Daniel Solove writes:
Last week, the White House released its report, Big Data: Seizing Opportunities, Preserving Values. My reaction to it is mixed.
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FERPA is not getting the job done. It lacks many of the key components that modern privacy regulation have. As a result, school systems are failing to adequately protect the personal data of students, and they are sharing it with many companies, such as cloud service providers, without adequately ensuring that it is protected.
A few years ago, the Obama Administration wanted to promote the collection and use of longitudinal data about students to track their performance over time. Instead of seeking to improve FERPA’s regulatory regime to handle all this data, the approach was to have the Department of Education amend its regulations to make it easier to share student data with third parties.
Thus, it is now a big step forward to see a White House report calling for FERPA reform. It’s about time. But hardly any specifics are mentioned.
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