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

HIPPA

[Anonymous Coward]

Government is on the right track with laws like HIPPA, as we see the government already acting against Doctors who publicly released Dr. Atkins medical records. However, privacy laws need to go further ...

The US needs UK like data privacy laws where no company or organization can ship private information outside the homeland's jurisdiction. This will not only help keep jobs in the country but protect the US from a digital "Pearl Harbor"

Re:There is no Constitutional right to privacy

[John Seminal]

I disagree. I think when you take the whole of the bill of rights and the constitution, there is a right to privacy the courts have recognized in the past. I do not want to look it up, but wording in one case was somthing like: "the courts must defend against the long arm of the government peering into the circle of individual liberty". If anyone wants, I can look up the exact case. If we are really free, then we have a right to privacy as that is a product of freedom. There is no right at all for someone to invade another persons house, papers, posessions, or the like without a court approving it. We have the right to form private groups, as the right to associate. So I see it very different than those who will let government take away our rights. I know those rights exsist and am not willing to let go of them.

It is only when government overstepps its boundry does the right of privacy dissapear, and often it is like the frog telling of the ecological disaster to come. Remember Hoover and his FBI? They were the ones who tapped the phones of political groups. And remember Nixon?

Defend your liberty or lose it.

Re:There is no Constitutional right to privacy

[Joel Carr]

Perhaps it is time for an amendment, but given the way things seem to be headed at the moment, do you think any amendment would be made in the right direction?

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Re:Patriot Act !~ /privacy/

[gertsenl]

No, because they've been getting a lot of flack for it. With that one part being ruled unconstitutional (according to one judge) and the various other challanges from disparate municipalities, this is a prime (if rare) example of government actually trying to correct their fascism, even if it is in their own fanciful bereaucratic fashion -- I, for one, welcome it, commend them, and don't see the need to poopoo it.

Like similar positions?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if this "Minister of Privacy" position will be more like the EPA head who has gutted long-standing environmental laws. Now personally I've always thought that the Republican candidates had more respect for individual privacy laws and that Democrats were more likely to attempt to legislate morality (and you know as well as I that this is impossible). Plus, it seems there have always been fewer wackos running on the Republican tickets than on the Democratics ones.
Not in this administration.
Part of freedom is the ability to do what one pleases as long as it does not hurt or affect others. But now I'm seeing laws that allow the government (under the pretense of law enforcement) to surveil whoever they want without a judge giving the OK. This administration has soiled the sacrifices of those brave soldiers on earlier battlefields; it has twisted the tragic deaths of those on 9/11; it has waged war by deceiving the American public.

These are our new overlords.

Re:There is no Constitutional right to privacy

[John Seminal]

I think it is the will of government and the will of those in power to take away as many freedoms and rights as they can. I doubt you will ever have the conditions again which formed our country. 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. When they wrote the constitution, they wanted to protect everyone from those breaches of power. They believed it was a natural god given right to be free, to have freedom. Today you see those freedoms being limited slowly, one peice at a time.

Just remember this rule, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

People act for their self benifit, and when they can to help their friends. Look at Bush and the oil industry or Cheney and Halliburton. Cheney will make millions from them when he leaves the white house. The temptation is too great. That is why we need rules in place to protect those in power from abusing the power we give them.

Re:There is no Constitutional right to privacy

[Stile 65]

The right to privacy may be implied in the 9th amendment, but it's a logical extension of the right of property which is protected by the 5th amendment.

Also remember that the Constitution does not grant rights, but sets up a government whose job it is to protect what are/were thought of as "natural rights" - things like life, liberty, property, and their natural extensions. Privacy is a natural right. Security is another aspect of the rights of life/liberty - if your person is not secure against another's aggression, then you don't actually have the right of life, but are granted a privilege of life by the charity of the person who does not initiate force against you.

Natural rights of course end where others' natural rights begin. Thus, when the nation was born, there was no wealth redistribution - someone's right of life did not mean that they had the right to be kept alive. So just because you couldn't provide for yourself doesn't mean it was okay to infringe upon someone else's right of property through taxation to artificially extend your right of life. Today's welfare state is moving farther and farther away from that idea.

Big Brother

[frasherdabasher]

What scares me the most is people are blind to see what letting the government collect information on people with out any control will bring to us. I think the government impact in our lives was to strong before the Patriot Act was ever dreamed up. The small rights they take away just will lead to the total control they might have over us in the end. More people need to start watching what our Governmental Officials are doing with our tax money. I think this new bill should have been put in place back in the early stages of telephone, satellites, and other communicational devices that the government can in some way use to listen in on our private lives.

We need more or less privacy?

[dark-br]

To achieve valuable personal integration, people typically need a significant measure of security from invasions of their private space as well as their private records and information. In fact, they need more than immunity from invasion: they need time for reflection, time when they are not in co-operation with others or distracted by other commitments. In this sense, the right to privacy really is concerned with valuable (i.e. morally upright) individual self-development.

Whenever I visit a tourist attraction that has a guest register, I always sign it. After all, you never know when you'll need an alibi.

I've been doing this since I was a kid, but these days you don't have to take any positive action to leave a trail behind. Almost everything we do is recorded. Closed-circuit cameras watch us in most public places. Our credit-card purchases, japanese schoolgirl tentacle porn, telephone calls and Web surfing are all tracked these days.

Editorialists have decried these losses of privacy, as if it were the most sacred of human rights. But just what is the value of privacy? Do we really need it? And, indeed, can we afford it? After all, everything from your son's shoplifting to the destruction of the towers at the World Trade Center could have been prevented if we had less of an ability to do things in secret.

Re:There is no Constitutional right to privacy

[Mark_in_Brazil]

Actually, the Constitution is very specific - I paraphrase: "Any right not enumerated is considered to belong to the people". Since privacy is NOT mentioned, it cannot be infringed by the Federal Gov. - the people have a right to privacy.

The framers, and the drafters of the "Bill of Rights" did not want to fall into the trap of forgetting something, so they made sure they had a safety net in place. They weren't dummies.

What you're talking about here is the Tenth Amendment, the last part of the original Bill of Rights. Amendment X is all of 28 words. Here they are:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited to it by the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

In the 1996 Presidential campaign, Bob Dole flew a couple of trial balloons about "dusting off the Tenth Amendment," which was Republican code for "get rid of social programs we don't like." I laughed and wondered if ol' Bob would be willing to have a real discussion of dusting off the Tenth Amendment and doing away with all the power the US Government has taken on without that power having been delegated to the government by the Constitution. Of course not!
The Tenth Amendment, like the Second, was designed to protect the people from the very government whose powers are specified by the Constitution. The Second Amendment was not about armies or self-defense against foreign invaders, as its modern-day opponents allege; it was designed to prevent the usurpation of power by the Federal Government that has in fact occurred over the 217+ years since the Constitution was written. I am sad to report that the meaning of the Second and Tenth Amendments is largely forgotten (favorite funny slogan for the ACLU: "Defending the rights guaranteed by the Amendments of the Bill of Rights-- all nine of them") and basically ended up amounting to nothing more than mere speedbumps, only slowing down (definitely NOT preventing) the theft of power from citizens of the USA by the government of the USA.

It's a little sad that I have to say this, but even though I've criticized both the Republicans and the ACLU (and thus, basically the entire political "spectrum" of the USA), this is not intended as any kind of troll. The meaning of the two Amendments in question is clear if you read the Constitution itself and other writings from the same time by the "framers" of the Constitution. The framers, having had to fight a war against a government they felt did not represent them, were very worried about their new government becoming like the one against which they had fought. Washington voluntarily stepping down after two terms as President due to concerns that he could become like a new "king" shows that this concern continued until at least 1797, more than 15 years after the end of the American Revolutionary War and more than a decade after the Constitution was written.

--Mark

Summary of discussion

[Phantasmo]

Privacy of the people = security risk
Privacy of politicians = security measure

Re:Marxism is invalid

[a whoabot]

Like, is this just a really light troll? Like somehow those are "bad" guys, and being the only ones you mentioned, therefore Marxism is bad too!!?

Since I'm not sure, I'll continue. YHBT me if you have to.

Okay, how can you say North Korea, is a "Marxist government", what is that supposed to mean? Like, this is an honest question, please elaborate. My understanding is that it is extremely Stalinist in character. The gap from Stalinist to Marxist is not negligible; at least or more as qualitatively as all of the world's current socialist governments. That would explain why essentially all "Marxists" were removed from the government of Stalin. A better example of today's world would certainly be Cuba.

I wouldn't say the Baath party was "inspired" - influenced no doubt. But essentially all governments nowadays are influenced by Marxism: some more than others. France's current government would be more "inspired" by Marxism than the the Baath party. Much of Europe's governments are greatly influenced by Marxism, and, of course, continental theory is still shaking from Marx's contributions.

Re:Learn to live with it

[ncr53c8xx]

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.

Scott McNealy would really like it everyone gave up their privacy. He wants people to get over it. However, privacy, like security is a process. You don't have to subject yourself to all this privacy invasion in the future if the laws/business methods are changed. In particular, how do the database maintainers verify the data they have? Unless privacy violations are backed by specific laws, the value of the databases would be small. To paraphrase a slashdot fortune, you will have zero privacy only when you accept zero privacy.

Re:There is no Constitutional right to privacy

[Dalcius]

The underlying problem of our growth of government is that people relate "good idea" with "law".

Want to stop drug use? Want to help the poor? Want to prevent companies from becoming too powerful? Want to prevent domestic industries from bombing out?

I personally think all of these are good ideas. However, government is not the only avenue you may pursue these on and anyone stuck in this dilusion is adding to the problem this thread is talking about.

Cheers