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unixronin: Galen the technomage, from Babylon 5: Crusade (Default)
Unixronin

December 2012

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Thursday, February 18th, 2010 10:16 am

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.

Thursday, February 18th, 2010 04:55 pm (UTC)
Good question. On my dell there is a led that lights up when I turn the camera on. No idea if it can be disabled in software.

You can always go low tech a put a piece of electrical tape over the lens though.