I think CNET’s headline of “Obama privacy board gets members after two years” was a bit of an overstatement, but it’s true that after two years in office, President Obama has finally named two appointees to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. The Board has sat empty since 2008. Declan McCullagh reports:
But it wasn’t until today, nearly two years after taking office, that the president finally began appointing members of a Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.
Obama’s first two picks: Jim Dempsey, vice president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, and Elisebeth Cook, a former assistant attorney general under President Bush now in private practice at the Freeborn and Peters law firm. The positions are subject to Senate confirmation.
Read more on cnet.
So now the question is: will the Senate confirm? And when will the President nominate others to fill all of the vacant seats?
Given the concerns over intrusive TSA methods as well as all of the concerns over online tracking and government access to digital data, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board is a badly needed protection or part of a package of privacy protections for citizens. It’s time to get it functioning.