Congress Files Huge National Data Mining Bill

By Carole Hornsby Haynes, Ph.D. November 9, 2017

If the current bipartisan legislature passes, the federal government will be able to track you throughout life using education, employment, wage, and workforce data. The legislation forces all federal agencies to adopt a system that collects data on federal programs designed to track data on everyone including children, without their consent.

On October 31, following recommendations made in the Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking’s (CEP) final report, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Senator Patty Murray filed a huge data mining bill, the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act(H.R. 4174 --S. 2046 ). This legislation will create a national data clearinghouse that includes student data which will be shared with various agencies and researchers.

Since this citizen surveillance and tracking are tactics of police states, why would “conservative” Republicans – Ryan (WI), Trey Gowdy (SC), and Blake Farenthold (TX) – join Democrats in sponsoring this legislation?

Ryan is promoting this legislation as a necessity to “fight poverty” and to evaluate federal programs to determine those that work.

We already know nearly all federal programs don’t work, including anti-poverty programs. The ignoring of decades of research on the government boondoggle – Head Start – is evidence that government doesn’t care whether programs work, only that there be more programs to suck up more personal freedom and more taxpayer money.

The real purpose of CEP is for Congress to create permanent, lifelong dossiers on every higher education student. All college students would be entered into a massive federal database without their consent or knowledge or ability to opt out. There would be no limits to the data collected – employment, health, military service, financial, legal, family, religious, political, social, criminal.

Because Americans don’t want the federal government collecting dossiers on them, there is a statutory ban on a “federal student-unit record system.” Now a group of corporate funded researchers are hitching up with the Gates Foundation funded Data Quality Campaign to overturn the ban. At that point the federal government can collect information on all individuals and track them everywhere, anytime, for any purpose, for a lifetime.

Since the legislation does not include any limits, the student unit-record ban can be overturned and a national student database at the primary and secondary education levels can be created.

Although the legislation claims to protect the privacy of the data, evidence already exists that the U.S. Department of Education’s data security system is riddled with risks. 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.”

This national student database legislation is a camel in the tent in the D.C. swamp.

There is a parallel to this in the history of the federal takeover of education.

In violation of the 10^th Amendment, state control over American elementary, secondary and post-secondary education was enacted with two federal statutes -- National Defense Education Act of 1958 (NDEA) and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA).

The need for the NDEA was touted as necessary after the successful launch of the first Soviet earth-orbiting satellite and launch of Sputnik II. Though they voted for the bill, Congress recognized the Sputnik crisis was a sham, the real intent being to increase federal control over education. Senator Goldwater correctly predicted that the NDEA would prove to be the proverbial “camel’s nose” of the central government in the tent of education.

The camel’s nose moved in further with the passage of ESEA, claimed by Congress to be necessary to provide better educational opportunities of low-income children. The strategy was to make education expenditures politically irresistible to create nationwide entitlements.

These two statutes were passed against the will of the people.

As predicted by Goldwater, the camel moved entirely into the tent as ESEA became No Child Left Behind and now Every Student Succeeds Act, which gave even more power over education to the federal government.

Just like the deception over the NDEA and ESEA legislation, so, too, is the national data clearinghouse legislation a deception -- a deception to create a socialist state with citizen control.

During the months of hearings, Americans have protested the creation of a national I.D., yet they have been ignored – evidenced by the introduction of H.R. 4174 and S. 2046.It seems that Beltway Republicans still haven’t gotten the message that grassroots Americans are fed up with Big Brother – and politicians.

Contact your Representatives -- tell them to oppose the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking (H.R. 4174/S. 2046).

Capitol Switchboard 202-224-3121