This Week in Student Privacy: 5/27
Chicago Public Schools Mistakenly Release Student Information
Last week, Chicago Public School officials confirmed that “[f]ive vendors seeking to do business with the Chicago school district were delivered real personal data of 4,000 students for testing software intended for more efficient management of the district’s bus system.” According to Softpedia, “[s]ince the purpose of the data set required by the vendors was to check how their software solutions would fair, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) could have provided a random list of addresses or withhold certain details about the students.” Although “CPS took steps to remedy the problem and contacted the vendors with a request to destroy the received data,” “the info received by the vendors included...home addresses,...names, phone numbers[,] and disability status.” For more: NBC Chicago.
Penn State Faces Cyberattacks
Last week, Pennsylvania State University’s College of Engineering “took its computer network offline...after disclosing two cyberattacks.” The attacks, one of which “is ascribed by a forensic cybersecurity corporation retained by Penn State to computers apparently based in China,” allowed the perpetrators “to access information on 18,000 students.”
Articles/Resources
- danah boyd in The Message: "Which Students Get to Have Privacy?"
- On Senators Hatch and Markey’s Protecting Student Privacy Act: The Orange County Register,iSCHOOLGUIDE.
- On Senator Vitter’s Student Privacy Protection Act: JD Supra, Education Dive, SC Magazine.
- Education Week: “Five Principles for Securing Student-Data Privacy.”
- The Dupage Policy Journal published an article on a bill recently introduced in the Illinois House of Representatives which “would require students to release their private social media passwords to the schools upon request.”
- Education Week: “State Lawmakers Balance Concerns on Student-Data Privacy.”
This update was compiled by Hannah Offer. Hannah is a senior at the Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences and a research assistant for the Student Privacy Initiative.