The more databases the U.S. government keeps on citizens, the mor...
The more databases the U.S. government keeps on citizens, the more vulnerable personal information, the Electronic Frontier Foundation told House Commerce Committee and Telecom and Oversight subcommittee leaders last week. The committee asked the foundation for input as it…
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reviews the Protect America Act. EFF cited recent Government Accountability Office findings that nearly 800 breaches of federal databases occurred from January 2003 through July 2006. Some national security databases aren’t subject to Privacy Act requirements that they only store information “relevant and necessary” for their stated purpose, the group said. Errors can be hard to fix in networked databases if all sources of an error aren’t traced, such as in the Terrorist Screening Database, it said. Mission creep is another risk of database proliferation, with national security being cited as a reason to use material collected for one purpose for another. EFF also summarized the background on what it said was AT&T’s interception of communications for the NSA at the telco’s San Francisco switching facility. Citing comments of its expert, a former FCC Internet technology adviser, in the Hepting case against the telcos, EFF told the committee that the San Francisco setup probably was repeated elsewhere, given clues in the hardware configuration. EFF also analyzed the use of “exigent letters” to get details of communications from telcos, saying such letters mostly were used out of their statutory context, which reserves them for “emergency” situations. “Generalized fears are not sufficient to support a reasonable belief in an immediate emergency threat to life or limb,” EFF said.