Thursday, October 13, 2016

Schools may not show the personal data of students on Net – Public.en



The National Commission for Data Protection (CNPD) condemns in the deliberation recent what it considers to be "a widespread practice" to disclose personal data of the students in the sites of the schools, as the guidelines with the classifications, the images of the minor and the hours of study. And alert to the risks that this publication brings to these children and young people, in particular for your security.

The commission says that the data can help produce "judgments stigmatizing with a high discriminatory potential," or allow a criminal to know the time a child leaves the school.

it Is this observation that leads the commission to issue "accurate directions" to public and private schools, from pre-school to secondary education, about what they can broadcast over the Internet, in a resolution dated 6 September.

The spokesman for the CNDP, Clara Guerra, asserts that this decision was made on the initiative of the commission itself, in the wake of several complaints of parents made over the last few years and who do not know accounting. Clara Guerra said that some of these cases have already resulted in the application of fines to the schools.

In the deliberation, the commission highlights the role of schools in training and development of individual children, highlighting that these institutions have a particular obligation to protect actively the students and to respect their fundamental rights".

THE CNPD considers that is understandable and desirable that schools make use of the Internet as a means to expeditiously and effectively disseminate information, but stresses that the public exposure of the data of minors who are detained by the schools "is highly in breach of privacy and has a very significant impact on the lives current and future students."

The commission points out that the Internet is accessible by any person, in any part of the world", the data can be copied and reproduced infinitely, providing "the unfair use of this information for various purposes, including for purposes criminals". And note that in the sites can be disclosed a wealth of useful information about the school activity that does not involve personal data, that is, "information concerning a natural person, identified or identifiable".

parental Consent

The publication of photographs and videos of pupils in a school environment raises "the greatest reservations" of the commission. The commission says that the dissemination of images and even the voice of the students, by the initiative of the schools, "creates a universe of opportunity to play and tamper with the data, and promoting their reuse for other purposes that are not even on the departure imaginable".

The resolution states that this issue is not foreseen in the law, but considers that even the express consent and free of the parents may not be enough. And remember a judgment of the Relationship of Évora, in June 2015, which imposed upon parents the duty to refrain from disseminating pictures or information that would identify the daughter in the social networks.

"In any case, understanding the interest underlying the disclosure of the activities of the school, will be allowed the dissemination of images that do not allow for the identification of children and young people", reads the text, which advises schools to focus on "capturing images from far away and from angles in which the children are not easily identifiable". Even in these cases, the CNPD considers to be necessary for the consent of parents, since there is a certain subjectivity in the definition of what is an identifiable picture.

The commission does not admit even to refer these contents to a reserved area of the sites, accessible only to users with a password, a solution that the commission argues in the case of the guidelines for the evaluation and in the lists of enrolled students. "It is not possible to control how each one of the users can come to make use of the images, including manipulating them or playing them on social networks, and disseminating information not only about itself and about your child, but also about the other children," he said.

Guidelines should be taken

in Relation to the guidelines with the student evaluations, it is considered that it may be published in the site free and that the that have been must be removed. The commission accepts that this information be published in the reserved areas of the sites, "subject to mechanisms of strict authentication of users duly authorized". But it insists that each parent should only have access to the data of the student that the secretary of state.

Remembering that the scores are only displayed in the interior of the schools "for a short period of time", argues that the rule should also be followed on the Internet. "The ratings should be eliminated from the site with effectiveness, that is, not just 'hidden', but actually erased, it can never exceed the maximum deadline of the end of the academic year concerned.”

Also the lists of the enrolled students only can be disclosed in reserved areas of the sites and must not contain "more information than necessary". The CNPD alert to the dangers of scattered information, although it doesn’t have the name of the students, can be crossed with other data, allowing, for example, to understand what are the hours of a particular child.

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