The House Judiciary Committee is today holding a markup session on six bills aimed at disrupting the monopoly power of Big Tech. EPIC has long argued that market consolidation in online platform threatens privacy. More than a decade ago, EPIC urged the FTC to block Google’s proposed acquisition of DoubleClick. EPIC said that the acquisition would enable Google to collect the personal information of billions of users and track their browsing activities across the web. EPIC correctly warned that this acquisition would accelerate Google’s dominance of the online advertising industry and diminish competition. The FTC ultimately allowed the merger to go forward. EPIC has since repeatedly warned FTC that other mergers posed similar risks to consumer privacy and competition, including Facebook's acquisition of WhatsApp.
As part of EPIC's ongoing lawsuit for cell phone surveillance orders issued by federal prosecutors, the Department of Justice identified 182 orders and warrants for cell phone location data under ยง 2703(d) from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Rhode Island from 2016-2019. During the same time period, the office handled 453 criminal cases. The District of Rhode Island is one of the smallest districts in the country. EPIC has previously obtained the number of location data requests for the District of Delaware and the Virgin Islands, two of the five districts that the DOJ has agreed to search for location data requests. EPIC is awaiting responses from two of the agency's other prosecutor's offices and will continue to update its comparative table as remaining districts release more information. Currently, prosecutors do not release any comprehensive or uniform data about their surveillance of cell phone location data. In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Carpenter v. United States that the collection of cell phone location data without a warrant is a violation of the Fourth Amendment. The case is EPIC v. DOJ, No. 18-1814 (D.D.C.).
In a joint opinion regarding the European Commission's Proposal for Regulation on artificial intelligence, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) and the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) called for a ban on the use of "AI for automated recognition of human features in publicly accessible spaces, and some other uses of AI that can lead to unfair discrimination." Europe's two main data protection authorities also critiqued the European Commission for failing to include international law enforcement efforts in the proposed regulations. The joint opinion is the latest in an increasing chorus of calls for a ban on facial recognition. EPIC has joined a number of coalitions urging a ban on facial recognition including: an international letter opposing the technology, a statement of concerns on police use of FR, and EPIC's Ban Face Surveillance campaign. EPIC recently endorsed legislation that would ban federal law enforcement use of facial recognition and pressure state law enforcement to do the same.
