Federal Legislative Proposals for the Protection of Privacy

Previously, privacy rights had to be litigated under one of the four recognized tort claim of actions. With the advent of the computer age, it was argued that new causes of actions should be created to supplement the individually recognized privacy rights of the people. At the time this article was written, several privacy related bills were before congress. The note examines the benefits of the bills proposed, and the (justified) failure of the proposals to consider a single federal information data bank due to its inability to safeguard privacy. It also synopsizes the Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights' findings on these issues as well as the privacy rights afforded by the Freedom of Information Act and the Privacy Act of 1974.