Bush finds foxes to guard the privacy henhouse

Well, at least the Bush administration is consistent. When writing guidelines for mercury pollution, they turn to those who do the polluting. When finding a diplomat to send to the United Nations, they turn to someone who wants to destroy the institution. And when creating a panel to study privacy rights, they turn to those who invade our privacy.

Even before recent security breaches exposed private data about millions of consumers, the Department of Homeland Security was assembling a public board to recommend how to best safeguard privacy, as the agency makes use of growing stores of information collected about U.S. citizens.

But the 20-member panel has angered security and privacy-rights advocates who charge that it is tilted toward the industries that profit most from gathering, using and selling personal information, often to the government.

Two of the members work for database-marketing companies, while two others work for think tanks that receive funding from the industry. Other members represent the insurance, airline-reservation, technology-research and database-software industries. At least two members are from companies with Homeland Security contracts.

In one particularly egregious example, the Bush administration’s panel on safeguarding privacy invited D. Reed Freeman Jr. to join the group. Freeman has unique expertise in the area of consumer privacy — as someone who’s ignored it for years.

Freeman was the chief privacy officer of Claria Corp., which was known as the Gator Corp. before it changed its name to conceal its past. Indeed, Freeman’s company was, as the Post put it, “notorious for its software system for tracking online user behavior and displaying pop-up advertising on Web sites,” including some without their permission. Better yet, the same company with the new name, Claria, continues to collect information about web users’ surfing and buying habits, much to the consternation of privacy advocates.

So, when the Bush gang needs to craft an administration policy on consumer privacy, it’s only natural they’d turn to Freeman, and others like him, to help craft the details. Par for the course.

Nuala O’Connor Kelly, chief privacy officer at the department and organizer of the board, responded to concerns by saying, “Homeland security should not just be about Washington policy thinkers.” Perhaps not, but should it be about corporate flacks dictating government policy?