§3572 Confidential information protection

Summary

Requires that information people or groups give a government agency under a promise of confidentiality for statistical use be used only for statistics and kept private. Only agency officers, employees, or agents may handle that data, and they may use it only for statistical work. Identifiable data — data that shows who provided it — cannot be released for non‑statistical purposes unless the person or organization gives informed consent, the head of the agency approves the release, and no other law forbids it. This does not reduce any other legal privacy protections that already apply. If data might be used for non‑statistical purposes, the agency must tell the public before collecting it. Agencies may hire agents under contract to do statistical work, but those agents must follow the same rules. Anyone who is an officer, employee, or agent and willfully gives protected information to someone not allowed to have it is guilty of a class E felony and can be jailed for up to 5 years, fined up to $250,000, or both.