Activist Group Seeks Silicon Valley Whistleblowers

Fight for the Future (FFTF), which has been hammering ISPs over net neutrality, is launching a concerted effort to uncover unethical practices at edge providers like Facebook and Google.

It has launched a web site and ad campaign encouraging Silicon Valley employees to blow the whistle on their own companies, and giving them online tools to do so including a direct link to a SecureDrop platform.

FFTF is also crowdfunding a targeted ad campaign looking to hoist edge companies on their own petard by using Facebook and Google micro-targeting to serve the ads directly to employees of the biggest tech firms.

Related: Digital Liberties Group Slams Dems Over "Electronic Wall"

"If the company you work for isn't upholding its values, you have the power to speak out," the ad says. "You can to the right thing."When big tech companies like Google bid on government surveillance contracts or when Salesforce provided the technical foundation for the violation of human rights, tech employees were not letting them get away with it," the group says. "Employees speaking out have led to urgent and important national debates about privacy & race, immigration, and government contracts."

Related: Privacy Groups File YouTube Complaint at FTC

The effort comes as Democrats now in control of the House are calling for regulating the edge over issues like breaches, improper third party data sharing (including geolocation data), facilitating election meddling, encouraging in-ap purchases by children, hate speech and more.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.