The Surveillance, Tech, & Immigration Policing Project at IDP submitted two joint comments to the Federal Trade Commission on November 21, 2022, in response to the agency’s Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) on commercial surveillance and data security practices.
Comment on Data Brokers and the Companies Behind the Government’s Surveillance Programs: Along with Mijente, Just Futures Law, UCLA’s Center on Race and Digital Justice, and MediaJustice, we call on the FTC to protect consumers from companies that collect, analyze, monetize, and sell personal data and data analytics products, especially to police and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). These companies, including data brokers, are the backbone of the government surveillance programs that target immigrant communities and fuel DHS’ deportation machine. We urge the FTC to strongly limit the operations of data brokers, data analytics, and other predatory companies that exploit consumers’ need for essential services and utilities to capture, repackage, and sell their personal information. Read the comment here.
See the press release from MediaJustice on our joint comment here.
Comment on Algorithmic Discrimination: In partnership with NYU’s Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law, we highlight how commercial algorithmic tools, powered by AI and data mining, exacerbate inequality. Algorithmic discrimination pervades and amplifies the harms of the criminal legal system, immigration system, and housing industry. We call on the FTC to use its authority to address the harms of algorithmic discrimination, especially on undocumented people, people with criminal records, people experiencing incarceration, poor and working class people, people without stable housing, and other marginalized and targeted communities. Read the comment here.