Every Child Achieves Act of 2015
Floor Speech
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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Madam President, I thank my colleague Senator Daines for his extraordinarily valuable work on this bipartisan bill, which will help protect students, help safeguard the privacy of young people, which would be considered separately from the measure now before us, the Every Child Achieves Act, which will strengthen the Federal Government's commitment to ensuring that every child has access to a high-quality education.
The bill Senator Daines and I are offering ensures that every child is protected during their education from invasive and intrusive sharing and selling of highly private information about their educational progress--all kinds of sensitive, personal data that are accumulated and collected by school authorities and the companies that contract with them in the course of that child's education.
When a parent signs a take-home form permitting their children to use a learning application in math class, for example, they have no assurance right now--none--regarding what information the app company will collect or how the app company will protect that information. That kind of very personal, identifiable, confidential information is inadequately protected in many school systems around the country. If that app company fails to protect the personal information of the student and their family, it could be stolen by hackers. It could be breached. We have seen how Federal files have been breached on a scale that none of us would ever have imagined--supposedly protected information--and we are talking about companies leaving vulnerable children's information potentially on the same scale--millions of children being at risk of their data being breached and stolen by hackers. But we are also talking about that information being bought and sold, exchanged by companies. The current protections against that commercial exploitation are inadequate. Children and their parents and their families deserve better protection of their privacy.
It is a big business. It is a huge and burgeoning business for those companies. They may serve a very worthwhile purpose for many of those children and for many school authorities who need someone to organize and apply software to the raw information that is collected in test scores or other kinds of educational data. But it is not data that belongs to the companies; it belongs to the student and the school authorities, and it ought to be protected not only because of who owns it but because of whom it belongs to. It belongs to students as a matter of morality, not just legality.
We are introducing student digital privacy legislation, the SAFE KIDS Act. This week Senator Daines and I will introduce it to establish strong and vital protections that will give parents the peace of mind they need and deserve. Our bill would prohibit companies from reselling student data--something corporations should never profit from doing. The SAFE KIDS Act would also prohibit companies from using student data, including a personal profile of a student, for any targeted advertising. This kind of marketing goes on in our society.
Our legislation also requires companies that hold student data to enact robust protections, such as proper encryption of that data, which will prevent the theft of personal information.
Under our bill, parents are empowered to access their children's information, request corrections of any erroneous information, and request deletion of certain student data.
Our bill charges the FTC with the responsibility to implement and enforce the SAFE KIDS Act, and it enables States to enact stronger, more demanding protections if they choose to do so. It establishes a floor, not a ceiling. It does not preempt stronger measures if States choose to move forward.
This measure is in no way incompatible with the provision and amendment on which we will vote tonight that deals with another aspect of this issue in establishing a commission. I support that amendment. The commission would issue recommendations on a number of specific topics, such as preventing targeted advertising, limiting data retention, and providing parents with complete information. Those issues are complex, and they need the kinds of studies and research the commission would provide. And the results of that commission would help to inform the FTC regulations that would be issued under the SAFE KIDS Act that Senator Daines and I are introducing this week.
I look forward to supporting the Hatch-Markey amendment, voting for it, and I urge my colleagues to support it and the SAFE KIDS Act because they enable a comprehensive approach to student privacy.
Make no mistake--this data is in danger and so is the privacy of our students. In a world that has become enormously invasive and intrusive and where personal information is so much at risk, our students, children, and their families deserve this protection. I urge my colleagues to support it.
BACKGROUND CHECKS AND GUN VIOLENCE
Madam President, I wish to talk for just a moment about the disclosure last week that Dylan Roof, the alleged killer of nine innocent people in Charleston, SC, was able to buy guns without first passing a background check. The reason, very simply, was the default-to-proceed loophole in the law, which allows--but does not require--firearms retailers to proceed with a gun sale after 3 days if an applicant's background check is still pending.
Undoubtedly, more facts will come to light. Certain facts are unknown now as we speak, but the FBI acknowledges that a completed background check would have uncovered Dylan Roof's prior arrest on a drug charge and his drug addiction. Those discoveries would have barred him from purchasing the .45-caliber handgun he used to take nine lives in that unspeakable, horrific tragedy.
In effect, Dylan Roof's exploitation of this loophole is not an anomaly. In the last 5 years, the default to proceed loophole has led firearms retailers to proceed with 15,729 gun sales to prohibited persons--people who were deemed ineligible to purchase a firearm once their background checks were completed. In effect, those 15,729 people were able to circumvent the law because of that loophole that enabled them to do so on a default to proceed after 3 days.
After that default-to-proceed loophole is exploited, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives then has the difficult, dangerous, and often impossible job to retrieve the firearms that are sold. In fact, it is often impossible to even expect that they can once those firearms are sold without proper recordkeeping or any recordkeeping. We make that job harder every day by underfunding and hamstringing the work of the ATF in our appropriations bills. That creates that impossible task for them.
Responsible gun retailers can act today. The law allows retailers to decide whether to permit gun sales to proceed after that 3-day default period has elapsed. They have a duty to ensure that their products do not get into the hands of dangerous individuals. They have that moral duty. They have that social responsibility.
In 2008, Walmart, which is the Nation's largest gun store, agreed not to transfer firearms without a background check even if the 3 days have passed without it. The short-term inconvenience to retailers is minimal. In the vast majority of cases, a background check is completed within minutes and the retailer knows whether they may proceed with the sale.
After the horror visited on the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, no responsible gun retailer should give the benefit of the doubt and hand over a gun without a definitive completion of that background check.
Over the weekend, my colleague Senator Murphy and I urged the Senate Judiciary Committee to immediately review this failure in our background check system and potential remedies, lest this legislative body's silence on the matter be taken as a consent on the repeated failures we have witnessed. In the long run, this system must be made as effective and error proof as possible, and it should be extended to sales not covered now by the law.
As Senator Murphy and I and many of our colleagues in the Senate have urged consistently and repeatedly, the failure to adopt a comprehensive, universal background check system is inexcusable, but we also have to make sure loopholes in the current law are eliminated, as the FBI and the Department of Justice have recommended, by extending that 3-day time period and otherwise increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of the background check system.
Senator Murphy and I will be taking additional steps to try to make it more effective. Gun retailers can step up in the meantime to stop dangerous people from getting their hands on dangerous weapons and taking lives--innocent lives--as happened in Charleston. They can, very simply, stop selling guns to people who have not passed that background check even if the 3 days have expired, even if that default period has come and gone. They can do that on their own.
I look forward to working with my colleagues, including continuing the great work Senator Murphy and I have sought to do together in making America safer and better and improving our background check system and making sure commonsense, sensible gun violence prevention measures become the law of the land.
I yield the floor.
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