ALERT – Legislation seeking to undo student privacy protections now before CT Legislature’s Education Committee
In this day and age of widespread data breaches, Governor Dannel Malloy, Attorney General George Jepsen and an overwhelming majority of Connecticut state legislators say they support privacy protections. They’ve even passed laws that guarantee notification and required protection for those whose data has been breached.
But in an incredibly underhanded maneuver, a new bill is being considered by the Education Committee that would roll back critically important protections for parents and children if data collected at school is breached.
House Bill 7207 strips the protection that students currently have by repealing the existing requirement that parents be notified if their child’s information is released via a corporate breach.
One would think that elected officials would be outraged, but with industry lobbying seeking to turn back the clock on these important notification requirements there is only silence from Governor Dannel Malloy and Attorney General George Jepsen — both of whom publicly bragged about their commitment to protecting Connecticut residents from data breaches.
In fact, just two years ago, Malloy and Jepsen pushed for legislative action requiring companies to notify and protect residents in the case of a breach and last year Malloy signed the new education law (Public Act 16-189) which targeted companies that do business with public schools.
But now with the new push to undo those protections, Malloy and Jepsen are nowhere to be seen.
As the parent run Connecticut Alliance for Student Privacy explains,