Federal Judge Orders Schools To Stop Laptop Spying

CWmike writes "A federal judge on Monday ordered the Pennsylvania school district accused of spying on its students to stop activating the cameras in school-issued MacBook laptops. According to the original complaint, Blake Robbins was accused by a Harriton High School assistant principal of 'improper behavior in his home' and shown a photograph taken by his laptop as evidence. In an appearance on network television last Saturday, Robbins said he was accused by the assistant principal of selling drugs and taking pills — but he claimed the pictures taken by his computer's camera showed him eating candy. Also on Monday, the company selling the software used by the school district to allegedly spy on its students blasted what it called laptop theft-recovery 'vigilantism.'" jamie found two posts from stryde.hax pointing out suggestive information about one school district network administrator, and coaching students how to determine if their school-issued laptops were infected with the LANRev software used to operate the cameras remotely and in secret.

Comments

Re:Uh huh

[biryokumaru]

Slashdot uses html-like tags, not BBCode-like tags.

Re:Uh huh

[Monkeedude1212]

By Default, anyways. I don't Have to use HTML if I don't want to. But yeah, BB isn't an option.

'At school' versus 'not at school'

[fermion]

Reading one of the articles, on the possible surveillance used, it seems like people have conflicting points. I will make an over arching statement that I think everything the school district did was wrong because there was not full disclosure. I think many of the problems might have been solved with disclosure and a better thought out policy.

First, monitoring the computers at school. Many, if not all, schools have software to monitor the users actions on school computers. This is particularly useful for testing, or simply to make sure students are on tasks. Traditionally these computers have been school based desktops, so home issues are not a problem. Also, traditionally these computers have been monitored by people the students know, and the rules are well known. In this way extension to the laptop makes sense.

Which leads to the second question. Can student use a personal computer at school. I would say that school policy would go either way. I might suggest that a teacher might not want a students to use a unmonitored computer in a classroom where all the other computers are monitored. In TFA, a study hall situation was mentioned where the computer was taken up. The kid, of course, is not going to mention if they were off task, perhaps downloading music from limewire, but there may have been a reason. A school does not have to allow a personal computer any more than an iPod.

That said there should be a provision where a student can carry a personal computer which is used in unmonitored situation. In my experience, most of a students work can fit on an external drive, and it is not a big deal to hook it up, especially to Macs. Since MS machines require a driver for every single device, no matter how generic, there can be issues with permissions.

That said, laptops in schools is not a simple solution to anything. Taxpayers need to have their property protected, and students are a special case when it comes to spying by adults. Children are also a special case when it comes to the often underpaid employees who are paid to monitor the network. If policies and audit trails are not clearly laid out, then parent will of course be concerned.