A billboard truck trolled public streets around Harvard University, broadcasting the names and faces of students who signed an open letter blaming Israel for the terrorist attack perpetrated by Hamas. As reported by The Harvard Crimson and other outlets, students associated with organizations that signed on to the letter composed by the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee have since faced doxing attacks and threats of professional blacklisting. According to the Crimson, four of the blacklisting sites published students’ full names, class years, photos, hometowns and club memberships—all of which is directory information eligible to be published without student consent under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA. The very legal framework intended to safeguard student privacy actually enables violating it.

…In the age of big data, online publication of directory information makes students vulnerable to doxing and other forms of online and real-world harassment. What’s more, educational directory information can be cross-referenced, manually or algorithmically, against social media and other digital identifiers to profile, categorize, sort and target students, exposing them to various forms of exploitation and surveillance.

…The school officials provision, added in 2008 to enable third-party access to students’ educational records at a time when colleges were increasingly adopting online learning services and outsourcing other aspects of the student experience, is like a FERPA magic wand: when waved over contractors, consultants, volunteers and others, it transforms them into school officials eligible to access FERPA-protected educational records. And the data flows do not stop there—redisclosure of student data is permitted, and educational records can be passed downstream to other parties that satisfy the generous “school official with legitimate educational interest” standard. Digital transformation in higher education could not occur without the FERPA magic wand that transforms ad-tech companies like Google and Facebook into school officials with legitimate educational interests.

Read more:

Hartman-Caverly, S. (2023, October 26). The Failure of FERPA. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/views/2023/10/26/harvard-doxing-truck-shows-ferpas-obsolescence-opinion