UPDATED with new info 18th of August '22.
Danish authorities have banned the usage of Chromebooks in public ground schools due to
prohibited sharing of personal data from children between EU and US in Google Workspace.
This ban may spread to other parts of the educational sector and even other states in
the EU.
Cheers!
Is that bad, tho? :^)
As a fellow neighbor, I’m quite intrigued by Danish political decisions lately.
Good stuff, keep it coming! (and tell your neighbors in the south about it)
Okay, but what about windows and mac doing the exact same thing? Seems.like a targeted attack on google specifically, not that im defending google outright but if you are going to chace one with rules apply them evenly
It’s easier to target a niche-r market, cuz ChromeOS is <1% If I recall.
“Chromebook ban”. It’s really the use of Google Workspace.
Afgørelsen indeholder et forbud mod at behandle personoplysninger ved brug af Google Workspace, som er en programpakke, der ligger på en Chromebook.
The agreement contains a ban on processing personal information while using Google Workspace, which is a software package, that is in Chromebook.
And it seems like it’s only until they’ve done a formal consequence analysis on it.
But it’s good. Don’t save things on Google that you don’t want Google to snoop on.
In Denmark, a lot of schools provide Chromebooks to the students / pupils as a loan, which is then used as an essential part of the lecture/lessons - because it is a cheap alternative to laptops capable of running Windows. Right now, many pupils are on summer vacation but when the school starts again some time in August, an essential tool is no longer available to the pupils. That is actually going to cause a lot of trouble for some schools since they have Chromebooks as an integrated part of their planned lecture. As far as I know, this may become a problem for about half of the pupils in public ground schools in Denmark - what a summer, that’s a bummer!
@Exard3k The ban is actually a result of the European GDPR, so no Cup for the Danish politicians this time… 
@Zibob Dunno… Apparently the problem is that Google allows sensitive user data to be gathered in the EU and then transferred to the US where the government and others may get access to it which is in conflict with EU’s GDPR. Both Microsoft and Apple have data centers located in Denmark, btw…
“Both Microsoft and Apple have data centers in Denmark” is pretty much the sole reason they’ve not done much about those 2… Since they’re, as far as I know not sending it (data) to Westerns >_>
Oh I see. But let’s just say that Margrethe Vestager probably had something to do with it as well. We can both be right then 
In any case a good direction. My German administration is a slothful institution, we need pressure from outside or we’ll run Win XP and US cloud until 2100.
I’ve heard from a place where I am gettin’ an intership soon, that the Germans are heavily against Microsoft’s Azure, or, anything Microsoft for their business/gooberment stuff. Correct me if I am wrong tho, cuz this is just 1 team of people working for them. (I’m also not German, tho, Gutten tag 
)
Pretty much.
Since any data crossing the US border has to be available for some 3-letter agency to stick their nose into, anything German government is bared from anything US-based where cloud or datacenter is mentioned in the EULA.
That is also the reason Win10/11 (and their Server Counterparts) and O365 are finding only slow adoption if any in the public sector here.
There is some movement. I even heard the word “open source” in a parliament debate. Liberals+Greens (the parties that are not using fax anymore for communication) in government can make this fly and some federal states are already going all-in (which means in 10 years by government standards), but not all of them. Schleswig-Holstein being in a protagonist role and infecting other states. I personally don’t believe it until I see Jitsi servers, SuSE or whatever running and teachers teaching shell commands in IT class.
I’m curious how long it takes for Google to provide a solution to the matter since they hardly want to give up the potential for data collection.
@HomelessDeFRaGer Yes, but user data from EU citizens stored in the EU is underlying EU laws. If user data is transferred to the US, EU law does no longer apply. That is probably the main issue in this regard.
@Exard3k LOL, Prins Valium von Schnarchistan (TV Total)! I’ve heard that there is still a lot of paper filing going on in Germany? In a privacy perspective that is not that bad after all!
Schools are slowly introducing RPI’s with the acompanying “look, the terminal does not bite”.
Yep.
All though, you can often make an appointment online or print out the papers you will have to file now.
To me, some desk jokey typing MY very personal data into a closed off system sounds way better than “everyone and the CIA knows it”
This, honestly. Couldn’t have said it better. Well, I can just say “One day”. We shall hope it does actually go from just gooberment not liking microsoft, to majority of servers/data centers moving to (INSERT LINUX/BSD BASED SERVER)
Fax machines and cars are the German’s favorite machines. You can report a crime to the police online, but you have to send evidence and photos by (non-e)mail or fax. That pretty much sums up most of digital Germany in 2022. Half digital, half analog and sometimes a wierd and disturbing mix of both.
Sucks for students/teachers given the alternatives are much hassle-ier to manage.
Chromebook hardware if implemented as recommended is fully autoupdatable, fully encrypted and completely disposable, and it’s hard to end up in a situation where you need a bunch of third party software on them to manage, because it’s usually just simply not supported.
I wonder what “export” requirements are specifically, e.g. audited access by US employees to data stored in EU, would that be ok?
They should have opted for alternative solutions to start with. Google offers feature rich and easy to use solutions for free, but the price you have to pay is your privacy. Since GDPR (more or less) protects EU citizens from privacy violations, Google’s business model is somehow under pressure in the EU.
The problem there is that they can’t legally transfer it to the US but do so anyway.
I really hope that the EU will finally put their foot down somewhere to stop this data hunger and actually cut off the data for one of those data giants. It seems that might happen soon and I hope that, despite all the user backlash it’ll cause, it’ll actually bring about change.
Meanwhile the Dutch government has already advised Dutch schools to not use Chrome OS and Google Workspaces due to GDPR violations back in July of '21. Google said that they “can’t comply yet” due to technical limitations and needing time to change the products. They plan to be compliant by summer '23 in time for the school year of '23/'24.
https://www.tweedekamer.nl/kamerstukken/brieven_regering/detail?id=2022Z15083&did=2022D31242
Appeasement and bullshit from some PR department.
And regarding the facebook blackout…oh this would lighten up my summer by quite a bit. Facebook-free Europe? Yes please.