Louisiana Mom Testifies Against Data Collection During State Senate Hearing

Sara Wood, a mom in Louisiana, gave testimony before during a hearing on SB 449 before the Louisiana Senate Education Committee on March 19th.  This bill will likely be up for a vote on Wednesday and it is important to note that it is wholly inadequate to protect privacy.

You can watch her testimony below (or here starting at the 1:53 mark):

Gretchen Logue at Missouri Education Watchdog outlines the concerns she gives:

• Kids are becoming a data index
• In her legislative experiences, statist and elitist mentality pervades
• Parents have been villianized in every way possible
• Parents are omitted in everything…”we matter nothing”
• This is my children’s information
• Unintended consequences
• There is a freedom and right to privacy and this bill does nothing to protect this right
• I am the sole legal authority over my child
• You would fully restore the right over data privacy, collection and collection storage for my child and not give it to a governmental agency
• We are afforded due process and protection for effective due process and right to privacy
• There is a denial of these rights
• There is no due process in this bill for parents
• FERPA is meaningless
• Parents don’t count because we are not required to consent and SEA can determine just about anyone an authorized representative
• Louisiana can go further than FERPA
• SSNs have been uploaded to third party vendors
• The buck has to stop with our children
• Parents are denied the divine right to protect their student’s data and this bill totally negates my right as a parent and gives it to government
• We are adopting a village mentality rather than have parents have the right to protect their children
• Pass a bill that places students/parents first and foremost in traditionally free America.  NGOs are supplanting us in so many ways.  How do you counter NGOs and governmental agencies? In a traditionally free America you keep these agencies (state and private) in check with one word: Consent.  You need consent from the person to whom that information belongs.  My information belongs to me, not the government.  The countries that streamlined the data tracking initially were Russia and China.  What have we gotten in America with increased data tracking?  We’ve gotten less freedom and more government.

Louisiana parents and students (and parents and students everywhere) deserve to have data privacy bills that actually protect privacy not garbage like this.