As the COVID-19 health crisis continues to expose the depth of our country’s digital divide and the essential role that broadband access plays in sustaining critical aspects of our everyday lives-- it has also revealed how the continued lack of broadband and digital skills education have resulted in higher rates of poverty, underemployment, and limited vaccine distribution for multicultural communities nationwide.

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On behalf of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and its Media/Telecommunications Task Force, we submit our views regarding the critical need for a permanent broadband affordability and inclusion plan. We consider the Emergency Broadband Benefit program to be an important watershed moment in helping to connect millions of households to affordable broadband—but it is only the first step. A rapid and bold effort to support a permanent broadband benefit and digital inclusion program is necessary to meaningfully address the serious gaps in broadband adoption.

On behalf of Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC, OCA – Asian Pacific American Advocates, and the National Council of Asian Pacific Americans, we submit this written statement ahead of the Committee’s hearing to urge Congress to do more to ensure families and communities continue to have access to an essential service beyond the pandemic.

On behalf of Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC, OCA – Asian Pacific American Advocates, and the National Council of Asian Pacific Americans (NCAPA) we submit the following comments in response to the Federal Communication Commission’s (“FCC” or “Commission”) Public Notice, released on March 19, 2021. We believe the Lifeline program is essential to connecting low income Asian American and Pacific Islander and other minority households to all facets of everyday life.

As organizations focused on protecting the privacy of the American public, we express our strong support for the confirmation of Prof. Lina Khan as a commissioner for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Prof. Khan brings a critically important set of skills and knowledge that will ensure the FTC is best positioned to play a leadership role safeguarding U.S. consumers as they navigate the digital environment.

Advancing Justice | AAJC signed on to a letter from civil rights and human interest organizations expressing concern for the federal government’s use of facial recognition technology provided by private company Clearview AI. Face recognition has been shown to return false positives in law enforcement use. In each confirmed instance of a false positive, the arrested individual was a person of color. These inherent biases are all the more concerning given that Clearview AI was founded by individuals with reported ties to far-right and white nationalist organizations

Advancing Justice | AAJC signed on to a letter from civil rights and human interest organizations asking President Biden have Congress adopt a long-term federally-funded broadband benefit program that the FCC would manage and administer to provide low income individuals with enhanced financial support for broadband long after the pandemic ends.