[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Pages 11351-11352]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     PROTECTING STUDENT PRIVACY ACT

  Mr. MARKEY. Madam President, we do not have to look any further than 
the recent data breaches at the Government Office of Personnel 
Management, Target, Home Depot, Sony, Neiman Marcus, and countless 
others to know there are pitfalls to the rush to store our personal, 
sensitive data online. And there is no information more personal and 
more sensitive than that of school-aged children.
  The business of sifting through and storing the records of grade 
school and high school students is growing as fast as students are. By 
collecting personal information about students' test results and 
learning abilities, teachers may find better ways to educate their 
students. We can help improve their test scores, improve academic 
achievement, and prepare students for the future.
  The increased use of data analysis of student performance holds 
promise for increasing student achievement, but at the same time there 
are perils from a privacy perspective. Putting the sensitive 
information of students in the hands of third parties and private 
sector companies raises a number of very serious questions about the 
privacy rights of parents and their children. The information being 
collected is about students as young as 5 years old.

[[Page 11352]]

  As a nation, we have already decided that children require extra 
protection, and that is why in the House of Representatives I was the 
principal author of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, or 
COPPA, which is what it is called. COPPA is the communications 
constitution for protecting children when they are online. I believe 
very deeply that parents, not private companies, should have the right 
to control information about their children, even when a child's data 
is in the hands of a private company.
  We know that the pre-K through 12 educational software and digital 
content market is currently worth more than $8 billion. I will say that 
again. An $8 billion industry has now been built up around pre-K 
through 12 educational software, and nearly all of America's school 
districts rely on cloud services for a diverse range of functions that 
include data collection and analysis related to student performance.
  As data analytics companies increasingly play a role in the education 
area, Congress must act to ensure that safeguards are in place for 
student data that is shared with third parties. Show-and-tell should be 
a classroom exercise with students, not with students' personal and 
sensitive information.
  A child's educational record should not be sold as a product on the 
open market. That is why earlier this year I introduced the Protecting 
Student Privacy Act with Senators Hatch and Kirk. That is why today my 
colleague Senator Hatch and I are offering a bipartisan amendment which 
the Senators will be asked to vote on which will establish a commission 
to report to Congress on how we protect student privacy and parental 
rights in the digital age.
  These recommendations the Senators will be voting on here today will 
include a number of things--No. 1, how to prevent marketers from using 
educational records to target students with advertisements. The goal 
here is to help young scholars make the grade--not to have private 
sector companies make a sale. They should not be using the information 
they have in order to target young kids with products. That should be 
an issue for which we have a national policy.
  No. 2, when should student information be deleted? Permanent records 
of children shouldn't be held permanently by private sector companies, 
but only by students and their parents.
  No. 3 is how parents should be able to access and correct private 
information about their children. Just as there could be an erroneous 
charge on a credit report and that should not prevent someone from 
getting a loan, a false grade or a false bit of information on a report 
card shouldn't prevent a young person from getting into the college of 
their choice, and parents should have the ability to say they want that 
changed.
  No. 4, how do we ensure that outside vendors, outside companies that 
handle and store this sensitive information put in place the strongest 
possible data security standards? This is a business. These companies 
are making money, saying: We will store this information so you don't 
have to build more physical storehouses. We will put this information 
up into the cloud. That will be a real cost savings for the school 
system. Well, how much security is that private sector company now 
going to build around the cloud with all of that information? Are they 
going to have the highest level of cyber security protections built in? 
Or are they just going to buy something that is dirt cheap and say they 
have security precautions but, like Target, like Sony, like the Office 
of Personnel Management, they will not have actually put in place the 
security protections which will ensure that children's most sensitive 
information is not compromised as it is being stored up in the cloud.
  The reality is that our data is being increasingly compromised, and 
companies of all shapes and sizes must devote the resources necessary 
to protect that information. As it is stored in the cloud and as it is 
being subjected to malicious attacks, there must be a security system 
that can repel those attacks.
  The amendment Senator Hatch and I bring to the floor here this 
afternoon at 5:30 brings together privacy experts, parents, school 
leaders, public advocates, and the technology industry in order to 
tackle how to best balance protecting students' personal information 
while promoting greater academic achievement. I urge my colleagues to 
support this bipartisan amendment.
  There is a Dickensian quality to this digital world. It is the best 
of technology and the worst of technology simultaneously. It can be 
used to enable and ennoble. It can be used to degrade and debase. How 
we choose will only be determined by human beings and by those who 
represent them in the Senate. We have to ensure that we put in place 
policies that ensure we have the best use of these digital technologies 
while not having children and their parents be robbed of the private 
information that is so sensitive to the long term well-being of a child 
as they are developing.
  That is what this amendment is all about here today. I urge an 
``aye'' vote.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.

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