April 04, 2006 | Justice Meet Privacy

The Justice Department has a new a chief privacy officer, Jane Horvath, who pledges to start an internal privacy advisory board and oversee the Justice Department's use of commercial data in its investigations, according to Daniel Pulliam at GovExec.com.

Lisa Sotto, a partner at Hunton and Williams, a New York City law firm, said Horvath's biggest challenge is that she is the first person to hold her position. She could "take some life lessons" from Homeland Security's first chief information officer, Nuala O'Connor Kelly, who resigned in September 2005, Sotto said.

"They're not thinking about privacy unless someone hits them on the head with a two-by-four," Sotto said. "Her first challenge is to educate people at the Justice Department in order to get things flagged when they require her input."

Horvath said she considers Kelly a friend and has received good advice from her, particularly on the importance of building relationships with the privacy community.

The role of chief privacy officer is complicated and ranges from negotiator to educator to consultant, said Jim Dempsey, policy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington-based privacy advocacy organization.

"She's not just the ombudsman who takes complaints," Dempsey said. "And she's not just the policy adviser or the writer of the rules and regulations."

It is indeed an odd job, half policy advisor, half internal affairs investigator (and she should have lots of company in the gov since every agency is now supposed to have a chief privacy officer). Horvath will have her hands full, especially given the FBI's continued reliance on private data collecting and spilling firms such as ChoicePoint, which just landed another contract with the feds to provide them with access to their database.

Full story.

Technorati Tags: privacy, doj

Posted by Ryan Singel at April 4, 2006 02:13 PM

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