Hungary’s teachers union is protesting a letter recently sent out to secondary schools by the county government offices, in which they are asking principals to send them the personal email addresses of their staff in order to “establish direct contact” with the teachers in the future.
A government decision taken last year handed over management of these schools to the state from the county councils.
The union said the request is against data privacy laws and does not specify what the contact information is needed for, nor does it say who will manage the data and for how long. [index.hu]
I don’t get it, why are they so upset?
After all, personal integrity isn’t a Hungaricum, I dare say it something unheard of all around Orbanistan…
So, kind folk, be prepared to give away just about every bit of yourself, because this is the New World Order!
In Orbanistan, that is!
my e-mail adress I would give would be f–kyou@hotmail.hu who the hell do they think they are, so they can spy on what teachers have to say to each other about the current political crisis
From my understanding, all the county-run school boards are being nationalized, and thus far, all the principals of those recently nationalized schools have lost their position as principal. Almost every single one.
So, probably, the government just wants to get teachers’ email addresses so they can hand them over to the new handpicked pro-fidesz principal, or perhaps just contact them directly if they decide not to hire a replacement.
Just another part of society that Fidesz feels they must have utter power over. This reminds me of when Putin decided that all regional governors in Russia would no longer be elected, but chosen by his government.
Did the local authorities really mean private email addresses (as in fu2@freemail.hu) or individual school email addresses of teachers, in their capacity as employees? The first is clearly a breach of privacy, the second I’m not so sure about.
It’s not clear from this news, or others, which one but I suspect it was the school e-mail.
However only one county level government office (in Hajdú-Bihar) asked for such a data for those teachers who organize A-level exams… on a voluntary basis:
-http://stop.hu/belfold/kik-es-miert-gyujtottek-a-tanarok-elerhetosegeit/994377/
(BTW, stop.hu is a news portal close to MSZP.)
So the news was false on several accounts:
1/ Not “kormányhivatalok” (plural form) but “kormányhivatal” (singular form)
2/ Not all teachers were asked to supply their e-mail address to the government office.
3/ It was a request, which may be denied, not a directive, to teachers.
The brain-trust is it at again
If the Authorities wanted the official email-address belonging to the Authority, they would just send an internal PM to the IT-responsible for that entity, but that would of course be too clever to do
If the Authority does not know who is a teacher and who is a cleaner, they would just ask the HeadMasters to collect that info for them:
* Professional title, Name, email-address
So it is the teachers private email they want, or these people sending out this letter were only employed due to their Fidesz membership-card
Your pick