Penn school district spying story gets worse


ecarlson - Posted on 19 April 2010

Why do I have a cynical view of people in positions of power?  Here's one...

"A webcam spying scandal at a suburban Philadelphia school district is broadening, with lawyers claiming the district secretly snapped thousands of webcam images of students using school-issued laptops without the pupils’ knowledge or consent.

Some of the images included pictures of youths at home, in bed or even “partially dressed,” according to a Thursday filing in the case. Pupils’ online chats were also captured, as well as a record of the websites they visited.
Pennsylvania high school officials are accused of spying on their students through webcams on district issued Macbooks. Here is a picture a webcam took of a sophmore sleeping at home

Pennsylvania high school officials are accused of spying on students with webcams on district-issued Macbooks. Here is sophomore Blake Robbins sleeping at home in an image secretly and allegedly taken by his school's laptop. (Posted here with permission of Robbins' attorneys)

When the story first broke in February, the district said the cameras were activated only handful of times when a laptop was reported stolen or missing — an assertion lawyers suing the district say is false.

“Discovery to date has now revealed that thousands of webcam pictures and screen shots (.pdf) have been taken from numerous other students in their homes, many of which never reported their laptops lost or missing,” attorney Mark Haltzman wrote in a Thursday federal court filing.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/04/webcamscanda/