Big Brother USSA

[eyer]

The IRS is said to be data mining Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other sites for info that could come handy in audits.

Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter have all become places where people post intimate details about their lives: vacation photos, work successes, buying a new house, car, or other cool stuff.

However, this information is also up for grabs by the Internal Revenue Service.

The taxman is reportedly using data from social media on people who file fishy-seeming taxes or don't file at all, according to Marketplace. The IRS loses roughly $300 billion per year to tax evasion; and in times of budget cuts, with a smaller staff, the agency has allegedly turned to both data mining and data crunching.

In its quest to find and audit tax dodgers, the IRS is said to use online activity trackers to sift through the mass amounts of data available on the Internet, according to Marketplace. This data is then added to the information the agency already has on people, such as Social Security numbers, health records, banking statements, and property.

"It seems they may be using predictive analytics," University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School of Communication Professor Joseph Turow told Marketplace. "That takes a huge amount of data and puts it together in a big pot to see if they can predict which individuals don't pay their taxes."

...Last year, it was revealed that the IRS was claiming the right to read taxpayers' email and private information on social media accounts without first getting a search warrant. After a brouhaha from civil liberties groups, citizens, and lawmakers, the IRS announced the no-warrant-required policy would be ditched for email, but it did not make the same commitment for other private electronic communications.

Full piece here:

http://www.cnet.com/news/tax-dodgers-beware-irs-could-be-watching-your-social-media/

 

[eyer]

And just to show that it's not only some in federal government who fly the flag of the United Socialist State of America:

The state’s highest constitutional office has already said random collection and storage isn’t legal — but many local police departments in Virginia continue to do it.

Last year, then-Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli concluded in an official opinion that “data collected in the continuous, passive manner that is not properly defined as ‘criminal intelligence information and not otherwise relating directly to law enforcement investigations and intelligence gathering respecting criminal activity … may not be lawfully collected through the use of LPR technology.”

...Per Alexandria Police Department policy, LPR-generated data may be kept on a computer for up to 30 days, pending upload to the LPR database. There, information can be kept for up to six months, according to Crystal Nosal, commander and senior public information officer for the Alexandria Police Department. Police Chief Earl Cook ratcheted down that storage policy from four years to two, and then from two years to six months.

Alexandria police have 13 mobile systems, which are mounted only on police vehicles, Nosal said.

...In 2008 and 2009, the Virginia State Police, which now regularly expunges records but still collects them, captured license plate data of people at political rallies for Sarah Palin and Barack Obama.

Who’s watching me? Police took photos of my license plates

http://watchdog.org/138370/police-reporters-license/

 

[phrodeau]

Do the people of Virginia have license plates? I thought it was only the vehicles that did.

 

[BoyNextDoor]

If only people ...
had to register their guns ...on FaceBook

 

[LiFeNdEaTh]

If only people ...
had to register their guns ...on FaceBook

lol..

 

[KingOrfeo]

Oh, flew in from Miami Beach B.O.A.C.
Didn't get to bed last night
On the way the paper bag was on my knee
Man I had a dreadful flight
I'm back in the U.S.S.R.
You don't know how lucky you are boy
Back in the U.S.S.R. (Yeah)

Been away so long I hardly knew the place
Gee it's good to be back home
Leave it till tomorrow to unpack my case
Honey disconnect the phone
I'm back in the U.S.S.R.
You don't know how lucky you are boy
Back in the U.S.
Back in the U.S.
Back in the U.S.S.R.

Well the Ukraine girls really knock me out
They leave the West behind
And Moscow girls make me sing and shout
That Georgia's always on my mind

Aw come on!
Ho yeah!
Ho yeah!
Ho ho yeah!
Yeah yeah!

Yeah I'm back in the U.S.S.R.
You don't know how lucky you are boys
Back in the U.S.S.R.

Well the Ukraine girls really knock me out
They leave the West behind
And Moscow girls make me sing and shout
That Georgia's always on my mind

Oh, show me around your snow-peaked mountains way down south
Take me to your daddy's farm
Let me hear your balalaika's ringing out
Come and keep your comrade warm
I'm back in the U.S.S.R.
Hey you don't know how lucky you are boys
Back in the U.S.S.R.

Oh let me tell you, honey
Hey, I'm back!
I'm back in the U.S.S.R.
Yes, I'm free!
Yeah, back in the U.S.S.R.

Ha ha

 

[eyer]

Cogs in the Machine: Big Data, Common Core, and National Testing

Press Release: Study Finds That New Technology, Relaxation of Protections Threaten Student Privacy

Federal government using grants to induce states to build identical, increasingly sophisticated student-data systems

Contact: Jamie Gass, 617-723-2277, ext. 210 or jgass@pioneerinstitute.org

BOSTON – New technology allows advocates for education as workforce development to accomplish what has long been out of their reach: the collection of data on every child, beginning with preschool or even earlier, and using that data to track the child throughout his/her academic career and then through the workforce, according to a new study published by Pioneer Institute.

“It is an idea that dates back to the Progressive era,” says Emmett McGroarty, a co-author of “Cogs in the Machine: Big Data, Common Core, and National Testing.” “It is based in a belief that government ‘experts’ should make determinations about what is successful in education, what isn’t, and what sorts of education and training are most likely to produce workers who contribute to making the United States competitive in the global economy.”

In an era in which violations of privacy have become front-page news, the technology presents myriad threats to student privacy.

For many years the federal government has been using grants to induce states to build identical and increasingly sophisticated student-data systems. More recently, the federal government has worked with private entities to design and encourage states to participate in initiatives such as the Data Quality Campaign, the Early Childhood Data Collaborative, and the National Student Clearinghouse – all geared toward increasing the collection and sharing of student data. The National Education Data Model, with its suggestion of over 400 data points on each child, provides an ambitious target for the states in constructing their data systems.

None of the privacy protections currently in place reliably protect student data. Last year Congress gutted the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), leaving no reliable protections in place for student data. With Big Data, anonymization of an individual student’s information is practically impossible.

Initiatives such as the Workforce Data Quality Initiative, Unified Data Standards, MyData, ConnectEd, and student-unit records have sprung up to eliminate the technical obstacles to increased data-sharing. Private companies have donated education apps to schools in exchange for access to student information.

This treasure trove of student data is a tempting target for hackers, who have already begun their assaults.

In Promoting Grit, Tenacity and Perseverance, published last year by the U.S. Department of Education (USED), the authors expressed a strong interest in beginning to monitor students’ “beliefs, attitudes, dispositions, values and ways of perceiving oneself” and to measure non-cognitive attributes such as their “psychological resources.”

The report says that researchers could employ “functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and physiological indicators [that] offer insight into the biology and neuroscience underlying observed student behaviors.” It goes on to say that they can hook students up to devices such as cameras to record facial expressions, chairs that record posture and movements, and skin sensors to measure student responses to classroom activities. “Informant reports,” in which a parent, teacher, or other observer judges a student’s “grit, tenacity, persistence, and other psychological resources,” can gauge student attitudes and behaviors.

“This sort of character development and monitoring has traditionally been the domain of parents,” says “Cogs in the Machine” co-author Joy Pullmann. “But the Grit report clearly implies that families can’t be trusted to inculcate values and attitudes.”

“Cogs in the Machine” also discusses the types of “fine-grained” data that can be collected on non-cognitive attributes through students’ interaction with certain digital-learning platforms. “The manufacturers of these technologies certainly know what they mean for classrooms,” says “Cogs in the Machine” co-author Jane Robbins, “but few teachers are aware of it and even fewer parents are.”

These expansive data structures are intimately connected to the Common Core State Standards Initiative and national testing. Any information from the data initiatives mentioned above that is given to the two federally funded national assessment consortia aligned with the Common Core State Standards will be made available to the USED.

The national standards will also create a unified “taxonomy” that facilitates creation of common instructional materials and data-collection technology. Because Common Core focuses not on academic knowledge but rather on “skills” that involve attitudes and dispositions, it paves the way for national assessments and digital platforms that measure such attributes.

The authors make a series of recommendations to protect student privacy. They include urging parents to ask what kinds of information are being collected on digital-learning platforms and whether the software will record data about their children’s behaviors and attitudes rather than just academic knowledge. If parents object to such data-collection, they should opt out.

The authors also urge state lawmakers to pass student privacy laws, and they recommend that Congress correct the 2013 relaxation of FERPA.

Emmett McGroarty is executive director of the Education Project at the American Principles Project. Joy Pullmann is a research fellow of The Heartland Institute and managing editor of School Reform News, a national monthly publication. Jane Robbins is an attorney and a senior fellow with the American Principles Project in Washington, DC.

Pioneer’s extensive research on Common Core includes: The Dying of the Light: How Common Core Damages Poetry Instruction; Common Core’s Validation: A Weak Foundation for a Crooked House; Lowering the Bar: How Common Core Math Fails to Prepare High School Students for STEM; How Common Core’s ELA Standards Place College Readiness at Risk; Common Core Standards Still Don’t Make the Grade; The Road to a National Curriculum: The Legal Aspects of the Common Core Standards, Race to the Top, and Conditional Waivers; National Cost of Aligning States and Localities to the Common Core Standards, and A Republic of Republics: How Common Core Undermines State and Local Autonomy over K-12 Education. Pioneer produced a video series: Setting the Record Straight: Part 1, and Part 2, and has earned national media coverage, including op-eds placed in The Wall Street Journal and The Weekly Standard.

###

Pioneer Institute is an independent, non-partisan, privately funded research organization that seeks to improve the quality of life in Massachusetts through civic discourse and intellectually rigorous, data-driven public policy solutions based on free market principles, individual liberty and responsibility, and the ideal of effective, limited and accountable government.

http://pioneerinstitute.org/feature...tion-of-protections-threaten-student-privacy/