Privacy advocates are cheering news that the White House’s Big Data review has resulted in calls for an overhaul of privacy laws and the country’s surveillance programs, reports The Hill. Representatives from the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) and the American Civil Liberties Union praised the 85-page report, released Thursday, which consolidated the White House’s John Podesta’s 90-day fact-gathering effort into six specific recommendations for the president, including legislation on data breaches and updating the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. The CDT’s Nuala O’Connor, CIPP/US, CIPP/G, said, “The report rightfully highlights the potential for limiting our choices or discriminating based on broad assumptions from a data set.” Some, however, are chiding the report for not going far enough. Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy expressed disappointment that the report “failed to identify the commercial surveillance complex that has been put in place by … data-driven businesses.”
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