The Department of Homeland Security’s Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee meets Wednesday at the Hilton Arlington (Ballston), 950 North Stafford Street in Arlington, Virginia.
Focus: Fusion Centers.
Should be HOT! Or not . . . Agenda here.
Privacy, Security & Government Surveillance 
Google’s Peter Fleischer commences their call for global privacy standards saying, “As I’ve noted before, everyone has a right to privacy online.” Wrong.
Privacy is a good, not a right. Government standards to protect privacy (if even possible) would be a set of entitlements, not a vindication of rights.
More on what privacy is here.
Here’s a good Arsticle on the FBI’s use of “improper” letters – er, illegal demands – to get information from telecommunications providers. They’ve got a cub reporter over there at Ars Technica who seems destined to really make some waves.
Winner line: “. . . White House Homeland Security Advisor Frances Fragos Townsend responded to questions about the latest revelations by pointing to the creation of a ‘compliance unit’ in the FBI. We thought the Constitution already provided for a ‘compliance unit’: the judicial branch.”
Amy Zegart, guest blogging at Volokh, relates the Top 5 Most Depressing Findings from her new book.
Among them, “[t]he CIA and FBI missed a total of 23 opportunities to potentially disrupt the 9/11 plot.” Keep that in mind when you next hear someone from the intelligence community argue for more legal authority or more surveillance technology.
When I talk about information, I sometimes describe it as being volatile, like gasoline or acetone. It has similar properties to these substances, which evaporate and dissipate rapidly. They are very difficult to contain once exposed to the air.
Jeff Jonas has a post ruminating on how personal information multiplies in enterprises. It’s a good illustration of how “volatile” it is. It helps to illustrate how difficult a task it would be to ask organizations to provide access to customers’ personal information, for example. It helps show that the best protection for privacy is keeping information bottled up. Once you open the gas can, don’t expect to be able to collect the atoms of gasoline you’ve released.
The prescription? If you want to keep all your gasoline, put it in a sealed container. Likewise, if you want to keep your privacy, don’t tell people stuff.
Sorry if these observations require too much personal responsibility, effort, and discretion, but I think that’s the way it is with things that have these properties.
There was an interesting hearing on “Warrantless Surveillance and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act: The Role of Checks and Balances in Protecting Americans’ Privacy Rights” in the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. Former Rep. Bob Barr (R-GA) claimed that,
Essentially, thanks to this law, the government has potentially carved out from Fourth-Amendment protection an entire class of communication – electronic communications going to a person outside the United States, or coming to a person inside the United States. There is — and here again contrary to the public missives by the Administration and its supporters — no requirement whatsoever, implied or express, that even one of the parties to such category of communications subject to warrantless surveillance would first have to have any known or even suspect connection with any terrorist or other targeted group or activity.
Barr also repeated the warning of Judge Royce Lamberth, that “you can fight the war [on terrorism] and lose everything if you have no civil liberties left when you get through fighting the war…”
But no one — George Bush included — is advocating that …
Brian Beutler has a generally good summary of the coming FISA debate. Unfortunately, it reflects the defensive crouch the Democrats continue to take on this issue, and the great degree of lattitude lefty commentators are giving the House leadership for its craven capitulation to the Bush administration. The article starts out thus:
House Democrats went limping into August recess, having watched a president with historically low public support nonetheless cram his surveillance agenda past them.
I’m no parliamentarian, but my understanding of House rules is that the House leadership can never have anything “crammed past them”—certainly not in 48 hours. What happened, rather, is that Nancy Pelosi was faced with a choice between a bad FISA bill or no FISA bill, and made the political calculation that the bad FISA bill would hurt Democrats less.
The story continues in the same vein. For example:
But Judiciary Committee aides say meeting such an ambitious timeline may be easier ordered than done. They are not at all certain they can move legislation that would survive a presidential veto before the February 2008 sunset.
Obviously any FISA legislation reining in the executive branch is likely to be vetoed, because President Bush has staked his administration on expanding executive power. Which is why Democrats in Congress should be crafting a bill that, if vetoed, will put them in a good position to shift the blame to the president for vetoing the legislation. President Bush is not a nice guy who will sign FISA legislation that strikes a reasonable balance between executive power and civil liberties. He’s a ruthless partisan who will wield his veto pen any time he thinks it will either expand executive power or put Democrats at a political disadvantage.
One of the things I think the conservative movement understands better than the liberals is that politicians will only toe the line if they’re subjected to withering criticism when they fall short. If an activist base cuts its politicians slack when they screw up, as Brian is cutting Pelosi slack here, the politicians won’t reciprocate by trying harder next time. They’ll conclude they can take their base for granted and shift even further to the center. Which is why I think it’s a mistake for left-of-center writers to act as though this was a freight train that the House leadership just couldn’t have stopped (and by implication, can’t stop this fall). It’s not true, but if it’s repeated often enough as if it were, it’s likely to be a self-fulfilling prophesy. It would be far more helpful for left-of-center journalists to write articles pointing out that Pelosi sold out her principles for the sake of short-term political gain, or depicting her as a hapless Charlie Brown being suckered once again by George Bush’s Lucy.
At Burning Man last week, I came across a young fellow whose backpack had been stolen – with it, his ID, car keys, and credit cards. Among his stresses was getting on a plane to return home without ID. I explained to him that the TSA doesn’t require you to show ID, they just pretend to require it, and I told him about the Great No-ID Airport Challenge. Even the local sheriff who took the report on the theft didn’t know what the TSA’s rules were.
Happily, Chris Soghoian has been bird-dogging the no-ID issue through the auspices of Senator John Warner’s office. He has finally received written confirmation from the Transportation Security Administration that people are not required to show ID at the airport. (His discussion here.)
I also explained to the stressed young man that merchants and his credit card association would absorb the liability for wrongful use of his credit cards. His remaining problem was conjuring car keys from Reno out to the Black Rock Desert. Now that’s a tough one.
I wonder if the TSA is starting to take the phrase “security theater” too literally. Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing reports on a downright surreal incident at the Los Angeles airport last week:
I walked from the arrival gate towards baggage claim, and when I was about halfway there, all of a sudden about a dozen or more TSA personnel and private security staff appeared, shouting STOP WHERE YOU ARE. FREEZE. DO NOT MOVE. Not just at me, but all of the travelers who happened to be wandering through the hallway at that moment. Some of the TSA guards then backed up against walls in the hallway, and sort of barked at anyone who tried to move a few feet away from their “spot,” like towards chairs to sit down or whatever. One TSA guard jogged ahead, back towards the arrival gates (United, this was Terminal 7). At first I assumed maybe it was some weird security drill? A few of us asked what was going on, and got terse answers, like, “Security review.” WTF? 5 minutes passed. 10, 15, 20. The two teen Japanese tourists about ten feet behind me looked utterly dazed — welcome to America, guys. I was really jetlagged and cranky, wanted to move a few feet and sit down, but the TSA lady nearest me kind of snapped at me to stop and stay frozen where I was when the order went out. After 30 minutes, the TSA people said, okay, you may leave now. And everyone unfroze, and went and got their bags. No explanation.
That’s just bizarre. But it sounds very theatrical. I wonder if any of the travelers in that hallway walked away thinking “man, those TSA agents sure are working overtime to keep me safe from terrorists!”
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.