JUSTICE REPORT/PROTECTION OF CITIZENS' PRIVACY BECOMES MAJOR FEDERAL CONCERN

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP76M00527R000700140002-7
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 11
• Document Creation Date: December 12, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 21, 2001
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: October 12, 1974
• Content Type: OPEN

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 u.stice Report/Protection ocitizens privacy ~~3~3
J
becomerf e
M ede I,V 1 f i 27R by Rcha 0Richard E. Cohen
A concern that government and busi-
ness accumulate too much data on pri-
vate citizens is making the protection
of individual privacy an issue high on
the priority list of scores of govern-
ment policy makers.
While part of the rush to action is
in response to abuses of government
power documented in the Watergate
scandals, it also is an inevitable re-
sult of the rapid growth of government
record keeping made possible by the
increasingly sophisticated use of com-
puters. A three-year study by the
staff of the Senate Judiciary Consti-
tutional Rights Subcommittee revealed
the existence of 858 federal data banks
containing 1.246 billion separate
records of American citizens.
Under the leadership of a White
House committee chaired by Gerald
R. Ford when he was Vice President,
government agencies have been
strongly encouraged to deal with a
broad variety of privacy invasions.
The issues range from the use of medi.
cal and employment records to the im-
plications of a "cashless society."
This review of the government's im-
1521
ioit zr. d
NATIONAi
JOURNAL
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01974
Pram' - th1 talk feecea are pre"asb r,Brlatluas for gevenatiat data banks
it is designed primarily to serve the
White House's political interests rather
than to buckle down on agency abuses.
Beck`rorad: Until about a year ago,
privacy was an issue that drew scant
public or congressional attention. A
few Members of Congress used their
committee leadership posts to hold
hers of Congress on privacy issues be-
cause they are concerned about the
'plumbers unit' and the use of Internal
Revenue Service records, and are re-
sponding to it," said Rep. William S.
Moorhead, D-Pa., chairman of the
Foreign Operations and Government
Information Subcommittee of the Gov-
ernment Operations Committee.
"There was a crisis for the past few
years in communications and data
collection. It took awhile for the coun-
terforce to catch up, but Watergate
made people more receptive to the
issue of what the government is col-
lecting," said Henry Goldberg, gen-
eral counsel for the White House Of-
fice of Telecommunications Policy.
Coincidentally, the Member of Con-
gress with the longest and most ac-
tive interest in privacy regulation is
Sen. Sam J. Ervin Jr_. D-N.C., chair-
man of the Senate Select Committee
on Presidential Campaign Activities,
which uncovered many of the Water-
gate abuses. As chairman of the Sen-
ate .Government Operations Commit-
tee and the Judiciary Subcommittee
on Constitutional Rights, he has been
in a unique legislative position to se-
cure privacy legislation prior to his
retirement at the end of 1974.
Ervin's two principal bills are de-
signed to regulate the use of criminal
history information and provide rules
for the gathering and disclosing of
non-criminal information by govern-
ment agencies. His position as a prin-
cipal nemesis of the Nixon White
House and Justice Department added
political complications to the passage
of those bills, but his staff has intensi-
fied efforts on each of them since the
resignation of President Nixon.
A growing consensus is building that too much personal,
information about private citizens is collected by both
business and government and becomes too easily avail-
able to people who have no right to it. But while agree-
ment exists that curbs on the collection and dissemina-
tion of this data are needed, there is disagreement over
how this should be accomplished. A major problem is
the reluctance of federal agencies to revise some of the
accumulated practices that contribute to the problem.
The interest of President Ford in the invasion of privacy
issue, however, could speed action.
pact on privacy may bear results sim-
ilar in scope to those generated five
years ago by the concern for protect-
ing the environment. And, as with the
ecology boom, privacy may be an is-
sue that is easy to support in general
terms but raises complex policy and
cost questions when the specifics are
analyzed. Action also has been frus-
trated by bureaucratic inertia in many
federal agencies.
One result has been a difficulty in
securing agreement on legislation
whose goals both congressional and
executive branch officials say they
support but whose provisions may af-
fect a gamut of unrelated areas.
And some Members of Congress
who have been in the forefront of the
privacy movement have begun to
question the motives of the Adminis-
tration initiative, wondering whether
hearings on subjects such as wiretap-
ping and other electronic eavesdrop-
ping, consumer credit practices, and
the use of lie detector tests. Wide-
spread fear about the creation of a
"national data bank" arose in the
mid-1960s, but faded after the glare of
publicity shined on the proposal.
Without any discussion of policy
or attempt to set operating standards,
the steady growth of federal data
banks continued unabated. The only
guidelines on federal computer use
came from the Office of Management
and Budget and the General Services
Administration who were interested
primarily in procurement practices.
The abuses of individual liberties
documented by Watergate have dra-
matically changed that picture.
"Watergate has made it easier to get
the interest and votes of other Mem-
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1522 Ford committee
10/12/74
:.,krl ONAL
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tive branch lacked an identifiable in-
dividual or institutional leader to
study privacy issues and coordinate
proposed initiatives. Responding to
the increasing public interest in
privacy, President Nixon Feb. 23 cre-
ated the Domestic Council Commit-
tee on the Right of Privacy and named
then Vice President Ford as its chair-
man.
Geoffrey C. Shepard, associate di-
rector of the Domestic Council and
the initial coordinator of the privacy
committee concept, said following its
creation that the committee "will not
establish a broad philosophy but will
produce a series of recommendations
and actions that pursue the theme of
restricting the government's demand
of information from individuals." '
Ford, who demonstrated little in-
terest in the privacy issue during his
25 years in the House, seized the op-
portunity and appointed his own staff
to run the committee. He soon had
the committee studying more than a
dozen areas and he made several
speeches focusing on the need for
government action to protect privacy.
In a June 26 speech to the National
Broadcast Editorial Association, Vice
President Ford said "the problem of
insuring personal privacy in a com-
puterized society which threatens to
open the most personal affairs of each
of us to anyone with access to com-
puter-stored information" is one of
the "most serious" and "least real-
ized" problems facing the nation.
In the committee's early months,
Ford succeeded in having President
Nixon rescind an executive order per-
muting the Agriculture Department
to review the income tax returns of
farmers and strongly criticized a Gen-
eral Services Administration (GSA)
plan to develop a data network with
the capability of linking federal agen-
cies. The GSA plan was subsequently
shelved by Administrator Arthur F.
Acting to anticipate further danger
to civil liberties posed by the per-
vasiveness of government has proved
to be a task easier said than done. A
few legislative and administrative
steps already have been taken, with in-
creased intensity since the Aug. 9 res-
ignation of Nixon, but many problems
will continue to be studied while a
growing corps of government privacy
experts attempts to set more definite
standards for identifying privacy prob-
lems and providing solutions.
Until seven months ago, the execu-
Sampson. (For background on the
GSA "Fednet" proposal, see Vol. 6.
No. 23, p. 856.)
Cottttaittee operations: In addition to
the Vice President, Nixon appointed
six Cabinet members and four sub-
Cabinet officials to the committee and
asked the committee to give him "a
series of direct, enforceable meas-
ures" within four months. The com-
mittee members included the Secre-
taries of Treasury, Defense, Com-
merce, Labor and HEW, the Attor-
ney General, the chairman of the
Civil Service Commission, and direc-
tors of the Office of Management and
Budget, Office of Telecommunica-
tions Policy and Office of Consumer
Affairs.
The committee held its first meet-
ing at the White House Feb. 26, three
days following Nixon's nationwide ra-
dio address. According to Shepard,
Nixon attended 70 per cent of the two-
hour meeting and told the group the
government collects too much infor-
mation that it has no reason to have
and cannot use.
Initial activity- Ford appointed
Philip W. Buchen, his close friend and
former Grand Rapids law partner, as
the committee's executive director. It
was the first significant government
post for Buchen, who Ford named
his counsel shortly after he became
President.
With the assistance of a staff of
three professionals, Buchen super-
vised the selection of the committee's
initial targets. Task forces were estab-
lished containing representatives of
the agencies involved in a specific
problem area. The task forces were
told to meet as often as possible in
order to . develop firm Administra-
tion policy in the 14 areas initially
identified by the staff and endorsed
by the committee.
Although the committee members
did not meet again until July 10, and
have not met since then, the commit-
tee's over-all progress is reviewed
once every three or four weeks by a
"liaison group" of assistants to the II
committee members.
According to Carole W. Parsons.
a committee staff member, the exist-
ence of the committee, its creation of
task forces and the elevation of its
first chairman to the presidency have
caused "agencies all over the executive
branch to take notice of the privacy
issue and begin to address it." She es-
timated 200 to 300 persons are directly
involved in committee projects.
Douglas W. Metz, deputy executive
director of the committee and the
principal staff officer since Buchen
became counsel to the president, said
the committee views its role as pro-
viding "leadership in the implementa-
tion and coordination of the initiatives
which it has endorsed."
One agency official, who is familiar
with the work of the committee, said
it has been handicapped because its
small staff has had to rely heavily on
the agencies whose policies are being
reviewed. "The big difficulty has been
the lack of aggressive leadership from
Mr. Ford, who has not had enough
time, and Mr. Buchen who has been
understandably cautious because he
is not an expert on these issues."
OMB role- While the Domestic
Council committee developed initia-
tives and supervised the task forces
seeking to find solutions to the prob-
?
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lems. the Ott-ice of Management and
Budget played a key role in coordinat-
ing the increased execufve branch
activity on a number of prig ac\ issues.
Robert H. Marik. OMB associate
director for management and opera-
tions, played down the importance
of Watergate as an explanation for the
accelerated government interest in
privacy regulation. He attributed the
increased interest to a July 1973 re-
port of the HEW Department's Ad-
visory Committee on Automated Per-
sonal Data Systems.
That study, initiated in 1972 by
HEW Secretary (1970-73) Elliot L.
Richardson, was the first significant
departmental review of the implica-
tions of government computer tech-
nology and it contained a number of
recommendations designed to ensure
personal privacy. (For a review of the
HEW report, see Vol. 5, No. 43, p.
1602.)
According to Marik, who was FLEW
assistant secretary for administration
and management before he joined
OMB in February 1974, "We saw at
HEW that it was not possible for only
HEW to set privacy rules because we
were only one part of the federal fam-
ily, so we searched for a central gov-
ernment vehicle to which all federal
agencies could relate, but we could
not find it."
Nixon's establishment of the Do-
mestic Council committee provided
the vehicle for coordinating new poli-
cies. OMB's traditional role of serv-
ing as a clearinghouse for agency
views on proposed legislative and ad-
ministrative action, Marik said.
"placed us in the position of reflect-
ing the attitude that we walk before we
run.
"We know some changes must be
made in government use of informa-
tion but the operation of the data sys-
tems is a very costly and sophisticated
process. To impose on the process sig-
nificant regulations is a major under-
taking."
Walter W Haase. OMB deputy
associate director for information sys-
tems and a principal assistant to
Marik, has participated actively in
the development of mans Domestic
Council committee initiatives. He
said the creation of the committee
was an important step in providing
an organization with lead responsi-
bility for privacy concerns within the
executive branch and a focal point to
carry out President Ford's privacy in-
terests.
Repub'icans Prepare Own Agenda
At the -same time that the executive branch was stud i..c imtra,:?e.
to protect individual privacy, a task force on privacy of the Huu\\c Repub-
lican Research Committee prepared its agenda for legislative acuuun.
Task force Chairman Barn M. Goldwater Jr., R-Calif.. said "pri\acc
rights have become subservient to concerns of utility and pragmatism."
The task force report was intended to increase public awareness of prisacs
concerns in the hope that specific reforms will be adopted, he