Information under Privacy Act
The Privacy Act applies only to records about individuals maintained by agencies in the executive
branch of the federal government. It applies to these records only if they are in a system of records,
which means they are retrieved by an individual’s name, Social Security number, or some other
personal identifier. In other words, the Privacy Act does not apply to information about individuals in
records that are filed under other subjects, such as organizations or events, unless the agency also
indexes and retrieves them by individual names or other personal identifiers.