Ohio Senate Passes Bill to Protect Students’ Privacy

COLUMBUS – The Ohio Senate passed Senate Bill 29 sponsored by Senator Steve Huffman (R-Tipp City), which generally prohibits schools and technology providers from tracking student activity on school-issued devices. 

“The use of technology and school-issued electronic devices is rapidly growing,” said Huffman. “It is important that students’ privacy is protected when using these devices and that the monitoring is left to the parents not the tech companies.” 

This bill prohibits a school district or a technology provider from electronically accessing or monitoring the following:

  1. location-tracking features,
  2. audio, visual receiving, transmitting, or recording features, and 
  3. keystrokes and web-browsing activity.

This legislation is important to prevent technology providers from using educational data for any commercial purpose. Often, tech providers collect a student’s data that can include personally identifiable information, and from there, that data can be used to direct certain products or other online material to the student.

“Our children need privacy to express themselves, and it should be left to parents to make the best decision of how to surveil our children’s online presence,” said Huffman.

Senate Bill 29 now heads to the Ohio House for consideration. 

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