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.
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