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

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

#61

Post by jdietrich »

cgranade wrote: post #56
jdietrich wrote: post #51

Don't just sit there fuming - do something. You can contact the school board's directors at capitalcomments@lmsd.org or call (610) 645-1800 If you believe that a criminal act may have been committed, you can contact the Montgomery County District Attorney at KKasopsk@montcopa.org or call (610) 278-3090

It seems a bit irresponsible to me to encourage people not directly involved to call the authorities over this. Surely they have been made aware, if only by the media. Often times (again, not a lawyer, so I don't know how to nail this down), charges and complaints can only be filed by those directly victimized by a crime. If people followed your suggestion, then the DA's office would soon be flooded with redundant, u…

The DA's office provides a form on their website to report a crime - they are actively inviting people to report illegal activity. DAs only prosecute where they believe it is in the public interest to do so.

Would you call the cops if you saw a guy on the corner of your street dealing drugs? Would you do something if you heard your neighbour beating his wife? If you would, then why stay silent just because the criminals are a school board?

It is our democratic duty to speak up. It is our duty as citizens to apply pressure to those in power to do the right thing.

What do you think the Christian right would do if they got wind that a school was, for instance, permitting it's students to view pornography? They would be calling the DA, calling the school board, calling their senator in huge numbers and rightly so - that's how you achieve change in a democracy.

It's not irresponsible to do your democratic duty.

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

#62

Post by f_sav »

bgraves wrote: post #25

This was part of a program on PBS called Digital Nation. The show was very interesting, and there's a section where the school IT administrator demonstrates his ability to pull up a students laptop ... and working webcam. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/learni... The relevant part starts at about 4:35. "They don't even realize that we are watching. I always like to mess with them and take a pict…

So that'd mean some schools (or is it the same one?) did such spying without even trying to conceal it. That it hadn't occurred to students to cover the camera with something is a bit troubling too (either they don't realize the possibility/risk or they don't care).

I may sound paranoid, but having integrated cameras in almost every electronic device around, with no easy physical (vs. software) way of blocking it somehow, is a recipe for such situations happening one day or the other (of course that doesn't make it any more OK).

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

#63

Post by JshWright »

ErrantX wrote: post #23
DavidSJ wrote: post #8

This takes things one giant leap further, but my cousin in high school already has his personal email and home web browsing read by a team of school monitors, thanks to the provision of a laptop by his public high school. Of course, his parents are unlikely to buy him his own laptop since he's already got one, so what does he need another one for?

That's a violation of various computer misuse laws. Get him to file a police complaint.

How is that a violation? I assume the school actually owns the laptop, and the monitoring is disclosed up front.

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

#64

Post by krich »

cgranade wrote: post #39
ugh wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said and repeated and really like to repeat here again: children should have limited rights and they actually do have limited rights in Germany. Spying is ok. Reading their E-Mails and going through their drawers is ok. But only up to a point. The parents just cannot limit their rights without limits. I'm also not really sure why courts should not decide what's necessary and justified. That's all we ever did in…

I have serious concerns about any parent that decides to routinely and casually invade the privacy of their children by reading their e-mails or tracking their web browsing. Children raised in such an environment are being taught that they should not expect to have privacy and that they should will not be treated as human beings in general. That kind of casual violation is precisely what justifies infractions like th…

I think it's actually a good idea to train them to treat the internet as a space without privacy, because it really is. Not sure if reading their emails etc is the way to go about it though.

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

#65

Post by sophacles »

Silhouette wrote: post #38
JunkDNA wrote: post #4

Found a PDF of the filing itself: http://craphound.com/robbins17.pdf It's hard for me to imagine how anyone could think this was an OK idea.

This reminds me of the strip search story from a few months ago. A young girl was searched by school officials. As it turned out, she was only carrying prescription drugs. While the Supreme Court found that the search had been illegal (amazingly, only by an 8-1 majority) they also ruled that the officials concerned could not be held personally liable. This was because it supposedly wasn't obvious to the officials at…

More disturbing about that is this: I face serious consequences for all sorts of things, many of which I don't know are illegal. Some of those things I don't know the legalities of are related to my profession. Yet, while being tried, if I put up a "I didn't know it was illegal" defense, I would be laughed at, found guilty and fined/jailed/etc. Why do the school officials get out of liability for not knowing that their actions were illegal?

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

#66

Post by 3dFlatLander »

bgraves wrote: post #25

This was part of a program on PBS called Digital Nation. The show was very interesting, and there's a section where the school IT administrator demonstrates his ability to pull up a students laptop ... and working webcam. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/learni... The relevant part starts at about 4:35. "They don't even realize that we are watching. I always like to mess with them and take a pict…

To be fair to the school shown in that particular documentary, they weren't looking at the students through a webcam. It looks like they're using a remote desktop program to look at the students desktop. He explained that many students use the webcam program as a mirror to look at themselves or just mess around.

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

#67

Post by rmorrison »

holdenc wrote: post #60

I wonder if these laptops had a recording light by the camera like most. Wouldn't this have been an immediate tip-off to everyone? Disabling the recording light (if this happened) would have required some effort as well...

I would hope that recording lights are hardware operated, so that they cannot be disabled via software. When the camera is on, the light is on.

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

#68

Post by aplusbi »

ErrantX wrote: post #47
cgranade wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the role that schools have played in destroying the lives of some children by getting authorities involved in "sexting" cases, it would be especially ironic if this spying program produced child pornography charges. After all, in many cases, intent isn't required-- people have been arrested for having malware download child porn without the user's authorization or knowledge. Given that precedent, doing somethin…

> reople have been arrested for having malware download child porn without the user's authorization or knowledge Do you have a citation for that, out of interest. It's considered something of a myth within LE and I wasn't aware a case like that actually existed.

Here is one such case: http://www.scmagazineus.com/malware-to-blame-for-porn-on-sta...

I also recall a case of a teacher whose school computer had malware that ended up displaying porn in the classroom who was arrested and faced up to 40 years in jail. I'm pretty sure she was acquitted.

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

#70

Post by blhack »

holdenc wrote: post #60

I wonder if these laptops had a recording light by the camera like most. Wouldn't this have been an immediate tip-off to everyone? Disabling the recording light (if this happened) would have required some effort as well...

Uhh...which laptops have a recording light on them? Mine certainly does not.
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