Electronic Privacy Information Center or EPIC is a public interest research group in Washington D.C.. It was established in 1994 to focus public attention on emerging civil liberties issues and to protect privacy, the First Amendment, and constitutional values. EPIC operates a West Coast Office in San Francisco, CA, that focuses on consumer privacy issues. Public interest is a term used to denote political movements and organizations that are in the public interest—supporting general public and civic causes, in opposition of private and corporate ones (particularistic goals). ... Aerial photo (looking NW) of the Washington Monument and the White House in Washington, DC. Washington, D.C., officially the District of Columbia (also known as D.C.; Washington; the Nations Capital; the District; and, historically, the Federal City) is the capital city and administrative district of the United... 1994 (MCMXCIV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International year of the Family. ... Civil liberties are protections from the power of governments. ... Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to stop information about themselves from becoming known to people other than those they choose to give the information to. ... The first ten Amendments to the U.S. Constitution make up the Bill of Rights. ... This article or section should be merged with Customer privacy Consumer privacy laws and regulations seek to protect any individual from loss of privacy due to failures or limitations of corporate customer privacy meausures. ...

EPIC works to achieve these goals by:

• Researching privacy, free speech, and civil liberties issues
• Presenting its findings at conferences and in publications, as well as throughits Internet policy site at epic.org and the twice-monthly EPIC Alert newsletter
• Testifying before Congress on privacy and civil liberties issues
• Obtaining and publishing government documents through the Freedom of Information Act
• Assisting attorneys, consumer organizations, and civil liberties organizations on lawsuits in its fields of expertise
• Testifying before government agencies
• Filing comments and complaints with government agencies

Background

EPIC was founded in 1994 by David Banisar, Marc Rotenberg, and David Sobel, as a joint project of the Fund for Constitutional Government and Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. Early on, the organization focused on government surveillance and cryptography issues, such as the Clipper Chip and the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA. After becoming an independent non-profit organization in November of 2000, EPIC has continued to work on government surveillance issues, especially after the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act in 2001, and on a growing number of consumer privacy issues, such as identity theft, the national Do-Not-Call Implementation Act of 2003, and commercial data mining. EPIC also works to increase government transparency by filing Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain and make public government documents. EPIC has also been active in promoting secure, verifiable, and privacy-guarding methods for electronic voting. In 2004, EPIC opened EPIC West, its San Francisco office that supports state-based privacy initiatives. The Clipper chip is a chipset that was developed and promoted by the U.S. Government as an encryption device to be adopted by telecommunications companies for voice transmission. ... The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) is a controversial United States law passed in 1994 (Pub. ... President George W. Bush signing the Patriot Act in the White Houses East Room on October 26, 2001. ... The Do-Not-Call Implementation Act of 2003 (Public Law No. ... Data mining, also known as knowledge-discovery in databases (KDD), is the practice of automatically searching large stores of data for patterns. ... Nearly sixty countries around the world have implemented some form of freedom of information legislation, which sets rules on governmental secrecy. ... Electronic voting machine used in all Brazilian elections and plebiscites. ...

External links

• Official Website
• Privacy International
• Internet Free Expression Alliance
• Global internet Liberty Campaign
• Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialog
• The Privacy Site
• Observing Surveillance
• The Public Voice
• Voting Integrity