Bush taps DHS official for privacy board

WASHINGTON, Feb. 27 (UPI) -- President Bush has nominated the chief civil liberties officer of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to head a revamped federal privacy panel.

Daniel Sutherland was nominated Tuesday for a six-year term as full-time chairman of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. Bush also nominated two others to be part-time members of the board: Ronald Rotunda for a four-year term and Francis Taylor for a two-year term.

The board, recommended by the Sept. 11 Commission as a mechanism to monitor and curb overreach by the federal government in its counter-terrorism policies, was initially established by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004.

But it was March 2006 before the board got up and running, and last year Congress re-wrote the law governing it after complaints that it lacked teeth. The new law made all five members Senate-confirmable and moved the board out of the Executive Office of the President to become a stand-alone federal agency with a full-time chairman.

White House spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore told United Press International that Sutherland, a career official who was appointed to be Homeland Security's civil rights and civil liberties officer in April 2003, was "highly qualified" for the post.

"It is important to get a full-time chairman in place so that the board can get working," she said.

Prior to getting the Homeland Security job, Sutherland worked in the office of civil rights at the Department of Education. Prior to that, he served at the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department and on the White House's Domestic Policy Council.

Sutherland received his bachelor's degree from the University of Louisville and his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law.

Rotunda is professor of law at George Mason University in Virginia and was assistant majority counsel for the Watergate Committee. A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School, he was a member of the editorial board of the Harvard Law Review. He is the author of several textbooks on legal ethics and constitutional law.

Taylor, who has been General Electric Co.'s chief security officer since March 2005, sat on the privacy board's previous iteration. He is a former senior Foreign Service official who was the State Department's counter-terrorism coordinator from July 2001 to November 2002, before moving on to head the Bureau of Diplomatic Security -- the department's security and law enforcement arm.

Taylor is a graduate of Notre Dame University.

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Shaun Waterman, UPI Homeland and National Security Editor