Right2Object project
A Law/Education collaborative project aiming to inform teenagers of their right to object to using technologies in school that may pose a privacy risk.
About the project
Our individual data protection rights are captured in legal frameworks such as the UK GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and the Data Protection Act 2018. Article 21 of the GDPR outlines the right to object to digital data processing. For example, if you are age of 13 or over, you don’t have to agree to any data about you being gathered for advertising and marketing purposes.
Of course, schools and teachers use technology for teaching and learning, and there are good reasons for this. But some technologies may pose a clear privacy risk, even when they are very useful in the schooling context. They are run by companies which have a commercial interest in collecting data about you which are not just about helping your learning progress.
In this project, we aim to inform teenagers of their right to object to using certain technologies in school. It’s a fundamental data protection right, but it has many social and legal complexities in the school context. We have produced a video which captures the basic information, and which you can watch below. We’ve discovered that guidance on the practical execution of this data protection right needs urgent improvement, which is what we’re working on next.
The project, which includes the production of the video below, was funded by the Human-Data Interaction Network.
Work with us
We would like to hear from data protection officers in schools, teachers and headteachers, and the children who are the legal data subjects, and work together on a way forward that is legal, ethical, clear and practical.
Find out more
Read the Right2Object project report
Watch our video:
This video is for information only, produced as part of this project by Dr Caroline Stockman (Department of Education Studies and Liberal Arts), Dr Emma Nottingham (Centre for Information Rights) and Prof. Maria Burke (Head of Research and Knowledge Exchange, Faculty of Business, Law and Digital Technologies).
Further information
If you’d like to know more about us and related projects,
- Visit the Centre for Information Rights
- Email Dr Caroline Stockman, Dr Emma Nottingham or Prof. Maria Burke
- Connect with us on Twitter: @c_stockman and @EmmaCNottingham