PIPC Resources

48 Hours of Student Privacy News

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48 Hours of Student Privacy News May 24, 2023 In the past two days, the child and student privacy landscape has been overwhelmed with an influx of news and announcements. The biggest? The FTC’s new settlement with edtech company Edmodo might break school technology use in a few different ways, including shifts on which education entities edtech vendors can contract with and what rights parents have to modify or delete their children’s education data. While that would certainly be enough to hold our attention, we also saw: A major conservative think tank stating publicly that they believe that the pending […]

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Child Privacy Expert Warns Policymakers Must Enact Meaningful Federal Privacy Laws to Ensure Students’ Online Safety, Protect Against Dire Consequences

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Press Release Child Privacy Expert Warns Policymakers Must Enact Meaningful Federal Privacy Laws to Ensure Students’ Online Safety, Protect Against Dire Consequences April 17, 2023 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE WASHINGTON, D.C. – Public Interest Privacy Center Founder and President Amelia Vance today offered testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Innovation, Data, and Commerce during a hearing entitled, “Addressing America’s Data Privacy Shortfalls: How a National Standard Fills Gaps to Protect Americans’ Personal Information.” During the hearing, Vance urged policymakers to take action by enacting comprehensive federal privacy law that include appropriate protections for children and students who are

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Privacy Impact of the Federal Parent Bill of Rights

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Privacy Impacts of the Federal Parent Bill of Rights March 16, 2023 PIPC supports the technical work of AASA’s Student and Child Privacy Center. AASA has established policy priorities specific to student and child data and privacy. This analysis is informational, and any AASA advocacy positions or nuance are available on the AASA website.  In just over a week, the Parents Bill of Rights Act(PBOR) – a bill intended to give parents more control over their child’s education – was reintroduced, marked up, and passed out of the House Education and Workforce Committee. It will be voted on by the

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February Updates

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February Updates February 23, 2023 TLDR: February has been (unofficial) child privacy month. These issues were the focus of last week’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, received the “loudest ovation” during the State of the Union, and popped up during the recent House Education and Workforce Committee hearing. Here are this month’s highlights and our big takeaways: Senate Hearing: Protecting Our Children Online “Senators from both parties are once again taking aim at big tech companies, reigniting their efforts to protect children from “toxic content” online. At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, they said they plan to “act swiftly”

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Bipartisan Support for Child Privacy Protections

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Bipartisan (?!) Support for Child Privacy Protections “We must finally hold social media companies accountable for the experiment they are running on our children for profit. And it’s time to pass bipartisan legislation to stop Big Tech from collecting personal data on kids and teenagers online, ban targeted advertising to children, and impose stricter limits on the personal data these companies collect on all of us.”  – President Biden, 2023 State of the Union Address At the State of the Union (SOTU) address last Tuesday night, President Biden reaffirmed that child privacy remains a priority for his administration. This statement

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January Updates

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January Updates February 1, 2023 Cross-posted from AASA Blog TLDR: Soon-to-be reintroduced federal parent rights bill may allow parents to opt out of most EdTech. Child privacy bills crafted without education input continue to risk banning school technology use – as was the case with the almost-passed COPPA 2.0 and Kids Online Safety Act in December. Just in case that wasn’t enough, President Biden published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, noting that “Congress can find common ground on the protection of privacy, competition and American children.” He called on Congress to pass legislation that would “hold Big Tech accountable” and to tighten pre-existing

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Beyond Commercialization Concerns in Student Privacy

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This week’s newsletter focuses on a new report from Human Rights Watch. I decided to write it because this report joins many others from student privacy advocates that focus nearly exclusively on commercialization risks.

When student privacy reports focus again and again on advertising technology as the major threat to student privacy, stakeholders overlook other insidious privacy harms. The likely result of the report will be a series of articles about how student privacy is in crisis and there are not enough laws and companies are bad. That may draw attention to this issue, but it also means that other really important student privacy issues could fall by the wayside.

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FTC Issues EdTech & COPPA Policy Statement

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FTC Issues EdTech & COPPA Policy Statement May 19, 2022 Cross-posted from Public Interest Privacy Consulting LLC Blog COPPA AND EDTECH NEWS FROM THE FTC! Today, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) voted unanimously to adopt “a policy statement that announces the agency’s prioritization of the enforcement of COPPA as it applies to the use of education technology.” The full statement is available here. Overall, the policy statement is carefully characterized as existing legal requirements of COPPA that the FTC will focus on as they begin to ramp up their COPPA enforcement. (Need a refresher on COPPA in schools? I’m a fan

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The Week in Child & Student Privacy

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The Week in Child & Student Privacy April 27, 2022 This has been a big week for new legislation and regulations. Few news outlets have reported on the child or student privacy implications of these bills, so the newsletter is in a slightly different format this week. What I’m Reading Cross-posted from Public Interest Privacy Consulting LLC Blog 1. The California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act Passes Out of Committee The bill was passed out of committee with amendments and re-referred to the Assembly Appropriations Committee on the 25th, and read a second time and amended on the 26th. Some of

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