MESSER/POLIS STUDENT PRIVACY BILL PROTECTS COMMERCIAL INTERESTS OF VENDORS NOT KIDS
Contact: Rachael Stickland, 303-204-1272, info@studentprivacymatters.org
Leonie Haimson, 917-435-9329, leoniehaimson@gmail.com
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Messer/Polis Student Privacy Bill Protects
Commercial Interests of Vendors not Kids
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The bill just introduced by Representatives Messer and Polis addresses few if any of the concerns that parents have concerning the way their children’s privacy and safety have been put at risk by the widespread disclosure of their personal data by schools, districts and vendors.
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Leonie Haimson, co-chair of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy said, “The bill doesn’t require any parental notification or consent before schools share personal data with third parties, or address any of the current weaknesses in FERPA. It wouldn’t stop the surveillance of students by Pearson or other companies, or the collection and sharing of huge amounts of highly sensitive student information, as inBloom was designed to do.”
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“All the bill does is ban online services utilized by schools from targeting ads to kids – or selling their personal information, though companies could still advertise to kids through their services and or sell their products to parents, as long as this did not result from the personal information gathered through their services. Even that narrow prohibition is incomplete, as vendors would still be allowed to target ads to students as long as the ads were selected based on information gathered via student’s single online session or visit – with the information not retained over time.”
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Rachael Stickland, Colorado co-chair of the Parent Coalition: “The bill doesn’t bar many uses of personal information that parents are most concerned about, including vendor redisclosures to other third parties, or data-mining to improve their products or create profiles that could severely limit student’s success by stereotyping them and limiting their opportunities.”
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Other critical weaknesses of the bill:
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- Parents would not be able to delete any of the personal information obtained by a vendor from their children, even upon request, unless the data resulted from an “optional” feature of the service chosen by the parent and not the district or school.
- The bill creates a huge loophole that actually could weaken existing privacy law by allowing vendors to collect, use or disclose personal student information in a manner contrary to their own privacy policy or their contract with the school or district, as long as the company obtains consent from the school or district. It is not clear in what form that consent could be given, whether in an email or phone call, but even if a parent was able to obtain the school’s contract or see the vendor’s privacy policy, it could provide false reassurance if it turns out the school or district had secretly given permission to the company to ignore it.
- Vendors would be able to redisclose students’ personal information to an unlimited number of additional third parties, as long as these disclosures were made for undefined “K12 purposes.”
- Vendors would be able to redisclose individual student’s de-identified or aggregate information for any reason or to anyone, without restrictions or safeguards to ensure that the child’s information could not be easily re-identified through widely available methods.
Rachael Stickland concludes: “This bill reads as though it was written to suit the purposes of for-profit vendors, and not in the interests of children. It should be rejected by anyone committed to the goal of protecting student privacy from commercial gain and exploitation.”
Privacy bill wouldn't stop data mining of kids
When President Barack Obama called earlier this year for a new federal law to protect student privacy in an era when children increasingly learn online, he called the concept “pretty straightforward.”
But the bipartisan bill to be introduced Monday — which was drafted in close collaboration with the White House — has proved anything but.
The bill lets education technology companies continue to collect huge amounts of intimate information on students, compile it into profiles of their aptitudes and attitudes — and then mine that data for commercial gain. It permits the companies to sell personal information about students to colleges and employers, and potentially to military recruiters as well.
And it empowers schools to authorize even wider disclosure of student data, without notifying parents or seeking their consent, according to a near-final draft reviewed by POLITICO.
At least one education technology company, Microsoft, already has endorsed the bill. And the chief sponsors, Reps. Luke Messer (R-Ind.) and Jared Polis (D-Colo.), said they’re confident it will quickly earn bipartisan support in both chambers; Polis said he believed it would sail through the House under a suspension vote, with limited debate and no amendments.
Privacy advocates and parent activists, however, are crushed.
“This bill doesn’t fulfill President Obama’s stated commitment to ensure that data collected in the educational context is used only for educational purposes,” said Khaliah Barnes, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center’s student privacy project.
Barnes said “huge loopholes” and “escape clauses” sprinkled throughout the 18-page draft undermine the positive elements of the bill.
Rachael Stickland, co-chair of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, went further: “This bill reads as though it was written to suit the interests of for-profit vendors and not the interests of children,” she said.
The bill comes at a time of increasing anxiety among parents, teachers and school administrators about the proliferation of classroom technology — and the lack of transparency as to how student data is being used.
The market for educational technology for preschool through high school is huge; last year, it hit nearly $8 billion. And every time a student clicks through an online textbook, watches tutorials, plays games or takes quizzes online, he sheds an enormous amount of data, not just about what he knows but also about how he learns, thinks and perseveres in the face of challenge. Top ed-tech companies boast of collecting millions of unique data points on each child each day. That’s orders of magnitude more than Facebook or Google gather on their customers.
