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Privacy Act - General Information

What is the Privacy Act?

The Privacy Act of 1974 is a Federal law that seeks balance the Government's need to maintain information about individuals with the rights of individuals to be protected against unwarranted invasions of their privacy resulting from the collection, maintenance, use, and disclosure of personal information.

In general, the Privacy Act allows individuals to learn how the Federal Government collects, maintains, uses, and disseminates records containing personal information. It also safeguards confidentiality by limiting or restricting disclosure of personally identifiable records maintained by Federal agencies. The Privacy Act allows individuals to gain access to their own personal records (unless the requested records are exempted from disclosure), and to seek correction or amendment of Federally maintained records that are inaccurate, incomplete, untimely, or irrelevant. As such, the Privacy Act establishes a "code of fair information practices," which requires Federal agencies to comply with statutory norms for collecting, maintaining, and disseminating records containing information about individuals.

The Privacy Act applies only to U.S. citizens and aliens who are lawfully admitted for permanent residence in the United States. It applies only to personal information maintained by agencies in the Executive Branch of the Federal Government.

The Privacy Act also pertains only to information that is maintained in a "system of records," which the Act defines as a group of agency-controlled records from which information is retrieved by a unique identifier, such as an individual's name and/or birth date, social security number, or employee identification number. The Privacy Act further defines a "record" as any individually identifiable set of information that an agency might maintain about a person.

Resources for more information about the Privacy Act

  • Text of the Privacy Act : Title 5, Section 552a, of the United States Code (5 U.S.C.552a), as amended.