Skelleftea Anderstorp high school facial recognition

Sweden's Data Protection Authority (DPA) has fined (pdf) the Skelleftea municipality 200,000 Swedish Krona for tracking 22 students over three weeks and detecting when each pupil entered a classroom. Images from the camera were then compared to pre-registered images of their faces. 

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 failed to do a proper impact assessment, which should have led to consulting the authority due to the risks involved.