Continuing erosion of privacy

[unixronin]

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.

Comments

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Duct tape over the camera is a low-tech fix for the video -- I don't know about the audio.

[lebo-superman.livejournal.com]

Audio fix - download a white noise generator (they make them to generate other noises, too, like pink noise) and set it to play on a continuous loop.

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

i use a cut piece of postit, else risk damaging the lens

microphone, just plug a dummy unit in?

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