suma friends, we hope you’re enjoying these shortening September days and that the end of summer is treating y’all alright. We’ve been putting in the hours and want to share some important digital privacy work with you: the first draft of the suma platform’s privacy policy. Email us at info@mysuma.org if you want to learn more about the privacy policy.

Suma has been talking with community members about online privacy a lot. They’ve told us they want to work together to build the suma platform as a way to save money on the things they buy the most, but they are concerned about privacy and vendors sharing their personal information.

So we said: “why don’t we build the suma platform’s privacy policy together?”

This year, suma has worked with the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab, community members, and partners like Brown Hope, Community Vision, Hacienda CDC, Home Forward, Immigrant Community & Refugee Organization, Our Just Future, and Verde to craft a community-led privacy policy that sets the terms for platform transactions with vendors:

Lab Work. The Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab helped us inventory privacy policies, identify best practices, develop initial policy recommendations and support community engagement. Housed in Princeton University’s Department of African American Studies, the Lab brings together students, educators, activists, and artists to develop a critical and creative approach to data conception, production, and circulation. The Lab’s aim is to rethink and retool the relationship between stories and statistics, power and technology, data and justice.

Grassroots Privacy Dialogues. In small group conversations, we’ve listened to community privacy concerns, shared best practices from our work with the Lab, and heard specific guidance from community members about what they want to see in our privacy policy. Winco, Fred Meyer or Visa gift cards were provided to all participants.

For example, a recent dialogue we organized with Community Vision, a Portland-based nonprofit that provides services, education, and advocacy to ensure that people with disabilities direct their own lives. Their AT Lab worked with us to adapt earlier dialogue content to their community, including high contrast large fonts and unique conversation starters. Over a Thursday pizza lunch, five Community Vision community members emphasized themes we’ve heard throughout the dialogues:

-we only want to share what is necessary

-we want to feel a sense of security

-we want clear language, not legalese

-we want true choice and to be able to change our minds

Upcoming, suma shares the draft privacy policy as part of user testing and works with legal counsel to review the draft policy for compliance purposes. Email us at info@mysuma.org if you want to learn more about the privacy policy or schedule user testing.