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PA School Spied On Students Via School-Issued Laptop Webcams

Posted by timothy on from the wait-for-your-health-insurance-computer dept.

jargon82 writes "A Pennsylvania high school is using laptops they issued to students to spy on them in homes and outside of school. According to a class action filling the webcams and microphones in these laptops could be remotely activated by school officials, and have been used in this role. One student was accused of 'improper behavior in his home' and the school provided a photo taken via his laptop as proof."

5 of 941 comments (clear)

  1. Hmm by LogarithmicSpiral · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Does anyone see some child porn charges coming here?

  2. at the very least by heffy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    School officials might avoid child porn charges if they prove they didn't see any lewd images, but I definitely see a lot of people getting fired.

  3. Re:Why am I not surprised. by CorporateSuit · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I have to agree. My daughter's elementary wants to press criminal charges against us for taking her on a 4-day trip to see Grandma on Thanksgiving. We notified the teacher and the school beforehand, got her classwork and homework, and had her turn it in the day she got back. As it turns out, 3 days would have been ok. Because it was 1 day more, I'm harboring a future-gang member and deserve to go to jail! The school officials here are completely insane.

    --
    I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
  4. Re:Why boingboing? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I suspect it's because BoingBoing scooped everyone else on this one yesterday. There were blogs for pennsylvania city papers (like http://citypaper.net/blogs/clog/tag/big-brother/) that were citing BoingBoing as the source. BoingBoing didn't link to a news article, they linked to the court documentation. If you look at all of those links from Google, none of them have a timestamp earlier than the BoingBoing post either. I suspect this wasn't on the paper's radars until BB posted it in the first place.

  5. Re:Tape by Mistlefoot · · Score: 4, Interesting

    And jailed.

    If even a single 14 year was viewed naked in the privacy of their own home by a covert camera laws will have been broken.

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/28/webcam_coersion_suspect/

    A life sentence is what this guy faced.........

    Be interesting to see how much of this is hype and how much really happened.