Senator Wyden Fights for privacy again!
see www.slashdot.org or below
Citizens' Protection in Federal Databases Act
EFF, EPIC, CDT, ACLU and Free Congress have drafted a bill that's been
introduced by Senator Wyden today, for a new law called "The Citizens'
Protection in Federal Databases Act." This is a hell of a law. It finds
that various species of spooks are making avid use of commercial and
governmental databases, merging them and aggregating them, without
transparency, accountability, or any real understanding of the danger to
civil liberties involved in this practice. Accordingly, it requires any
Fed agency using non-Fed databases to cut it out and make a full report
to Congress on who they're buying database and database-services from,
what they're doing to preserve privacy, why they're doing what they're
doing, and whether they actually have a realistic chance of catching any
bad guys. And it calls into account Feds who abuse their authority and
limits the kind of doomsday hypotheticals that can be used to justify
such abuse.
We've spent the two years since September 11th writing blank checks to
anyone who's got a good story about preventing terrorism through the
wholesale abridgement of civil liberties, trading off freedom for the
perception of safety. It's time that we called our civil servants to
account on these scores -- they've spent our money and our freedom, what
did we get in return?
Each report shall include -
(A) a list of all contracts, memoranda of understanding, or other
agreements entered into by the department or agency, or any other
national security, intelligence, or law enforcement element under the
jurisdiction of the department or agency for the use of, access to, or
analysis of databases that were obtained from or remain under the
control of a non-Federal entity, or that contain information that was
acquired initially by another department or agency of the Federal
Government for purposes other than national security, intelligence, or
law enforcement;
(B) the duration and dollar amount of such contracts;
(C) the types of data contained in the databases referred to in
subparagraph (A);
(D) the purposes for which such databases are used, analyzed, or
accessed;
(E) the extent to which such databases are used, analyzed, or accessed;
(F) the extent to which information from such databases is retained
by the department or agency, or any national security, intelligence, or
law enforcement element under the jurisdiction of the department or
agency, including how long the information is retained and for what purpose;
(G) a thorough description, in unclassified form, of any
methodologies being used or developed by the department or agency, or
any intelligence or law enforcement element under the jurisdiction of
the department or agency, to search, access, or analyze such databases;
(H) an assessment of the likely efficacy of such methodologies in
identifying or locating criminals, terrorists, or terrorist groups, and
in providing practically valuable predictive assessments of the plans,
intentions, or capabilities of criminals, terrorists, or terrorist groups;
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