Laws and guidance that govern civil liberties primarily focus on privacy. Image: Lightspring/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffFederal agencies still have a variety of practices for collecting, storing and using large amounts of data, despite a series of laws and orders seeking to set common standards and protections, the GAO has said.
Its review of the 24 Cabinet departments and largest independent agencies found that they “varied in their actions to establish dedicated offices, designate oversight officials, and develop policies and procedures to protect the public’s civil rights and civil liberties.” Those agencies further “reported challenges in protecting the public’s civil rights and civil liberties while using personal information that include handling issues that arise from new and emerging technologies and the lack of qualified and dedicated personnel.”
Key findings included (in GAO’s words):
* “While there are existing federal laws and guidance focus on civil rights, they primarily address the civil rights complaint process and compliance efforts. The governing statutes and federal guidance do not comprehensively address the use of large volumes of data by emerging technologies, particularly those with the potential to misidentify individuals and to introduce bias against people with certain racial and ethnic backgrounds. The need to mitigate those types of systemic risks is not addressed.
* “Laws and guidance that govern civil liberties primarily focus on privacy. However, other broader civil liberties considerations include due process, informed consent, and data protection related to the use of publicly available information. These broader issues are not addressed in the federal guidance that outline privacy protections, which only apply to data stored in systems of records and therefore may not be addressed by agencies’ privacy programs.”
* “Existing federal guidance that addresses civil rights and civil liberties considerations applies only in specific circumstances in which agencies use AI, such as when the technology may impact rights or safety. The guidance does not apply to other technologies, such as facial recognition, that an agency may use to collect or share personal data, which present similar risks to the public’s civil rights and civil liberties. Similarly, the existing guidance does not specify when federal agencies may use publicly available or commercially provided information and, what obligations, if any, apply to those data sets.”
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