Identity Crisis
Our series "Identity Crisis" raised eyebrows among several parents I know. They couldn't believe that their kids would be the easy targets that we came across in our stories. But unfortunately, they probably are.
Our investigation found that college students are particularly susceptible to identity theft. Within just a few minutes, with help from one of our college-aged associate producers, we were able to gather a number of names, addresses, birth dates and even social security numbers.
Had we been crooks, we would've had a field day ruining the finances of some young people and enriching our own pockets. But lucky for them, we shredded the information we gathered.
It was so easy, I was honestly shocked. One student, whom we duped, explained it by saying that they're asked for their personal information all the time at school and one more request didn't seem that big a deal.
What is a big deal, however, is the growing number of identity thieves out there. Every 79 seconds someone in America is having their identities stolen. Thieves are using them to create new credit accounts and increasingly, selling them to rings that specialize in documenting illegal immigrants.
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The Lenoir City School
The Lenoir City School District has a random drug test policy for its student athletes. The drug testing program is run by an outside organization which changes every year. (who knows why. The last one was in Georgia. Could they find one in Tennessee?) The school district provides that organization whith the students' social security number. At one time they also provide the sex and sport but I don't think theydo anymore. When I complained I was told by the school district's lawyer that there was no privacy rights associated with a Social Security Number. Which is technically true, except for the fact that the Social Security Number has become our de facto national ID number. Funny he wouldn't give me his Social Security Number, but told me that my children had no right of privacy associated with theirs. The only way I could stop it was to ask them to give up sports.
Despite family privacy laws like FERPA, the public schools, or at least in Lenoir City, do nothing protect family privacy and in fact readily do things to violate it. No wonder these kids give up personal information so easily. They are trained early on that they have no privacy rights, not with their personal information, property, nor even their persons and bodily functions.
There is a provision in NCLB thatr requires schools to provide the military with the directory informaiton of all children 16 and older in order to get federal funds. There is also a provision that allows the parents to opt out.Strange how there is no method of doing that at Lenoir City, It took mee two years to get them to publish our FERPA rights which is required by law.
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