All About Military Records

The military records is where you will find all the information pertaining to millions of military personnel’s health, medical records as well as information on the discharged and deceased veterans. The military personnel records also come with information on medical records of retirees from all services, the date a person entered service, the position and branch under which the individual entered, deployment history, court martial and even commendations, as well as details on enlistment duration.

You can get information online on people who spent time in the military and this information is a good resource for genealogy researchers and historians. One can make a request for information on the military records; information will be provided to the extent that the law permits.

Federal Privacy Act

The Federal Privacy Act is quite similar to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA); this act mainly puts a limitation to the kind of information that government agencies can collect about military personnel, it also puts a limitation on agencies from disclosing information about individuals to the public or the other agencies, and provides procedures for the military personnel to amend the wrong information available in government files.

Military personnel can also sue a government agency that violates the rules of the Privacy Act; in such cases, individuals can also obtain an injunction, attorney’s fees and damages.

The Privacy Act allows military personnel as well as other individuals have a look at the information that the government has in its records and make changes when the information is not correct. There is a legal procedure for gaining access to one’s personal information. Note that the Privacy Act is not applicable to all the government information and agencies. Information can be requested on military personnel if an individual is able to provide the person’s name, social security number or any other kind of personal identifier.

Handling of Privacy Act Requests

As with the FOIA, a single government agency does not handle the Privacy Act requests. You need to contact the Privacy Act Officer or the head of all agencies that you think has information on you. Military personnel and general public have the right to know from agencies whether they have information on them or not. You can send a letter marked “Privacy Act Request”, mention the date, the name of the agency and request access to information. You may have to pay certain amount of fees and even provide your telephone number of the agency wants to contact you.

You should be getting a response in 10 days; if there is no response in a month, you have to send the request again enclosing a copy of the original request that was made. Request changes for any misinformation that you find on the military records; if your request is denied take the matter to court.

A majority of the federal agencies have links to specific Privacy Act instructions and you can be enlightened on what kind of information the agency collects, what they do with it, why they require such information, and how you can gain access to such information.