What is the Privacy Act?
The Privacy Act not only allows you to obtain your own records, it also gives you the right to correct, amend or delete information about you that is inaccurate, irrelevant, outdated or incomplete. In fact, the Privacy Act gives you the right to sue the agency if it refuses to correct or amend your record, or if it refuses to give you access to it.

There are several important distinctions between the FOIA and the Privacy Act. For this reason, you should request access to your records under both statutes.

• The Privacy Act may be used only by U.S. citizens or permanent resident aliens, and only to obtain access to records that can be retrieved from a "system of records" by your name, or by a number, symbol or other identifying particular that is assigned to you. The FOIA, on the other hand, allows any person to request access to any records, as stated above.
• The Privacy Act carries broader exemptions than the FOIA does - particularly where law enforcement records are concerned. Some agencies may routinely refuse your FOIA request for that reason.
• The Privacy Act permits an agency to charge requesters for copying, but not for search costs.
• The statute of limitations for filing a lawsuit is only two years under the Privacy Act, but under the FOIA, it is six years.

There are two other Federal Open Government Laws: The Government in the Sunshine Act of 1976, which gives us the right to attend meetings of the governing boards of fifty federal agencies and to obtain the records of these meetings, and the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972, which allows individuals to attend federal advisory committee meetings.