The Patriot Post® · Wednesday Opinion

Best of Right Opinion

• Michelle Malkin: The Student Data-Mining Scandal Under Our Noses
• Rich Lowry: Mark Zuckerberg’s Insufferable Tripe
• Hans von Spakovsky: There Are Good Reasons for Felons to Lose the Right to Vote
• Byron York: Lots of Mueller Action, but What About Collusion?
• Gary Bauer: ‘Witch Hunt’

For more of today’s columns, visit Right Opinion.

Opinion in Brief

Michelle Malkin: “While congresscritters expressed outrage at Facebook’s intrusive data grabs during Capitol Hill hearings with Mark Zuckerberg this week, not a peep was heard about the Silicon Valley-Beltway theft ring purloining the personal information and browsing habits of millions of American schoolchildren. It doesn’t take undercover investigative journalists to unmask the massive privacy invasion enabled by educational technology and federal mandates. The kiddie data heist is happening out in the open — with Washington politicians and bureaucrats as brazen co-conspirators. Facebook is just one of the tech giants partnering with the U.S. Department of Education and schools nationwide in pursuit of student data for meddling and profit. Google, Apple, Microsoft, Pearson, Knewton, and many more are cashing in on the Big Data boondoggle. State and federal educational databases provide countless opportunities for private companies exploiting public schoolchildren subjected to annual assessments, which exploded after adoption of the tech industry-supported Common Core ‘standards,’ tests, and aligned texts and curricula. The recently passed Every Student Succeeds Act further enshrined government collection of personally identifiable information … and allows release of the data to third-party contractors thanks to Obama-era loopholes carved into the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act.”