Release of the 2003 Privacy and Human Rights Report
Date: Friday, September 5, 1:00 pm EDT
Event: National Press Club, Washington
Key words: Privacy, Civil liberties, EPIC, Patriot Act
Webcast: http://www.ConnectLive.com/events/epic
Report: http://www.privacyinternational.org/survey/phr2003/
Privacy Group Finds Public Opposition to Total Information Awareness, Biometric ID Cards
Will Pursue Lawsuit on Passenger Profiling
WASHINGTON, DC - The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and Privacy
International will release today the sixth annual Privacy and Human Rights
survey. The report is the most comprehensive survey on privacy and data protection
ever published. The report will be released at the National Press Club in
Washington, DC and simultaneously webcast on the Internet. This report
reviews the state of privacy in over fifty-five countries around the world.
Key topics include Total Information Awareness, the public response
to the USA-Patriot Act, traveler profiling, biometric identification, and
other new technologies of surveillance. According to the 2003 Privacy and
Human Rights report, governments have enhanced their surveillance powers,
affecting many fundamental human rights, including privacy. But public opposition
is growing.
"
The public in the United States and around the world is now voicing its opposition
to the dramatic expansion of government surveillance that occurred after September
11," said EPIC Executive Director Marc Rotenberg. "The resignation
of
John Poindexter, the suspension of the Total Information Awareness program, and
campaigns against identity cards in Europe and East Asia make clear that citizens
are not prepared to make privacy one of the casualties in the war on terrorism."
Under the banner of anti-terrorism, combined with a shifting international
political climate, several governments are using new systems and methods of
surveillance technologies, from biometrics and computerized national ID cards
to DNA databases and face-recognition. Most prominent among these proposals
is the United States' CAPPS II system,
an airline passenger profiling system that uses passengers' personal information
to detect potential security threats.
At the press conference, EPIC General Counsel David L. Sobel will discuss
the lawsuit that the EPIC has filed this week against the Transportation Security
Administration for information about the CAPPS II passenger profiling system.
An earlier EPIC lawsuit revealed that many air travelers were wrongly
detained by security officials. The new lawsuit seeks an emergency order
requiring
the immediate release of information about the privacy impact of the controversial
profiling system. Biometrics has received increasing attention from
governments and law enforcement agencies in the past year. Several nations
are also developing new identification and authentication systems, such as
smart cards and digital identification cards. Japan launched a computerized
national ID system that compiles the personal data of residents into a centralized
national database that can be accessed by the government. Other countries,
including Austria, Belgium, Germany, Russia, Singapore, and Spain, are establishing
similar systems.
But while nations have taken advantage of the unstable international environment
to promote privacy-endangering policies and more expansive police powers,
individuals and advocacy groups have made headway in opposing many of these
efforts. In the United States, public outcry over the Pentagon's Total
Information Awareness program led to a curb in
its funding and the eventual resignation of the program's chief, retired
admiral John Poindexter. In Taiwan, a
coalition successfully fought against a next-generation national ID system.
In Canada,
advocacy efforts led to a modification of a government data-gathering scheme
on travelers entering the country. Several new issues are also reported
in the survey as raising serious threats to privacy: radio frequency identification
tags, smart video surveillance technologies, and the abuse of genetic and
medical data. Many countries data protection authorities have reacted
by issuing reports on the ethical, legal and social implications of those
technologies for citizens' civil liberties and privacy rights.
The WHOIS database is another problem threatening privacy. Originally
intended to allow network administrators to find and fix problems with minimal
hassle
to maintain the stability of the Internet, it now exposes the personally identifiable
information of domain name registrants' to spammers, stalkers, criminal
investigators, and copyright enforcers. The United States Congress
is considering WHOIS at a hearing this week in Washington but is avoiding
the privacy consequences
of the Internet-based directory. "The 2003 Privacy and Human
Rights report is the most complete global privacy survey ever published.
We relied this year on the expertise of more than a hundred experts, from
the government, academia and human rights groups," said Cédric
Laurant, EPIC Policy Counsel and assistant editor of this year's survey.
Deborah Hurley, former director of the Harvard University Information Infrastructure
Project and author of a forthcoming report on human rights and the information
society, will also be speaking at the EPIC Washington press conference. Ms.
Hurley said, "Privacy is one of the critical policy issues facing governments
today. The 2003 Privacy and Human Rights survey will be an enormously
important resource for policymakers, experts, and advocates."
Privacy and Human Rights 2003: An International Survey of Privacy Laws and Developments
is available for sale at the EPIC Bookstore at
http://www.epic.org/bookstore/phr2003/ and (in HTML) at
http://www.privacyinternational.org/survey/phr2003/.
The event will be webcast live in audio-only format. The webcast will be archived
and available for one year following the event. To access the webcast, go to
the EPIC homepage (http://www.epic.org) and follow the link
from there,
or go directly to http://www.ConnectLive.com/events/epic.
EPIC is a public interest research center in Washington, DC. EPIC maintains
a comprehensive web site on privacy and civil liberties issues at http://www.epic.org.
Privacy International is a human rights group formed in 1990 to monitor surveillance
by government and corporations. PI is based in London, England and has an office
in Washington, DC. More information is available at http://www.privacyinternational.org.