Senior Intelligence Official: Change Your Understanding of PrivacyGood catch from Pam Hess of the AP. At an intelligence conference last month, the nation’s number-two intelligence official, Don Kerr, contended that you shouldn’t expect the government to protect your anonymity. At least one prominent civil libertarian tells TPMmuckraker that Kerr should resign if his remarks reflect what he believes.
Kerr, the chief deputy to intelligence chief Michael McConnell — he of questionable credibility concerning the Bush administration’s surveillance programs — contended last month that anonymity is an outmoded component of citizens’ reasonable privacy expectations. Technology has influenced social interaction to such a point where people don’t blanch at giving Amazon their credit card numbers or posting personal information on social-networking websites. While the government should protect privacy, shielding anonymity “isn’t a fight that can be won.” Kerr, it should be noted, was previously the director of the National Reconnaissance Office, which is in charge of the nation’s spy satellites.
Some civil libertarians read Kerr’s remarks as at odds with long-standing legal privacy protections. At least one tells TPMmuckraker that it’s time for Kerr — who was just confirmed as McConnell’s deputy on October 4 — to find a new line of work. “The Constitution protects the right of anonymity,” says Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. “If Mr. Kerr does not believe he can uphold the Constitution, he should resign.”
Kerr shied away from teasing out the implications of his statement when asked. (“It’s a personal question that everyone, in a way, has to answer for themselves,” said Kerr — who, remember, is a government official presumably not willing to allow 300 million people the leverage to decide, say, how much surveillance the government can perform.) But here’s the heart of the argument (pdf):
Anonymity results from a lack of identifying features. Nowadays, when so much correlated data is collected and available — and I’m just talking about profiles on MySpace, Facebook, YouTube here — the set of identifiable features has grown beyond where most of us can comprehend. We need to move beyond the construct that equates anonymity with privacy and focus more on how we can protect essential privacy in this interconnected environment.
On Thursday the Senate Judiciary Committee will mark up the new surveillance bill that passed the intelligence committee. One feature that certain Senate Democrats — Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, for instance — want to clarify is the procedure for minimization. That’s the privacy protection whereby the NSA has to remove identifying characteristics of U.S. citizens whose communications get swept up in a net of warrantless surveillance. In light of Kerr’s little-noticed remarks, that’s not surprising: minimization is all about anonymity, and it’s been a key component of surveillance law for decades.
Here’s Kerr’s definition of privacy:
Instead, privacy, I would offer, is a system of laws, rules, and customs with an infrastructure of Inspectors General, oversight committees, and privacy boards on which our intelligence community commitment is based and measured. And it is that framework that we need to grow and nourish and adjust as our cultures change.
The CIA director is currently at war with his inspector general. Most members of the Senate and House intelligence committees had no idea that the president’s warrantless surveillance efforts existed before The New York Times broke that story. At least one member of the president’s intelligence civil liberties and oversight board has resigned, calling the effort a joke.
Meanwhile, $10 in TPM fun-bucks to the first reader who can make sense of this somewhat unclear parable from Kerr:
Too often, privacy has been equated with anonymity; and it’s an idea that is deeply rooted in American culture. The Lone Ranger wore a mask but Tonto didn’t seem to need one even though he did the dirty work for free. You’d think he would probably need one even more.
Update: Reader BP, consider your wallet full of TPM fun-bucks. BP writes:
The story behind the Kerr parable is he is apparently a fan of talented musicians. It’s from a Lyle Lovett song called “If I Had a Boat”
The mystery masked man was smart/
He got himself a tonto/
cause tonto did the dirty work for free/
But tonto he was smarter/
And one day said kemo sabe/
Kiss my ass I bought a boat/
Im going out to seaNow, I’d like to think that Mr. Kerr could follow through and get out of town, but the odds are likely against me. Will the next Presidential Medal of Freedom winner please step forward?
A valiant and creative effort, but I have to admit I’m still a bit unclear about who the Lone Ranger is and who Tonto is in Kerr’s metaphor. BP gets, say, half the TPM fun-bucks. And that means, gentle readers, that the remaining prize is still out there for you!
