WASHINGTON – Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, ID-Conn., issued the following statement Monday in reaction to reports that the Department of Education allowed access to a database containing confidential student information:
“I am deeply disturbed by reports that the Department of Education has apparently allowed excessive and inappropriate access to a database containing confidential and sensitive information on 60 million students, despite previous warnings that lenders were accessing the data without proper permissions and, in some cases, giving access to the system to unauthorized users, such as marketing firms.
“The Department’s response so far has been anemic and it must now act aggressively and expeditiously to curb such violations. I intend to seek additional information from the Department to determine if the Privacy Act or any other laws were broken.
“Unfortunately, this is just the latest in a long string of incidents that remind us the federal government is simply not doing enough to guarantee the security of confidential information that we must all provide to federal agencies at one time or another for tax, medical, lending or other purposes.”
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