Privacy Is in the House 

The hearing, which included testimony from former Virginia Gov. James Gilmore and University of Michigan law professor Sally Katzen, also doubled as an oversight hearing on the activities of Nuala O'Connor Kelly, the chief privacy officer for the Department of Homeland Security.

Although several agencies -- including the Postal Service, the State Department and the Internal Revenue Service -- have chief privacy officers, O'Connor Kelly is the only one whose position is mandated by law, which committee members agreed gives the position more clout.

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Both the committee and the other witnesses praised O'Connor Kelly's work over the last nine months, calling her work proof that other agencies and the Office of Management and Budget also should have privacy officers.

Over the past year, O'Connor Kelly has been involved in the development of the second generation of the airline passenger-screening system (known as CAPPS II), the ongoing negotiations with the European Commission over the transfer of passenger data to border-control agencies, and the new foreign visitor biometric database system (known as US-Visit).

Despite continuing reservations about US-Visit, privacy advocates have praised O'Connor Kelly's work on the program's privacy impact assessment (PDF). They point to the report's description of the program's database structure and the discussion of possible security risks that could expose personal data as evidence of O'Connor Kelly's thoroughness.

In her testimony, professor Katzen, who helped guide the Clinton administration's privacy policies, guardedly praised O'Connor Kelly's work in revising CAPPS II's privacy act notices, though she said changes still needed to be made.

"O'Connor Kelly's success demonstrates that the government needs 24 more O'Connor Kellys, along with a chief privacy czar in the Office of Management and Budget," Katzen said.

She added that the Patriot Act shows that the Justice Department in particular needs a strong privacy officer, an idea that at least one committee member said he would be looking into.

The Bush administration has yet to take a public position on the bill, which now heads to the full House Judiciary Committee for final markup and approval, before it can be sent to the House floor for a vote.

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