What the Privacy Act Protects
The purpose of the Privacy Act of 1974, United States Code, Section 552a, is to balance the U.S. Government's need to maintain information about individuals with the rights of individuals to be protected against unwarranted invasions of their privacy stemming from federal agencies' collection, maintenance, use and disclosure of personal information about them.
The Privacy Act applies only to records about individuals maintained by agencies in the executive branch of the government. It applies to these records only if they are kept in a "system of records." A system of records is a group of records from which the information was retrieved by an individual's name, Social Security number, date of birth, or some other personal identifier.