Student Privacy Bill Proposes Parental Consent for Data Collection
Senators Christopher Dodd, CT-D and Richard Shelby, R-AL, last week, proposed legislation that would require schools to obtain parental consent prior to any collection of students' personal data for commercial use.The bill stipulates that schools create policies for commercial data activities as well as disclose all pertinent information to parents.
The proposal came shortly after privacy advocates questioned the practices of Internet infrastructure company N2H2 Inc. and its Bess filtering service.
N2H2 provides non-personally identifiable Web surfing habits of schoolchildren to market research firm Roper Starch, which markets the data in its aggregate form.
