Support the Student Privacy Protection Act
Gary Ruskin
gary@essential.org
Mon, 03 Apr 2000 19:39:49 -0400
Commercial Alert April 3, 2000
-- Please support the Student Privacy Protection Act to protect
schoolchildren from corporate marketers that use the schools to extract
children's personal information without parental consent.
The ZapMe! Corp plants computers in the schools as advertising delivery
and market research devices. Through these school-based computers,
ZapMe's corporate sponsors may collect and distribute schoolchildren's
personal information -- including their names, addresses and telephone
numbers -- without parental consent. This is a gross violation of the
trust of parents who send their children to school each day.
ZapMe! itself monitors the activities of the children on the Web, for
commercial purposes. According to Associated Press, ZapMe! breaks the
data down "by age, sex and ZIP code. It delivers this information to
advertisers and marketers, who use it to target students in school with
laser-like precision."
On April 5, The House Committee on Education and the Workforce is
expected to vote on Student Privacy Protection Act (HR 2915), which
would require schools to obtain a parent's consent before any
corporation could gather market research from their child in the public
schools.
The Student Privacy Protection Act will be offered as an amendment to
the Education Options Act (HR 4141).
Please tell the Members of the House Committee on Education and the
Workforce to support the Student Privacy Protection Act. The
Congressional switchboard phone is (202) 224-3121. To find the fax
numbers and e-mail addresses of Members of Congress, see
<http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/ziptoit.html>. The Membership of the
House Education Committee is available at
<http://www.house.gov/ed_workforce/members/mem-fc.htm>.
Following is a Dear Colleague letter from Rep. George Miller, the
sponsor of the Student Privacy Protection Act.
March 21, 2000
Dear Colleague:
I am writing to provide background and summary information on my bill,
the Student Privacy Protection Act (HR 2915). I plan to offer a
modified version of this legislation when the Committee takes up the
remainder of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
Increasingly, classrooms are being used by market researchers to try and
get kids to reveal valuable information about themselves. This
information is used to target students with laser like precision and may
be sold or transferred to other companies. Many of these commercial
activities during the school day are disruptive and compromise student
privacy as well as the
parent-child relationship.
For example:
Students in a Massachusetts elementary school spent parts of two
days tasting cereal and answering an opinion poll.
Kids in a New Jersey elementary school filled out a 27 page booklet
called "My All About Me Journal" as part of a marketing survey for a
cable televison channel.
The ZapMe! Corporation provides schools with free computers but then
monitors students' web browsing habits.
While the costs and benefits of these arrangements can argued, parents
should know when their children are being used for this purpose and have
a right to say no. My bill gives parents that right.
The Student Privacy Protection Act would require that parents give their
informed consent before schools allow companies into classrooms to
collect information on their children. This will allow parents to
retain more control over how the school day is spent and to make a more
informed decision as to whether they want their children to reveal
personal information that private companies otherwise might not be able
to obtain.
The amendment I plan to offer will apply to information that is
collected in school for commercial purposes. College recruiting and
educational testing are specifically exempted.
Polls consistently demonstrate that the public is worried about
invasions of their privacy, with over three quarters of adults
supporting restrictions on the release of information for marketing
purposes, according to a ABC poll conducted in January.
Some people have argued that the bill unfairly targets information
collected by for-profit companies. That is incorrect. In fact, current
federal law requires academic researchers to obtain parental consent
before they collect information from children, whether or not the
information collected is personally identifiable. My bill essentially
puts research done for commercial purposes on par with that done for
academic purposes.
In addition, beware of companies that say they don't collect personally
identifiable information. For example, the ZapMe! corporation told
Education Daily, "We do not take any individual data. We absolutely
will not let anybody track an individual child." However, ZapMe's SEC
filings state that, "we may in the future collect names and other
personal information."
I look forward to working with you to protect children's privacy and the
parent-child relationship. If you have comments or concerns, please
contact me or my legislative assistant David Madland at 5-2095.
Sincerely,
GEORGE MILLER
Member of Congress, 7th District
<--------dear colleague letter ends here------->
BACKGROUND:
For more information about the ZapMe! Corp. or the broad coalition or
progressive, conservative and privacy organizations that opposes ZapMe's
presence in schools, see
<http://www.essential.org/alert/zapme/index.html>.
Commercial Alert opposes corporate exploitation of children and the
excesses of commercialism, advertising and marketing.
Commercial Alert's materials are distributed electronically via the
commercial-alert mailing list <commercial-alert@lists.essential.org>. To
subscribe to the commercial-alert mailing list, go to
<http://lists.essential.org/mailman/listinfo/commercial-alert> or send
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PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY
--
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Gary Ruskin | Commercial Alert
1611 Connecticut Ave. NW Suite #3A | Washington, DC 20009
Phone: (202) 296-2787 | Fax (202) 833-2406
http://www.essential.org/alert/ | mailto:gary@essential.org
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