Consumer, Civil Rights & Privacy Groups call on Obama Adm Privacy Stakeholder Process to Ensure Two-way Participation

This letter was sent today to Lawrence Strickling, Ass’t Sec of Commerce, as well as The White House. Despite our best efforts (link is external) to encourage the Commerce Department to ensure that people across the country can meaningfully participate in the first key stakeholder meeting scheduled for 12 July, the agency has failed to embrace an effective means to do so. Over the last few weeks we did get the Commerce people to change their plans to allow some outside of the Beltway involvement—but in a very limited way. The groups previously submitted a set of principles (link is external) last February to help govern the negotiations and ensure equitable representation and deliberation. Today’s letter is attached. See too Consumer Federation of America press statement. (link is external)