The Case Against the Google-Doubleclick Merger

November 19, 2007 12:45 pm to 2:00 pm

Marc Rotenberg is Executive Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) in Washington, DC. He teaches information privacy law at Georgetown University Law Center and has testified before Congress on many issues, including access to information, encryption policy, consumer protection, computer security, and communications privacy. He testified before the 9-11 Commission on "Security and Liberty: Protecting Privacy, Preventing Terrorism." He has served on several national and international advisory panels, including the expert panels on Cryptography Policy and Computer Security for the OECD, the Legal Experts on Cyberspace Law for UNESCO, and the Countering Spam program of the ITU. He chairs the ABA Committee on Privacy and Information Protection. He is a founding board member and former Chair of the Public Interest Registry, which manages the .ORG domain. He is editor of "The Privacy Law Sourcebook" and co-editor (with Daniel J. Solove and Paul Schwartz) of "Information Privacy Law" (Aspen Publishing 2006). He is a graduate of Harvard College and Stanford Law School. He served as Counsel to Senator Patrick J. Leahy on the Senate Judiciary Committee after graduation from law school. He is the recipient of several awards, including the World Technology Award in Law. EPIC has filed a series of innovative complaints at the Federal Trade Commission concerning emerging privacy issues. In one case, EPIC challenged Microsoft's identity management service "Passport." The FTC sided with EPIC, issued a consent order, and Microsoft backed off Passport. In a second case against the databroker Choicepoint, EPIC helped the FTC obtain $15 m, the largest judgement in the Commission's history. In the most recent case, EPIC has challenged the proposed merger of Internet search giant Google and Internet advertiser Doubleclick, alleging that the merged entity would be under essentially no legal obligation to protect the personal information that it collects. EPIC has urged the FTC to block the deal or impose substantial privacy safeguards as a condition of the merger. Marc Rotenberg, the director of EPIC, who teaches privacy law at Georgetown, has authored more than two dozen amicus briefs on emerging civil liberties issues, and has testified before Congress on more than fifty occasions will discuss the theory and strategy of the case.

Senate hearing on merger (and Marc's testimony) is here:
http://judiciary.senate.gov/hearing.cfm?id=2955

Background on EPIC's complaint is here:
http://www.epic.org/privacy/ftc/google/

EPIC's letter to the Financial Times on the merger
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/764c5338-6a32-11dc-a571-0000779fd2ac.html

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