Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence, stated that ‘privacy can no longer mean anonymity’ at this year’s GeoInt conference in San Antonio. Instead, he feels that it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people’s private communications and financial information.

This story in today’s New York Times relays Kerr’s feeling that he finds it odd that people are concerned that the government may be listening when people are ”perfectly willing for a green-card holder at an (Internet service provider) who may or may have not have been an illegal entrant to the United States to handle their data.”

Kerr went on to state, “Protecting anonymity isn’t a fight that can be won. Anyone that’s typed in their name on Google understands that. Our job now is to engage in a productive debate, which focuses on privacy as a component of appropriate levels of security and public safety.”

These comments come as Congress is taking a second look at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and whether to grant immunity to telecommunications companies that shared phone and e-mail records with the government without court permission.

Privacy proponents say Kerr is missing the distinction between voluntary giving up information for a service and the acts of an intrusive government that wields great power.

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