FEMA officials initially would not disclose to his family the whereabouts of evacuee Edwin Coleman, 80. (By John Pomfret -- The Washington Post)

FEMA Restricts Evacuee Data, Citing Privacy
Families and Police Protest
By John Pomfret
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 12, 2005; Page A01

SAN ANTONIO, Oct. 11 -- The Federal Emergency Management Agency is restricting the release of information on Hurricane Katrina evacuees, complicating efforts by families to find loved ones and by law enforcement officials searching for parolees and convicted sex offenders.

Citing privacy concerns, FEMA has rejected a request by Texas officials for access to its database of the more than 100,000 evacuees who have registered for state aid, according to the governor's office. FEMA has also declined requests from five states to cross-check a database of convicted sex offenders and parolees against a list of evacuees requesting federal assistance, law enforcement officials said.

FEMA officials have started prohibiting workers at a large shelter here from sharing information about evacuees even with family members unless the evacuees had signed release forms. In many cases, relief workers said, such forms were lost or never presented in the chaos of the exodus. FEMA authorities made similar restrictions last week when they took over management of shelters in Beaumont, Tex.

"If we find someone, we've been instructed to tell family members, 'He or she is alive and well in San Antonio,' and that's it," said Rene Gauna, a San Antonio city employee working at a FEMA-managed shelter at the old Kelly Air Force Base. "We're no longer allowed to release new addresses or telephone numbers or tell people where their loved ones have moved."
Washington Post

The Privacy Act of 1974 protects all of that sort of personal information unless a release is obvious (usually a signed form). This is to keep states or agencies from getting a hold of 'undesirables', like pot smokers, and other minor offender records, and using them to justify kicking them out of aid shelters and what-not, but in this case, with over 9,500 people still listed as missing in NO, it also leads to the foundation of many conspiracy theories regarding the calculation of still dead/missing/unaccounted for in NO. It has also added enragement by local officials over the disappearence of 100's of sex offenders, including child sex offenders and the FEDS relunctance to help.