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Politech is the oldest Internet resource devoted to politics and technology. Launched in 1994 by Declan McCullagh, the mailing list has chronicled the growing intersection of culture, technology, politics, and law. Since 2000, so has the Politech web site.
Following is a dialogue about the Clinton administration's successes and failures on privacy, from three people: - Jamie Love, who works for Ralph Nader at the Consumer Project on Technology - Peter Swire, formerly chief counselor for privacy at the White House - Dave Banisar, a senior fellow at the Electronic Privacy Information Center -Declan ********** Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2001 16:51:58 -0500 From: James Love <love@cptech.org> Organization: http://www.cptech.org To: declan@well.com CC: politech@politechbot.com, swire.1@osu.edu, "Banisar, Dave" <banisar@epic.org> Subject: Re: FC: Clinton administration report on bankruptcy & privacy, fromP.Swire So what did Peter Swire accomplish as the White House privacy Czar? Jamie -- James Love Consumer Project on Technology P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036 http://www.cptech.org love@cptech.org 1.202.387.8030 fax 1.202.234.5176 ************ Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2001 14:49:27 -0500 To: Dave Banisar <banisar@2rad.net> From: Peter Swire <swire.1@osu.edu> Subject: Re: FC: Clinton administration report on bankruptcy & privacy,fromP.Swire Cc: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>, James Love <love@cptech.org>, politech@politechbot.com Declan: Perhaps you can post this in light of Jamie Love's question about what I (as part of the Administration) did to protect privacy. David Banisar also wrote some critical comments that I do not happen to think are fair. I do not wish to make a big fuss, but here are some items to consider. In helping to make policy within the Administration, I saw my job as trying to build privacy protections into the Information Age, while also trying to understand the role of other values, including economic growth and the First Amendment values that you (Declan) mentioned. In terms of public statements criticizing the Administration of which I was a part -- that was emphatically not part of my job. There were, however, many policy initiatives proposed within the Administration that would have posed privacy problems, and my office working with others helped to ensure that those initiatives were amended or stopped. Medical privacy. President Clinton announced final medical privacy rules in December, applying to all health care providers and insurers in the country. Privacy advocates, including in the New York Times, described these as the largest single set of privacy protections in U.S. history. The rules were accompanied by an Executive Order limiting the ability of prosecutors to bring actions against patients when a hospital's records are reviewed in an oversight investigation. Financial privacy. The Administration was crucial to ensuring that the financial modernization bill enacted in 1999 contained Title V protecting personal privacy. We believed that the bill did not go far enough, and the Administration proposed additional financial privacy legislation last April, which drew very favorable reviews from privacy advocates. Government privacy. In April, 1999 only about a third of federal agencies had privacy policies clearly posted on their web sites. A year later, all federal agencies had such policies posted, and privacy policies had spread to many other federal sites. This summer, the Administration adopted a new presumption against the use of persistent cookies on federal web sites. New data sharing guidelines to protect privacy were issued last month by OMB, among other things encouraging use of privacy impact assessments as part of the development of federal IT systems. Encryption. I participated in the White House announcement of the change in encryption policy in September, 1999, emphasizing on behalf of the Administration the importance of strong encryption for assuring security and privacy on the Net. Public records and electronic authentication. The study released last week on bankruptcy, privacy, and public records makes detailed recommendations on the difficult issues of how to allow both public access and privacy in an era of E-government. In another project, I secured funding for the National Academy of Sciences to sponsor a project on how to achieve both privacy and authentication for electronic transactions. Internet privacy. The Clinton Administration tried to seek multiple goals here. In pushing the private sector to do better, we saw an increase of 14% in 1998 to 88% in 2000 of commercial sites with privacy notices posted. The Administration and the FTC negotiated with DoubleClick and the rest of the Network Advertising Initiative in the summer of 2000 for a new code of conduct allowing online advertising while subjected the advertising companies to enforceable privacy promises. The trick has been how to move both toward privacy and the growth of the Internet. In a balancing act of that sort, opinions will inevitably differ greatly. Safe Harbor. We reached agreement with the European Commission in 2000 on a safe harbor approach. U.S. companies that sign up to significant privacy promises can flow data freely from Europe to the U.S. Again, a balancing act, but companies that adopt the safe harbor will create systems of privacy protection that go significantly beyond U.S. practices. Social Security Numbers. The Administration proposed in 2000 a bill to protect against identity theft and otherwise limit the sale or purchase of SSNs. The Congress came close to passing an alternative bill sponsored by Senator Gregg. After much controversy, the Gregg provision was defeated. Ed Mierzwinski of U.S. PIRG praised the Administration for its "steadfast" work on the issue. Genetic discrimation. Last February the President issued an Executive Order prohibiting the use of genetic information in federal hiring or promotion decisions. The Administration supported the Daschle-Slaughter bill to extend these protections to the private sector. Internet wiretapping. Last summer I staffed John Podesta in the Administration's bill to update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. The Administration proposal, issued after an exhaustive clearance process that included the Department of Justice and many other agencies, included a number of pro-privacy provisions including stricter standards for trap and trace orders and for intercepting the content of email communications. David Banisar, the ACLU, and others have criticized the bill sharply for favoring law enforcement too much. I think the debate an extraordinarily important one, and I am likely in the future to give my personal views in the area. But this Administration did take the highly unusual step of itself proposing legislation that would be more restrictive on law enforcement in important respects than the status quo. In short, I think this record shows a strong record of privacy protection during my two years in office (whatever I did was in tandem with many, many others within and outside of the Administration), while also seeking other important societal goals. Many of the relevant documents are available at http://www.cio.gov/docs/privacylist.htm. A profile of my work is available at http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/cti036.htm. Thank you, Peter Swire Peter P. Swire Professor of Law Ohio State University College of Law Formerly: Chief Counselor for Privacy United States Office of Management and Budget www.osu.edu/units/law/swire.htm *********** Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2001 16:46:21 -0500 (EST) From: Dave Banisar <banisar@2rad.net> To: Peter Swire <swire.1@osu.edu> cc: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>, James Love <love@cptech.org>, politech@politechbot.com, Dave Banisar <banisar@2rad.net> Subject: Re: FC: Clinton administration report on bankruptcy & privacy,fromP.Swire In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.2.20010122144453.00a905f0@pop.service.ohio-state.edu> Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.10.10101221621110.11416-100000@radserver1.2rad.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-UIDL: 6b3424e948782b792b819621dcc252a5 hmm. dont remeber saying anything publicly about you peter but i'll bite since I seem to be at the top of your list. Here's a different view of some of those "sucesses.' Doubleclick - perhaps you've seen the startling success to FTC has had in working for privacy. They chickened and ran from DoubleClick today: http://www.ftc.gov/os/closings/staff/doubleclick.pdf Medical Records - The regs alow for broad use for marketing purposes that require people to opt-out only after their information has been transferred to the entity. A real success there. Financial Records. Virtually unlimited use inside companies of the use of personal information. So weak that even President Clinton said that it was not adequate and now a whole bunch of states are adopting better laws. And lets not forget the "know your customer" rules. Safe Harbor. 12 whole signatures (which includes non companies such as Truste and several applications from the same company). I'm sure that the DOC staff is overwhelmed filling those out approvals. Govt policy - according to the GAo, most still dont even follow the crappy FTC fair information practices, much less the OECD guidelines that the US agreed to in 1981 or the 1974 privacy act. Encryption. 7 years of trying to throw cryptographers in jail, restrict development and get the govts around the world to follow suit. Still have dumbass, unclear regulations. Wiretapping. Laughed out of congress but now we have the DOJ sponsored Council of Europe cyber-crime convention to do the same things intl. Nothing like some good policy laundering when you cant get what you want in the US, go overseas. Nice job. Dave *********** Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2001 11:22:07 -0500 To: declan@well.com From: Andrew Shen <shen@epic.org> Subject: Re: FC: Clinton administration report on bankruptcy & privacy, from P.Swire X-UIDL: c8443c670527089176920f101593eec9 >Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2001 10:34:38 -0800 (PST) >From: peter swire <peterswire@yahoo.com> >Subject: New study on privacy, bankruptcy, public records >To: declan@well.com >Cc: swire.1@osu.edu > >Declan: > >Here is an item that may be of interest for your list. > >Today, OMB, Treasury, and the Justice Department >released a study on bankruptcy and privacy. The press >release is available at >www.treasury.gov/press/releases/ps1136.htm. (I'm not >sure if the full report is posted yet.) > FYI, the report referenced by Swire is available at: http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/docs/bankruptcy.pdf Andrew. *********** ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if it remains intact. To subscribe, visit http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------