This post includes articles regarding new domain name extensions, updates to the federal law governing children's online privacy, new privacy legislation in Washington state, and artificial intelligence applications.
With our "Interesting Policy Reads" blog posts, the EDUCAUSE Policy Office highlights recent articles on federal policy issues and developments that are directly relevant to members or provide insights on higher education policy in general.
- What's in a Domain Name? Inside Higher Ed, January 8, 2020. (The proliferation of new domain extensions such as .university, .college, .degree, and .education has led some colleges and universities to buy website addresses with these new extensions to protect their brand, but with so many possibilities on the market, institutions have to draw the line somewhere.)
- Lawmakers Offer Bipartisan Update to Children's Online Privacy Law, Axios, January 9, 2020. (A newly introduced bill, the Preventing Real Online Threats Endangering Children Today Act, H.R. 5573, would require companies to obtain parental consent before they can collect personal data like names, addresses, and selfies from children under the age of 16. Current law prohibits platforms from collecting personal data from children under the age of 13.)
- YouTube Overhauls Advertising, Data Collection on Kids Content, The Washington Post, January 6, 2020. (Responding to concerns that it was in breach of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, YouTube has implemented changes to better distinguish which content is intended primarily for children and prohibit personalized advertisements from running alongside such content.)
- Washington State Lawmakers Debut Legislation for Consumer Privacy and Facial Recognition, GeekWire, January 13, 2020. (Lawmakers in Washington state have introduced a bill that is similar to policies such as the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation and the California Consumer Privacy Act. The bill would give consumers new rights to ownership over their data and establish new transparency requirements for companies that process consumer data.)
- Hasty Departure for Head of Calif.'s New Online College, Inside Higher Ed, January 14, 2020. (The chief executive officer of California's new online-only community college has resigned after an eleven-month tenure.)
- Average Age of CIOs Nudges Higher, The Wall Street Journal, January 23, 2020. (The average age of CIOs at the top 1,000 US corporations by revenue has risen from 51 in 2016 to 55 in 2018.)
- New Surveillance AI Can Tell Schools Where Students Are and Where They've Been, Recode, January 25, 2020. (In an effort to bolster safety, some K-12 schools in the United States have acquired analytic surveillance cameras with AI-based software, leading some experts to worry about the impact these tools will have on student privacy.)
For more information about policy issues impacting higher education IT, please visit the EDUCAUSE Review Policy Spotlight blog as well as the EDUCAUSE Policy page.
Kathryn Branson is an Associate with Ulman Public Policy.
© 2020 Kathryn Branson. The text of this work is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 International License.