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The Student Data-Mining Scandal Under Our Noses
Townhall.com ^ | April 11, 2018 | Michelle Malkin

Posted on 04/11/2018 8:01:14 AM PDT by Kaslin

While congresscritters expressed outrage at Facebook's intrusive data grabs during Capitol Hill hearings with Mark Zuckerberg this week, not a peep was heard about the Silicon Valley-Beltway theft ring purloining the personal information and browsing habits of millions of American schoolchildren.

It doesn't take undercover investigative journalists to unmask the massive privacy invasion enabled by educational technology and federal mandates. The kiddie data heist is happening out in the open -- with Washington politicians and bureaucrats as brazen co-conspirators.

Facebook is just one of the tech giants partnering with the U.S. Department of Education and schools nationwide in pursuit of student data for meddling and profit. Google, Apple, Microsoft, Pearson, Knewton, and many more are cashing in on the Big Data boondoggle. State and federal educational databases provide countless opportunities for private companies exploiting public schoolchildren subjected to annual assessments, which exploded after adoption of the tech industry-supported Common Core "standards," tests, and aligned texts and curricula.

The recently passed Every Student Succeeds Act further enshrined government collection of personally identifiable information -- including data collected on attitudes, values, beliefs and dispositions -- and allows release of the data to third-party contractors thanks to Obama-era loopholes carved into the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act.

And the so-called school-to-work pipeline creates endless avenues into taxpayer coffers for firms pitching data-gathering initiatives to "align" student learning with "skill sets" and "competencies" desired by corporations.

Facebook, for example, joined with the Department of Education's federally sponsored Digital Promise initiative last fall to develop a system of "micro-credentialing" badges for adult students in digital marketing. You can be sure it's not merely out of benevolence and public interest that Zuckerberg's empire is training thousands of these students to learn "Social Media Marketing Basics," "Marketing with Facebook Pages," "Marketing with Facebook Ads" and "Marketing with Instagram."

As parent and educational privacy advocate Cheri Kiesecker reported, the Facebook/Digital Promise partnership is "a wonderful data collection and marketing tool for Facebook and the US Department of Ed, but it is incredibly alarming for students' privacy and security."

Facebook is on the march from luring adult students into its orbit to encroaching on secondary and elementary school-age users through its Messenger Kids app and "whole-child personalized learning" programs funded through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. CZI, a "philanthropic investment company" funded with up to $1 billion in Facebook shares over the next three years, is headed by Jim Shelton. He's a former program officer at the Gates Foundation and a key Common Core champion in the Obama administration.

"Personalized learning" is an edutech buzz phrase for hijacking the classroom and hooking students and teachers on branded software and hardware -- iPads, smartboards, computerized portfolios, homework apps, you name it -- without any evidence that such shiny objects improve academic performance.

Under the guise of customizable assessments, public and private preschools in Colorado experimented with toddlers whose student activities and social/emotional behaviors were tracked using the TS Gold (Teaching Strategies Gold) system -- funded with $30 million in Race to the Top subsidies under the Obama administration. As I reported in 2014, parent Lauren Coker discovered that TS Gold assessors in her son's Aurora, Colorado, public preschool had recorded information about his trips to the bathroom, his hand-washing habits and his ability to pull up his pants.

Sunny Flynn, a mom with kids in Jefferson County, Colorado, asked all the right questions: "What security measures are being used to protect this data? Who exactly has access to this data? How long will the data be stored? What is the proven benefit of a kindergarten teacher putting all of this data into a database?"

With little public oversight, Google has infiltrated schools through its "free" Google Apps for Education suite. As I've reported previously, Google is building brand loyalty through its questionable certification program that essentially turns teachers into tax-subsidized lobbyists for the company. GAFE enrollees are "trained" on Google products, earn certification, and then open up consultancy businesses and bill their school districts (i.e., the public) to hawk Google's suite of products to other colleagues.

And this week, 23 parent and watchdog groups filed a complaint with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission alleging that Google is violating child protection laws by collecting personal data of and advertising to those aged under 13.

Over the past four years, Google has admitted "scanning and indexing" student email messages sent using GAFE and data mining student users for commercial gain when they use their accounts for noneducational purposes. Google can collect student/family data to target ads through related services outside the GAFE suite, such as YouTube for Schools, Blogger and Google Plus. These are not covered under the already watered-down federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

Under the Obama years, Grand Canyon-sized loopholes in federal student and family privacy protections opened data mining to third-party private entities. Those have yet to be closed by the Trump administration. Why not? It's time to drain the student data-mining swamp and their facilitators in Washington. For the children.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Government
KEYWORDS: 0bamaadmin; act; apple; children; education; everystudentsucceeds; facebook; google; privacy; spying

1 posted on 04/11/2018 8:01:14 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

They aren’t data mining students for profit. There mining their data to brainwash them in future elections


2 posted on 04/11/2018 8:03:09 AM PDT by montag813
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I wonder if they would shut a school down if a kid was browsing free republic?


3 posted on 04/11/2018 8:06:04 AM PDT by dsrtsage (For Leftists, World History starts every day at breakfast)
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To: Kaslin

Never ever let your child use a school owned computer.


4 posted on 04/11/2018 8:19:01 AM PDT by bgill (CDC site, "We don't know how people are infected with Ebola.")
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To: Kaslin

My daughter’s school requires the students use Google Classroom.

Always made me queasy.


5 posted on 04/11/2018 8:31:00 AM PDT by Skooz (Gabba Gabba we accept you we accept you one of us Gabba Gabba we accept you we accept you one of us)
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To: Kaslin

This is a from Yahoo message today when I signed in:
Imagine what google is learning about and the gov’t and will blackball the students in their grades and in future employment if you do not “think” correctly.

How we collect and use data.
We’ve updated some of the ways we collect and analyze user data in order to deliver services, content, relevant advertising and abuse protection.

This includes: analyzing content and information when you use our services (including emails, instant messages, posts, photos, attachments, and other communications), linking your activity on other sites and apps with information we have about you, and providing anonymized and/or aggregated reports to other parties regarding user trends.


6 posted on 04/11/2018 8:51:39 AM PDT by minnesota_bound
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To: montag813
They aren’t data mining students for profit. There mining their data to brainwash them in future elections

... then they will use their offices for profit.

7 posted on 04/11/2018 8:55:55 AM PDT by pgyanke (Republicans get in trouble when not living up to their principles. Democrats... when they do.)
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To: Kaslin

It’s only a “scandal” if someone who matters cares. I think schools could be running a human-sacrifice lottery in the basement, and the vast majority of parents wouldn’t really care. It’s still free daycare, and the odds are they’ll stone somebody else’s kid.


8 posted on 04/11/2018 9:22:47 AM PDT by Tax-chick (I have the easiest life in the history of the world.)
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To: Kaslin

FB has more information on more people than the FBI ever had.


9 posted on 04/11/2018 9:52:53 AM PDT by I want the USA back (Lying Media: willing and eager allies of the hate-America left. PS. f*ck the media.)
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To: All

OBAMA VISITS SILICON VALLEY -— tech bigwigs suck-up to Obama
F/B users about to be screwed. The genesis of Obama’s Stasi-like Democrat data base -—round one.

Let’s stroll down memory lane.

(hat tip edzo4)

ITEM-—Circa 3/13/17 Zuckerberg referred to a dinner he and other Silicon Valley leaders had about a month ago.

ITEM-—Here’s the news article edzo4 dug up
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2017/03/13/former-president-obama-visits-with-tech-leaders-in-silicon-valley/

ITEM-—it was not revealed who Obama met with during his visit to San Jose; as a private citizen, Obama is not obligated to say.

ITEM-—Edzo4 found this photo of the dinner from the Mercury News
https://www.mercurynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/20110218_094437_obama_tech.jpg?w=700

ITEM-—And edzo4 found this blog that names the attendees.
https://kellblog.com/2011/02/19/seating-chart-for-president-obamas-silicon-valley-tech-titans-dinner/

ATTENDEES: Obama, Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Eric Schmidt, Reed Hastings.


10 posted on 04/11/2018 10:58:01 AM PDT by Liz ((Our side has 8 trillion bullets;the other side doesn't know which bathroom to use.))
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To: Kaslin

I wonder if Obama took over the college loan industry in order to data mine college age names, etc, for campaign purposes.


11 posted on 04/11/2018 10:58:11 AM PDT by aimhigh (1 John 3:23)
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To: All

OBAMA VISITS SILICON VALLEY -— tech bigwigs suck-up to Obama
F/B users about to be screwed. The genesis of Obama’s Stasi-like Democrat data base -—round one.

Let’s stroll down memory lane.

(hat tip edzo4)

ITEM-—Circa 3/13/17 Zuckerberg referred to a dinner he and other Silicon Valley leaders had about a month ago.

ITEM-—Here’s the news article edzo4 dug up
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2017/03/13/former-president-obama-visits-with-tech-leaders-in-silicon-valley/

ITEM-—it was not revealed who Obama met with during his visit to San Jose; as a private citizen, Obama is not obligated to say.

ITEM-—Edzo4 found this photo of the dinner from the Mercury News
https://www.mercurynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/20110218_094437_obama_tech.jpg?w=700

ITEM-—And edzo4 found this blog that names the attendees.
https://kellblog.com/2011/02/19/seating-chart-for-president-obamas-silicon-valley-tech-titans-dinner/

ATTENDEES: Obama, Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Eric Schmidt, Reed Hastings.


12 posted on 04/11/2018 10:59:24 AM PDT by Liz ((Our side has 8 trillion bullets;the other side doesn't know which bathroom to use.))
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To: Kaslin

Today’s socialist-leftists here in the US and in Europe are tomorrow’s Stalin and Mao. Remember how the Soviets and Mao’s China had a list of social classes, learned occupations, religions and believers in non-communist politics who were persecuted and denied just about everything like jobs, school admissions and decent housing as the government controlled everything?

Today’s leftists are building lists of everyone’s data not just to use now to win elections or sell you crap with ads, when they run the government totally, your conservative or Christian kids, relatives and grandkids will be punished unto the third generation with similar peersecution.


13 posted on 04/11/2018 12:38:36 PM PDT by RicocheT (Don't argue with an idiot; people watching may not be able to tell the difference.)
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