White House "Privacy Tour" a Flop On Its First Leg At MIT

v3rgEz writes "After the Snowden revelations, President Obama promised greater transparency on how the federal government collects and uses data on its citizens, including a three-leg 'privacy tour' to discuss the balance between security and privacy. Well, the first leg of the tour is up and — surprise, surprise — it's not much of a conversation, with official dodging questions or, in one case, simply walking out of the conference." There's a video of the workshop at MIT, and the article says not all of it was spent watching politicians be politicians: "The review, led by White House counselor John Podesta ... is not confined to intelligence gathering but is meant also to examine how private entities collect and use mass quantities of personal information, such as health records and Internet browsing habits. On the latter subject, the conversation was robust. Experts from places like MIT, Harvard, Nielsen, and Koa Labs traded pros and cons, and proposed high-tech compromises that could allow people to contribute personal information to big data pools anonymously. "

An Anonymous reader also wrote in that "Outgoing National Security Agency boss General Keith Alexander says reporters lack the ability to properly analyze the NSA's broad surveillance powers and that forthcoming responses to the spying revelations may include 'media leaks legislation.' 'I think we are going to make headway over the next few weeks on media leaks. I am an optimist. I think if we make the right steps on the media leaks legislation, then cyber legislation will be a lot easier,' Alexander said."

Comments

Re:First amendment cannot be abridged

[alen]

1st amendment has been limited for hundreds of years
no threats
no panics
no releasing classified info

The only surprise is that anyone is surprised

[ReallyEvilCanine]

Obama outed his atrocious attitude toward privacy back when he "halted his campaign" to run back to Washington to vote for FISA.

I'm considered a "far leftie" in the US, in case you think this comment came from the GOP noise machine.

Re:First amendment cannot be abridged

[Bob9113]

1st amendment has been limited for hundreds of years ... no releasing classified info

You are mistaken. See The Pentagon Papers and Daniel Ellsberg as the iconic example case.

Re:Media leaks legislation

[Agent0013]

Do not fall for the propaganda that the civil war was about slavery. Read up about it and you will find the north had slaves also. In fact slavery was already phasing out in all locations due to economic reasons, the invention of the cotton gin being a big one. The real reason the civil war was fought was to stop the southern states from leaving the union. It was the first big power grab by the federal government. After that point we were no longer a collection of states that ruled themselves but worked together in union. Instead we became one country which is ruled by people who have no knowledge or interest in the local conditions of any area.