Big Brother Watching School Kids
Sometimes things look better on paper and sometimes stupid just lingers in the air.
That's probably the case over in Lower Merion School District in Ardmore, Pennsylvania — the stupid part that is.
A family filed a lawsuit against school officials claiming administrators used that nifty webcam on a school-issued laptop to spy on their 15-year-old son at home.
According to the lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court, school officials could spy on kids indiscriminately by remotely activating the webcams on their school-issued Apple MacBooks without their knowledge.
According to a recent news article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, in the lawsuit the family claimed that an assistant principal confronted their son telling him he had "engaged in improper behavior in [his] home, and cited as evidence a photograph from the webcam embedded in [his] personal laptop issued by the school district."
Geewillikers.
I'm not sure what "improper behavior" was going on, but setting that aside, my own vision of me in a full home karaoke mode going on is enough to embarrass the Sam Hill out of me. It also breeds a level of paranoia: What if Steve Jobs can take a gander out there at anybody at any time? Or the Russians? Or the Chinese? Or… Skynet? Or…
Geewillikers, I think I've watched too many Terminators and Sarah Connor Chronicles.
According to the article, the school district has declined to comment on the lawsuit, but said that the district was investigating. School officials also said the webcam feature--which was originally intended as a "security feature" to snap a picture of the operator and computer screen contents if the computer was lost or stolen--has now been deactivated.
Paranoia aside, does anyone have any tape out there?
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