A coalition of 25 consumer, civil liberties and privacy groups have written to the White House calling for President Obama’s review of “Big Data and the Future of Privacy” to be opened up for participation by the public.



Groups including the Center for Digital Democracy, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (Epic) and the American Civil Liberties Union have written to John Holdren, director of the White House office of science and technology policy, to demand that the public be given the opportunity to weigh in during the big data review, which was launched by President Obama in the wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations of mass surveillance by the National Security Agency.

The letter says the public should be brought into the process “since it is their information that is being collected and their privacy and their future that is at stake.”

The coalition met on Monday with John Podesta, a counselor to Obama and long-time Democratic power player who is leading the review, to press the case for greater public involvement. “We want it to be opened up to the public so that it’s not just the White House engaging with the usual power brokers and special interests,” said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy.

In the letter, the groups warn that bulk collection of personal data by government agencies and large commercial entities is putting consumers at ever-increasing risk. The groups call on the White House to “conduct a review that incorporates the concerns and opinions of those whose data may be collected in bulk as a result of their engagement with technology”.

The petition over the White House review comes as more than 5,000 internet companies and groups prepare to launch what is being billed as “the day we fight back against mass surveillance” on Tuesday. Conceived as a day of web-based protest in honour of Aaron Swartz, the internet activist who died 13 months ago, the groups and sites participating range from Reddit and Tumblr to Anonymous and Greenpeace.

The protest is being modeled on a similar joint action in January 2012 that helped to scupper the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act, or Sopa.

Obama announced on 17 January that he had instructed Podesta to carry out a 90-day review into big data and privacy. The remit of the review is to look at the challenges posed by big data as gathered by both government bodies such as the NSA and by private firms such as Facebook and Google.

The Podesta-led review is distinct from an earlier panel of security experts who were asked by Obama to advise him on intelligence gathering in the light of the Snowden disclosures. That taskforce reported in December and suggested a number of important changes to bulk data collection, some of which have been publicly supported by the president, others not.

The Podesta review will look at aspects of data collection by the NSA and other government agencies, but will not be confined to that area, as it will also consider the activities of technology companies. In a White House blog post explaining the review, Podesta said he intends to deliver a report that “anticipates future technological trends and frames the key questions that the collection, availability, and use of ‘big data’ raise – both for our government, and the nation as a whole.”

The Center for Digital Democracy’s Chester told the Guardian that he believes the review was one of the most positive responses so far to the Snowden leaks. “Government and corporations are collecting a mass of information that is being used in a completely un-transparent manner. The review is an example of the positive impact that the Snowden revelations have had on US administration thinking.”