Privacy Act awareness: it's everyone's responsibility Published Oct. 20, 2011 By Karen Leden Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst Privacy Act Office JOINT BASE MCGUIRE-DIX-LAKEHURST, N.J. -- Protecting Privacy Act records is the responsibility of every federal employee, military member and contractor who handles them. Everyone has a chance of becoming a victim of identity theft. The monetary and emotional cost of repairing an individual's identity can be extensive - requiring years to recover. The Air Force and Air Mobility Command are commited to protect personally identifiable information. What is PII? PII is unique information about an individual not releasable to the public without the written consent of the individual. Examples include Social Security number, date of birth, age, marital status, race and medical or financial information. The current Social Security number reduction plan is to reduce or eliminate the use of the SSN in the Department of Defense. The SSN in any form, including but not limited to, truncated, masked, partially masked and encrypted or disguised will be protected as high impact PII and marked "FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY." Exercise caution by making sure the message is adequately safeguarded when sending PII over email. Ensure there is an official need and addresses are authorized to receive it under the Privacy Act. Email must be encrypted, have "FOUO" at the beginning of the subject line and carry the PA statement at the beginning body of the e-mail. Do not indiscriminately apply this statement to every e-mail, to the bottom of your email or include in the signature block. Use only in situations when actually transmitting personal information for official purposes within the government. Do not send PA information to distribution lists or group e-mail addresses unless each member has an official need to know the personal information. Be sure to safeguard paper PA documents with the AF Form 3227 or the DD Form 2923. AF Visual Aid 33-276, Privacy Act Label, is mandatory to assist in identifying and protecting PA information on removable electronic storage media as laptops, government hard drives and CDs. Do not use these labels for file drawers, folders or other stationary equipment. Do not throw them away in a trash can and do not utilize the blue recycle bins when finished with paper documents. Be sure to shred the documents so they are destroyed, not readable and beyond reconstruction. If disclosure of PII data is discovered, report it immediately through the appropriate chain of command and contact the Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst PA manager. Additionally, any lost, stolen or possibly compromised information must be reported to US-Cert, www.us-cert.gov, within one hour of the discovery and contact the base PA manager. The base PA manager will notify the AMC PA manager and follow up with any further action within 24 hours. Contact Karen Leden or Traci Carpenter, JB MDL PA Managers, at 754-3445 for any questions or to schedule unit training.