Gonzales Talks Tech In Written Testimony
In anticipation of Tuesday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, the Justice Department released Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' written testimony over the weekend. In it, the Bush administration's embattled top lawyer addresses a number of topics of interest to tech policy watchers.
He said the FBI's failure to properly use so-called "national security letters" can "undermine the civil liberties of American citizens and erode public support for these vital antiterrorism measures." Gonzales committed to remedying deficiencies flagged in a recent inspector general report on the secret subpoena power while striking the right balance between preventing terrorist attacks and protecting citizens' civil liberties.
The FBI is conducting a one-time, retrospective audit of the use of NSLs that will examine all 56 field offices nationwide, he said. Results of the study will be available soon and Congress will be briefed on the findings, he said. Regular audits of the program, starting this month, will also take place.
Gonzales also touted his department's child protection efforts. He described measures taken to improve sex offender tracking, notification, investigation, apprehension and prosecution. He also detailed progress made by Project Safe Childhood, which focuses on eliminating online child pornography and preventing sexual predators from finding and contacting kids on the Web.
Several paragraphs on intellectual property protection also appeared in the 25-page document. Justice has made combating IP theft a priority, Gonzales said, by "dedicating more resources than ever before" to fighting piracy and counterfeiting.
Last June, the agency's IP task force announced it had implemented all 31 of its recommendations to improve protection and enforcement in the United States and abroad. In the past two years, the department has expanded the Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property (CHIP) network of federal prosecutors and doubled the number of specialized CHIP units.
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