Racial justice advocates want the Federal Trade Commission to adopt new rules holding private corporations accountable for tech abuses involving electronic monitoring, commercial data and surveillance practices. Digital policing and electronic monitoring remain largely unregulated. MediaJustice, Mijente, Just Futures Law, the Center on Race and Digital Justice and the Surveillance, Tech, and Immigration Policing Project at the Immigrant Defense Project provided the agency with concrete proposals regarding the sharing, storing and collection of personal information by private companies.
Read the full story in NewsOne.
“This Federal Trade Commission rulemaking process could be hugely consequential in finally reining in the tech abuses by police departments, private corporations, and federal government agencies. In the past two decades, without comprehensive government action to protect the public, the now massive industry profiting from the extraction of our personal information is operating largely with impunity. It’s high time to create rules that assert our rights and power in an environment where they are bought and sold, largely without our informed knowledge or consent, compounding the exploitation of Black and brown communities.”
Rumsha Sajid, National Field Organizer on Policing and Surveillance in NewsOne
“While an outright ban on ankle shackles would be the best possible option, the FTC must act to reduce the harms done by these devices in the absence of the political will to abolish electronic monitoring altogether. This means imposing strict regulations for EM companies and their government contractors. Such regulations should limit the capacity of monitors to capture or share data, eliminate user fees, and make contracts and conditions of EM easily accessible to the public. The time to monitor the monitors on the pathway to their elimination is now.”
James Kilgore, Director of the Challenging E-Carceration Project in NewsOne
