The Danger in I-Ready Data

To be honest, there is no real online vendor today that protects your child’s personal data that they collect. When you read their privacy statement, it will sound like your child’s personal information is secure, but they won’t tell you that their data is not secure. Many kids in school use I-Ready. I-Ready comes with … Read more

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The Clock Is Ticking on the TikTok Ban

The April 5 deadline for TikTok’s China-based parent company, ByteDance, to divest its holdings or be shut down revives a controversial battle. Free speech advocates and millions of American TikTok users who practically have a codependent relationship with the video-sharing app are facing off with national security concerns and impacts on children’s mental health. Will … Read more

Privacy

Eliminate Student Data Tracking

D.O.G.E. just cut $900 million from an agency, the Institute for Education Sciences (IES), which tracks American student data. Did the cuts go deep enough to eliminate funding for the State Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) ? This system tracks student data from all fifty states, despite the fact that the federal government has no constitutional … Read more

IT Cloud Internet

Democrats Put Your ‘Data’ and ‘Privacy’ At Risk – Not Trump or Musk

Democrats fear Elon having access to sensitive information. Too many people combine the terms hack, breach, and leak as synonyms. A data “hack” is intentionally done by an outside source breaking into computer systems with malice intent. Breach is the term being used to make people fear Elon. A data “leak” is the accidental release of information, often due … Read more

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Legislators Push Back On REAL ID

Many a soul has resisted the national call to accept REAL ID in place of most states’ standard driver’s licenses. Every state is in compliance with the federal mandate, though not every driving licensed citizen needs to be. Those concerned about giving more information to the Feds to archive have friends in every state, including … Read more

Testimony: Prohibiting Businesses from Scanning Drivers’ Licenses

HB 77-FN: prohibiting businesses from scanning individuals’ licenses when selling alcohol or tobacco products. Thank you for addressing this issue that threatens the public’s ability to protect against identity theft and other dangers associated with private identifying information.  Since delving into this issue, I have come across other threats to individual’s rights to keep themselves … Read more

IT Cloud Internet

Who Will Protect Student Data? Right Now, No One

Here is my email to Education Commissioner Edelblut and Legislators on the PowerSchool Data Breach: Commissioner Edelblut,  PowerSchool, owned by Bain Capital, experienced an international cybersecurity incident that involved unauthorized access to certain PowerSchool SIS customer data. This has impacted many school divisions across North America. PowerSchool is a 5.6 billion dollar company that lost personal … Read more

New Legislation Could Claw Some of Your Privacy Back

Longtime readers may recall a pair of stories in 2023 regarding state laws and convenience stores scanning the barcodes on people’s driver’s licenses. The outlets had foregone looking at the front to confirm the age for cigarette and alcohol purchases, instead scanning the barcode on the back to pull in that and a pile of … Read more

Night Cap: Are We Still The “Live Free Or Die State”?

We are slipping, folks. Most of us have been proud to live in the state with this distinctive motto. But, is that all it was meant to be…a motto? Let’s talk about this. Last fall I noticed that convenience stores were scanning driver’s licenses for proof of age, whether you were obviously an octogenarian or … Read more

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Separate Tech and State

Some libertarians dismiss concerns over social media companies’ suppression of news and opinions that contradict select agendas by pointing out that these platforms are private companies, not part of the government. There are two problems with this argument.

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