Privacy Oversight Institutions

02/28/2013

PCLOB

Small But Significant Privacy Oversight Institution Almost a Reality After Pathetic Story of Delay

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 2:39pm

(Updated below)

The Senate Judiciary Committee today approved president Obama’s nominee, David Medine, as chair of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. With this step, we are on the cusp of finally seeing this important oversight body brought into full existence.

As new technologies emerge faster than ever, it’s vital to have a genuinely independent oversight body helping to make sure our liberties are protected (see here and here for prior posts on the PCLOB, and a 2009 report on privacy oversight). The PCLOB is a significant and much needed addition to the highly inadequate oversight structures currently overseeing our out-of-control national security establishment.

03/20/2013

ECPA

A Fourth Amendment Application for the Internet

By Grover G. Norquist, President, Americans for Tax Reform & Laura W. Murphy, Director, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 3:35pm

Originally posted on Politico.com

Technology has changed dramatically since 1986. With free, unlimited email storage and high-speed broadband service widely available, we no longer have to download email onto our hard drives. Instead, we indefinitely store our email and other personal effects — private reflections, financial records, photographs and love letters — in the "cloud," where the power and flexibility of massive servers are available for free or at very low cost.

08/24/2012

Civil Liberties in the Digital Age

Friday Links Roundup For August 24

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 5:36pm

On July 30, the Privacy Commissioner of British Columbia announced a review of license plate scanning programs by law enforcement in the province. If the United States had an analogous institution embodying /enforcing our privacy values, maybe we’d see something like that here instead of untrammeled expansion and retention of license data. We’re still waiting for the “missing in action” Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) to turn into something real. From 2007 until late 2011, neither President Bush nor President Obama even nominated anyone to fill the independent oversight board; we finally now have four members—but still no chair.

American Civil Liberties Union