High School Sued For Spying On Students With Laptop Cameras

Originally posted by awhispersecho
We have the Obama administration trying to make it legal to conduct searches of cell phones, and other electronic equipment without a warrant because as Obama said..we ( American citizens ) should have "no reasonable expectation of privacy".

Isn't this exactly what the "prolife" crowd has been saying for the last thirty years? I get a chuckle out of conservatives complaining about hteir own ideas.

Originally posted by Rapacity
There is no reason to use webcams to spy on children while they are in school. Teachers are paid to monitor pupils but they should monitor them with physical presence, not while hidden in a canteen or behind a desk. If children are messing around within a classroom then the teacher should be physically present to see them messing around. If the teacher is not able to physically see his/her pupils messing around then where the hell is he/she; for he/she is certainly not in the classroom with the pupils she/he is supposed to teach.

[edit on 18/2/10 by Rapacity]

As a teacher myself I can say that oftentimes the "messing around" does not happen within the classroom but rather in areas where students spend time between classes. Many times those are areas within a school that teachers seldom more than briefly pass through on their way.

I do agree with what you are saying but sometimes it's not as simple as saying the problem will be solved by a teacher being present in the classroom.

Originally posted by Blazer
Need more data before condemning the school. For example, what if it were this scenario:
1. School has remote admin software on all its laptops (this is not at all uncommon)
2. Student was VPN into school network, and their IDS, firewall, or otherwise network security monitors detected the student trying to hack into their servers or some other unauthorized access.
3. Upon detecting the unauthorized activity, they immediately determine what IP address the intrusion is coming from. Know full well the kid would just say "it wasn't me", "my brother did it", etc, they activate his webcam and take a snapshot which thus proves it was the student at the keyboard at the time of the intrusion.

Given the above scenario, would you still condemn the school?
I would like to believe it was something like this, because why in the world would school administration sit around after-hours or on weekends etc, watching all their students via webcam, and then making claims against them for something they saw them doing in their room or something? That is absurd, so I suspect it is something like the example scenario. I hope so anyhow!

I was thinking along the lines of Blazer as well. Thing is, no teacher or school administrator would have the time and/or inclination to sit around for hours to maybe spot something going on. Just imagine how bored you'd be looking people's unmade beds for hours on end. No way could they afford to have extra people doing these chores.

As for the paedophilia concern I think this would be a very uncertain, boring and unrewarding practic for anyone interested in child porn. You would have hours upon hours of no material at all, when all you have to do is find the right connections online and voila! as much filth as tou could ever need.

eideard.wordpress.com...

im not sure if this particular article has been posted or not...i happened to come across it when i googled the email address to the school that another member posted. it says in this article that:

"The plaintiffs say they learned that Big Brother was in their home when an assistant principal told their son that the school district knew he “was engaged in improper behavior in his home, and cited as evidence a photograph from the webcam embedded in minor plaintiff’s personal laptop issued by the school district.”

what the heck? he was engaged in improper behaviour in his home? thats absolutely none of the schools business!!!

this bothers me so much. i think it would be a good idea for all of us to email these people and tell them exactly what we think of their very poorly thought out idea. there are email addresses in that article for the school district, the board of directors and the superintendent.

*edit*
here is the letter that i wrote to the superintendent. i haven't sent it yet, i wanted to see if someone could review it and perhaps mention anything that i left out, or could have worded better. thanks

"I just read a very disturbing article, that some of your secondary school students are involved in a law suit regarding web cams in their school computers that can be accessed by school officials during home hours. I wonder who allowed this. Certainly not you? I cannot for the life of me even begin to fathom your reasoning for needing to be able to view students in their homes during private times. It is absolutely none of the schools business what a student does during their own private time, away from school property.

If there is a concern about students misusing their laptops while away from school, then you should not be allowing them to take them home. If it is necessary for their education to take the laptop home, then you should have other programs in place that record their computer activity and computer history and perhaps disable administrator abilities on the computers.

To think for one moment that it would be acceptable to be able to view their home life through the web cam is appalling. Did it ever occur to the school board that people may think your teachers are going to take advantage of this technology and spy on students in potentially some of their most private moments? Did it ever occur to the school that warrants are required for a police officer to enter a home, and anything he or she recovers from a home without a warrant is inadmissible in court? So why would the rules be any different for a teacher? How many images have been taken of students at home with these computers? How many of those images are appropriate for a teacher to be in possession of?

This is one of the lowest things I have ever heard of a school doing. You're making these students and their families think that you're helping them by giving them access to a computer 24/7, when all the while you're capable of spying on them the whole time, without them knowing. If a person came to my home and spied on me without my knowledge they would be arrested and charged by law enforcement. Which is EXACTLY what should be happening to anyone associated with this horrendous idea. "


[edit on 19-2-2010 by devilishlyangelic23]

FIVE words here.....

Under age kids.
Pictures.
Naked.

IT'S CHILD PORN! And I want all the people involved arrested and imprisoned!

Originally posted by JIMC5499

My wife is a teacher (Jr, High Science). She has to attend these continuing education classes both during the school year and during the Summer breaks. If she doesn't attend, she can lose her teaching certificate. In these classes they are taught that the Parents do not know how to raise their children. Only the teacher's and the schools acting as Advocates for the Child know what's best. My son is only two years old and we have agreed that he will be home schooled or cyber schooled.

Yes!
That and Global Funds/Banks representatives setting foot all over your country, my country, someone else s country surpassing the elected governments, and they all tell us what to do!
The all we have to do is connect the dots, for ex. who builds the camera equipments, the PCs, who lobby's to take the governmental contracts, are these corps favored by the Global Funds/Banks trusts etc etc Who do they appoint to their influential councils, what they were doing prior to that.
All that indeed do exist today, but are still fragmented and not so interconnected, but soon I see no reason of all these trusts becoming a Global entity. It's not so much of a conspiracy anymore as it used to be, is it? It's becoming real.
Imagine, of being the of same entity that builds, legislates and approves, a spying camera on your home the people who legislate and approve and install the same tools of manipulation, either be it, equipment or simply ideas and those people are at the other side of the globe, letting slip through the cracks of their legislated systems the subversive elements of their society that the society of your part of the world loathes. Total control. Total NWO.

[edit on 19-2-2010 by spacebot]

Originally posted by mikellmikell
I just picked up a used netbook off ebay and the first thing I did was to put tape over the camera until I find out how to tell if it's being remote acessed. Anybody know what to look for?

Uhh, yeah... reinstall the OS...

Webcams dont operate via esp.

That's a freaking joke. people are out of their minds now a days. Gosh.

can they charge the Admins with possession of child pornography?

“Many of the images captured may consist of minors and their parents or friends in compromising or embarrassing positions, including various stages of undress.”

link

I would LOVE to see what other programs were installed on the computers by the IT guys.

Im thinking if it was a private school, then they could claim some form of immunity, but if it was a public school, then they need to fire the entire board.

This is absolutly disgusting and if I were the kids parents I would have these administrators for this school held accountable. How dare they even consider looking at a child through a computer . Shows that disgusting people run the schools. Makes me wonder what kind of person e ven would work for a school. Im glad I do not have any children my god what has happened to the USA. Hang em high people.

FIRST OFF,

You now live in America. Not the land of the free anymore.

Second OFF, these computers were given to these kids to do homework and stay in touch with teachers. Definatley not for playing games or anything else with them. If he was tampering with the device or palying games yes !!! They turn the camera on ... to let the child know hes being watched. IT HAS A BIG BRIGHT ORANGE LIGHT ON THE FRONT TO LET YOU KNOW ITS BEING MONITORED. How is this spying ?!?!?

Third of all, they sign an agreement that it can be monitored as they do not pay anythign for this equiptment and it is the schools.

FOURTH and FINAL THOUGHT, YOU ARE ARE WAY BEHIND if you don't realize that any web camera whether it be on your cell phone or Laptop or anywhere for that matter has an Internet Protocol adress that it can be acessed by at any time. BY ANYONE WITH JUST A BASIC UNDERSTANDING OF Servers and how they work. anyways, Get over it. This is already here. Big brother is watching you .. STOP DOING STUPID SHYT !!!


O YEAH, THE LAP TOP IS SHUT THE CAMERA WILL NOT WORK IT IS ON THE INSIDE OF THE NOTEBOOK. NOT LIKE THEY JUST TURNED THE CAMERA ON and was viewing it at RANDOM TIMES. COME ON PEOPLE OPEN YOUR MINDS !!!

[edit on 19-2-2010 by Deus_Brandon]

Good thread. My lady allways gets mad at me and calls me paranoid freak for covering the motion eye camera on her laptop when I use it. I have never liked the idea of the kids sitting in front of an online machine with a camera. The funny thing about this one is that even ehen you manually turn off the pwer to the camera it still comes back on. Even when all start up apps are disabled in msconfig. Id say a fresh os would probably help though. Also I believe the camera is taking stills and storing them somewhere.(the machine makes a noise when the still is taken) I dont have anything to hide really except for an occasional scratching of my nether-regions, but since I dont know where the pics or feed are stored that means I also know nothing of THIER security. Im not worried about the man. I worry about the scum that steal from the man. Im no security expert, but I dont think any system is fully protected EVER. So I suppose thats where having a little faith in your community comes in. Just hopefully everyones on the same page.

As far as a school setting up this remote home viewing. Unless it being done in cooperation with national security institutions and gov. then everone involved should be fired and charged with child endangerment, and every other law that can be found. I think putting these people somewhere where they are watched all the time (federal prison) might quench thier thirst for unauthorized intel.

reply to post by Deus_Brandon


Because there probably wasnt a mandantory class for all participants in the program. Believe it or not there are still alot of folks who arent as much a part of the digital age as you. They still look at all tech like its witchcraft or something. Not thier fault , they just have different priorities than you.
All specs on the machine should have been discussed and agreed upon by all concerned, not just some quick tekkie meeting.

If you give a STUDENT a tool, the only thing they should not be allowed to do is hit someone with it.

If this wasn't a school but instead a person, parent, guardian whomever they would be jailed immediately on child pornography charges and they would be impaled by the media. However, because it is a school there is a kerfuffle about what to do. Give me a break. If I did this or any other person we would be in jail faster than our heads could spin.

reply to post by merryxmas


What about remote acsessed Nanny Cams? I wouldnt have one unless it were an emergency, but they are legal arent they?

Originally posted by Szticks
As a teacher myself I can say that oftentimes the "messing around" does not happen within the classroom but rather in areas where students spend time between classes. Many times those are areas within a school that teachers seldom more than briefly pass through on their way.

I do agree with what you are saying but sometimes it's not as simple as saying the problem will be solved by a teacher being present in the classroom.

I understand that; no one can be everywhere and never everywhere can someone be. However, when I was at school, 20 or so years ago, we had teachers in our classes, teachers in our playgrounds, teachers in our canteen and teachers in the halls. They were there to deter bullying and to respond should trouble occur (which often it did). We didn't need cameras and we certainly didn't remain our teachers' responsibility outside of our school's premises. When did teaching become so distant and lazy? Why?

Teachers are getting younger and they're getting lazier through inheritance of characteristic and attitude from the ever younger predecessors who taught them to teach - it is an avalanche effect. It is time we set minimum age and real life experience requirements that must be reached before a person can teach.

It seems to me that too many groups are usurping responsibility and asserting dominance over our lives: there are no clear cuts between teacher's, politicians, traffic wardens, park attendants and the police. The dividing line has shifted from the old "haves and have nots" to that of "public servants and citizens" with "servant" now meaning "to serve the orders of authority" as opposed to "to serve the elector hence employer".

With small steps, big targets are reached. Those small nibbles into our lives, taken over many years, are as effective as one big bite taken in one day. One is less painful, the other is more noticeable; one we consider urgent enough to fight off, the other we allow to go on gnawing at us. I hope, I sincerely hope, that people stand behind those students and their families and back them up to the hilt with as much force as is necessary to regain control from authority and maintain it within the public's domain. This is our world too; not government nor sect has the right to spy on us and remove our freedom to live act without malice or unmerited hindrance toward others.

You know, after thinking about this for awhile, a root question that remains unanswered to me is,

Why the heck would a school even choose a laptop model with a webcam on it? Its not work, its for school. Its not like they are going to hold webmeetings at home or on weekends, its for students attending class.

Remove the webcam and then its simply a piece of school property and they can monitor all the activity on the laptop without being privied to things you do in your home and personal space outside of school. The implications and possibilities of what they might see on a webcam away from school, they opened themselves up to the class action suit and someone should be losing their job over it.

Laptop good. Remotely accessing it to monitor, perfectly fine. You know which websites to log on on a regular school desktop and a laptop should be no different, nor a work PC. But THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO REASON AT ALL, that a school laptop should have, or need, a webcam on it.

More data trickling in but still not enough. Not yet definitive, but now its sounding like the laptop was STOLEN (or at least presumed stolen). news.yahoo.com...

A suburban Philadelphia school district accused of spying on students at home via school-issued computers told parents it only activated the webcams to find missing laptops.

The schools' technology and security departments would activate the webcam when any of the 2,300 student laptops were reported lost or stolen...

"The security feature's capabilities were limited to taking a still image of the operator and the operator's screen. This feature was only used for the narrow purpose of locating a lost, stolen or missing laptop," McGinley wrote. "The District never activated the security feature for any other purpose or in any other manner whatsoever."

reply to post by Blazer


Just to add to that update ...

They have disabled the security feature as of 5:30 PM yesterday and say they won't reactivate it without sending a letter explaining to all parents:

LMSD initial response to invasion of privacy allegation

Which seems like the proper response for now.

I'm a bit confused about the theft issue -- what, the kid reported his laptop stolen and then did something he shouldn't have with it and got caught when they used the webcam activation feature to try and find out who had stolen it?

Also, some answers to other questions that have popped up in the course of the thread: the school district in question is not the inner-city Philly schools, but the Lower Merion School District which serves the Main Line suburbs. The laptops were MacBooks, which are not offered without the webcam feature. Presumably the school district got a deal with Apple, so offering laptops without webcams wasn't an option.

For anyone interested, here's the FAQ about the computer program for parents at the LMSD website.

reply to post by Blazer


ok, that seems to make enough sense, that they were using it to detect a stolen computer. but i've read here that all 1800 students are involved in the class action lawsuit. if this was the case, that it was a student who stole the computer, then why are all the students involved? i think that may be what the intention of the web cams was...but i dont think thats exactly what happened. otherwise, why would all the students be involved in the suit?