“Hello everyone, if your children are under 13 years of age and use Google Workplace for Education (applications), we need you to file a complaint with the Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD) so that they can investigate,” says a message from the end. April in the Madrid Mobile Free Adolescence Telegram chat. He encourages his more than 3,000 members to denounce: “It is a way to start fighting the chromes (Chromebook computers) in schools. It’s very easy, I just did it. It is important that the more complaints there are, the better,” adds the message, which is replicated in other local WhatsApp groups of parents concerned about screens.
This campaign has just begun, but the AEPD already confirms that in recent months complaints against schools that use Google tools and do not comply with data processing have grown: “We would be talking about a dozen complaints against educational centers, for example. At the moment none directly against Google,” say sources from the AEPD. “There has been an increase in the last year,” they add, and warn that this figure may not include all those received: “There may be complaints filed pending admission in the prior analysis phase,” they say.
Google Workplace for Education consists of the transfer of gigabytes storage in Google Drive and the use of services such as Classroom, Meet, Google Docs, Forms and Google Chat. For all this, of course, each user must create an account. In its information about the service, Google says that “Google Workspace for Education does not collect student data for advertising purposes.” It says nothing, however, about other “ends.”
The original parent chat message also reminds that this tactic has been successful in Denmark. A father reported Google tools in 2020. The Danish data protection agency responded in February and issued a resolution where it says that the current system of data transmission through Google Workspace and Chromebooks in schools had no legal basis. Danish schools should therefore cease their transfer of personal data or obtain a clear legal basis for doing so.
The national Mobile Free Adolescence movement, which emerged from a family chat in November in the Poblenou neighborhood, continues to focus on the devices, as confirmed by a spokesperson, but in Madrid above all there is concern about data processing and the implications. of privacy and education of the use of screens and tools of large American corporations such as Google: “These actions are being carried out by the Adolescencia Libre de Móviles de Madrid (ALMMA) association because ALM is a state movement but has not gotten involved in the use of devices in schools,” says a Madrid spokesperson. “The priority now is to delay the delivery of smartphones to minors supported by health evidence and with the support of experts. Dedigitization will come later,” she adds.
When asked by EL PAÍS, Google does not have any official statement about these complaints to the AEPD, although they did share contextual information with this newspaper about their commitment to user privacy.
Agreements by communities
The concern is focused on Madrid, which in 2021 signed an agreement with Google for the use of its tools in community centers. But Google also has, according to the company, an agreement with Andalusia, Catalonia, Euskadi and the Canary Islands. With others such as Extremadura or Murcia, Google collaborates, but does not have an established agreement. The American company is in more regions, but at the same time it competes with Microsoft, which also gives its infrastructure to educational centers in various communities.
The AEPD has already warned the Canarian government in the summer of 2023 for using Google tools without due control. In another recent consultation about a possible agreement with Google in the cities of Ceuta and Melilla, the only ones that depend on the Ministry because they do not have transferred education powers, The AEPD is clear: “There is no doubt that we are facing an invasive collection of personal information to simply receive part of the education through a digital environment and acquire digital skills,” says the Agency, which gives more details of the information that can be generated through of these free accounts: “Let us not forget that the students would be identified through a user account and it would be the one with which they interact in the different services, being able to show their express preferences for content through “like” interactions or the inclusion of comments. Taking these possibilities into account, information on psychological behaviors such as eating disorders, sociability problems, cultural and educational behaviors of these minors could be subjected to treatment,” explains the Agency.
It is not easy to minimize risks
Academic researchers who have studied the Google environment also have reasonable doubts about where the data of Spanish and European students may end up: “In terms of privacy, using a cloud service provider like Google for education entails everything.” type of risks,” says Carlos Hernández Gañán, professor at the Technical University of Delft (Holland). “These risks are not unique to Google, but are exacerbated as, in educational settings, both students and teachers tend to share potentially private data. Google would also have access to data diagnosis that would basically allow us to know almost all of the student’s interactions with Chrome,” he adds.
One of the current problems is the lack of knowledge among data managers at the centers about how to protect minors’ accounts: “Google has presented measures to minimize these risks,” says Hernández Gañán, “but they assume that the IT administrators at the centers “Schools and teachers themselves have the technical capabilities to be able to configure the accounts appropriately.”
The Danish complaint occurred in 2020, by a father concerned about his children’s data being sent to Google. In Spain, the AEPD has only received complaints against educational centers, not against Google itself. The AEPD has already published sanctioning resolutions about the use of Chromebooks in a Basque school and by Google Workplace for Education in a Madrid center. It is likely that resolutions will continue and that other schools will fear getting involved in educational technology that can cause problems. “We want to inform the AEPD of the doubts raised by the use of the Google Workspace for Education study support tool by the school our minors attend,” says the ALM spokesperson in Madrid. “That is why it is important that families with children under 14 years of age, before they have turned 14, and who are using Google Workspace for Education, get started,” she adds.
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