The antithesis of the FOIA is the Privacy Act. The purpose of the FOIA is to make governmental records available to the public; the purpose of the Privacy Act is to withhold sensitive documents from public disclosure. The Privacy Act is also found in the APA, entitled “Records maintained on individuals.” This reflects the act’s goal of protecting the privacy of records collected and maintained about individuals, not other governmental records.

Records are defined as “any item, collection, or grouping of information about an individual that is maintained by an agency. The heads of some agencies may promulgate rules exempting certain records from the requirements of the Privacy Act. The Privacy Act does not prohibit agencies from collecting information about people. It does, however, restrict an agency’s authority to collect information.

An agency must maintain all records that it uses in making any determination about an individual with such accuracy, relevance, timeliness, and completeness as is reasonably necessary to ensure fairness to the individual. On request, individuals must be given access to their records or to information about them contained in an agency’s records. Individuals must be given the opportunity to review and copy these records. Individuals may bring a person of their own choosing when reviewing the records.

Individuals are also permitted to request amendment of their records if the records contain inaccurate, irrelevant, untimely, or incomplete information. The Privacy Act contains both civil and criminal provisions. While it is the most significant in scope, the Privacy Act isn’t the only federal privacy statute.