We are living a world where many people are getting far too accustomed to having their privacy invaded in various ways by technology. Google maps are zooming in on homes and businesses all over the world. GPS devices are being used in a variety of ways that sometimes cross legal lines when they used by stalkers to pinpoint the location of their victims. RATT phones supplied by suspicious spouses and other nosey people are listening in to what should be private conversations. And now a Pa. school district has done the unthinkable, and is accused of eavesdropping on its students inside their homes via remote controlled web cams on the laptops it supplied to said students. Suit: Pa. school spied on students via laptops (AP)
When you take into consideration that students are very likely to take those laptops supplied by the school into their bedrooms to do homework on, the idea of the school having remote web cams that can be turned on at any time, is disgustingly scary to say the very least.
The real irony here is that this Big Brother behavior by the school was uncovered when an assistant principal told a student he thought he had engaged in inappropriate behavior at home, then produced a photograph taken by the web cam on the computer supplied by the school as evidence. None of the stories I've read so far have said what the inappropriate behavior of the young student was. I can't help but feel that whatever that student did, it isn't half as bad as what the school has done by invading the homes of its students in the manner it has.
Some students from that school are now placing masking tape over the web cams and microphones on their school supplied computers. And though many are probably going to laugh at this, I actually started putting a small piece of sticky note over the built in iSight cameras on my macs a couple of years ago after watching a movie where a hacker took control of a computer web cam. I figured even back then, better safe than sorry when it came to that all seeing little eye on the top of my display screen.
The Lower Merion School District should ashamed of itself for violating the privacy of its students, as well their parents in the manner it has. They are at best, guilty of a form of illegal wiretapping, and at worst, no better than a pedophile who puts hidden cameras in bathrooms. The faculty members responsible for this breach of privacy need to be held accountable for their actions. And the school district as a whole needs to understand that their job of monitoring students does not extend past the boundaries of the schoolyard.
