NSW education department caught unaware after Microsoft Teams began collecting students’ biometric data
Guardian3 days
Australia: Biometric Data of NSW Students Collected by Microsoft Teams
Above: A laptop keyboard and Microsoft Teams on App Store displayed on a phone screen are seen in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on March 17, 2025. Image copyright: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images
The Spin
Narrative A
This was an egregious mistake on the part of the education department and a violation on the part of Microsoft of student privacy. In the digital age, it is paramount that we protect students from data harvesting as technology advances. The biometric data of our youngest and most vulnerable should not be given away.
Narrative B
This was an unfortunate incident, but the fact remains that student privacy was not compromised. All biometric data was encrypted and was never open for human access — it is a misnomer to suggest that personal data was used to train CoPilot or Teams. All data used to train AI systems is broken into abstract, mathematical bits, and thus posed no risk to the students.