The US privacy strategy

Abstract

The hopes of privacy advocates that US president Barack Obama would implement digital privacy reforms have been largely dashed by revelations of extensive US government surveillance. Such revelations have added an acute sense of urgency among ordinary people to the debate over privacy, surveillance, and technology. Unfortunately, despite the existence of innovative cryptographic techniques to protect privacy, US policymakers have so far not taken advantage of them to enable signals intelligence collection in more privacy-protective ways. The problem is not limited to controversial surveillance programs. A once-promising US strategy for online identity, the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC), may also fall short on privacy because of a failure to use available privacy-protecting tools. There is no excuse of such ignorance of the cryptographic state of the art. There is a critical need for greater awareness of privacy-enhancing technologies among policymakers.