They are extremely sued.
I would be “disabling” that “feature”...................
They should all be fired. the whole administration of the district and the schools and the technology department.
My understanding is that this computer program (accessing the webcam remotely) is standand anti-theft material on all MAC laptops. The idea is that if the laptop is stolen, the owner can contact (not sure whom) to active the program to help locate the thief & laptop. Big brother starts small in helpful ways.
I saw this story this morning and was shocked that any group of people could be so stupid as to access cams of students when they were at home...
It simply amazes me how easily a mere School Board can so thoroughly violate the US Constitution, the problems with something like this that ought to be obvious to someone who is supposed to be in charge. Just last week another School Board got busted for proposing to hand out I-Pods to parents that they were going to buy with “stimulus” money.
Elvis has left the building folks. There are no adults in charge right now and for all intents and purposes, much of our elected Gubment at all levels is running along on auto-pilot and quite completely out of control. Some of the worst offenders are local politicos who are pulling crap like this all over the Country, and getting away with it clean.
If they were Windows boxes, it could be turned on at any time by anyone with Administrative privileges.
Specifically, if the Remote Desktop Connection service is running, anyone with proper account credentials and connectivity to the box can do pretty much anything on the box.
Assuming that the laptops were joined to a domain, any district admin could do it. .
And schools should be giving take-home laptops because?
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".
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
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.
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)
Let’s see some charges for these 2300+ federal and state felony crimes, or pardon and expunge the records of every person in the country ever convicted under electronic surveillance laws.