Time to update Privacy Act to keep up with technology, group says

According to a privacy advocacy group, the U.S. government's ability to keep citizen's personal information protected from data mining from corporations has not kept pace with advances in technology, reports the Associated Press.

A number of think-tank scholars and privacy advocates testified before a Senate Judiciary Committee to advocate updating the Privacy Act.

"Congress is overdue in taking stock of the proliferation of these databases," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

Panel member Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., introduced a bill called the Federal Data Mining Reporting Act, which would require federal agencies to regularly inform Congress about their use of data mining "to discover predictive or anomalous patterns indicating criminal or terrorist activity — the types of data analysis that raise the most serious privacy concerns."

Among the witnesses was Leslie Harris, executive director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, who said the government is engaging in warantless investigations.

"Especially in the counterterrorism context, a major shift in the data collection and use landscape is taking place without a suitable privacy and due process framework.

The government is accessing entire buckets of data without a warrant" and without specific suspicion of particular individuals,

An individual mistakenly designated as a possible terrorist or associate of terrorists can face "arrest, deportation, loss of a job, more intrusive investigation, discrimination, damage to reputation and a lifetime of suspicion, with little or no opportunity for redress or correction of errors," Harris said.

Last month the Associated Press reported that the U.S. government had been developing risk assessments of millions of Americans over the last four years without their knowledge. Assessments of people who traveled abroad were to be kept for 40 years and could be shared with state, local and foreign governments and even some private contractors.

Such information could easily be used for other purposes (years after the citizen was determined not to be a threat), Harris said.