L.I.S.D. Students' Social Security Numbers Go Missing
By
KGNS News
Story Created:
Mar 22, 2011
Story Updated:
Mar 23, 2011
We begin with a big story tonight out of L.I.S.D. that has administrators scratching their heads and will likely have thousands of parents both worried and angry. A data breach involving student information has led to the release of social security numbers of every single student in the district. We're talking about tens of thousands of personal I.D. numbers. It's our top story at ten.
A Texas Education Agency spokeswoman made a comment to the Texas Tribune in Austin, saying T.E.A. first found out about the breach back in January. The district allegedly sent the social security numbers, on a disk, through the mail to the University of Texas at Dallas, who requested the data for a research project. But the disk was never delivered and the project the University in Dallas was working on was never even approved by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.
We caught up to L.I.S.D.’s Superintendent, Dr. Marcus Nelson, at a soccer game between Martin High and Nixon High with players whose very social security numbers may be in limbo tonight.
Dr. Nelson says while it is a huge concern for the district, he believes that it would be difficult for anyone to use the potentially sensitive information since it is encrypted. In short that means an individual or individuals would need a password to access the close to 25,000 social security numbers and names attached to them. Again, Superintendent Nelson says the fault lies not with L.I.S.D., but with the T.E.A. T.E.A. says they never received the disc, although the package containing it had been signed for at the government building which houses five governmental agencies, including T.E.A. in Austin.
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