Knowing what other people know about your personal life is unfortunately not as easy as it should be. Although you may feel that you have a right to know how privy other people are of your personal circumstances, government agencies do not necessarily agree. A USA Today story by Yamiche Alcindor illustrates the problem on a nationwide scale:
Fueled by the Edward Snowden evesdropping scandal, more Americans than ever are asking the National Security Agency (NSA) if their personal life is being spied on.
And the NSA has a very direct answer for them: Tough luck, we’re not telling you.
Americans are inundating the NSA with open-records requests, leading to an 888% increase in such inquiries in the past fiscal year. Anyone asking to verify their personal information is getting a standard pre-written letter saying the NSA can neither confirm nor deny that any information has been gathered, by their agency.
“This was the largest spike in these type requests that we’ve ever had”, said Pamela Phillips, the chief of the NSA Freedom of Information Act and Privacy Act Office, which handles all records requests to the agency. “We’ve had requests from individuals who want any records we have on their phone calls, their phone numbers, their e-mail addresses, their IP addresses, anything like that.”
By definition, public records are information about a certain person that does not contain private material. Any organization in the private or public sector will be challenged to look deeper into a person they want on their team and they most likely will use all legally available means to do so. One such avenue will be through using experienced public records search specialists like The Accu-Facts Company.
One of the most important assets of any company proficient in the compiling of public records for legal purposes is that they are well-versed in state and/or federal laws. The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), allows for the release of public material concerning various individuals or organizations of interest, which is held by federal agencies. Anyone seeking to compile relevant information on a client’s behalf about a subject individual may do so, but it will depend on the requested agency’s cooperation.
A public record search is a vital matter that no person should be denied the opportunity to have access to, even in the face of possibly exaggerated national security issues or dangers to civil liberties. A public records research service like The Accu-Facts Company is your best tool, or option, to lay out all the publicly available facts, about your life, if needed or when desired.
(Article Excerpt and Image from NSA grapples with huge increase in records requests, USA Today, 18 November 2013)
