[privacy] Bush 'Privacy Board' Just a Gag

["Richard M. Smith" <rms () computerbytesman com>]

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,72248-0.html
 
By Ryan Singel

WASHINGTON -- The first public meeting of a Bush administration "civil
liberties protection panel" had a surreal quality to it, as the five-member
board refused to answer any questions from the press, and stonewalled
privacy advocates and academics on key questions about domestic spying.

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight  <http://privacyboard.gov/> Board,
which met Tuesday, was created by Congress in 2004 on the recommendation of
the 9/11 Commission, but is part of the White House, which handpicked all
the members. Though mandated by law in late 2004, the board was not sworn in
until March 2006, due to inaction on the part of the White House and
Congress.

The three-hour meeting, held at Georgetown University, quickly established
that the panel would be something less than a fierce watchdog of civil
liberties. Instead, members all but said they view their job as helping
Americans learn to relax and love warrantless surveillance.

"The question is, how much can the board share with the public about the
protections incorporated in both the development and implementation of those
policies?" said Alan Raul, a Washington D.C. lawyer who serves as vice
chairman. "On the public side, I believe the board can help advance national
security and the rights of American by helping explain how the government
safeguards U.S. personal information."

Board members were briefed on the government's NSA-run warrantless
wiretapping program last week, and said they were impressed by how the
program handled information collected from American citizens' private phone
calls and e-mail.

But the ACLU's Caroline Fredrickson was quick to ridicule the board's
response to the administration's anti-terrorism policies, charging that the
panel's private meetings to date largely consisted of phone calls with
government insiders and agencies.

"When our government is torturing innocent people and spying on Americans
without a warrant, the PCLOB should act -- indeed, should have acted long
ago," Fredrickson said. "Clearly you've been fiddling while Rome burns. This
board needs to bring a little sunshine. So far America is kept in the dark
-- and this is the first public meeting you have had."

Lisa Graves, the deputy director of the Center for  <http://cnss.org/>
National Security Studies, asked the board two simple questions: Did they
know how many Americans had been eavesdropped on by the warrantless
wiretapping program, and, if so, how many?

Raul acknowledged in a roundabout way that the data existed, but said it was
too sensitive to release. Graves then asked if the board had pushed to have
that data made public, as the Justice Department is required to do with
typical
<http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2006/05/more_spying_sta.html?entry_id=1470
696> spy wiretaps.

Raul declined to say. "It is important for us to retain confidentiality on
what recommendations we have and haven't made," he said.

Graves tried to push the issue of whether the board was going to be public
or private, but chairwoman Carol Dinkins politely cut her off and ended the
question-and-answer session.

Board member Lanny Davis, who had introduced himself by saying he grew up in
a household where the ACLU was considered a "heroic organization," jumped in
to explain why the nation's most prominent privacy board won't be
transparent about whether it is urging more transparency.

"Congress put us in the office of the president, we didn't," Davis said.
"Had Congress wanted us to be an incensement agency, it would have made us
independent."

The sparsely attended meeting shaped up as a mostly one-way conversation,
with attendees offering suggestions on how the board could transform itself
into an effective organization by building on the work of earlier government
privacy panels.

Fred Cate, a cybersecurity professor at Indiana University, stressed that
anti-terrorism programs that collect and sift through data on Americans --
such as the no-fly list and the recently announced Automated Targeting
Center that has been computing terrorism quotients for those flying in and
out of the country for more than five years -- need to have a robust way for
people to contest the scores and underlying data.

"Redress seems to be the foundation of any system," Cate said. "The only
certainty in this entire field is that there will be false positives."

The committee members largely kept their views to themselves, and the press
was barred from posing questions during the two short public question
periods. Dinkins, the board's chairwoman, who is a partner at the same law
firm where Attorney General Alberto Gonzales once worked, offered little
beyond pleasantries. Another board member, Francis Taylor, never spoke.

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