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House Committee on Insurance 9:30AM
HB502 - Buford - requires auto insurance agencies to give retired military folks a 20% discount?

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What is this, Russia?

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Senate Committee on Local and Municipal Affairs (sometime this afternoon)
SB90 - Dorsey - Restricts neighborhood watches. Forbids them from confronting suspicious persons and requires them to comply with any advise that 911 operators have.

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What is this, Russia?

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SB90 - Dorsey

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Not shocked.

What do you do if the suspicious person confronts you as Trayvon did?

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What do you do if the suspicious person confronts you as Trayvon did?

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Curl into a fetal ball and accept your social justice.

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La Legislative session for 4-19-14

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Did I sleep through March???

Oh, crap!! I missed the tax deadline!!!

Student privacy bills are being discussed right now. it'll take a while.

Current admin is giving our kids' SSNs and personal data to select private entities - some of which have automatically enrolled students into charter/virtual classes so that the state will pay them.

Also, there's concerns about private IT contractors (some outsourced abroad) having access to the data.

eta: Like clockwork, Rep. Broadwater is against the privacy laws.

eta2: Thompson, another Charter guy is against it because he is worried a company may accidentally leak student SSNs and we wouldn't want to be too hard on them.

eta3: legit WYHI is crying now while testifying.

Man, there's some serious political maneuvering going on with the student privacy bills.

The Administration has stepped out in front of this and has their own version. The only problem is their own version takes out any penalties or repercussions for leaking student information and creates loopholes for the state to give the information to anyone they choose, including private companies, so long as they have an agreement. Seems pretty pointless, but they will claim a victory no doubt.

They've also claimed that the real privacy bill by Schroeder will cost the state $2 billion dollars, which is LOL funny. This all hinges on the belief that the state would be incapable of adding a unique identifier in place of the SSN and thus would lose TOPS and federal matching funds - which is ridiculous.

This crap is a much bigger deal than people realize. Companies are buying this data (including SSNs) and using it as part of a profit model.

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What do you do if the suspicious person confronts you as Trayvon did?

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Murder him.

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private companies are buying personally-identifiable data from the state? do you mean charter schools or something else?

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Data has been handed over to Google, Microsoft, virtual schools ( to help them recruit), and a myriad of market research and Human resource companies. Yes, it can include SSNs.

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but it sounds like you're saying this data is being sold to companies who want it simply for marketing purposes. am i hearing you right?

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Essentially, yes. The DOE isn't exactly forthcoming in these matters. We know the data goes to private companies in exchange for services or free storage. The data was handed over to Google and InBloom, a spinoff from owners of Microsoft and Fox News.

We know that data goes to other state agencies who then pass the data on to anyone they contract with for similar purposes. They can call it workforce development and give the data to a company for that purpose. That company in turn packages the data and resells it. They send the data to the fed government who does who knows what with it.

All of this is believed to be perfectly legal, although it is a bit murky.

This guy has a crusade against federal and state government getting too involved with local schools and has covered it extensively: Crazy Crawfish's Blog|Zesty Louisiana Education Politics

I wish I knew what happened with the Trayvon bill. I would have a hard time containing my laughter if I were on that committee.

if this

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That company in turn packages the data and resells it.

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and/or this

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data goes to private companies in exchange for services or free storage

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transfer in ownership is happening, it should be a huge story and heads should be rolling.

i have handled that type of data for years for both federal agencies and some in LA, and that shite is NOT legit use. if agreements are being written where this is allowed they are not legit either. and DOE should not be able to potentially be getting away with this so easily.

what's fishy about this is that i know for a fact that DOE in particular is very reluctant to share data, even with other agencies and for the most legit of purposes. it seems unlikely they'd be handing it out left and right in other places

ETA: looking at that crazycrawfish site, i'm starting to think it isn't happening that way, and that privacy concerns are basically public education advocates concern-trolling to protect the status quo

i'm all for thorough regs on ensuring confidentiality though, and for ensuring only contractors get access to that data, and only get to use it in support of and while working on state-contracted jobs. i know that at the federal level Privacy Act breaches were some sort of low-level felony