In January, the Obama
administration put together a “working group” to analyze how huge
swaths of Americans’ data are being gathered and stored and what
sort of privacy issues need to be addressed. The group’s report was
just released this week
Before you ask: No, it’s not about the National Security Agency
(NSA) sweeping up huge amounts of metadata from phone and online
communications by Americans, even though that’s the big data
conversation many Americans want to have right now. Such data
gathering is vaguely mentioned in the full report, but primarily
the
85-page study (pdf) is about consumer privacy in the private
tech sector and citizen privacy in other aspects of government data
collection. So, pretty much everything except NSA.
Here’s the list of
final policy recommendations. It’s a bit of a mixed bag, but
take note of how many appear to expand the power and reach of
government authority:
- Advance the Consumer Privacy Bill of
Rights because consumers deserve clear, understandable,
reasonable standards for how their personal information is used in
the big data era. - Pass National Data Breach Legislation that
provides for a single national data breach standard, along the
lines of the Administration’s 2011 Cybersecurity legislative
proposal. - Extend Privacy Protections to non-U.S. Persons
because privacy is a worldwide value that should be reflected in
how the federal government handles personally identifiable
information from non-U.S. citizens. - Ensure Data Collected on Students in School is used for
Educational Purposes to drive better learning outcomes
while protecting students against their data being shared or used
inappropriately. - Expand Technical Expertise to Stop
Discrimination because the federal government should build
the technical expertise to be able to identify practices and
outcomes facilitated by big data analytics that have a
discriminatory impact on protected classes. - Amend the Electronic Communications Privacy
Act to ensure the standard of protection for online,
digital content is consistent with that afforded in the physical
world—including by removing archaic distinctions between email left
unread or over a certain age.
The “Consumer
Privacy Bill of Rights” mentioned (pdf) calls for more
transparency about online company privacy policies for users but
wants to do so by expanding the power of the Federal Trade
Commission (FTC) to monitor consumer website behavior, including
creating a bureaucratic federal process for submitting site codes
of conduct for federal review. But, hey, the summary proposes a
“reasonable” 180-day turnaround on these reviews. No doubt it won’t
be a burden for anybody. The federal government has a good
reputation for meeting deadlines, right?
As for the White House’s desire to find ways to prevent big data
from being used for discriminatory purposes, the problem is that
currently at least one federal agency, the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission (EEOC), has been making fools of itself and
the administration (and wasting taxpayer dollars) going after
misguided, flimsy cases. They’ve been all but laughed out of the
courtroom for accusing companies of discrimination for using
background and credit checks as part of their hiring process.
Walter Olson, of the Cato Institute and Overlawyered, has a roundup
of some of the EEOC’s lows here.
On the plus side, it’s good that they’re calling for reform of
the archaic e-mail search policy. Current law allows authorities to
get access to stored e-mails older than 180 days with just a
subpoena, not a warrant.
But still, on the whole, the proposal looks like federal
agencies looking for more opportunities to regulate and pass more
rules controlling private commerce, and to use their authority to
come down like a ton of bricks on anybody who can’t keep up with
the many demands. And thus government
compliance costs will gobble up another piece of the budget
pie.
I would also point out that on the same day these
recommendations were released, The Washington Post
reported that several major tech companies such as Google,
Facebook, and Apple were going to start informing their customers
when the government subpoenas their data rather than keeping
quiet about it. The Department of Justice objected strenuously to
this new move toward transparency. The government is a terrible
guardian of our privacy.
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