Thank you for
visiting the U.S. Department of
Agriculture website and
reviewing our privacy
statement. Our privacy policy is
clear: We will collect no
personal information about you
when
you visit our website unless you
choose to provide that
information to us.
Here is how we handle
information about your visit to
our website:
Information Collected and Stored
Automatically
If you do nothing during your
visit but browse through the
website, read pages, or download
information, we will gather and
store certain information about
your visit automatically. This
information does not identify
you personally. We automatically
collect and store only the
following information about your
visit:
1. The Internet domain (for
example, "xcompany.com" if you
use a private Internet access
account, or "your school.edu" if
you connect from a university's
domain) and IP address (an
IP address is a number that is
automatically assigned to your
computer whenever you are
surfing the Web) from which you
access our website;
2. The type of browser and
operating system used to access
our site;
3. The date and time you access
our site;
4. The pages you visit; and
5. If you linked to the U.S.
Department of Agriculture
website from another website,
the
address of that website.
We use this information to help
us make our site more useful to
visitors -- to learn about the
number of visitors to our site
and the types of technology our
visitors are using. We do not
track
or record information about
individuals and their visits.
You
Send Us Personal Information
If you choose to provide us with
personal information, as in an
e-mail to the Secretary or
someone
else or by filling out a form
with your personal information
and submitting it to us
through
our
website, we use that information
to respond to your message and
to help us locate
for you the
information you have requested.
We treat e-mails the same way
that we regard
letters sent to
the
U.S. Department of Agriculture.
We are required to maintain many
documents
under the
Presidential Records Act for
historical purposes, but we do
not collect personal
information
for
any purpose other than to
respond to you. We only share
the information you
give us with
another
government agency if your
inquiry relates to that agency,
or as otherwise
required by law.
Moreover,
we do not create individual
profiles with the information
you provide
or give it to any
private
organizations. The U.S.
Department of Agriculture does
not collect
information for
commercial
marketing.
When
You Visit USDA Agency/Staff
Office Websites
Please read the USDA
Agency/Staff Office Privacy
Statement when you visit those
websites.
Where
necessary, an Agency/Staff
Office may have additional
privacy criteria, conditions, or
information
that you should know.
Links
to Other Sites
Our website has links to many
other federal agencies. In a few
cases we link to private
organizations,
with their permission. Once you
access another site through a
link that we provide,
you are
subject
to the privacy policy of the new
site.
Website
Security
Information presented on the
USDA website is considered
public information and may be
distributed
or copied. Use of appropriate
byline/photo/image credits is
requested.
1. For site security purposes
and to ensure that this service
remains available to all users,
this
government computer system
employs software programs to
monitor network traffic to
identify
unauthorized attempts to upload
or change information, or
otherwise cause damage.
2. Except for authorized law
enforcement investigations, no
other attempts are made to
identify
individual users or their usage
habits. Raw data logs are used
for no other purposes and are
scheduled for regular
destruction in accordance with
National Archives and Records
Administration
General Schedule 20.
3. Unauthorized attempts to
upload information or change
information on this service are
strictly
prohibited and may be punishable
under the
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of
1986 and the
National Information
Infrastructure Protection Act.
Privacy
Impact Assessment (PIA)
The E-Government Act requires
that agencies conduct privacy
impact assessments for
electronic
information systems and
collections and, in general,
make them publicly available.
A
Privacy Impact Assessment is
an analysis of how information
is handled: (i) to ensure
handling
conforms to applicable legal,
regulatory, and policy
requirements regarding privacy,
(ii) to
determine
the risks and effects of
collecting, maintaining and
disseminating information in
identifiable form in
an electronic information
system, and (iii) to examine and
evaluate
protections and
alternative
processes for handling
information to mitigate
potential privacy risks.
Comments or Questions
If you have any comments or
questions about the information
presented here, please forward
them
to Wilbur Crawley, Office of the
Chief Information Officer, at
Wilbur.Crawley@usda.gov
or
via phone
(301) 504-4154.
Last
Modified:
March 27, 2009 02:42 PM
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