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US Congress Committee Talking About Privacy
rm007 writes "The US House of Representatives Judicial Committee's Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law
is holding hearings on the Privacy Officer for the Department of Homeland Security
and approved
the Defense of Privacy Act.
The DHS Privacy Officer hearings are to examine how well the incumbent,
Nuala O'Connor Kelly, is doing and whether the statute creating the
position sufficiently addresses concerns about the handling of personally
identifiable information. This should be worth watching. Wired News has an
article that covers both of these as does GovExec.com, a newsletter for senior Federal employees."
means the terrorists - that is the US government and it's allies - have already won.
Read some Chomsky if you don't agree that they're terrorists. No tedious ad-hominems - rebuttals, please.
You might like to start with how the unprovoked attack on the pharmeceutical factory in Sudan was NOT an act of terrorism.
Personally I think this postion was a sham to begin with and the people who created it knew that or very early on there was a lack of concern for what this position was to be and no one adhered to these rules. Now they will evaluate it? I for one want to see how this turns out. If kelly recvies anything less than a failing grade that will just prove to me (and I'm sure many other) that HomeLandSecurity and no regards for privacy.
Perhaps *you* do, but most of us probably just like to think we are not being spied on all the time. It makes me somewhat uncomfortable to be 'on camera,' so to speak, all the time. And the less privacy we have as a society the more danger there is to those of us who can be victimized by an admittedly small group of crimminal offenders. I would like my children to be safe, but there has to be a balance.
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Does anyone see anything oxymoronic about the people that gave us the Patriot Act talking about privacy?
I've read some Chomsky. He has absolutely no credibility on socio-political affairs. He is a great linguist, however.
His political writings are deliciously fact-free. His ideology warps everything very badly. He is viewing things through an invalid and disproven simplistic theory (Marxism) which has little relationship with actual events. It is like reading stuff where everything is explained by Xemu or orgone energy.
He's also very gullible: if a horrific fascist dictator claims to be a Marxist, Chomsky is instantly in the dictator's camp.
I am in the military, and completely understand the need to protect the United States and its citizens from terrorist. That being said, I am afraid some of the measures put into place by the Patriot Act and other knee-jerk legislation have the two problems: 1) They would not have been effective if they were in place on September 10, and 2) They either infringe on basic rights, or they expose people to addition dangers implicit with having person information stored in a database. The problem starts with people writing the legislation not having a clear understanding of the technology they want to employ. The problem gets worse when the next generation expands the programs to use data for purposes the original drafters of the legislation never intended. For a government built on checks and balances, this is unacceptable. Each agency reviewing the use of personal information only works as well as the people doing the review. We need hard standards that specify what the government can collect, and some kind of legislation that limits access to the information in the future. Blanket cries of national defense are starting to sound a little hollow.
A nice little placebo position really. Let's make people think that privacy rights are being respected. It's like most privacy policies on websites; not worth the bandwidth they waste. Very little value when you don't have strong privacy laws as backup. And what's the point of having a privacy officer for the DHS when "anti-terrorism" laws don't allow for such things as being able to see what kind of information is registered on yourself in the first place?
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The right track? Maybe. They are defintely on the same track though. Using it when its a high profile person and everyone else gets loss in the fray. When the govt' standardizes the HIPPA procedures then maybe I can agree with you. Passing a law and then having people execute/follow the *same* law in differnt ways will lead to loopholes and do more harm than good.
"The Constitution makes no reference to heroin, and so the Federal Laws prohibiting its trafficking are unconstitutional."
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
You have no privacy anyway. Anytime you pay for something with a credit card, make a local phone call, a long distance phone call, buy a plane ticket, sign online, apply for a loan, pay a utility bill late, turn on your cell phone, rent a video, use your frequent shopper card, get a ticket, goto the doctor, get health insurance, or buy anything online you're just adding yourself to a big database somewhere.
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That is the whole point. Nobody can seize your papers or even go through them unless someone else comes forward and tells a court "That person is about to break the law by....". Even then, a court can say "no" we do not trust the person making the charge. That is why the police can not decide for themselves.
Back then, you had people who experianced government infringing on them. They knew what it was like to have the State dictate the course of their life, their religion, their associations.
It seems more and more that in the present day we are heading back into the world you just described.
As you said:
Today you see those freedoms being limited slowly, one peice at a time.
Perhaps we are going to see things turn full circle before they start to get better...
---
Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves. -- AE
I think chipping at privacy is like hitting a block of stone with a hammer.
...
Nothing seems to happen at first, and then you see a few flakes fall - nothing much. It seems nothing is happening to the huge block of stone. And then suddenly with just one more blow the whole block of stone splits apart.
Unfortunately, what is happening to the stone as each hammer blow pounds on it is not visible - and our eyes cannot see what our minds cannot see. Trusting our eyes we don't realize what is happening to the our privacy, and less so as to what effect it shall have on us
.
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized"
What part of "secure in their persons , houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures" does this "person" not understand.
This whole "no right to privacy", is just some neo-con bullcrap that is not supported by either case law or common law. It belongs in the same category as military commissions and martial law in that they have the appearance of law but are not really legal. They are typically called "violations of civil rights under 'color of law' "
It seems to me like we are walking a fine line between our security and our privacy. Some people are screaming to be "safe," while the other half of the population is screaming to keep individual "privacy." The positions in the Department of Homeland Security seem like a good place to set up someone to be shot down. Without a clear cut goal (none of this "make things better" stuff) all of the work that is done is totaly subjective. The department could be doing a great job, but there is no real way to tell. At the same time, if someone is doing a poor job, then we have no way to crucify the fool. With the extreem visibility of this position, it is also absurbly easy for the media to drag down anyone who does not fit what they want. Due to the subjective nature of the job, all the media has to do is make people feel unsafe and then the entire population will be howling for blood.
The thing that we need is well defined goals and some way of measuring preformance. Then I will start to worry about if I am giving up too much of my privacy in the cause of feeling "safe".
If I could get a firm grip on reality, I'd choke it...
Yes, they noted a high politicians are most vulnerable to the personal data mining. Who cares about affairs of an average citizen John Smith? But Everybody would care about an average congressman.
There you are, staring at me again.
Quote: This should be worth watching.
How about "worth getting off your duff and getting involved in?"
Democratic government (insert pfft! here) is not a spectator sport.
Most of the laws on the books, including any that prevent your possession of heroin, are indeed unquestionably unconstitutional. It's just that certain people, the ones that have the badges and blinking lights and stuff, don't care that everything they do with respect to enforcing unconstitutional laws is a felony because they are the ones that would have to do something about it.
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Here's the core issue: no one is safe against a sufficiently determined adversary, regardless of preventive measures which may have been put into place "ahead of time."
In fact, from a psychological perspective, putting too many ineffective barriers to harm in place may actually have the effect of lulling the populace (read: target) into a false sense of security. Case in point: grandmothers getting anal cavity searches during "routine" airport screenings (sorry for the nasty mental image, it's for purposes of illustration).
There is simply no way to reliably defend a large land mass against random insurgent attacks from loosely organized parties, especially when said attacking parties are comfortable with the notion of dying for their cause. I don't advocate our leaving Iraq anytime soon, as that would be utterly disastrous in the long term, but you only have to look at CNN each morning to note the steady stream of attacks on U.S. forces. True, the attacks don't have any significant impact on the forces deployed at large, but they will continue as long as people are willing to lay down their lives in the name of rebellion (or freedom, depending on which side of the fence you're standing on).
Personally, I think any measure of success in all of this goes back to people worrying about preserving their own immediate liberty first while still standing ready to defend their country as a whole against attack. This is not to be confused with attempting to play Dad to the entire nation while leaving one's own door unlocked, a practice many people seem somewhat adept at these days.
Of course, I'm probably going to be branded an armchair-this-or-that for my rambling, but so it goes.
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was is needed is accountability wrt government use of information about people. even if these bills or this privacy officer start down the road to accountability, true accountability needs either openness or trust. openness in national security issues? i don't think so. that leaves trust, and that doesnt exist right now
That is taking a very old-fashioned view of the threats to privacy in the world. In the old days, someone would have to read your papers or invade your house to know private things about you. In todays world with linked databases and omnipresent public "security" cameras, there is very little that cannot be known about you from purely public information.
About the only thing you are really free to do is act in your own home. But even there, if someone can find out that you bought Girls Gone Wild, hand lotion and some kleenex, all within the same week, the black box of your home becomes a very thin shell indeed. With enough sample points, the black box of your "privacy" becomes transparent.
Tracking where you go (EZPass, cell phone), what you buy (credit card, buyer's programs, RFIDs), websites you visit (cookies), who your friends are (Friendster), your driving record (DMV, insurance co.), etc, means that although you may *in theory* have privacy, everything anyone could want to know about you is *knowable*.
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"Human rights abuses are a MAJOR problem of both North Korea and Cuba"
Unfortunately, they've been a hallmark of every marxist/stalist state.
Think of it...
N Korea
Soviet Union
China
Much of Eastern Europe
Cuba
Much of the short-lived Central American experiments.
Look, we all want to believe that people should work for the greater good. But they don't. People work hardest for themseves. Like war, its inherent in the human condition. You wish it wasn't. But it is. Get over it and design the government and social fabric accordingly.
This is what you get when people will vote for anyone who will agree to give them something.
Everyone has this idea that the government is there to make the country great. Wrong. The government is there to protect you so you can live your life to your own choosing.
The day has come where YOU are no longer expected to make your country great, you just tell your government to do it for you. Charity, morals, economic power regulation, all of these things have been passed to your lawmakers. Do you think you have more control over these powers in your lawmakers' hands than in your own?
Government is a tool to control power, but the individual action, the individual decision, the individual debate, the individual dollar, the individual volunteer hour... all of these things are tools more powerful than those proxied off to a self-interested, self-perpetuating government.
The problem with government is, it's all or nothing. We either outlaw X or allow X, we take money from group A and give to group B, there are few gray areas.
Government is a sledgehammer and should be used as such and only as such. It might be a good idea to consider making your country great on your own.
At the risk of sounding resoundingly cheesy, I'll end this with a quote:
"The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods."
-- H. L. Mencken
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
Stop the bitching and GET OFF YOUR BUTTS!! GO VOTE! write your congress man. You actually can make a difference. Remember, if you didnt vote then you helped put those assholes in office.
At least its not like voting for CEO at motorola though. I voted against Galvin every year anyway, but it turns out if you dont vote, its an automatic vote for him. Its also set up some weird way that you have to vote all the board off or no one. I know... off topic.
I prefer the version, with many attributions, that:
Power attracts the corruptible.
I wish there were an effective way to draft our government. I worry about the competence issue, and I wonder if it would reduce corruption. Just how honest is the average citizen? If the average citizen were honest, would the drop in corruption balance the presumed drop in competence as a result of drafting government?
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
The point is that the constitution specifically says that anything not listed in the constitution is reserved as a right for the people of the US.
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" The real problem here is that there is no Constitutional right to privacy."
And thus, you, like so many before you, have fallen prey to the most diabolical usurption of power in the history of government - that the Constitution grants rights to the people. In fact, the Constitution specifically enumerates a small number of things with which the Federal government is tasked, and goes on to specifically state that anything not mentioned IS a right of the states, or of the people. The primary argument raised against support for the Bill of Rights was that an enumeration of specific rights could, at some point in time, be construed by a corrupt Federal government leadership to mean that the only rights citizens have are those granted to them under the Constitution.
The problem with this line of thinking is that once you begin to argue with the government over which rights you do and do not have, the argument inevitably shifts to which rights the government chooses to grant you. The instant this becomes the topic for debate, you've already lost. A government that grants rights to its citizens is a government that can revoke those rights as soon as they become inconvenient or run counter to the particular goals at hand. Thus, we have government agents who may legally break into a citizen's home, confiscate their property, bug their computers and telephones, and may do so with a secret warrant obtained under secret proceedings where the burden of 'proof' is reduced to an agent's vague and generic answers to questions by a panel of judges whose hands are virtually tied into granting every application.
Let there be no mistake - the FISA court is nothing more than a single degree of seperation between the FBI and the KGB. It is a rubber stamp court whose sole purpose is to lend a sliver of credibility to something which would otherwise provoke riots in the streets.
I don't need an amendment to tell me which rights I have - I need an amendment to punish those who violate my rights with our most severe penalties. I want to see an amendment that provides for life in prison for members of congress who vote up legislation that blatantly violates the God-given/creator-granted/natural-born rights of the citizens of this country. Seeing as some see fit to ignore the highest laws of our land, I think it's time we spelled out specific and severe criminal punishments for those who just can't seem to keep their hands off the rights of the people. While it might be inconvenient to imprison every member of congress who voted up the PATRIOT ACT, it would certainly set the tone for further debate. While we're at it, I think we need a nice, long-winded amendment discussing just which things the Federal government can and cannot stick its nose into. Once we've cleared out all the crap that's accumulated over the past 100 years or so, (things like the 'War on Drugs', Corporate welfare, most of current welfare other such programs), I think we'll find that paying down the national debt is rather simple. Once that's payed down, we can rescind the Federal income tax - an unconstitutional 'head tax' that was passed under the pretext that it was a temporary emergency measure. Your state taxes will go up substantially, but will be nowhere near what they are now, when combined with Federal taxes.
Wiping out 60 - 70% of the Federal government's current tasks, jobs, budget, and powers would bring this country to a century of unparalleled prosperity and freedom. The Federal tyranny began with Lincoln's unconstitutional war against the break-away southern states, and continues to grow in size and power even today. At this point, the titanic beast bleeds money, spits fire, and does little to no good for the American people. Let's give most of this money to the states and get people in state governments who are responsible enough to use it well.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
I'm all for adding an ammendment as it would bring the US Constitution on a par with the rest of civilization.
Currently, we're relying on piecemeal precedent of prior interpretation and specific instances (see: HIPAA), which is an unreliable and horrendously expensive way to establish something that should be straight forward.
However, we should watch out for the caveats other countries have written. In the case of Iceland, Article 71 clearly establishes the right to privacy--and then gives an escape that the current U.S. administration would use as a blank check that would bring us right back to square one.
"Everyone shall enjoy freedom from interference with privacy, home, and family life.
Bodily or personal search or a search of a person's premises or possessions may only be conducted in accordance with a judicial decision or a statutory law provision. This shall also apply to the examination of documents and mail, communications by telephone and other means, and to any other comparable interference with a person's right to privacy.
Notwithstanding the provisions of the first paragraph above, freedom from interference with privacy, home and family life may be otherwise limited by statutory provisions if this is urgently necessary for the protection of the rights of others."
South Africa is much more straight-forward about this, for reasons that should be obvious, stating in Chapter 2, Section 14,
"14. Everyone has the right to privacy, which includes the right not to have
1. their person or home searched;
2. their property searched;
3. their possessions seized; or
4. the privacy of their communications infringed."
That's it. No ifs ands or buts. As it should be. If those rights are going to be violated by the state, there better be one hell of a good reason, not just a fishing expedition.
I was right there up with you until you began to go on about this "welfare state."
In today's economy, there is a huge disparity between those with the most money and those with the least, especially in this country. The gaps between the haves and have nots create feelings of discontent, especially amongst those who can barely survive. This became particularly evident during the industrial revolution and really hasn't changed much since.
While morally laws such as these are touted to "level the playing field," they were originally conceived as measures of security, which falls right in line with the founding father's ideals. The idea being that those at the bottom of the pile have a "safety net" so they do not have to resort to crime in order to survive. The founding father's said "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." While I don't think its right to try to make everyone exactly equal and give everyone $50,000 a year no more no less, I don't think its out of line to provide someone with a base means of keeping themselves alive and out of trouble.
And to go into more detail, when someone doesn't have money, they aren't thinking about going down to atlantic city and looking up Donald Trump and mugging him. They are looking for the local hot spots, like convenience stores, banks, and your next door neighbor. This affects your average every day people, not the doctors, lawyers, and business people making way more money than they need to.
Studies also prove that
So next time you complain about "welfare states," be happy that if something completely shitty happens like the tech sector up and gets transplanted to india overnight or something equally drastic and uncontrollable, be glad you have a safety net. I'll be glad you won't be pointing a shotgun at me demanding the $200 I have in my pocket because you are desperate to live.
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