The president has convened an interagency "Privacy Working Group." Are your rights more - or less - secure when it's in session?
You knew the Clinton administration was, let's say, naïve for biting down so hard on the National Security Agency's line on the Clipper Chip. But you gave it the benefit of the doubt, assuming the cybercrats were well-intentioned if misled.
Those press photos of Vice President Gore merrily splacking away in CompuServe conferences assured you that the most informed, dedicated, and conscientious minds in government would make coherent sense of the mad, rushing convergence of digital media.
But there are agents in every government who will work toward their own gain. Some from this government have apparently converged on the working committees of the Clinton administration's Information Infrastructure Task Force, a group established by the White House in 1993 to sculpt the vision of the administration's National Information Infrastructure.
In the case of the task force's Privacy Working Group subcommittee, a disturbing number - about a quarter of the members - have a highly ambiguous posture regarding privacy: their careers are based on creative invasion of it.
Included in this subcommittee, which began its weekly meetings in August 1993, are representatives of the NSA (an international spy agency), the IRS (a domestic spy agency that monitors Americans' personal finances), and the Justice and Treasury Departments, both outfits with legacies of abusing taxpayer privacy.
Can these characters really be entrusted with policy questions on personal privacy? Let's examine the members' professional perspectives. NSA's fiscal 1995 budget, according to a report published by Defense Week last summer, is US$3.5 billion, much of it dedicated to listening to the world's electronic communications. The three NSA guys could be communications security consultants (though this may conflict with the Computer Security Act, which mandates that civilian networks are to be secured by the Commerce Department's technical advisors). But remember, the NSA was the outfit ordered to halt its domestic surveillance program, Operation Shamrock, by the Senate's Church committee, which was appointed to investigate CIA abuses in the mid-'70s. And the NSA also developed the Clipper Chip, the world's first encryption system built with a spare key for easy government surveillance.
The Internal Revenue Service? In December, the IRS proposed an amendment, now in effect, to the Privacy Act "system of records" that could lead to the instant creation of dossiers on all Americans. It would draw from virtually every database extant - from local land registries, motor-vehicle registries, and credit bureaus. This proposal is even more invasive than the National Data Center proposal that was rejected by Congress in 1966 as an invitation to tyranny. It's not a program that would be dreamed up by privacy zealots. After Knight-Ridder papers ran an item about the new IRS proposal, the IRS backed off with a "clarification" that the upgraded system will not be used to identify individuals, only group trends.
Department of Justice? Yes, these guys are bound by rules of procedure. But if a change in regulation can place something into view - where it's available without a warrant - why not? The FBI is always pushing the envelope, lobbying for amendments to give its agents access to financial information through "administrative subpoenas," for instance, instead of a warrant. This is not a crowd of privacy absolutists, to be sure.
Treasury? True, a body of regulations ensures bank confidentiality, but one of the Treasury's reps on the panel is Stephen Kroll, chief counsel for the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. The outfit uses high-order artificial-intelligence computer hardware to sift through federal and local databases to track down money launderers - and to target new subjects for investigation. I'm sure Kroll will never be accused of privacy fanaticism.
The United States Postal Service? The USPS rep on the panel is Chuck Chamberlain, the unlucky fellow who addressed a smart-card conference in Virginia last spring, discussing the logistics of delivering 100 million national "privacy" cards, which to privacy advocates sounded a lot like a national identification system. Chuck later got yelled at for spilling the beans, though the cards were part of Clinton's own reengineering-government and health-care plans. As a White House technology policy advisor said, "Chuck, he got a good talking to."
Given the market's answers to privacy on the public networks - onetime password schemes, encryption - what could be the motivation for packing the Privacy Working Group with characters whose stock-in-trade is privacy invasion?
The administration's history indicates that these soldiers of twilight information wars are on the panel to defend their agendas. After all, the Clinton White House embraced Clipper in 1993 as if it were a warm puppy, and got behind the FBI on the Digital Telephony Bill in 1994. That bill gives the Attorney General wide powers in controlling the design of the public phone network to maximize law enforcement's power to tap lines when and where it pleases.
If you'd like to know whether you can sit in on these Privacy Working Group meetings, ask Mike Nelson at the White House (mnelson@ostp.eop.gov) when the next panel adjourns. Or do some investigating of your own at the Information Infrastructure Task Force's Web site: .
