Office of Privacy and Civil Liberties

The Office of Privacy and Civil Liberties (OPCL) supports the Department’s Chief Privacy and Civil Liberties Officer (CPCLO).  The CPCLO is a member of the Office of the Deputy Attorney General and the principal advisor to the Attorney General, Department Leadership, and components on issues involving privacy and civil liberties policy and compliance.  Under the CPCLO’s leadership, OPCL has two general functions: (1) it plays a central policy-making role in the Department’s development and evaluation of legislative, regulatory, and other policy proposals affecting privacy, both domestically and internationally; and (2) it is responsible for helping to ensure the compliance of the Department’s components with existing laws, regulations and policies protecting privacy. 

OPCL is responsible for ensuring the Department’s compliance with privacy and civil liberties-related laws and policies, and appropriately minimizing related risks, including under the Privacy Act of 1974, Judicial Redress Act of 2015, and privacy provisions of the E­-Government Act of 2002 and Federal Information Security Modernization Act of 2014, as well as administration policy directives issued in furtherance of those Acts.  OPCL develops and provides Departmental privacy training; oversees the Department’s responses to data breaches; ensures the Department has adequate procedures to receive, investigate, respond to, and redress complaints from individuals who allege the Department has violated their privacy or civil liberties; prepares privacy-related reporting to Congress, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, and other appropriate entities; and reviews the information handling practices of the Department to ensure that such practices are consistent with the protection of privacy and civil liberties. Finally, OPCL is responsible for advising Department leadership and components concerning international data protection and privacy laws and policies.  In this role, OPCL participates in international organizations charged with addressing these issues, and helps represent the Department in international negotiations designed to harmonize privacy related laws, policies and practices related to the Department’s law enforcement and national security missions,   which increasingly must take place in an information ecosystem where the handling of personal data by one country is inextricably intertwined with that of others.