On 03/11/2010 01:15 PM, b_s-wilk wrote: > Of course the school knew who had the computers. This assertion that > they didn't is insulting to schools and to teachers. When any kind of > electronics are borrowed from schools by teachers or students there are > records of who has the equipment. Lower Merion is a wealthy district and > they have a lot of equipment, but that doesn't mean that they simply > hand it out to anyone without a record of who borrowed it.
No the school district can't have known who had the missing laptop when it began activating the webcam. There may well have been a likelihood that one individual had it, but said individual was not supposed to remove the laptop from school unless certain other conditions were met. > The case of Lower Merion is more like a public library that often > requires some kind of collateral to borrow some equipment. Or for those > instances that don't require collateral [like cash or your driver's > license] they still know who has the material/equipment. Someone who reads a book within the library usually doesn't have to produce some form of ID like a library card or license. While a laptop may have been issued for in school usage, it wasn't supposed to leave the school without purchasing the insurance and likely filling out forms. > The IT creeps who spied on the students had to know who they were > watching [MAC address, installed software, etc]. Since the > administration also knew who had the computers, it was their > responsibility to contact the parents, as it was also the parents' > responsibility to pay the insurance fee--if they could afford it. There > are areas with low-income families in the district [Ardmore, Narberth], > as well as students who are bused into the schools--no excuse, but not > everyone in the district is upper middle class. Once again, how could they know unless they were psychic? Besides, it isn't clear the IT folk were in charge of the records for which student had which laptop. It appears a school official asked that said laptop be located because it was missing. That's a different circumstance than your hypothetical above. I note incidentally that similar software is common in many businesses, and that the Adeona project was supposed to offer a similar service for free. http://adeona.cs.washington.edu/ Of course, the server used wasn't adequate and new usage isn't allowed. I wonder just how many folk used Adeona to find missing laptops. I have met folks who have no consideration for privacy. Finally if I remember correctly, one can change which Mac address recent apple computers offer with networking at least temporarily. Changing the mac address wouldn't affect adeona for example. ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
