School Uses Webcams for Spying

It's the end of the world as we know it, it's the end...

----------------

That is just wrong.They have no business doing that.I would file a law suit as well.Not for the money but for the principle.We allow this and what will be next?

The ACLU will roast them on a spit if that's true.

The scary thing is 129 people in the survey didn't answer NO to the following question ....

Is there any scenario where a school district is justified to monitor students at home?

Yes, if the webcam captures illegal activity.
54 (2.4%)

Yes, if the webcam captures a student suffering physical abuse.
28 (1.2%)

No, there is no scenario where this would be okay.
2132 (94.3%)

Not sure.
47 (2.1%)

Total votes = 2261

The school district just released a statement which says the webcam's remote activation feature is meant to track lost or stolen computers. Maybe so, but that doesn't explain why a student was hauled in to the office for 'inappropriate behavior'. His computer was never reported lost or stolen.

LMSD Statement

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Ya gotta love Big Brother at work.

There is no justification to spy on people.Any people.That is invasion of privacy.You cant do this, it is a violation of peoples rights.

FOG, my post above oozed of sarcasm...trust me.

It's really sad.

YGD,

I knew that.I am just blown away that they can do this.So ILLEGAL.

RJM,

Actually I'm encouraged to know that only 5.7% don't get it. That's a pretty small percentage as such things tend to go.

What's amazing is that apparently the school system's leadership is hired entirely out of that 5.7%.

And they are the ones in charge of educating our nation's children. Yikes.

Blake Robbins, a student, alleges:

An assistant principal at Harriton confronted the student for "improper behavior" on Nov. 11 and cited a photograph taken by the webcam as evidence.

The school district responded:

Upon a report of a suspected lost, stolen or missing laptop, the feature was activated by the District's security and technology departments. The tracking-security feature was limited to taking a still image of the operator and the operator's screen. This feature has only been used for the limited purpose of locating a lost, stolen or missing laptop. The District has not used the tracking feature or web cam for any other purpose or in any other manner whatsoever.

Personally, before hanging anyone, I'll wait more than a few hours to see what shakes out. If the allegations are true, school district heads need to roll.

OK, to me...reprehensible...but...

My employer has the right to and in fact DOES monitor everything I (and everyone else at my workplace) do on my EMPLOYER's PC/Mac. Not uncommon practice by employers. They can discipline me if I abuse THEIR computer by such actions as surfing over to 'undesirable' sites.

Not a lawyer...but if the computers belong to the school...legally, whats the difference?

Not debating...just asking...

The problem is that this particular lost/stolen recovery method reaches WAY deep into one of the Constitution's most sacred convenants. Had they used RF tags or GPS locators or some other method that only reported the laptop's position coordinates, it would be much different.

These morons probably had genuine intentions of recovering their property, and felt they were justified. But the real issue is that the line has to be drawn so that public officials in the future don't try to cite this as a precedent to justify something much more sinister.

What if your cable company had the same set up with THEIR box? (they do!) Does that give them the right snap pictures of your son while he's watching beach volleyball or Caliente?

These are minors. Think of the implications, if some weirdo were behind this thing. Who knows what images were captured, or where they could wind up.

Who's to say that the cameras weren't turned on, even accidentally, when a student might have been home getting dressed? Imagine a school or its administration on the s*xual offenders list.

It seems that my paranoia gets validated again. A while back I taped over the webcam on my laptop since I never use it. I'm not so mad as to figure a good way to temporarily disable the built-in microphone, but now I am thinking about it. These things can be remotely enabled by hackers. I figured it was only a matter of time before the government did it.

quote:

Originally posted by justbaseball:
OK, to me...reprehensible...but...

My employer has the right to and in fact DOES monitor everything I (and everyone else at my workplace) do on my EMPLOYER's PC/Mac. Not uncommon practice by employers. They can discipline me if I abuse THEIR computer by such actions as surfing over to 'undesirable' sites.

Not a lawyer...but if the computers belong to the school...legally, whats the difference?

Not debating...just asking...

I don't think you will find anybody who has a problem with what you describe because my school basically has the same policy. They can take my laptop at anytime and look through it see what internet sites I've visited using it (hope they like this place).

It's one thing to take the computer from the kid and look through it's history, files and other stuff like that. It's another to have the laptop on the kids desk and take a pic of what's going on in the room.

What if a 15 year old guy and 15 year old girl are "studying" in their room when the camera comes on and takes a pic? I don't think any father of this girl would be very happy at all.

My school is doing a laptop for kids type deal on a small scale. I'm on the fence with it and leaning towards it's a big mistake. I got to sit in on one of the classes using the laptops. The teachers in charge said they have the ability to use their computer to see what each and every kid is doing with their laptop. I think this is a necessary thing in order to ensure that the kids aren't surfing sites they shouldn't or have files put on the computer that doesn't need to be. But they also have a webcam feature but the teacher never said anything if they could take control of the cam and take pics - personally I don't want to know.

I can see where each kid having laptops can be a good resource / tool for learning but I think it's only beneficial on paper. The laptops in practice has been a problem. When these kids come to my room I established that the laptops were a privilege to use and had certain rules - 1. Don't surf the net when I'm lecturing, 2. During mandatory reading they have to read a book not the net. If they violated these rules then I was going to ban them for a week. Well so far I've had to punish two kids already after two weeks.

One kid was caught by one of the laptop teachers. The teacher came into my room and asked to see ***** in the hall. Apparantly he got thrashed by the teacher and came back in. The teacher told me he was surfing the net during class on non-history sites. Well I banned him for a week. Another kid was surfing during a lecture. He wasn't smart enough to hide the window and pull up his notes before I saw him. That's the real problem with the laptops - they can open a window minimize it when they see me coming.

So overall giving laptops to these kids are a bad idea in my opinion. You have kids in high school who will do the wrong thing with them plus if you put the tech in them like this Philly school has then you are asking for trouble on that end. Let's face it some schools have pedophiles as teachers. Why give them the power to look into these teenage kids personal rooms?

Here is something that might interest IT people. Someone 'borrowed' one of these computers tonight to take a closer look. This is what they discovered.

LMSD Laptop

quote:

Not a lawyer...but if the computers belong to the school...legally, whats the difference?

There is a question of whether the students and families were notified of the problem. If you're told, "We can monitor you so don't take this out of the school," and then you take it out of the school, that's on you. (Maybe, not certainly.) But if someone says, "We want you to learn to use this all the time, take me home, take me anywhere," and doesn't tell you they are going to spy on you, it's tantamount to an illegal wiretap. And from a governmental entity, that's a violation of your constitutional rights.

In contrast, typical job policies just tell you they can monitor how you are using the computers, e.g., to keep you off inappropriate sites and the like, or just to assure you aren't "stealing company time" by web surfing when you're supposed to be working. Typically you know when this kind of monitoring is going on. But you don't expect your employer to start watching you dress and undress at home. And if he did, I would like to meet you at my office to sign you up as a client for a big fat lawsuit.

quote:

One kid was caught by one of the laptop teachers. The teacher came into my room and asked to see ***** in the hall. Apparantly he got thrashed by the teacher and came back in. The teacher told me he was surfing the net during class on non-history sites. Well I banned him for a week. Another kid was surfing during a lecture. He wasn't smart enough to hide the window and pull up his notes before I saw him. That's the real problem with the laptops - they can open a window minimize it when they see me coming.

Coach2709 - I don't necessarily disagree, but how does this differ from the kid with a magazine hiding inside a notebook. The technology is different and while it may offer more diverse distractions, the potential for not paying attention in class has always been there and probably always will be. Its not the tool, its the motivation of the kid that needs to be addressed. Maybe the lecture needs to be more interesting

Got it, makes complete sense to me! Thanks.

quote:

Originally posted by Eyeontheball:

quote:

One kid was caught by one of the laptop teachers. The teacher came into my room and asked to see ***** in the hall. Apparantly he got thrashed by the teacher and came back in. The teacher told me he was surfing the net during class on non-history sites. Well I banned him for a week. Another kid was surfing during a lecture. He wasn't smart enough to hide the window and pull up his notes before I saw him. That's the real problem with the laptops - they can open a window minimize it when they see me coming.

Coach2709 - I don't necessarily disagree, but how does this differ from the kid with a magazine hiding inside a notebook. The technology is different and while it may offer more diverse distractions, the potential for not paying attention in class has always been there and probably always will be. Its not the tool, its the motivation of the kid that needs to be addressed. Maybe the lecture needs to be more interesting

Good point but to me the biggest difference is the school is providing the distraction rather than the student sneaking in a magazine on their own.

Plus there is nothing wrong with lecture (mine or anyones) because it is a good teaching tool IF the education community enforces high standards. Not everything has to be entertaining. In fact this whole "learning has to be fun" is helping to destroy the work ethic in kids.

But this is a whole other topic that can get me really riled up.

Our school district doesn't give away MacBooks. But they sell them for $400. With software they list for about $1,200. When I told my son about this story he said the spy software comes with the Mac. He disabled it when we got his. There's no reason to track it. It's his property.

While this "incident" has raised some questions in regard to video, I see no problem with a school system monitoring equipment location via GPS, or the web history of students using school owned property or a K12 ISP.

What if a review of the web history uncovered frequent visits to skin-head or other racist sites. What if it was a how to make a home made bomb. How about kiddy-p0rn. How about excessive credit card use. A site about the use and modification of assault rifles. The use and abuse of other web-cams. If I was an administer a school district that provided a tool that would enhance the education of the students, not only would I want to ensure that it was being used for that purpose, but also would want show the ability to monitor a medium that I provided that is potentially dangerous.

If a student or the family are worried about their privacy they should go outside the box purchase their own equipment and connection to the internet.

School Laptop Case in Federal Court

Is there any truth to the rumor that the superintendent of this school district is Dick Cheney?

quote:

Originally posted by rz1:
While this "incident" has raised some questions in regard to video, I see no problem with a school system monitoring equipment location via GPS, or the web history of students using school owned property or a K12 ISP.

Tracking the browser history of school owned property and taking pictures of someone in their own bedroom are not even close to comparison. One is expected, the other is sick.

I suspect that you will see the school has invaded the privacy of many more students by misusing this capability. I hope I am wrong.

The fact of the matter is, there are several other non intrusive ways of tracking and disabling a stolen laptop. This capability was begging to be abused and this school district will pay through the nose for doing just that. Not hard to see how this ultimately plays out. The school district loses their butt in a lawsuit and in turn, they cut programs for the kids because they have no funding.

quote:

Originally posted by 1baseballdad:

quote:

Originally posted by rz1:
While this "incident" has raised some questions in regard to video, I see no problem with a school system monitoring equipment location via GPS, or the web history of students using school owned property or a K12 ISP.

Tracking the browser history of school owned property and taking pictures of someone in their own bedroom are not even close to comparison. One is expected, the other is sick.
Never said the video was not sick, I agree, its wrong. What I am saying is the ACLU or some other "personal rights" group will take the measure and expand it to potentially protect the guilty. Using school owned equipment carries a weight of responsibility on both sides. I'll bet the district did not impose a policy because they sat back over a beer one night and said "let's take pictures of kids in their homes because it will be fun". I'll bet a situation had happened someplace and a potential solution was put in place. I think the line of thinking is "With any action there is a reaction", unfortunately, this was not thoroughly thought out.

As rz ducks for cover awaiting return fire

I suspect that you will see the school has invaded the privacy of many more students by misusing this capability. I hope I am wrong.
The mindset of many today is conspiracy driven. "Big Brother" is out to get us and drive us into a Gestapo State. The problem with that theory is that "us" is too big and too spread out to make a dent in our lives if you are living it above board. What is not published are the returns that "Big Brother" has provided us by proactively inhibiting assaults on our freedoms by "bugging" into factions within our society that are unethical and ruthless.

As rz ducks for cover again

...Not hard to see how this ultimately plays out. The school district loses their butt in a lawsuit and in turn, they cut programs for the kids because they have no funding.
Who knows how it turns out but I doubt this "incident" will be the straw that breaks the back of program funding. IMHO, there is more wasted money due to lack of interest and participation in programs that are developed to assist "needy" students and the real loser is the middle class, and average student who sees their programs cut.

..and again

rz1, the ACLU jumped in today.

Here's more for the tech people. It explains how the software works.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...ture=player_embedded

quote:

Originally posted by AntzDad:
rz1, the ACLU jumped in today.

Here's more for the tech people. It explains how the software works.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...ture=player_embedded

Interesting vid. FWIW- In most governmental systems a technical group must write an RFP (Request For Purchase) which identifies the hardware and software requirements a bidder must meet in order to win the contract. This request is about as public as it comes, and is open for bid to all. IMHO, from dealing with similar bidding processes, a Red Flag would be raised by many if there was any indication that the intent of the school district was to spy on the students. My guess is "somebody" took it upon themselves to expand the use of the "theft tool" and turn it into a "tool of invasion" without running it through the approval process. As with many "incidents", the ridiculous actions of a few, reflect on the whole.

quote:

Originally posted by rz1:

As rz ducks for cover awaiting return fire [/color]

I meant no disrespect to you at all so no need to duck for cover.

Love this site but like all web based forums, it can be tough to understand the exact context of what a poster is trying to convey so I apologize if I came off snarky.

I agree with much of what you said, I just think the whole "snap a picture of someone remotely" wasn't thought through very well from the School or the District (as it pertains to potential abuse by individuals). They basically set themselves up for a big lawsuit. It was just a matter of time.

The law of unintended consequences?

quote:

Originally posted by 1baseballdad:

quote:

Originally posted by rz1:
As rz ducks for cover awaiting return fire [/color]

I meant no disrespect to you at all so no need to duck for cover.
Likewise . It was more directed at the masses. Being a "leaning" conservative in ultra liberal Madison Wi, I have had to build many walls and moats even within my own home


...so I apologize if I came off snarky.
Snarky, No. Honest Yes. There's rarely ever a need to apologize for honesty IMO

The law of unintended consequences?
I think that may fit

If the computers are owned by the school, there's no problem with them monitoring what websites the students are viewing.

However, peeking in on them with the webcam is totally wrong.

This would be no different than the principal lurking in the back yard and peeking in the windows at the student's house.

That should prompt criminal charges, shouldn't it?

Why should schools even provide laptops at all? The school should only have to provide desktop computers at school. If a kid wants a laptop he/she should get their own.

Sounds like a lame idea from the beginning, and you know, one lame idea will usually lead to another lame idea.

I agree new2this but laptops are much cheaper (at least the ones my school are using) than a desktop. We got our laptops for about $500 where a desktop is closer to $1000. Plus there are grants out there that businesses or some type of organization that is willing to provide the money to get them. The reason why we are going to laptops is there is this huge push in education to get our kids proficient on using technology.

Funny thing is you make a kid / parent(s) financially responsible for a laptop since their kid is in the class if they break them but what if the parent can't or won't pay? We charge around $25 each student for book fees and other miscellaneus things and there is a long list of kids who don't / can't pay. Who then picks up that tab?

quote:

Originally posted by New2This:
Why should schools even provide laptops at all? The school should only have to provide desktop computers at school. If a kid wants a laptop he/she should get their own.

This is the question that's been going through my head. When you provide a laptop to a professional engineer, it doesn't last more than 3 years. If you provide an anvil to a 16-year old, I'll be broken or lost within 6 months. I don't know who works up the budget plans for that school district, but he/she is probably not thinking too far out ahead.

quote:

Originally posted by New2This:
Why should schools even provide laptops at all? The school should only have to provide desktop computers at school. If a kid wants a laptop he/she should get their own.

Sounds like a lame idea from the beginning, and you know, one lame idea will usually lead to another lame idea.

When weighing the risk-reward of a school handing out the same "throw-away" laptop to all students is a no-brainer for all concerned IMHO.

#1 and most important. ALL students are playing with the same bat-n-ball. No one has an advantage of "better" resources and no one can use the excuse that they did not have the same tools. Leveling the playing field is the first step toward equal opportunity.

* The advanced student becomes more advanced with this tool at their fingertips.

* The average student may use the tool to put them over the top, or realize that learning can be "deeper" than only opening a boring book.

* The under achieving student, while this may sound cold, it is not the intent. For this student the laptop may be the last resort in an effort to open his eyes, get with the program, and leave those who refuse to improve themselves to sit on the side of the road looking for a life of handouts.

The laptop has raised the bar in regard to education. No more hassles dealing with paper books, and a wider array of resources from the biggest library in the world. Higher expectations leads to better results and more inquisitive minds.

This is why this thread is passion to me. Many are leaning on the fact that some idiot school district screwed up and Big Brother is after me again, or what a waste of money. IMHO, those lines of thinking are a combination of wearing dark tinted glasses and blinders. You are missing the fact that the same school district you are condoning for the action of a few, came up with, supported, and funded, the use of a tool that may help put our next generation in a position to make their lives, and this world a better place.

Who knows, maybe I'm just talking out of my a$$, but, doing SOMETHING is better than sitting on a resource like the internet and not taking full advantage of it. Sometimes we have to put our emotions and opinions on "stand-by", jump outside the box, look down the road at the potentially POSITIVE results, invest venture capital, and let those who are the experts fix the potholes in the road that the new traffic has caused.

As rz jumps off his soapbox

quote:

Originally posted by rz1:

The laptop has raised the bar in regard to education.

This is why this thread is passion to me.

It is no coincidence that this school district's two high schools, Harriton (the one in the lawsuit) and Lower Merion (Kobe Bryant's alma mater)consistently rank Top 10 in this major metropolitan area, and are the only schools that hand out laptops. It's a very expensive place to live. Taxpayers demand, and get, the most for their education dollars.

It keeps going. Here's an analysis of the analysis in the above link
http://strydehax.blogspot.com/...harrington-high.html

here's a live discussion on public radio
http://www.whyy.org/91FM/live.html

I agree with RZ and share this


Consider this fact “25% of India’s population with highest IQ is greater than the total population of the Unites States. Translation: India has more Honors kids than America has kids”

Not a bad idea to make sure every single one of our kids has every opportunity. I realize we might not be able to afford it, but can we really not afford it?

quote:

Why should schools even provide laptops at all? The school should only have to provide desktop computers at school. If a kid wants a laptop he/she should get their own.

Our school district is part of the same program as Lower Merion. I believe it's a statewide option for a district to participate. Our district subsidizes the purchase rather than loaning them. The kids can buy them for $400 (worth about $1,200 with software). For the handful of families where $400 might be a problem they can pay $10 a month for 40 months.

The reason for every student having a computer is online research. There's no way you could have 4,500 kids get online at school each day. There aren't the desktop computers for it. There isn't the space for that many desktops.

The school has WiFi for students, teachers and guests. The educational process at my son's school is completely automated. All syllabuses and lesson plans are online. Often the required reading is online. Being absent is not an excuse for not doing homework. Classroom computer training starts in kindergarten. Parents have 24/7 access to records like grades, homework passed in (or not), attendance and behavior. The high school has a 95% on to college rate.

Students are not to pass in poorly written (penmanship) papers. Except for math/science with math oriented homework students are expected to print out or email homework. My son emails his homework. The dog can't eat the homework anymore.

This is the wave of the future. It happened early at our school district. WIRED Magazine rated our town as the most wired in the country at 1.8 computers per household back in the early 90's when many homes in the country didn't have computers yet.

In Maine every public school student gets a laptop. I can't remember what grade it occurs.