One impetus for the Privacy Act of 1974 was Congressional concern about the government’s use of computers to keep records about individuals, with the Act’s preamble identifying automated record keeping as potentially harmful to record subjects.

The Computer Matching and Privacy Protection Act of 1988, or the Computer Matching Act (CMA), amends the Privacy Act of 1974 to establish procedural safeguards affecting agencies’ use of Privacy Act records in performing certain types of computerized matching programs.

Pursuant to 5 U.S.C. § 552a(o), “no record which is contained in a system of records may be disclosed to a recipient agency or non-Federal agency for use in a computer matching program except pursuant to a written agreement between the source agency and the recipient agency or non-Federal agency,” subject to other delineated exceptions.

Below is the latest Computer Matching Activities Report and a listing of all computer matching agreements with their corresponding Federal Register Notices.