DHS LEADERS MULL BIOMETRICS, PRIVACY WITH CHARMED CIRCLE OF INSIDERS
The conference sponsors--a group of DHS agencies--afforded access to
the unclassified conference to select nonprofit organizations
concerned with privacy issues from this country and Europe, but barred
the media from most sessions of the meeting.
http://www.gcn.com/online/vol1_no1/42669-1.html Baker went on to state that keeping biometric information in discrete systems to maintain privacy, as was the practice before the September 2001 terrorist attacks, is no longer an acceptable limit on counterterrorist methods.
He described how Congress and the administration have knocked down the legal walls that separated criminal and intelligence information in the past. “There was a time when we were enthralled with [establishing] limits on who has data,†he said, explaining that such limits played a part in hobbling efforts by the FBI and CIA to catch dangerous terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attacks.
Baker noted that his recent experience of negotiating an agreement with European officials over the use of airline passenger data showed that the idea of keeping such personal information in separate repositories “still has a lot of appeal.â€
