London, February 8th: Concerned that student data could be misused, Denmark’s data protection authority has ordered schools to stop sending student data to Google through the use of Chromebooks and Google Workspace services.
Regulator Datatilsynet has issued an injunction to 53 local governments, ordering them not to provide students’ personal data to Google.
The issue was brought to the department’s attention about four years ago by concerned parent and activist Jesper Graugaard.
Graugard protested that student data was being sent to Google without any consideration for potential misuse.
A Danish government agency has now determined that the current method of transferring personal data to Google has no legal basis for all disclosed purposes.
Local governments have until March 1st to declare exactly how they intend to comply with the regulator’s orders, and until August 1st to fully align their data processing practices with the new requirements.
Google has not yet commented on the Danish government agency’s order.
“Most IT standard products today have highly complex contractual infrastructures that not only include many options for variations in the processing of personal data, but also undergo relatively frequent changes.” says IT security and legal expert Alan Frank. agency.
“It’s easy to lose track of what’s happening with your data, making it unnecessarily difficult for companies and authorities responsible for data to comply with GDPR,” he said in a statement.
Local authorities were ordered to stop the transfer of personal data to Google for certain purposes or to obtain a clear legal basis for such transfer.
We are required to analyze and document how personal data is processed before using tools such as Google Workspace, and to ensure that Google does not process the data we receive for non-compliant purposes.