The CDD says few U.S. health consumers are aware they are being identified, labeled, profiled, and tracked on the Internet while they search or access information on specific conditions or concerns.

"The health and safety of U.S. consumers must be protected from inappropriate and potentially harmful use of digital marketing applications that have been embraced by pharmaceutical and health marketers," said Jeff Chester, Executive Director, CDD.

"It is essential that the FDA craft regulatory safeguards for Internet-related promotion, especially since interactive communications will become the dominant form for the delivery of health information and advertising to both consumers and health professionals."

The CDD asked the FDA to work with the Federal Trade Commission and other agencies to develop a set of policies for regulating the use of behavioral targeting and data collection in the marketing of drugs and health-related products.

The FDA held two days of hearings last November on the role of the Internet and marketing for regulated drugs. Chester said at those hearings, "pharmaceutical marketers purposely painted a sanitized, storybook image of social media marketing."

"Direct-to-Consumer Digital Marketing of pharmaceutical and health-related products requires the FDA to re-evaluate its standards for advertising practices, including what should be considered as truthful and non-misleading," he said.
 

In a joint letter to the FTC, Consumer Watchdog and the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) said Google is simply buying its way to dominance in the mobile advertising market, reducing competition to the detriment of consumers.

"The mobile sector is the next frontier of the digital revolution. Without vigorous competition and strong privacy guarantees this vital and growing segment of the online economy will be stifled," wrote John M. Simpson, consumer advocate at Consumer Watchdog and CDD Executive Director Jeffery A. Chester.

"Consumers will face higher prices, less innovation and fewer choices. The FTC should conduct the appropriate investigation, block the proposed Google/AdMob deal, and also address the privacy issues."

Last week Google said the FTC had made a second request for additional information about the deal, a signal the commission is closely examining the proposal.

In addition to the anti-trust issues, the letter from the two non-partisan, non-profit groups, said a combined Google/AdMob raises privacy concerns. Both AdMob and Google gather large amounts of data about consumers’ online behavior, including their location.

"Permitting the expansion of mobile advertising through the combination of these two market leaders without requiring privacy guarantees poses a serious threat to consumers," the letter said.

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> Google Provides An Update On The AdMob Acquistion

> Mobile Advertising Guidelines Get An Update

> Best Buy Now Installing Google Mobile Apps On Smartphones

Hours after we reported Jones Day purged DoubleClick references from its website, the CDD and EPIC submitted a letter to Federal Trade Commission secretary Donald Clark requesting all of the information they have regarding Jones Day and its relationship with DoubleClick.

Two separate FTC spokespersons told CNet and MediaPost that Jones Day would represent DoubleClick before the European Commission regarding the ad network’s potential acquisition by Google. They had not heard of Jones Day representing DoubleClick before the FTC.

It appears the firm at one point had been advising DoubleClick on both the international and US aspects of antitrust law. A now-removed document from the Jones Day site indicated their relationship began on or before November 9th.

EPIC and CDD helpfully attached the Google cache of the relevant jonesday.com page presenting this summary. When we reviewed the current Jones Day site’s list of clients, and the five attorneys who had been listed as representing DoubleClick, all DoubleClick related references had been removed from the site.

Again, cached versions of each page showed the DoubleClick references in place. The FOIA request filed today asked the FTC to produce all records concerning Jones Day as related to the Google and DoubleClick deal, as well as "any other matter involving Jones Day and the investigation of consumer privacy complaints or the enforcement of consumer privacy law at the Commission."

To make matters even more interesting, a DoubleClick spokesperson told WebProNews today, "Jones Day has been engaged primarily with respect to European and other non-U.S. jurisdictions."

If that is the case, why would the prestigious Jones Day firm remove DoubleClick references from its list of clients and its attorneys’ bios?

This all started when CDD and EPIC asked FTC chair Deborah Platt Majoras to recuse herself after Jones Day’s involvement in DoubleClick’s affairs became known. Her husband, John Majoras, is a partner at Jones Day. Who knows where this may end?

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Jeff Chester, executive director of the CDD, says that while the changes Zuckerberg announced this morning were "a step in the right direction," it’ll take more than that to get privacy advocates and government agencies off his back.

"Mr. Zuckerberg isn’t truly candid with Facebook users," Chester said in a statement. "Beacon is just one aspect of a massive data collection and targeting system put in place by Facebook."

Chester doubts Zuckerberg’s stated intention of developing a tool that allows users to "share information across sites with their friends." He hearkens back to earlier statements by the troubled young CEO about making marketers a part of the conversation on Facebook. Part of that plan, says Chester, involves serving "the data collection interests of marketers."

"Mr. Zuckerberg can’t simply now do a digital ‘mea culpa’ and hope that Facebook’s disapproving members, privacy advocates, and government regulators will disappear…CDD will continue to press U.S. and EU regulators to address Facebook’s significant privacy problem."

Kathryn C. Montgomery, Ph.D. Professor of Communication at American University is also calling for regulatory agencies to investigate and develop rules to protect consumer privacy.

"These companies are continuing full steam ahead with new generation of intrusive marketing practices that are based on unprecedented levels of data collection and personal profiling," she said.

By "these companies," Montgomery assumedly includes MySpace and Google, the latter of which the CDD has also taken action against over the DoubleClick buyout. The advocacy group wrote a letter last month to FTC chairwoman Deborah Platt Majoras, calling on the regulatory body to investigate privacy issues related to online behavioral targeting.    

DoubleClick neatly covers that vulnerability like a set of thick leather boots. That has the groups concerned. They want the Federal Trade Commission to block or modify the multi-billion dollar proposal Google has on the table to acquire the company.

The three groups submitted a second supplement to the FTC, claiming that without safeguards for consumer information in place, that data could be abused by government or commercial entities.

Google’s current stance on privacy calls for a global standard based on the APEC framework. Melissa Ngo of EPIC blasted that proposal as “feeble” during a conference call.

Amina Fazlullah of US PIRG thinks information collection centralized in this merger, with Google in its dominant position, will affect the consumer’s position in the marketplace. Pricing and item availability could be impacted by what Google would know with its aggregated information.

“Content producers would be stuck with very few choices,” Fazlullah said of advertising opportunities for that blanket group of industries, should the deal go through.

CDD executive director Jeff Chester said the “overwhelming share of control” possible from the deal poses a “profound threat to privacy at home and abroad.”

That seems to be the case for Canada, today, as the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic filed a request for an audit of the merger with the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

Google has posted an early response to the FTC’s concerns at its Public Policy blog.

Pablo Chavez, Google Policy Counsel, said in the post his company is “glad to see” the FTC readying its town hall meeting about online advertising on November 1 and 2.

“Late last week we sent comments recommending that the Town Hall address two additional topics,” said Chavez. “We did so in response to the FTC’s request for suggested Town Hall topics in addition to the very timely questions it already plans to pursue.”

Google has asked the FTC to consider “the rapidly changing business landscape of online advertising, and the role it plays in providing free, accessible, user-friendly, and high-quality content to consumers,” and “the ways in which online advertising is contributing to a healthy and vibrant small business community.”

Google will have access to a lot more information through DoubleClick than it had already.

The CDD’s Jeff Chester, whose first-in-a-series of multitudinous words, begins the complaint to the FCC this way:

In the rapidly expanding world of online advertising, a few mega-giants are dramatically expanding their power, including the ability to track consumers’ online movements, to collect and analyze personal data resulting from those travels, and to craft ever-more-sophisticated digital marketing campaigns based on that analysis. 

The recent spate of mergers and acquisitions in the online advertising industry—led by Google’s $3.1 billion takeover of DoubleClick in April and Microsoft’s $6 billion buyout of aQuantive in May—threatens to undermine privacy, competition, and diversity on the Internet.  Permitting the further growth of these data-dependent unrestrained giants is a threat to personal privacy online. 

Increasing digital media consolidation will also have a negative impact on the diversity of public interest content essential for a civil society (e.g., news, public affairs, and cultural programming).

Yes, that’s only three sentences. And yes, somewhat melodramatic, but it will be up to the Federal Trade Commission to decide it’s merit. The triad of privacy advocates added to their original complaint to the FTC, with EPIC leading the wordy objections.

The 12 Commandments, as taken from the 21-page amendment pdf:

1. Order Google to provide meaningful notification when personal data from two distinct Google services are combined to produce a result that is linked an identifiable user.

2. Order Google to give a user the right to obtain knowledge, in a reasonable and timely manner, of whether or not the data relating to the user is processed and if it is processed, information to the purpose of the processing.

3. Order Google to provide, in a reasonable and timely manner, the logic involved in any automatic processing of data concerning that user.

4. Order Google not to retain user data in a form that permits the identification of data subjects for longer than necessary for the purposes for which the data were collected.

5. Order Google to institute an “opt-in” approach to collecting user information. If Google allows a user to “opt-in” before collecting personal data in order to personalize the search experience, Google should implement the same system with regards to a user’s privacy options.

6. Order Google to allow individuals reasonable access to their personal information, along with the ability to edit and delete that information.

7. Order Google to stipulate to never engage in behavioral tracking.

8. Further order Google not to sell personally identifiable information.

9. Order Google to implement a functional and secure system of anonymizing stored user data. Anonymized data remains traceable to the individual user, as demonstrated when America Online inadvertently leaked the search records of 658,000 Americans. Google must implement a technique that truly anonymizes this data, either by erasing more the last octet of the IP address, erasing the IP address completely, assigning randomized numbers to the data, or developing an alternative technique that will render tracing the data back to the individual source impossible.

10. Order Google to cease storage of IP addresses. The search engine functionality would not be impaired if a search engine did not store any user information at all.

11. Condition the merger on Google and DoubleClick maintaining separate databases of user information. Order Google to craft, disclose, and implement a security plan that will maintain, protect, or enhance the privacy, confidentiality, or security of all personally identifiable information.

12. Order Google to implement remedies and a system of accountability in the event of a breach, and to disclose to the public the extent to which it cannot or will not protect the privacy, confidentiality, and security of all personally identifiable information.

The CDD got together with American University to research the extent to which online marketing is contributing to childhood obesity and the health problems that come with it.

Neither of them liked the conclusion: food marketers are bombarding young people with encouragement to eat high-calorie, low nutrient foods all the time through every medium available – instant messaging, online gaming, avatars, etc.

This of course means the amoral world of marketing is making kids fat and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) needs to set rules for food messages aimed at kids.

On one side of the grocery aisle are kids screaming at their parents for Fruit Loops because bagels and yogurt just won’t do. They want Fruit Loops because Toucan Sam (or whoever the mascot is nowadays) told them they want it – that and sugar’s awesome.

So, from their standpoint (the parents with plugged-in kids throwing hissy-fits around every nutritious corner), that’s a problem – especially when Junior’s getting stuck in the tire swing.

(Oops, I forgot, kids don’t go outside anymore, the little pale-faced glowworms. That’s part of the problem with digital age, kids won’t risk the sun damage long enough to let the parents have some quality time…Do you really think four-leaf clovers are lucky for the kids? Nope, lucky for their parents who finally got the kids onto an impossible mission. You’re unlucky if they find one too soon.)

It’s easy to understand the parents’ frustration. It really is hard to tell those cute little monsters no. Let’s review how my Mom did it – because Lord knows what a beautiful, sweet child I was. Must have been terribly difficult to deny me of those little childhood pleasures.

But she found a way. And she found a way often. Eventually all it took was a look and a snap and I dropped that cookie right back in the jar. And I knew that if I didn’t drop the cookie back in the jar, then the snap would turn into a slap.

Some parents say that’s child abuse, but only the ones with fat kids.

So we’re at an impasse then, it seems. Parents are kinder and gentler these days. Childhood and adult obesity is an increasingly huge (pun intended) problem in the US. We don’t work on farms anymore; we work at desks and eat as if we’re still field hands. And all that tasty, cheap, low-quality food is always spinning in high definition around us.

But really? You really think the answer is regulating marketers trying to sell their products? It’s not like they’re selling rat poison. They’re selling junk food to soft parents. Should that be against the law? Kids don’t have any money, right?

Forget that for a minute, it’s an all-day sucker. Maybe, if we’re going to get the government involved in something, we should find a way to make healthy food cheaper. Little Debbie cakes are 35 cents each. Double cheeseburgers are $1.

Why do you think West Virginia’s one of the fattest states in the Union? Because healthy food cost three times as much. Hmmm. Grilled tilapia or Whopper Jr. for lunch? If you’re making $6 per hour, you’re picking the Whopper.

In Japan, fatty, sweet food is way more expensive than the opposite – though they’re adopting American ways more and more. But finding a fat person in Japan is like trying to find something at an American grocery store without high fructose corn syrup.

So, don’t you think that before we ask the government to pound the marketers into their places, we should look into other ways to address the problem? Granted, since pharmaceuticals were allowed to advertise on TV, the cost of prescription drugs has skyrocketed, which means regulation is sometimes necessary.

(Hint, hint – And instead of all this universal health care talk, while we’re on a tangent, why not instead put that tax money to paying the citizens’ insurance bill. That’s all the hospitals care about anyway.)
 
Instead of slapping the hands of the marketers, slap the hands of the kids reaching for the cookies. Instead of punishing a valid trade, provide encouragement and make it easier to eat healthy. Instead of pretending to be angry at the oil companies for price gouging so you’re constituents think you’re really working for them, how about a tax break at the pump?

Oh wait, now I’m really dreaming, aren’t I?

Protests Begin Over Google’s DoubleClick Buy

That information consists of the online activity of 80 to 85 percent of Internet users, according to the Electronic Privacy Information Center. EPIC filed their complaint on April 19th with the FTC, six days after Google announced the purchase.

The U.S. Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG) and the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) also signed on to EPIC’s filing with the FTC. EPIC claims Google and DoubleClick have not taken adequate steps to protect the personal data they collect.

“The acquisition of DoubleClick will permit Google to track both a person

The Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG), filed the complaint with the FTC earlier this week urging a full investigation of online advertising practices in general, but targeted Microsoft because, in the groups’ estimation, the company’s tracking system is the most advanced.

The groups found Microsoft’s Hotmail service “especially disturbing” as the email service is used to bolster adCenter targeting by collecting information on 30 million monthly visitors.

In the filing, the groups complain that the FTC is behind the curve in dealing with data collection and interactive marketing systems used by Internet companies like Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo! to track, profile, and target users as they surf the Internet.

“Unfortunately, over the last several years the FTC has largely ignored the critical developments of the electronic marketplace that have placed the privacy of every American at risk,” said Jeff Chester, CDD executive director.

“The FTC should long ago have sounded a very public alarm–and called for action–concerning the data collection practices stemming from such fields as Web analytics, online advertising networks, behavioral targeting, and rich ‘virtual reality’ media, all of which threaten the privacy of the U.S. public.”

Among the concern is that current privacy disclosure policies are inadequate to inform users about what data are collected and how that data is used. The CDD and US PIRG strongly doubt that the information, as is claimed, is really non-personally identifying. This was illustrated by the recent AOL search data leak that led several news organizations to pieced together enough information to identify specific AOL users.

Last year, the Department of Justice subpoenaed all the major search engines, including MSN, AOL, Yahoo! and Google, asking them to release reams of search data collected as part of an effort to bolster legislation against child pornography. Google, the lone holdout among the search engines, was eventually ordered by a judge to turn over some information.

In spite of recent events, and a steady echo of privacy concerns in the blogosphere, the CDD and US PIRG say the FTC hasn’t been paying attention to what’s been going on in cyberspace.

“The emergence of this on-line tracking and profiling system has snuck up on both consumers and policymakers and is much more than a privacy issue,” said U.S. PIRG Consumer Program Director Ed Mierzwinski.

“Its effect has been to put enormous amounts of consumer information into the hands of sellers, leaving buyer-consumers at risk of unfair pricing schemes and with fewer choices than the Internet is touted to provide.”

There are four specific requests made of the FTC:

launch an immediate investigation into the online marketplace

expose practices that compromise user privacy

issue the necessary injunctions to halt practices that abuse consumers

craft policies and recommend federal legislation to prevent such abuses.

“Microsoft, like Google and Yahoo, is actively rewriting the rules that govern the online marketplace,” said Chester. “It is the FTC’s job to make certain that these rules reflect more than corporate self-interest. The public interest matters, too, and it is the FTC’s responsibility to protect and promote that vital perspective, by issuing injunctions against the most egregious of the new invasive advertising practices, which are fully described in our complaint.”

Microsoft didn’t address the charges specifically, but reiterated its commitment to consumer privacy.

“Consumer trust is essential to the success of online business and helping protect consumers’ privacy is a top priority for Microsoft in our development and implementation of online services,” Microsoft Senior Attorney Mike Hintze told WebProNews.

“We are very open about our privacy policies and practices across all of our online services and advertising products because we believe that providing consumers with this type of transparency and control is extremely important, and it will continue to be a central focus of how we design and deliver online services both now and in the future.”

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