Privacy and Security

Monitoring Usage

For site security purposes and to ensure that this service remains available to all users, this government computer system employs software programs to monitor network traffic to identify unauthorized attempts to upload or change information, or otherwise cause damage.

Preserving Privacy Rights

Except for authorized law enforcement investigations, no other attempts are made to identify individual users or their usage habits. Raw data logs are used for no other purposes and are scheduled for regular destruction in accordance with National Archives and Records Administration General Schedules.

Unauthorized Changes or Additions

Unauthorized attempts to upload information or change information on this service are strictly prohibited and may be punishable under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 and the national Information Infrastructure Protection Act. While the CIA exercises every effort to ensure the security of this site and the accuracy of its information, we cannot be held accountable for unauthorized changes because the Internet is an inherently unsecured environment.

If you simply browse our Web site:

When you visit the Central Intelligence Agency FOIA Electronic Reading Room Web site [hereafter, the Central Intelligence Agency Web site] to browse information it contains, you do so anonymously unless you choose to provide us information about yourself. If you do nothing during your visit but browse through the Web site -- reading pages, viewing photographs, or downloading information for example -- we will gather and store certain information about your visit automatically. This information does not identify you personally.

This gathering and storing of information is separate from the activity described as monitoring in our Security Notice. Provide link to Security Notice Information gathered automatically is used for only two purposes: site management and, in the case of suspected unauthorized activity, for law enforcement and possible criminal prosecution (see Security Notice). Provide link to Security Notice The Central Intelligence Agency FOIA Electronic Reading Room Web site automatically logs visitor information from which summary statistics are created. We use the summary statistics to help us make our site more useful to visitors, such as assessing what information is of most and least interest to visitors, and for other purposes such as determining the site's technical design specifications and identifying system performance or problem areas.

The following fields are automatically collected and stored for each file you download:

• the Internet domain and Internet Protocol (IP) address from which you access our Web site;
• the type of Internet browser and the operating system of the computer you use to access our site;
• the date and time you visit our site, and how long you spent on the site;
• the pages, images, and documents you visit on our site;
• if you linked to our Web site from another Web site, the address of that Web site;
• if you linked to our Web site from a search Web site, the address of that Web site and the search term you used.
• the protocol (e.g. HTTP) that you used to request the file