High School Sued For Spying On Students With Laptop Cameras

reply to post by devilishlyangelic23


My feeling exactly, something doesn't seem right. I hope the school is being truthful; however, the initial report stated the student was being "disciplined for 'improper behavior in his home'" Were he being disciplined for theft then I am sure that it would have been mentioned in the earlier reports.

that vice principal is so lucky i'm not the student he confronted about inappropriate behavior. he'd be f***ed

honestly if it was my kid, i would put him in the car, along with his/her friends, and drive over to the principals house and throw his ass out into the street. "i'm kicking your ass for engaging in ILLEGAL behaviour at home"

sickening.

reply to post by JIMC5499


This is true. I was arrested 25 kilometers away from my school while in highschool and was also suspended from school for the same incident.


My opinion on the article is that there should be no way this goes unpunished. Give every kid who took one of those laptops home a scholarship to college for what has been done to them.

second, the capabilities of the remote access appears to be limited. As far as the article says it has the ability to take a single still photo and a print screen, seeing who is in front of the screen and what is on the screen at that specific moment in time.

the school says this is in case the laptops are misplaced or stolen.

My question, would a GPS (software or hardware) not accomplish the same thing, while being much less intrusive? Although still an invasion of privacy, the locating device would at least be defensible in court as the school does have a right to monitor the location of their own property.

I see no problem with them spying. Someone has to keep an eye on those meddling kids!!

Let me see into the future. Hmmmm....yep, I was right. I see that school dealing with a whole bunch of lawsuits.

Originally posted by JIMC5499
I know of several more who were suspended for drinking beer during a non-school trip to Germany, during the summer. A teacher who was in the group turned them in to the school when classes resumed.

Wow, I find that ridiculous. When I was in grade 11 I took a class trip to Europe during the summer. There were several teachers with us and they allowed us to drink as long as we were of legal age in that country (which was pretty much every country except for England) Heck, the teachers got outright drunk on occassion. It was a great trip and sort of created a better bond with our teachers. I'm glad I didn't get stuck with a hardass teacher who thinks we have to live by our local standards.

When in Rome... or France or Germany or Austria or any of the other places we went to...

My brother goes to the school mentioned in the above article, Harriton High School. I'd like to summarize what happened since there's a lot of rumors floating about on other sites, not sure about this one. The kid in question, named Blake, partook in an “illegal” action. Not that I care, since the activation of the camera is a complete violation of rights. He was smoking pot and the reason they claim they activated the camera is because they had suspicion he was dealing drugs. Which is a stupid excuse, considering he isn’t a drug dealer, and also that gives them no right. Besides, it’s pot. Not a big deal. But anyway they took a snapshot of him blazing and used it to interrogate him or what have you. I’ve borrowed my brother’s laptop as well a few times and noticed the camera would randomly turn on. As in the green light would turn on, on the apple laptop. I didn’t think much of it since I knew no one would be sick enough to spy on underage kids. However, I was obviously wrong. This camera has also turned on when my brother has been undressing to take a shower, since the laptop is open when he listens to music, when showering. Federal money payed for the laptops (go figure). This same high school charges at least $20 just to get a parking pass.

Apparently the FBI is now investigating the issue.

Yahoo News Article

This is going to open a whole can of worms they probably never intended to open. Seems like they really need to think their plans through a bit more before execution.

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.

improper behavior = HUMAN BEHAVIOR!??

what ever.

[edit on 19-2-2010 by Ram]

Originally posted by Blaine91555
Really though, its probably a porn source for the Pedo's teaching the classes.

I agree with you. That is most likely the true motive, and I'm sure the excuse they come up with will be very weak. This is no different to drilling a peephole in the child's bedroom wall.

As someone stated, electrical tape is cheap, easy and effective. That's what I'd do.

reply to post by soficrow


Activating a remote cam on any computer attached to the internet (and a lot of phones now) is really very simple. The software has been available since back orifice came on the market around 1998, there are others available also as writing the programs (malware/virus) is very simple even for a beginning programmer.

1. Send an e-mail attachment or a link that triggers an automatic download.

2. (optional) on a laptop Change the "lid Close Action" to "do nothing" in the power settings this will allow the camera to work when the laptop is closed.

3. Activate the camera, then sit back and watch.

The same can be done with the built in Mic

The Fix?
1. Don't click on and/or download attachments from strangers or untrusted websites.

2. Check your camera/Mic settings often.

3. Disable the built in Mic by plugging in an external microphone into the jack for it; it is always on otherwise.

4. Tape over the camera is the best and simplist idea. removable when you want to use the cam.

i actually work for a company that is involved with that school. Talk to the IT people on a daily basis. I can honesty say that I am shocked that this is happening. Fortunately the software we provide has nothing to do with what happened. I cannot imagine the feelings I would have if I were a parent.....

I think when 2010 comes to a close, this news story will DEFINITELY be in my top 10 most disturbing.

This is totally wrong and weird. What's terrible about it is that every parent was probably so relieved that they didn't have to spend so much money getting their child a brand new Apple laptop (which are horribly overpriced!) but instead the school is paying for it! Now look!

Unfortunately, if any other school in the future tries to do something similar, no matter how genuine their intentions, will be very suspicious.

Ridiculous! They spied on the kid in his home and said he had "improper behavior" in his home? As if that's their business? What constitutes "improper behavior"? What a bunch of authoritarian pricks. What the kids do at home is none of their business -- it's off of school property.

This will damage the image of schools for a long time to come; that's the most worrying thing. Most parents trust the schools they send their children to. I don't doubt that most schools are not like the ones in the Philadelphia area but I think this will impact all schools in some way. Maybe that's a good thing - perhaps more people will monitor schools and reclaim some of the authority they've let them take.

There are more details about this at The Register

The Robbins family have reacted by talking to their lawyers – and this week they issued suit (pdf) against the school district, its board of governors, and Christopher McGinley, the Superintendent of the district.

They allege a veritable shopping list of wrongdoing, including not only breaches of the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution, but also the Electronic Communication Privacy Act, the Computer Fraud Abuse Act, the Stored Communications Act, s1983 of the Civil Rights Act, the Pennsylvania Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Act, as well as Pennsylvania common law.

The Associated Press article linked above and reproduced by Yahoo states:

The FBI will look into whether any federal wiretap or computer-intrusion laws were violated by Lower Merion School District officials, the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss the investigation, told the AP on Friday.

and

Blake Robbins told KYW-TV on Friday that a school official described him in his room and mistook a piece of candy for a pill.

"She described what I was doing," he said. "She said she thought I had pills and said she thought that I was selling drugs."

Thank you ConcernedBrother for joining ATS to provide us with those extra details.

[edit on 20/2/10 by Rapacity]

wheres the best place to start monitoring the public?

where they probly wont find out?

where if they did find out they may not know wot to do?

schools!...fortunately this school got busted lol

If my daughters attended that school, I would be there now looking for what other covert cameras were installed. What's in the restrooms? Who's watching the locker rooms?

I know that there is at least one judge in the area that would issue the warrant, and i'm sure many lawyers that would love to enforce the warrant with the accompanied service of it!

It wouldn't surprise me if a lot of Computer monitors, TV sets, Freeview boxes are also capable of this, with having inbuilt Webcam Devices.
Wasn't there a few incidents a couple of years back when Sky Boxes were found to be "broadcasting" signals, when infact there simply reciever devices.
I'd suggest anything that looks like a webcam lens, cover it up. Even on my Polaroid LCD TV i've now become suspicious of a lens that doesn't give a light output, yet is there for a unknown reason (now covered up.)

i agree with the one commenter on the boingboing.net link:

nanuq | #1 | 23:58 on Wed, Feb.17

If they're recording images of underage children without parental consent, couldn't that be considered child pornography?

...not to mention filming them in the "privacy" of their own home

Originally posted by ConcernedBrother
My brother goes to the school mentioned in the above article, Harriton High School.

I heard on another message board that somebody said about the same thing you did except they said he had some "pills" that turned out to be mike n ikes. But everything else you said matched up to what he said.