Gregory Nojeim: Privacy's Private Eye

May 10 2000

President Clinton's proposal last week for sweeping online data-privacy protections was cause for jubilation among numerous online privacy advocates. Clinton's plan would give consumers the choice whether financial, medical, and other data collected over the Internet could be shared with third parties. At long last, the powers that be were being addressing privacy concerns long debated in Internet circles.

But for Gregory Nojeim, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union and a lobbyist on privacy-protection issues, it was too soon to party.

"For the first time the Clinton administration recognizes the need to protect some financial information with an opt-in requirement; previously the administration had proposed only opt-out," Nojeim explains. "But where the proposal falls significantly short is in protecting our financial information against invasions of privacy by the federal government. In fact, the Clinton administration's bill does nothing to protect that."

As the government wrangles with protection policy and as most privacy advocates zero in on the activities of businesses, such as the use of "cookies" to collect marketing data - Nojeim looks at privacy from a different angle. His work focuses on what he says is the ways that law enforcement and other government agencies use the Net and other technology to violate the privacy of the very people they are purported to protect.

"All too often, technological advances are used to diminish instead of enhance personal privacy," he says. "What we try to do is offer alternatives to proposals that are invasive of privacy. We also try to get member of Congress to look at privacy-invasive proposals in a different light. One of the partial successes is encryption. Encryption can advance security and inhibit crime in a way the government originally didn't initially sufficiently recognize. For example if a company sends encrypted data and is allowed to freely use encryption, it's less likely that that information will be stolen."

Like any other lobbyist, Nojeim's days are spent leaping from congressional hearings to speaking engagements and back to his office, where he drafts legislation, phones legislators, and organizes grassroots lobbying. "In a way, he's my lobbyist as I coordinate the work in ACLU privacy," says Barry Steinhardt, associate director of the ACLU. "We count on Greg to be our point person in Washington."

Nojeim began working for the ACLU after a four-year stint as the Legal Director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. "He's always worked on immigration and national security; that involved Fourth Amendment matters. It's been over the last two years or so, as privacy issues have come to the forefront, that he's been more directly involved [in privacy legislation]," says Steinhardt.

"I've always had a strong interest in privacy and, in particular, the Fourth Amendment," Nojeim says. "I'm one of those people who asks why it is the government can conduct a search every time I get on an airplane, when there's clearly no probable cause."

In his five years as an ACLU legislative counsel, Nojeim has testified on congressional rules that require banks to spy on customers, on airport-security X-ray machines that "see through your clothing but not through your skin," and on the implications of giant online databases that use Social Security numbers to track down everyone from "deadbeat dads" to student-loan defaulters.

When it comes to privacy issues, Nojeim speaks with simultaneous intelligibility and passion. He is charismatic but never off-message. Steinhardt says members of Congress "appreciate his clarity and lack of guile. He's very straightforward."

But his views on privacy also have frequently put him at odds with lawmakers - including the Clinton administration. For example, says Nojeim, "many members of Congress fear being called soft on drugs or other than one of the soldiers in the war on drugs." He says that as a result, they'll approve airport profiling, which allows agents to search passengers based on racial and other broadly defined characteristics.

Nojeim says the Net is an important tool in making sure lawmakers are aware of privacy concerns. He concedes that although the Internet has produced a host of new privacy violations, it has also made fighting them much easier. "The Internet has also spawned one of the most effective and vocal communities ever to come together," Nojeim says. "It helps every advocacy organization get its message across, and it helps federal agencies understand where consumer concerns are."