White House praises defense privacy efforts

The White House commended the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) on Monday after the agency unveiled a new set of privacy principles for balancing the tradeoffs between national security and individual privacy.

Under its new guidelines, DARPA has promised to analyze the privacy implications of its research and development projects, which aim to keep the military technologically advanced.

Tom Kalil, deputy director for policy at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said DARPA's privacy proposals take on the difficult issue of privacy in a meaningful way. 

"It is critical that we maintain our privacy and civil liberties in the digital age, and I am delighted to see DARPA’s leadership take this issue so seriously," he said. 

DARPA's new guidelines will create an internal privacy ombudsman for the agency and an independent privacy review panel. The agency will also initiate a National Academy of Sciences study about the implication of technical advances and work with the National Science Foundation to examine the consequences of research and development that involves personally identifiable information. 

Advances DARPA is known for include some of the technology that led to the development of the Internet.