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From washingtonpost.com :
The chairman of the Senate education committee urged the Bush administration yesterday to block student loan companies from accessing a national database that holds confidential information on tens of millions of students.
Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), came after The Washington Post reported on inappropriate searches of the database that could violate federal rules and raise concerns about data mining and abuses of privacy.
The problem has so alarmed officials at the U.S. Department of Education that they are considering a temporary shutdown of the system, which contains 60 million student records.
"Until the security of the database can be ensured, I urge you to block the use of the database by private lenders," Kennedy wrote in a letter to Education Secretary Margaret Spellings.
The database, known as the National Student Loan Data System, contains Social Security numbers, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, birth dates and other sensitive financial information covered by federal privacy laws.
"The department takes these matters very seriously and invests significant planning and resources to enhance security and protect the data entrusted to it," she said in an e-mail.
"Reports of this privacy being abused raise extremely serious questions about the Department of Education's efforts to safeguard the privacy of millions of students."
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Posted on April 16, 2007 11:13 PM
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