Tell the FTC to Stop the Biometric Surveillance of Child Athletes!

Across the country, major youth sports leagues and data brokers are colluding to force parents into an unlawful ultimatum: surrender your children’s sensitive personal data or they can’t play.

Organizations like RCX Sports (operator of NFL Flag) and Flag Football Life have partnered with data brokers like National Sports ID and Zorts Sports to mandate digital IDs for children as young as six.

Under the guise of “age verification,” these companies are demanding biometric data such as facial scans, social media history, and other Personally Identifiable Information (PII) to aggregate data in order to establish permanent digital profiles of our kids. This invasive data harvesting is a direct violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) which prohibits operators from conditioning a child’s participation in an activity on the disclosure of more personal information than is reasonably necessary.

Digital IDs are not reasonably necessary. A Virginia family, backed by CHD, successfully forced these leagues to accept manual, paper-based age verification (like a birth certificate). Yet, these companies refuse to offer this traditional and less invasive option to the general public.

Instead, they are funneling children’s data into commercial databases where it may be:

• Monetized: Used for profiling and “targeted advertising strategies”
• Treated as a Business Asset: Subject to transfer or sale during mergers and bankruptcies, completely eliminating parental control
• Permanently Vulnerable: Even the industry admits, “Passwords can be changed. Faces cannot.” Biometric data is a massive liability if breached. Additionally, constant personal digital data aggregation on children creates a continuous record of history and characterization of a child that parents, and the children themselves, lack the ability to control. Recorded histories are permanent.
• A National Security Threat: The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently warned that aggregated data profiles of military families pose severe risks, as they can be targeted by foreign adversaries.

The Bottoms family has filed a formal, detailed COPPA complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). However, the FTC has been slow to move. We need to flood the FTC’s Division of Privacy and Identity Protection (DPIP) with demands to investigate these youth sports data brokers and establish strict “opt-in” privacy defaults, while eliminating companies’ ability to compel families to provide biometric data in order to participate in sports.

TAKE ACTION TODAY!

Contact the FTC and demand an immediate investigation into these operators and the Bottoms family’s case, and urge voluntary “opt-in” defaults for any digital ID in youth sports.