[Infowarrior] - Study on privacy protections finds citizens distrust security agencies

[Richard Forno]

February 20, 2007
http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=36167&dcn=todaysnews


Study on privacy protections finds citizens distrust security agencies

By Andrew Noyes, National Journal's Technology Daily
The CIA, Homeland Security Department and National Security Agency are the
least trusted federal agencies when it comes to protecting Americans'
privacy, according to a new study by the Ponemon Institute.

The annual survey, which will be released Wednesday, asked more than 7,000
citizens whether they believe the government takes appropriate steps to
safeguard personal information. Answers were mixed, but the overall trend
suggested a decline in public trust since the think tank first studied the
issue in 2004.

The NSA has suffered a substantial flogging by lawmakers and privacy
advocates amid questions in the past year over its domestic spying in search
of terrorists. It also was revealed recently that the CIA has been utilizing
a special subpoena power of the 2001 anti-terrorism law known as the USA
PATRIOT Act to comb bank and credit-card records.

Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, which were
evaluated separately in the survey, have experienced their fair share of
controversy over the mining of information from government and commercial
databases and a program that screens travelers entering the United States.

After last year's massive breach of more than 27 million military
personnel's data, furthermore, the Veterans Administration fell from a
top-five ranking in 2006 to just outside the bottom five in the 2007 Ponemon
study.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' office also was among the least trusted
of the 74 federal entities included in the poll.

"There's a clear correlation between bad publicity and poor privacy trust
performance," survey author Larry Ponemon said. Previous studies "lacked a
big headline negative event," whereas this time, there were several.

"Initiating more transparent operations and communications with the public
is often the first step toward repairing damaged trust, but for obvious
reasons, those are not options that agencies like the CIA or NSA can take,"
Ponemon said. The confidential nature of the agencies' operations "will
always carry a certain cloud of mistrust with some."

Lisa Graves, deputy director of the Center for National Security Studies,
said the study "rightly gives these agencies rock-bottom privacy trust
scores." "Some politicians may believe they can make political gains by
going along with the president's anti-terrorism policies that strip away
Americans' privacy rights," she said. But the survey makes clear that
Americans do not think the entities can be trusted to protect their rights,
she said.

The U.S. Postal Service received Ponemon's top ranking for protecting
privacy the third year in a row. Other notable high achievers were the FTC,
its Bureau of Consumer Protection, the National Institutes of Health, and
the Census Bureau.

The study's overall findings concluded that Americans remain concerned over
a "loss of civil liberties and privacy rights," "surveillance into personal
life," and "monitoring e-mail and Web activities."

While diminishing public trust for the NSA and VA was not surprising to
privacy advocate Marc Rotenberg, the FTC "may not be out of the woods" given
mounting public concerns about identity theft. "If the FTC doesn't get a
better handle on that problem, the commission may find its own trust rating
drop in the 2008 survey," he said.