I read a piece of news in the Spanish newspaper informing about a fine that has been imposed to a Swedish school in Skellefteå for using facial recognition to control the students attendance. It was a test implemented during three weeks in one classroom, with 22 students who had given their consent to be monitored in such way. However, the school must face a fine of 200 000 kr because this project violates the GDPR. Consent is not enough in this situation, since those who own the data (students) are in a weaker or depending position with respect to those who control them now (the school board).
This situation brings up an interesting and polemic subject: what happens with our data and who controls them. It is not new, I would say that it is extremely recurrent. One of the latest times was when discussing the Russian app FaceApp, which aged our faces in a funny way to post in Instagram. It went viral during the summer, and the debate about privacy arose once more, since our facial information was being shared.
But it is not just FaceApp, or any other suspicious up. It's everything. We share our data, our personal information everyday. We must accept conditions and grant permits every time we download a new app. In most cases they don't make sense, but that is the price we have to pay, and we pay it. We have become digital, but that has enormous implications for our privacy.
What can we do, if anything? I don't know, and I would like to know. It seems that the lost of privacy is one of the drawbacks of the progressive digitalization of our lives. Legislation such as the aforementioned GDPR certainly helps and it is needed, to protect us, customers. Or products, I should say. Because when we get something for free, it unfortunately means that we, i.e. our data, are the product.
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| Image from EUGDPR - Information Portal (eugdpr.org) |
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