Articles by Jim Harper

Jim 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.

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Obama’s Next Step on Transparency: A Shortcut

by Jim Harper on February 3, 2009 · 15 comments

I’ve been following President Obama’s early moves on government transparency here on Tech Liberation and on the Cato@Liberty blog.

Last week, Obama’s first broken campaign promise was the pledge to post legislation online for five days before signing it.

Well, the White House is working to address that, but it appears to be doing so with a half-measure that comes up short. On Sunday, the White House blog announced that the SCHIP legislation pending in the Senate was up for public comment. And it is, of course, but it hasn’t passed the Senate yet.

It was implicit in the promise to post bills online for five days prior to signing that the bill posted would be the one passed by the House and Senate and presented to the President.

If the White House were to implement the promised practice of leaving bills sitting out there, unsigned, after they pass Congress, that would have significant effects. The practice would threaten to reveal excesses in parochial amendments and earmarks which could bring down otherwise good bills. President Obama’s promised five-day cooling off period would force the House and Senate to act with more circumspection.

Taking comments on a bill as it makes its way through the House and Senate does not have the same salutary effect. If the White House is trying to start the five-day clock on the SCHIP bill with the posting of a comment page on Sunday, that is not consistent with President Obama’s promise.

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Cloning and Tracking Passport Cards and EDLs

by Jim Harper on February 2, 2009 · 601 comments

Via engadget, here’s a fun video showing how easy it is to pick up information from passport cards and “enhanced driver’s licenses.” (Enhancement is in the eye of the beholder, of course.)

These cards use RFID to broadcast information when properly interrogated, and this information can be used (at a minimum) to track people’s movements. Hacker Chris Paget demonstrates this and discusses the weakness of using RFID on people.

San Francisco ex-pats like myself will take special delight from the video as Chris drives past Red’s Java House at minute 1:56. Burger me – NOW!

And he would scrap WHTI. I’ll have one of those too.

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Administration Delays E-Verify for Federal Contractors

by Jim Harper on January 30, 2009 · 9 comments

The Washington Post reports that the Obama administration is delaying the Bush Administration plan to require federal contractors to use the E-Verify worker background check system.

Criticizing the move, Lamar Smith (R-TX), ranking minority member on the House Judiciary Committee says, “It is ironic that at the same time President Obama was pushing for passage of the stimulus package to help the unemployed, his Administration delayed implementation of a rule designed to protect jobs for U.S. citizens and legal workers.”

E-Verify may well have been designed or intended to protect jobs for citizens and legal workers, but that’s not at all what it would do. I wrote about it in a Cato Policy Analysis titled “Electronic Employment Eligibility Verification: Franz Kafka’s Solution to Illegal Immigration” (a ten-year follow-on to Stephen Moore’s “A National Id System: Big Brother’s Solution to Illegal Immigration“):

A mandatory national EEV system would have substantial costs yet still fail to prevent illegal immigration. It would deny a sizable percentage of law-abiding American citizens the ability to work legally. Deemed ineligible by a database, millions each year would go pleading to the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration for the right to work.

Even if E-Verify were workable, mission creep would lead to its use for direct federal control of many aspects of American citizens’ lives. Though it should be scrapped, the longer E-Verify is delayed the better.

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And the Press Want Their Transparency Too . . .

by Jim Harper on January 30, 2009 · 12 comments

In at least two recent stories, the mainstream press are highlighting Obama administration slow-walking on transparency.

Bloomberg recently filed suit against the Fed under the Freedom of Information Act to force disclosure of securities the central bank is taking as collateral for $1.5 trillion of loans to banks.

“The American taxpayer is entitled to know the risks, costs and methodology associated with the unprecedented government bailout of the U.S. financial industry,” said Matthew Winkler, the editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News, a unit of New York-based Bloomberg LP . . . .

And here’s what President Obama said in his day-one memorandum on FOIA:
Continue reading →

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Next Wednesday at Cato: Jefferson’s Moose

by Jim Harper on January 29, 2009 · 8 comments

Reminder: Next Wednesday, February 4th, the Cato Institute will host a book forum on David Post’s new book, In Search of Jefferson’s Moose: Notes on the State of Cyberspace.

Comments will come from Clive Crook, Chief Washington Commentator of the Financial Times and Senior Editor of The Atlantic Monthly; and Jeffrey Rosen, Professor of Law at The George Washington University and Legal Affairs Editor of The New Republic.

It’s a very interesting book, and the commentators are second to none.

And here’s Adam’s review of the book.

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Walking Away from Transparency, Step Two

by Jim Harper on January 29, 2009 · 30 comments

On the first full day of the new Obama administration, I wrote here, and later followed up, expressing regret that the Obama White House hadn’t ported the “Seat at the Table” program over from the transition. Change.gov published documents submitted to the transition on its Web site for public review and comment. Whitehouse.gov does not.

Now we learn that the White House will not honor an Obama campaign and Whitehouse.gov pledge – not more than nine days old – to post all non-emergency legislation on the White House Web site for five days before the President signs it.

One significant addition to WhiteHouse.gov reflects a campaign promise from the President: we will publish all non-emergency legislation to the website for five days, and allow the public to review and comment before the President signs it.

President Obama signed the “Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009” into law today, one day after Congress delivered it to him. And there’s the ~~bill~~ law, posted on Whitehouse.gov for public review. But it sure hasn’t been up for five days. And it’s not emergency legislation: Bills like it have been floating around in Congress since at least June 2007.

If I was a little demanding about transparency from day one, it was a bit of counterpoint to folks who were going dewy about Obama’s transparency promises. Those were simply words. Judging by the Whitehouse.gov screen cap below, transparency got thrown over the side for a photo op. Welcome to Washington.

obama-photo-op

Update: Just got an email that helps illustrate why the sound practices of letting legislation cool and taking public comment would go by the wayside. Getting credit from the ACLU is much more important than pleasing the relatively tiny coterie of transparency fans – and there is almost no expectation among the public that a White House should practice good lawmaking hygiene.

aclu-screencap

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DTV Transition Delay Fails to Pass House

by Jim Harper on January 28, 2009 · 7 comments

S. 328, the DTV Delay Act, did not receive the 2/3 majority needed to pass in the House under the procedure known as “Suspension of the Rules.” Here’s the roll call vote – 258 for passage, 168 against. It was introduced and passed in the Senate Monday.

It would pass a straight up-or-down vote, but House leadership evidently miscalculated the level of support the measure enjoys.

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“Publicacy”? How About “Publicity”?

by Jim Harper on January 28, 2009 · 8 comments

Scott Cleland is nothing if not interesting. And I was interested by a post he has up this morning: The Growing Privacy-Publicacy Fault-line – The Tension Underneath World Data Privacy Day.

Today is World Data Privacy Day. You can tell by the demonstrations and fireworks displays in capitals around the world. (ahem)

I’ll be speaking at a Dialogue on Diversity Internet privacy briefing on Capitol Hill this afternoon, in case you’re interested and have time.

But Scott’s point – privacy is in tension with the “publicacy” ethos of the Web 2.0 world – I think it’s a very interesting point.

My differences with him are two.

The first is semantic: I think the word he should use is “publicity.” It has the benefit of already being a word – and it’s capable of being pronounced as well!

The second, and more important, is where the ethos comes from: It’s a demand of people – not the Web 2.0 set, but all people.

Privacy and publicity are two sides of the same personal-information coin. People want some information to be kept private – we know that. But they have at least equal or greater demands to make information public – to give it publicity. This is why restaurants and bars are open, curtainless rooms. It’s why email, blogs, Flickr, Facebook and other social networking sites are popular.

The reason why privacy is sought-after and its twin “publicity” is ignored, is because publicity is the default. The laws of physics mean that information about you is automatically displayed when you walk on the street. Photons of light bounce off your body and convey personal information to the photo-receptors (or “eyes”) of people around you.

The ‘physical’ laws of the Internet are similar. You have to ‘publicize’ your IP address to have any contact with another on the Internet. You have to publicize lots of identity, biographical, and other personal information to have any meaningful contact with others on the Internet.

But imagine a world where privacy was the default and information did not naturally travel to others. People would demand publicity. Poeple would demand to be seen and remembered, to have details about their lives recounted by others.

Publicity is not an incursion on social norms being perpetrated by Google and other Web 2.0 types. Web 2.0ish things are a response to the broad implicit demand for publicity. Oh, it’s implicit to the point of contradictory: People say they want privacy even as their actions betray their longing for publicity.

The trick is for people to figure out how to give themselves publicity in the things they want known, and to maintain privacy in the things they don’t. That’s a problem that will most likely be solved by the passage of a few generations, when the technologies that are new today are familiar, and when people have reset their personal information practices and their expectations.

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Seeking Transparency in the Economic Stimulus

by Jim Harper on January 27, 2009 · 9 comments

Chris Soghoian has the story.

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Social Networks Awash in Paedophilia, Terrorism . . . and Gullibility

by Jim Harper on January 26, 2009 · 8 comments

(HT The 463) Forget the sex offenders on MySpace, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal (and C|Net reporter Elinor Mills) should be investigating reincarnation on Facebook!!