56,000 images of school children taken illegally...

[Wayne]

I'm sure everyone's heard of the Lower Merion School District and their lojacking of the laptops used by their students to reportedly "help retrieve stolen laptops" right?

Turns out as the story unfolds, there were over 56,000 pictures of school-age children -- in all measures of dress -- taken by the school administrators in what some of them refer to as their "own little soap opera".

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/break ... scope.html

Wow... I hope someone responsible for this ends up in "rape you up the ass prison" for this. Trouble is, there are now reports coming out that Lower Merion is by far NOT the only school district doing this...

If your kids have a school-issued laptop, first, have a forensics guy go over it for evidence of the same, then give it back to the school and buy one that YOU control..

 

[ilwrath]

Yeah, definitely the administrators doing this need to be sent off for a very long time. They had to have a clue that what they were doing was unethical and probably illegal.

Of course, as a parent, I would have taken the chance of getting a school laptop to teach a little work/personal resource explanation. If your job or school issues you a resource, it is to be used for that purpose, and that purpose only. Since it's a school laptop, you only use it for school work, and you close it when you're done.

And as for additional "features" the device may have, like the webcam in question? Well, if it doesn't have a legitimate school/work purpose, feel free to disable them in a non-harmful manner. A simple sticker over the lens disables a camera pretty well. And if anyone asks why you did it, ask why they're looking at your camera.

And that's another great lesson: It's not wrong to question authority.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

If your kids have a school-issued laptop, first, have a forensics guy go over it for evidence of the same, then give it back to the school and buy one that YOU control..

I'm not at all surprised by this. It could have never come to light either - or been buried except for the parents bringing suit. But this is just what happens when you give people authority and the means to spy - they spy.

The NSA probably has all sorts of things on you and your credit card company knows too much and there are private database companies that amass data and sell it to whoever and some of what they collect can damage you more than a picture of you sleeping. It's just a symptom of the world we live in. Once we all get our tracking chips in will that information be treated as "securely".

But using your own computer might not be an option. At my company only machines managed by IT are allowed onto the VPN. Schools would probably want to lock down their networks and machines too because of potential liabilities from file sharing etc. Plus I'm sure there are many parents who wouldn't be able to afford an appropriately specc'ed machine for their kids and if it's a requirement then what are they to do.

Since these things are bound to happen then the only defense is vigilance and camera covering. Camera covering is generally good practice anyway. You have no idea what's running on your computer and there are several know instances of malware serrupticiously photographing users.

 

[cecilia]

hem, interesting thought!

How would I know if someone is using my wen cam?

 

[ilwrath]

How would I know if someone is using my wen cam?

Typically there's often an activity light next to the lens that will turn on. Of course, if that is disabled, from a glance, you typically wouldn't know.

There are plenty of indirect methods to find out what your computer is doing. Such examples would be checking on active processes, monitoring firewall logs and active network connections, and using the driver software to check camera status. Of course, there are hacks around all of these, as well, though it becomes increasingly unlikely that software would be that clever and well hidden.

In short, though, it's very difficult. It's easier and a better idea, in general, to just cover the darn thing. Plus, that is a very visual and open way of saying you don't want to be watched. This is a stronger moral position to start your argument from, should the need arise.

 

[Glaucus]

hem, interesting thought!

How would I know if someone is using my wen cam?

I believe most cameras allow only one piece of software to use it at any given moment (at least on XP). So if you can run an app that uses the web cam then you're ok because nothing else is using it. Unless the malware infects the driver itself but that would require intimate knowledge of every web cam out there, and would fail on devices built after the malware was released - so I'd say that is less likely.

 

[cecilia]

thanks guys.
this web cam is on a windows 7 laptop and the cute little blue light turns on when I boot it up. I know it's turned on then. and I have only ever used the cam when using skype. otherwise the blue light is off.

and, yes, I agree the mechanical solution seems easy right now. As I'm fairly unfamiliar with win7 I would have to do some research to figure out what is going on in there. :mrgreen: