{"id":6661,"date":"2006-02-20T10:41:40","date_gmt":"2006-02-20T15:41:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6661"},"modified":"2006-02-20T10:41:40","modified_gmt":"2006-02-20T15:41:40","slug":"the-white-houses-hollow-privacy-and-civil-liberties-oversight-board","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-white-houses-hollow-privacy-and-civil-liberties-oversight-board\/","title":{"rendered":"The White House’s hollow Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, this<\/a> certainly explains a lot.<\/p>\n

For Americans troubled by the prospect of federal agents eavesdropping on their phone conversations or combing through their Internet records, there is good news: A little-known board exists in the White House whose purpose is to ensure that privacy and civil liberties are protected in the fight against terrorism.<\/p>\n

Someday, it might actually meet.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The 9\/11 Commission recommended the creation of a Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board within the administration, whose sole purpose would be to help ensure that the war on terrorism does not infringe on Americans’ privacy and civil liberties. Congress agreed and the president created the panel in December 2004.<\/p>\n

Now, 14 months later, the board has literally never met. The problem has been a combination of “foot-dragging, debate over its budget and powers, and concern over the qualifications of some of its members.”<\/p>\n

For example, the Bush gang waited nine months to nominate the board’s chair and co-chair. Once sent to the Senate for confirmation, the Senate Judiciary Committee pushed it off. Once lawmakers began to consider the nominations in earnest, Senate Dems discovered Bush’s nominees had no experience on civil liberties — the board chairwoman, Carol Dinkins, is a longtime friend of the Bush family; she was the treasurer of George W. Bush’s first campaign for governor of Texas; and she was co-chair of Lawyers for Bush-Cheney, which recruited Republican lawyers to handle legal battles after the November 2004 election.<\/p>\n

What’s more, the Bush administration immediately limited the board’s budget. Bush proposed an initial budget of $750,000, which was one-twentieth<\/i> the size of the budget for a similar board in the Homeland Security Department. In the fiscal 2007 budget, the administration made no express mention of funding the board at all.<\/p>\n

The context for all of this is painfully predictable. As Washington debates how much power to give the administration over things like the Patriot Act and domestic warrantless-searches, the administration’s Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board only exists on paper.<\/p>\n

How encouraging.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, this certainly explains a lot. For Americans troubled by the prospect of federal agents eavesdropping on their phone conversations or combing through their Internet records, there is good news: A little-known board exists in the White House whose purpose is to ensure that privacy and civil liberties are protected in the fight against terrorism. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6661\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}