Posted on 06/16/2006 9:50:00 AM PDT by NativeNewYorker
June 16 (UPI) -- Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said Americans need a ``privacy bill of rights'' in an age of increased surveillance and new technologies, and she will introduce legislation this year to guard against breaches of private consumer information.
Clinton, a New York Democrat who is considering a run for the presidency in 2008, said her legislation would make it easier for consumers to sue health-care, financial services and other companies that misuse consumer data, and would establish a ``privacy czar'' at the White House to improve federal policies.
``At all levels, the privacy protections for ordinary citizens are broken, inadequate and out of date,'' Clinton said in remarks to a Washington meeting of the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy, a network of lawyers, law students and scholars.
Clinton, 58, was sharply critical of President George W. Bush's administration in a 40-minute address, including the recent theft of personal data for 26.5 million veterans and the decision to embark on warrantless eavesdropping of suspected terrorists.
``That's unacceptable,'' Clinton said of the expanded surveillance. ``Their track record does not warrant our trust.''
Bush has defended the decision to authorize the government eavesdropping as meeting the balance between his obligation to uphold the constitutional rights of Americans and protect the country from its enemies.
Today's speech continues a series of policy addresses by Clinton, considered the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination should she decide to run. She spoke on energy policy at the National Press Club last month, criticizing Bush's ``do-nothing'' policies and calling for a national fund financed by oil companies that would be used to fashion alternative sources of energy. She spoke on the economy in Chicago in April, panning Bush for policies that she said favored the rich.
Clinton was favored among Democrats, including 2004 nominee John Kerry, in public opinion polls this year of potential Democratic presidential candidates. Some polls, including a May 11-15 ABC News/Washington Post poll, have shown her trailing Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican, in a potential general election match-up.
In that poll, 57 percent of adults said they would consider voting for him and 38 percent saying they would consider voting for Clinton. Clinton drew the stronger opposition, with 42 percent of those surveyed saying they would definitely not vote for her compared with 28 percent who ruled out McCain.
Clinton was viewed favorably by 54 percent of voters, statistically even with the 55 percent for McCain. The poll of 1,103 adults had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
In her address today, Clinton said new consumer privacy protections should give consumers the ability to know about the personal data that is available to industry and the government, and to correct it. Consumers should decide how their information will be used, and outsiders who get any access to it must use the ``highest standards of care,'' she said.
Financial services and other companies that have private data on their customers should be able to compile it and share it only if consumers ``opt in'' on a document. Consumers now generally have to make clear they don't want their information to be shared, known as ``opting out.''
``The `opt out' protections under current law can be helpful, but for some things the default privacy agreement should be that companies cannot share the information without your explicit agreement to 'opt in,''' Clinton said.
She said current law makes it too hard to sue companies that abuse consumers' private information. Her legislation will establish new penalties and increase the chances consumers can prevail in privacy-related lawsuits, she said. The measure will include limits on penalties for small businesses, including a cap of $1,000 for breaches of privacy and $5,000 per instance of misusing information.
Clinton said she also wants a federal law that bars employer discrimination on the basis of genetic-related health conditions.
Clinton criticized the Bush administration's security policies saying, ``We need to abandon the idea that privacy and security are somehow mutually exclusive.''
She said she wants to establish a new requirement that congressional oversight committees be informed in advance of the rationale for any expansions of government electronic surveillance.
Like 900 FBI files no doubt.................
Way to go, Hillie!
900 FBI files was just the tip of the iceberg. Many people figured that she probably left the White House with all the FBI and CIA files on everyone loaded into her computers.
And my own bet is that she is probably still updating her files, because she has blackmailable handles on a lot of people in the FBI and the CIA and wouldn't hesitate to use them. Regretably, Bush has done little or nothing to remove these people from the agency, although some of them are very well known.
Like that FBI agent who covered up TWA 800 for clinton, and then was awarded a medal and a promotion by Bush's new director. As far as I know, Lon Horiuchi is probably still in place, too.
Lots of the Clinton Admin's history shows eroded privacy rights.
Like HIPA- before HIPA, your medical data stayed in your MD's office. After, lots and lots of government agencies had "proper access" to your data, yet there was data that you as patient could not get, and it is difficult to get data about a minor child.
I can't wait for her to put the bill up for all to see!
What trial lawyer wouldn't want to make it easier to sue companies with very deep pockets.
So much for tort reform.
Note that as usual Hillary makes sure that trial lawyers get paid.
To sue companies who cough up info to the Feds, Hillie, is that what you're getting at? Like that telecom bill your hubby signed that gave telecom companies a legal leg to stand on when providing info to Uncle Sam?
Years ago, she advocated a gatekeeper for the Internet.
Now she wants a privacy czar?
I'd be more fearful of a 'privacy czar' than the status quo.
In this case, less is more; the less governing interference we have, the more actual freedom we have.
Hilly didn't have the "integrity" NOT to steal the FBI files. She sure as hell don't have the integrity to be CIC.
Clinton's fatal flaw - putting government above the people and failure to put responsibility at its proper level (including on her husband).
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