The names, birth dates and social security numbers of as many as 17,000 Williamson County school children have been accidentally posted on the internet, according to a Washington D.C.-based watchdog agency.

Liberty Coalition said the sensitive information was accidentally leaked in August 2007.

The agency's director said a Williamson County educator was doing a dissertation comparing student test results when the colossal mistake was made.

Williamson County School officials confirm that an educator authorized to handle the sensitive data had it on a thumb drive, and while working on a project, accidentally posted it to a personal Web site.

Craig Cooper has two children in the Williamson County school system and was recently contacted about a breach of his kids' names and social security numbers.

Concerned, Cooper went to the Web site SSNBreach.org, punched in his children's names and sure enough, the site showed him what was accidentally sent to the World Wide Web.

"We are upset," Cooper told News 2.  "And concerned our nine-year-old child will buy a car in Europe somewhere [and] ruin his credit.  [There is] no way to recover from this."

"What is really bad you throw it to the internet winds [there is] no way to know who has a copy and no way to get it back," said Aaron Titus, Director of Privacy at Liberty Coalition.  "It was unnecessary for the dissertation... There should be policies and obviously there are not, or they were not followed."

Jason Golden, in-house council for the Williamson County School System, told News 2 it was appropriate for the man to have access to the information because he is an assessment specialist in the curriculum department who coordinates testing.

When asked when the teacher reported the incident to the school system, Golden said neither he nor Williamson County Director of Schools Dr. Becky Sharber learned of situation until Tuesday.

Williamson County parents were officially informed of the situation through a recorded phone message sent out Wednesday night.

The message was similar to the following:

This is Becky Sharber, the Williamson County Director of Schools.  We recently received a report alleging that confidential student information from the 2006 and 2007 school year had been available on a private Web site during August and September of last year.  That report states that social security numbers of approximately 15% of our students and testing data for a larger number of students were in files which were accessible during this period of time.

This Web site was created by a school employee working on a graduate degree, and he states that some student information was erroneously uploaded to the site.  The information we have from that employee indicates that test scores and social security numbers of our students then in grades third through eighth were in those files, but we have not yet confirmed this.  Since we were just informed of this event, we do not yet know whether your child's information was included, but we wanted to make sure you were aware of this issue.  We will call you next week to give you an update on our investigation.

Also, as part of this investigation, we will work to ensure that no such event occurs again, and we thank you for your patience as we go through this process.

U.S. Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn issued the following statement to News 2:

"I understand the anxiety that Williamson County parents are feeling right now and trust that county officials are taking the appropriate steps to resolve the issue. In the meantime, I am standing by to help these families with any Federal resources that are available to assist them. Congress should act to ensure that federal response to secure the identities of minors is as rapid as possible."

Those who think their children may have been affected should go to SSNBreach.org and type in their children's name.

The Web site won't tell you what your child's social security number is, but it will tell you what type of sensitive information might have been compromised.

It is also recommended parents check with a reporting agency like AnnualCreditReport.com and get a free credit check.

A nine-year-old should not have any credit ranking.  If he or she does, their identity has been stolen.

Thursday, News 2 spoke with Williamson County Schools' Attorney Jason Golden.  Click HERE to read a transcript of the interview.