Civil Rights

Know More: Legal ethics 2.0, Legal ethics

On May 24, 2006, Sanjeev Bery, San Jose Director, ACLU of Northern California, gave a talk in Palo Alto, CA on civil rights, including immigration reform, secrecy and government surveillance, and radio-frequency identification (RFID).

In his discussion on RFID, he mentioned the trade off between safety and privacy. Bery spoke about Senate Bill (SB) 682 known as the Identity Information Protection Act of 2005. The Information Practices Act of 1977, the existing law, regulates the collection and disclosure of personal information regarding individuals by state agencies.

The new act introduced would limit the use of technology such as RFID to automatically encode personal identify information onto documents such as drivers’ licenses, passports, and broadcast such data to those who have scanning capabilities in order to create a safer environment.
Advocates for the use of RFID for encoding personal information, appear to be those in the technology industry who develop RFID and scanning products. Use of RFID for security creates a revenue stream for these technology companies, and perhaps new inventions down the road to block the scanning of such information may appear depending on whether the legislation is headed towards an opt-in or opt-out viewpoint.

Bery also spoke on immigration reform such as employee eligibility verification permissions which require all workers to obtain government permission prior to commencing work. Such permissions would enable the creation of databases on people’s work and address histories to ensure the legitimacy of jobs and workers. Drawbacks to such a verification system include the potential for identity theft and delays in hiring caused by permissions formalities.

Bery discussed privacy concerns relating to the revealing of consumer telephone records to the National Security Agency (NSA). Access to personal data may be abused by government agencies when the data is used for purposes other than to promote security. Bery raised the issue on whether the privacy given up actually created more leads on terrorists or improved safety. Data mining of phone records may be an inefficient use of government time that could be spent on other methods to improve security. He gave the example of someone who made frequent calls to Pizza Hut.

Devoted to Corporate Attorneys, Corporate Lawyers, and Corporate Counsel

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