EPIC: Student Data Should Be Protected

This is from an article from Policy Matters Amassing Student Data and Dissipating Privacy Rights. 

From test-performance scores to student financial data to statewide longitudinal data systems, there has been a dramatic increase in the collection of students' sensitive information over the last decade. Both the U.S. Congress and the presidential administrations have touted the amassing of student data as beneficial and necessary to a successful education system. However, the increase in the collection of student data has led to a marked decrease in student data protection. Changes to student privacy regulations and government programs such as the Education Data Initiative underscore the need for meaningful oversight for the protection of student data.

The authors provide an excellent accounting of how student data is being released to various government agencies and private corporations/researchers.  This dissemination of student data erodes students' privacy rights.  They offer this conclusion:

In February 2012, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed suit against the Education Department regarding the changes to the federal student privacy regulations under FERPA. At EPIC, we believe the agency exceeded its authority when it revised the federal privacy law to make student data more available. And we disagree with the agency's decision to loosen the key definitions that help safeguard student records. Our case, EPIC v. Department of Education, is pending in federal district court in Washington, D.C.

When FERPA was enacted almost forty years ago, Congress made it clear that students' personal information should not be made widely available. Congress was particularly concerned that if student records fell into the hands of private parties, these records could hurt students later in life when, for example, students were seeking jobs. Although the pressures have increased over the years to access student data, Congress and the Education Department should work to strengthen student privacy rights and provide oversight on student data disclosure.

Read the entire article here.

Resist Invasion of Privacy at Schools. Hillary Clinton Will be Proud.

Scientific experiment = Creative Dissent.  Become a STEM ready student and constitutional scholar.

Ed Morrissey at HotAir writes about the "Nanny of the Month" and the winner is Northside School District’s requirement for students to wear RFID tags to attend class.  Morrissey links Reason's TV information on the tracking chip program which is not designed so much for educational and alleged safety purposes as it is for government funding:

This month’s lineup of of busybodies includes the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, where administrators may ban booze in dorms–even for students of legal drinking age (guess those college kids would just stay dry!). Then there’s Chi-Town, where officials are using GPS devices to track food trucks to make sure they don’t wander within 200 feet of any fixed businesses that sell food, including convenience stores. Violators could face fines of $2,000. Compare that to the $100 fine you’d face for parking in front of a fire hydrant and you get an idea for just how seriously city officials take the threat of competition. (Good thing the Institute for Justice is on the case.)

 But this time the nanny of the month comes to us from deep in the heart of Texas, where administrators at San Antonio’s Northside school district are tracking kids with radio frequency identification chips. Dozens of electronic readers have been installed in the school’s ceiling panels to keep tabs on the kiddos while they’re at school. The official number-one reason for going RFID is to “increase student safety and security,” but–since district funding goes up when attendance goes up–it’s clearly all about the Benjamins.

 With school-based tracking going back to at least 2004, the Lone Star State has been something of an RFID trailblazer. In fact, Northside is considering expanding the program to cover all of the district’s 97,000 students.

We've written several posts about government agencies tracking children from birth and the reasons why:

• Money
• The establishment of a data system for a managed workforce

However, the most insidious result of these tracking chips and longitudinal data system informatmion is the loss of freedom and practice/ownership/inherent belief of personal responsibility.  The government is now in control of your child's future and you have given it away to a centralized bureaucracy under the guise of advertising campaigns telling you your student will not be successful without the government's knowledge/tracking of personal data.

The comments from the HotAir readers recognize the long term detrimental effects of these political/private relationships and the power afforded to the state and taken away from individuals:

If I had kids I would not want them being conditioned to believe that it is acceptable for the authorities to track their every movement.

 and

administrators at San Antonio’s Northside school district are tracking kids with radio frequency identification chips. Dozens of electronic readers have been installed in the school’s ceiling panels to keep tabs on the kiddos while they’re at school. The official number-one reason for going RFID is to “increase student safety and security,

It is a trade of liberty, for security….and they shall have neither.
This is a ruse, it’s conditioning. Once these kids are trained to give up a little bit, they’ll give a little more. Oh yes, it’s passive monitoring I’m sure.

The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made,above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live — did live, from habit that became instinct — in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.

One reader has a solution  for dissent from these governmental mandates:

Ok. Schools say you have to wear those badges. But I don’t think the regulation says anything about the badges being EFFECTIVE.

Hey, kids! Here’s a hint. Google the phrase “Faraday cage”. For about a buck’s worth of copper screen, you can create an envelope around the badge that will destroy the effectiveness of the tracking device. Resist!

Hillary Clinton should approve of creative dissent and applaud this rejection/circumvention of tracking as she was quoted in 2003: 

"I'm sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and disagree with this administration, somehow you're not patriotic.  We need to stand up and say we're Americans, and we have the right to debate and disagree with any administration."

Try the Faraday cage science experiment.  Doesn't the government tell us it wants STEM ready students?  Explain to your school administration it's your scientific creativity at work to protect your individual liberties.

 

 

Facebook Privacy = Student Privacy. It's the Same Issue. Where's the Outrage over the Longitudinal Data System? The Argument is the Same. Your Privacy is YOURS. Your Data is Not Your Employer's and not the Government's.

Facebook put out a statement about privacy as employers have started demanding Facebook passwords from prospective employees.  Why are Americans so concerned about this issue while a breathtaking invasive data gathering is occurring in the public schools...for children from birth to death?

We've changed a few words here and there to illustrate the importance of understanding how the Department of Education is eliminating student privacy rights in public programs via the Longitudinal Data System...and providing prospective employers and various governmental agencies information such as your voting status, eye color, religious affiliation and over 300 other data sets.  You can delete a Facebook account.  You can't delete the data sets required by the Federal government to attend public school or to receive public services.

If it's not okay for employers to ask about Facebook information, why is it permissible for the Federal Government to gather data on students JUST BECAUSE they are in public school?

Following is an altered statement from Facebook (changes relating to education vs Facebook concerns noted in all caps) to illustrate the protection needed for public education students against the Federal government...and how the argument is really the same. Private or governmental agencies should not have a right to personal data information for employment and/or educational/governmental services.

**********************************************************************

Protecting Your Privacy (OR NOT)

In recent months, we’ve seen a distressing increase in reports of employers or others seeking to gain inappropriate access to people’s EDUCATIONAL profiles or private information.  This practice undermines the privacy expectations and the security of both the user and the user’s TEACHERS, ADMINISTRATORS, AND EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS.  It also potentially exposes the EDUCATIONAL FACILITY WHICH seeks this access to unanticipated legal liability.

The most alarming of these practices is the reported incidences of EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS asking STUDENTS AND FAMILIES to reveal their PERSONAL DATA.  If you are a PUBLIC EDUCATION STUDENT, PREVIOUSLY you never HAD to share HIGHLY PERSONAL DATA, let anyone access your PERSONAL DATA (THAT'S WHY IT'S CALLED "PERSONAL"), or do anything that might jeopardize the security of your DATA or violate the privacy of your FAMILY.  We have NOT worked really hard at THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION to give STUDENTS/FAMILIES the tools to control who sees PERSONAL DATA information.

As a user, you PREVIOUSLY  HAD NOT BEEN forced to share EXTENSIVE private information and communications just to get a job OR RECEIVE AN EDUCATION.  And as PUBLIC EDUCATION STUDENT, you PREVIOUSLY DID NOT have to worry that your private information or communications WOULD be revealed to someone you don’t know and didn’t intend to share with just because that YOU WERE looking for a job OR ATTENDING PUBLIC SCHOOL.  That’s why THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION SHOULD make it a violation of LAW AND INSTITUTE A Statement of Rights and Responsibilities  THAT IT IS ILLEGAL to share or solicit PERSONAL STUDENT DATA ON BEHALF OF FEDERAL AGENCIES OR PRIVATE RESEARCH COMPANIES.

We DO think employers should be asking prospective employees to provide their PERSONAL DATA because we DO think it’s the right thing to do, AND IN FACT, THAT IS WHY WE INSTITUTED THE P20 PIPELINE TO TRACK YOUR DATA.  But it also may cause problems for the employers that they are not anticipating.  For example, if an employer sees on A DATA SET that someone is a member of a protected group (e.g. over a certain age, etc., RACIAL GROUP, DISABILITY GROUP, POLITICAL GROUP, RELIGIOUS GROUP) that employer may open themselves up to claims of discrimination if they don’t hire that person.

Employers also may not have the proper policies and training for reviewers to handle private information.  If they don’t—and actually, even if they do--the employer may assume liability for the protection of the information they have seen or for knowing what responsibilities may arise based on different types of information (e.g. if the information suggests the commission of a crime).

THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND THIS SCHOOL SHOULD take your privacy seriously.  WE SHOULD take action to protect the privacy and security of our users, whether by engaging policymakers or, where appropriate, by initiating legal action, including by shutting down applications that abuse their privileges.

While we SHOULD (BUT PRESENTLY ARE NOT DOING) TO continue to do our part, it is important that everyone IN A PUBLICLY FUNDED SCHOOL understands they SHOULD have a right to keep their PERSONAL DATA to themselves (AS A RIGHT TO PRIVACY), and we PRESENTLY ARE NOT DOING our best to protect that right, IN FACT, WE ARE INTENT ON TRACKING YOU FROM BIRTH TO DEATH AND PROVIDING THIS DATA TO EVERY FEDERAL GOVERNMENTAL AGENCY.

-- DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, Chief Privacy Officer, Policy, AND ARNE DUNCAN, SECRETARY OF THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

The FTC is Worried About Child Privacy. The Department of Education, Not so Much.

Government urges more info on kids' apps

From eSchool News: 

“There is almost no information on what data is being collected and how it is being shared,” said David Jacobs of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.


The government DOES want to protect its citizens from privacy breaches!  It is protecting our right to privacy!  Yes!  Just like Facebook, the government is concerned about your children being tracked by private companies and wants to put a stop to the practice.  

What's missing from the last sentence?  Did you think the above quote was for all data gathered in the private AND public arena?  The FTC doesn't want Google to track your children via personal data gathered, but it's okay for the Department of Education to have access to even more invasive personal data to share with the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and private research companies to supply the workforce. 

Where's the disconnect here?  Is anyone else concerned why our information should belong to the government? Why is it permissible for ANY entity, private or governmental, to have access to personal data not voluntarily provided? Why is the FTC worried about kids' apps and privacy data, but the DOEd is willing and mandating private information be shared?

(More reading on the FTC's move to protect privacy may be found here.)

Judy Collins and the Majority of Americans "Really Don't Know Clouds At All" and the Danger to Individual Privacy

Do you remember Judy Collins' song "Both Sides Now" in which she mentions clouds, love and life?  She may have been on the cutting edge of technology in the late '60s and she didn't know how prophetic her words were regarding America's (and global) current technology phase.  We are living in an age that allows data to be gathered from every human capital's life. 

We've written about the common cartridge and the plan for a child's curriculum to be pre-loaded, plugged into a computer and delivered to the student for his/her study.  The teaching profession will cease to become a profession, as teachers will mainly monitor the student's progression (or non-progression) with the curriculum.  Direct teaching will become archaic as there will be decreased need for human instruction. 


This administration believes to become globally competitive, we need to know what the other countries around the globe are doing and what they are studying so we can play on the same field with the same data.  In this era of teaching "globalism" and the belief we are living in a global community and not an exceptional nation, an international curriculum becomes desirous and important.  We now need the common cartridge to supply a national curriculum with the desire (the Clinton Global Initiative) to adopt international goals for education.  We are not only ignoring the fact Federal law states a national curriculum is illegal, we are jumping ahead on the global Monopoly board  eager to be part of international educational goals.

Via technology we can now be part of the global community, compare our nation to others (and vice versa), and live the international dream.  Forget about the American dream, it has been extinguished in favor of common and international goals.  How do we believe this revised global dream is occurring and replacing the American dream?

• First, states must adopt common core standards because all the other states have to talk to each other to determine how their particular state is doing in implementing the standards and the result of the implementation.  The data has to be uniform in the comparison and cut down on variables.
• Second, the data is required to be sent to varying Federal agencies (Departments of Education, Labor and Health & Human Services) so they can run their own data supplying the answers to their particular questions and agendas.  Traditional educational data (name, address, emergency information, test results, etc) is expanded to include the social and personal data needed to service the child.
• Third, this information can be supplied to third parties the Department of Education deems appropriate in the interest of education without your knowledge or permission.
• Fourth, in the circumvention of the FERPA law, there is no language indicating this information will not be shared with foreign entities.  Why should there be any withholding of this information if it is to be used for the "global good"?

Your family's and child's information will be used from the time your child is born and all through the workforce.  Where will this information be stored?  In the Cloud.  Don't know much about the Cloud?  Here's an article from the Wall Street Journal describing the storage of data by the cloud where data taken from your child will reside:


At its most basic level, the "cloud" is simply the Internet, or the vast array of servers around the world that comprise it. When people say a digital document is stored, or a digital task is being performed in the cloud, they mean that the file or application lives on a server you access over an Internet connection, via a Web browser or app, rather than on "local" devices, like your computer or smartphone.

What are some pitfalls of personal information being stored in the Cloud?

Another problem is privacy. Many of these cloud services have good security, but prying hackers are relentless and smart, so consumers should be careful about what they store in the cloud. You may not care if a family photo is swiped, but your Social Security number is a different matter.

The cloud with "educational" data (paid for by school districts via taxpayers) will store this information and will then be used and/or sold for data driven decisions.  This is ostensibly done to improve education.  Starting at birth, children will now be tracked and assessed and this information entered into the cloud throughout their stint as a public schooled student.  

Here is an article from MIT highlighting Google Chairman Eric Schmidt's speech about how life will be structured for us and our children and our increasing dependence on increased data.  From  MIT News:


A “global mind” comprising humans and computers offers huge opportunities for informed decision-making, democratization of information, and world-wide problem solving, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said at the MIT Sloan School of Management Tuesday.

Schmidt said the rapid accumulation of data will push people to find better ways to solve global problems, with new, faster technology to back them up.

Throughout his talk, titled “The Future of the Global Mind,” delivered before a capacity audience at the Wong Auditorium, Schmidt committed himself to the idea that evolution of and access to technology will benefit humanity. Discussing world leaders’ approach to the global economic crisis, Schmidt said that many world leaders he has met are extremely well-informed about the issues, and can offer thoughtful interpretations of the relevant facts and data.

“Technology is not really about hardware and software any more,” Schmidt said. “It’s really about the mining and use of this enormous [volume of] data” in order to “make the world a better place.”

This is the future of the world envisioned by this current administration as well as it is ignoring FERPA law and writing regulations allowing your child's data to be released to the global cloud.  Do you believe that it is our DATA that will make the world a better place or the PEOPLE inhabiting the world?

If you subscribe to the mindset that people are only important for their data, then you should jump on this technology bandwagon with MIT and Eric Schmidt.  If the endgame is the person's data, the path taken to get there is secondary.  The purpose of educational data is not to improve the education itself, it's to improve the data resulting from the education.  It doesn't matter WHAT the curriculum is...as long as the data is trending upward, it can be deemed a success. 

Do you know you are providing this information on you and your child to venture capitalists and technology companies via the Federal government for free and without your active permission?  Just by your child walking into a public school and receiving services entitles the government to data mine your child.  The data is fed into the cloud and then transmitted to who, what and where?  

When Mr. Schmidt states "the mining and use of this enormous [volume of] data” (is used) in order to “make the world a better place” who is deciding how and why this information is to be used?  Whatever happened to the apparent archaic idea that the individual could affect change on his/her own?  Would Abraham Lincoln have achieved the presidency based on his data set?  Did Lincoln require government intervention (or private research firms) to reach his goal?  Would he have been allowed to pursue his goals based on his data set of failure? 

According to Schmidt's and Arne Duncan's theory, people are valuable on the global level for their data and need to be tracked so an institution, agency and/or entity can "make the world a better place".  This is important to understand.  The data is for the WORLD to become better, NOT the individual.  The need of the state supersedes the desire of the individual.   The information is to be used for governmental systems, the workforce, and private companies making a financial killing interpreting human data sets. 


When children are born today, parents should negotiate a price for the government to take data information for their child. There is no free lunch and there should be no free data taken from your baby for the government to use for its purposes via through the Cloud.  The government belongs to the people, the people do not belong to the state.  The peoples' data does not belong to the state nor should be taken from the people.


As Judy Collins sang in her song about clouds:


But now they only block the sun/They rain and snow on everyone/So many things I would have done/But clouds got in my way

Is this Information Necessary for Educating Your Child? Just Wait. The Questions Will Become More Intrusive.

The educational Longitudinal Data System may be in operation sooner than thought in terms of asking invasive personal questions. Here is a story from the UK Daily Mail about a California school in the Dry Creek School District requesting this information on a school enrollment form:

Did you deliver your child vaginally or by c-section? If you check the c-section box you’re asked to include why the surgery was performed. (Note: The questions are marked as optional.)

A follow-up story on Mominformation blog states the district has rethought its practice of asking for this information:

Story update: Momformation reached out to Dry Creek School District this morning and heard back from superintendent Mark Geyer this afternoon. He says the question about how a child was delivered at birth was included in a health form required for enrollment that was created in 2007. At the time, research indicated that children delivered by c-section were more likely to have certain learning disabilities and health issues. Geyer says the district looked into the matter after the CBS segment and found that research related to c-sections has changed. This morning, the district introduced a revised form. “The question about c-sections might have been pertinent at the time the form was introduced,” Geyer said. “But we’ve realized that the research has changed and there’s no longer a correlation.

Parents, taxpayers and teachers are outraged in their comments in both postings. They don't like the intrusiveness of the question and many tell the story of having birthed children via C-section and then those same children winding up as honor students through school. Some commentors believed this question could be construed as labeling parents who had a baby born according to convenience rather than from necessity. According to the school, it believed learning disabilities were more likely if a child was born by C-section, but research has changed. However, look at this 2010 report regarding C-section births in Scotland which states:

The researchers found out that earlier delivery is proportionate to higher risk of learning disabilities. About 4.9 percent of the studied cases were having special education needs. 1, 565 kids born before during 37 to 40 weeks needed Special Educational Needs (SEN). Kids born at the 39 week were more likely to have learning disabilities than their counterparts born at the 40 week of pregnancy. The study was carried out for 12 years.

The scientists also mentioned that SEN was more relevant and desired during the school time in the kids that were born after 40 weeks. They concluded that a complete gestational period ensure healthy and normal life for babies. They believed that till now, when the previous researches only considered babies born at 37 week as preterm as compared to the term babies born in between 38 to 40 weeks, this research can be useful to analyze and assess the SEN and learning disabilities in the babies.

Is this the beginning of assessing your human capital based on their entrance into the world? Should your human capital be labeled as high risk for learning disabilities before they even are enrolled in school because he/she was born via C-section?

Is this the start of obtaining personal information for the alleged educational benefit of your human capital? The new data system questions want the legal ability to know the religious and political belief of you and your child. If parents believe asking about the birth circumstances of a child is intrusive, they might be surprised to discover what else schools and the government want from you and your human capital.

Maybe you could state your student was adopted and you don't know the birth history. This most likely would place your human capital in yet another category for at risk students. How can a school possibly service a student without knowing the biological background of the human capital? Oops. It's difficult to place a label on human capital who doesn't come with full disclosure.

The following type of information will be easy to glean from your adopted human capital, or for any human capital if questions aren't answered by the parental unit. As we all know, it's very important to know information such as this to educate your child:

Eye Color

Source: Handbooks
The color that best describes an individual's eyes.

Code Set:

• Black - N/A
• Brown - N/A
• Red - N/A
• Blue - N/A
• Green - N/A
• Hazel - N/A
• Violet - N/A
• Other - N/A

Deadline for Comments on FERPA: Midnight EST, Monday, May 23.

You have just a few hours to make your comments and object to changes to the existing FERPA regulations.

Contact the DOE straightaway.

Regulations could be loosened and information provided to various agencies (federal and private) being provided information from your student and family such as:

• 1. Political affiliations or beliefs of the student or parent;

• 2. Mental and psychological problems of the student or the student’s family;

• 3. Sex behavior or attitudes;

• 4. Illegal, anti-social, self-incriminating, and demeaning behavior;

• 5. Critical appraisals of other individuals with whom respondents have close family relationships;

• 6. Legally recognized privileged or analogous relationships, such as those of lawyers, physicians, and ministers;

• 7. Religious practices, affiliations, or beliefs of the student or the student’s parent; or

• 8. Income (other than that required by law to determine eligibility for participation in a program or for receiving financial assistance under such program).

If you believe the government should have access to this information, there is no need to fill out a comment card. If, however, you believe this is an overreach of governmental regulations, then take 5-10 minutes and record your opinions. Be sure to print a copy of your comment with the comment number, your comment may take awhile to surface.

DATA is a Four Letter Word if You Value Your Privacy.

You may have been reading about the ability of Apple and Google to track their users' location and information:

Apple Inc.'s iPhones and Google Inc.'s Android smartphones regularly transmit their locations back to Apple and Google, respectively, according to data and documents analyzed by The Wall Street Journal—intensifying concerns over privacy and the widening trade in personal data.

Here is an idea of some of the information that can be tracked:

For almost two years, Alex Pentland at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has tracked 60 families living in campus quarters via sensors and software on their smartphones—recording their movements, relationships, moods, health, calling habits and spending. In this wealth of intimate detail, he is finding patterns of human behavior that could reveal how millions of people interact at home, work and play.

It doesn't stop at Google and Apple, however, your use of Facebook also compromises your privacy. This 2010 article on the founder is quite enlightening on the vanishing idea of individual privacy:

Zuckerberg imagines Facebook as, eventually, a layer underneath almost every electronic device. You’ll turn on your TV, and you’ll see that fourteen of your Facebook friends are watching “Entourage,” and that your parents taped “60 Minutes” for you. You’ll buy a brand-new phone, and you’ll just enter your credentials. All your friends—and perhaps directions to all the places you and they have visited recently—will be right there.

For this plan to work optimally, people have to be willing to give up more and more personal information to Facebook and its partners. Perhaps to accelerate the process, in December, 2009, Facebook made changes to its privacy policies. Unless you wrestled with a set of complicated settings, vastly more of your information—possibly including your name, your gender, your photograph, your list of friends—would be made public by default. The following month, Zuckerberg declared that privacy was an evolving “social norm.”

The backlash came swiftly. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Privacy Information Center cried foul. Users revolted, claiming that Facebook had violated the social compact upon which the company is based. What followed was a tug-of-war about what it means to be a private person with a public identity. In the spring, Zuckerberg announced a simplified version of the privacy settings.(emphasis added)

Here is one of the latest articles about Facebook's use of data mining information:

...privacy watchdogs say Facebook's unique ability to mine data and sell advertising based on what its members voluntarily share amounts to electronic eavesdropping on personal updates, posts and messages that many users intended to share only with friends.

"Facebook has perfected a stealth digital surveillance apparatus that tracks, analyzes and then acts on your information, including what you tell your friends," said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. "Facebook users should be cautious about whether the social networking giant ultimately has their best interests at heart."

You can deduce from these various scenarios with Apple, Google and Facebook, the idea of privacy is becoming quite antiquated. It seems as if the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) push by this administration is for naught: money is not made by creating and producing products; CEOs will become millionaires by selling other people's information. And let's package it by declaring privacy is an "evolving social norm". It's the ultimate nudge to give away our individuality for some company's or government's usage.

We'll be writing this week about this push for your data and your student's data while in public school and quite possibly, private and home school settings as well. Data mining is rampant in private businesses, so I suppose the government decided it might as well get what it could to drive the workforce and manipulate education services based on data.

It's been done in Europe for quite some time and we'll be writing about England's experience with tracking its citizens and what they do with this data. Since we're now copying their health system, the Federal Government probably thought it might as well utilize their data experiences too. It's all connected: health data leads into education data leads into workforce data. Stay tuned.

Arne Duncan is From the Government and He is Here to Help You

In its effort to clarify student data privacy rules for researchers and education officials alike, the U.S. Department of Education proposed several changes to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA, on Thursday and named its first chief privacy officer.

"Data should only be shared with the right people for the right reasons," U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in a statement on the proposals. "We need common-sense rules that strengthen privacy protections and allow for meaningful uses of data. The initiatives announced today will help us do just that."

There is a pesky problem standing in the way of sharing student data between states and Federal Agencies: present FERPA standards. If these standards are not altered, the data necessary to supply the workforce cannot be shared.

The DOE promises your student's data will be secure. Really? What's happened the last several weeks or years regarding cyber information?

• TJX, the parent company of T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, and other retailers, has not acknowledged how data on more than 45 million credit and debit card users who had shopped at the company's retail locations was stolen and sold to fraudsters. (May 9, 2007)
  

• A data breach involving online marketer Epsilon, whose clients are a Who’s Who of major banks and retailers, was only the latest in a string of hacking attacks aimed at getting email records for more thefts. Companies that have said they were exposed since then include banks Citigroup Inc and Capital One Financial Corp, and retailers Walgreen Co and Best Buy Co. (April 5, 2011)

• According to U.S. investigators, China has stolen terabytes of sensitive data -- from usernames and passwords for State Department computers to designs for multi-billion dollar weapons systems. And Chinese hackers show no signs of letting up. "The attacks coming out of China are not only continuing, they are accelerating," says Alan Paller, director of research at information-security training group SANS Institute in Washington, DC.

  Secret U.S. State Department cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to Reuters by a third party, trace systems breaches -- colorfully code-named "Byzantine Hades" by U.S. investigators -- to the Chinese military. An April 2009 cable even pinpoints the attacks to a specific unit of China's People's Liberation Army. (April 14, 2010).

The data sets from the National Data Education Model are set and ready to be used on your student. Don't worry if there is a cyber security attack on the Longitudinal Data Systems; information to be gleaned from an attack would only include some of the following:

• Base salary or wage
• Blood type
• Height and Weight
• Dwelling Arrangement
• Health Care History
• Health Care Plan
• Identification Results
• Immunization Status
• Insurance Coverage
• Overall Health Status
• Residence Block Number
• Social Security Number
  
• Voting Status

The United States Government cannot stop cyber attacks from China; why should taxpayers believe student privacy is secure because of a change in FERPA legislation?

If you believe this information is secure, you will also believe the following:

According to the No Child Left Behind Act, by 2014 every child is supposed to test on grade level in reading and math.

Not every child can test on grade level in reading and math. It's an admirable goal, but impossible to achieve. That's not going to happen. The goal for data systems is to beef up privacy protections. Like the NCLB goal, it sounds great, but if the government cannot stop foreign countries from hacking into military computers, do you believe the DOE can safeguard student data from hackers?

Read this sentence in the second paragraph again: We need common-sense rules that strengthen privacy protections and allow for meaningful uses of data. The problem with that sentence? Strengthening privacy protections don't safeguard the privacy and the "meaningful uses of data" should raise questions for anyone concerned about the constitutional right to individual privacy that your government is determined to document and share.

Question: Is a Version of the P20 Pipeline Already Being Used in St. Louis?

We've written previously about the educational data sets ready to be implemented for students to supply the workforce and reported in Pajamas Media. Data is set to be gathered via a P20 Pipeline on your student for information on blood tests, eye and hair color, gestational age at birth, voting status, non-school activity information and other interesting information. Your student will be tracked from preschool through age 20 and into the workforce. The data prepared is quite extensive and there are 351 data sets listed in the Education Data Model.

Why wait for a child to enroll in school to gather information? Selected pregnant women in the St. Louis City, Jefferson County, and Macoupin County, Illinois areas could be part of a national children's study for their children from birth through age 21. This is a story from Fox 2 in St. Louis detailing the collaboration between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and major medical universities.

What is the stated purpose of this study? By following children from the moment of birth until they turn 21, researchers hope to find out what role the environment plays in how children mature and grow. But environment is more than air and water; it also includes family, neighborhood, income, school, and race, among many other factors. By monitoring their environments, and running periodic blood and genetic tests, researchers want to answer hundreds of questions about children. (Emphasis added)

Does this information from a study about children from birth to age 21 either voluntarily or through school records bother you? Do you want the government and school to know details about your family, income and genetic information? We know what the purpose of the educational data system is from the Illinois Data System Warehouse Document.
It is to provide the workforce:

The term workforce is defined as consisting of the workers engaged in a specific activity, business or industry or the number of workers who are available to be assigned to any purpose as in a nation’s workforce.

The public workforce system is a network of federal, state, and local offices that function to support economic expansion and facilitate the development United States workforce. The system is designed to create partnership with employers, educators, and community leaders in order to foster economic development and high-growth opportunities in regional economies so that businesses find qualified workers to meet their present and future workforce needs. (Emphasis added)

This educational data is to be shared with the Departments of Labor and Health and Human Services. Where is the information from the pregnant women study being shared? From the National Children's Study website:

The National Children’s Study is led by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in collaboration with a consortium of federal government partners. Study partners include the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences of the NIH, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Here is some of the information they will gather on children in this study. (For a more detailed report you can access the 76 page brochure here). It seems as if it will indeed ask and answer hundreds of questions about children. Combined with the data sets from the schools, it appears there isn't much varying Federal agencies (over 40 Federal entities in the Children's study alone) won't know about your family or your child. Do you believe this is a positive development? Why do all these federal agencies need to garner information on families and individuals? Is this the role of government?

Whether you think it is a valid role or not, the government is already studying its first baby in the region. Here is an article about the first St. Louis infant born into the National Children's Study: http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/news/2011/03/08/first-baby-born-into-national.html

A version of the P20 pipeline has arrived in St. Louis with a week old infant.

h/t to CT