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Project GUARDIAN - Events

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The Dynamics Between Civil Liberties and Technology in the War on Terrorism

On March 21, 2003, the Potomac Institute hosted another informative discussion on "The Dynamics Between Civil Liberties and Technology in the War on Terrorism." This discussion was part of the larger Institute study effort, PROJECT GUARDIAN. The Institute hosted nine expert panelists in the Dirksen Senate Office Building before an audience of Congressional staffers, journalists, and private industry personnel.

Panelists included in the discussion were:

Dr. Phil Anderson of CSIS, an expert in homeland security issues;

Mr. Robert Andrews, a Washington novelist who writes on a breadth of national security matters;

Mr. Rick Cinquegrana, Deputy Staff Director and Chief Investigative Counsel for the Joint Congressional Inquiry into September 11th;

Dr. Ruth David, President and Chief Executive Officer of ANSER;

Mr. Timothy Edgar, Legislative Counsel in the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union, an expert in national security, terrorism and immigration issues;

Mr. Chris Ford, Counsel for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, where he has staff responsibility for legislative oversight of intelligence activities and the annual Intelligence Authorization Act;

Mr. Daniel Gallington served as the moderator. He is a senior research fellow at the Potomac Institute, and is the Project Guardian study director. He has served in senior positions at the DOD, DOJ, and was General Counsel for the SSCI.

Mr. John Rizzo, Deputy General Counsel for the Central Intelligence Agency; and

Dr. Latanya Sweeney, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Technology and Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, who is an expert in data privacy.

The discussion included a number of timely issues including:

the extremely complex nature of the debate between new technologies and privacy issues, and how it compared to similar debates in the 1920s, 1950s, and 1970s;

distinctions between generalized and specific searches of data;

how to keep information anonymous;

the impacts of making inadvertent errors if new data-mining programs were initiated; and,

the Constitutional aspects of data correlation and profiling.

The panelists agreed that it remained the responsibility of the U.S. Government to provide a common defense and to evaluate new technologies that can defend against terrorism, and to simultaneously protect the civil liberties of Americans in the process. Exactly how to go about doing that was the source of the majority of the debate, with some panelists calling for precise, new legal and Congressional authorities, while other suggested building protections into existing legal frameworks.

The Potomac Institute's PROJECT GUARDIAN will continue to debate these types of issues as it examines the whole spectrum of science and technology policy issues associated with maintaining our civil liberties, while improving the use of technology to prevent terrorism. The multidisciplinary effort provides a public forum to examine the delicate, but necessary balance between civil liberties and national security.

Please continue to visit the Project Guardian web page for upcoming seminars.

Press Club pictures.