Parents in Pennsylvania are suing their son's school for accessing the Web cam on his school-issued laptop while he was at home.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/02/19/laptop.suit/index.html?hpt=T2

To me this is just another example of how our privacy rights keep slipping away as we get more technologically advanced.

To receive the laptop, the family had to sign an "acceptable-use" agreement. To take the laptop home, the family also would have to buy insurance for the computer.

In an "acceptable-use" agreement, the families are made aware of the school's ability to "monitor" the hardware, he said, but it stops short of explicitly explaining the security feature. He termed that a mistake.

I agree that it's creepy, but they should have read the fine print or asked some questions about what it means to monitor the hardware.

Neither police nor school officials can enter a private home, physically or electronically, without an invitation or a warrant. The school district's clandestine electronic eavesdropping violates constitutional privacy rights, intrudes on parents' right to raise their children and may even be criminal under state and federal wiretapping laws," Walczak said "... George Orwell's '1984' is an overused metaphor, but it applies here in spades. Part of the school officials' punishment should be to retake ninth-grade civics class."

I read more, and I think I was probably wrong. I do think people tend to disregard user agreements, but the school is probably going to be in trouble. The last sentence here made me lol

If you have nothing to hide, what is there to worry about?

At least this is what I kept being told as the Patriot Act and warrantless wiretapping were getting rammed down our throats...

What was the school hoping to find? I swear common sense is just about gone!

What are the odds that this ends up with a child porn charge? I mean, if you have school administrators looking in on students doing who knows what . . .

These are the types of things we should all be very concerned about, regardless of what side of the aisle you support. There is no amount of "fine print" that is able justify this kind of intrusive action. None.

Take a good look at some of the "1984 George Orwell" stuff Google is doing if you really want a scare.

What if teenage girls/boys leave their computers open in their rooms and change in those rooms? What's to stop school officials from looking in? Way too intrusive, the school will be in some pretty hot water I think.

The way they used this was probably illegal.

The administration said they only use the feature to help locate lost laptops. If that's the case then why was the student approached about whatever was inappropriate that he was doing?

For some reason privacy isn't respected anymore.

ytownfootball wrote: These are the types of things we should all be very concerned about, regardless of what side of the aisle you support. There is no amount of "fine print" that is able justify this kind of intrusive action. None.

Take a good look at some of the "1984 George Orwell" stuff Google is doing if you really want a scare.

Google is horrifying. Not so much for what they collect/hand over to the government/etc but that they are still seen as the "good" tech giant to Microsoft's big bad reputation.

At this point I trust the Microsoft more than Google.

Google isn't any different than numerous other info. companies, in terms of storing data and the like.

They're the biggest, yes, and should be leading the charge for increased internet privacy, but they are not nearly as "evil" as you guys are making them out to be.

I would love for them to really "set" the example, but not going to happen yet.

Nor have they done anything terribly malicious with the data.

Wait and see. Blame it on the government.

Don't like it. Don't use their services.

And, i consider them "good" because they let me use a lot of their Google maps data in my own work.

I won't add to hi-jacking the thread but just add a quote about google that I've read and is detailed further:

Things got murky, though. Google began raising ethical concerns with various projects including mapping the entire planet, archiving classic works of literature and storing newspaper articles. With a project aimed at photographing every street in America and beyond, a feature that tracks the physical location of its users, an e-mail service that searches for keywords in written correspondence - and now with a new online service that records and transcribes voicemail - Google has raised eyebrows among privacy advocates.

I just think they're over stepping privacy issues that a service provider shouldn't. I use their services on a very limited basis, however most search engines are enhanced by google so it is becoming more difficult to avoid them.JMO

cbus4life wrote: Google isn't any different than numerous other info. companies, in terms of storing data and the like.

They're the biggest, yes, and should be leading the charge for increased internet privacy, but they are not nearly as "evil" as you guys are making them out to be.

I would love for them to really "set" the example, but not going to happen yet.

Nor have they done anything terribly malicious with the data.

Wait and see. Blame it on the government.

Don't like it. Don't use their services.

And, i consider them "good" because they let me use a lot of their Google maps data in my own work.

It's the attitudes of the Google executives that's disconcerting.

But back to the topic, any more news on the school thing? I read the other day that the FBI was getting involved so this might get nasty.