Overkill or No Kill at All

[Louis VI the Fat]

Lower Merion School District sued for cyber spying on students


Lower Merion School District officials brag that they give every one of their 1,800 high-schoolers laptop computers to "ensure that all students have 24/7 access to school-based resources."

Instead, they ensured they got a 24/7 sneak peek into students’ private lives by secretly monitoring webcams embedded in the laptops to spy on teens and their families at home, according to a federal, class-action lawsuit filed this week in Philadelphia.


http://www.philly.com/philly/news/ho...cmpid=15585797

Merely overkill, or China in the US? A teenage boy was reprimanded at school for "improper behavior in his home".

Great. You sign up for a school with a "mobile, 21st-century learning environment". Then you find out this environment consists of the school filming and monitoring you and your family inside your home.

Including - for totalitarianism is always as much about authoritarian control as empowering 'the little creep' on which the system rests - a nice collection of all the girls (and boys) in their bedrooms.

The family first learned of the embedded webcams on Nov. 11, when Harriton High's Assistant Principal Lindy Matsko reprimanded Blake Robbins for "improper behavior in his home," according to the lawsuit. Matsko cited as evidence a photograph from the webcam on the boy's school-issued laptop.
The lawsuit does not specify why the photograph was objectionable.


Because the webcam can capture anything happening in the room where the laptop is, district personnel could illicitly observe plenty more than a student's online activity, the lawsuit alleges.


"Many of the images captured and intercepted may consist of images of minors and their parents or friends in compromising or embarrassing positions, including, but not limited to, in various stages of dress or undress," the lawsuit charges.

[Beskar]

What right has the school to discipline a child for behaviour in their home? They have no jurisdiction there.

[CrossLOPER]

What right has the school to discipline a child for behaviour in their home? They have no jurisdiction there.

In the school system that I entered in the US, EVERYTHING you did during the schoolyear was their business. Whether you got into a fight in school, after school or on Saturday, it does not matter.

[Beskar]

In Britain, it is everything that happens on the school grounds and academically.

If they suspected something like Child-Abuse, they report it to Social Services to deal with.

[Azathoth]

Is that a prestigious school?

No, just your average middle school in a not-terrible neighborhood. Better than Louis Armstrong, at least.

The family first learned of the embedded webcams on Nov. 11, when Harriton High's Assistant Principal Lindy Matsko reprimanded Blake Robbins for "improper behavior in his home," according to the lawsuit. Matsko cited as evidence a photograph from the webcam on the boy's school-issued laptop.
The lawsuit does not specify why the photograph was objectionable.

Oh boy, I wonder if the poor sap had been searching up pornography on that machine.

The real question is, how many people do you need to continuously monitor 1800 children 24/7?

[Gregoshi]

Oh boy, I wonder if the poor sap had been searching up pornography on that machine.

No, according to the kid, he was accused of taking drugs. What the school claims is him taking pills, he maintains are Mike & Ike candies (an elongated, capsule-like jelly bean). The school also maintains the security feature has only been activated 42 times for machines that were reported lost or stolen, however, the student's machine had not been reported as such. Knowledge of the feature was mixed among the students and some of them had put tape or paper over the webcams to prevent possible intrusions. This is a rather big local story, so there has been a lot of coverage. The school seems to be backpedaling now, so I think that even if the particular incident that sparked the lawsuit turns out to be false, the school district officials are in hot water. The whole thing has "stupid idea" written all over it, but that is probably just hindsight in my case.