Privacy Bill Moves to Judiciary Committee
In hopes of urging the Administration to prioritize civil liberty concerns, the House Judiciary Committee’s Commercial & Administrative Law Subcommittee voted to send a privacy bill to full Judiciary Committee, after a hearing Wed. The bill would require federal agencies to take into account the impact of their rules on the privacy of individuals. The action follows the release of a GAO study found that federal agencies’ practices for handling personal information were “uneven.”
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“The Administration needs to weigh in on this in a very significant way,” Rep. Delahunt (D-Mass.) said: “We have not seen evidence of the Administration making this the priority that I think it deserves.”
Efforts to help appease the privacy concerns of many Americans are long overdue, according to hearing witness Sally Katzen, a prof. at George Mason U. Law School and former deputy dir.-management at OMB in the Clinton Administration. “Given the importance of privacy and its persistence in the national debate, it is somewhat surprising that this Administration has been so reluctant to address the nation’s concerns,” she said. Katzen also said the Administration’s delay in setting up its privacy committee and its failure to appoint a permanent privacy officer shows its lack of commitment to privacy concerns.
However, DoJ is creating a new advisory group that will focus on civil liberties and outreach programs, Chief Privacy & Civil Liberties Officer Jane Horvath told the subcommittee. The group will be divided into 3 subgroups, one that seeks opinions from Arab and Muslim communities, one that focuses on the data community, and one that draws from the law enforcement community, all to discuss how DoJ efforts might affect civil liberties and privacy, Horvath said. The DoJ approach differs from the that devised by the DHS privacy committee, which is primarily made up of experts in privacy, security and emerging technologies. DoJ also hopes to launch extensive training on privacy within the Dept.
While federal agencies have been compliant with some aspects of privacy requirements, they have much to learn, said Linda Koontz, dir.-information management issues at GAO. Agencies need more help from the OMB to ensure they're compliant, she testified. She said many federal practices could heighten citizen concerns, such as increased use of data mining technology to detect terrorist threats or the use of radio frequency identification systems to transmit data. These systems track and store objects and are used by the DoJ to find shipments, she said, and citizens might be concerned that the govt. is using these devices to track people if privacy officers fail to educate their agencies and the public.