Program Areas

We are now subjected to a far-ranging system of “commercial surveillance,” where our information is continuously gathered. Data is collected when we go online, use mobile phones, post to social media, and more. CDD plays a unique leadership role holding the digital data industry accountable, as well as helping foster regulatory safeguards.

An elaborate system is in place designed to influence our behavior by taking advantage of our use of digital media. Social media sites collect your habits, delivering you and your network of friends and relationships to advertisers and marketers. You are a product, sold to corporations: food, credit, entertainment, alcohol, apparel, and even political campaigns. CDD closely tracks this industry, bring their activities to the attention of the public, the media, and policymakers.

As more consumers rely on the Internet to obtain health information, as the medical profession expands its own use of the Internet to engage in diagnosis and treatment, and as the boundaries between health-care institutions and the digital commercial marketplace are eroding, the privacy and security of our health data will be at even greater risk. A weak and fragmented health-privacy regulatory system fails to provide adequate safeguards to protect personal health information. Failure to reign in unfettered market dynamics and algorithmic classification systems that enable profiling and discrimination, the harms of this “new health economy” will likely affect disproportionately the most vulnerable people in our society, including people of color, the sickest, the poorest, and those with the least education.

CDD is working to ensure the digital health field is accountable; privacy is respected, and that safeguards are in place for online health marketing.

CDD protects the interests of young people, through its work to ensure compliance with the law it helped pass--the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Beyond children’s privacy, CDD is committed to ensuring children and teens are treated fairly in the commercial online marketplace, where they are subjected to a torrent of powerful ads for junk food and other products.