How About a White House Watchdog to Protect Privacy of Americans? It Already Exists, but Does Nothin

[The Straight Story]

While pundits and politicians debate the merits of the federal government’s spying operations, the question has surfaced: Should there be a special body in Washington charged with protecting Americans’ civil liberties?

No, and yes.

No, because one already exists. Yes, because the one that does exist doesn’t do anything.

The do-nothing body is known as the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), which has been around for almost 10 years.

Created in 2004 at the suggestion of the 9/11 Commission, the PCLOB didn’t hold its first meeting until 2006, and its first report was so heavily edited by officials in the George W. Bush administration that it resulted in one board member, Democrat Lanny Davis, quitting.

The controversy prompted Congress to transform the PCLOB into an independent agency. But that didn’t help much at all. Partisan squabbling between Senate Democrats and Bush prevented new board members from being confirmed.

Then, Barack Obama became president—and waited three years to nominate anyone to the PCLOB.

http://www.allgov.com/news/controversies/how-about-a-white-house-watchdog-to-protect-privacy-of-americans-it-already-exists-but-does-nothing-130613?news=850281

[Bluenorthwest]

1. The apathy of the Obama administration is astounding

While not bothering to nominate anyone to PCLOB, the President found lots of time to repeat his opposition to marriage equality in great detail. How many times did he feel the need to call himself a Super Christian and use his bigoted proof of his faith?
'Did I mention that I oppose rights for minorities because I am a Christian? I need to say again what a good Christian I am, very superior, and I think it bears repeating, I'm a very good Christian, so I don't like gays. Did I mention how devout I am? Yes, I'm a Christian.'

[The Straight Story]

2. When it comes to our privacy, no one cares. But privacy of the government and what it does?

Top secret/national security gets stamped on anything they don't want us to know - even if there is no reason for it to be marked as such.

Oh they will release some info, 15-20 years later when no one can be prosecuted or fired.

My government is afraid of the terrorists. But I am more afraid of my government.

[rusty fender]

3. I don't think that the government is scared of terrorists

They use the threat of terrorism to scare us so that they can control us and so that their cronies can become rich off of our money, and then their cronies can hire them after they have retired from the gov't. Our government has become the Politburo: corrupt, bloated, oppressive, ineffectual.

[ljm2002]

4. Exactly...

...while they go on about the new, "asymmetric warfare" that terrorists engage in, they have created a hugely asymmetric information system in our country, where more and more of what the government does is opaque to us and more and more of what we do is transparent to them.

Even if by some miracle they only used the information properly, it would still be wrong. It's not only about what is being done with the information right now: by setting up this massive surveillance database, they are laying the groundwork of something that can easily be misused, that was described in one article as "turnkey tyranny". Once these things are set up, they are a big juicy temptation for those with the very worst impulses.

Imagine J Edgar Hoover having access to something like this? We know historically what his organization did with the powers they did have. Yes, yes, I know: he was FBI and this is NSA. But that is not the point. The point is, there are always J Edgar Hoover types out there, certainly there are plenty of them in the security field. Give them access to something like is being built in Utah, and they WILL use it, legally or not.