Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) has sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission urging a more aggressive approach to privacy protection. Senator Hawley outlined the many privacy violations by tech giants in recent years, including Facebook's failure to honor the promises it made when it acquired WhatsApp, Google's use of location data, and the disclosure of personal information to third parties by many platforms. "There is no excuse for inaction," Senator Hawley said. Earlier this year, EPIC joined a coalition of groups urging the FTC to unwind the Facebook-WhatsApp merger, citing promises the companies made at time of the merger. With the one-year deadline of the reopening of the Facebook investigation approaching, EPIC has launched the campaign #EnforceTheOrder, @FTC.
Prior to a hearing on "GDPR & CCPA: Opt-ins, Consumer Control, and the Impact on Competition and Innovation," EPIC has sent a letter and related materials to the Senate Judiciary Committee advising on federal privacylegislation. EPIC Executive Director Marc Rotenberg recently wrote in the New York Times, "There is still much that Congress can do to strengthen privacy protections for Americans. Enacting federal baseline legislation and establishing a data protection agency would be a good start." EPIC also sent the Committee EPIC commentaries from the Financial Times, Techonomy, the OECD Observer, and the Harvard International Review.
At the start of Sunshine Week, Buzzfeed featured documents obtained by EPIC about a deeply flawed facial recognition program that could impact all U.S. travelers returning to the United States. The documents, released following an EPIC FOIA request, describe the Administration's plan to extend a faulty CBP pilot program to TSA, ICE, and the Coast Guard. Documents previously obtained by EPIC, following a lawsuit against DHS, found similar problems with a facial recognition program at the southern border.
