Peter Greene writes about a ruling in Pennsylvania that protects the privacy rights of teachers. The public does not have a right to know where teachers live, i.e., their home addresses. Sounds simple, no?
Today, when there are so many challenges to privacy, this is a ruling that is heartening.
Now, we need parents willing to challenge the right of school districts to agree to the data mining of their students without parental consent.
And parents who will sue when the district gives the names and addresses of their students to charter chains in search of students.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
In WA they get to publish our age along with our salary, years of experience, education, etc. Big push by the newspapers awhile ago for “transparency” and they all set up web accessible databases. Nothing obscene was found, all the outrage seemed to die off. Haven’t seen the charter schools show up in those databases yet….
LikeLike
Transparency is used to justify data mining.
LikeLike
“Transparency” and “accountability” for all except charter schools. We just throw money at them and hope for the best while they send bags of cash offshore.
LikeLike
Could you imagine the outrage if they required the same of politicians, judges and police officers?
LikeLike
This is a joke. Do they have Google in Pennsylvania?
LikeLike
We need to critically think about our connectedness and our ways to protect ourselves.
Quote from the fictional novel, The Circle, by David Eggers, about a powerful internet company and our society’s obsessions with sharing and social media.
“Already 90% of the world’s searches go through the Circle. Without competitors, this will increase soon to 100%…if you can control the flow of information, you can control everything.”
“How can anyone rise up against the Circle? If they control all of the information and access to it? They want everyone to have a Circle account, and they are on their way to making it illegal not to?”
LikeLike
Teachers are generally seen as second class citizens with less rights, even by many supporters of police/fire unions and private sector unions. Publishing personal data is an intimidation tactic directed towards teachers and even enjoyed by anti-teacher zealots as a way to intentionally put teachers in danger of personal harm to them or their family. Some, too many, hate teachers so much, they relish the thought of “payback” for whatever past failures or slights the teachers bashers perceived as students or parents. If you think this is hyperbole, go to any alt-right blog and defend teachers.
LikeLike
It is a veiled intimidation tactic. Likewise, when public officials such as Cuomo call public education a “monopoly,” they should be challenged. A monopoly makes a profit without competition, and there is no such profit in public education. We need to reaffirm our right to a democratic public institution. We should tell policymakers that if they cannot support public institutions and public workers, they should resign.
LikeLike
It is hard to call over 13,500 separate school districts a monopoly with a straight face. What they really mean is the national ideal of an available public education for all citizens is incompatible with a plutocratic, theocratic, and authoritative view of America.
LikeLike
When do they privatize the FBI, CIA and NSA and open them to free market solutions? What could possibly go wrong under such a scenario?
LikeLike
Maybe Capitol Hill would like to privatize the Senate and Congress and contract out to ALEC individuals who will represent the fine people of the United States. The United States could then have a low cost democratic machinery in place (well, at least “democratic” for the ALEC members serving in the Congress and Senate) and save the tax payer billions of dollars.
In addition, private individuals can advertise on billboards and in Ladies’ Home Journal all sorts of spiffy slogans trying to convince the average voter to make them president.
“Choosy voters choose Mel!”
“Harold: I’m lovin’ him!”
“Vote for Madeline . . . Because you’re WORTH it.”
“Got Paul?”
“There are some things money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s Sarah.”
“John: The quicker voter picker upper”.
“Can you hear me now? Good. Now vote for me.”
“Like a good neighbor, Edward is there.”
“Maybe she’s born with it. Maybe it’s Mabel”.
“The few. The proud. The Wealthy.”
“America runs on Arne Duncan”.
LikeLike
This is a very big deal.
All of us including teachers lost our privacy a long time ago. Just go to Intellius type in your own name and check. You will find all your children and spouse listed by name and they for a small fee send you the address, phone number (land line), e-mail address and even check on your criminal past for an additional fee. You will see many others with the same or similar name listed along with your name.
There are many others organizations doing the same type of data mining and selling.
There is no harm in checking your name, but beware these services will start charging you a monthly fee for the rest of your life.
Beware searches like this leave an Internet trail which can be used to trace the searching persons whereabouts. Beware of this power and its consequences. I know, because some of the people have searched my name, but because there are many of us with similar names, the search did not lead to me. If you are willing to spend less than $100 Dollars, there is a treasure chest of information available on anyone. Some of it is true and others are false.
A frightening aspect, it knows the address of all the places you have lived from the time you became an adult.
I will join the teachers and every one else in this country to demand a stop of such betrayal of our basic right of confidentiality. But I sure I am a little too late and as the saying goes “a Dollar short.”
LikeLike
Raj,
Agreed.
Scary loss of privacy
LikeLike
Thanks,
Now the question is how did we get here. We were foolish to start with and in some way were duped.
All of us applied and received many credit cards. Most of them sell this personal information to data consolidators. Some major cards have a policy of sharing the information with other organizations that they deal with. It is a two way street, the data consolidators sell the info to credit card companies, who in turn sell more updated info back to the data consolidators. Your personal data has a monetary value and it is bought and sold without your permission.
All or most of us applied unknowingly for those innocuous cards at the super market, drug stores and other national chains. Most of the time the store uses your phone number which you willingly provided. Just for providing personal data you get some discounts.
In some stores if you refuse to provide personal data but still demand the price for “Valued customers” they will swipe a store card and still honor the low price. They are not willing to lose sales just because you are unwilling to provide personal data.
You want to buy an item. You search the internet using Google. You find the product is available in your local store like Home Depot and buy it. Right after your search, wherever you go on the Internet you are bombarded by ads for that product by various stores, on-line or local. Google sold your interest of the product to the others and made a profit. I believe that Google knows more about you than yourself.
As part of your job you needed and applied for government clearance. You bared your soul to the Government. Now the government some how looses all that data to some hackers. The last instance 29 million people were effected. The government is now obligated to provide you ID theft services for free for a duration of 2 to 3 years. You sign up and are immediately informed that your e-mail accounts have been compromised and requires you to perform certain actions. You do what is needed and a few months later you get the same message. How do we avoid this? I have no idea.
This scenario happens with major banks often.
Remember we all use an e-maill address to sign up as part of Internet banking services.
You go to see a doctor. Your medical records are searched using your Social Security number bringing another aspect of confidentiality of your medical records.
My question is how do we avoid all these and many more pitfalls?
LikeLike
Raj,
The vast hack that occurred last Friday showed how vulnerable we all are. We are connected, and the connection is not secure.
LikeLike