In 1992 seven students at Rutgers University sought federal court action to compel University administrators to protect their Social Security Numbers (SSN) from dissemination. The case became known as Krebs v Rutgers. It is often cited as guidance for what must be done to protect privacy from promiscuous use of SSN. The court record tells their story.
Tag: FERPA
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Protecting the Security of Student Data: CollegeNet v XAP, A Case Study
In her blog “Law, Policy and IT” Tracy Mitrano expressed a concern: protecting student privacy as colleges and universities outsource information processing with external servicers. To ensure education records are protected, she writes, outsourcing contracts must explicitly detail the protection to be provided student data. She suggested contract provisions should require an entity comply with federal law including the Federal Education Rights Privacy Act. FERPA is one of the United States’ earliest public privacy laws enacted more than thirty years ago. She said “the Department of Education has already made clear that outsourcing these records does not alleviate the institution of its obligations under this law.” Her recommendation would build a “chain of responsibility” for the privacy and security of student education records. She observes these records have become “an important and permanent marker of an individual in a competitive society currently plagued by high unemployment rates even among college and professional school graduates in an era where corporations and firms routinely amass information from a variety of sources in the course of hiring.”
Student data have been disclosed and sold without permission by external vendors. One example is described in the court records of CollegeNet Inc. v XAP Corporation, U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon.
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How Georgia Tech Has Shown the Perils of SOPA
This has been a tough week for open education, at least in higher education. First came the news that Georgia Tech has taken down a 14-year-old student wiki site that allowed discussions and collaboration across courses and across semesters. Next came the news of more details on proposed intellectual property laws in Congress, dubbed SOPA for Stop Online Piracy Act, that are being drafted in a draconian manner to protect content providers while taking away reasonable “safe harbor” protections for internet site operators. Despite the nominal differences in these two pieces of legislation, I think that the Georgia Tech FERPA decision has shown just how dangerous SOPA could be to higher education.
Ramblin Wreck
The system under consideration at Georgia Tech was “Swikis”, a site that students used for their coursework and broader educational usage. As described in the Chronicle, all it took was for one student to cause the institution to shut down the whole Swikis program, despite the fact that students choose how to participate. The reason for Georgia Tech’s decision was their interpretation over violating FERPA regulations. No ambiguity here, just a simple interpretation by the institution despite the fact that FERPA was written into law in 1974, well before we had an internet and collaborative online software.