I don't have much more to add, other than that I'm enjoying reading some of the background that you've given us regarding data matching.
The one example I'd like to run by you is similar to what Mr. Wallace cited as an example. We found this one worrisome. The federal government knew that 300,000 senior citizens were eligible for the guaranteed income supplement but had never applied for it. They knew this by virtue of their income tax returns.
We asked the officials, if they knew these people were eligible, and they knew they were in need, because they had to be really low income to be eligible, why they didn't just tell them that they qualified for another $12,000 a year. Their answer was that it would be a violation of the right to privacy to use income information for any purpose other than assessing taxes on their income.
Does that jibe, does it seem plausible? Given what you know about the Privacy Act, was the government acting properly in not using their income tax information for any purpose other than income tax?