what law establishes the federal government's legal responsibility for safeguarding pii

The law that establishes the federal government’s legal responsibility for safeguarding personally identifiable information (PII) is the Privacy Act of 1974.

Core law in one line

The Privacy Act of 1974 is the primary federal statute that requires U.S. federal agencies to properly collect, maintain, use, safeguard, and disseminate PII about individuals in their systems of records.

How it creates the responsibility

• The Act limits what personal data federal agencies can collect and how long they can keep it, and it requires that records be accurate, relevant, timely, and complete.

• It obligates agencies to safeguard PII against unauthorized access or disclosure and allows individuals to access and request correction of records about themselves.

Related but secondary authorities

• The e-Government Act of 2002 and OMB privacy/breach memoranda provide additional requirements and guidance for how agencies must protect PII, but they build on the baseline duty created by the Privacy Act of 1974.

• Agency-specific statutes (for example, census and tax laws) can impose even stricter confidentiality rules for certain kinds of PII, yet the general government-wide legal responsibility still traces back to the Privacy Act framework.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.