Why the Privacy Act of 1974 still matters — and why I’m defending Arizonans’ data

By Adrian Fontes

Submitted photo/Arizona Secretary of State’s Office

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OPINION — Privacy is not a partisan cause — it is a foundational American promise. The freedom to live, work and participate in civic life without constant government scrutiny underpins everything from the right to bear arms to the confidentiality of our tax records.

Americans rightly expect their personal information will be protected, not monitored or weaponized. Voter information is no exception, and as Arizona’s chief election officer, it is my responsibility to safeguard that privacy for good reason.

In the early 1970s, Americans discovered a disturbing truth: the federal government had been quietly building secret files on its own people and using them for political power.

That revelation shook the country. It forced Congress to confront an uncomfortable reality: without clear limits, government access to personal information would be abused, weaponized and used to silence dissent. In response, Congress enacted the Privacy Act of 1974, a landmark law designed to put guardrails around the government’s ability to collect, use and share the personal data of its citizens.

That law is not a relic of history. It is one of the reasons I have rejected the U.S. Department of Justice’s repeated requests for the sensitive personal information of more than 4 million registered Arizona voters.

To understand why, we need to remember what spurred Congress to act in the first place.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, congressional investigations uncovered widespread abuses by federal agencies. The Federal Bureau of Investigation ran COINTELPRO, a covert program that spied on civil rights leaders, anti-war protesters, journalists and political opponents. Americans were surveilled not because they had broken the law, but because they held views that those in power found inconvenient.

The Central Intelligence Agency, despite being barred from domestic spying, conducted surveillance activities inside the United States. People lost jobs, faced harassment or found themselves targeted by the government based on inaccurate or unverified information they could never see, correct or challenge.

Then came Watergate. Under President Richard Nixon, the American public learned how personal data and federal power could be deliberately weaponized against perceived enemies. The government collected information not merely for administrative purposes — it used that data to intimidate, punish and silence.

At the same time, a new force was reshaping government forever: computers. Congress recognized that emerging technology would allow the government to store, copy, search and share personal information at a scale never before imagined. Without firm rules, the abuses of the past would not just continue against the American people, they would accelerate.

The Privacy Act of 1974 was Congress’s answer. It established a simple but powerful principle: the federal government cannot collect, use, or share personal information without clear authority, transparency and accountability. Americans won the right to know what records the government keeps about them, to correct errors and to limit how their information is disclosed.

Government adherence to these protections is not optional. They are not inconvenient technicalities. They are the direct result of hard lessons learned when government power went unchecked.

In the 50 years since the law was passed, federal courts from the Supreme Court on down have upheld and applied its protections, including its criminal penalties for government officials who violate it.

Today, those lessons matter more than ever. We live in an era of massive digital databases, advanced analytics and unprecedented data-sharing capabilities. Information that once took months to compile can now be transferred in seconds. That efficiency can be useful — but it can also be dangerous.

When federal agencies seek broad access to sensitive voter data without clear legal justification, strong safeguards, and a narrowly defined purpose, the risks are real. History shows us exactly how such access can be misused. The Privacy Act was written to prevent those mistakes from being repeated, regardless of who is in power or how well-intentioned the request may be.

Protecting voter data is not about secrecy or obstruction. It is about honoring the law, respecting individual privacy and maintaining public trust in our democratic institutions. Arizonans expect their personal information to be safeguarded — not casually handed over, aggregated or repurposed in ways that exceed what the law allows.

Unchecked access to personal data is not efficiency. It is power. And in our constitutional republic, power must always be limited, justified and accountable.

That is why I will continue to stand by the Privacy Act of 1974. And that is why, as Arizona’s secretary of state, I will continue to protect the sensitive personal information of the people I serve.

Adrian Fontes has served as Arizona's 21^st secretary of state since 2023. He wrote this for Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA. Please submit comments at yourvalley.net/letters or email them to AzOpinions@iniusa.org. We are committed to publishing a wide variety of reader opinions, as long as they meet our Civility Guidelines.