National Public Radio has a story about the vacant Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. Terms for the original board (created in 2004) expired in January 2008, but President Bush delayed the nomination of new board members for many months; none were confirmed by the Senate. President Obama has not yet nominated any members. As a result, the board strengthened by a 2007 law has never begun operations. (For the history of the Board, read a previous post.)

NPR reports, “The board is supposed to ensure that the government protects Americans’ privacy and civil liberties in a range of counterterrorism activities. [...] Former member Lanny Davis says the board was “extremely effective” during its existence, though he believes there were problems with the organization’s structure.”

NPR notes that several legislators, including Senators Patrick Leahy and Susan Collins, have written to President Obama about the vacancies. NPR mentions a letter from more than 30 groups (including Privacy Lives) sent to the White House urging that President Obama nominate individuals to fill the board. The groups explained that it is more critical than ever that the board convene. “As a result of the attempted Christmas Day bombing, your Administration and Congress are considering numerous policy changes that impact the privacy and freedoms of Americans, including expanding watch lists and more intrusive searches at airports. It is crucial that you nominate qualified individuals to serve on the PCLOB, so that it may begin to provide guidance as new policies and procedures are developed.”

InformationWeek reports on a way to identify individuals by using the bacteria left by people on objects.

Scientists at the University of Colorado at Boulder have found that the bacteria trail left behind on objects like computer keyboards and mice can analyzed and used to help identify users of those devices.

“Your body is coated with bacteria inside and out,” says CU-Boulder assistant professor Noah Fierer in a video on YouTube. “You’re basically a walking microbial habitat. And we found that the diversity of bacteria just on the skin surface is really pretty incredible. You habor hundreds of different bacteria species just on your palm, for example. We’ve also found that everybody is pretty unique. So of those let’s say hundred or so bacteria species, very few are of them are shared between individuals.” [...] Read more »

The Federal Trade Commission will hold the last of its three roundtables on privacy on March 17 in Washington, D.C. The agency has released its agenda. Panels include:

Panel 1: Internet Architecture and Privacy
Moderators: Loretta Garrison and Naomi Lefkovitz, Division of Privacy and Identity Protection, FTC
Panelists:
John Henry Clippinger, Co-Director, The Law Lab, Harvard University Berkman Center for Internet & Society
Jules Cohen, Director, Trustworthy Computing Group, Microsoft
Peter Eckersley, Staff Technologist, Electronic Freedom Foundation
Lucy Lynch, Director, Trust and Identity Initiatives, Internet Society
Ari Schwartz, Vice President & Chief Operating Officer, Center for Democracy and Technology
Edward W. Felten, Director, Center for Information Technology Policy, Princeton University
Drummond Reed, Executive Director, Information Card Foundation

Panel 2: Health Information
Moderators: Loretta Garrison and Manas Mohapatra, Division of Privacy and Identity Protection, FTC
Panelists:
Linda Avey, Founder & President, Brainstorm Research Foundation
Stanley W. Crosley, Co-Director, Indiana University Center for Strategic Health Information Provisioning
Kimberly S. Gray, Chief Privacy Officer, Americas Regions, IMS Health
Deven McGraw, Director, Health Privacy Project, Center for Democracy and Technology
Marc M. Boutin, Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer, National Health Council
Jodi Daniel, Director, Office of Policy and Planning, Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, Department of Health and Human Services
James Heywood, Co-founder & Chairman, PatientsLikeMe
Deborah Peel, Founder, Patient Privacy Rights

Panel 3: Addressing Sensitive Information
Moderators: Catherine Harrington-McBride and Michelle Rosenthal, Division of Privacy and Identity Protection, FTC Read more »

There will be two privacy panels at SXSWWeek 2010 in Austin, Texas.

Core Conversation: Big Brother on the Big Screen: Fact/Fiction?
Saturday, March 13 at 5:00 PM / Location: 8A
Can the NSA really do that? Um, yes. Join Nicole Ozer and Kevin Bankston at the movies to take a close look at how government surveillance has caught up with the fables dreamed up for Hollywood flicks like Enemy of the State, Minority Report, The Bourne Ultimatum, and The Dark Knight
Presenters: Nicole Ozer, ACLU of Northern California; Kevin Bankston, Electronic Frontier Foundation

Panel: My Life, Take Two: The Right to Delete
Sunday, March 14 at 11:00 AM / Location: Hilton K
Most of us have incidents in our past that we’d rather leave there–but that’s getting harder to do in a world teeming with tools and devices that capture our actions and record them forever. Do we have a “right to delete” records and data about ourselves? Can we? Should we?
Panelists: Chris Conley, ACLU of Northern California; Annalee Newitz (moderator), tech journalist/blogger and editor of io9.com; Marc Davis, Chief Scientist and co-founder of Invention Arts; Andrew McLaughlin, Deputy US Chief Technology Officer at Executive Office of the President and former Head of Global Public Policy for Google; Elly Jonez, Drupal developer and lifeblogger

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that the Lower Merion School District placed on leave two Information Technology workers, the latest update in an ongoing surveillance scandal. Recap: In a lawsuit — Robbins v. Lower Merion School District (pdf) — in Pennsylvania, the Robbins family alleged that the Lower Merion School District misused Webcam-enabled laptops it issued to students in order to remotely peep into the students’ homes, take photographs and violate their privacy. The school district has denied violating anyone’s privacy, claiming the Webcams were only turned on in case of lost or stolen computers. The FBI and local officials are investigating. There have been discussions among legal scholars about the Fourth Amendment implications.

The Inquirer reports that, “The two people authorized to activate the software — Michael Perbix, a network technician, and Carol Cafiero, information systems coordinator — were put on paid leave last week while lawyers and technicians examine how the remote system was used.”

Lawyers for Cafiero and Perbix said their clients did nothing wrong. Perbix and Cafiero only turned on the remote software when a laptop was reported missing, they said – and administrators knew what they were doing. [...] Read more »

USA Today has a report on an issue I’ve discussed before: law enforcement use of license-plate scanners to track cars.

The cameras read license plates of parked and moving cars — hundreds per minute — and check them against vehicle databases, said Lance Clem, a spokesman for the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, which purchased several systems for its police vehicles last fall.

Departments in Denver and Colorado Springs; South Portland, Maine; Gwinnett, Douglas and Cherokee counties in Georgia; and Clinton, Conn., are planning to deploy or have already added License Plate Recognition (LPR) systems this year, officials from those agencies said.

Also, about 40 law enforcement agencies in the Washington, D.C., metro area are deploying LPRs this year, according to Nate Maloney, a spokesman for their supplier, ELSAG of Brewster, N.Y. The district has had them since 2005, he said. [...] Read more »