Washington D.C. officials accidentally uploaded the identities and private information of 12,000 public school students to an unprotected website Tuesday.
The information was online for several hours before officials with the District’s Office of the State Superintendent of Education became aware and removed the information. The 12,000 students listed belong to the Individualized Education Program which gives students with special needs personalized instruction, reports The Washington Post.
The privacy breach included names, the school they attend, student identification numbers, age, race and details on the student’s disability including what special services they require. Patience Peabody, a spokeswoman for the superintendent’s office, said officials are conducting an investigation to find out who is responsible for uploading the information.
The incident resulted from someone in the office sending the student data to a D.C. Council Dropbox with public access. Hanseul Kang, the state superintendent of education, circulated an email to colleagues Tuesday expressing her disappointment and ensuring her office was doing everything it could to rectify the situation, reports RT America.
“I am deeply disappointed by this situation,” Kang said. “Our families deserve to know that their students’ personal information is being kept confidential and secure in the education system. As you know, we have taken significant steps as an agency over the past 11 months to better protect our student data, but they are clearly not enough.”
District public school students and parents are no strangers to privacy breaches. Last February school officials accidentally released the private data of students in a Freedom of Information Act document. The document had redacted identifying information but the protection was not secure and could be undone.
The District publicly apologized for the incident and promised to increase security measures to prevent similar mistakes and breaches. Privacy security for public schools in D.C. is clearly still a work in progress.
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