Leading US privacy, civil liberties and human rights organizations launched a campaign on Monday calling on tech companies to take concrete steps to protect their users in the wake of revelations about the harvesting and manipulation of Facebook data conducted by Cambridge Analytica.
In an open letter to the tech companies, the group, which includes the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Color of Change, Fight for the Future and others, are calling on Facebook, Google and their cohorts to commit to “to protecting their users’ data from exploitation and securing their users’ human rights, ensuring their products and services do not put human rights at risk”.
The groups have launched a website, Security Pledge, and are calling on people to add their names to the open letter.
The campaign was launched after the Observer revealed Cambridge Analytica, a political data firm, gained access to private information on more than 50 million Facebook users. Those revelations have shone a spotlight on the amount of data collected by tech companies and the ways they use it and triggered government inquiries on both sides of the Atlantic.
The pledge sets out a detailed set of technological and policy commitments that tech companies must make in order to “ensure the internet is used to expand democracy, not undermine it”.
“This is a watershed moment for the internet,” said Evan Greer, deputy director of Fight for the Future. “Millions of people now understand how their data can be weaponized and used against them, and they are demanding change.
“Cambridge Analytica is just the tip of the iceberg, and this problem doesn’t begin and end with Facebook. If the largest tech companies take the steps outlined in the security pledge, it will change the course of human history for the better and protect billions of people’s basic rights,” she said.
Specifically, the pledge calls for companies to:
- Limit the amount of data they collect in the first place, and give users control over how it is shared.
- Offer end-to-end encryption by default to ensure that users’ communications are protected from corporate and government surveillance.
- Provide users with full transparency about what data is collected, how it is used, and what measures are in place to prevent it from being abused.
- Support legislation and policy reforms that limit government access to user data except with a warrant and judicial oversight.
David Segal, executive director of Demand Progress, said: “The major online platforms are facing a reckoning: How they respond in this moment will help determine whether the utopian vision that inspired so many internet pioneers and users stands a chance of becoming a reality, or whether companies will ignore the public interest turn the internet against its users towards the end of private benefit.”
“It’s time that companies take steps to ensure that using their products doesn’t mean that users have to sacrifice their rights,” said Neema Singh Guliani, ACLU legislative counsel. “The way companies treat data can affect whether you are wrongly excluded from job or housing ads because of your gender, targeted for dubious financial products or have your security compromised. Many companies have for too long ignored their obligation to treat data responsibly, prevent information from being used to discriminate and provide users’ full control over how it is handled.”
