A group of 31 organizations united by privacy policy interests urged Senate Judiciary Committee leaders in an August 29 letter to give prompt consideration to President Trump’s two most recent nominations to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board – Travis LeBlanc and Aditya Bamzai. Those nominations were announced earlier this month and would fill out the roster of the five-member board – if the full Senate also proceeds on confirmation votes on the nominations of Adam Klein, Ed Felten, and Jane Nitze, which have already been cleared by the Senate Judiciary Committee. The group of privacy organizations, which includes the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union, pointed out that PCLOB has lacked a quorum of members for 19 months and because of that is unable to issue public reports and perform other essential functions. The groups said that while some of them disagree on the qualifications of some of the nominees, they all agreed “that it is critical that the PCLOB be able to resume its important work conducting oversight and providing advice regarding counterterrorism laws and programs.”
