SEN. GILLIBRAND’S PRESS CONFERENCE TODAY ABOUT HER BILL TO CREATE A DATA PROTECTION AGENCY
This afternoon I spoke at a press conference in NYC to support Sen. Gillibrand’s new bill to create a new federal agency specifically devoted toward protecting privacy, called the Data Protection Agency. The bill is posted here; more about it is here.
The statement I gave is below; and below that is the press release, with quotes from Sen. Gillibrand and the other two privacy experts pictured above, Caitriona Fitzgerald of EPIC and Prof. Ezra Waldman of NY Law School.
Hi, my name is Leonie Haimson, and I’m co-founder and co-chair of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy. We are one of the many organizations that have submitted complaints to the FTC about the way companies like Facebook, Google and Google Play Apps have been illegally harvesting young children’s information and potentially using it for commercial purposes without parental consent in violation of COPPA. And yet the FTC’s response to these complaints has been silence, or at best a mere slap on the wrist, a symbolic fine that barely touches the huge profits of these companies.
In addition, the FTC has put out a series of contradictory guidance documents about how COPPA applies to the collection of personal data from children in schools that has managed to confuse nearly everyone. As a result, each school and district interprets their responsibilities differently about whether or not they even inform parents beforehand, no less ask for their consent, . when their children are assigned programs to use that require them to upload their personal information.
For example, Google Apps for Education, also called G-suite, is used in literally tens of thousands of schools across the country; and yet CONTINUE READING: Sen. Gillibrand’s press conference today about her bill to create a Data Protection Agency | Parent Coalition for Student Privacy