Remedying Invasions of Privacy

There are three approaches to remedying government and corporate invasions of privacy:

1. Fast:   Last Friday evening, July 19th, I called our City Manager and wrote him and our City officials, reporting a breach of privacy on the City of St. Augustine's website, exposing named local residents to breach of their personal information in the agenda packet for the July 22, 2013 meeting.  On Saturday morning, July 20th -- within some 14 hours of my reporting it -- the privacy and security breach was cured.  Thanks to St. Augustine City Manager John P. Regan, P.E., to Vice Mayor Nancy Sikes-Kline and to former Mayor Len Weeks for working to assure fast, proactive action to correct a PR staffer's  breach of privacy, which could have empowered stalkers, identity thieves and hackers. It takes a village. Good work!  Now if only our federal government were as responsive (and responsible) as our City of St. Augustine officials -- see cases 2 & 3 (below).

2. Slow:  In 1986, I noticed as a newly-trained GS-9 Attorney Advisor in hte Office of Administrative Law Judges in Washington, D.C. that every single one of our tens thousands of  U.S. Department of Labor Black Lung decisions carried the claimant coal miner's Social Security number.  I was told by our Attorney-Advisor trainers that this was mandatory, and required by the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Workers Compensation Progams.  Every single coal miner's Notice of Hearing in every single Black Lung case that DOL ever decided bore miners' Social Security numbers.  DOL had since the 1970s, in each case, shared them with dozens of other people, includng other miners with hearings set for the same day; plaintiff and defense law firms; court reporters; the United Mne Workers and insurance companies. SSNs were routinely mailed out on thousands of documents to people with no Need to Know.  Every single Black Lung Benefits Act document, from orders to hearing transcripts, bore miners' Social Security numbers.  This promiscuous publication of SSNs was Department of Labor  "standard procedure," approved by the Solicitor of Labor himself, I was told.  DOL, founded in 1913, is 100 years old this year. DOL was long run by authoritarian, hierarchical order-followers and standpatters, people who "know not that they know not that they know not."  Thus, when I raised concerns about the use of Social Security numbers on every decision, the answer might as well have been carved in marble over the DOL building headquarters: "We've always done it this way."  In 2003, the United States Supreme Court agreed with lower courts that the decades-long DOL practice of Social Security number publication violated federal Privacy Act rights, upholding an injunction (but rejecting damages for miners).  Doe v. Chao.

3. Nonexistent:  This week, the U.S. House of Reprsentatives narrowly voted, 217-205, to reject the Amash-Conyers amendment that would have halted NSA invasions of privacy.  Thus, the House voted by a close margin, not to do anything about the National Security Agency's invasion of hundreds of millions of patriotic Americans' privacy (revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden).  Twelve members were absent.  Read the list of who voted and how.  It is very revealing.  Conservatives and Liberals united and almost won the day. Kudos to our freshman U.S. Congressman, Republican Ronald DeSantis, for supporting the NSA amendment, which was sponsored by two Michigan Congressmen, conservative Republican Justin Amash and liberal Democrat John Conyers.  Only the Republican and Democratic House leadership -- other-directed by fierce and furious lobbying by NSA and the Pentagon -- halted the voice of the American people being heard and heeded in our U.S. House of Representatives. How many of those poltroonish Representatives who refused to vote for the Amash-Conyers Amendment took the time to read the words of the Fourth Amendment?  How may of them horse-traded something else for their vote?  How many of them held their noses as they voted, knowing that Reps. Amash and Conyers are true patriots, true to our Founders' vision?  This 217-205 vote is not the last word. Instead, it is a moral victory.  Next stop: I predict that the American Bar Association might weigh in on the issue with a House of Delegates Resolution next month.  ABA has often supported protecting human rights, helping end "Jim Crow" segregation and South African Apartheid, while supporting us in our efforts to: (a) protect the rights of 3.5 million government and contractors on security clearances (Honolulu, August, 1989); (b) protect the rights of GLBT people (Denver, February 1989); and (c) protect the rights of government and corporate whistleblowers (Los Angeles, February 1990).