Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops

wired.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 357 posts

Re: Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops

#21

Post by wonderwonder »

capableweb wrote: post #7

> The work started at the end of November 2020, just days after Stockholm’s Board of Education was hit with a 4 million SEK ($456,658) GDPR fine for “serious shortcomings” in the Skolplattform. Integritetsskyddsmyndigheten, Sweden’s data regulator, had found serious flaws in the platform that had exposed the data of hundreds of thousands of parents, children, and teachers. In some cases, people’s personal information…

I don't really understand the fine, its a board of education so are the funds taken from public school funds? Seems wrong to take money from a school district.

Re: Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops

#22

Post by taylodl »

The first thing that jumps out is Sweden has a national identity system, BankID. The APIs appear to be protected using those credentials. With that in mind I have two questions:

1. Who owns the data?

2. Should public funds be used for the creation of private APIs that manage the data?

The answer to (1) has consequences for (2).

I think many HN readers, including myself, and certainly these parents would argue that the data is the property of the parents. If you see the data as being the property of the parents then you would see the APIs as being the means for retrieving and manipulating your data - data that's protected by this national BankID identification.

It appears the school system believes the data is their data, and not the parents' data. Therefore retrieving the data through any other means than the "official" app is a potential data breach.

So who is right? Think about the data we manage on behalf of our customers, for example. Who owns that data? What rights do our customers have in accessing and managing that data?

This is a really interesting case and hopefully will force the answer to these questions.

Re: Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops

#23

Post by enumjorge »

literallyaduck wrote: post #13

Government should learn from that self organized teams who work for passion build better software. Authoritarian dictators mandating a poor solution vs self lead, self organized, committed parents building a piece of software they will instantly dogfood.

I agree with the main point of your comment but calling the people trying to shut this down “authoritarian dictators” erodes the meaning of the phrase.

Re: Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops

#24

Post by dylan604 »

literallyaduck wrote: post #13

Government should learn from that self organized teams who work for passion build better software. Authoritarian dictators mandating a poor solution vs self lead, self organized, committed parents building a piece of software they will instantly dogfood.

Please. If those in charge allowed the passionate to do these kinds of things, they wouldn't remain in charge. Authoritarian dicators not required.

Re: Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops

#25

Post by quartz »

merpnderp wrote: post #6
rockbruno wrote: post #5

Funny that they were so concerned about GDPR violations given that in Sweden everyone's address/job/phone/salary is public and easily accessible. I like it that every time a foreigner joins my company (I live in Sweden) it's a matter of time before they post a message in our Stockholm channel saying "guys... what the hell is this website and why am I in it?". Then the swedes mention that they see nothing wrong with i…

Salary? How could that being public serve the public's interest? As a privacy advocate that does pique my curiosity.

In most cases salary is private more due to social customs and corporate interests than privacy concerns. If EVERYONES salary is public, I could see it serving the public interest in preventing wage disparity and discrimination.

Even in the US you can look up the salary of many people (public university employees come to mind).

One of the most important moments early in my career was learning the salary of the people above me. It let me evaluate the upside of climbing that ladder for the next 5-10 years and ultimately helped me make a critical decision to leave and take a higher risk role where the upside was greater.

Re: Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops

#26

Post by wonderwonder »

raxxorrax wrote: post #20
wonderwonder wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I think this digital child managing system sounds moderately dystopian to be honest" I disagree, I have 2 kids in elementary school and it is very useful to be able to look up what the kids have scheduled for the day to determine what to dress them in, see what's for lunch and if I need to pack them something if they won't like the available option. Most importantly though its very helpful to look up what homework /…

As I said, as a kid I would have hated this. I don't think kids benefit from this kind of overbearing parenting in the long run. Better than being neglected, I guess. Perhaps this is useful for very young children, but knowing myself I would have broken out of there as quickly as possible.

I can understand personal preference of a child but study after study show that children whose parents are actively involved with their education and schooling get better results.

Re: Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops

#27

Post by dylan604 »

enumjorge wrote: post #23
literallyaduck wrote: post #13

Government should learn from that self organized teams who work for passion build better software. Authoritarian dictators mandating a poor solution vs self lead, self organized, committed parents building a piece of software they will instantly dogfood.

I agree with the main point of your comment but calling the people trying to shut this down “authoritarian dictators” erodes the meaning of the phrase.

s/authoritarian dictators/power hungry, desperate to remain in power/

Re: Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops

#29

Post by locallost »

> The platform is a complex system that’s made up of three different parts, containing 18 individual modules that are maintained by five external companies. The sprawling system is used by 600 preschools and 177 schools, with separate logins for every teacher, student, and parent. The only problem? It doesn’t work. > The Skolplattform, which has cost more than 1 billion Swedish Krona, SEK, ($117 million), has failed to match its initial ambition.

So JIRA for Schools failed. It's a top down system, where people on top decide to solve problems for all people below, without really knowing how to solve it, or what the problem even is. And then contractors get involved.

People are willing to put up with this if you can press them, e.g. they are at work, they are in the army etc. so they have to put up with it, but it's not going to work for anything else. It attempts to solve everything for everyone, where it's questionable if most of these things are even worth solving. E.g. from the article, what is somebody's child doing in school, what do they need in gym class. You might just ask them, no? There are quarterly or so meetings with the teacher to discuss things, progress, problems? The problem is not that the menus are convoluted, but that maybe most of this stuff is not worth categorizing, not worth having an UI other than a piece of paper.

Re: Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops

#30

Post by raxxorrax »

striking wrote: post #17
raxxorrax wrote: post #8

> In some cases, people’s personal information could be accessed from Google searches. SEO providers should take a note here. > It warned parents to stop using the app and alleged that it might be illegally accessing people’s personal information If your API allows data extraction, it probably isn't a fault of any client. Perhaps they meant that creators could steal credentials. A problem with any software. I think t…

It appears to manage attendance and grades among other things. I'm not sure what this has to do with Chromebooks.

Such devices are part of their strategy for digitization as is this school app. Sweden spends a decent amount of money on education.

But if look at a purely educational value any notebook beats a tablet aside for art. Purely technical knowledge is also better gained in more open environments. Depends on age I guess.

Post reply on HN