For immediate release: July 30, 2014

 

Rachael Stickland, 303-204-1272; [email protected]

Leonie Haimson: 917-435-9329; [email protected]

 

On the Markey/Hatch student privacy bill

 

Rachael Stickland, co-chair of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, said: “Though we appreciate the effort that Senators Markey and Hatch have undertaken on behalf of better privacy protections for students, their proposed legislative fix falls short of what’s needed; it sets no specific security standards for the storage or transmission of children’s personal information, allows unlimited disclosures and redisclosures  to for-profit vendors and other third parties without parental consent as long as the data isn’t used for marketing purposes, and doesn’t even require that schools and districts inform parents as to what personal information is being shared with which particular vendors.  Thus the clause that requires that parents be able to amend the information held by the vendor is nonsensical as its unclear how they would even know who to contact.” 

 

Said Leonie Haimson, the other co-chair of the Parent Coalition, “Nothing in this bill would have stopped the outrageous data-grab of inBloom, or any of the other companies set to take its place. We need a far stronger bill to do the job that parents are demanding:  protecting their children’s privacy and safety from breaches and  unwarranted data-mining.”

 

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The link to the “Protecting Student Privacy Act ” is here.