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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

#81

Post by cgranade »

f_sav wrote: post #78
cgranade wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As opposed to pocket electronics with integrated microphones? Think of all the embarassment that has occured due to pocket dialing, and now consider if that had been intentional. It's harder to block a microphone than a camera lens, too, and less obvious where the microphone is.

True. At least with cameras there's an obvious way of disabling it. Yet there's just no enough market pressure to get manufacturers to include a clear electronic switch-off mechanism. Maybe with a few more stories like this one...

I think one reason for that is because of the sheer number of sensors included in modern devices. It would greatly clutter interfaces and physical form factors to include privacy switches for each kind of sensor.

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

#82

Post by sketerpot »

blhack wrote: post #70
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.

My Asus laptop has one. It's small and green, and if it weren't there, I would always be paranoid that my laptop was spying on me.

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

#83

Post by Silhouette »

sophacles wrote: post #65
Silhouette wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

IIRC, the point was that it wasn't entirely that the officials' actions were illegal. There were some earlier rulings and issues of being in loco parentis that clouded the issue sufficiently that the Supreme Court's hands were effectively tied. Of course, now that the Supreme Court has given an explicit ruling in this case, it would be pretty difficult for anyone to pull that defence in future.

None of this means the actions weren't grossly disproportionate, unreasonable, and abusive in the eyes of any sane, independent observer, but unfortunately that isn't what court rulings are based on.

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

#84

Post by motters »

Technology enabled spying seems to be completely ubiquitous now. Maybe new laws can be passed, but given recent history I'm not optimistic about that. Probably the best strategy is to try to encourage more equiveillance.

As an immediate workaround if you are the parent of one of the children with these laptops:

i) Complain to the school. Make sure your complaint is formally registered (not just verbal on the phone).

ii) Install an operating system onto the laptop yourself, to ensure that there is nothing untoward installed in the background. Preferably use some linux distro, or if you are an ardent Windows fan take a backup image after a new installation which can easily be restored later to overwrite any nasties which may have been installed later.

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

#85

Post by illumin8 »

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?

https://gmail.google.com - Make sure you're getting Google's SSL cert and not the schools. For private browsing there is Tor.

Better to just work around the system. If you try to change it you'll be flagged as a criminal or terrorist and they'll start watching you more closely.

Move along student/citizen... nothing to see here.

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

#86

Post by cx01 »

ErrantX wrote: post #55
cgranade wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, I don't have the citation off the top of my head. For all I know, I could've fallen for an urban legend. If I have, sorry for being gullible!

It's cool - I do believe you. [You'll always get suspicion over that story because it is the #1 most common defence (and ironically easy to disprove)] I'd always be interested to see if it actually happened though - it would be useful research.

How is it easy to disprove? The trojan could delete itself after downloading CP. Should be impossible to reconstruct what happened exactly.

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

#87

Post by sophacles »

Silhouette wrote: post #83
sophacles wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

IIRC, the point was that it wasn't entirely that the officials' actions were illegal. There were some earlier rulings and issues of being in loco parentis that clouded the issue sufficiently that the Supreme Court's hands were effectively tied. Of course, now that the Supreme Court has given an explicit ruling in this case, it would be pretty difficult for anyone to pull that defence in future. None of this means the…

Even worse actually. If the mandatory reporters at the school heard about this girl being strip searched by mom & dad for drugs, they would, without a second thought, report the parents to some authority. But when they do it in loco parentis the same behavior is OK?

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

#88

Post by there »

rmorrison wrote: post #67
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.

i've long had an irrational fear that someone would compromise my computer and upload some modified firmware to the camera that would allow it to record without illuminating the light.

i always keep a piece of electrical tape over the cameras on my computers now.

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

#89

Post by ErrantX »

cx01 wrote: post #86
ErrantX wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's cool - I do believe you. [You'll always get suspicion over that story because it is the #1 most common defence (and ironically easy to disprove)] I'd always be interested to see if it actually happened though - it would be useful research.

How is it easy to disprove? The trojan could delete itself after downloading CP. Should be impossible to reconstruct what happened exactly.

Of course there is an upper limit to how provable it is. But that is fairly elaborate malware your describing (because if that is all it did it should be fairly apparent - it also has to fake fairly extensive use as well).

Mostly it is very easy to see the CP activity (dont forget were not just talking about images on the HDD here but actual activity indicative of behavior). If it were downloaded all together, with no references in, say, web history etc, no thumbnails and nothing in the cache files (which are FULL of rich information) then it would ring alarm bells :)

Eventually even the most elaborate malware will make a mistake with activity that is not "normal" - and the investigation is intensive enough to pick this up.

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

#90

Post by f_sav »

cgranade wrote: post #81
f_sav wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. At least with cameras there's an obvious way of disabling it. Yet there's just no enough market pressure to get manufacturers to include a clear electronic switch-off mechanism. Maybe with a few more stories like this one...

I think one reason for that is because of the sheer number of sensors included in modern devices. It would greatly clutter interfaces and physical form factors to include privacy switches for each kind of sensor.

Makes sense (esp. these last few years where device come with the least physical switch possible, e.g. the iPhone), but given the benefit, I personally wouldn't mind the added clutter.

One good first step would be to cut the link to the microphone on lid close (for a laptop or a cellphone, say). Or have a global "privacy switch" which would still allow apps to run to but electrically cut off the privacy-invading sensors (mostly gps, camera, microphone... other?).

Just dreaming out loud here...

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