"When elementary school students return from vacation, they can no longer use their portable Chromebooks. The Data Protection Authority has banned the use of Workspace - the applications on the Chromebook - because students' data may be disclosed to US authorities.
"The specific decision applies to Helsingør Municipality. But the Danish Data Protection Agency makes it clear that all the other municipalities that use Google's learning platform - that is about half of the country's 98 municipalities - should stop using Chromebooks in teaching. "The Danish Data Protection Agency expects these municipalities to take relevant steps on the basis of the decision," writes the Danish Data Protection Agency.
I thought it was a basic tablet with a webbrowser, is this wrong?
That includes the sign on to the computer and the device management to enforce limitations, it includes Google Docs, it includes Google Drive which is where persistent data is typically stored for a Chromebook.
If you elect not to use Workspace, there's no way to control and monitor the use of the devices. If the users login to the devices, they'd need to use a Google account, which presents the same data storage issues, so everyone would need to use the devices as a guest; but I'd bet guest use also results in unrestricted telemetry being sent to Google; and again, there's no way for the school system to manage the devices (which could enforce telemetry settings, perhaps) with users logged in as guests.
On the other hand, a windows Active Directory based system might run with servers hosted by Microsoft in Azure (and probably subject to similar concerns about data access by US governments), or it can be done with servers hosted onsite by the school system, or it can be outsourced to a provider within the country or economic area.
Apple computers are frankly unsuitable for this market; device management is poor. Open source operating systems could be setup however you like. Someone could setup a ChromeOS fork where the server hooks didn't need to go to Google, but I haven't seen it if it's been done. ChromeOS devices can usually run other OSes (if the other OSes support the critical hardware and the device can be convinced to boot in a method condusive to the other OS), but it might be labor intensive to setup at a school system wide level. You'd also need to come up with a different choice for productivity apllications as I don't think Google Docs would be easy to get working without Google.
The "no" is said to be based on the possibility that google workspace data COULD be handed over to american authorities jy google.
"The Data Protection Authority has banned the use of Workspace - the applications on the Chromebook - because students' data may be disclosed to US authorities"
Wouldn't that be the case with all US hosted services?
Completely incompatible with GDPR.