Consultant calls for White House Conference on Privacy Protection Predicts “Purple Alliance” of Red and Blue states, libertarians and liberals outraged by privacy abuses

(Medfield, MA)— Homeland Security consultant W. David Stephenson called today for a White House Conference on Privacy Protection to create a public-private strategy and legislative agenda to end the spiraling pattern of data and privacy abuses by government and the private sector.

Stephenson, principal of Stephenson Strategies, wrote in his blog, W. David Stephenson blogs on homeland security (www.stephensonstrategies.com), that outrage will lead to an “unholy ‘Purple Alliance,'uniting citizens from red and blue states, libertarians and liberals.”

He also predicted that continued inaction by the Bush Administration, Congress, and the private sector will lead to “loss of public confidence in the digital economy, public outrage at government, and 'digital disobedience,' in which individuals will intentionally provide false information in order to bring the system to it its knees.”

Stephenson said the convergence of the New York Times’ revelation that the Social Security Administration agreed to an “ad hoc” policy giving the FBI access to information including medical information as part of its 9/11 investigation, combined with news last week that up to 40 million MasterCard records were exposed to thieves were the tipping point demanding such an extraordinary step as a White House Conference on the issue.

He noted they were just the most dramatic examples in a recent pattern of governmental abuses such as the flawed “no-fly” lists and data-mining proposals such as CAPPS II, combined with private sector sloppiness including the Lexis-Nexis and BankAmerica data losses/thefts. Stephenson, an award-winning corporate crisis management consultant prior to entering the homeland security field, said “what happens in such a situation is that all of the violations become confused and merged in the public consciousness. That means only a joint public-private initiative to put legal and technological protections in place can rebuild public confidence.”

Stephenson ended his blog entry by urging readers to call their representative, senators, and the White House to demand a White House Conference on Privacy Protection.

Stephenson Strategies is a homeland security consulting firm specializing in empowerment of the general public, innovative use of technology, and win-win public-private collaborations providing economic and security benefits. CIO.com has called David Stephenson’s blog the best on homeland security. He also created the “Terrorism Survival Planner,” the only comprehensive data base on terrorism preparation and response created specifically for handhelds.