The Department of Homeland Security has named Claria, an adware maker that online publishers once dubbed a “parasite,” to a federal privacy advisory board. An executive from Claria, formerly called Gator, will be one of 20 members of the committee, the department said.

What has happened to our government? I don’t understand? We now have our own Homeland Security with an executive of a company who spys on your websurfing habits and 90% of the time individuals had no idea that they were bargaining for a slower computing experience, uninstall nightmares and pop-up hell when they downloaded that little-needed “must have” utility.

Claria bundles its pop-up advertising software with ad-supported networks such as Kazaa. Recently, the privately held company has been trying to seek credibility by following stricter privacy guidelines and offering behavioral profiling services to its partners.

In an e-mail message to CNET News.com, Kelly defended the inclusion of a Claria representative on the committee. “I am proud of, supportive of and grateful for those individuals in the public and private sector who are willing to take on the hard tasks, fight the good fight, and who surprise us with creative, fresh and unconventional thinking, and who make change where change is needed through their hard work and personal dedication,” Kelly said.

Although sued by several large retailers for their purported ‘trademark infringement,’ the application is often felt to be installed without permission or knowledge. The ‘terms of use’ agreement for the application now is over 20 pages long inthe small and obscured window provided for it’s view during registration. Does anyone read them expecting them to say things like ‘we are gonna get rich from you allowing us to pop these ads on your computer!’

Claria’s representative on the Homeland Security privacy board is company Vice President D. Reed Freeman, a former Federal Trade Commission staff attorney. Other members include executives from Intel, Computer Associates International, IBM, Oracle and the Cato Institute. Kelly said Freeman will “bring his courage and conviction to the board, and will contribute productively–and constructively–to the board’s and the public’s dialogue on privacy and homeland security.”

Conviction has several meanigs you know.

Listen, it’s out of control. The Feds are appointing spyware adware vendors to our Homeland Security Privacy Council - We somehow re-elected President Bush - we live in a country where the international domain ‘authority’ knowingly licenses domain-squatters as domain registrars - providing them with discounted pricing and unfettered access to do most anything they want.

The committee is tasked with providing “external expert advice to the secretary and the chief privacy officer on programmatic, policy, operational and technological issues that affect privacy, data integrity and data interoperability.”

In February 2003, Gator settled a high-profile case brought by The Washington Post, The New York Times, Dow Jones and other media companies. Terms of that deal were quiet, but Claria appears to have stopped delivering pop-ups to those publishers’ sites. At one point, over 20 large US retailers had filed suit against Gator - which all seemingly went very silent at their time of filing for their IPO.

From what I’ve heard, their IPO S-1 filing contained information which was not available during depositions and was in fact even contradictory to testimony provided in the cases active at the time. But, who knows - I mean, President Bush, are you really letting this happen?

This single act disappoints millions of Americans as we continue to believe in the Constitution of the United States of America, which provides us the right to be secure in our own land. Appointing the Minister of Spyware to our Privacy Council threatens millions of us with the potentional ‘loop-hole’ in a bill somewhere allowing Claria to utilize your processors idle time to transmit all your extra porn to the military in Iraq, which spidering your email for contextual relevant advertising while reading anything on your PC. How better to engage in computer-animated dialogue with you than to read your email to learn HOW to!?

Don’t take this sitting down - write your congressman today!