Sometimes, somebody just has to go to ridiculous lengths to illustrate privacy problems

[jducoeur]

Thanks to the_nita for pointing out one of the most impressive invasions of privacy I've yet come across that *somebody* is probably going to try to claim is defensible.

Summary: reports are that a school district issued laptops to the kids, and then used them to spy on the kids at home via the webcam. I'm not yet certain that it's real -- it's the sort of story that often turns out to be some parent misconstruing the circumstances -- but it's sadly in line with a fair number of modern trends in the attitudes of schools towards children, and society towards citizens in general. In today's culture, you almost have to do something that is really harmful to children before anybody really pays attention. But this does seem to cross a bunch of memetic lines. God help the school officials if somebody finds pictures of children actually undressing: in modern America, anything that can be contrued as child porn is pretty much regarded as worse than murder.

Overall, though, this is one of those Risks Digest moments...

Comments

[jducoeur]

Normally I'd reassure her, on the theory that no bureaucracy would be stupid enough to do something that legally dangerous. But occasionally, people do live down below my expectations...

[outlander.livejournal.com]

My response to her was something along the lines of there are thousands of high school teachers in the state. They are more likely to be checking browser history or something like that which can be done using a search program rather than having someone actually watch her as she inputs grades or creates lessons.

This is one of the main reasons I do absolutely nothing non-work related on my work computer. I just don't. I won't check LJ or Facebook or Ravelry on in from home--I don't want to take a chance at all. I doubt anyone in Lowell is savvy enough to check up on me remotely, but I also don't want the browser history to show anything out of the realm of absolutely mundane.

[jducoeur]

I can understand that. I don't worry about it so much, but programmers are *expected* to be weird -- I don't need to worry about reputation issues to the extent you do...

[dragonazure.livejournal.com]

I hate to tell you, but that theory was disproven long ago.... 8^(

Most of the incidents I am aware of involve security folks who are concerned about preventing a potential problem (based on their experience) rather than reacting to a problem. However, that sort thinking runs counter to our current notions of privacy and jurisprudence.

Luckily, in those cases, there were other people watching the watchmen, so the overzealous usually got disciplined.