Ashcroft taps privacy watchdog

Attorney General John Ashcroft named a chief privacy officer for the Justice Department last week, a move that was widely expected.

Dan Collins, associate deputy attorney general, will advise senior department officials on privacy issues that will include:

n The privacy implications of technologies used by law enforcement agencies in crime investigations.

n The department's obligation to comply with laws protecting citizens' privacy when it collects information in the course of its operations.

n Justice's responsibility to enforce existing laws protecting personal privacy from unlawful invasion, whether in the public or private sectors.

n Consideration of any proposed legislation or regulations that address key privacy issues.

"I trust [Collins] to make certain we are taking precautions to protect the right to privacy that every American deserves," Ashcroft said in a July 24 statement.

Ashcroft told privacy advocates in April that he was going to name a pri.vacy official, so his announcement generated little surprise.

"It is not surprising that he took this seriously and followed up on his commitment to get somebody in place," said Ari Schwartz, a policy analyst for the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington, D.C., privacy group. "It was one of the major things he focused on" as a senator from Missouri.

Collins graduated from Harvard University and Stanford University Law School. He was a clerk for Judge Dorothy Nelson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, and was a partner at Munger, Tolles & Olson, a Los Angeles law firm.