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EDUCATION selling K-12 student INFORMATION and their rights to privacy

Privacy and Encryption companies gather and sell k12 student information. Check to see whether your school district has a policy about disclosing student information.

Teachers: Does your district have a policy regarding students privacy?

Parents: Check to see whether your school district has a policy about disclosing student information.

When it comes to your student's personal information, who's in charge?
The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, enforced by the Federal Trade Commission, requires commercial website operators to get parental consent before collecting any personal information from kids under 13. COPPA allows teachers to act on behalf of a parent during school activities online, but does not require them to do so. That is, the law does not require teachers to make decisions about the collection of their students' personal information.
The No Child Left Behind Act includes a provision that requires high schools to turn over personal information on students to military recruiters. In addition, the Pentagon now maintains a database of some 30 million 16- to 25-year-olds, including their names, ethnicities, addresses, cell phone numbers, family information, extracurricular activities, and areas of study.

Alumni Associations And Public Universities Profit By Selling Student Data To Bank Of America - Consumerist 2007

DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR STATE IS COLLECTING ABOUT YOUR CHILD?

Shawn Bay, the founder and chief executive of eScholar, a software company has helped build successful student data warehouses in 20 states. State Education Technology Directors Association also build the database. Examples:

WHOA - Cyberstalking - a volunteer organization founded in 1997 to fight online harassment through education of the general public, education of law enforcement personnel, and empowerment of victims. We've also formulated voluntary policies which we encourage online communities to adopt in order to create safe and welcoming environments for all internet users. Online Harrassment Stats

DEPT. OF EDUCATION PROPOSES EXPANDING IPEDS Inside Higher Ed, 1 December 2006
The U.S. Education Department has proposed significantly expanding the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), creating what it calls Huge IPEDS. In March 2005, the department proposed creating a unit-record database that would track students much more closely than current reporting does, allowing more accurate statistics for graduation and transfer rates among U.S. college students. Many in the higher education community resisted the unit-record database, saying it represents an invasion of student privacy, not to mention increasing the administrative workload. Some of the most vocal opponents of the unit-record database now see Huge IPEDS as a government tactic to move forward with the database by proposing another that is even more unpalatable. One official from a higher education association who asked not to be identified said, "It seems like a lever for the department to make an even stronger case why unit records make more sense." Mark Schneider, commissioner for education statistics at the Department of Education, declined to answer whether the new proposal is a decoy but did say that "people want and need more data, and were going to get it one way or the other."

School Districts' Staff installing spyware / adware on district-owned workstations.

School District's staff seems to download and install all types of garbageware: Example: Hotbar, Webshots, Bonzi Buddy, Shopping Buddy, Comet Cursor, etc. with little regard or thought as to what these "programs" do in the background (advertising banners, stealing information from forms).
Should the district care if staff wants to personalize their workstation? Most of these kinds of programs have become very, very intrusive and invasive. Ad components don't uninstall, browser security settings are abruptly changed, ads added to personal email, etc. What is the district policy if secretaries & custodians who have installed "Hotbar" (which puts pieces into IE and Outlook) and who now cannot fill out district browser-based database forms, and other staff members who now have lost their default browser homepage settings to Webshots or related garbage (and, oddly enough, Win2000 Group Policies isn't preventing it or fixing it). Some staff members get popup windows with advertising as soon as they start their browsers to view the district private internal webserver. Garbageware is starting to prevent people from completing their job duties.
  1. Do any districts have policies in place regarding staff installing software from the Internet (as compared to purchased CD-based software)?
  2. Staff installing software from the InternetIs this allowed freely?In your policies, do you address issues of whether these garbageware titles are violating federal laws regarding privacy of student records?
    Some transmit the contents of whatever form you're filling out back to the ad company. 10/02 Example: imagine if every piece of information you filled out in a PowerSchool form was sent back to CometCursor or Bonzi Buddy for evaluation (they're doing) Do you use firewall-based or content-filtering tools to block such invisible network communications between ad client and ad company?
  3. Is removing this garbage going to be a big focus for your school district?

Educational CyberPlayGround's Catching Digital Cheaters, how to COMBAT PLAGIARISM

SCHOOL PUBLIC ACCESS SYSTEMS -
prevent students from installing or deleting software on our public access systems.

Schools have tried to punish their students’ online activities and failed. Learn Why.

 

ARMED FORCES COLLECT CHILDREN'S INFORMATION

Mining for kids: Children can't opt out of Pentagon  recruitment database
By Kathryn Casa | Vermont Guardian
Parents cannot remove their children's names from a Pentagon database that includes highly personal information used to attract military  recruits, the Vermont Guardian has learned.
The Pentagon has spent more than $70.5 million on market research, national advertising, website development, and management of the  Joint Advertising Market Research and Studies (JAMRS) database a 
storehouse of questionable legality that includes the names and personal details of more than 30 million U.S. children and young people between the ages of 16 and 23.
The database is separate from information collected from schools that receive federal education money. The No Child Left Behind Act requires schools to report the names, addresses, and phone numbers of  secondary school students to recruiters, but the law also specifies 
that parents or guardians may write a letter to the school asking that their children's names not be released.
However, many parents have reported being surprised that their children are contacted anyway, according to a San Francisco-based coalition called Leave My Child Alone (LMCA).
"We hear from a lot of parents who have often felt quite isolated about it all and haven't been aware that this is happening all over the country," said the group's spokeswoman, Felicity Crush.
Parents must contact the Pentagon directly to ask that their children's information not be released to recruiters, but the data is not removed from the JAMRS database, according to Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, a Pentagon spokeswoman.
Instead, the information is moved to a suppression file, where it is continuously updated with new data from private and government sources and still made available to recruiters, Krenke said. It's necessary to keep the information in the suppression file so the Pentagon can make sure it's not being released, she said.
Krenke said the database is compiled using information from state motor vehicles departments, the Selective Service, and data-mining firms that collect and organize information from private companies. 
In addition to names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and phone numbers, the database may include cell phone numbers, e-mail addresses, grade-point averages, ethnicity, and subjects of interest.

S.F. SCHOOL BOARD SET TO PULL TRIGGER ON JROTC
A majority of the San Francisco Board of Education is poised to end the district's 90-year relationship with the U.S. military and its widely popular Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps, with a vote expected next week. Four board members oppose the program on two grounds: the military's stance on gays and the desire to keep the armed forces out of public schools. "I don't think the military should be involved in civilian life," said board member Dan Kelly, a self-described pacifist who served two years in prison for resisting the Vietnam draft. "I know that children, the students, like the program," Kelly said. "I know they enjoy it. That doesn't necessarily mean it's doing a good thing for them." The program costs nearly $1.6 million per year, reports Jill Tucker. The military pays $586,000, or half the salaries of 15 instructors -- all of whom are retired military personnel rather than certified teachers. The district pays the other half of salaries and $394,000 in benefits. Most critics acknowledge that the JROTC helps reduce dropouts. Students learn leadership and problem-solving skills, first aid, money management, geography, civics and how to be a team player, among other topics -- some of which they learn in other required classes. Opponents say all that can be done without the military.

How to Protect Kids' Privacy from the Government
k16 to 25? Pentagon Has Your Number, and More By DAMIEN CAVE June 24, 2005
The Defense Department and a private contractor have been building an extensive database of 30 million 16-to-25-year-olds, combining names with Social Security numbers, grade-point averages, e-mail addresses and phone numbers.
The department began building the database three years ago, but military officials filed a notice announcing plans for it only last month. That is apparently a violation of the federal Privacy Act, which requires that government agencies accept public comment before new records systems are created.
David S. C. Chu, the under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, acknowledged yesterday that the database had been in the works since 2002. Pentagon officials said they discovered in May 2004 that no Privacy Act notice had been filed. The filing last month was an effort to correct that, officials said.
Mr. Chu said the database was just a tool to send out general material from the Pentagon to those most likely to enlist.
"Congress wants to ensure the success of the volunteer force," he said at a reporters' roundtable in Washington. "Congress does not want conscription, the country does not want conscription. If we don't want conscription, you have to give the Department of Defense, the military services, an avenue to contact young people to tell them what is being offered. It would be na12ve to believe that in any enterprise, that you are going to do well just by waiting for people to call you."
On Wednesday, The Washington Post reported that the notification in The Federal Register had drawn criticism from a coalition of eight privacy groups that filed a brief opposing the database's creation. Yesterday, many of those privacy advocates, learning that the database had been under development for three years, called its existence an egregious violation of the Privacy Act's rules and intent.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/24/politics/24recruit.html?ex=1277265600&en=10803fe5d6f59fe1&ei=5090

ARMED FORCES RECRUITER ACCESS TO SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS
Did you know that NCLB Title IX, Section 9528 requires school districts that receive NCLB assistance to share student information such as names and addresses of students to military recruiters? Another provision in Section 9528 allows parents and students to protect this information by requesting that it not be released. Schools must notify parents of their right to request that personal student information not be released, but many do not do so. NCLB requires school districts to provide military recruiters the "same access to secondary school students as is provided generally to postsecondary education institutions or prospective employers." Many states and school districts also have policies that regulate the privacy of student information, in addition to the NCLB requirements. With their parents written consent to the school district, a student may request that their name, address and telephone not be released to military recruiters, institutions of higher education or both. At the link below are sample forms that can be submitted to school districts to request privacy protection of student information.

Student Marketing Group Inc.
Deceived students into providing personal information. The company encouraged teachers to collect the data from students, which was then sold to marketers to pitch the students for items such as magazines, clothes, and credit cards. Suit

American Student List, LLC
New York: (888) 462-5600 • Florida: (888) 550-8548
E-mail: sales@studentlist.com
Privacy Policy
American Student List then sells student names and other information to companies that solicit students for a wide array of goods and services. ASL provides the largest, most authentic lists of students available. They target children for promotions by zip, county, sectional center and state, gender, age and class year. Many lists also include telephone numbers. All lists are available on magnetic tape, tape cartridge, diskette, pressure-sensitive or cheshire labels, or through electronic delivery: modem to modem.

School students are entitled fo First Ammendment Protection.

American Student List pays for the information by helping to fund the National Research survey. Companies that buy student names from American Student List include shaving giant Gillette Co.; credit-card purveyors American Express Co. and Capital One Financial Corp.; Kaplan Inc., the Washington Post Co. unit that is the largest admissions test-coaching chain; Primedia Inc.'s Seventeen Magazine; and Columbia House Record Club, which is owned by AOL Time Warner Inc. and Sony Corp.

College-Survey Firm Quietly Peddles Student Information to Big Marketer

[source] Each year, more than one million U.S. high-school students take time out of their school day to fill out a survey asking their names, addresses, grade-point averages, races, religions and social views. The organization that sponsors the survey, the National Research Center for College and University Admissions, tells the schools it will broaden students' higher-education options by distributing their names and profiles to hundreds of colleges and universities across the country.
But colleges aren't the only recipients of the survey results. Generally unknown to high schools, colleges, students and their parents, National Research for at least a decade has also sold the personal information it gathers to the country's leading supplier of young people's names to commercial marketers, American Student List LLC.

UNIVERSITY

2007 The ruling says the student had "legitimate, objectively reasonable privacy expectations" concerning the data on his computer even though he had connected it to the university network. University policies, no matter what they say, "do not eliminate [the student's] expectation of privacy in his computer," the decision said. Read the text of the decision, , written by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

How They Manage
Student Data

 

The University of Texas at Austin manages student data  confidentiality and disclosure in accordance with FERPA, the Federal  Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (aka the Buckley  Amendment) and the Texas Public Information Act. Under FERPA,  universities designate certain formation as "directory information"  that may be disclosed without the student's explicit permission  (although students may elect to make directory information  confidential, most students do not). Under the Public Information  ("Open Records") Act, "it is the policy of this state that each  person is entitled, unless otherwise expressly provided by law, at  all times to complete information about the affairs of  government ...." including student directory information.
Texas Public Info Act: UT Austin's FERPA policies: http://www.utexas.edu/student/registrar/ferpa/

2000 Privacy Law Forcing Changes to Children's Sites
WASHINGTON -- The first federal law governing privacy in cyberspace takes effect on Friday, when Web sites that gather personal data will be required to start getting parental permission before requesting personal information from children under 13.
Lawmakers, regulators, privacy advocates, Web companies and Internet users alike will be closely watching the introduction of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act to see if it is effective, how it changes the online experience of young Web surfers and whether similar rules should be expanded to cover teenagers or even adults.
The Federal Trade Commission, which wrote the rules for the new law and which will be responsible for enforcing it, has launched a media blitz both on- and off-line to educate parents, children and Web site operators about the new law.
The law that takes effect Friday was passed two years ago after an FTC survey found that the state of online privacy protections was generally dismal. It requires all Web sites that gather personal information from children under 13 to have clearly posted privacy policies stating how that data is used. And they must gain "verifiable" parental consent before gathering any information.
Web Sites Related to This Article:
Center for Democracy and Technology
Federal Trade Commission: Privacy Initiatives, with links to information about the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act

Immunity provisions of the federal Communications Decency Act (CDA).
Legal Liability for Internet Service Providers Under the Communications Decency Act By Edmund B. (Peter) Burke
http://www.gigalaw.com/articles/2001/burke-2001-05-p2.html
A Win for a Public Library
In this article we will examine some recent cases that throw light on the interpretation of the immunity provisions of the federal Communications Decency Act (CDA). The decisions generally involve the interpretation of Section 230(c)(1) of the CDA, which states: "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."
The leading case on this rule of federal immunity is, no doubt, Zeran v. America Online Inc., a 1997 case from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. In Zeran, the court found that Congress made a deliberate policy choice to immunize those persons providing Internet access from tort liability. According to the Fourth Circuit's decision:
Congress recognized the threat that tort-based lawsuits pose to freedom of speech in the new and burgeoning Internet medium.... Section 230 was enacted, in part, to maintain the robust nature of Internet communication and, accordingly, keep government interference in the medium to a minimum.

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