organization:privacy and civil liberties oversight board

The U.S. Government’s Privacy Watchdog Is Basically Dead, Emails Reveal
▻https://theintercept.com/2017/03/03/the-governments-privacy-watchdog-is-basically-dead-emails-reveal

There’s a little-known federal agency whose job is to ensure U.S. spy agencies protect privacy and other civil liberties even as they work to defeat terrorists and criminals, and to blow the whistle when that doesn’t happen. But the agency, known as the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, is down to just a single voting member — which means it has been stripped of nearly all its powers, according to emails obtained by The Intercept.

Watchdog Report Says #N.S.A. Program Is #Illegal and Should End - NYTimes.com
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/23/us/politics/watchdog-report-says-nsa-program-is-illegal-and-should-end.html

An independent federal privacy watchdog has concluded that the National Security Agency’s program to collect bulk phone call records has provided only “minimal” benefits in counterterrorism efforts, is illegal and should be shut down.

The findings are laid out in a 238-page report, scheduled for release by Thursday and obtained by The New York Times, that represent the first major public statement by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, which Congress made an independent agency in 2007 and only recently became fully operational.

#surveillance

A Privacy Board Was Supposed to Protect Americans From NSA Spies - Businessweek
▻http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-06-27/a-privacy-board-was-supposed-to-protect-americans-from-nsa-spies

In the weeks since former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden exposed government spying into millions of Americans’ phone calls and e-mails, the Obama administration has reassured the public that there are restraints on U.S. espionage. One check against Washington’s vast counterterrorism efforts is supposed to be the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. In a June 17 interview with Charlie Rose, the president said, “I’ll be meeting with them, and what I want to do is to set up and structure a national conversation” about privacy.

The board is staffed with five presidential appointees who get top secret security clearances and, in theory, the power to shape both legislation and regulations to assure that espionage undertaken in the name of the Patriot Act or the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act doesn’t trample on the public’s privacy rights. That’s how the 9/11 Commission, which proposed the board in 2004, envisioned it would work.

Hamstrung by Congress and ignored by two presidents, the board has been powerless.

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