BACKGROUND

The growth of the Internet and digital government—that
is, e-government—has dramatically increased the federal
government’s ability to collect, analyze, and disclose
personal information about many private aspects of
people’s lives. Such information, once available only on
paper to a limited number of people, is now instantly
retrievable anywhere in the world by anyone with a
computer and an Internet connection, including by hack-
ers and firms specializing in selling information on indi-
viduals. At the same time as this dramatic increase in
digital government, the level of trust in government has
declined (Council for Excellence in Government, 2001);
currently, many Americans perceive the government as a
potential threat to individual privacy. Given these forces
at work in American society, one should not be surprised
to read the results of surveys that show privacy as a top
concern of Americans in the 21st century. If Americans do
not believe that the government is adequately protecting
individual privacy, they may be less willing to provide the
government with information. For example, most surveys
by statistical agencies are voluntary, and even others that
are mandatory, such as the decennial census and the
American Community Survey, can suffer from
underreporting by respondents. Such reluctance could
compromise the ability of government to collect infor-
mation necessary to develop, administer, and evalu-
ate the impact of various policies and programs
(Mullen, 2004).