State lawmakers are questioning whether limits should be placed on how much information tech giants are allowed to harvest from students.
“A lot of parents probably have no idea how vulnerable their children’s online data can be,” Michigan state Sen. Phil Pavlov told the Washington Examiner. “Many people believe federal law contains adequate safeguards, but it’s outdated when it comes to the digital realm.”
As a solution, Pavlov is proposing two pieces of legislation, SB33 and SB510. Respectively, the proposals would apply to public schools and to private companies. “Together, the bills prohibit selling student data for profit, amassing student profiles or conducting targeted advertising toward students,” Pavlov says. “They also ensure that parents would be able to see if and why their child’s information has been shared with a third party.”
The legislation was modeled after a California law passed in early 2014, he said. Dubbed the Student Online Personal Information Protection Act, or SOPIPA, the law prohibits companies from amassing student data and using it for commercial purposes.
Since California approved its legislation, the backlash has grown against companies seeking to profit off student data. That sentiment made it to Washington in early December, when the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a complaint against Google with the Federal Trade Commission.
At the heart of the complaint is a “Sync” feature enabled by default on Chrome browsers on the company’s Chromebooks. “This allows Google to track, store on its servers, and data mine for nonadvertising purposes, records of every Internet site students visit, every search term they use, the results they click on, videos they look for and watch on YouTube, and their saved passwords,” the advocacy group says.
“Google doesn’t first obtain permission from students or their parents, and since some schools require students to use Chromebooks, many parents are unable to prevent Google’s data collection,” the group adds.
That wasn’t much of a problem in 2012, when Chromebooks comprised less than 1 percent of laptops or tablets shipped to K-12 schools. However, that share grew to 51 percent in the third quarter of 2015.
As a result, the issue has gained more attention, with both the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Parent Teacher Association calling for laws that protect student privacy.
“Current federal laws do not contemplate electronic records, online service provider rights and responsibilities or individual electronic student profiles,” the PTA notes in a position statement. It calls for laws to be “modernized to better protect students’ educational records and the collection of information gathered online.”
Congress has passed laws to that effect in past decades. The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 and Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 both sought to protect student data and allow parents to review how it is used. Yet as the PTA notes, those laws do not address modern tech companies siphoning data from afar, often unbeknownst to their subjects, and set it free in cyberspace for advertisers to absorb.
Federal lawmakers make take up the issue eventually, but Pavlov says he’s not going to wait for it to happen.
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“It’s appropriate for federal law to be modernized to reflect current risks, but states shouldn’t sit by and wait for federal action to protect students,” Pavlov said.
