Daily Caller -
Students could have advertisements directed at them by Coca-Cola due to holes in existing privacy laws, one expert testified Wednesday during a House hearing on the data security of American schoolchildren.
Joel Reidenberg, who directs the Center on Law and Information Policy at Fordham Law School, told joint hearing of two House subcommittees that the privacy risks of growing digital efforts in education are grossly underappreciated.
The hearing, on the topic of “How Data Mining Threatens Student Privacy,” was shared between the Education Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education and the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection and Security Technologies.
Reidenberg testified that school districts often lack awareness about just what information they are transmitting to third-party vendors. Student data, he said, isn’t just test answers but also information such as family financial status, lunchroom purchases, physical fitness records and more.
Only 7 percent of school contracts with third-party firms explicitly prohibit selling student data, he said, meaning there is ample opportunity for private firms to exploit student data.
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