US Government Needs to Better Protect Personal Data, Senator Says

The main law that currently governs how US agencies should handle private information hasn’t been updated since 1974. Now one US Senator is pushing for big changes to the Privacy Act to make sure the law reflects today’s new technology.

In an article on the Network World website, Grant Gross says Senator Susan Collins and other witnesses told the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs that the law, in some cases, has huge exceptions on its restrictions for sharing personal information.

“Technology evolves so rapidly in this day and age, that we will need to be more vigilant in ensuring that the wheels of progress are not inadvertently running over our basic privacy rights,” Collins told the committee. “We’re constantly trying to catch up with the laws and the policies to the technology.”

Among the recommendations are that the government make several improvements in its privacy policies and data collection to avoid data breaches such as a 2006 incident in which a laptop containing the personal information of 26.5 million people was stolen from a US Department of Veterans Affairs employee, or reports of 490 laptops stolen from the US Internal Revenue Service.

Not only that, but privacy protections are not consistently applied across the government, and agencies often do not limit their collection of personal data to needed information, Linda Koontz, GAO’s director of information management issues, said.

“Current laws and guidance impose only modest requirements for describing the purposes for personal information and limiting how it is used,” Koontz wrote in one report.