A Swedish school municipality in the Skellefteå Kommun has decided to replace its roll call documented on paper with an automated facial recognition technology. The system detects and identifies which individual student enters the classroom via its camera interface and a facial recognition algorithm. The school believes this technology to be very effective in minimising the administrative burden on teachers, while at the same time poses only minimal privacy risks to its students (BBC, 2019).
However, the Swedish data protection authority penalized the school board in light of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. Despite consent being obtained from parents and an opt-out option, the Swedish authority found the board’s monitoring too intrusive, overlooked student privacy, involved sensitive data, and lacked necessary impact assessment (Swist, Humphry, & Gulson, 2023).
