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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"?
So then why was a student reprimanded for their in home behaviour with a picture from the webcam used as evidence?
The school denies Misuse, however they have photographic evidence of a child committing inappropriate behavior in the child's bedroom.
Therefore the School has already committed a misuse of said camera's. The real question is why hasn't the school fired the people involved. there was no evidence of any laptops being stolen therefore the system shouldn't have been turned on to begin with. The only reason the camera's were turned on would be for misuse.
So the school district is lying to cover themselves. They could get out of this much easier if they simply fired a couple of people and blamed those directly responsible, and their bosses for the policy.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
If cartoons are CP, then fuzzy grey images out real kids are definitely CP.
Double standards suck. We need consistency.
A few days ago, most of us were still waiting to see if this story was in fact exaggerated and/or untrue: what about the school's side of the story?
But it appears that the initial impressions were correct: the school is in fact just scrabbling around for excuses ("It was a security feature, promise!"). This suggests that there was in fact no good reason or alternate story.
Which is good, because I can go and get properly angry now.
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?
There's one way the school could be telling the truth about this. They didn't say this explicitly, so it's not clear, but:
The lawsuit alleges that the school accused the student of inappropriate behavior. That behavior could have been reporting his laptop as "stolen", then continuing to use it. The school maintains that they only use the webcams to take a still photo when a laptop has been reported stolen, to aid in recovering it. If the laptop was reported stolen, the school took a picture, they saw that the student who reported it was the one using it, and they confronted the student with this evidence, that would explain both the lawsuit and the school's position.
Sort of odd that the school's response wouldn't explain that, if that is indeed what happened. But people tend to omit important details like that when there's a lawsuit pending, on advice of counsel...
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
You must be new here. School's are FAMOUS for long strings of abysmally unintelligent decisions. Hell, the most recent SCotUS case involved a stripsearch conducted by multiple adults because one student with a bad disciplinary record got caught with advil in a folder that had been loaned to her by another student at least several days before.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
The district has successfully used the software to recover 18 of 42 lost laptops, so if anything it seems like they might need even stronger software than this (though this is still $18,000 worth of taxpayer money the software has saved)
Each $1,000 laptop is insured by parents, with $55/yr premium and $100 deductible. 2,800 laptops netted $154K, enough to fully replace 154 laptops every year. But they lost only 42, and over more than a year. So the school should just remove all the security software and let the insurance deal with it.
I still find it far more plausible that the student took a photo himself and sent it to his buddies
Then you need to explain how the remote webcam activation thing was claimed, and was true (at least to the capability of doing it.) Clairvoyance is not the answer :-)