This is the best summary I could come up with:
Danish privacy regulator Datatilsysnet has ruled that cities in Denmark need considerably more assurances about privacy to use Google service that may expose children’s data, reports BleepingComputer.
Municipalities will need to explain by March 1st how they plan to comply with the order to stop transferring data to Google, and won’t be able to do so at all starting August 1st, which could mean phasing out Chromebooks entirely.
Google using it for purposes like performance analytics or feature development is a problem under their interpretations, even if it doesn’t include targeted advertising.
For instance, it’s easy to see how regulators might take issue with student data being used to develop and improve AI features, which are increasingly part of Google Workspace and Chromebooks.
Datatilsysnet says that cities hadn’t actually done a thorough enough job of vetting the risk of using Google Workplace for Education before they approved their use by local schools.
In 2022, it required 53 municipalities to re-do their assessments as a condition for rescinding a previous data-sharing ban for the city of Helsingør.
The original article contains 258 words, the summary contains 176 words. Saved 32%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
who knew that an impossibly cheap computer was harvesting your data with a butchered open source operating system with a lot of closed-source stuff added to it?
sounds familiar…
I am just surprised how this is legal from the start.
Yup.
The only weird thing is that Google gets so much for such a low lobbying bill: https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary?cycle=2016&id=D000067823
Makes you wonder how much cash they’re shipping to legislators under the table.
I’m always disappointed how cheap our politicians really are. Like $5-10k is enough to get you to sell out your constituents? Yikes, dawg.
It’s called old people in charge who don’t understand how modern shit works. Have no understanding of why privacy is worth fighting for.
google should not be allowed anywhere in healthcare. OR strict restrictions and full tansparency of the company should be required.
My kids have been using these Chromebooks. I find it hard to believe that this data has any value for Google, unless they’re really want to collect all the wrong answers to the math curriculum for a 6-10 year olds and the essays about favourite names for pet animals. The location data is also useless. The kids are at school at school time.
They should just have offered laptops that don’t exchange data outside the school, because it’s frankly worthless to do in the first place.
if your IT guy is especially competent, they could’ve built a locked down linux distro to flash onto the chromebooks. that’s basically all chromeOS is.
Most public schools wouldn’t have the budget to allocate a staff member to create and maintain such a distro. It would also take quite some time to flash to all of the devices.
The management tools built into chromeOS are also mature and very compelling to schools. Most schools don’t see the value of reinventing the wheel when a mostly ok solution that takes no extra effort is already available.
that’s also a factor, but having some of these tools developed on a national level could be useful.
Looks like it’s not focused on the student’s schoolwork/personal data but how they use the devices/services.
From the original BleepingComputer article that The Verge article is based on:
The agency clarified that permissible uses of student data include providing the educational services offered by Google Workspace, enhancing the security and reliability of these services, facilitating communication, and fulfilling legal obligations.
Non-permissible cases are purposes related to maintaining and improving Google Workspace for Education, ChromeOS, and the Chrome browser, including measuring performance or developing new features and services for these platforms.
