I forgot to point to this in my earlier message. You can see this kind of thing in action in the recent Frontline documentary "Digital Nation" (you can watch it here):
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/view/ In segment 4, starting at about 33:35, you can see a Vice Principal monitoring students behavior at the school workstations. He can see their screens and he can turn on their webcams, and he demonstrates pinging the kids to put them back on task. He's just showing monitoring inside the building. But these are Macs, so most likely this stuff works by IP, not on a proprietary network -- so it's going to be route-able across the internet, and so what he's demonstrating here most likely would work much like what's described in the Merion case. W.r.t. martinettish interference by Authori-tai: I had no idea that kind of thing was in Captain Underpants. It's a pretty pervasive theme, for sure -- so much so that the movies or books where the monitoring is *not* present (e.g. *Risky Business*, *Catcher in the Rye*, *Election, Over the Edge, River's Edge*, *Kids*, *Harriett the Spy*, just about anything by S. E. Hinton, etc.) stand out*. In a lot of those, it starts to look like people really don't want to know what's going on with the kids. (River's Edge and a lot of Hinton seem that way to me.) In others (e.g. Harriett) the parents Learn a Lesson. (Harriett's got a LOT of other stuff going on, of course.)* There's a little of that in *BB*, in that the narrator's "good" parents don't really ask a lot of questions about what their kid is doing -- they "trust" him (at least, before the bombing). That falls apart, of course; there's enough there to generate a discussion, and I'm sure I know a certain occasional lit teacher who would be getting that discussion to happen in her classes, but in *BB* the sturm und drang of state surveillance does tend to overpower the question of what constitutes an "appropriate" *level *of monitoring by parents, of children. Cory does touch on the school privacy rulings in *BB*, but just in passing as his character is righteously blowing them off. Treats it as an opportunity for exposition. I read a bunch about them when I was in high school, and they righteously pissed me off then. I'm more ambivalent about them now. I feel as though I more often hear of them being abused than being productively *used*. On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 7:39 PM, Alicia Henn <[email protected]> wrote: > Little Brother had something similar, but slightly less invasive. Just > spying on the kids' computer activities. > Doctorow didn't mention that in the BoingBoing post. > > It reminds me of Captain Underpants with the School Principal going to > absurd lengths to catch a kid in the act of ANYthing he could use against > him. > Rather cartoonish or 1980's teen movie-ish. Didn't Porky's have that as a > story line? Footloose? Risky Business? > > Alicia > > > On Feb 19, 2010, at 5:08 PM, Eric Scoles wrote: > > 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. >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group. >> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >> [email protected]<r-spec%[email protected]> >> . >> For more options, visit this group at >> http://groups.google.com/group/r-spec?hl=en. >> >> > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/r-spec?hl=en. > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]<r-spec%[email protected]> > . > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/r-spec?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group. 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