President Obama’s Friday meeting with a newly reformed privacy watchdog panel will take place behind the closed doors of the White House Situation Room, according to administration officials.
It’s the president’s first sit-down with the recently constituted and little-known Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, created nearly a decade ago but dormant for the entirety of the Obama presidency.The White House released few details on the meeting agenda other than to say it will be held at 3 p.m. and will include the discussion of classified information such as the National Security Agency’s data and telephone record collection efforts, recently revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, former NSA employee.
White House spokesman Jay Carney on Friday reiterated that the president believes it’s vital to have a public debate about how to balance the respect for privacy rights with national security, and said the rebirth of the privacy board will play an important role as that conversation unfolds.
“We have seen in the wake of these unauthorized disclosures of classified information a developing debate about these issues. The president believes this is a worthy debate,” Mr. Carney told reporters, adding that Friday’s meeting is more than an informal “get-to-know-you session” and will include the discussion of serious issues.
“It will be part of a process,” Mr. Carney added.
But critics question why the White House waited so long to resurrect the privacy board.
“Here’s my answer: They didn’t see this as important enough,” said Lanny Davis, former special counsel to former President Bill Clinton and a member of the first incarnation of the privacy board. He was appointed to the panel by former President George W. Bush but resigned after being treated more like “White House staff” than an independent watchdog, Mr. Davis said.
In 2008, the board was revamped as a fully independent agency, presumably to free it from the political pressures of the White House.
But those changes resulted in the near-death of the group. It languished without a full complement of members for five years.
Mr. Obama didn’t nominate anyone to the board until December 2010, and didn’t offer a full five-member contingent until late 2011.
The board’s new chairman, David Medine, former associate director of the Federal Trade Commission, wasn’t confirmed by the Senate until last month, despite first being nominated 18 months earlier.
The other four members were confirmed in August 2012, but were in limbo until Mr. Medine was approved as chairman.
The White House, Mr. Davis said, surely blames congressional Republicans for holding up the nominations. But that doesn’t change the fact that the board, had it been fully functional, could have fulfilled a critical mission, he said.
“They should’ve been in place. What they might have been able to do is persuade the [National Security Agency] and the White House to get their story out about how important their [surveillance] programs are,” Mr. Davis said.
In the absence of an active board, the administration allowed Mr. Snowden — a government contractor who leaked classified information on government data-collection and surveillance programs to media outlets — to drive the debate.
Still, the board’s revival is better late than never, Mr. Davis said.
“The president’s decision to meet with them, even if it’s late in happening, is important and [Mr. Obama] should be credited for that,” he said.
In addition to Mr. Medine, the other members of the board are: James Dempsey, vice president of public policy for the Center of Democracy and Technology; Rachel Brand, chief counsel for regulatory litigation at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a former Justice Department official; Elisabeth Collins Cook, former assistant attorney general at the Justice Department; and Patricia Wald, former chief judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
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