Computing Research Policy Blog

DOD Technology and Privacy Advisory Committee Releases Final Report

Just a quick note to link to the final report (3.4 mb pdf) of the TAPAC on Safeguarding Privacy in the Fight Against Terrorism. The committee was chartered in the wake of the Terrorism Information Awareness controversy by the Secretary of Defense to "ensure the application of [TIA] or any like technology developed within DOD is carried out in accordance with U.S. law and American values related to privacy." I'll have more on the contents of the report in a future blog entry. Today's Washington Post has an opinion piece from Heather McDonald of the Manhattan Institute taking particular issue with TAPAC's recommendation that DOD seek a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court authorization before revealing any personally identifiable information known to or reasonably likely to concern US persons. I haven't read enough of the report yet to know whether this recommendation really means what McDonald says it does.

Of course, as I've noted before, the irony of the attack on TIA is that research on privacy protecting technologies -- the kinds of technologies that might allow the DOD to do a significant amount of data mining without revealing personally identifiable data -- is no longer being funded as a result of the TIA shutdown, yet many of the other areas of TIA-related research are apparently moving forward "in the black" (in classified research in other agencies).

Anyway, I'll share my thoughts on the report in another post in the near future....