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."

Comments

This should be interesting.

[neferusobek]

sufficiently addresses concerns about the handling of personally identifiable information.

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.

Re:Privacy

[war3rd]

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.

Patriot Act !~ /privacy/

[99bottles]

Does anyone see anything oxymoronic about the people that gave us the Patriot Act talking about privacy?

Privacy vs protection

[hthiefshorty]

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.

you beat me to it...

[tuxette]

I was about ready to write "Oxymoron of the day: Privacy Officer for the Department of Homeland Security."

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?

The Fine Line in the Sand

[al!ethel]

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".