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

[dragonazure.livejournal.com]

Defensible? Absolutely not (at least not according to what was reported). Assuming the report is factual, the limited use cited by the schoold district is that once the laptop is reported stolen or missing, the webcam is activated for a still picture.

The kid was called in because the webcam was activated and he was "doing something inappropriate" per the assistant principals words.

Whatever the kid was doing, the fact is that the webcam was activated outside parameters of the stated policy and guidelines. That action cannot be defended. Most people would be very surprised, not to mention horrified to know how often their "public access" systems are monitored....

[etherial.livejournal.com]

I think all the school's press release tells us is that they're going to blame it all on the Principal.