“You are shedding data everywhere,” Mr. Podesta said.

The report makes six policy recommendations. They include passing a national data breach law that would require companies to report major losses of personal and credit card data, after attacks like the one on Target that exposed credit card information on roughly 70 million customers. It seeks legislation that would define consumer rights regarding how data about their activities was used. It suggests extending privacy protections to individuals who are not citizens of the United States and argues for action to ensure that data collected about students is used only for educational purposes.

But the most significant findings in the report focus on the recognition that data can be used in subtle ways to create forms of discrimination — and to make judgments, sometimes in error, about who is likely to show up at work, pay their mortgage on time or require expensive treatment. The report states that the same technology that is often so useful in predicting places that would be struck by floods or diagnosing hard-to-find illnesses in infants also has “the potential to eclipse longstanding civil rights protections in how personal information is used in housing, credit, employment, health, education and the marketplace.”

The report focuses particularly on “learning algorithms” that are frequently used to determine what kind of online ad to display on someone’s computer screen, or to predict their buying habits when searching for a car or in making travel plans. Those same algorithms can create a digital picture of person, Mr. Podesta noted, that can infer race, gender or sexual orientation, even if that is not the intent of the software.

“The final computer-generated product or decision — used for everything from predicting behavior to denying opportunity — can mask prejudices while maintaining a patina of scientific objectivity,” the report concludes.

Mr. Podesta said the concern — he suggested the federal government might have to update laws — was that those software judgments could affect access to bank loans or job offers. They “may seem like neutral factors,” he said, “but they aren’t so neutral” when put together. The potential problem, he added, is that “you are exacerbating inequality rather than opening up opportunity.”