DEQ Web Site Privacy & Information Disclosure Notice

Thank you for visiting the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality's Web site. This notice addresses privacy concerns about the information collected on this site.

The following topics are covered:

1. Links to Other Sites - A Disclaimer
2. Information Collected When You Just Browse
3. Public Disclosure
4. Personal Information and Nondisclosure
5. Requesting Personal Information Inspection
6. Cookies
7. Asking questions about this policy

Links to Other Sites - A Disclaimer
This site has links to other Web sites as a convenience to our customers. These include links to Web sites operated by other government agencies, nonprofit organizations and private businesses. When you use one of these links, you are no longer on this site and this Privacy Notice will not apply. When you link to another web site, you are subject to the privacy policy of that new site.

When you follow a link to one of these sites neither the State of Oregon, nor any agency, officer, or employee of the State of Oregon warrants the accuracy, reliability or timeliness of any information published by these external sites, nor endorses any content, viewpoints, products, or services linked from these systems, and can not be held liable for any losses caused by reliance on the accuracy, reliability or timeliness of their information. Portions of such information may be incorrect or not current. Any person or entity that relies on any information obtained from these systems does so at his or her own risk.

Information Collected When You Just Browse
If you do nothing during your visit to this Web site but browse or download information, we automatically collect and store the standard data collected by all Web server software. That information is as follows:

1. The Internet Protocol (IP) address and domain name used (but not the e-mail address). The IP address is a numerical identifier assigned either to your Internet service provider or directly to your computer. We use the Internet IP to respond to your browser request.  Example: 159.121.9.10 ;
2. The domain name (DNS) assigned on the Internet to your IP Address (if there is one).  Example:   somename.com;
3. The type of browser and operating system you used.  Example:  Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows NT; IE4WDUS-1998101501);
4. The date and time you visited this site;
5. The Web pages or services you accessed at this site; and
6. The Web site you visited prior to coming to this Web site. (Note: this is included so that summary analysis can be done on how visitors get to your site, i.e., from a search engine, from a link on another site, etc.)

We do not track individual user navigation choices. We do, however, summarize the information listed above to determine:

• what organizations are our most frequent users (item 2 above) to better target our content for the audience.
• what browsers are being used on our site to determine what techniques we can use to develop pages that will work with different browsers (item 3 above).  
• how often our pages are being used (item 5 above).
• by the traffic from organization names such things as the search engines that are good at directing people to the site (item 6 above)

For site security purposes and to ensure that this service remains available to all users, this site may monitor network traffic to identify unauthorized attempts to upload or change information, or otherwise cause damage. If security monitoring reveals evidence of possible abuse or criminal activity, system personnel may provide the results of such monitoring to appropriate officials. Except for authorized law enforcement investigations no attempts are made to identify individual users or their usage habits. Unauthorized attempts to upload information or change information on this service are strictly prohibited and may be punishable under the state law and federal statutes including the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 and the National Information Infrastructure Protection Act of 1996.

Public Disclosure
All information collected at this site becomes a public record unless an exemption in law exists. ORS Chapter 192 contains the Oregon Public Records Law and other program specific ORS's and OAR's.

In the State of Oregon, laws exist to ensure that government is open and that the public has a right to access appropriate records and information possessed by state government. At the same time, there are exceptions to the public's right to access public records that serve various needs including the privacy of individuals. Both state and federal laws provide exceptions. We may request personally identifiable information from you in order to provide requested services, but such information is handled as it would be on an in-person visit to a governmental office.

Personal Information and Nondisclosure
"Personal information" is information about a natural person that is readily identifiable to that individual, such as an individual's name, address and telephone number. Such personal information may be exempt from disclosure if disclosure would constitute an unreasonable invasion of privacy under the circumstances. A domain name or Internet Protocol (IP) address is not considered personal information. Most information collected by state government is assumed to be open to the public unless specifically exempted.  ORS Chapter 192 contains the Oregon Public Records Law.  Under this law, individuals are permitted to request that public officials not disclose a public record that contains their home address and telephone number under certain circumstances. ORS 192.445 specifies how to request non-disclosure.

• E-mail: If you send us an electronic mail message with a question or comment that contains personal information, or fill out a form that e-mails us this information, we will only use the information needed to respond to your request. We may redirect your message to another government agency that is in a better position to answer your question.

  The information collected is subject to the access and confidentiality provisions of the Oregon law including ORS Chapter192.

• Forms: In general, online forms only collect personal information which is voluntary (e.g. address to sign up for a mailing list), or information which is required as a part of a DEQ regulatory program. In both cases, this information is stored in the same databases as that which is received by other means. These databases are subject to ORS Chapter 192, the Oregon Public Records Law, and must be disclosed upon request. DEQ does not currently collect any information over the Internet which would be exempt from ORS Chapter 192. See "Public Disclosure".

• E-mail address and associated information: DEQ has entered into a contract with GovDocs, a technology provider in St Paul, Minn., to deliver documents using the Internet and e-mail. We will ask for a person's e-mail address, name, and/or organization name. The distribution system requires users provide an e-mail address with optional fields for name and organization. The terms of our contract ensure that the information collected may not be released or used in any form by GovDocs. However, the names and addresses in all DEQ databases are subject to disclosure as outlined in ORS Chapter 192.

  DEQ will not make personal information submitted voluntarily available over the Internet unless the form specifically identifies that as a possibility.

Requesting Personal Information Inspection
You have the right to review information collected about you by this site. Contact DEQ Headquarters to arrange this. Staff will have to ask for a significant amount of information to allow us to determine if any information about you has been stored.

Cookies
To better serve our users, we use "cookies" to customize your browsing experience on some parts of DEQ's Web site. Cookies are simple text files stored on your computer by your Web browser. DEQ uses cookies only to store a randomly generated identifying tag on your computer. Cookies created on your computer by using this Web site do not contain personally identifying information and do not compromise your privacy or security.