A government civil liberties panel established in 2004 at the behest of the 9/11 Commission that has laid dormant since the terms of its members expired Jan. 31, 2008 could probably not be fully operational as an independent body until mid-2010, the panel's former executive director told Tech Daily Dose. Mark Robbins, who staffed the White House Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board under former President George W. Bush, said the new administration has not nominated any new members and once they are selected, vetted and confirmed by the Senate, it will take time to set up office space and hire a staff. Last Congress, lawmakers statutorily distanced the board from the Executive Office of the President after concern grew it was not fully autonomous.

"We warned Congress before they passed the law making PCLOB independent that they would be killing it well into the next administration -- who's ever it was," said Robbins, now a rule of law advisor for the State Department in Iraq. "Congress killed the imperfect in search of the perfect, and ended up with nothing." "My guess is that the new board will be as welcome to the Obama administration as it was to the Bush administration," he said in an e-mail. Meanwhile, key senators have begun pressing the White House to set up the reconstituted panel. Read more about that effort in CongressDaily's AM Edition here.