Bush Admin. Appoints Civil-Liberties Officer 292
Zephyros writes "The WSJ reports that the Bush administration has appointed a Civil Liberties Protection Officer in order to assuage the public's privacy concerns. From the article: 'As the son of a U.S. aid worker stationed in Guatemala during the 1970s civil war, Alex Joel recalls being unable to tell the good guys from the bad as both armed soldiers and civilians alike would order his family out of their car to search it. Those first-hand brushes with totalitarianism, says Mr. [Alex] Joel, have led him to take the rights of individuals very seriously.' It remains to be seen how effective he will be, but at least they're recognizing the concern."
Bush's previous appointments / plans (Score:2, Informative)
- Supreme court justice Harriet Myers
- Clean Air
- Environment czar to relax the environment initiatives
- Homeland security from everyone but the illegals
- VP himself to supervise energy policy
- And last but not the least
Re:Bush's previous appointments / plans (Score:5, Informative)
June 2003: Nuala O'Connor Kelly, (former Chief "Privacy" Officer of Doubleclick) [wired.com] appointed to be Chief "Privacy" officer for HomeSec.
February 2005: D. Reed Freeman, (former Gator/Claria Chief "Privacy" Officer) [slashdot.org] sitting on HomeSec's Data "Privacy" and "Integrity" Advisory Committee.
Maybe we should be thankful. Based on precedent, the BSA guy should be put in charge of the Copyright office, or perhaps hired by NSA to... adjust its priorities when it comes to what sort of traffic is worthy of further investigation.
April 2006: Department of Commerce, undersecretary for technology: Robert Cresanti, former VP of public policy at the Business Software Alliance (BSA) [slashdot.org].
Now we have a guy who "recalls being unable to tell the good guys from the bad as both armed soldiers and civilians alike would order his family out of their car to search it", and who says one of his best qualifications for the job includes "first-hand brushes with totalitarianism" in charge of Civil Liberties instead.
"Good? Bad? I'm the guy with the gun."
- Ash, Army of Darkness (1993)
Anyways, freedom's overrated these days. You know what they do to people in those freedom camps? (Yeah, neither do I, and I'd like to keep it that way!)
There's still time to appoint Jeff Bezos to run USPTO! (I've got a $10 bet riding on it, so please, write your Congressmen today! :)
Mirror of LA Times article (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022006R.shtml [truthout.org]
Privacy Guardian Is Still a Paper Tiger
By Richard B. Schmitt
The Los Angeles Times
Monday 20 February 2006
A year after its creation, the White House civil liberties board has yet to do a single day of work.
Washington - For Americans troubled by the prospect of federal agents eavesdropping on their phone conversations or combing through their Internet records, there is good news: A little-known board exists in the White House whose purpose is to ensure that privacy and civil liberties are protected in the fight against terrorism.
Someday, it might actually meet.
Initially proposed by the bipartisan commission that investigated the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board was created by the intelligence overhaul that President Bush signed into law in December 2004.
More than a year later, it exists only on paper.
Foot-dragging, debate over its budget and powers, and concern over the qualifications of some of its members - one was treasurer of Bush's first campaign for Texas governor - has kept the board from doing a single day of work.
On Thursday, after months of delay, the Senate Judiciary Committee took a first step toward standing up the fledgling watchdog, approving the two lawyers Bush nominated to lead the panel. But it may take months before the board is up and running and doing much serious work.
Critics say the inaction shows the administration is just going through the motions when it comes to civil liberties.
"They have stalled in giving the board adequate funding. They have stalled in making appointments," said Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.). "It is apparent they are not taking this seriously."
The Sept. 11 commission also has expressed reservations about the commitment to the liberties panel.
"We felt it was absolutely vital," said Thomas H. Kean, the Republican former governor of New Jersey who led the commission. "We had certainly hoped it would have been up and running a long time ago."
The inaction is especially noteworthy in light of recent events. Some Republicans joined Democrats to delay renewal of the anti-terrorism Patriot Act because of civil liberties concerns. And the disclosure in December that Bush approved surveillance of certain US residents' international communications without a court order has caused bipartisan dismay in Congress.
"Obviously, civil liberties issues are critically important, and they have been to this president, especially after 9/11," said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino, adding that the White House had moved expeditiously to establish the board. "We do not formally nominate until we are through the background investigation and the full vetting. It takes time to present those nominations to the Senate. But now that they have been confirmed, that is a good thing."
The board chairwoman is Carol E. Dinkins, a Houston lawyer who was a Justice Department official in the Reagan administration. A longtime friend of the Bush family, she was the treasurer of George W. Bush's first campaign for governor of Texas, in 1994, and co-chair of Lawyers for Bush-Cheney, which recruited Republican lawyers to handle legal battles after the November 2004 election.
Dinkins, a longtime partner in the Houston law firm of Vinson & Elkins, where Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales once was a partner, has specialized in defending oil and gas companies in environmental lawsuits.
Foremost among her credentials, she told Senate Judiciary Committee members in a response to their questions, was the two years she spent as deputy attorney general in President Reagan's Justice Department. There, she said, she had to weigh civil liberties concerns while overseeing domestic surveillance and counter-intelligence cases.
The board vice chairman is Alan
Further (Score:4, Informative)
These are problems because
Reading further into TFA, It seems to me that his job is partially going to involve enabling datamining in a more 'anonymous' fashion.Bush, Cheney & company seem to desperately want to track/datamine people. Even after the program was 'shut down', it turns out that it wasn't. It just got a name change & was shuffled around bureaucraticly. This looks to me like another attempt to legitimize that program.
Re:A.G. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Who appoints? (Score:5, Informative)
You have...
The mining lobbyist as a number 2 in the Department of the Interior and a cattle rancher laywer as the chief counsel.
The pharmaceutical lawyer acting as lead counsel for the FDA.
The meat industry lobbyist running our meat labelling program.
The number 2 in the EPA was a Monsanto executive, and his pick for chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality represented GE in its fight against cleaning up its own toxic waste. The chief of staff left to go work for Southern Company (a major owner of coal plants) a week after clean air standard were relaxed.
Read more. [commondreams.org]
Essentially, Bush has packed every government enforcement agency with people who have spent their careers trying to help companies get out of complying with regulations meant to protect the people. Even his own Supreme Court nominees are strong advocates of executive power. His legacy has been to undermine every control meant to keep him and his supports from running out of control.
Re:Sarcasm Aside... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Good first step (Score:1, Informative)
What, I wonder, will you and your crack moderators do when bush leaves office?
Let's pick on James Connaughton (Score:4, Informative)
I'll pick James Connaughton for my example. This man is a lawyer who has lobbied on behalf of coal, chemical, and utility companies to avoid having to pay to clean up Superfund sites that they created. One of these companies was GE, which has been responsible for creating the largest number of Superfund sites of any other company in the nation. They've also pumped a ton of money into lobbying against having to pick up the bill for toxic waste dumping and against the designation of sites as toxic waste dumps in the first place. A real good cause there, huh?
He also helped head up the ISO 14000 standard for environmental policy which has no real requirements beyond minimal compliance with the law and no external audit requirement. It's toothless and basically just a free sticker you can apply to your company to claim that you care about the environment without actually having to do so.
Once in office, he helped lead the charge to prevent the government from tightening standards on arsenic in the water supply. He has been a passionate advocate against any policy to reduce greenhouse gasses and has been implicated in censoring language in research studies that support the existence of global warming. He's been a supporter of the "Clean Skies" initiative which destroys a lot of the Clean Air Act's protective provisions. He likes to push for "volunatry standards" a.k.a. "not having to do anything about a problem."
He's just one example. His expertise has entirely been in helping business pursue profits at the expense of public health. His kind of industry experience the people can do without.