Direct to Full Text Report (41 pages; PDF)

This report includes discussions of:

+ Cookies
+ Social Networking
+ Search Logs
+ Location data and Geocoding
+ Government Use of Commercial Databases
+ Data Mining

From the Summary:

Soon after passage of the Privacy Act of 1974, experts noted loopholes in the law. The Act’s limitations have become more significant with the passage of time, as information technology has become more prevalent in the operation of government programs. And while the fundamentals of the Act—the principles of fair information practices—remain relevant and current, the letter of the Act and related law and policy do not reflect the realities of current technologies and do not protect against many important threats to privacy.

Inattention by policymakers to the underlying problems, and relatively little White House guidance, has meant that privacy policy is left to the individual agencies. There has been a lack of government?wide direction, and only a few privacy leaders in key agencies have been empowered by their internal leadership to fill the policy vacuum.

Moreover, new technologies not covered by the Act are generating new questions and concerns. For example, the Federal government has provided no guidance on technologies that allow civilian government agencies to track individuals and retain data about individuals by default. And government use of private?sector databases now allows the collection and use of detailed personal information with few privacy protections. Because little guidance has been provided to the agencies since the Privacy Act was enacted, agency policy and procedure have not adapted to technological change.

Source: Information Security and Privacy Board (U.S.)

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 28th, 2009 and is filed under Information Policy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.