Intrusive and discriminatory impacts of remote proctoring in the UK

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic many educational institutions in the UK have moved exams online and are turning to remote proctoring as a monitoring solution. This potentially results in a number of intrusive and discriminatory impacts, including the collection of personal data through room scanning and tracking cookies, unfair algorithms used to identify students and analyse their behaviour, and data security risks.

Open Knowledge Foundation planned to take litigation against a number of institutions using remote proctoring software to prevent its use until the data rights and equality issues are resolved. For organisational reasons, the litigation was ended early.

Some success was achieved with an independent inquiry being launched in 2021 based on Open Knowledge Foundation’s litigation, and finding that the UK Bar Standards Board must adhere to a framework of recommendations protecting data and equality rights in any future use of the technology.

Open Knowledge Foundation created and held a series of monthly data law workshops using their experience of litigation on remote proctoring software. They also launched a launched a monthly community drop-in meeting. They found the legal arguments, organised around data and equality rights, to be transferable throughout many topical domains of the law where algorithms are in play.