Big Teacher Is Watching You
My laptop’s webcam now has a postage stamp covering it. Does yours?
This week, a district court judge in Philadelphia, PA, had to do the unthinkable: issue an order preventing a school district from further remote reactivation of webcams on laptop computers issued to nearly 2,000 high school students, a practice which has left many students and parents wondering whether school administrators had unfettered access into their homes and lives.
Just last week, a high school sophomore named Blake Robbins filed a class action lawsuit in federal court against the Lower Merion School District, the wealthy destination district on Philadelphia’s prestigious Main Line which gave the world numerous doctors, lawyers, financial managers — and Kobe Bryant. The school district, Robbins alleges, has been spying on students and students’ families in their own homes by means of remote access to webcam-equipped laptop computers provided to all students through an initiative funded largely by federal and state grants.
Neither students nor parents were provided notice by Lower Merion School District about the remote-access capability when the computers were distributed or at any other time. Robbins and his family only discovered the capability when the 15-year-old was approached at school by an assistant principal at Harriton High School and accused of engaging in “improper behavior” in his own home.
A photograph captured by Robbins’ laptop webcam was offered as evidence. The “improper behavior” which so concerned school administrators? Assistant Principal Lindy Matsko pointed to what looked like prescription drugs being held by Robbins in the photograph and voiced concern that he was selling drugs; in reality, Robbins was eating his favorite candy, Mike & Ikes, while at the computer in his own home.
Lower Merion School District, Robbins claims, has violated a long list of federal and state laws designed to protect personal privacy and stored information, including but not limited to the Electronic Communication Privacy Act, the Computer Fraud Abuse Act, the Stored Communications Act, §1983 of the Civil Rights Act, the Pennsylvania Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Act, and Pennsylvania common law. And then, of course, there’s the matter of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Even for those who do not read a bona fide right to privacy into the Constitution, considering that the Fourth Amendment was written and drafted by our founders in response to the practice so many years before of British soldiers who conducted warrantless searches of colonists’ homes in search of signs of smuggling, that this case features an overreaching school district peering into private homes without notice or consent, all in search of “improper behavior” of the sort that Robbins was confronted with, should be cause for alarm for anyone who values liberty and individual freedom.
In the week which has followed the filing of the complaint, a number of students have come forward to say that either they noticed a green light indicating an active camera illuminate arbitrarily, or that they may not have noticed the light but often have the laptop open in their bedrooms, or even in their bathrooms, where music from iTunes can make showering more enjoyable for anyone who belts out Lady Gaga tunes into their shampoo bottle.
I think that it is interesting that when the story first surfaced, the school claimed that they only turned on the cameras if the laptop was considered stolen, and that we were to infer what we want by that. Trying to shift blame to the student. Now, the story is that he was eating Mike & Ike’s and they thought he was doing prescription drugs? Shame on the school. Now that they have been caught with what they were doing they stepped up, but only after being forced to.
I posted a “question” saying I am going to Marmaris, but it got deleted. Just like Selin’s q about heights and weights. It seems Yahoo admins are monitoring what we ask here, too. I started to feel like a high school student trying to have my way hiding from teachers.
http://ezinearticles.com/?Best-Anti-Eye-Wrinkle-Cream—Choose-With-the-Help-of-My-Personal-Experience&id=3789968
Two low-numbered rules:
Technology WILL be mis-used.
A lot of public education administrators are on a power-trip.
If those students did their homework in their room, wearing less clothing than the school dress code requires, there’s possibly a picture of them on some Asst Principal’s hard-drive.
We hand something as important as Education to the government, give that government monopoly power, hundreds of billions of dollars, unionized labor that cannot be criticized or dismissed and, worst, a mantle of righteousness because their cause (educating the children!) is a “right” we must all bow to at any cost and on their terms, then complain when they spy on us looking for inappropriate behavior.
When you abdicate your responsibilities to the government, what do you expect?
The lawyers don’t want the word “injunction” used when it comes to the School District’s misfits.
But they think nothing of destroying a first graders life by bringing him up on sexual harassment charges for smiling at the little girl sitting beside him at her desk or having both of them arrested for carrying a peanut butter sandwich in a bag along with a plastic picnic knife; now known officially as a deadly weapon.
Alas, it would be way too much to wish for the court system to burn the school system honchos asses royal, because the court officers were educated by these same dysfunctional idiots to begin with.
What no-one seems to be noticing is the school’s excuse is bogus to begin with. Cameras aren’t used to locate lost or stolen laptops. For example, if I show you a picture of a stranger in front of a wall, would you know where he was? Of course not; and that is the image most laptop stolen cameras would capture.
Programs such as this http://www.locatemylaptop.com/index.html locate stolen laptops, not cameras.
Even the defense atty hasn’t figured this out.
I’m an IT guy for a school district. Our district is very cautious about snooping on students and staff. Good thing. My suggestion for users of PCs issued to you by someone else: tape over the webcam lens and the little built in mic. And don’t use it for anything you would not want on the local news. Save that for your own PC. This illustrates the problem with socialized computing. That “free” laptop doesn’t look so good anymore, does it?
I commented on this on another website, but I think it bears repeating:
1) If the school is concerned about missing or stolen laptops, there is (or can be installed) a gps transmitter that can be activated as needed. This will give a precise location of the laptop, rather than trying to determine it’s location through crappy webcam images.
2) Why doesn’t the school issue bare bones laptops without an unnecessry webcam. Surely the cam adds to the cost of the ‘puter and is NOT germane to its primary “educational” function.
I’d be curious to see responses of these facts.
This is so bad on so many levels, a can of worms, and a lawyers wet dream, and I would hope that the school district and the school officials involved are hammered by both civil and criminal suits that will severely penalize them, and also hope that the people involved in this spying end up either out on the street or in jail.
Think about this a little.
How did the school pick up on the students supposed drug use? Did they have a tip that decided them on activating the webcam, or is it more likely that they had a whole bunch of administrators monitoring a whole lot of webcams, snooping around looking for supposed “violations?” I can sure see a bunch of guys in the computer division sitting back–probably with pizza and beer–and surfing the various webcams to see what kind of juicy images they could find. And, of course, is this the only student who they have been snooping on?
Then, we have the issue of whether the school has any right at all to monitor, or to forbid a student’s actions off school property and in his own home.
If they somehow took webcam pictures of naked female students, are we talking child pornography charges?
What about the fact that the computers were supplied by the Federal government, any possible charges there?
And on and on.
I will say it again! Its time for parents to take back the schools! But i am also thinking its time to LEAVE the public schools, do what ever it takes and send your kids to private school.
The liberals have been using the public education system to raise the newest generation of liberals, while parents sit by and let it happen!! Get involved, we MUST stop the Gov/Liberals from using OUR classrooms to teach the progressive philosophy!
Ahh, just another reason to home school. Would that I had home schooled my older children, but thank God I got a clue and home school the youngest one.
Public Schools as we know them will never, never give us what we think they will because they were never set up to do what we thought to begin with.
Dewey’s Pedagogic Creed statement of 1897 gives you a clue to the zeitgeist:
Every teacher should realize he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of the proper social order and the securing of the right social growth. In this way the teacher is always the prophet of the true God and the usherer in of the true kingdom of heaven.
In a speech he gave before businessmen prior to the First World War, Woodrow Wilson made this unabashed disclosure:
We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.
These quotes and so very much more will educate you, really educate you, not what passed for education-if you pick up and read John Taylor Gatto’s book “The Underground History of American Education”
Mr. Gatto was the New York State Teacher of the Year, twice. He also routinely annoyed the powers that be, when he decided he’d had enough he opted to find the history of schooling in America and what was wrong. Prepare to be shocked if you opt to read the book.
This link will take you to it online http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm
If the story of the school snooping makes you ill to your stomach like it does me you need to read this book.
#4 Koblog,
Very, very well stated. Hopefully, the more these examples of overreach by public school nazis are publicized, the sooner we can force the debate over how much power they actually should have. Just an interesting sidelight: My daughter (who was seven at the time) wore a t-shirt with a pink camouflage motif and a sparkly butterfly on the front to school one day. The school made her change it because they said camouflage was a threat to security. When I asked them what real-earth environment features pink foliage, they relented.
I find it telling that *nobody*, on any level, thought to call in an InfoSec expert to look at these laptops’ “management” software. No kids, no parents, no teachers or administrators, not even the school district’s legal counsel.
How is it that so many people have forgotten what it is to be free, to cherish liberty and privacy?
I remember many discussion where the liberating effect of the Internet was taken for granted. The idea that the totalitarian state could and would turn this technology to its advantage was summarily dismissed. I used to argue that the Internet and its associated technologies were Dr. Goebbels wet dream. Events like this give me no reason to change my opinion.
One of the most important reasons why the left has won so many victories is due to the fact that after 1975 most conservative parents tacitly agreed to pretend their children were earning their grades in the softer disciplines. They looked the other way as long as the kids became “honor students.” “Stay out of harm’s way. Keep your mouth shut and get the credentials behind your name—so that you will eventually find a good paying job,” was the advice given to their progeny. These parents morally compromised themselves.
These educators today (term used loosely) are the same “progressive” ones who make our kids memorize songs praising our current president, demand global warming that endangers poor polar bears and requires redistribution of wealth somehow is a fact, and think they (as the largest goverment corps) know better about children than those children’s parents.
One wonders how many other students were “observed” and in what state of potential undress they were in. If they captured any such images they might constitute child porn in which case the noble school administrators can get to do some really ugly jail time.
they all need to be fired. Not allowed to work with the public again. they violated the cardinal rule of privacy.
maybe they are PEDOPHILES in disguise as educators,
trying to get into the kids bedrooms etcetcetc..hhhmmmm???????????
1. Wolla Dalbo #9, you beat me to it. Afaic the surveillance is criminal, but there are no serious consequences to the perpetrators. Therefore, similar behavior will continue.
If it were up to me:
a. Give token fines and suspended jail sentences to the people who activated the snooping. If there is proof that higher-ups gave the order, give them larger fines and longer suspended jail time.
b. State explicitly that future cases will be treated more strongly and jail time will likely not be suspended–and follow up accordingly.
I sympathize with the IT people, caught between the law and potential threats to their jobs. They should have whistleblower protection. My intent is to get them to insist on written orders from the real malefactors.
2. TCobb #18, I share your anger, but IMO laws are already being twisted way too far beyond their intended and reasonable purposes. Treating the surveillance as a break-in
3. tdiinva #15, IMHO the Internet is liberating only as long as we remember that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. The solutions proposed by many critics of technology are so unappealing that it’s easy for me to overlook that some of the criticism is valid.
Hi Jeff,
Good to see you here.
My UK news blog The Daily Stirrer reported last year on a story about a Britush school installing CCTV in classes “for the pupils safety.”
Americans are litigious, the Brits are more bolshie. The kids went on strike and refused to go back to school until the cameras were removed.
So, on the news it is not clear who is blaming whom now…
The bad guys should NOT get away with such a stunt, leaving the minions to take the fall.
Is this a bunch of pedophiles?
And the Trojan horse was full of…?
If administrators have time to be monitoring students on computers, especially outside of school hours, there is a surplus of administrators and budget money that would be better spent elsewhere.
Their time would be better spent making their presence known in the classroom, making personal contact, rather than administrating from test scores and technology.
Lower Merion is not the only school district to use these webcams on laptops lent to students by schools. Henrico County School District, just outside Richmond, Virginia, admits to using these webcams, like Lower Merion, to “track stolen & missing laptops.” Here’s the link to the Richmond Times-Dispatch story “Henrico School System Uses Webcams to Locate Missing Computers,” dated February 25, 2010:
http://www2.timesdispatch.com/rtd/news/local/education/article/COMP25_20100224-212806/326709/
Make what you will of Henrico’s rationale: used only when reported to police as stolen, police report number required to activate webcam, never actually used for high schoolers taking computers home.
Is it possible, maybe even probable, that many other school districts with laptop lending programs are also using the same questionable monitoring approach? Is this SOP for all such programs?