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PA School Defends Web-Cam Spying As Security Measure, Denies Misuse
tekgoblin writes "The Lower Merion School District of Pennsylvania was recently accused of privacy invasion. Now the school has released an official response to the allegations. According to the school, the security feature was installed in the laptops as an anti-theft device and was not intended to invade privacy. The software that was installed would take a photo of the person using the laptop after it was stolen to give to the authorities. Now this may be what it was intended for, but it seems that someone didn't get the memo."
The district's claim that it "has not used the tracking feature or web cam for any other purpose or in any other manner whatsoever" doesn't square with the allegations which set off this whole storm. And if there was nothing wrong with it, why does the school say it won't start using the snooping feature again without "express written notification to all students and families"?
Sure. That's what the body scanners at the airports for as well.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Following the logic of their stated reasons for using the on-board camera to take a peek at student's private lives, I respectfully submit that the individuals which are most at risk are therefore those most in need of the kind of protective surveillance this school offers. Right? Now it is common knowledge that attractive females are, more than most other groups, at risk. Both in school and outside.
It therefore follows, with an elegant inevitability, that surveillance should focus on the 5% most attractive females of the school. We are then talking about continuous surveillance of course.
I recommend enhancing security by also enabling the laptops' microphone. Besides, are those laptop cameras any good for taking infra-red pictures?
Ahh, so that's what they call it these days...
Are you sure he wasn't eating Candi? If so, and depending on their ages, they might have been violating some sort of blue-nose law about teenage sex.
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It was created as a joint venture between Microsoft, Apple, Google, IBM, and the FSF.
I'd like to see a mashup of the blog I ran into earlier today with pairs of chatroulette web captures, but with the "you" picture in each case being the shocked (simply shocked!) face of some school official from this place.
I'm not suggesting that the students should all sit at home masturbating in leopard costumes and makeup while butt-dialing the school to report that their laptops have been stolen. There are many other fruitful scenarios that I am also not suggesting.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
If you could, you probably work for the PA Schools.
But I always do it in the marital bedroom, well, until the husband come home...
But, but, won't someone think of the toons?
P-r-r-r-r-r-rease?
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Then I would accuse them for secretly setting up a child pornography network.
Yeah, I used to be terrible in school...
Do you really want the officially sanctioned price for spying on kids in their bedrooms to be "a box of candy"?
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In high school, I was suspended from using any of the computers in the school for half a year.
The reason? The librarian saw me type "dir" at a DOS prompt. I was accused of "hacking".
The principal told me I shouldn't be using "dir" because it gets me into "directories".