🇺🇸Drivers Privacy Protection Act

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Drivers Privacy Protection Act

Drivers Privacy Protection Act

Drivers Privacy Protection Act is part of the United States sectoral privacy framework. It should be applied to the covered actor, record, communication, service or practice identified by the statute rather than treated as a general law for all personal data.

Current official version

Effective status: September 13, 1997, as amended

Citation: 18 U.S.C. ss. 2721 through 2725

Source basis: Current 18 U.S.C. Chapter 123 published by the Office of the Law Revision Counsel.

Scope

The DPPA restricts disclosure and obtaining of personal information from state motor vehicle records. It applies to state departments of motor vehicles and to persons obtaining, using or redisclosing covered information, subject to enumerated permissible uses.

Operational obligations

Organisations must document a permissible purpose or compliant consent before obtaining or disclosing covered motor vehicle information, restrict redisclosure to a permitted use, verify recipients and retain the required redisclosure records for five years.

Maintain an evidence-based applicability decision, identify the systems and records within scope, assign owners, configure access and disclosure controls, document legal bases and exceptions, train relevant staff and retain the records needed to demonstrate compliance.

Important boundary

The DPPA is source-specific. Similar information obtained independently may fall outside the Act, while data originating from a motor vehicle record remains subject to purpose and redisclosure controls.

Enforcement

The Act provides criminal fines, civil penalties against state departments and a private civil action against a person who knowingly obtains, discloses or uses personal information for a purpose not permitted by the chapter.

What this means for you

Map this law to specific products, records, communications and teams. Verify current statutory and regulatory text before relying on an exception, consent, permissible purpose or enforcement assumption.

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