http://www.epic.org/privacy/poverty/
EPIC Alerts Public to Homeless Tracking System. Proposed guidelines to create a homeless tracking database called "Homeless Management Information Systems" present serious risks to civil liberties. EPIC has released a new fact sheet detailing the risks, and urging the public to send comments to the Department of Housing and Urban Development in opposition to HMIS. (Aug 19) HUD Announces Homeless Tracking System. The Department of Housing and Urban Development announced guidelines (pdf) for "Homeless Management Information Systems" (HMIS). HMIS is a standard system for tracking homeless persons and the services rendered to them. Entities that provide services would collect their names, Social Security Numbers, dates of birth, race, gender, health status (including HIV, pregnancy, and domestic violence), veteran status, and income information. Although the plan does not call for a national, centralized database, the information collected could easily facilitate the creation of such a database in the future. Furthermore, law enforcement, Secret Service, and National Security access to the database would be nearly unlimited. The guidelines are open to public comment until September 22, 2003. Introduction and Background Poor people have less of everything--less autonomy, less social mobility, and less privacy. State interests in fraud prevention and the structure of privacy law itself have worked to the disadvantage of the poor. This page is gives an overview of these forces and their effects on electronic privacy. Fraud Prevention: Welfare Surveillance and EBT Professor John Gilliom of Ohio University provided an excellent summary of the changes in welfare surveillance in Overseers of the Poor: Surveillance, Resistance, and the Limits of Privacy. In that book, Gilliom explains that state interests in avoiding fraud motivated increasingly invasive investigations of benefits recipients. Historically, these methods were limited by technology and social norms. At one time, this included visits to recipients' homes to determine whether the residence was clean and orderly. But norms have changed, and we are less tolerant of fraud or inefficiency, and technology allows much more invasive surveillance techniques. Electronic benefits systems and computer matching systems now are employed to determine whether fraud is taking place, and whether the recipient is entitled to the benefits. Such systems do serve important state interests in fraud prevention, however, the systems are highly privacy invasive. Over and over again, policymakers choose more invasive systems in the interests of fraud prevention to the detriment of individual autonomy. With increased dependence on the Social Security Number (SSN), the government has been able to engage in pervasive tracking of aid recipients. Now, with the requirement that states implement Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) by October 2002, aid recipients are being issued benefits cards that facilitate government tracking of all purchases. Gilliom argues that this combined with personal interviews delving into matters such as romantic relationships, results in a comprehensive tracking system that subjects the poor "to forms and degrees of scrutiny matched only by the likes of patients, prisoners, and soldiers." Strip away the bureaucratic language of fraud control, regulatory enforcement, consent forms, and the like, and we see a simple pattern in which a government agency is using broadly targeted and online surveillance in an effort to force a dependent population to live at an intolerable level of poverty. Gilliom's book provides firsthand accounts of the humiliation brought to bear by individuals watched by the state. Gilliom argues that traditional notions of privacy do not adequately describe the total surveillance in which the poor exist. He argues that a new language is needed to describe surveillance systems: a language that explicitly recognizes it as a tool of social control. He suggests, as a solution to this humiliation, that aid recipients themselves have to be involved in defining the goals and framework of the welfare system. John Gilliom, Overseers of the Poor: Surveillance, Resistance, and the Limits of Privacy (University of Chicago Press 2001). Structure of Constitutional Privacy Law: Those Without Private Spaces Have Less Privacy Constitutional privacy protections in the United States are conditioned upon the finding of a "reasonable expectation of privacy." To find such an expectation, a court examines whether society itself finds privacy in a certain context (objective test), and also whether the individual affected thinks that their actions are private (subjective test). Obviously, this two-pronged test does not provide privacy protections in areas that are public, the areas in which much of the poor exist as a result of not having homes, country clubs, or other establishments to engage in activities. It further does not protect those whose living spaces are exposed to public areas, for instance, homes or apartments without fences, heavy curtains, or well-insulated walls. Professor Christopher Slobogin of the University of Florida has argued that Fourth Amendment jurisprudence contains an implicit "poverty exemption." That is, courts have interpreted the Constitution to the disadvantage of the poor. He notes that even when a poor person is within a home, state interests in fraud prevention can trump privacy interests. For instance, in Wyman v. James, the Supreme Court allowed welfare workers to conduct a warrantless search of a welfare recipient's home without a warrant citing interests in fraud prevention. In other cases, however, the Court has required a warrant to search a business for investigation of tax fraud. Police interests in drug interdiction have also played a central role in the dissolution of privacy for those in poorer neighborhoods. Consistently, courts have expanded police search and seizure powers over those in public. There are numerous exceptions to the warrant requirement for police searches, and the so called "Terry Stop," which was first approved to protect officers from concealed weapons, now has become a pretense for searching subjects for any type of contraband. News Ripped Off, New ATM Card Screws Poor People, The Stranger, November 4, 1999. Citigroup and the Privatization of Welfare, Citiaction. Resources National Center on Poverty Law. NOW LDEF Welfare and Poverty Page. John Baggaley, Orwell on Poverty and Inequality, 10 EPIC Alert 13, June 25, 2003. Christopher Slobogin, The Poverty Exception to the Fourth Amendment, 55 Fla. L. Rev. 391 (January 2003). Naomi K. Seiler, Abstinence-Only Education and Privacy, 24 Women's Rights L. Rep. 27 (Fall/Winter 2002). Fabio A. Sciarrino, Ferguson v. City of Charleston, The Doctor Will See You Now, Be Sure to Bring Your Privacy Rights In With You, 12 Temp. Pol. & Civ. Rts. L. Rev. 197 (Fall 2002). Electronic Benefit Transfer, A new system for distribution of food stamps and possibly cash benefits, Consumers Union Information Packet, April 2001. David Cole, No Equal Justice (New Press 1999). William J. Stuntz, The Distribution of Fourth Amendment Privacy, 67 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 1265 (1999). Cases Ferguson v. City of Charleston, 532 U.S. 67 (2001). The Court held in this case that a state hospital cannot perform diagnostic tests to obtain evidence of criminal conduct without the patient's consent because such a test would be unreasonable and violate the Fourth Amendment. In the case, a state hospital, in cooperation with local law enforcement, began ordering urine samples for drug testing from maternity patients who were suspected of using cocaine. If a patient tested positive, the hospital immediately contacted local law enforcement to arrest the patient. The petitioners, who were all women arrested under the hospital's policy, successfully challenged the search as unconstitutional. Bowen v. Roy, 476 U.S. 693 (1986). Known as the "Little bird of the snow case," where the parents of a child sued to challenge the requirement that the child be assigned a Social Security Number in order to continue receiving benefits. The parents objected to the SSN requirement as a violation of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. The Supreme Court rejected this argument, holding the SSN requirement Constitutional as it was a neutral and uniformly applicable requirement that used a reasonable means to promote public interests in fraud control. Wyman v. James, 400 U.S. 309 (1971). Goldberg v. Kelly, 394 U.S. 254 (1970). This case established that the receipt of benefits is a legal entitlement, and that revocation of such an entitlement requires due process. King v. Smith, 392 U.S. 309 (1968). This case reversed an Alabama regulation that denied access to certain benefits if the recipient co-habitated with an able-bodied man. The Court held that the benefits were designed to provide economic security for children, and the suspected impropriety of a parent did not justify the revocation of benefits. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
