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U.S. Government Wants Detailed College Data
Doofus writes "Apparently aggregate data are no longer enough for the trusty US Dept. of Education, as we can read in this opinion piece Alma Mater as Big Brother in today's Washington Post. As the author, a college president tells us, the governement would require schools "to report all their students' Social Security numbers and other information about each individual -- including credits earned, degree plan, race and ethnicity, and grants and loans received -- to a national databank". And the author counters by pointing out the obvious but real threat of such aggregation: "The creation of a gigantic database containing educational records and other personal data on millions would be a costly and troubling assault on privacy. This information could all too easily be shared with other government agencies or even with the private sector.""
Cause the way things are going, it's damn sure that it's dead and someone needs to be saying the prayers.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
Its bad enough reading about all these idetity thefts taking place, but when you find out its because someone decided to create this wonderful new database of only info that an identity theif could use.. does anyone else think this is a dumb idea?
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
Won't somebody think of the children!
Nice to see that they're still churning out complete screw-up policies like this. Oh wait, no it's not. Damn. It really saddens me how society seems to be going right down the drain, and the people who are supposed to be preventing this are usually the ones that end up causing it. This situation is a perfect example of why I really dislike the concept of politicians. Lets see, a group of people who desperately want lots of personal power. Uh, hello? Alarm bells ringing!
Santa's suicide mission go!
...no male who ever got a nickle in loans or scholarships has avoided being enrolled in this database from the get-go and which database is that? The selective service of course.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
I feel the same way about Republicans, but wouldn't moving Libertarian be a more logical choice?
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
maybe... the one good thing that has come out of all this is that I'm looking at all the options, including Libertarian. The move to the Democratic party was as much a symbolic protest as a tactical move.
...is if they collected this information, but didn't cross reference it between fields. Let them have my SSN, my majors, etc... but don't let them tie them all together in one big identifying lump.
but governments cracking down on academia sounds stangely familiar to me.
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
The question, to a large degree, is "Why?" Why are they collecting this data? They stated reason is to get "better information on graduation rates and what students pay for college." However, that doesn't make any sense, as A: agregate information would reveal the answer to that and B: you just don't do a sociological study by polling everyone. Attempting to get data on every individual student in the US is a terribly, terribly wasteful study. Therefore, they must be looking for something different.
And that is the fear, that the govermnet is fishing for dissidents. Lots of people subscribe to Mother Jones. But subscribing to Mother Jones, majoring in ecology at Berkeley, and flying out to Montana every 6 months? Must be a nut, they go on the TSA grey list. White, rich, and majoring in business administration? Must be OK.
And that's really one of the major problems with data mining people. It's difficult to make such generalizations without being racist or discriminatory. Even if it is statistically justified, it still goes against a lot of the ideals of this country to say that being Muslim makes you more likely to hijack a plane, or that being poor increases your chances of trying to blow something up.
There are volumes of aggregate information out there. There are huge repositories of privately-owned data that anyone can buy a piece of. But to have individual histories at such resolution and without stating the real reason you collect that data? It's a little scary.
Of course, nothing that bad could ever happen here.
The ______ Agenda
There is more personalized data about each and every student floating around hundreds and even thousands of institutions that nobody has any control over any of it.
You know, although I don't trust the Federal Government that much, I wouldn't mind one agency having default ownership of all this data and be responsible for locking down the data sharing and keeping students privacy being intact.
I always find it funny that people are upset at the federal government for tracking information about them. Hey, when I was born I got a birth cert. and a social sec. card., when I went to college I had to fill out FAFSA forms, when I got married I had to get a marriage cert. and it changes my tax status for some strange reason, when my two kids were born we had to get them birth cert. and SS cards. To attend public schools, we had to provide copies of shot records.
We filled out the census.
I and my wife have driver's license.
We have a mortage on our house. We pay taxes to the IRS.
If my wife and I decided to separate, that would be registered come tax time at a min.
When my wife, one of my kids, or I die, their will be a death cert.
What data do my wife and I have left that the government would care about?
No. So that the US Armed Forces can recruit (or, if you want to be even more cynical, draft) who they please.
Military recruiting is an an all-time low despite rather large bonuses for signing up, re-enlistment, and so on. If Iraq doesn't wrap up soon, the military will simply run out of people who want to be in the military.
Rumsfield keeps telling us how they prefer a volunteer military, but if it comes down to "needing a soldier for that gun", they'll put anyone there.
Please help metamoderate.
Will the current administration please repeat after me:
The United States was never meant to have transparent citizenship. The United States was meant to have transparent government.
I'm perfectly happy giving all of my data to the current administration. In return, though, I expect they won't mind my installing webcams around the oval office, tapping Bush's phone line, rifling through his financial records, and interviewing his daughters... I mean, unless he's doing something wrong, he's got nothing to hide. Right?
The ______ Agenda