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"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." - Nelson Mandela

Congress Suspends Rule:  Fast Tracks Police-State Bill

By Carole Hornsby Haynes, Ph.D. November 13, 2017

Congress is suspending rules to fast track a bill that allows surveillance of citizens and students. This week the House will take a voice vote on a bill that will create a massive federal data clearing house to merge information which will be shared with various agencies and researchers much like that of China.

Parents will not be able to opt their children out of this national database.

House Speaker Paul Ryan introduced the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act (H.R. 4174) while Senator Patty Murray introduced a companion bill (S. 2046)

The bill is based on the report of the Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking (CEP) whose purpose is to remove the ban on lifelong tracking of students through college and the workforce.

During the testimony Americans voiced strong protests about the legislation. The report of the CEP (page 30) notes, "Nearly two-thirds of the comments received in response to the Commission’s Request for Comments raised concerns about student records, with the majority of those comments in opposition to overturning the student unit record ban or otherwise enabling the Federal government to compile records about individual students.”

Knowing the public does not want this bill, the House Oversight Committee, chaired by Republican Trey Gowdy, passed the bill on a voice vote.

Now they intend to ram H.R. 4174 through the House on a voice vote – perhaps as early as Wednesday of this week!

H.R. 4174 is not the only assault on individual privacy. There are a flurry of bills being rammed through Congress, all designed to weaken federal student-privacy protections and create lifelong government surveillance and tracking of American citizens.

The College Transparency Act of 2017 (H.R. 2434), which purports to be transparency about college majors and future earnings, actually will overturn the Higher Education Act’s ban on a federal student unit-record system and establish a system of lifelong tracking of individuals by the federal government.

All students who enroll in higher education will be included in the federal database without their consent or knowledge or even the ability to opt out.

There will be no limits to the data collected – employment, health, military service, financial status, and criminal records. The data will be shared with other agencies to create a lifelong, permanent dossier on each person.

Still another assault on individual privacy is the Student Privacy Protection Act (H.R. 3157), which will further shred the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) that was gutted with the power of the pen under the Obama Administration, allowing third parties to access personal student information without parental consent.

Corporate researchers in tandem with the Gates Foundation funded Data Quality Campaign want greater access to data under the guise of education research to fatten their already bulging bottom lines.

Although the legislation claims to protect the privacy of the data, evidence already exists that the Department of Education’s data security system is riddled with vulnerabilities. Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) concluded that “almost half of the population of the United States of America has their personal information sitting in this database, which is not secure.”

A national clearing house is simply the camel’s nose in the tent at the D.C. swamp. The ultimate goal is to create a socialist state with citizen tracking, surveillance, and control.

It seems that Beltway Republicans – even some in the Freedom Caucus who have been sold a bill of goods – have decided they are superior beings to American citizens and will proceed on their own authority.

Unless grassroots Americans stop this leftist Republican-led Congress, individual privacy and personal freedoms will soon be a ghost from the past.

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