Our use of information about you is guided by the Privacy Act (PA) of 1974 (public law 93-579). The PA was enacted in order to protect Americans and legal permanent residents (LPRs; "Green Card" holders) from invasions of their privacy stemming from the unauthorized collection or release of information about them. Basically, we cannot disclose information about you to others without your permission.

Some of you at one time or another may have been asked to consider a Privacy Act Waiver. You would, through this waiver, tell us who we can disclose information to. You could, for example, tell us to share information with family members but not with the media. It is always your decision. Absent your written permission, the default is that we do not share information.

So who is asking about you anyway? The answer in most cases is no one. Even with the broadest permission from you to release information we do not sell or rent your names, or make available to outsiders information about you. In some instances people contact us seeking to find someone in Japan, perhaps an old classmate, perhaps someone they think owes them money! In such circumstances, we never disclose information about you, but rather use the information we have on file to send the request to you, and let you decide to respond or not. Such requests, by the way, are very rare.

So what do we do with the information? Most of the information about you we have is supplied by you when you register or apply for a passport. Registration is a wholly voluntary way of telling us that you, an American Citizen, are here with us in Japan. We use registration data to make provisions in the event of an evacuation and to make it faster and easier for you to renew or replace your American passport. What information we ask for when registering you or renewing your passport is controlled by legislation; we can't add or delete questions from the passport application form, for example.

The full text of the Privacy Act is available elsewhere on our web site.

The next question is about how to protect the information you supply to us. The computer system we use to issue passports is isolated from the outside, with no connection with the Internet. Access to the system requires physical access into our office, knowledge of our Intranet system and various levels of passwords and access controls to our database.

When you sign up for our email updates, the email address you supply is the only information collected. These messages are written by us. The mechanics of signing you up are handled by a U.S. company back in the States. That company does not sell, rent or otherwise share your email addresses. In fact, the list of subscribers to our updates remains the property of the U.S. Government and any misuse by the company would be a criminal act.

One of the reasons we choose this company to help get these updates to you was that they have a NO SPAM policy; they will terminate any contract with anyone who uses their service to send unwanted mail. That's why you received a confirmation message when you first signed up. That was your way of telling the company you indeed want to receive our messages. That same confirmation message also told you how to unsubscribe if you choose.

There are three ways to register with us: in person, by FAX or through our web site.

When you register via our web site, your information is not encrypted when it is sent to us due to technical limitations of our system. Instead, it is transmitted immediately to us by email. The information is not processed by any company or service, no information is intentionally exposed to or collected by any third party and the information is maintained only in our internal databases. Your data passes through a firewall to us and then is re-keyed into our database to preserve the no physical link between our system and the Internet.

Persons who do not wish to transmit their information via our web site are welcome to register by FAX (the form is downloadable on our site) or in person. The three choices-- online, FAX or in person-- exist so that you can make your own choices about the proper balance between convenience and security.

We have never had an instance where any data held by us, or transmitted to us, has been compromised.