Is it surprising that the DHS Privacy Office pretty much sucks?

DHS threats to privacy are severe, say privacy watchdogs

Mashable’s Pete Cashmore recently wrote a column for CNN declaring privacy dead. He’s burying it Irish funeral style, with celebration. While fellow True/Slanter Maureen Henderson takes issue with his column, I found myself nodding in agreement. My philosophy can usually be summed up by: “Yep, privacy is dead. Deal with it.”

That said, I have to admit that I admire those fighting to keep privacy alive. I admire their David-like persistence in the face of Goliathian anti-privacy forces.

The latest such battle comes to us from the Department of Homeland Security. When I think of the DHS, I think of wiretaps, surveillance, and monitoring of international phone calls, all activities that reflect the government’s privileging security over privacy. But lo and behold, the DHS has a privacy office!

The Department of Homeland Security Privacy Office is the first statutorily required Privacy Office at any federal agency whose mission is to minimize the impact on the individual’s privacy, particularly the individual’s personal information and dignity, while achieving the mission of the Department of Homeland Security.

via DHS | The Privacy Office of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Awwww. The nation’s first privacy office required by law. Under the direction of Mary Ellen Callahan, the Chief Privacy Officer and Chief FOIA Officer, the office issues guidelines for how the DHS can keep us safe while respecting our privacy. I imagine that’s a tough job.

Well, according to a group of privacy advocates, she’s not doing it very well. They say the privacy office has shown “an extraordinary disregard” for its duty — which is “to ensure that new technologies sustain, and do not erode, privacy protections.” What specifically pisses off the privacy coalition of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), the ACLU, the Gun Owners of America, Bob Barr and a bunch of libertarians?

Specifically, critics said the DHS office in the past year has assessed privacy effects of practices such as suspicionless searches of travelers’ laptop computers and other electronic devices at border checkpoints, and funding for state and local police intelligence analysis centers, but has done little to scale them back.

DHS also apparently could not stop such practices as “whole body imaging” at airports. The government says such images cannot be recorded and are analyzed by security officers at remote locations who never see the passengers. Privacy advocates are skeptical that the technology will not be abused.

via Coalition seeks investigation of Homeland Security privacy office – Washington Post.

You can read the group’s letter to Congress on the EPIC website. The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee said the committee will look into this. Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) told the Washington Post that “the panel is aware of the issues raised by the letter” and that “it will review calls” and maybe even “create an independent oversight agency.”

(And then it was never heard of again.)