Department of Who Thought This Would Be a Good Idea?


Homeland Security has announced an appointment for their privacy czar -- the woman who headed up Doubleclick's "privacy" department. And here I thought the Bush admin didn't have a sense of humor.

Homeland Security has announced an appointment for their privacy czar, who will oversee proposals and procedures for use of and dissemination of private information on citizens, gathered in their brand-spankin'-new database monolith.

Who would they appoint? None other than the woman who headed up Doubleclick's "privacy" department. Remember Doubleclick, boys and girls? The marketing behemoth investigated by the FCC, among others, for misuse of private information they gathered -- most of the time without the awareness or permission of said users from Internet/Web users. Doubleclick, who is still on the hotlist at the Electronic Freedom Frontier of Companies Not To Trust As Far As We Could Throw Them. I can go with that -- I've been using various software to block their ads (and therefore most of their information-gathering bots) for years. Tricky little devils even place invisible .gifs on pages that gather information that can't be blocked by most software.

And we're supposed to trust the former "privacy" officer of this company with overseeing the "privacy" section of Homeland Security, including CAPS II?

What are they drinking in D.C. these days? Absinthe?

Posted: Fri - May 16, 2003 at 07:09 PM        

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