Laptops sent home by schools 'spied on students'

[TriWooOx]

Quote:Gloating officials who spied on them said it was "like a soap opera", it is alleged.

The pictures were made possible by tracking software that was installed on laptops by the Lower Merion School District (LMSD) to allow them to locate the computers in the event of them being lost or stolen.

A lawsuit filed by the parents of one of the pupils, 15-year-old Blake Robbins of Harriton High School in Rosemont, claims that the tracking system captured more than 400 images via his school-issued laptop over the course of two weeks last autumn and that "thousands of webcam pictures and screen shots have been taken of numerous other students in their homes."

A minute camera mounted on the computer took snaps of the unwitting teenager and his relatives "including pictures of Blake partially undressed and of Blake sleeping," as part of a system designed to take a new picture every 15 minutes while it was switched on, they claim.

He and his family only became aware that they were being secretly spied on when Blake was called in by the assistant principal at his school to be quizzed about one of the images.

It showed the boy sifting through a handful of sweets, which school officials had wrongly presumed to be illegal drugs.

One school staffer with access to the images sent an email to Carol Cafiero, the school administrator who oversaw the programme, marvelling at its capabilities and likening them to "a little LMSD soap opera," the lawsuit alleges.

"I know, I love it," she is said to have replied.

The school district has argued that it activated the secret camera in Blake's computer because his parents had not paid the necessary insurance fee that allowed him to take it home.

Federal investigators are examining whether the spy programme was illegal.

Senator Arlen Specter, of Pennsylvania, introduced legislation on Thursday to close what he says in a loophole in federal wiretap laws that allow for unauthorised monitoring.

"Many of us expect to be subject to certain kinds of video surveillance when we leave our homes and go out each day – at the ATM, at traffic lights, or in stores, for example," he said.

"What we do not expect is to be under visual surveillance in our homes, in our bedrooms and, most especially, we do not expect it for our children in our homes."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnew...dents.html

[Deathaniel]

Wonder how much teen porn they got....?... just a guess, but i'm sure at least one of them, used it for IM-ing and so....

bet we won't hear of that though