oddly enough (or maybe not) this makes me think of conspiracy theories.
somebody in the Lower Merion School District had to be stupid enough to
think they could use a picture of the Robbins' home as evidence for
discipline. (a chestnut comes to mind that I've most often heard attributed
to napoleon: "Don't assume malice where stupidity will suffice.") that leads
me first to suspect that the practice might have been extremely widespread
-- so widespread that people forgot how plainly illegal (not to mention
unethical) it would be to spy on people when they're at home.*
but the second thing it makes me think of goes back to that napoleonic
apocryphum: grand conspiracies, like the CIA blowing up the WTC, or Obama
being born in Kenya (or Jakarta or Westminster), would inevitably stumble on
the casually-stupid arrogance of their participants. Think Cpl Chuck Grainer
& Pfc Lynndie England....
OTOH, maybe it's all a plot to lull us into a false sense of security. ("A
conspiracy to convince us that there are WMDs in Iraq? That's ridiculous!
Why, if that were true, someone would surely have spilled the beans by
now!")
or maybe that's just what they want us to think....
--
*Expect this argument in the school's defense: The school-supplied hardware
constitutes "school grounds." There's a wealth of precedent establishing
that students have no real right of privacy on school grounds. plus, scalia
argued in Kyllo that once technology becomes "ubiquitous" we don't need to
be told that it can be used against us. (That one's tricky because in the
actual case, the rule was used in favor of the defendant.) If it were to go
to the SCOTUS, I could easily imagine at least 4 justices of the current
court getting behind that.
On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 4:41 PM, SteveC <[email protected]> wrote:
> http://www.boingboing.net/2010/02/17/school-used-student.html
> School used student laptop webcams to spy on them at school and home
>
> "According to the filings in Blake J Robbins v Lower Merion School
> District (PA) et al, the laptops issued to high-school students in the
> well-heeled Philly suburb have webcams that can be covertly activated
> by the schools' administrators, who have used this facility to spy on
> students and even their families. The issue came to light when the
> Robbins's child was disciplined for "improper behavior in his home"
> and the Vice Principal used a photo taken by the webcam as evidence.
> The suit is a class action, brought on behalf of all students issued
> with these machines."
>
>
> With the usual: assuming this is accurately reported, the allegations
> were ever true to begin with etc.
>
> Sure took the authorities a long time to get around to this.
>
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