Privacy Statement for the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties

Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Main Page >> Organization >> Privacy Policy

The purpose of our Web site is to publicize the existence of this office, and to give you contact information which will enable you to submit comments or provide information about alleged civil rights or civil liberties violations, or racial or ethnic profiling that may be connected to Department of Homeland Security activities. The privacy policy relating to the operation of this web site generally (web cookies, etc.) is set by the Department of Homeland Security. A summary of that policy is available.

If you provide information about an alleged violation of civil rights or civil liberties, or racial or ethnic profiling, the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties will retain the personal identifying information you provide and conduct a review of your allegation, as authorized by 6 U.S.C. 346. We can conduct a review even if you do not provide any personal information to us. It may be difficult, however, to review your allegation or to report back to you if we do not have sufficient information.

• If you make a comment, we will respond or forward your comment to the appropriate government component for response.
  
  
• If you make a complaint, we will use the information you provide to initiate a review. We may perform the review from the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, or we may pass on the information to an appropriate agency or government component.
  
  
• We may contact you to request additional personal information, information pertaining to your allegation, or to update you on the status of our review.
  
  
• We may also contact other people with knowledge of your allegation during our review.
  

We will safeguard the information you provide in accordance with the Privacy Act and the Federal Records Act, as well as Department of Homeland Security policy. We may be required by law or government policy to release the information you provide to other government agencies, to Congress, to scholars and to other private individuals. Such disclosures may be mandatory under the Privacy Act, the Freedom of Information Act, or other statutes, regulations or policies. Under no circumstances will the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties collect or release your personal information for commercial marketing purposes.

A discussion of your rights under these laws can be found at the National Contact Center. Detailed information about CRCL’s plan for retaining and safeguarding data will be made available in the Statement of Records System Notice for the Office’ record system, called “CRCL Matters”.

If you have questions about this policy, please call or fax Office of the Chief Privacy Officer, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Washington, D.C. 20528. Phone: 703-235-0780 Fax: 703.235-0442.