Hearing of the
Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law of the Committee on the
Judiciary of the
Testimony of
Governor James S. Gilmore, III
President of
Former Governor of the
�
&
Former Chairman
Advisory Panel to Assess the Capabilities for Domestic Response to Terrorism Involving Weapons of
Mass Destruction
Topic:�
"Privacy in the Hands of Government:�
The Privacy Officer for the Department of Homeland Security"
Chairman Cannon, Ranking Member Watt, and members of the
Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law. The Committee on the
Judiciary and the Subcommittee have played a major leadership role in including
privacy considerations in the overall development of the Department of Homeland
Security.� I applaud the Committee for
its leadership in this key area.� It has
been my privilege to serve as the Chairman of the Advisory Panel to Assess
Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass
Destruction for the past five years.� In
my private business and law practice I represent clients in homeland security
matters.� I also am President of USA
Secure, a group of private sector companies and non-profit organizations that
come together to deal with significant homeland security issues.� USA Secure's primary focus has been on
bioterrorism issues to this date.� My main
attention in homeland security over the past five years has been as Chairman of
the Advisory Panel on behalf of this Congress.�
Congressional Mandate
The Advisory Panel was established
by Section 1405 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999,
Public Law 105��-261 (H.R. 3616, 105thCongress, 2nd Session)
(October 17, 1998).� That Act directed
the Advisory Panel to accomplish several specific tasks.� It said:
The
panel shall--
1. Assess Federal agency
efforts to enhance domestic preparedness for incidents involving weapons of
mass destruction;
2. Assess the progress of
Federal training programs for local emergency responses to incidents involving
weapons of mass destruction;
3. Assess deficiencies in
programs for response to incidents involving weapons of mass destruction,
including a review of unfunded communications, equipment, and planning
requirements, and the needs of maritime regions;
4. Recommend strategies for
ensuring effective coordination with respect to Federal agency weapons of mass
destruction response efforts, and for ensuring fully effective local response
capabilities for weapons of mass destruction incidents; and
5. Assess the appropriate
roles of State and local government in funding effective local response
capabilities.
That Act required the Advisory
Panel to report its findings, conclusions, and recommendations for improving
Federal, State, and local domestic emergency preparedness to respond to
incidents involving weapons of mass destruction to the President and the
Congress three times during the course of the Advisory Panel's deliberations-on
December 15 in 1999, 2000, and 2001.
The Advisory Panel's tenure was
extended for two years in accordance with Section 1514 of the National Defense
Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2002 (S. 1358, Public Law 107-107, 107th
Congress, First Session), which was signed into law by the President on
December 28, 2001.� By virtue of that
legislation, the panel was required to submit two additional reports-one on
December 15 of 2002, and one on
Advisory Panel Composition
Mister Chairman, please allow me
to pay special tribute to the men and women who serve on our panel.
This Advisory Panel is
unique in one very important way.� It is
not the typical national "blue ribbon" panel, which in most cases historically
have been composed almost exclusively of what I will refer to as "Washington
Insiders"-people who have spent most of their professional careers inside the
Beltway.� This panel has a sprinkling of
that kind of experience-a former Member of Congress and Secretary of the Army,
a former State Department Ambassador-at-Large for Counterterrorism, a former
senior executive from the CIA and the FBI, a former senior member of the
Intelligence Community, the former head of a national academy on public health,
two retired flag-rank military officers, a former senior executive in a
non-governmental charitable organization, and the head of a national law
enforcement foundation.� But what truly
makes this panel special and, therefore, causes its pronouncement to carry
significantly more weight, is the contribution from the members of the panel
from the rest of the country:
� Three directors of state emergency
management agencies, from California, Iowa, and Indiana, two of whom now also
serve their Governor's as Homeland Security Advisors
� The deputy director of a state
homeland security agency
� A state epidemiologist and
director of a state public health agency
� A former city manager of a
mid-size city
� The chief of police of a suburban
city in a major metropolitan area
� Senior professional and volunteer
fire fighters
� A senior emergency medical
services officer of a major metropolitan area
� And, of course-in the person of
your witness-a former State governor
These are representatives of the
true "first responders"-those heroic men and women who put their lives on the
line every day for the public health and safety of all Americans.� Moreover, so many of these panel members are
also national leaders in their professions: our EMS member is a past president
of the national association of emergency medical technicians; one of our emergency
managers is the past president of her national association; our law officer now
is president of the international association of chiefs of police; our
epidemiologist is past president of her professional organization; one of our
local firefighters is chair of the terrorism committee of the international
association of fire chiefs; the other is chair of the prestigious national
Interagency Board for Equipment Standardization and InterOperability.
Those attacks continue to carry
much poignancy for us, because of the direct loss to the panel.� Ray Downey, Department Deputy Chief and
chief-in-charge of Special Operations Command, Fire Department of the City of
Panel Reports
In the
history of the Panel, we have produced five advisory reports to the Congress
and to the President of the
Fifth Report (2003) -
Forging
Mister Chairman, the Advisory Panel released its
fifth and final report on
�
That strategic
vision offered by
the panel reflects the guiding principles that the panel has consistently
enumerated throughout its reports:
- It must be truly national in
scope, not just Federal.
�
It
should build on the existing emergency response system within an all-hazards
framework.
�
It
should be fully resourced with priorities based on risk.
- It should be based on
measurable performance.
�
It
should be truly comprehensive, encompassing the full spectrum of awareness,
prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery against domestic and
international threats against our physical, economic and societal well-being.
- It should include
psychological preparedness.
- It should be
institutionalized and sustained.
- It should be responsive to
requirements from and fully coordinated with State and local officials and
the private sector as partners throughout the development, implementation,
and sustainment process.
- It should include a clear
process for strategic communications and community involvement.
�
It must preserve civil liberties.
In developing the report, panel members all agreed at the outset
that it could not postulate, as part of its vision, a return to a pre-September
11 "normal."� The threats from terrorism
are now recognized to be a condition that we must face far into the
future.� It was the panel's firm
intention to articulate a vision of the future that subjects terrorism to a
logical place in the array of threats from other sources that the American
people face every day-from natural diseases and other illnesses to crime and
traffic and other accidents, to mention a few.�
The panel firmly believes that terrorism must be put in the context of
the other risks we face, and that resources should be prioritized and allocated
to that variety of risks in logical fashion.
The panel
has proffered a view of the future-five years hence-that it believes offers a
reasonable, measurable, and attainable benchmark.� It believes that, in the current absence of
longer-term measurable goals, this benchmark can provide government at all
levels, the private sector, and our citizens a set of objectives for readiness
and preparedness.� The panel did not
claim that the objectives presented in this future view are all
encompassing.� Neither do they
necessarily reflect the full continuum of advances that
�
The panel
said that
- Both the sustainment and
further empowerment of individual freedoms in the context of
measurable advances that secure the homeland.
- Consistent commitment of
resources that improve the ability of all levels of government, the
private sector, and our citizens to prevent terrorist attacks and, if
warranted, to respond and recover effectively to the full range of threats
faced by the nation.
- A standardized and effective
process for sharing information and intelligence among all
stakeholders-one built on moving actionable information to the broadest
possible audience rapidly, and allowing for heightened security with minimal
undesirable economic and societal consequences.
- Strong preparedness and
readiness across State and local government and the private sector
with corresponding processes that provide an enterprise-wide national
capacity to plan, equip, train, and exercise against measurable standards.
- Clear definition about the
roles, responsibilities, and acceptable uses of the military
domestically-that strengthens the role of the National Guard and
Federal Reserve Components for any domestic mission and ensures that America's
leaders will never be confronted with competing choices of using the
military to respond to a domestic emergency versus the need to project our
strength globally to defeat those who would seek to do us harm.
- Clear processes for engaging
academia, business, all levels of government, and others in rapidly
developing and implementing research, development, and standards across
technology, public policy, and other areas needed to secure the homeland-a
process that focuses efforts on real versus perceived needs.
Well-understood and shared process, plans, and incentives
for protecting the nation's critical infrastructures of government and
in the private sector-a unified approach to managing our risks.
The panel's Future Vision 2009
included specifics details involving:
�
State, Local, and Private Sector Empowerment
�
Intelligence
�
Information Sharing
�
Training, Exercising, Equipping, and Related Standards
�
Enhanced Critical Infrastructure Protection
�
Research and Development, and Related Standards
�
Role of the Military
Civil Liberties at the
Foundation
The panel
addressed the on-going debate in the
The Privacy Officer
With the
leadership of this Committee and Subcommittee, the Department of Homeland
Security has established the position of Privacy Officer in accordance with
statute.� The foundation of the
Congress's thinking was the protection of privacy will enhance the protection
of American freedom. As such, the primary responsibility for the privacy policy
includes an oversight of the use of technologies to make sure that they sustain
and do not erode privacy protections relating to the collection and disclosure
of personal information.� It places
special emphasis on the Privacy Act of 1974 and empowers the Privacy Officer to
evaluate legislative and regulatory proposals involving the disclosure of
personal information.
In its
drive to make the country secure, the
�
Many
might quickly argue that our traditional values of privacy, anonymity, and
freedom are out of date and rendered obsolete by the terrorist threat.� As Chairman of the Advisory Panel, and as a
private citizen, I could not more emphatically disagree with the concept that
our freedoms must take second place as against the goal of creating greater
security in the
I
congratulate Secretary Ridge and his Department for supporting the Privacy
Officer and empowering her so greatly.� Through
its first Privacy Officer, Nuala O'Connor Kelly, the Department contains an
instinct towards the creation of a "culture of privacy" that will allow the
personal data of people to remain as confidential as possible with an
environment of trying to weed out stealth attacks by anonymous terrorists.� We have laws to protect the confidentiality
of private information of the American citizen; but, how does the American
citizen know that his confidential and private information will not be made
public or even disseminated to other governmental agencies or other
organizations to disempower him by impinging upon his private information.� We live in the culture of the anonymous leak,
but we cannot continue the society of the empowered individual if government
has the ability to take all of their private information and then to handle
that information in such a way that citizens' private information is
exposed.�
We have a
long tradition of the independence of the American citizen.� This, too, cannot continue without systematic
thinking and advocacy by someone in government to preserve the freedoms and
values of the American people.� This is
fundamentally and primarily the duty of the
I urge
upon the Congress that we may be entering into a historic time in which bad decisions
now may have consequences to the freedoms of the American people throughout
their future.� Privacy is an essential
element of American liberty.� The ability
to keep personal information secure from prying eyes gives the mental
empowerment to people to live as free citizens.�
Without that security American citizens are vulnerable and insecure,
never knowing whether their personal information will be put into the hands of
someone who will use that information against their interests to make them
weaker or to destroy their individuality.�
This debate, now, goes to the fundamental relationship between citizens
and government, and should, and ultimately will, go far beyond just the issue
of privacy.��
We are
now engaged in a debate of the American citizen's role in his own society
within the context of terrorism and security.�
Some societies have always been much more comfortable with the citizen
fitting into the entire community and being subject to the entire community or
the state.� As such, identification
cards, reporting requirements, stops by police, the presentation of papers,
subjecting citizens to interrogation, checkpoints, frisking, and prying into
the personal business of citizens has always been much more accepted in many
countries of the world than in the United States.�
The
fundamental question the Congress must ask is whether this view of the
individual is the future of the
Did the
enemy fundamentally redefine the American relationship because of its attacks
on
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