Texas is for Lovers!
Kiddie lovers, that is…
“The News2Houston Investigators reported Thursday night in an exclusive story that Houston-area students’ personal information is readily available to anyone, even child predators, and can be used to hunt for specific kinds of kids — by their age, race or gender,” Click2Houston reports.
The law that allows it is called the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
It requires schools to have parental permission to release any student information.
But there’s a catch.
‘Directory’ information can be released without consent, which includes your child’s name, address, phone number, picture, and e-mail address.
‘I think it’s a loophole in the system that allows information to get out to people who prey on children,’ said Charles Clickman with Child Watch Of North America.
The Investigators wanted to find out how easy it was for anyone to get all this private information, so they sent out faxes to area school districts, using a company name that no one questioned or checked out.
The faxes were sent from a corner-copying store. Then, they got money orders from a convenience store, since most districts charge a few bucks for it. Within a couple of days, The Investigators knew exactly where to find thousands of children, after receiving envelope after envelope with home addresses, unlisted parents’ phone numbers, you name it.
Related (from the Houston Chronicle): “‘Hey, don’t look at us — we were out performing exorcisms that whole day,’ area priests swear”
Thank you. Thank you very much.
Yep. It’s amazing what crap infects the airwaves here in Houston.
I remember when their IT Manager went nuts and they needed to hire a new one. I called, they wanted to know if I could run a live truck, and I’m laughing at ‘em.
Computer guy… live truck… are they insane or something? Just what you want… a $100k+ vehicle in the hands of someone you’ll page 20 times a day trying to find the Any key.
50%+ profit margins, and they have to take the most essential position of the infrastructure and double-purpose it. I’d rather dig ditches or delouse rabid, horny wolverines.
Something you should know about this particular story: It ran last Thursday. Channel 2 started hyping it on Saturday during the NBA playoff games. In other words, this is a Really Big Story that can help you Keep Your Children Safe, but we’re gonna pimp it for five days in order to assure maximum ratings first.
Truthfully, given the track record of the local newsies around here and theire Your Children May Be In Danger! stories, it’s somewhat amazing that the actual story had merit to it.