Back at district offices, the Robbins motion says, employees with access to the images marveled at the tracking software. It was like a window into "a little LMSD soap opera," a staffer is quoted as saying in an e-mail to Carol Cafiero, the administrator running the program.Source
"I know, I love it," she is quoted as having replied.
When I was in high school (2000-2004) we were required to take home a document for our parents to sign acknowledging that the school could punish us for any actions taking place at any time and any location starting with the beginning of the first school day of the year 24/7 until the end of the last school day of the year. If a classmate decided to tell my principal that they saw me smoking a cigarette outside a local convenience store I could be suspended in school and fined by the school district for violating its tobacco policy even though it wasn't on school property or during school hours or even at an extra-curricular school activity....really? I mean, this is Europe and all, but it was usual for me to meet my Lit teacher at the supermarket on Sat. afternoons while I was (16 or 17 and) stocking cartloads of beer for band practice and getting out of it with a grinning nod of approval and a pat on the back from him.
This case reeks of bullshit and questionable behavior (on all sides). I still doubt that LMSD was actually truly spying on their student body (pun intended)....at least I really hope that that's the case. And if it turns out that they were (outside of trying to track a missing or stolen laptop), then clearly there should legal consequences. The "Mike & Ike's candy" angle just smacks of banal misdirection and doesn't ring true for me.I hope these people get jail time.
Their restraining order motion cites media interviews with other students who said they noticed a green light near their webcams turned on periodically – a sign they may have been in use, attorneys argue.It's mentioned in this article as well:
That contradicts anecdotal evidence compiled by Hax, who searched message boards used by Lower Merion high school students, and found many reports of iSight cameras powering up, as indicated by a brief flicker of the LED light next to the camera. Some students even put tape over their iSight cameras to prevent them from operating, but most were assured by the district that the light was a "common MacBook glitch." The LANRev software apparently disabled the cameras for all other uses; students were unable to use PhotoBooth or video chat, so apparently most of them believed that the camera did not work at all.posted by Blue Jello Elf at 2:22 PM on April 18, 2010 [2 favorites]
A much more likely scenario is that the kid took a picture of himself with the webcam, doing something stupid/illegal and the school found that picture on the computer's HD and now wants to discipline him for the infraction. And instead of owning up to his misbehavior, he and his parents decide to sue based on a lot of assumptions about what the management software can and cannot do.
Boing Boing (and Cory Doctorow) have a long history of alarmist and sensationalistic journalism. That this story is being popularized there surprises me not at all. There is more to this story that we're not being told, as is so often the case with sensationalistic news stories. I, for one, would love to be in the courtroom during a trial for this case to watch the technical experts pick apart the allegations made in this lawsuit. There are just too many holes and assumptions being made about LANRev, the school district, and its monitoring policies (if these even exist).
What was that about assumptions?
posted by one_bean at 2:04 PM on April 16, 2010 [2 favorites]