US school district spied on students through webcams, court told Pennsylvania district accused of using remote-control laptops to photograph teenage students at home without their knowledge
Daniel Nasaw in Washington guardian.co.uk, Friday 19 February 2010 13.54 GMT A school district in Pennsylvania spied on students through web cameras installed on laptops provided by the district, according to a class action lawsuit filed this week. Lower Merion school district, in a well-heeled suburb of Philadelphia, provided roughly 2,300 high school students with Mac laptops last autumn in what its superintendent, Christopher McGinley, described as an effort to establish a "mobile, 21st-century learning environment". The programme was funded with $720,000 (£468,000) in state grants and other sources. The teens were forbidden from installing video games and other software, and were barred from "commercial, illegal, unethical and inappropriate" use. But unbeknown to the students, the district retained remote control of the built-in webcams installed on the computers - and used them to capture images of the students, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court this week. The ruse was revealed when Blake Robbins, a student at Harriton high school, was hauled into the assistant principal Lindy Matsko's office, shown a photograph taken by a webcam on the laptop in his home and disciplined for "improper behaviour". According to Robbins, Matsko said the school had retained the ability to activate the laptop webcams remotely, at any time. ... http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/19/schools-spied-on-students-webcams *********************************** * POST TO MEDIANEWS@ETSKYWARN.NET * *********************************** Medianews mailing list Medianews@etskywarn.net http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
