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I know there is no possible way for this not to go off-topic, but its so disgusting to me, that I have to post about it here to let you all know....

Article Link: http://www.boingboing.net/2010/02/17/school-used-student.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+boingboing/iBag+%28Boing+Boing%29

Text:

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.

If true, these allegations are about as creepy as they come. I don't know about you, but I often have the laptop in the room while I'm getting dressed, having private discussions with my family, and so on. The idea that a school district would not only spy on its students' clickstreams and emails (bad enough), but also use these machines as AV bugs is purely horrifying.

Schools are in an absolute panic about kids divulging too much online, worried about pedos and marketers and embarrassing photos that will haunt you when you run for office or apply for a job in 10 years. They tell kids to treat their personal details as though they were precious.

your privacy is worthless and you shouldn't try to protect it.

Update: The school district admits that student laptops were shipped with software for covertly activating their webcams, but denies wrongdoing.

Court Case: Robbins v. Lower Merion School District
Click here for the pdf of the lawsuit. (http://craphound.com/robbins17.pdf)

Yeah. I read about this the other day. Disgusting. I'm worried that they saw many kids dressing and undressing. Gross.

I don't have webcams.  Can built in ones be deactivated?

Every official should be fired period and never allowed to be part of the education system again. Also if any child was seen in a state of undress they should be prosecuted under child porn laws.

Agreed. I would love to hear the thought process that went along with this. How could anyone think this was a good idea. Further, why do they  care what the kids are doing off school property. The whole thing is just...ew.

I agree, this creeps me out big time.  No one has the right to invade privacy like that.  I agree with bsmooth that this school system needs a major overhaul. 

One thing though..... if what student's do off school property has a detrimental effect on them in school, school officials do have the right to take action. 

For example, if my daughter gets into a fight with another girl off school property, both girls can be suspended from school the next day.  Especially if they are wearing anything that has their school name and/or logo on it.

This is about 15 minutes away from where we live, so we heard about this the other day. Made me double check if my company laptop had a webcam in it!  ;)

I did the same thing with my work laptop.  I know your area.  I've got a cousin who lives in Upper Darby. 

What do you do?

I don't think what a kid does off property should have any bearing on their school life UNLESS there is some sort of legal action. For instance the 2 girls in question get in a fight and arrests occur? Sure the school should be able to do something.  Just as it would be for adults and their emplyment. Otherwise, it's none of the schools business. If teens want to send inappropriate photos of themselves to others from home that's for their parents to deal with.

The school's argument, at least as I've read elsewhere, was that there were problems with theft of these devices and the monitoring was only supposed to be used when a theft was reported.

If this is true, the school should have gone public with the information by letting every parent know before hand what they were doing, why they were doing it, and when they would be doing it. Or, they should have gone to the police and let them know so that they could obtain the proper permissions.

I'm actually in the north-western suburbs of Philly. Upper Darby is about 45 minutes to an hour away from me. I'm in sales.

Things like this are in play everywhere. Technology is getting very scary and people need to be concerned. Hotel rooms, changing rooms, and even public bathrooms.  No one can ever charge you with anything illegal based on anything captured where you have an expectation of privacy. However there are Voyeur's out there getting there Jollies off and embarrassing the heck out of people daily. It s a serious issue from kids with cell phone cameras in school to Full out Tech junkie perverts in public areas.

OK, Don't get all over me,I'm not agreeing with the school district.....(I think I saw this in action on a recent Documentary,you can watch the episode on PBS.org,the Show is Frontline, Episode digital nation Section/part 4 is the part about the laptops in school..)

I'm curious if this is more sensationalized than it really is....In the Mentioned episode,It shows the principal watching the students through their Laptops proved by the school districts...It's more like go to P.C., or remote desktop.The kids are using an Apple type application,that allows you take pictures of yourself,using the built in webcam.The Kids use it like a mirror...They check their hair,lipstick,make up,etc,etc...(while in class) he joked, sometimes, I'll take a picture of them when they're making faces...It let's them know he's there.....The software allows them,make sure they're not surfing sites Myspace,youtube,facebook, while they're supposed to be in class....








I'm just wondering if there is a bit of "the Star,National enquirer,TMZ reporting.....IE Some celebrity says they had a lump,they got it checked out for cancer,it was nothing, they joked they thought they had 6 months to live..and the headline is "Star has cancer. 6 months to live...."

Modified to add, the whole episode of digital nation was pretty intresting,Some of the stuff, I knew about..but it was still interesting...

This is a good question. Anybody know?

I would have zero problem with the school using school laptops to "spy on the kids" during the school day while the kids were in school. 

The at home during non-school hours part bothers me.   

I'm with you B. I just have a hard time believing it is so blatantly wrong.

There would be more merit in your argument if the vice principal had not used a picture taken  through the computer at the childs home of the child engaged in some sort of improper act ( masterbating? drugs?). There cannot be enough over dramatization when a school is spying on kids in their own bedrooms to look for means to punish them. This is crossing way over the boundary of parental roles. There is a sick and perverse thought pattern running through our education system that makes them believe they know whats best for children in school and out. This just further demonstrates the temerity and hubris being displayed by the powers within the education system of our country towards parents.

cheating on a take home exam????

a schools right to punish should be limited to things that affect school.

If the camara was only activitated because some filter that kicks in when the student goes to wikipedia on the school computer than this might not be as bad as it first sounds.

I hope the school would monitor the students use of the computers paid for by tax dollars in way of what websites they visited.  Spying on them in their bedrooms I don't like. 

Hoodie- I understand the and agree there is a privacy issue,when they are watching....But then again, I've not seen alot of details such as...Could the kid have been home sick,during school hours when they checked the camera..Was this at 3:30 in the afternoon 20 minutes after school let out, 2am on a Saturday....When was the phototaken....

Bsmooth...Who's Liable for the contents,and what that laptop is used for? What if some teenage girl was using some type of IM program to Flash naked pics...You now have a teenage girl (underage exposing themselves) on the school laptop?

I see it alot like Hoodies response....spying I don't like, but I don't know what made the person monitoring the computer go look to take a picture either)

Too me I hate these type stories,because so many people get all outraged on very little info....was the point of my post....(and to bring up what I saw in the documentary)  :-\

You can put programs into the computer that track all keystrokes and can detect if the user is accessing unauthorized sites with out the need to activate a camera.
But a big point is this. All stuff that pertains to kids behavior off campus falls into the realm of parenting. The schools authority should end once the kid leaves the campus, unless it is something specifically school related.
Spying on your student body in secret, possibly in their bedrooms is beyond any normal school function that the administration should be monitoring.

keyloggers are useless to identify who's typing the info,sitting behind the keyboard..How is a keylogger gonna to show you who stole a laptop?....

Modified to add, (according to the schools response...)The security system with the camera was only supposed to be turned on when the laptop is stolen,Lost, or reported missing....So I still ask Why was it turned on....The laptop was reported to be stolen (after searching the schools website....)...


Hijack! When I was in school authority reached till I walked in my front door,which saved my ass once,and worked against me once....In Elementry school,I walked in the front door of my house threw my book bag down,ran a block from my house mooned a kid...About an hour later when back to the school to shoot baskets, the principal saw me....He couldn't do anything, because I walked in my house.....In Jr. High, I got in a fight with a kid,and neither of us went home yet...We both got in school suspension...endhijack

That's not entirely true.  While it is true anything YOU (Defense5499) record illegally could not be used as evidence in court the exclusion rule only applies to law enforcement. 

For example, if the Erin Andrews peeping tom videos has shown her snorting coke the DA could use that as evidence against her in a criminal prosecution for illegal drug usage, even though the video was taken illegally, without running afoul with the US Constitution.  Individual states may have laws or own state constitutional interpretation that would excluded such evidence, and it is possible that in Florida such evidence could not be used, but what you state is not universally true. 

OK.  I'm in Miami and I work for a career transition firm.  In other words, I'm like George Clooney from Up In The Air.  The difference is, my company only operates in the State of Florida, so I'm on the road a lot as opposed to on a plane.

...and a school's right to videotape student behavior should be limited to when the kid is in school.

I have no problem at all with the school-issued laptops keeping histories of websites visited so that the school can determine any inappropriate use of school property, but to actually remotely activate a webcam to see what the kid's doing at night on the computer?  Way out of bounds, imo...

Also if they suspected the laptop was stolen, then they should have notified authorities and then the police could have activated the camera as part of a criminal investigation.
All these excuses being brought up to defend the schools actions fail when put to the common sense test.

If this is true, I think it should result in jail time.

The facts are finally starting to come out in this case, partly due to court proceedings (a judge just ordered the school to cease activating any remote measures). It turns out that the school statements so far have been... misleading...

The laptop in question was never reported stolen.
The child in question was the rightful possessor of the laptop.
The child was presented with a printed photo taken of him, in his home after school hours, by an assistant principal at the school and accused of dealing and taking drugs (the child claims it was candy).
A network tech at the school has a blog in which he details some of the techniques that the installed anti-theft software allowed the school to use, including making the web cam appear disabled in user applications, but still available to the anti-theft software.
The network tech is also featured in a podcast advertising the anti-theft software.

Additionally, some rather stringent terms of attending classes at the school have come to light:
- Possession of a monitored laptop was required to attend at least some classes.
- Use of non-monitored laptops during school hours was prohibited.
- Any attempt at disabling the monitoring of the laptop, including turning off the web cam, was prohibited and grounds for expulsion.

I thought Dave's comment above was overboard initially, but the more facts that surface about what really transpired, the more I'm inclined to agree with the need to impose some jail time.

Edited to add: Some MIT-affiliated researchers have reportedly reverse engineered the software used to spy on the children. They report that the software allows school administrators to run as "root" on the laptops (so they can effectively do anything they want, including wipe all traces of what they've done). The software was apparently also very insecure, requiring no authentication (password or otherwise), potentially allowing anyone complete access to student laptops -- including the ability to activate the webcam at any time (provided it was turned on, of course).

If the kids new about the software and that they were being monitored than that makes this less of an issue. 

BTW Brilliant stratagy by the kids atty.  Kid gets caught doing drugs, shifts focus to the school.   

I disagree, but that's beside the point, because...

They didn't. The school has already publicly admitted that the parents and children were NOT informed about the remote webcam ability. On the contrary, numerous children have come forward saying that the webcam light on their laptops blinked at random times, both during and after school. They were told by the school that it was a hardware glitch. Only the 2009 graduation class reported this problem as it has since been "fixed" by making the webcam appear inactive.


School officials perpetrate a highly illegal scheme and you want to focus on what some kid may or may not have done? Your priorities are completely out of wack, in my opinion.

I also don't consider the school even remotely qualified to evaluate what the kid was eating simply by looking at a few webcam pics.

How do they know the kid was doing drugs? Why is it their business? This entire situation stinks. A lot.

Once again this is way beyond the scope of what schools are supposed to do. Schools are only in place to teach our children the fundamentals required to be a functional part of our society. There has been a serious push by certain elements of our society who want our children raised by the schools and not by parents. This is just another glaring example of it.
But in a new twist appearantly now the schools want to do law enforcements job too.

It doesn't matter if the kid was smoking crack with a pipe he made from the bones of a hooker he just strangled.  It's irrelevant to the charge of the school.

The are spying on children IN THEIR HOMES.  ...in their bedrooms, for Christ's sake!  Whoever authorized this decision should be treated like someone who got caught peeping in the window of their 16 year old nextdoor neighbor.

Jesus Christ, people.  How does someone so incredibly incompetent as to think that this is OK even sniff a position of power in the school system?

So does anyone know how to disable a camera that is installed in a laptop?

Duct tape works for everything.

I was wondering what I was going to do this weekend...thanks for the great idea.

If anyone hacks my webcam, they're in for a rude awakening.

I started trying to imagine just what they would see and then thought the better of it. Coming from you I'm pretty sure it would be pretty funny!!

I'm pretty sure it involves mickey mouse ears and a jar of miracle whip...

And the name Spanky stitched into the back of the ears?