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Advocacy and Letters -
Letters to Government Agencies Signed by TMA
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Written by Coalition
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Thursday, 25 March 2010 |
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March 25, 2010
Dear President Obama,
We represent a wide range of air travel, educational, civil liberties, human rights, religious and taxpayer rights organizations from across the country.
We are writing to ask you to suspend the further deployment of body scanners in US airports.
In addition to the privacy and health concerns that have been raised, we are becoming increasingly aware of growing doubts about the effectiveness and safety of the devices as well as the very real offense to deeply held religious views. Many religious leaders have spoken recently in opposition to body scanners. We join them in urging you to suspend this program.
We further believe that the full body scanners are contributing to a negative perception of the United States and reducing the number of foreign visitors who will travel to the US.
If the program is suspended, there is the very real possibility of saving taxpayers over $400 million this year and much more in the years ahead.
We support a proposal to undertake a comprehensive study to evaluate the effectiveness, health risks, and privacy impacts of the devices. We also ask you to consider the importance of sincerely held religious opposition to the digital undressing of air travelers by TSA officials, as well as the economic impact on the US tourism industry.
Sincerely, Organizations
American Civil Liberties Union
Bill of Rights Defense Committee
Center for Financial Privacy and Human Rights
Council on American--‐Islamic Relations
Consumer Federation of America
Consumer Travel Alliance
Doctor--‐Patient Medical Association
DownsizeDC.org
Electronic Privacy Information Center
Essential Information
Government Accountability Project
Identity Project
Liberty Coalition
Muslim Legal Fund of America
National Center for Transgender Equality
National Workrights Institute
Privacy Activism
Privacy International
Privacy Rights Clearinghouse
Rutherford Institute
The Multiracial Activist
U.S. Bill of Rights Foundation
World Privacy Forum
Individual Privacy, Law, and Civil Liberties Experts
Grayson Barber
Bob Barr, Former Congressman
David Flaherty, Former Privacy Commissioner, British Columbia
Chip Pitts, President, Bill of Rights Defense Committee
Peter Gibbons
Mary Minow
Ralph Nader, Consumer Advocate
Peter Neumann, Principal Scientist SRI International
Edward G. Viltz, President, Internet Collaboration Coalition Be first to comment this article |  Add as favourites (47) |  Quote this article on your site | Views: 553
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Advocacy and Letters -
Letters to Government Agencies Signed by TMA
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Written by Coalition
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Wednesday, 17 March 2010 |
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March 17, 2010 The Honorable Patrick Leahy
Chairman
United States Senate
Judiciary Committee
224 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510 The Honorable John Cornyn
Ranking Member
United States Senate
Judiciary Committee
152 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510 Dear Senators Leahy and Cornyn: The undersigned organizations write in support of the Faster FOIA Act, which would establish the Commission on Freedom of Information Act Processing Delays (the Commission). This advisory commission would be charged with recommending to Congress and the President steps that should be taken to reduce delays in the administration of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). In our experience, agency backlogs impose one of the greatest impediments to access under the FOIA and create a disparity across the federal government in the administration of the FOIA. Moreover, while backlogs have presented a longstanding problem in agency implementation of the FOIA, we still do not understand fully the conditions and practices that create those backlogs. Particularly in light of President Obama’s directive to agencies to reduce significant backlogs of outstanding FOIA requests, it is imperative that we identify the root causes of FOIA processing delays. Toward that end, the Commission established by the Faster FOIA Act would examine agency backlogs and recommend to Congress and the President steps that should be taken to reduce delays and make the administration of the FOIA equitable and efficient throughout the federal government. By including representatives of the FOIA requester community, the Commission would bring a fresh perspective to a persistent problem. The Commission would also be tasked with examining the current FOIA system for charging fees and granting waiver fees. In our experience, an agency’s refusal to recognize a requester’s entitlement to a fee waiver all too often causes further processing delays and imposes yet another unreasonable bar to access under the FOIA. We welcome the opportunity this legislation presents for further study of this problem, specifically considering whether the current statutory provision should be reformed. Thank you for your ongoing commitment to strengthening the Freedom of Information Act. Sincerely, OpenTheGovernment.org American Association of Law Libraries American Library Association Association of Research Libraries American Society of News Editors Californians Aware Center for Democracy and Technology Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington Defending Dissent Foundation DC Open Government Coalition Electronic Frontier Foundation Essential Information Government Accountability Project iSolon.org Justice Through Music Liberty Coalition Minnesota Coalition on Open Government MuckRock The Multiracial Activist National Coalition for History National Freedom of Information Coalition National Security Archive North Carolina Open Government Coalition OMB Watch Project On Government Oversight Public Citizen Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press The Rutherford Institute Sage Information Services Society of Professional Journalists Special Libraries Association Sunlight Foundation Velvet Revolution Washington Coalition for Open Government PDF version: http://www.openthegovernment.org/otg/FasterFOIAletter.pdf
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Advocacy and Letters -
Letters to Government Agencies Signed by TMA
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Written by Coalition
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Tuesday, 24 November 2009 |
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Coalition for Patient Privacy November 24, 2009
David Blumenthal, MD, MPP
National Coordinator
Office of National Coordinator for Health Information Technology
U. S. Department of Health and Human Services
200 Independence Avenue, SW
Washington, DC 20201
See Letter as .PDF
See Letter as .DOC
Dear Dr. Blumenthal:
We were very pleased to hear your announcement last month regarding a new privacy and security work group that will advise the HIT Policy Committee and “create recommendations based on results of the September privacy hearing.” Our Coalition and the millions of Americans we represent solidly stand behind the remarks Dr. Latanya Sweeney and Dr. Deborah Peel made at the September privacy hearing. Americans clearly want to control their personal health information and, more importantly, they expect the federal government to ensure this happens.
We have been provided no evidence that control or meaningful, informed consent does not work. In fact, the final report from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality that describes their recent nationwide focus groups clearly illustrates that the public expects the right to decide who can see and use their personal health information. AHRQ determined there was no support for the establishment of general rules that apply to all health care consumers. Participants thought that health care consumers should be able to exert control over their own health information individually, rather than collectively[1]. The Administration has a duty to respect and to protect these fundamental privacy rights.
From the outside looking in, we note the HIT Policy Committee has an extensive and difficult job description and seemingly unrealistic time constraints. It is critical that individual experts outside this Committee be an integral part of the privacy and security work group, as Congress intended in HITECH. The work simply cannot be done without reaching out to other experts in health privacy and national consumer privacy advocacy organizations.
Therefore, we urge you to cast a broad net when selecting members of this critical work group. Many privacy and consumer experts that have a wealth of knowledge on HIT and privacy are eager to serve this endeavor. We hope you will call on members of our Coalition, including Dr. Peel, along with HIT vendors implementing innovative privacy solutions.
We support your efforts and continue to offer our expertise and time.
Sincerely,
The Coalition for Patient Privacy
American Association of People with Disabilities
American Civil Liberties Union
American Council for the Blind
Clinical Social Work Association
Consumer Action
Electronic Privacy Information Center
Just Health
The Multiracial Activist
National Association of Social Workers
National Coalition of Mental Health Professionals and Consumers
Patient Privacy Rights
Private Citizen, Inc.
Secure ID Coalition
U.S. Bill of Rights Foundation
Universata, Inc.
cc:
HIT Policy Committee Members
HIT Standards Committee Members
For additional information, please contact:
Ashley Katz
Executive Director
Patient Privacy Rights
(O) 512-732-0033
(C) 512-897-6390
\n
This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it www.patientprivacyrights.org
1AHRQ Publication No. 09-0081-EF "Final Report: Consumer Engagement in Developing Electronic Health Information Systems" Prepared by: Westat, (July 2009), see page 29,http://healthit.ahrq.gov/portal/server.pt/gateway/PTARGS_0_1248_888520_0_0_18/09-0081-EF.pdf (last visited September 14, 2009)
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TMA Articles and Commentary -
TMA Commentary and Essays
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Written by José Maria J. Yulo
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Wednesday, 11 November 2009 |
Faulty Dichotomies: Fort Hood and Reverse Racism
November 11, 2009 - The Abolitionist Examiner
José Maria J. Yulo
Originally published in Ignatius Insight
For neither Man nor Angel can discern
Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks
Invisible, except to God alone,
By his permissive will, through Heav’n and
Earth.
—John Milton By liberalism I mean false liberty of thought, or the exercise of thought upon matters, in which, from the constitution of the human mind, cannot be brought to any successful issue, and therefore is out of place.
—Cardinal John Henry Newman Within the first twenty-four hours the news broke on the attack by a gunman on an army base in Texas, and with the appropriate reserve owed to an event of such severity, various media outlets were hesitant at first to speculate on the identity and ethnic origin of the assailant, not wanting to foment irrational fears and reactions. What intrigued however was the quickness with which some news organizations began the narrative of a soldier ridiculed because of his ethnicity, ultimately cracking and lashing out in a rage against his perceived persecution. Making matters more interesting was the possibility of the murders carried out because of post-traumatic stress, an unusual possibility to say the least since by latest account, the attacker had not yet been deployed overseas and therefore had yet to experience the fire of combat. The mystery behind the massacre’s motivation still remain unclear. What is peculiar is the motivation behind a seeming attempt to find more preferable reasons to deliberately and with a fixed intention kill a dozen people and injure dozens more. Perhaps unknown to its authors, the veins of this narrative run deep and parallel to the precedents set forth by various philosophical schools in the last century. Paramount here is the dichotomous worldview ham-fistedly established by Marx and perennially finding converts among cultural elites. The dialectical clash between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is often chameleon-like, assuming the suitable color and hue to fit the assigned socio-political context. In the liberation theology of Paolo Freire, the paradigm of the oppressor and the oppressed takes form as the basis for the Brazilian’s distillation of Socratic dialogue into “conscientization.” In this third world setting, members of the latter class are made aware of their assigned status and encouraged to rebel, sometimes violently, against the former since, as Freire claims, rebellion is an “act of love.” Integral in this school of thought is the belief that group membership in the oppressed class, even removed by both time and current economic conditions, permits for looser interpretations of moral norms, enabling a historically underprivileged group the license to “correct” their plights by means restricted only by their creativity. An example removed from the wages of war perhaps here is helpful for illustrative purposes. In 1990, an undergraduate student at the University of Hawaii wrote a letter to a school publication addressing the word “haole” as it was and is used in pidgin Hawaiian. The term literally denoted a foreigner, but as most who have visited or lived in Hawaii would know, it is more specifically focused on people of Caucasian descent. The student went on to describe how he had discovered the many negative associations to the term, relating to his own experiences within the island of Oahu, up to and including his being assaulted and beaten more than once simply for his ethnicity alone. At university, one would expect perhaps a spirited letter or essay submitted to counter such claims, if only for the academic exercise they would involve. Such counterarguments did not come. Rather, what came in response surprised most observers. A faculty member in Hawaiian Studies wrote a letter to the selfsame publication accessed earlier, building, if one can call it that, a case not against the nature of the word “haole,” but against the student, a Caucasian male from Louisiana, who had the temerity to even suggest he was victimized because of his race. The teacher expounded that the student in question’s forefathers had permanently afflicted “her” homeland with racism, disease and all manner of oppression. In her words he was a haole, and ought resign himself to his negative treatment by reason of this. If he found such status difficult to bear, the faculty member advised him to take one of the many flights off the island and “go back to Louisiana.” Little is further known of the student who was involved in this case, though within three years, the lady teacher of Hawaiian Studies was awarded a full professorship by the university. There are two noteworthy errors exhibited by the reasoning of the faculty member in this case. Of course, both are predictably caused by the faulty dichotomous worldview cited earlier. First, the zeal with which students of this school of thought compartmentalize individuals into oppressor and oppressed camps allows for a generalization always tempting for the sociologist and liberation theologian alike. Namely, the assumption that since the student in question “belonged” to a historically privileged class, he must have ontologically enjoyed his lineage’s perks and savored its depredations. It is most ironic that this blanket perspective on race and culture is usually perpetrated by those who supposedly educate against such stereotype and prejudice. In short, the student in question may be a bad student, perhaps even a deplorable human being as well. Yet, the simple fact remains. He, himself, was not guilty of the crimes the professor cited. In a departure from ex post facto law, he was not guilty now from something he did legally then. Rather, he was guilty now for something someone else did a century before. It would appear that the teacher had loftier ambitions than professorship, assuming Yahweh’s capacity of punishing the sons for the sins of the fathers. Second, the professor’s implied approval and sanctioning of the ills visited upon the student logically extended from a stilted worldview on the plight of the oppressed. Name-calling, ostracizing, and physical beatings were “expected” repercussions by those from oppressed groups, even if the oppression occurred to someone else a century before. It is almost pitiable, this lack of exposure to Augustinian lessons on the free will. What is at work here however, is something more than blithe ignorance of medieval philosophy. In allowing “the oppressed” to bend, if not break moral standards of behavior, the professor, and the apologists for the Ft. Hood shooter write a common chapter with a shared pen. They write, “some people, because of the group they belong to, cannot be blamed for acts of malevolence.” As the evidence has yielded, only one man has his bloody prints on the murder weapon in Texas. Instead of excusing such behavior, which is the ultimate wish of such prevarication, a most condescending patronizing emanates. Who do societies claim are not responsible for their actions? The answers are obvious, children and lunatics. By asserting that certain segments of the population should be absolved of their freely chosen acts of mayhem, those who write this narrative do “the oppressed” a greater disservice than overt oppression: the rendering of convenient calibanization of human beings for the cause.
José Maria J. Yulo is a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. He received his doctoral degree in the philosophy of education from the University of San Francisco and teaches philosophy and western civilization at the Academy of Art University.
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