Our National Privacy Officers
Posted by Lance Koonce
Today's Wall Street Journal contains an article about the new civil-liberties protection officer for the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Alex Joel. Joel was recently appointed to this new position, which observers say was created to assuage privacy concerns relating to U.S. intelligence efforts, in particular the NSA's heavily criticized surveillance program (see prior entries here, here, here and here). Other privacy posts have been created at other agencies as well, including the Justice Department. As an aside (or maybe not), Mr. Joel sees no problem with the NSA program from a privacy perspective.
The question appears to be the extent of these new privacy officers' powers. They do not have the authority to conduct investigations, and indeed the focus of these positions appears to be at the policy level, rather than policing or enforcement. But after only a few weeks on the job, it's far too soon to judge the impact these new appointments will have on "national" privacy issues.