Roberta Metsola, Maltese Member of the European Parliament, has hit out at a new law that enables the Government to collect huge amounts of personal and sensitive data of school children, saying that the potential for abuse is staggering.
Legal Notice 76 of 2014, now allows the Minister to order any educational institution – from childcare and pre-primary to higher education institutions – to furnish him with sensitive information related “to age, sex, ability, educational attainments and other data…” All this data is meant to be used for research or employment advice.
“Parents, teachers and students alike are naturally worried and are asking all sorts of questions. This Government’s half-baked attempt to explain itself has done nothing to alleviate people’s concerns. It must come clean and explain to us why it is necessary for data on the ability and educational attainments of our children in pre-primary school to be collected; Who has access to the data?; Where and how is this data being stored?; Why was this passed through without a public debate?; It is almost as if the legal notice was published with the hope that no one would notice. It is like something out of a George Orwell novel”, said Dr Metsola.
“It is even more worrying when you consider that the Government has chosen not to appoint a national Data Protection Commissioner for Malta yet and has left the post vacant. Who will now oversee that this data is not being abused of? Where can people go for redress? This is not something to take lightly – the law also allows for the prosecution of those teachers or heads of schools who refuse to comply with these requests”, added Dr Metsola.
“When you consider that the European Parliament has only recently voted on sweeping new Data Protection regulations and privacy rules, this law is of huge concern. We must be assured that Personal Data is only collected according to very strict criteria, for very limited use, with proper restrictions on access and storage. People deserve better answers”, concluded Dr Metsola.
