Articles by Jim Harper

Jim HarperJim is the Director of Information Policy Studies at The Cato Institute, the Editor of Web-based privacy think-tank Privacilla.org, and the Webmaster of WashingtonWatch.com. Prior to becoming a policy analyst, Jim served as counsel to committees in both the House and Senate.


Petitioning WH.gov: TSA’s Strip-Search Machines

by on July 30, 2012 · 1 comment

[Update II: The petition has now expired, about 2,500 signatures shy of the 25,000 needed to require a White House response.]

[Update: The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has accepted CEI’s amicus brief and ordered the TSA to answer EPIC’s petition. It is common for courts to simply reject petitions of this kind, so this is important progress in the effort to get TSA to follow the law.]

Will the White House give us a substantive answer or not?

A few weeks ago, we ‘celebrated’ the one-year anniversary of a court order requiring the TSA to do a notice-and-comment rulemaking on its policy of using strip-search machines for primary screening at airports. It’s been a year and the TSA has shown no action.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center, which brought the original case, filed a petition asking the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to require action on the TSA’s part. The Competitive Enterprise Institute and many other friends of the court chimed in with an amicus brief highlighting issues in the case. I emceed a Cato Capitol Hill briefing on the topic.

But the real fun has been with a petition on Whitehouse.gov asking the president to make the TSA follow the law. When I put that up there, the issue took off. Stories and links went out on Ars Technica, Wired, and the Washington Times, just to name a few. People sent notices out to their email lists. And there was plenty of Tweeting, blogging, reTweeting, reblogging.

The petition is nearing 16,000 signatures (of 25,000 needed to require a response from the White House). That would be great to have, though not essential. The PR value has already been gained.

PR value is real value in Washington, D.C., and to illustrate that value, inveterate friend of liberty Will Hayworth whipped up a little code to grab the locations of the people that named their location when they signed the petition, and he put them on a Google map. It’s a nice illustration of the nationwide distaste for the TSA’s policy—and its refusal to implement the policy consistent with the law.

Take a look and see how many people from your state or town have signed on. Do your friends need a reminder? Send them the link to the petition page!

Locations of Signers to “TSA—Follow the Law” Petition

Petitioning isn’t going to upend government, but it is an organizing idea with a constitutional pedigree—the First Amendment. So if you think TSA should follow the law, well, maybe you should join in the fun!

If we get 25,000 signatures by August 9th, the White House will have to respond.

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Ryan Radia Debates CISPA

by on June 12, 2012 · 3 comments

I’m impressed with the job Ryan Radia did in this Federalist Society podcast/debate about CISPA, the Cyber Intelligence and Sharing Protection Act.

It’s also notable how his opponent Stewart Baker veers into a strange ad hominem against “privacy groups” in his rejoinder to Ryan. Baker speaks as though arguable overbreadth in privacy statutes written years ago makes it appropriate to scythe down all law that might affect information sharing for cybersecurity purposes. That’s what language like “[n]otwithstanding any other provision of law” would do, and it’s in the current version of the bill three times.

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Microsoft Pushes “Do-Not-Track”

by on June 2, 2012 · 3 comments

The world does not owe targeted advertising networks a business model, so I am agnostic about Microsoft’s decision to ship Internet Explorer 10 with “Do-Not-Track” enabled by default. Ryan Singel has a good write-up on Threat Level that covers many dimensions of the issue.

Decisions like this are never driven by a single motivation, but I’m interested in the likelihood that Microsoft made this choice hoping to drive a dagger into Google’s business model. To the extent it did, it’s a nice illustration of how competition among companies can serve consumers’ privacy preferences. There is some demand for privacy, though less than most regulatory types believe. Microsoft saw an angle to get some pro-privacy PR, improve consumers’ privacy by a small margin, and hamstring a competitor. You go, girl. Er, Microsoft.

Now, consumers aren’t falling over themselves for protection from the benign practice of tracking for the purpose of delivering targeted ads. I suspect that counter-punches from ad networks and Google will send the Do Not Track header into the dustbin of privacy history right along with P3P. The idea of putting a signal into the header that says “please do not track” is clumsy, to put it charitably.

If you want to avoid tracking, you can do that already. Use Tracking Protection Lists.

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The ACLU of Washington State is Looking

by on May 23, 2012 · 0 comments

May 2012
TECHNOLOGY AND LIBERTY DIRECTOR
(Full-time)

The ACLU of Washington (ACLU-WA) seeks a self-motivated public policy advocate to lead its work to protect civil liberties in the face of society’s increasingly advanced technologies. The ACLU-WA’s staff of 30 employees and numerous volunteers work in a fast-paced, friendly and professional office in downtown Seattle. Continue reading →

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The Kochs, Cato, and Miscalculation—Part III

by on April 20, 2012 · 9 comments

In previous posts about the battle for control of the Cato Institute, I’ve noted (Part I) that the “Koch side” is a variety of different actors with different motivations who collectively seem not to apprehend the Cato Institute’s value. Next (Part II), I looked at why the Koch side is fairly the object of the greater scrutiny: their precipitous filing of the original lawsuit.

My premise has been that the Koch side cares. That is, I’ve assumed that they want to preserve Cato and see its role in the libertarian movement continue. Some evidence to undercut that assumption has come around, namely, their filing of a second lawsuit—and now a third! [Update: Mea culpa—there hasn’t been a third lawsuit. Just a new report of the second one. I had assumed the second was filed in state court and thus thought this was distinct. I’m not following the legal issues, obviously, which matter very little.]

The Koch side may be “on tilt.” Lawsuit-happy, win-at-any-cost. We will just have to wait and see.

For the time being, I will continue to assume that the Koch side has the best interests of liberty in mind and explore the dispute from that perspective. I owe the world some discussion of Cato-side miscalculation—of course, there is some—but before I get to that in my next post, I think it’s worth talking about the burden of proof in the Kochs’ campaign to take control of Cato.

Only fringies will deny that the Cato Institute adds some value to the liberty movement. It does. The question—if preservation of liberty is the goal—is how well it will do so in the future. The central substantive issue in the case—there are many side issues—is how Cato will operate in the future.

Now, here’s a quick primer on public campaigns and the difference between the “yes” side and the “no” side. Continue reading →

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Data Transparency Coalition Debuts Today

by on April 16, 2012 · 3 comments

Meet the Data Transparency Coalition.

The Washington Post‘s Capitol Business blog reports this morning:

A small but growing collection of companies has formed a coalition that will push the federal government to establish a standard system by which agencies categorize their data. …

“Our members understand that if the government identified its data elements in consistent ways, there would be vast new opportunities for the tools that they are building,” Executive Director Hudson Hollister said.

Early supporters include Microsoft and data analysis and management firms Level One Technologies, Teradata, and BrightScope. I’m on their Board of Advisors. One of their early priorities will be to pass H.R. 2146, the DATA Act.

(Here’s a nit I can’t help but pick: The Post says the coalition “aims to standardize ‘big data.'” No. It’s just data.)

Follow the coalition‘s founder and executive director on Twitter @hudsonhollister, and you can Like their Facebook page, as well, to get updates that way.

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Cato Institute Job Posting: Data Curator

by on April 9, 2012 · 5 comments

The Cato Institute’s jobs page has a new posting. If you have the right mix of data/technical skillz, public policy knowledge, love of freedom, and vim, this could be your chance to advance the ball on government transparency! [Added: For more background on Cato’s transparency work, see this and this.]

Data Curator, Center on Information Policy Studies

The Cato Institute seeks a data curator to support its government data transparency program. This candidate will perform a variety of functions that translate government documents and activities into semantically rich, machine-readable data. Major duties will include reading legislative documents, marking them up with semantic information, and identifying opportunities for automated identification and extraction of semantic information in documents. The candidate will also oversee the data entry process and train and supervise others to perform data entry. The ideal candidate will have a college degree, preferably in computer science and/or political science, and experience using XML, RDFa, and regular expressions. Attention to detail is a must, with an understanding of U.S federal legislative, spending, and regulatory processes preferred.

Applicants should send their resume, cover letter, and a short writing sample to:

Jim Harper
Director of Information Policy Studies
Cato Institute
1000 Massachusetts Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20001
Fax (202) 842-3490
Email: jharper@cato.org

Here’s an exclusive insider tip for TechLiberationFront readers. Don’t send your application by fax! That would send the wrong signal…

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The Kochs, Cato, and Miscalculation—Part II

by on April 5, 2012 · 5 comments

Last week, I posted about the conflict between the Koch brothers and the Cato Institute, threatening to make that post first in a series. Never let it be said that I don’t follow through on my threats, sometimes.

Recapping: I believe the Koch brothers want what’s best for liberty, but the actions of the “Koch side”—an array of actors with differing motivations and strategies—may not be serving that goal. This seems due to miscalculation: the Koch side seems not to recognize how much of the Cato Institute’s value is in its reputational capital, capital which would be despoiled by a Koch takeover. I basically fleshed out an early point of Jonathan Adler’s on the Volokh Conspiracy.

But why is it the Koch side that gets the attention and not the Cato side? Continue reading →

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The Kochs, Cato, and Miscalculation

by on March 30, 2012 · 13 comments

It’s well known now that a long-simmering contest for control of the Cato Institute has bubbled over. On the last day of February, Charles and David Koch filed a lawsuit against the widow of former Cato chairman Bill Niskanen, Cato president Ed Crane, and Cato itself seeking to have Niskanen’s shares returned to Cato or granted to the remaining shareholders under the terms of a shareholder agreement. This would give the Kochs (one of whom participated in the founding of Cato) majority ownership, allowing them to elect a majority of Cato’s board. It would also position them to extinguish Crane’s shares so as to gain 100% control.

Cato disputes the Kochs legal positions, and it believes that their success “would swiftly and irrevocably damage the Cato Institute’s credibility as a non-partisan, independent advocate for free markets, individual liberty, and peace.”

The quote just above is from Cato’s “Save Cato” web page, but the more interesting commentary has been scattered by Cato staff and leadership across various blogs and outlets (e.g., Jerry Taylor, Gene Healy, Jason Kuznicki, Julian Sanchez, Jonathan Blanks, Justin Logan, Trevor Burris, Michael Cannon). There has been lots of commentary from many quarters, of course, led by Jonathan Adler at the Volokh Conspiracy. Really, there’s too much commentary to list.

A Facebook page dedicated to “saving” Cato has zoomed past 5,000 supporters.

Now it’s my turn. Putting my thoughts here on TLF is a stretch because I won’t be talking about tech. Think of this as the “liberation” part of Tech Liberation Front. The reason many of my colleagues and I do what we do here is because of both Ed Crane and the Kochs, and the institutions they have built and nurtured. Now these giants in the modern liberty movement are fighting.

That’s a shame for a lot of reasons. There is the overall cause of freedom, of course, our part of which is side-tracked and sullied by the dispute. We Catoites love what we do, fighting for freedom backed by thousands of highly engaged supporters. But don’t go all analytical and forget the hundred-plus Cato staff whose livelihoods and careers are under a cloud. That’s concerning and frustrating, especially for the people with children. Once or twice, I’ve let my colleagues know when I found their arguments overwrought. That personal dimension might be why.

Yes, Cato people are people. And so are Koch people. This is important to surface as part of the theme I want to focus on: miscalculation. Continue reading →

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FTC Issues Groundhog Report on Privacy

by on March 26, 2012 · 1 comment

The Federal Trade Commission issued a report today calling on companies “to adopt best privacy practices.” In related news, most people support airline safety… The report also “recommends that Congress consider enacting general privacy legislation, data security and breach notification legislation, and data broker legislation.”

This is regulatory cheerleading of the same kind our government’s all-purpose trade regulator put out a dozen years ago. In May of 2000, the FTC issued a report finding “that legislation is necessary to ensure further implementation of fair information practices online” and recommending a framework for such legislation. Congress did not act on that, and things are humming along today without top-down regulation of information practices on the Internet.

By “humming along,” I don’t mean that all privacy problems have been solved. (And they certainly wouldn’t have been solved if Congress had passed a law saying they should be.) “Humming along” means that ongoing push-and-pull among companies and consumers is defining the information practices that best serve consumers in all their needs, including privacy.

Congress won’t be enacting legislation this year, and there doesn’t seem to be any groundswell for new regulation in the next Congress, though President Obama’s reelection would leave him unencumbered by future elections and so inclined to indulge the pro-regulatory fantasies of his supporters.

The folks who want regulation of the Internet in the name of privacy should explain how they will do better than Congress did with credit reporting. In forty years of regulating credit bureaus, Congress has not come up with a system that satisfies consumer advocates’ demands. I detail that government failure in my recent Cato Policy Analysis, “Reputation under Regulation: The Fair Credit Reporting Act at 40 and Lessons for the Internet Privacy Debate.”

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