Slashdot Mirror
School District Hit With New Mac Spying Lawsuit
CWmike writes "A former student at a suburban Philadelphia high school has sued his school district for allegedly spying on him and his family using a school-issued Mac laptop, according to court documents. The Lower Merion School District of Ardmore, Pa. was first sued in February 2010 by another student using similar charges. That case, dubbed 'Spygate' in some reports, was settled last October when Lower Merion agreed to pay Blake Robbins $175,000 and cover $425,000 in court costs. On Monday, Joshua Levin, a 2009 graduate of Herriton High, charged the district with violating his civil rights and privacy by remotely activating the notebook's built-in camera to take photographs and screenshots. On Wednesday, Lower Merion spokesman Doug Young called Levin's lawsuit 'solely motivated by monetary interests and a complete waste of the taxpayer's dollars.' Levin begged to differ. According to his lawsuit, Lower Merion used his laptop to take more than 8,000 photographs and screenshots between September 2008 and March 2009. A district report uncovered more than 30,000 photographs and 27,000 screenshots taken. Last June, lawyers made photos and screenshots available for viewing by the 76 affected students. 'Plaintiff opted to view the recovered images, and was shocked, humiliated and severely emotionally distressed at what he saw,' Levin's lawsuit stated."
Funny that Lower Merion is about 30 minutes from where I grew up and my former high school was violating privacy as well through technology. According to reports I am hearing from my family and friend who live in the area there school employees making fake Facebook accounts to befriend students to look for incriminating photos. It seems that many schools forgot that they are there to teach the students and think it is there job to police and discipline them for their activities outside of the classroom. As technology grows so will the number of those who abuse it.
Just because you are wrong and I called you out on it doesn't mean I am a Troll.
Whenever you get something for free, distrust it. Even if it's from someone you would trust otherwise.
Your privacy is yours to defend. Everyone else is trying to limit it. Companies, governments, hell, I even know parents who think it's a good idea to spy on their kids all the time. Hey, do you know where your kids are now?
My hope is, now that teenagers finally get to feel what level of blatant trespassing on privacy is happening, we might eventually get a generation that starts to oppose the development. It might take longer than "Generation Facebook", but I hope our powers that are do what they usually do: They overdo it to the point where people start to fight back.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
As a recently promoted IT Manager from Sysadmin I can say that IT should have fought back. Spying is a dangerous game for anyone to play. Given the nature of trust granted to IT professionals privacy should always be a concern. Sometimes managers want to spy on their employees; to that I respond by asking them if they are happy with the work their employees are doing. If they are not happy then I suggest they talk to that employee about their performance, this usually happens with HR involved. I consulted with legal and it is now company policy. The only way we'll spy on you is if we think you're doing something illegal and luckily so far that hasn't come up.
It is our duty to safeguard all users of the network, not just the executives. The case would only be more true in a public setting like a school and especially when kids are involved.
The FBI did investigate and chose to not press any charges, since they didn't have "criminal intent", which is of course bullshit. They broke the law, and there are penalties for illegal wiretapping, both with and without criminal intent.