Chromebooks and Workspace possibly banned
In Denmark, an end to the use of Chromebooks and Google Workspace in education is imminent. While in the Netherlands a year ago an education ban on Workspace for Education was painstakingly averted, Google now seems less fortunate. Danish privacy watchdog Datatilsynet published a ruling late last week banning schools in the municipality of Elsinore from using these Google and Workspace laptops.
Indeed, the processing of data coming from school students using Gmail, Google Docs, Calendar, Drive and other Google cloud software does not comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (AVG). According to the Danish regulator, Google's terms and conditions allow data to be transferred to other countries such as the US. And they shouldn't. After the demise of the Privacy Shield that regulated data sharing between the EU and the U.S., a vacuum was created in this area.
After Elsinore reported a personal data security breach two years ago, the "Danish AP" focused specifically on this municipality. But in the ruling, the regulator states that its conclusions may also apply to schools in other municipalities. If those other municipalities follow Elsinore's example, students may leave their Chromebooks at home after the summer vacations.
Google states in a commentary that it never uses students' data for commercial purposes. In the Netherlands, the tech company has taken a series of technical and organizational measures to comply with the AVG. Both educational cooperatives Surf and Sivon had reached an agreement with Google on this. Here, Google may only process diagnostic data for the purpose of providing, securing and updating its services.
