Sunday, February 21, 2010

PA Webcam Spying Case

So I'd like to review what happened in this case.  Some Philly suburb high school gave out laptops to the kids.  The laptops had webcams, and software which allowed the school to remotely enable the webcam and take pictures.  The school claims this was only to be used in case of the laptop being reported stolen as a way to help identify the thief.  The problem is that the reason everyone knows about this is because the school took a pic of some kid using his unstolen laptop at home eating Mike and Ikes.  Naturally they assumed these brightly colored candies were in fact deadly drugs and attempted to punish him.  At which point the kids parents responded with approximately "wait, you're spying on our kid at home?", and the school followed up with "oh... never mind".

The school claims the webcams are only remotely activated if the laptops are reported stolen.  I've seen some claim the kid took the pic himself and then the school found it when he returned the laptop.

Local News Story

Edit:
http://strydehax.blogspot.com/2010/02/spy-at-harrington-high.html
It appears the school was almost certainly spying.

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