The DHS Privacy Committee meets at 1:00 p.m. (Eastern) today, via telephone, and you can listen in! From the Federal Register notice:

Members of the public are welcome to listen to the meeting by calling (800) 320-4330 and entering Pin Number 215132. The number of teleconference lines is limited, however, and lines will be available on a first-come, first-served basis.

From the Columbus Dispatch:

Information on [Joe “the Plumber”] Wurzelbacher was accessed by accounts assigned to the office of Ohio Attorney General Nancy H. Rogers, the Cuyahoga County Child Support Enforcement Agency and the Toledo Police Department.

The security of information about you in government databases is contingent on you keeping your head down.

According to ABC News:

Despite pledges by President George W. Bush and American intelligence officials to the contrary, hundreds of US citizens overseas have been eavesdropped on as they called friends and family back home, according to two former military intercept operators who worked at the giant National Security Agency (NSA) center in Fort Gordon, Georgia.

It’s a simple formula: Lack of oversight produces abuses. Members of Congress may scurry around and declare outrage, but the responsibility is their own as much as anyone else’s.

Yours truly shows up in a good story on surveillance cameras on the Christian Broadcasting Network today. Watching the whole thing, I was impressed by the sophistication of the host, who observed in the discussion segment: “We’re giving up so much privacy in order to obtain the illusion of security.”