Posted on 02/19/2010 6:51:10 AM PST by CJBernard
Furthermore, in the statement released a few hours ago, Lower Merion School District not only admits to the existence of the remote access capability (“[t]he laptops do contain a security feature intended to track lost, stolen and missing laptops”) which had indeed been active (“[t]his feature has been deactivated effective today”), but also admits to exactly who has the discretion to activate the feature (“the feature was activated by the District’s security and technology departments”) and comes clean on the lack of student or parental notification alleged by Robbins in the complaint:
(Excerpt) Read more at americasright.com ...
Makes perfect sense, doesn't it? Makes one wonder why they sent them home with cameras in the first place.
Some people get drunk with power and end up believing rules are for the little people and laws don't apply to them
Given that we are taking about pubskewl here, it’s iffy. A student could buy a netbook for $299.
So was it the football coach checking out the girls? The women’s field hockey coach checking out the girls? or the guidance counselor checking out the boys? And what was it they were doing that was so bad?
A bunch of kids are going to get their college tuition all paid for - and then some.
American parents have surrendered their kids to Hillary's "village." They're raising the kids now [and they also have tenure (union power) to protect their parenting techniques].
Interestingly, Lower Merion is one of the school districts that our school administration holds up as an example. Whenever they want to increase taxes or increase services, they love to compare us to Lower Merion. Superintendents can be a very competitive bunch, and they love to compete on the basis of facilities. When our taxes were lower than some competing districts, it was positioned as an indicator that our quality would be dropping, as we weren't funding for the future, or some such garbage.
We're doing plenty of funding for the future now. We're midway through building a grand new high school, and recently expanded our Kindergarten to full day. We built a new elementary school 10 years ago. Granted, our academic results are strong, but it's often a tribute to smart hard working kids, involved parents, and a boatload of private tutoring as much as the school curriculum. Our community has a large percentage of Jewish families and Chinese immigrants. The parents are typically entrepreneurs or professionals in law, medicine, or biotech. They make sure that the kids work hard and succeed. Their cultures don't tolerate a lot of slackers. When we push our boys, they accuse us of being "Chinese parents".
Somebody wasn’t thinking.
A fair question. Lower Merion is a well-to-do area. Like our school district, LM took advantage of a state grant to fund this. The laptops in our high school stay in school. In my experience, there are very few youngsters in our school district who don't have access to a computer at home. I'm sure Lower Merion is similar. For our kids, thumb drives are required equipment at the outset of the school year. They work on projects at home and bring them to school on thumb drives. There is no need to drag a laptop around, needlessly exposing it to breakage. They also have access to computers in their school library and the public library. Some school administrators just spend money needlessly, as do state governments. I wasn't too happy when our school district created a new position for a grant writer, expressly to seek funds from federal, state or other funding bodies. We have one of the more affluent communities in the state, and in my opinion, we shouldn't play this game.
From the Inquirer
Virginia DiMedio, who as the Lower Merion district's technology director until she retired last summer helped launch the laptop initiative, said yesterday: "If there was a report that a computer was stolen, the next time a person opened it up, it would take their picture and give us their IP [Internet protocol] address - the location of where it was coming from."
No one is saying what the student is accused of doing.
If he told them the laptop was stolen and then the school district enabled that security feature and found out he was lying to them.
But anything else and it's Jail Time
I understand your concern about this situation, but object to your broad-brush condemnation of IT departments. Certainly, the "technology" department of this school should be brought up on charges.
IT departments are typically the "white-hats" of computing, ensuring the safe and effective use of a given information infrastructure, and enforcing the information security policy dictates of the organization for which they work. Both the school administration and tech dept are at fault and I hope they get their butts handed to them in court.
Ol' Sox, CISSP, CISM
Similar services exist for Mac. If configured as part of an enterprise deployment, as is likely, such services are typical. . .
Wow.
What a shame for the taxpaying citizens of this scruel district. They will have to bear the burden of the massive number of lawsuits that will be filed and justifiably won.
Every single one of the persons associated with this event should be fired then prosecuted if for nothing else than stupidity. I can’t believe that there are not grounds for criminal charges somewhere as the temptation to photograph underage students is simply too great. IT departments too often consider themselves omnipotent and behave as such.
I am not one who believes that computers should be issued to students gratis. Boxes can be procured cheaply enough that they can be worked for and earned. Providing this facility gratis is a profligate waste of taxpayer money.
Strikes me as pretty worthless. Presumably this is known to most computer thieves, who would just tape something over the camera lens to disable it.
I am unfamiliar with how these ‘give a student a laptop’ programs work.
1. What prevents students from simply selling the laptop and then claiming it was stolen. What prevents them from then claiming the replacement laptop was stolen?
2. If the teacher is assigning work that requires a laptop what prevents a student from demanding an endless string of replacement laptops?
3. How do the students get internet at home, if parents don’t have it? Do they have some form of wide area wireless?
4. Is any effort made to prevent the laptops from becoming mobile XXX-rated peepshows, do they have anti-porn filters?
5. Given the fact that a year’s support of a single laptop, in a corporate environment, typical costs more than the laptops purchase price. How are the laptops supported? Who and how many and how much does it cost to keep these laptops up and running. Assuming the kids are prone to go to music download, celeb and porn sites which are notorious for infecting computers how are they maintained?
I have no problem with the anti-theft capability since it is a good thing to have, but instead of using it when the anti-theft situation warranted it, it was used for jollies.
That is inappropriate and illegal. They should be sued big-time.
I still have not seen it alleged that the remote web cam activation was actually used to spy on anyone or take the photo in question. The fact that the lawsuit does not specifically allege this makes farily certain it did not happen.
My guess is it played out something like this:
1) Student takes incriminating photo of himself with school issued laptop.
2) Photo is either emailed by student or automatically synched back to school servers.
3) Vice principal is made aware of photo and confronts the boy about it.
4) In discussing the photo it comes out that the anti-theft feauture theoretically COULD be used to spy by remotely activating laptop web cams. Remember the suit never claims that this is how the Vice Principal obtained the photo.
5) Parents and student decide to use this fact to cover for the kid’s behavior and try to ripoff the taxpayers of the district with a lawsuit.
Maybe some truly horrible spying did go on here, and if so, those involved should be serving decades in prison. However, at this point, I doubt that is what happened.
I never would have let a webcam-enabled PC into my home, much less one controlled by government workers.
Anyone who did let their kid bring one of these home should send the computer back to school. A note should be attached informing the school that their kid will not be bringing any other equipment home, nor using any camera-enabled PC at the school. Furthermore, any academic penalties suffered by their child as a result of your position will be met with a legal response.
These people need to be told in no uncertain terms to stick to academics.
Gee! Is this the wonderful socialization homeschoolers are missing? ( Just wondering)
I'm all for a less litigious society, but school administrations need to be kept in their box, and slapped hard when they try to climb out.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.