The Privacy Act 2020 is the law that governs how organisations collect, use, and share personal information. The Act also gives you the right to access information about yourself, and correct it if it’s wrong.
Contact us by email or post to ask us for personal information you think we might hold about you.
Email: oia.privacy@nzsis.govt.nz
Post: NZSIS, PO Box 900, Wellington
We need some information to respond to your request. When you contact us, send us the following information so we can respond to your request:
- Your full name
- Your date of birth and place of birth
- Your contact address (email or postal)
- Details of your request, such as a specific time-frame (for example, any information we may hold about you for the period from 1 January 2010 to 31 December 2015)
- A copy of an identity document.
The Privacy Act requires agencies to be satisfied about the identity of an individual before responding to a request so we do not reveal personal information to the wrong person. The easiest way to do this is for you to include a scanned copy or photograph of your photo identification, such as a driver’s licence, with your request.
We may ask you for more details if we need them to respond to your request.
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner’s website has an AboutMe tool that will help you create your request and automatically email it to us.
Go to the AboutMe(external link) tool
Requests for information about other people are generally dealt with under the Official Information Act.
Learn more about the Official Information Act, or contact us by email or post to so we can explain what is required if you want to request information about someone else.
Email: oia.privacy@nzsis.govt.nz
Post: NZSIS, PO Box 900, Wellington
We’ll tell you how we’ll respond to your request as soon as practicable – within 20 working days after we get your request.
We may need more time to respond. If this happens, we’ll tell you how much longer it will take.
If you ask for information held by another government agency we will transfer it and let you know we have done this.
We try to be as open as possible about what we do. But because some aspects of our work would stop being effective if made public, we may need to respond to your request for information with “We can neither confirm nor deny the existence or non-existence of information”.
Why we sometimes neither confirm nor deny
Revealing details about what we do or do not know, or capabilities and methods we do and do not use, can hurt New Zealand’s interests. Over time, we would reveal too much information about what we are or are not interested in.
If you receive a “neither confirm nor deny” response, this does not mean that we are investigating you, that you pose a security risk or that we hold information about you.
If you’re unhappy with our response to your request, contact us first to see if we can resolve the issue.
If we can’t resolve the issue, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner.
Complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner(external link)
If the Office of the Privacy Commissioner cannot resolve the issue, you can complain to the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security.
Complain to the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security(external link)