As colleges and universities roll out new artificial intelligence (AI) tools across campuses for a wide range of administrative, security, and academic functions, students are facing growing data privacy intrusions and concerns. Federal and state laws assure students of a substantial degree of data privacy. Your college or university should not be violating your state and federal data privacy rights. If your school has harmed you or is threatening to do so through its AI invasion and violation of your data privacy rights, retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team to address your issues and enforce your rights. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now to retain our skilled and experienced attorney representation.
The AI Boom on College and University Campuses
No question remains that the AI boom has hit college and university campuses, not just among students using AI tools to support their studies but also among school officials and administrators. AI is everywhere on college and university campuses, from the AI video surveillance indoor and outdoor cameras to AI electronic communication monitoring, AI exam proctoring, AI instruction and assessment tools, and AI admissions and marketing services. Colleges and universities are especially developing and deploying AI large language models (LLMs) and their chatbots, scooping up enormous quantities of student data for analysis, development of advanced AI tools, and widespread sharing.
When you entered your college or university, you may not have known it, but you were giving up virtually every last ounce of your privacy, especially your data privacy. You were likely familiar with how your use of social media and online shopping apps enabled sellers to track your every online move across applications, and even to access your electronic communications, to promote products and services. Advertisers seem to know everything about you. But the same is increasingly true for colleges and universities, which, too, know everything about you and share your data widely with others, whether you like it or not.
Campus AI Data Privacy Concerns
AI didn't create data privacy concerns. Data privacy violations, issues, and concerns have been around since the digital revolution began decades ago. The laws, summarized below, on data privacy are likewise mostly decades old. What AI has done and is currently accelerating is the vast collection and dissemination of student data, often without any thought or at least sufficient attention given to student privacy. AI didn't create the problem, but instead magnified it tenfold or a hundredfold. That's both the power of AI and AI's tragic problem: to accelerate and magnify every error its human designers make in their own conduct.
A report from Stanford University's Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence Institute highlights how the AI boom is adversely impacting data privacy. First, AI is constantly collecting and sharing vast quantities of online data, virtually without restriction. No one using digital technology, especially not college and university students using electronics as much as they do, really has any way to guard against AI chatbots serving large language models. Scoop and score is the mantra. Second, AI scooping and sharing serve the nefarious interests of scammers who have such easy and extraordinary access to your supposedly private online data. Third, AI enables others to manipulate and repurpose your data for uses you did not authorize or intend. AI data misuse can also amplify biases with unlawfully discriminatory impacts, for instance, in school admissions and grading.
Federal Data Privacy Laws and Campus AI
As ubiquitous and unstoppable as AI data scooping and sharing is, you retain data privacy rights. All is not lost. Americans do not have the advantage of the European privacy law known as the General Data Protection Regulation, harmonizing data protection laws across the European Union. However, some states are adopting equivalent laws, Congress has been considering a national equivalent, and other federal and state law data protections already exist, as the following sections summarize.
Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) is the primary federal law establishing student data privacy for all schools, like most colleges and universities, receiving federal funding. FERPA requires colleges and universities to obtain student consent to disclose personally identifiable information from the student's education records, with exceptions related to the ordinary operation of the academic program. Under FERPA, your school shouldn't be using AI tools to collect your personally identifiable education records and share those records outside of the specific authorized school uses. Students can enforce FERPA rights with a federal administrative complaint or within school administrative procedures.
FERPA rights apply broadly enough to reach AI-related data privacy breaches, although FERPA does not directly address AI. College and university officials should be aware that their use of AI LLMs and chatbots can lead to FERPA concerns, issues, and violations. See, for example, Northern Michigan University's Center for Teaching and Learning guide to faculty members on how to avoid FERPA violations when using AI. That guide recommends that faculty members limit data collection and transfer, obtain commitments from third parties to respect student FERPA rights, and obtain student consent to data sharing when necessary. Let us help you advocate that your professors and institution follow these practices and respect your FERPA rights in their use of AI.
Proposed American Data Privacy and Protection Act
Congress has considered but not yet enacted a national American Data Privacy and Protection Act (ADPPA) that would address data privacy nationwide for all individuals, including college and university students. If enacted, the ADPPA would be the first federal law devoted specifically to protecting consumer data nationwide, on the model of the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation.
Other Federal Data Privacy Laws
Other federal laws touch on data privacy protections, without broad application to all college and university students. The Privacy Act of 1974, 5 USC 552a, provides data privacy protection among federal agencies. The E-Government Act of 2002, 44 USC 3601, ensures the privacy of personal information in electronic records that the government maintains. And the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, 18 USC 2510, extends and clarifies federal wiretapping and eavesdropping laws. However, these laws, while influential as guides, have little or no direct control over college and university functions.
State Data Privacy Laws and Campus AI
The California Consumer Privacy Act, California Civil Code Section 1798.100, is the state equivalent of the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation. The CCPA established the California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA) to implement and enforce the Act's data privacy provisions. Illinois continues to consider a similar bill, as do other state legislatures. The CCPA requires businesses and other organizations to control and maintain the confidentiality of consumer information obtained through their operations and notify consumers in the event of breaches of data privacy. The state's regulators continue to work out the implementation of the law.
States also have statutory and common laws regarding civil liability for privacy violations. Depending on your specific state's laws regarding government liability and official immunity, you may have civil tort claims against your school or its officials for invasion of privacy, public disclosure of private facts, intentional or negligent infliction of emotional distress, and similar claims. Our attorneys can help you evaluate and enforce state tort law rights addressing your school's AI data privacy breach.
Higher Education Data Breaches
Colleges and universities do experience substantial and alarming data breaches. One security journal reports thousands of educational institution data breaches at educational institutions across the nation, resulting in the disclosure of nearly 40 million school records. Some breaches involve the college or university itself disclosing student data without need or authorization. Other breaches involve third-party vendors in their dealings with the college or university, inappropriately accessing and disclosing student data. Digital attacks and ransomware lead to other data privacy breaches. You are not alone if you have experienced an alarming breach.
Impacts of College and University AI Data Breaches
College and university AI-generated data privacy breaches can have severe impacts on the involved students. Federal and state laws, rules, and regulations recognize student data privacy for several purposes. First, student data in the wrong hands may lead to the data's misuse for coercion of the student, defamation of the student's good character, or identity theft involving the student's finances and credit. Students can suffer significant direct financial, personal, relational, and reputational harms from data privacy breaches. Second, data privacy breaches cause students to withhold data that professors and the institution may need to serve their educational purposes. The student's loss of trust, confidence, and respect can adversely affect the student's learning. Data privacy breaches also affect the school's reputation for competence and integrity, as well as its relationships with alumni, staff members, regulators, and other constituents.
Relief for Campus Data Privacy Violations
Don't overlook or underestimate the potential adverse impacts of your school's AI-generated data privacy breaches on your interests and the interests of other school constituencies. The form of relief our attorneys gain depends on the nature of your school's AI data privacy breach. But relief may include monetary compensation, tuition relief, retrieval of released data, removal of misused data or images, change in AI practices and data retention policies, an apology to you, and similar forms of relief. Let us help you address your data privacy issues for the benefit of all concerned.
Invoking College and University Procedures
If your college or university violates your data privacy rights using AI tools, we may be able to invoke various school administrative procedures to address and correct the violation. First, our attorneys may be able to get appropriate relief from the involved school officials who committed, investigated, or confirmed the data privacy breaches that impacted you. If, for instance, the AI data privacy breach involved the registrar or admission office's use of AI tools, releasing your private data in marketing, admissions, or related materials, or to vendors assisting the school in those functions, we may be able to get those officials' support and recommendation for your appropriate relief and compensation.
If we are unable to gain appropriate relief from the involved school officials, colleges and universities also maintain student grievance procedures administered by a dean, vice president, ombudsperson, or similar school official charged with oversight powers. For example, the Indiana University Student Complaint Procedure articulates different grievance procedures depending on the university official committing the alleged wrong. Our attorneys can prepare, submit, and advocate your grievance until we obtain appropriate relief.
If your college or university doesn't have an appropriate student grievance procedure or the procedure does not produce appropriate relief, our attorneys have a good reputation and relationships among general counsel and other oversight officials to pursue alternative special relief. We may be able to show that even if the involved school personnel failed or refused to correct their AI data privacy breaches and provide you with a suitable remedy, oversight officials should do so to avoid regulatory, liability, and reputational impacts.
Regulatory and Court Relief for AI Data Privacy Issues
If we are unable to gain appropriate relief within your college or university through its administrative procedures, our attorneys have the knowledge, skill, and experience to pursue agency regulatory relief. You've seen above, for example, that federal education agencies enforce FERPA rights. We can help you prepare, submit, and advocate a federal FERPA complaint. While the actions that federal regulators take tend to involve institutional fines, administrative orders, and funding impacts rather than individual relief, we may be able to use federal regulatory enforcement to convince school officials to provide you with individual relief. Our attorneys can also pursue your civil court tort or other remedies, as already discussed briefly above.
Premier Student Representation Available
If you have suffered adverse impacts from your college or university AI-generated data privacy breach, retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Student Defense Team to address and enforce your legal rights. Call 888.535.3686 or use our contact form now to retain us to pursue all appropriate relief.
