteur on privacy, as part of a consultation designed to propose global safeguards for young people online.  Both CCFC and CDD, along with allies in the U.S. and throughout the world, are working to advance stronger international protections for young people, especially related to their privacy and the impacts that digital marketing has on their development.

The Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) announced today its opposition to the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), also known as Proposition 24, which will appear on the November 2020 California general election ballot. CDD has concluded that Prop 24 does not sufficiently strengthen Californians’ privacy and may, in fact, set a new, low, and thus dangerous standard for privacy protection in the U.S.