Obama Fills Vacant Seats of Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board
The timing of this is noteworthy, as last week the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that e-mails were protected from warrantless searches and the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals blocked an attempt by the Obama administration to obtain peoples’ location from cell phone towers without a warrant.
As a U.S. senator and presidential candidate, Barack Obama pledged to “strengthen privacy protections for the digital age.”
But it wasn’t until today, nearly two years after taking office, that the president finally began appointing members of a Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.
Obama’s first two picks: Jim Dempsey, vice president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, and Elisebeth Cook, a former assistant attorney general under President Bush now in private practice at the Freeborn and Peters law firm. The positions are subject to Senate confirmation.