Group seeks answers from DHS on delay of privacy report

A privacy rights group is pressing the U.S Department of Homeland Security to disclose when it plans to release its annual privacy report to Congress. The letter also noted that Callahan is obligated by law to prepare an annual report to Congress detailing activities at the agency that have an impact on privacy. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) on Tuesday sent a certified letter to Mary Ellen Callahan, DHS's chief privacy officer, noting that the department's last privacy report was released more than a year ago, in July 2008. "As it has been over a year since the publication of the last report, we would like to know when the current report, concerning the activities of your office, will be made available to the public," the letter states.

The report also needs to detail complaints of privacy violations, implementation of the Privacy Act of 1974, and internal privacy controls within the DHS, the letter states. Lillie Coney, EPIC's associate director, said the privacy report was "significantly tardy enough" to merit sending the letter to DHS. "We'd like to know what the agency has been doing regarding privacy," Coney said. A copy of the DHS letter was sent to the chairman and the ranking member of the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security. EPIC needs to be sure that the DHS' privacy officer is sufficiently focused on her obligation to release the report in a timely fashion, Coney said. The DHS could not be immediately reached for comment. The annual report, which has been issued since 2003 chronicles the privacy issues that the DHS is focused on and shows whether it is fulfilling its constitutional obligations for privacy and civil liberties, Coney said. "It gives us an idea of the way the DHS has been prioritizing privacy issues and what resources it has made available" to address the issues, she said.

This is not the first time EPIC has pressed DHS to release its reports in a timely fashion. As one of the largest federal agencies, the DHS is involved in several projects that privacy groups such as EPIC keep a close eye on. The group sent a similar letter to the DHS last year after the report's release was delayed. Examples include Einstein 2.0, a network monitoring technology that improves the ability of federal agencies to detect and respond to threats, and the Real ID identity credentialing initiative . The DHS's terror watch list program, its numerous data mining projects , the secure flight initiative, the proposed use of body imaging technologies and its searches of electronic devices at U.S. borders are also all being closely followed by privacy groups.