HANCOCK COUNTY — Leaders of Hancock County schools that use Google’s educational service do not share concerns of accused spying and data mining outlined in a federal lawsuit against the tech giant.
New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas filed the lawsuit against Google in February in a U.S. district court in Albuquerque. The suit accuses Google of violating federal and state laws by collecting personal data children generate, The Associated Press reported. Google uses its education services package marketed to school districts, teachers and parents to spy on children and their families, according to the lawsuit. The suit also accuses the company of mining children’s information like physical locations, visited websites, watched videos, saved passwords and contact lists.
Google said those claims are “factually wrong” and that its G Suite for Education package lets schools control account access and requires schools to obtain parental consent when necessary. A company spokesman told the AP that Google doesn’t use personal information from users in primary and secondary schools to target advertisements.
Two Hancock County school corporations — Eastern Hancock and Mt. Vernon — use Google’s education package. Eastern Hancock students in first through 12th grade get Google Chromebooks, and Mt. Vernon students in kindergarten through 12th grade get the devices.
“We do not have any indication that Google has data-mined or used any Mt. Vernon students’ data improperly,” Maria Bond, director of community relations for Mt. Vernon, told the Daily Reporter in an email.
David Pfaff, superintendent at Eastern Hancock, said he has yet to receive any legal advice on the matter from the school corporation’s attorney or the Indiana Association of Public School Superintendents.
Unlike Europe, the United States doesn’t have a comprehensive law regarding data collection and privacy, the AP reported. Instead, there’s a mix of state and federal statutes that safeguard certain kinds of data, like consumer health, financial information and personal data younger children generate.
New Mexico’s lawsuit against Google refers to alleged violations of the state’s Unfair Practices Act and the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which requires websites and online services to get parental consent before collecting information from children younger than 13. In a different case, Google has agreed to pay $170 million combined to the Federal Trade Commission and New York state to settle accusations that its YouTube video service gathered children’s personal data without parental consent.
Nicolas Terry, Hall Render professor of law and executive director of the William S. and Christine S. Hall Center for Law and Health at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law, said Indiana doesn’t really have any specific state laws protecting data privacy, but added there are multiple federal statutes that do. He too pointed to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act; along with a state law protecting the privacy of school records; the federal statute protecting health data most known by its acronym HIPAA; and even a federal statute that protects the privacy of VHS tape rental records.
“Whenever you have a discussion like this, people stare east, to Europe,” Terry said.
He cited the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, which lays out seven principles for the lawful processing of personal data.
“Generally in this country we have very thin consumer data protection laws, with a few exceptions,” Terry said.
