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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.""
The people who are recommending this are not interested in your privacy. I recall a time when Republicans stood for a less intrusive government, or they did until they figured it served their interests to do otherwise. I switched my party affiliation from Republican to Democrat this year. Even Newt Gingrich doesn't understand what happened to the GOP. If it weren't for the fact that all the newspapers (except NYT) have rolled over in the face of the constant Bush terror propaganda, this kind of thing would be big news. Scary as fuckin hell.
How can schools report every students SSN when the colleges are required, by law, not to ask for SSN? Yes, yes, I know that they all DO ask for it, but it seems like this is going from ignorance of the law to intentionally going against it.
On a note of that, I've been told that the social security act banned certain uses of the SSN as ID. Is that really really true? If so, where does it say that? I would love to actually take a university to court and make them change. Why hasn't anyone done this?