In remarks at the University of Chicago Law School yesterday, President Obama named privacy as one of the constitutional issues that will be increasingly salient in the years to come. "In a society in which so much of your life is digitized, people have a whole new set of privacy expectations that are understandable,” said the President. Obama said the encryption debate was “just the tip of the iceberg of what we’re going to have to figure out.” In its brief in Apple v. FBI, EPIC recently argued that cell phone encryption was adopted to protect consumers from crime. EPIC routinely files amicus briefs in cases that raise novel privacy and civil liberties issues.
EPIC and over 30 organizations have urged the Obama Administration to halt proposed changes to Executive Order 12333 that would permit the NSA to transfer raw data collected to law enforcement agencies. The NSA’s vast data collection activities are traditionally limited to intelligence purposes. The proposal will permit use of NSA data by law enforcement and make personal data more widely available across the federal government. Last year, EPIC urged the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board to increase oversight of 12333. EPIC called for: (1) new limits on data collection and disclosure; (2) audit trails for surveillance activities; and (3) published legal justifications for surveillance programs. The Board is currently reviewing surveillance under EO 12333.
The report of a secret FAA committee would relax safety rules for drones operating over populated areas. The report also makes no mention of the privacy risks of aerial surveillance by small drones. Like the FAA registration task force, the FAA small drones committee was composed of mostly industry members and did not include any privacy or consumer protection groups. The report recommends allowing drones to fly within 20' above a person or within 10' next to a person. EPIC previously sued the FAA for failing to establish privacy rules for commercial drones. EPIC v. FAA is pending before the D.C. Circuit. EPIC also filed a FOIA lawsuit against the FAA for the records of the secret drone task force meetings.
