Insurance Exec Joins Advisory Committee for Homeland Security

Department names members to a new committee that will advise on technological issues affecting privacy, as well as data integrity and interoperability.

The Department of Homeland Security is tapping the private sector to get advice on data privacy. The department Wednesday named 20 members to the newly formed Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee, which will advise Secretary Michael Chertoff and chief privacy officer Nuala O'Connor Kelly on program, policy, operational, and technological issues that affect privacy, data integrity, and data interoperability.

Panel members come from companies of various sizes, academia, and nonprofits. They have expertise in privacy, security, and emerging technologies and are expected to help with data-protection, openness, technology, and national-security issues. "The diversity of experience and perspectives represented by this committee will play an important role in advancing the national discourse on privacy and homeland security," O'Connor Kelly said in a prepared statement.

The department received more than 129 applications from perspective members. O'Connor Kelly's office reviewed the applications, and she offered her recommendations to then-Secretary Tom Ridge, who approved them.

Advisory committee meetings will be held quarterly, with the first meeting on April 6 in Washington. Some future meetings will be held in other locations around the country. Some of the proceedings, and information generated from the panel's activities, may be kept private because of classification and information-protection laws.

O'Connor Kelly serves as the committee's sponsor; Rebecca Richards, director of privacy compliance, serves as its executive director.

Committee members are:

Joseph Alhadeff, VP and chief privacy officer at Oracle
Ramon Barquin, president of Barquin International
J. Howard Beales, associate professor at George Washington University
D. Reed Freeman, chief privacy officer and VP at Claria
James W. Harper, editor/executive director at Privacilla.org and director of information policy studies at the Cato Institute
Kirk Herath, chief privacy officer and associate general counsel at Nationwide
David A. Hoffman, group counsel and director of privacy at Intel
Lance Hoffman, research professor at George Washington University
Tara Lemmey, CEO at Lens Ventures
Joseph Leo, VP at SAIC
John Marsh, professor at George Mason University School of Law
Joanne McNabb, chief of the Office of Privacy Protection at the California Department of Consumer Affairs
Charles Palmer, department group manager for security, networking, and privacy at IBM
Richard Purcell, CEO at Corporate Privacy Group
Paul Samuel Rosenzweig, senior legal research fellow at the Heritage Foundation
John Thomas Sabo, manager for security, privacy, and trust initiatives at Computer Associates
James Sheehan, general counsel at Milton Hershey School
Lisa Sotto, partner and head of regulatory privacy and information-management practice group at Hunton & Williams
Michael Turner, president and senior scholar at the Information Policy Institute
Samuel Wright, senior VP for government relations at Cendant