schools as big brother in the wrong in the worst possible way...

[acroyear]

School used student laptop webcams to spy on them at school and home Boing Boing:

According to the filings in Blake J Robbins v Lower Merion School District (PA) et al, the laptops issued to high-school students in the well-heeled Philly suburb have webcams that can be covertly activated by the schools' administrators, who have used this facility to spy on students and even their families. The issue came to light when the Robbins's child was disciplined for "improper behavior in his home" and the Vice Principal used a photo taken by the webcam as evidence. The suit is a class action, brought on behalf of all students issued with these machines.

hey, who needs that pesky 4th amendment anyways...

for good measure, I want the administrators under arrest for facilitating child porn, 'cause if a laptop can take a picture of a clothed student on demand to be examined, there's no reason it couldn't take a picture of a nude one.

Comments

Re: get back to the big picture, please

[cozit.livejournal.com]

Sorry, you mistake what I meant in that last bit. Using the IP address grabber to obtain general location information, I'd think they'd be permitted to do. But *before* using the camera for location information outside the school campuses (there it should be OK), they should have involved the police.... even if the families had given their OK, it might be that one time that it wasn't a missing computer, but actually stolen, and without that police *and* warrant (the general location where it shouldn't be should be of use for obtaining that) the camera shouldn't be triggered.

But as far as that particular picture goes, *if* it showed what it was originally thought to have shown, *and* it had not been triggered by the school system, but by either the student or the other person in the room/picture... but then seen and obtained by the school when the computer did its automatic back-up to the computer... *then* it would have been a legally obtained photograph, as all students/families were made aware, in advance, that the contents of their computers were visible to anyone with access to the servers.

Again, I've yet to see how that particular picture was obtained. It's been implied that it was a school district grab, but that has not been stated outright, anywhere that I've seen, yet (and it's been explicitly stated that only ... I think it was two... district techs had the capability to trigger a grab - the vice principal involved did not have that ability, according to the official school district statements... so even some of the accusations against him would fall flat - though obviously not his use of the photo, if obtained through the grab).