Department of Transportation's Maritime
Administration Privacy Policy
Maritime Administration
Privacy Policy
Content updated on
December 01, 2005
Our Commitment
We respect your right to privacy and will protect it when you visit our
website.
This Privacy Policy explains our online information practices only,
including how we collect and use your personal information. It does not
apply to third-party websites that you are able to reach from this
website, nor does it cover practices of other areas within the
Department of Transportation. We encourage you to read those privacy
policies to learn how they collect and use your information.
What We Automatically Collect Online
We collect information about your visit that does not identify you
personally. We can tell the computer, browser, and web service you are
using. We also know the date, time, and pages you visit. Collecting this
information helps us design the site to suit your needs.
In the event of a known security or virus threat, we may collect
information on the web content you view.
Other Information We May Collect
When you visit our website, we may request and collect the following
categories of personal information from you:
-
Contact information
-
IDs and passwords
Why We Collect Information
Our principal purpose for collecting personal information online is to
provide you with what you need and want,
address security and virus concerns, and to ease the use of our website.
We will only use your information
for the purposes you intended, to address
security or virus threats, or for the purposes required under the law.
See “Choices
on How We Use the Information You Provide” to learn
more.
We collect information to:
-
Respond to your complaints
-
Reply to your “feedback comments”
-
Manage your access to restricted areas of the website
-
Fulfill requests for reports and other similar information
-
Register you for a member account
Sharing Your Information
We may share
personally identifiable information you provide to us online with
representatives within the Department of Transportation’s
Operating Administrations and related entities, other federal
government agencies, or other named representatives as needed to speed
your request or transaction. In a government-wide effort to combat
security and virus threats, we may share some information we collect
automatically, such as IP address, with other federal government
agencies.
Also, the law may require us to share collected information with
authorized law enforcement, homeland security, and national security
activities. See the Privacy Act of 1974 below.
Choices on How We Use the Information You Provide
Throughout our website, we will let you know whether the information we
ask you to provide is voluntary or required. By providing personally
identifiable information, you grant us consent to use this information,
but only for the primary reason you are giving it. We will ask you to
grant us consent before using your voluntarily provided information for
any secondary purposes, other than those required under the law.
Information Practices for
Children
We do not intentionally collect information from children under the age
of 13. If in the future we choose to collect personal information from
children, we will comply with the
Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).
Cookies or Other Tracking Devices
A “cookie” is a small text file stored on your computer that makes it
easy for you to move around a website without continually re-entering
your name, password, preferences, for example.
We only use “session” cookies on our website. This means we store the
cookie on your computer only during your visit to our website. After you
turn off your computer or stop using the Internet, the cookie disappears
with your personal information.
Securing Your Information
Properly securing the information we collect online is a primary
commitment. To help us do this, we take the following steps to:
-
Employ internal access controls to ensure the only people who see
your information are those with a need to do so to perform their
official duties
-
Train relevant personnel on our privacy and security measures to
know requirements for compliance
-
Secure the areas where we hold hard copies of information we collect
online
-
Perform regular backups of the information we collect online to
insure against loss
-
Use technical controls to secure the information we collect online
including but not limited to:
·
Secure Socket Layer (SSL)
·
Encryption
·
Firewalls
·
Password protections
-
We periodically test our security procedures to ensure personnel and
technical compliance
-
We employ external access safeguards to identify and prevent
unauthorized tries of outsiders to hack into, or cause harm to, the
information in our systems
Tampering with
Maritime Administration’s
website is against the law. Depending on the offense, it is punishable
under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 and the National
Information Infrastructure Protection Act.
Your Rights Under the
Privacy Act of 1974
The Privacy Act of 1974 protects the personal information the federal
government keeps on you in systems of records (SOR) (information an
agency controls recovered by name or other personal identifier). The
Privacy Act regulates how the government can disclose, share, provide
access to, and keep the personal information that it collects. The
Privacy Act does not cover all information collected online.
The Act’s major terms require agencies to:
-
Publish a Privacy Act Notice in the Federal Register explaining the
existence, character, and uses of a new or revised SOR
-
Keep information about you accurate, relevant, timely, and complete
to assure fairness in dealing with you
-
Allow you to, on request, access and review your information held in
an SOR and request amendment of the information if you disagree with
it.
When
the Maritime
Administration
collects information from you online that is subject to the Privacy Act
(information kept in an SOR), we will provide
a Privacy Act
Statement specific to that collected information. This Privacy Act
Statement tells you:
-
The authority for and the purpose and use of the information
collected subject to the Privacy Act
-
Whether providing the information is voluntary or mandatory
-
The effects on you if you do not provide any or all requested
information
View our Privacy Act Notices
Our Privacy Practices
For more information or for comments and
concerns on our privacy practices, please
contact our Privacy Officer,
Kenneth Moore,
by
email at Kenneth.Moore@dot.gov or by
phone
at 202-366-8805.
Also,
DOT has conducted a Privacy Impact Assessment on some systems.
View
our Privacy Impact Assessments
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