Justice denied! Slipshod and circular reasoning in the judge's decision on our inBloom lawsuit!
Late Friday afternoon, we learned that Judge Breslin of the NY Supreme Court dismissed the lawsuit to prevent the NY State Education Department from uploading personal student data to inBloom, which in turn plans to share this information to vendors without parental consent. The judge's decision is nonsensical in many ways, as he didn't show how the state's disclosure of personal student data to inBloom was either necessay or specifically authorized by law, as the Personal Privacy Protection Law requires. Instead, his decision exhibits slipshod and circular reasoning.Despite the chorus of inBloom supporters and others on the Gates payroll who pounced on this decision with glee, the Court did not make any independent judgments on the educational value or security of this information. Instead, the judge pointed out an exception in the PPPL: that such disclosure can be made "to those who contract with, the agency that maintains the record if such disclosure is necessary to the performance of their official duties pursuant to a purpose of the agency required to be accomplished by statute or executive order or necessary to operate a program specifically authorized by law."
However, the State did not prove that such disclosure to the contractor, in this case inBloom, was indeed"necessary to the performance of their official duties" or "necessary to operate a program specifically authorized by law" -- so I'm really not sure how the Judge came to this conclusion, and it seems to be based upon a very slippery argument.
Moreover, according to the experts that we've spoken to, the contractor would itself be bound by the PPPL law and thus required to protect privacy to the same extent as the State Education Department. This
So that the disclosure to a contractor, namely inBloom, is allowed "inasmuch as disclosure is necessary to the performance of respondents' official duties." Because SED says it is made to carry out its "duties" it is "necessary", and thus the PPPL does not apply? Why have a law that restricts the actions of state agencies to