May 4th, 2007
Huge new report recommends a new privacy bureaucracy
After seven years, the National Research Council has issued a new 400-page report, entitled "Engaging Privacy and Information Technology in a Digital Age," which calls for a European-style bureaucracy (and if you think American bureaucracy is bad you really need to spend some time on the continent) to monitor governmental and business intrusion into government, Declan McCullagh writes on CNET's News Blog.
Declan questions the usefulness - and especially the impartiality - of an executive branch commission or agency, which he terms YAFB for Yet Another Federal Bureaucracy.
Can a federal privacy commissioner appointed by President Bush be expected to criticize the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program? Will a commissioner appointed by President Clinton have sufficient independence to say that the Clipper Chip and encryption restrictions are just plain stupid ideas? Why do we think that a Republican-appointed commissioner would not look more favorably on Intel (which gives plenty of money to the GOP) and a Democratic one would not whitewash issues with Google (which had only one employee give money to a Republican candidate in the first quarter of 2007).
More, a YAFB for privacy could actually harm the effort by imposing "onerous" regulations on business, which he sees as unnecessary. And having done so, future politicians would hide behind the fact that the privacy commission came up with these regulations.
Both corporations and privacy advocacy groups found fault with the report for its bland waffling on many issues.
"There are too many recommendations," said Susan Landau of Sun Microsystems. "There was far too much waffling."
Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation added: "It suffers from not having enough civil liberties practitioners on the board and too many academics."
