Continuing erosion of privacy

Lower Merion School District in Pennsylvania issued laptops to its high-school students and encouraged them to take them home.  Then it used the remotely-activatable webcams on the laptops to spy on the students and their families without their knowledge.  (Update:  Another story on it says webcam-equipped laptops were issued to 1,800 students at three high schools.)

A class-action lawsuit has been filed.  I hope the school administrators responsible go to jail for this.  There is absolutely no possible excuse whatsoever.  I won't be surprised if it turns out that some of the school administrators have their own private collections of the racier webcam shots, and if so, I predict they WILL be going to jail, on kiddie-porn charges.

Breaking news

It is being reported that a presumably-disgruntled individual in set his house on fire, then took off in his Cirrus SR22, a single-engined private plane, and deliberately flew it into a building in Austin that housed government offices. There is some speculation that he may have been targeting an IRS office on the first floor.

CNN is tracking it here.  Whatever the reasons behind it, I think the odds are good this is going to end up bad for almost everyone.  New restrictions on general-aviation flight are probably in the offing, just for starters.

More on that Austin plane crash

This is apparently the message left behind by the pilot.  It's now very clear that yes, he was 100% intentionally targeting the Austin IRS office.

(Gee, that was fast ... the FBI has requested it be taken down.  The Smoking Gun has a copy here.  It's also been posted by statesman.com here.  This genie is out of the bottle already.)

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