The Privacy Coalition is a nonpartisan coalition of consumer, civil liberties, educational, family, library, labor, and technology organizations that have agreed to the Privacy Pledge. Members of the coalition have been meeting since 1995, but formalized the organization in February 2001. View a list of member organizations.
Latest Posts
2010 Annual Privacy Coalition Meeting
February 2, 2010The annual meeting of the Privacy Coalition held in Washington DC on January 21-23, 2010 hosted discussions among activists, policy makers, government decision makers, and federal chief privacy officials. Congressman Bennie G. Thompson served as the Keynote speaker at the dinner held on Thursday evening. At the event Beth Givens, founder and director of Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, was presented with the EPIC's U.S. Privacy Champion Award for 2010. Meeting participants. Meeting Agenda.
Posted by EPIC on February 2, 2010
Privacy Coalition Members Defend Privacy of Facebook Users
December 17, 2009Ten Privacy and consumer organizations filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, urging the FTC to open an investigation into Facebook's revised privacy settings. The complaint, led by EPIC is signed by nine other privacy and consumer organizations, states that the "changes violate user expectations, diminish user privacy, and contradict Facebook's own representations." There has been widespread opposition from Facebook users, security experts, bloggers, and news organizations.
Posted by EPIC on December 17, 2009
Privacy Coalition Members Send Comments to NIST on Smart Grid Systems
December 2, 2009Members of the Privacy Coalition urged a federal agency to establish safeguards for Smart Grid systems that protect consumer electricity usage information from unauthorized collection, use, disclosure, or sale. Smart Grid networks, which uniquely identify individual devices and appliances, create new privacy risks and could reveal intimate details of home life. EPIC recommended that policies be established to safeguard consumer privacy, including limitations on data collection, enforceable privacy practices, new security standards, and independent oversight.
Posted by EPIC on December 2, 2009
November Mary Ellen Callahan Meets with Privacy Coalition Members
Mary Ellen Callahan, DHS CPO meets with the Privacy Coalition for the November 2009 meeting. This was the first meeting between the Privacy Coalition and the Obama Administration's Department of Homeland Security's Chief Privacy Officer. The hour long discussion covered a range of topics and ended with an invitation to Coalition members to participate in quarterly meetings hosted by the DHS CPO's office. Also speaking at the meeting was Dr. Marios Savvides, founder and Director of CyLab's Biometric Center at Carnegie Mellon University and a Research Assistant Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at CMU. He spoke about advances in biometric identification systems that go beyond the need to create databases of those enrolled for authentication purposes.
Posted by EPIC on December 2, 2009
Coalition Members Send Letter in Support of Fordham Children's Privacy Report
Privacy Coalition members joined letters sent to the Chair and Ranking Members of the Senate and House Education Committees, as well as the Secretary of Education regarding the Fordham Law School study, which found that state educational databases across the country ignore key privacy protections for the nation's school children. The study reports that at least 32% of states warehouse children's social security numbers; at least 22% of states record student pregnancies; and at least 46% of the states track mental health, illness, and jail sentences as part of the children's educational records. Some states outsource the data processing without any restrictions on use or confidentiality for children's information. Access to this information and the disclosure of personal data may occur for decades and follow children well into their adult lives.
Posted by EPIC on December 2, 2009
Privacy.org headlines
DHS Announces Cybersecurity Awareness Campaign (Mar. 10, 2010)
Air Travelers Complaints Contradict TSA Claims Regarding Whole Body Scanners (Mar. 10, 2010)
FTC Fines LifeLock $12 Million for Deceptive ID Theft Prevention Claims (Mar. 10, 2010)
Should Rocket Scientist Have Worker Privacy Rights? (Mar. 9, 2010)
President Obama Nominates Former Army General to Head TSA (Mar. 8, 2010)
President Obama Nominates Former Army General to Head TSA (Mar. 8, 2010)
New FTC Commissioners Confirmed by Senate (Mar. 8, 2010)
EPIC Files Supreme Court Brief Advocating Petitioner Privacy (Mar. 8, 2010)