Skelleftea Anderstorp school illegally tracks students using facial recognition

Sweden's Data Protection Authority fined the Skelleftea municipality 200,000 Swedish Krona for illegally tracking 22 students over three weeks and detecting when each pupil entered a classroom. According to Swedish state broadcaster SVT Nyheter , Skelleftea municipality said they thought facial recognition technology would save teachers 17,280 hours a year reporting student attendance. The regulator ruled that although the school had secured parents' consent to monitor the students, it felt it was a legally disproportionate reason to collect such sensitive personal data, and that students could be expected to have a sense of privacy when they entered a classroom. The DPA also said the managers of the project had failed to do a proper impact assessment, which should have led to consulting the authority due to the risks involved. System 🤖 Unknown Operator: Skelleftea Secondary Education Board, Anderstorp's High School Developer: Tietoevry Country: Sweden Sector: Education Purpose: Register student attendance Technology: Facial recognition Issue: Consent; Privacy/surveillance Legal, regulatory 👩🏼‍⚖️ Swedish Data Protection Authority (2019). Supervision pursuant to the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 – facial recognition used to monitor the attendance of students European Data Protection Board (2019). Facial recognition in school renders Sweden’s first GDPR fine

Date it happened

2018-01-01

Organisation involved

Skelleftea Secondary Education Board, Anderstorp's High School

This is a record of what was reported, not a finding that anyone broke the law. If it names your organisation and you believe it is wrong, the corrections process is free and open to everyone.