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.
Wow look what happened, the school got in trouble. Here's how you figure out if the software is installed, on Windows just look in the registry with regedit, on Mac just use the terminal, if you can't do either because you don't know how then log off facebook and get some real skills that will serve you in life.
They are going to get wupped for sure. Which is going to mean that the folks in the class action are going to get lots of money and the resources available for education in this district are going to be severely depleted.
The gain for those in the suit will be a short term financial affirmation that they screwed money out of a school that was trying to protect assets for the benefit of the pupils and overstepped the mark. Possibly one/some staff member(s) acted illegally too.
The loss will be in the education of, depending on the award, all pupils in the district.
Another great day for justice?