Evan Selinger & Brenda Leong on Student Data Privacy

On September 17, Passcode published “The Case for Safeguarding Students’ Digital Privacy”, an opinion piece discussing the results of a recent FPF-sponsored survey on parents’ attitudes towards the collection and use of student data.  Coauthored by FPF’s own Evan Selinger and Brenda Leong, the piece identifies the risks to students who maintain an active online presence without a working knowledge of sensitive data and digital privacy, and what schools ought to do to address this emerging problem.

From the article:

We personally believe elementary schools that integrate tablets, laptops, and desktops into their curricula should be assuming more responsibility for confronting the long-term implications of online identities created by students.

When students are led through the process of creating accounts and setting up passwords, schools become responsible for providing a broader explanation for why passwords matter and what happens once information is stored in databases and others can analyze it. Even if the ideals reflected in the survey became safeguarded by perfect procedures…students still would remain vulnerable to all kinds of extra-curricular data collection and scrutiny.

You can read the full article by clicking here.