AU- Pedophile fears as student profiles, pictures go on net

10-29-2008 Australia:

PARENTS are outraged at a State Government plan to post the profile of every state school student on its intranet, sparking fears pedophiles could find it.

The intranet database, dubbed OneSchool, will profile each of the state's 480,000 public school students enrolled from Prep to Year 12.

Photographs, personal details, career aspirations, off-campus activities and student performance records are being collected from all 1251 state schools.

The site already has been labelled a likely target for computer hackers.

"The social fabric of hackers is such that this database (OneSchool) is going to be a fair target," Queensland University of Technology deputy dean of Information Technology professor Mark Looi said.

"People are going to try and get in. There is no doubt in my mind."

But Education Minister Rod Welford has warned the state-wide rollout of the OneSchool database is "non-negotiable" and students could be refused an education if they don't divulge required information.

Parents outraged

couriermail.com.au reader Sari, of Brisbane, suggested personal information of our politicians, their wives and children should be posted first.

“Then we'll see how safe it is before adding school children.”

Sandra of Brisbane said Mr Welford could not stop her children from attending school if she refused to allow them to be part of the database “because by law the government has to provide my children with an education”.

“Stick that where you must. And you can get screwed if you think I am going to consent to my children's photo and private details being available to anyone and everyone in the system,” she wrote.

I Reckon of Brisbane wrote: “Ya gotta be joking? What a world of paranoid people we have became!”

Andrew of Queensland said: “My own children’s teachers need this information, not every person (including adminstration staff) and the entire education system.”

“Well, I guess my children will be getting a home education as there is no way on this earth any of my child's details will be available to anyone in this way,” Ad of Brisbane wrote.

However, Adam of Brisbane said: “Why would a pedophile bother to hack into a database like this when there seems to be enough vile content elsewhere on the internet?”

Education Queensland said details of 180,000 students from 637 schools already were online and the database would be completed by December.

About 80,000 students are expected to be added to the internal education department database each year.

Welford's ultimatum

Education Minister Rod Welford said parents could be denied access to public education if they refused to consent to their child being profiled, and he dismissed concerns from parents about pedophiles hacking into the database.

"It's not Facebook we're creating here," Mr Welford said, referring to the popular internet networking site.

"The Courier-Mail is playing to the ridiculous, extreme and hypothetical, and I will not be drawn into playing your game."

He said - to his knowledge - no one had gained unauthorised access to Education Queensland's other online databases.

Students must accept it

Mr Welford has warned OneSchool is "non-negotiable" and students could be denied an education if they don't divulge required information.

He also said he understood some people might have concerns about the security of online databases but OneSchool was designed to be more secure than the current system.

"If they don't want to have any of their information recorded ... how else does one record a student's results," he said.

However Civil Liberties Council vice-president Terry O'Gorman yesterday said parents should be concerned, warning the OneSchool system could put students' privacy at risk.

Mr O'Gorman called for the system to be restricted so principals and teachers could access data only on their own students, with non-teaching staff excluded and no access for home computers or laptops.

"Why should anyone other than the teacher of a particular student and the principal of that school have a right to know what a child's academic performance is, behavioural status is or what their life aims are?" he said.

"It just puzzles me as to how it can have any possible benefit to centralise that information, whereas it has a clear privacy downside."

At least four Queensland teachers have been arrested in the past fortnight in connection with an international child porn network. One is accused of super-imposing photos of himself and his students on online images of children being sexually abused.

OneSchool users will have passwords to one of 12 different levels of access to the encrypted data, according to their role.

Until now schools have used paper records and offline computer or internet-based databases to store student information.

Queensland Council of Parents and Citizens Association vice-president Charles Alder rejected concerns about security breaches.

"The security standards on this are as high as on any other system," he said.

Queensland Association of State School Principals president Norm Hart also supported OneSchool.

The first phase of the database rollout, to be completed by December, focuses on developing accurate student-management records including school reports, contact details, attendance, extra-curricular activities, behaviour, career aspirations and parental contact. ..News Source.. by James O'Loan and Melanie Christiansen