Predictable?

[Chris_Wendt]

17 y/o Sachem Teen Hacks District Student Data...

...15,000+ names, GOING BACK TEN YEARS!...

...posts it on two websites...

...Data includes "a report on about 130 Sachem High School North students in the 2010-2011 year who received 'instructional services in an alternative setting....'"

...arrested on felony charges; jailed.

Read all about it here (link to Newsday) and here (link to District website).

Letters will be going out from the Sachem District to those whose privacy has been violated.
Fifteen thousand letters, plus postage.
There's a Budget Transfer.

Stunning.

Chris Wendt

[lilly]

Chris, it was a helluva lot more than special ed info. District IT's and BOCES are responsible for this data. They are hardly known for their IT acumen. And ppl are afraid of inBloom, which I believe was founded by Gates?

Pass the popcorn... Just waiting for the NY parents court case for inBloom. Should be interesting.

[Chris_Wendt]

Once a data storage server (or data warehouse) is "hacked" anything and everything in there is compromised. We know, from the news report, what data the hacker posted on two extraneous websites, but we have no idea that else he may have done, what else he may be capable of doing with whatever other data was not reported in the news.

I put this thread under Special Education, because the most sensitive among the identifiable data that was compromised and published were a large group of special education recipients' names.

As bad as it is when data over which students' parents have no say and no control is hacked, it is worse, in my opinion when the compromised data had been willingly submitted by trusting parents or their children. I presume that all the hacked data in this instance was warehoused by the school district without their having sought or received parental permission to do so.

This goes to my theory about the price of a free, sound, basic education. That price should not include surrendering your child's intimate personal or statistical data to the state to be warehoused, where it can subsequently be hacked, and then abused.

Best regards,

Chris Wendt