The Privacy Act is a US law from 1974 that allows individuals to control their government records, correct errors, and know how they are being used. It differs from the Freedom of Information Act, which aims to make government-held information accessible. The Privacy Act also protects citizens from unauthorized disclosure and limits requests that may compromise personal privacy.
The Privacy Act is an American law passed in 1974 to address growing concerns about the privacy of individuals and the way government keeps, maintains, and controls records. The core of the privacy law was about individual control over government records, with the law stating that people must be able to see their own records and that they have the right to edit erroneous records and to find out how their records are being used.
People often debate the Privacy Act and the Freedom of Information Act together, because the two acts are both about government transparency and empowering individual citizens. The Privacy Act, however, is more focused on protecting the privacy of individuals, while the Freedom of Information Act is designed to make government-held information more accessible to the public, as long as free access does not compromise national security.
Under privacy law, government agencies must have systems for logging and must monitor and protect those logging. Information may not be exchanged between agencies except under specific circumstances or with the approval of the person concerned by the documents. When a system of record includes items that can be used to identify individuals, such as names, Social Security numbers and other identifiers, those individuals have the right to request copies of their records.
Individuals can file a privacy law request to see records held by government agencies, and they can also correct errors if they identify any. Government agencies will not release information that is considered a potential security risk, nor will they release information if no personal identifiers are used. For example, a government agency that maintains records about organizations would not be required to release information about those organizations to members of those organizations unless something like a list of names was used to index the file and orient it in the filing system of the agency.
The privacy law also protects citizens from disclosing their information to unauthorized persons. Individuals cannot make privacy law requests for people other than themselves, for example, and privacy law can also be used to limit Freedom of Information Law requests, on the basis that granting certain requests may compromise personal privacy. The law also does not cover materials that are considered historical or archival; for example, obtaining information about someone who lived in a previous century is relatively easy, because that information is considered archival in nature.
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