Philladelphia School District Used Laptops With Video Cameras To Spy On Students?

[aimeeandbeatles]

No student should bring anything to a school campus, physically or digitally, that they wouldn't want anybody else seeing.

This mean I can't take the little notebook to school where I write down my thoughts on Tom Petty?

At my school we have something called a resource officer who just walks around the hallways and stuff and sometimes busts students for selling drugs outside and in theory can respond right away in emergency. So far it seems to be working. Maybe other high schools could use that especially in the bad areas

 

[JollyRoger]

My place is prob a lot more hardline than the schools most of you attended. When students stop bringing weapons and drugs to school (yes, even ten year olds do), we'll stop being heavy handed about security. Its all about minimizing risk. If we don't do this, we leave ourselves open to be sued.

So crack down on the weapons and drugs instead of web surfing.

 

[useless]

This mean I can't take the little notebook to school where I write down my thoughts on Tom Petty?

At my school we have something called a resource officer who just walks around the hallways and stuff and sometimes busts students for selling drugs outside and in theory can respond right away in emergency. So far it seems to be working. Maybe other high schools could use that especially in the bad areas

Are these sexual thoughts Aimee? You can tell me. I won't tell anyone.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Nah, I'd rather not.

 

[downtown]

So crack down on the weapons and drugs instead of web surfing.

Truancy officers, not to mention Appropriation Committee members, tend to get upset when they find out that state resources are being misused so 14 year olds can look at porn...specially in a recession where everybody is looking for things to cut.

School Districts, online charters in particular, are always dancing on the edge of the funding cliff. If people didn't have to sweat about legal liability and political fallout that would jeopardize the school...maybe they would ease up a little bit.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

What is this online school anyways for?

 

[JollyRoger]

Truancy officers, not to mention Appropriation Committee members, tend to get upset when they find out that state resources are being misused so 14 year olds can look at porn...specially in a recession where everybody is looking for things to cut.

School Districts, online charters in particular, are always dancing on the edge of the funding cliff. If people didn't have to sweat about legal liability and political fallout that would jeopardize the school...maybe they would ease up a little bit.

Well, truancy officers' time (which is a state resource) is being misused to the extent they are cracking down on keystrokes rather than weapons and drugs. Perhaps we can cut their hours.

 

[downtown]

Well, truancy officers' time (which is a state resource) is being misused to the extent they are cracking down on keystrokes rather than weapons and drugs. Perhaps we can cut their hours.

Part of their job is to make sure students are in school for the state mandated hour requirement. The best way anybody has found to do that for a digital school is via keystroke monitoring.

 

[Trajan12]

Wait...

Why again is this school district able to use federal dollars to buy MacBooks for high school students? Considering that there are probably public schools in that met area which are falling apart, something about that reeks.

 

[civ_king]

Boy's room. Toilet water works just fine.

BRB forgot the thumb screws and ankle chains (waterboard while hanging from ceiling [deal])

I used to work for an online charter school. We all used key logs/monitor logging systems. Part of my job with the school was to call parents to let them know their student was in violation of the law (laptops were purchased with state money) when they were looking at porn. We also had to actually watch the porn to make sure it wasn't child porn or something. I had to make a lot of phone calls to some unhappy parents, and one to the police. Not my favorite part of the job.

some people would like that job

The state has a user-agreement for all state-owned computers that states what the machines can and cannot be used for. All families had to sign the document, although I doubt many read it. We told them specifically that they couldn't watch porn or download games, and that they could be expelled otherwise. Many apparently thought we weren't serious.

So bootcamping it is fine?

One of my teachers once said not to go onto any banking websites on the school computers. Another sad thing too is because they installed this addon there's no way to clear any private data or cookies. If you click on either "Clear Private Data" or "Options" it will ask for a password. They also seem to have disabled the private browsing. This makes me very uncomfortable because I use Google Documents at school.

4GB flash drive with Firefox Portable?

...and the moral of the story is that if you ever get a computer on lone like this the first thing you do is completely wipe it and then install Linux (Unless you happen to have an extra Win XP boot disc hanging around.) Or at the very least cover the Webcam and run some extensive Anti-Spyware checks.

Seriously though this is really ridiculous, as others have said students shouldn't expect privacy at school while on school computers, but spying on them at home is ridiculous, and I think that even monitoring their computer usage at home is borderline, though in some cases like Downtown describes I can understand the motivation.

You are thinking there

This mean I can't take the little notebook to school where I write down my thoughts on Tom Petty?

At my school we have something called a resource officer who just walks around the hallways and stuff and sometimes busts students for selling drugs outside and in theory can respond right away in emergency. So far it seems to be working. Maybe other high schools could use that especially in the bad areas

Somehow I don't think she is doing anything wrong here

Wait...

Why again is this school district able to use federal dollars to buy MacBooks for high school students? Considering that there are probably public schools in that met area which are falling apart, something about that reeks.

They are just that awesome?

 

[Camikaze]

Without reading the thread, I wouldn't say this is some outlandish case of draconian proportions. Sure, it's probably not the right thing to do, but it's not that bad. It would obviously be preferable if there was full disclosure as to what surveillance could be undertaken when the things were handed out, but it's not like the webcams were being used as part of some nefarious scheme. Here in NSW (and I think in all of Australia), all year 9 kids get laptops from the government. With the proviso that the internet is heavily filtered and that administrators can view anyone's screen (to see what they're doing, to see if they're breaking the rules, like playing games or using a proxy to get around the filter) on the network. But this is known. Having it as a secret method of surveillance is not really the right thing to do. But it's nothing to get terribly worked up over.

 

[nc-1701]

Without reading the thread, I wouldn't say this is some outlandish case of draconian proportions. Sure, it's probably not the right thing to do, but it's not that bad. It would obviously be preferable if there was full disclosure as to what surveillance could be undertaken when the things were handed out, but it's not like the webcams were being used as part of some nefarious scheme. Here in NSW (and I think in all of Australia), all year 9 kids get laptops from the government. With the proviso that the internet is heavily filtered and that administrators can view anyone's screen (to see what they're doing, to see if they're breaking the rules, like playing games or using a proxy to get around the filter) on the network. But this is known. Having it as a secret method of surveillance is not really the right thing to do. But it's nothing to get terribly worked up over.

The big thing here is that they were using the computers webcams to spy on whatever the kids were doing within sight range of the computer, so if they left their laptop open in there room the school officials could watch them go about their business in their own room doing things utterly unrelated to the laptops and internet.

civ_king
You'd be better off carrying a portable copy of Google Chrome I think, not only does it run better than Firefox, but its a much smaller file and has built features which will automatically delete cookies and not save any history.

 

[bhsup]

Without reading the thread, I wouldn't say this is some outlandish case of draconian proportions. Sure, it's probably not the right thing to do, but it's not that bad. It would obviously be preferable if there was full disclosure as to what surveillance could be undertaken when the things were handed out, but it's not like the webcams were being used as part of some nefarious scheme. Here in NSW (and I think in all of Australia), all year 9 kids get laptops from the government. With the proviso that the internet is heavily filtered and that administrators can view anyone's screen (to see what they're doing, to see if they're breaking the rules, like playing games or using a proxy to get around the filter) on the network. But this is known. Having it as a secret method of surveillance is not really the right thing to do. But it's nothing to get terribly worked up over.

Really? What if you were a parent of a 13 something teen girl? How would you feel about the principle of her school hiding out in a tree outside here bedroom window with a camcorder? Watching her study, sleep, take her clothes off, dry off from the shower, make out with her boyfriend, etc.

This is NO different. The school district simply chose to use the computer's webcam as the medium of image transfer rather than a principle in the tree with a camcorder. I would refuse to prosecute any father who shot such a person out of the tree.

 

[JohnRM]

A webcam won't tell you what a person is looking at on the screen. It's not monitoring the computer, but rather the user. It's only supposed to be used when a theft has occurred, but somehow it caught a student doing something "improper".

I was talking about them monitoring the activity on the computer itself, not the webcam use.

 

[Camikaze]

The big thing here is that they were using the computers webcams to spy on whatever the kids were doing within sight range of the computer, so if they left their laptop open in there room the school officials could watch them go about their business in their own room doing things utterly unrelated to the laptops and internet.

Really? What if you were a parent of a 13 something teen girl? How would you feel about the principle of her school hiding out in a tree outside here bedroom window with a camcorder? Watching her study, sleep, take her clothes off, dry off from the shower, make out with her boyfriend, etc.

This is NO different. The school district simply chose to use the computer's webcam as the medium of image transfer rather than a principle in the tree with a camcorder. I would refuse to prosecute any father who shot such a person out of the tree.

I was going under the assumption that they were using the webcams remotely for the intended purposes, but a second and more thorough reading of the OP articles suggests otherwise, I guess. It's not really proven that they were being used for bad purposes, yet, but the indication would be that they were being used for those purposes. So read my quote as being written assuming the webcams were being activated only to recover stolen or lost property.

 

[civ_king]

Solution: Close Laptop when not in use

 

[MobBoss]

Latest story in defense of the school was they were tracking this computer down since it was removed from school property improperly, and that they had done similar actions 30 to 40 times previously recovering about 20 or so computers this way.

 

[Formaldehyde]

The kid who was engaged in "improper behavior" was apparently holding Mike and Ike candy which the school administration mistakenly thought were drugs. And the FBI is now investigating to determine if any federal laws were violated.

But the district requires all students to pay a $55 insurance fee, with a $100 deductible if they are damaged or lost, according to a 2009 letter to parents from Harriton principal Steven R. Kline. "No uninsured laptops are permitted off campus," Kline wrote.

Each school has a pool of "loaner laptops" available for students who haven't paid the fee. Asked if Robbins took a loaner computer home without authorization, Young declined to comment.

 

[JollyRoger]

Latest story in defense of the school was they were tracking this computer down since it was removed from school property improperly, and that they had done similar actions 30 to 40 times previously recovering about 20 or so computers this way.

There are less intrusive ways of tracking down a computer than activating the webcam. Once the webcam was turned on and the kid was identified though, mission accomplished, you know where the computer is, no need to continue with the peepshow.

 

[bhsup]

I would refuse to prosecute any father who shot such a person out of the tree.

I'd like to back away from that comment. Upon reflection It's just a wee tad extreme and I'd likely prosecute in such a situation.