A WHITE HOUSE privacy board…..that kinda says it all, doesn’t it?

WASHINGTON - A White House privacy board is giving its stamp of approval to two of the Bush administration’s controversial surveillance programs - electronic eavesdropping and financial tracking - and says they do not violate citizens’ civil liberties.

Democrats newly in charge of Congress quickly criticized the findings, which they said were questionable given some of the board members’ close ties with the Bush administration.

“Their current findings and any additional conclusions they reach will be taken with a grain of salt until they become fully independent,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson (news, bio, voting record), D-Miss., who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee.

After operating mostly in secret for a year, the five-member Privacy and Civil Liberties Board is preparing to release its first report to Congress next week.

The report finds that both the National Security Agency’s warrantless eavesdropping program and the Treasury Department’s monitoring of international banking transactions have sufficient privacy protections, three board members told The Associated Press in telephone interviews.

Both programs have multiple layers of review before sensitive information is accessed, they said.

“We looked at the program, we visited NSA and met with the top people all the way down to those doing the hands-on work,” said Carol Dinkins, a Houston lawyer and former Reagan administration assistant attorney general who chairs the board.

“The program is structured and implemented in a way that is properly protective and attentive to civil liberties,” she said.

Some board members were troubled by the Homeland Security Department’s error-ridden no-fly lists, which critics say use subjective or inconclusive data to flag suspect travelers.

One area the board will focus on in its report is the computerized anti-terrorism screening system recently announced by DHS and used for years without travelers’ knowledge to assign risk assessments to millions of Americans who fly abroad.

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