By now, you’ve heard the story of the school district in Pennsylvania spying on its students via webcams from laptops that the students took home. This has been covered to death this week, so, here’s a video and some links in case you want to know more.
The webcams were activated 42 times over a 14-month period.
It’s one thing to attempt to install security procedures to protect against the loss of a laptop. It’s quite another when those procedures appear to have been enacted without the knowledge of students or parents and leave the school open not only to all of the charges already leveled in the Robbins’ lawsuit, but also–as in the case of a student who leaves her laptop open in the shower to listen to music–to charges of child pornography.
The school district is being sued [pdf] .
The school sent out a letter to parents. This is their initial response.
The complaint alleges that they are in violation of:
The Electronic Communications Privacy Act
The Computer Fraud Abuse Act
The Stored Communications Act
Section 1983 of the Civil Rights Act
The Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution
The Pennsylvania Wire-tapping and Electronic Surveillance Act
Pennsylvania Common Law
The local DA and the FBI are now investigating.
