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PA School Spied On Students Via School-Issued Laptop Webcams
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."
Solves all problems. At least the ones that WD-40 can't.
Karma fed to this user will be promptly burnt. Be warned; be wary.
Does anyone see some child porn charges coming here?
They were obviously trying to weed out all those terrorists, commies, subversives or whatever the government is at war with this time.
Its better to start at an early age.
I cant wait until they can scan foetal DNA to find out if its going to be a paedophile or terrorist.
And accuse school officials of pedophilia. This will be fun...
Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.
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.
Idiots!
Been there, done that, paid for the T-shirt
and didn't get it
WTF is "improper behavior in the home", and why does the school seem to think that it's their business?
School officials tend to think themselves as above the law / the law way too many times in my personal experience, not surprised that some decided they would also be the police in these kids homes.
I hope they lose this suit. Hard.
"We need to get over this notion, that, for Apple to win... Microsoft must lose." - Steve Jobs, 1997
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If I were one of those students and under-aged (18), I'd claim that they were guilty of producing child pornography because I had been naked in front of my laptop.
Hell, I'd go as far as to tell them that I have masturbated in front of it.
Fuck them and whomever came up with that idea, that includes IT personnel, school administrators, PTA and whoever else have have even a superficial finger in this and haven't said 'no'.
One of the most disturbing things in this story is that the school deemed "inappropriate behavior" of the student. I have read the legal briefs and a number of other sources and have not been able to determine what this is. What on earth could a school say about MY child that would be considered inappropriate behaviour? Drinking? No, sorry, covered by privacy rights. The only thing I can think of would be inappropriate use of school equipment. The inappropriateness of anything in the home would be determined by the parent.
This is why you don't want "free" computers from the government, you want the government to NOT take that money away from you to begin with so you can buy your own computer...
It's shocking, given the general lack of tech competence by school bureaucrat types that they did this and thought they could get away with it. And why aren't there criminal charges? This isn't any different than them putting cameras (potentially) in the bathrooms of minors for the purposes of procuring child pornography.
This goes far beyond stupid school administrators, this is a blatant case of GOVERNMENT actors out of control, willfully violating the Constitution (and scores of other laws) and they need to be punished. Not just fired, everyone responsible for this need to spend some quality time in a "pound me in the ass" prison.
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First, there's no way that you can take illegally obtained "evidence" and punish the student for it. It goes against the 4th amendment, and is unethical on so many levels. I strongly doubt that this case will go too far in court.
Second, why the hell do they need to spy on students anyway? It's good that they're giving the students laptops, but what they do at home (regardless of all the stupid shit they do) is none of the school's business, nor is it in their jurisdiction. I could make a rant about how parents need to step it up and take better care of their kids, but I'll just sum it up: schools should stay out of parental territories. It's bad for the student, and it's bad for the school.
Whoever was running this, either the school IT admins or even the higher school administration should be at least suspended pending further review.
The submission system is broken. If you submit something with a crappy summary and it gets rejected, it will block submissions with that article link, so someone with a good summary must find another source.
What exactly is "improper behavior in the home", and who would believe it was appropriate for a school to accuse the kid of it?
In a society where we are now so ready to trade privacy and other personal liberties for the (often empty) promise of security, it is no surprise at all that this or that government entity should feel no compunction at this gross affront to the privacy of their students and their families. And let's be clear, someone had to have had second thoughts about this, and still they went ahead with this staggeringly stupid plan.
I hope that not only do the tools responsible for this have their asses handed to them in civil court, I sincerely hope that those asses are then tossed into prison for what has to be a long list of criminal statutes that have been violated.
Beautiful job by the lawyers in this case. They're the only winners. It is a class action where all students in the district are members of the class. Seeking liquidated damages, punitive damages, and attorney fees. Assuming they "win", then these same families will be able to vote themselves a new tax levy to pay for the damages awarded, plus the attorney fees of both sides.
On the face of it, the school screwed up royally. No doubt about it. But did anyone even try to work this out via another method? Did the school board know about this? Since they are probably parents in the district, my guess is that they did not know.
I think the board should fire the administration for cause. If they have to pay some lawyers to make that stick, so be it. It would still be less expensive than this class action.
Someone should go to jail for this.
Child porn charges should be raised, of course. Further, the cameras/mics could be used to spy on anyone in the house, including adults who are not in any way, shape, or form under the guardianship of the school. So any argument about guardianship is moot.
Sadly, no one will go to jail for this. Some administrator will be told not to do it again, and the school board will be fined, and that will be the end of it. At least, that is all that happened when a school nurse (not a cop) forced a child to strip and wiggle (without probable cause, for that matter).
I don't understand how a society that is so obsessed with protecting the children that it tries children as adults for crimes that wouldn't have been crimes if the children were adults can turn around and let adults off scott-free when they directly break the law to the detriment of children.
Irrationality really frustrates me. And scares me, too.
I absolutely DARE some school official to try this with my kids. I don't play the stupid game where they think they have even an ounce of authority over what my child does after stepping off the bus. In fact, if they punished my son for anything he did at home, I'll buy him ice cream for every day he's suspended and encourage him to make noise about it and resist in a smug, non-violent way as well as writing every official, politician and journalist I can find in a 100 mile radius. And then, I'll just be getting started. I'm not afraid of DSS either. I even *gasp* spank my kids.
The problem is sticking up for yourself and actually exercising your rights gets you branded as a radical, a criminal or a terrorist. This needs to end. I'm willing to live a harder life to live it with my liberty, pride and self-respect intact and I have. I've lost jobs, promotions, etc solely on sticking to values and principals and refusing to do the wrong thing. It's cost me.....dearly in some cases but at least I can honestly say that I'm free. There used to be a lot of people like this.
The school's job is to pour a bit of knowledge in his head. Teaching morality and values is the parent's job. They need to stay the hell off of my turf and stop overstepping their bounds. Period. What my son's personality is like, his habits, etc is none of their business outside that building.
When the media reports a story that sounds utterly beyond the pale of sensibility, take a deep breath and exercise some skepticism.
I got $100 that says the next few days will see some "clarification" of this story that will make it seem significantly less reprehensible.
My bet is the kid used the webcam to take some photos that then ended up back at school.
...it's actually quite interesting. I have a feeling that the folks who are looking to see child porn charges pressed might actually get their way. According to the filing, "...it is believed and therefore averred that many of the images captured and intercepted may consist of images of minors and their parents or friends in compromising or embarrassing positions, including, but not limited to, in various stages of dress or undress."
Seriously, what could have made the school district think that this was, in any way, a good idea? The district itself, the school board, and the superintendent are all listed as defendants. This could be really, really 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.
If you didn't visit, then why are you guessing at the contents of the link and criticising them for your imagined contents? You seem to have an axe to grind.
The BoingBoing article has commentary beyond simple reporting of the facts, which you may or may not appreciate, but it isn't simply parroting the AP. More importantly, it has a link to the class action complaint itself, which the AP article and the "highly respected news sites" do not.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
You are sadly dissillusioned (or just young and ignorant, or incredibly stupid). Anarchy always leads to monarchy; with anarchy, the strong (meaning rich and powerful) can do anything they want to the weak. Anarchy means I can shoot you in the back without provocation and without fear of reprisal. I can get an armed mob and enslave you. I can rape your mother, sister, girlfriend, and two year old daughter before torturing them to death. No law.
"Anarchy is the REAL democracy and freedom" is the dumbest statement I've heard all week. What grade are you in, kid?
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PBS's Frontline had an interesting episode earlier this month - "Digital Nation" there's a section where a school official is remotely watching what kids are doing from a laptop, and showing a reporter how he does it... it's all inside the confines of the school, but it still scared me.
At the core of the problem here is that we have an education system that is still stuck in the 19th century.
Cory Doctorow's novel, "Little Brother" predicted exactly this happening in schools, where the school-issued laptops were used to monitor student behavior, websurfing, etc. etc.
I didn't think it would actually happen this soon, however.
>if any inappropriate sexual behavior is observed, included but not limited to self-abuse
Masturbation is not self-abuse.
>and teachers, who act as guardians
While the children are at school, not when said children are at home.
The 1950's called, they want you back.
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What really discourages me about all of this, is teaching the students to expect and accept this kind of treatment. I realize they are minors and often (necessarily) children's rights are limited or curbed to facilitate time to learn and understand consequences for exercising those rights.
As I watched my younger brother go through high school I was shocked to hear how the students were given no right to privacy in their lockers or personal vehicles, were under constant surveillance and could be patted down or searched at any time the school felt it wanted to (without parental consent or notification, and without any sort of probable cause requirements). The kids just accepted this and thought it was the way things worked... everywhere. No one told them that this was only possible because of the school setting; no one told them that when they became adults in the real world this sort of treatment from authorities was illegal and a violation of their rights. I don't like what we are teaching our kids, in the name of 'protecting' the kids. I'm afraid the level of scrutiny and personal rights violations that we are subjecting them to is desensitizing them to how wrong it is.
We wonder why citizens seem to just accept the erosion of their personal liberties, but what should we expect when we've been teaching them to just accept it since they were kids.
You've never seen the way I do it.*
*Unless you have remote access to my webcams.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
really, how intelligent do you have to be to realize that revealing to people that you spied on them at home is something that you should not do.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I'm hoping your nick isn't a clue.
Funny how totalitarian practices by the government slowly trickle down to the local level; cops, school administrators, local government. No surprise at all.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Personally, I think the individuals involved with this policy should be charged with attempting to acquire child pornography. After all, the laptops in question could easily have been in the child's room where they would absolutely have a reasonable expectation of privacy. It's no different than if the teacher/administrator had drilled a peephole in that child's room and had anytime access to watch them change their clothes.
Also, if I were a parent, I would be unbelievably angry if school faculty came bursting into my home uninvited. This is no different.
School faculty only has a right to deal with a student's behavior when they are on school grounds or attending school functions.
Personally, I hope criminal charges are filed against the school administration that did this.
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According to them, the system only took 1 single picture to recover a stolen laptop. Now, the thief's parents are suing the school.
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