School used student laptop webcams to spy on them at school and home | Hacker News Reader

School used student laptop webcams to spy on them at school and home

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The real question is: where is the criminal investigation?

This breaks so many laws it's not funny.

And the kid originally being disciplined at school for something he did at home.

It's the first time for a while news like this has made me feel physically sick! Lock them up :(

This was the first thing I was asking myself too.

AFAIK only a limited group of people is allowed to do such a thing (law enforcement) and only if the have a court warrant for it.

If they really pulled this off, then they are in very deep shit..

Well not only could every board member potentially face criminal charges, similar for every teacher who was in on this, but the entire school (or multiple if it's owned by a group) is financially liable, likely to the tune of tens to hundreds of thousands per person. This shit could easily shut this school down, and if that's the least that happens it's a grand achievement.

> And the kid originally being disciplined at school for something he did at home.

This is pretty standard practice. Schools have all kinds of 'code of conduct' things that can get you in trouble for things that didn't happen on school grounds.

I know; but in his own home! It's psychopathic.

Oh, I agree. Just don't think this is a one-off kind of thing.

Indeed. Perhaps (hopefully) any outcome from this will spark off a review of such policies.

What scares me is the kind of review that will likely happen isn't going to be one that emphasizes the rights of schoolchildren, but that emphasizes how schools should modulate their activities to stay within the letter, if not the spirit, of the law. For anything substantial to change would require a fairly fundamental reexamination of the role of the school system in the private lives of students.

Children's rights are one of those funny things... kids can't vote, and nobody's going to win against parents' frothing mouths about how they're not 'keeping kids safe' and other grandstanding shenanigans. I wouldn't expect much to change.

Have those "code of conduct" policies ever seen a direct court challenge?

I don't know. Children's rights are a funny thing in this country...

This is pretty standard practice.

In the US. Certainly not in Europe.

> things that can get you in trouble for things that didn't happen on school grounds

What?! There is no way that kind of policy would be tolerated here. What is the logic behind this?

Agreed.

An arm of the government inserting hundreds or thousands surveillance devices in people's homes without their consent? I can't imagine getting more upset.

In fact, the story is almost too perfect. It wouldn't surprise me to find out either it's bogus or big parts of it have been left out.

But if the skeleton of this story holds true, somebody needs to go to jail. Not get fired. Not get fined. But go to jail. For a very. long. time.

As I've said elsewhere, and as Cory Doctrow mentioned in his write-up, this kind of complete invasion trains children to become adults who do not value privacy and who do not understand why it is important to be vigilant against just this kind of thing. For many of the children growing up under this kind of privacy-less regime, there is nothing absurd about the NSA's warrantless wiretapping programs, nothing unconscionable about the Total Information Awareness office and the PATRIOT Act. Guilt becomes the default, and the state's actions in obtaining evidence of guilt are justified under this kind of an inverted (perverted?) worldview.

This was part of a program on PBS called Digital Nation. The show was very interesting, and there's a section where the school IT administrator demonstrates his ability to pull up a students laptop ... and working webcam.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/learni...

The relevant part starts at about 4:35. "They don't even realize that we are watching. I always like to mess with them and take a picture."

That's horrible!

Also: How the hell did they finance handing out Mac laptops to all their students?

through sale of kiddy porn?

Well, the video and article mentions Google and Google Docs about a dozen times...I think Google provided some or all of the financing.

From their website: http://schools.nyc.gov/SchoolPortals/09/X339/default.htm

Showcased by Google as highly innovative school [http://a.parsons.edu/~jenkc865/339/nyc_is339_cs.pdf]

I thought they were using laptops on carts. My school does that too. Did they give every student a computer to take home?

So that'd mean some schools (or is it the same one?) did such spying without even trying to conceal it. That it hadn't occurred to students to cover the camera with something is a bit troubling too (either they don't realize the possibility/risk or they don't care).

I may sound paranoid, but having integrated cameras in almost every electronic device around, with no easy physical (vs. software) way of blocking it somehow, is a recipe for such situations happening one day or the other (of course that doesn't make it any more OK).

As opposed to pocket electronics with integrated microphones? Think of all the embarassment that has occured due to pocket dialing, and now consider if that had been intentional. It's harder to block a microphone than a camera lens, too, and less obvious where the microphone is.

True. At least with cameras there's an obvious way of disabling it.

Yet there's just no enough market pressure to get manufacturers to include a clear electronic switch-off mechanism. Maybe with a few more stories like this one...

I think one reason for that is because of the sheer number of sensors included in modern devices. It would greatly clutter interfaces and physical form factors to include privacy switches for each kind of sensor.

Makes sense (esp. these last few years where device come with the least physical switch possible, e.g. the iPhone), but given the benefit, I personally wouldn't mind the added clutter.

One good first step would be to cut the link to the microphone on lid close (for a laptop or a cellphone, say). Or have a global "privacy switch" which would still allow apps to run to but electrically cut off the privacy-invading sensors (mostly gps, camera, microphone... other?).

Just dreaming out loud here...

To be fair to the school shown in that particular documentary, they weren't looking at the students through a webcam. It looks like they're using a remote desktop program to look at the students desktop. He explained that many students use the webcam program as a mirror to look at themselves or just mess around.

The students and parents are also presumably fully aware. If on the other hand they were unaware, the student's mistake of opening a webcam program would not reduce culpability.

I've seen a lot of stuff on the web, but that video is truly shocking. The complete lack of concern for the privacy/dignity either of the children or their families and the complacent attitude of the IT guy is really disheartening to see. I think it shows how organizations can become enchanted with the technology, whilst forgetting some of the most basic human values.

That's interesting to see from an administrator point of view, but also quite disturbing.

The school I go to now has a similar program (Macbooks for every student), and the Remote Desktop program is used on our laptops as well. It used to be a serious point of contention between the administration and the students. A large number of students actually covered up the webcams on their computer with tape or similar to stop people from watching them.

In theory, the requirements for monitoring were that every once in a while, everyone's computer would have its desktop monitored without their knowledge. If they were doing anything that they weren't supposed to (e.g. on Facebook (via proxies), or looking at porn) Photo Booth, the webcam application, would be opened and a screenshot would be taken, capturing both the offending behavior and the offender.

I know that on a computer provided by the school, any preconception of privacy should be abandoned, but it still seems like a bit much. It seems to me that simply logging activity and then punishing the student after it had been reviewed would be easier and more transparent.

I think this is a clear indication that we need an IT code of ethics. Yeah it's cute that as a programmer or administrator you have all this power, but we don't have the right to invade people's privacy.

Found a PDF of the filing itself:

http://craphound.com/robbins17.pdf

It's hard for me to imagine how anyone could think this was an OK idea.

Power hungry bureaucrats who have an end justifies the means philosophy -- who don't understand that their job is to serve and not to control.

This reminds me of the strip search story from a few months ago. A young girl was searched by school officials. As it turned out, she was only carrying prescription drugs.

While the Supreme Court found that the search had been illegal (amazingly, only by an 8-1 majority) they also ruled that the officials concerned could not be held personally liable. This was because it supposedly wasn't obvious to the officials at the time whether what they were doing was illegal or improper.

Now, while I can understand that as a matter of law any court can only rule on the specific details of a particular case in context and they have to worry about a suitable burden of proof, I have to wonder how anyone could think it was OK to strip search a 13-year-old on some vague suspicion about carrying drugs.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/06/25/national/main51125...

More disturbing about that is this: I face serious consequences for all sorts of things, many of which I don't know are illegal. Some of those things I don't know the legalities of are related to my profession. Yet, while being tried, if I put up a "I didn't know it was illegal" defense, I would be laughed at, found guilty and fined/jailed/etc. Why do the school officials get out of liability for not knowing that their actions were illegal?

IIRC, the point was that it wasn't entirely that the officials' actions were illegal. There were some earlier rulings and issues of being in loco parentis that clouded the issue sufficiently that the Supreme Court's hands were effectively tied. Of course, now that the Supreme Court has given an explicit ruling in this case, it would be pretty difficult for anyone to pull that defence in future.

None of this means the actions weren't grossly disproportionate, unreasonable, and abusive in the eyes of any sane, independent observer, but unfortunately that isn't what court rulings are based on.

Even worse actually. If the mandatory reporters at the school heard about this girl being strip searched by mom & dad for drugs, they would, without a second thought, report the parents to some authority. But when they do it in loco parentis the same behavior is OK?

The idea is that, when the search took place, jurisprudence didn't make it clear such searches are illegal. If the legal system is not sure whether something is a crime or not, then it isn't. In theory, anyway.

I've always been paranoid that the people I work for would turn on the video camera on my laptop and just observe me work...

It would be particularly sick if the legal case for this came down to deciding whether any adults had their privacy violated. In general, US courts have not been to fond of protecting the rights of children (which makes the children arrested for child porn of themselves trend still more poignant), and so I can easily see the case coming down to deciding if adults were harmed, effectively setting a precedent that it's OK to spy on kids.

you bet your ass it's ok to spy on kids; I made em, i can spy on em (sorry kiddos). the school district on the other hand, is not allowed to venture onto my lawn, much less into my house.

Why would you think you should have unlimited rights to violate their privacy? Parents already don't have an unlimited right to limit their freedom of movement (e.g. locking them up in their room indefinitly) or the right to use any kind of violence against them. (At least that's the case here in Germany, but I would guess that the US are similar.)

The rights of parents are already limited by the rights of their children, I don't see how you can then jump from "I made em" right to "i can spy on em". We also don't jump from "I made em" right to "i can beat em up" or "i can lock em up forever".

I would agree that some spying should be allowed, but not unlimited (similar to freedom of movement). Putting a camera in the bathroom would definitly not be ok. I would also argue that the rights to privacy increase with age. Secret surveillance might be ok for infants (e.g. baby monitor) but most certainly not for seventeen year old teenagers.

For one thing parents have been spying on their kids for time immemorial. Also you'll have practically no chance of enforcing a prohibition against parents spying on their own kids.

The underlying issue here, at least in the U.S., is that as a parent, I'm responsible for anything that happens to my children. Kid misses school, I get in trouble. Kid deals drugs, I can go to jail. Kid has a mental disorder that causes them to be violent and I let them roam free? I am responsible for the consequences. Kid keeps contraband in my car or house? I could lose my car or house to the authorities.

It's highly contextual, sure. I can't beat a kid with a stick because he eats his cereal wrong. But I am expected to restrain my children from hurting themselves, even if that means by using force. I am responsible to control what goes on in my house, even if that conflicts with the idea of increasing freedoms.

In practice, parents give way over time -- the entire idea of parenting is that the child becomes ready to be responsible for these things themselves. But there are lots of edge cases. You can't make blanket statements and have them hold up. That's one of the reasons we have a juvenile court system -- to handle the mixed rights of parents and the children they live with. In general, however, the GP is more correct than not: children do not have rights in the same way an adult does. Just like everybody else with diminished mental capacity, somebody else is responsible for taking care of them, and no matter how you do that, it's going to infringe on what they might of had if they were an adult.

Is the law that different? I know that in Germany it's quite hard to demonstrate that you have claims against the parents if their child damages something. You basically have to demonstrate that the parents really screwed up. If not, you are on your own. In Germany parents are most definitly not responsible for everything their child does.

And I never said that children have or should have the same rights as grown-ups. The law should only reflect that parents do not violate the child's rights without it being necessary and justified. And it does in Germany. I don't know about the US.

(Just one example about parent's responsibilities I remember: If, say, nine year old children damage a parking car on their way home from the playground it's imposible to make them responsible but it's also practically imposible to make their parents responsible. Going alone to and from the playground is, as long as it's not too far from home, a normal activity for nine year olds, their parents did nothing wrong.)

If you need a court system to determine whether it's necessary or justified you are doing something wrong. There is a large prejudice to leaving kids and parents to work out their own problems. Therefore in practice it's all up to parent to determine how everybody's rights are to be balanced. And that's the way it should be -- parents are supposed to be training their children to uphold their values, culture, and lifestyle. This is one of the reasons we have children. The state should only interfere if harm is coming to the child, and having your folks scan your emails or search your room is not harming you at all. (Not that I approve or disapprove of any specific practices. Like I said, it's all very subjective between the kid and parent)

As I said and repeated and really like to repeat here again: children should have limited rights and they actually do have limited rights in Germany. Spying is ok. Reading their E-Mails and going through their drawers is ok. But only up to a point. The parents just cannot limit their rights without limits.

I'm also not really sure why courts should not decide what's necessary and justified. That's all we ever did in our cases in the introductory course on public law and basic rights. (Basic rights in Germany have an influence on how courts have to decide in civil cases - just before anybody says anything about this being only the case in public law, i.e. citizen-state relationships, not citizen-citizen relationships)

Reading their emails is okay? WTF? These are people we are talking about. Inexperienced people true, but still people!

That's the reason why I wrote "But only up to a point."

Up to what point exactly? I don't see how reading someone else's email is suddenly okay with any kind caveat.

I have serious concerns about any parent that decides to routinely and casually invade the privacy of their children by reading their e-mails or tracking their web browsing. Children raised in such an environment are being taught that they should not expect to have privacy and that they should will not be treated as human beings in general. That kind of casual violation is precisely what justifies infractions like those documented in the article.

I think it's actually a good idea to train them to treat the internet as a space without privacy, because it really is. Not sure if reading their emails etc is the way to go about it though.

So you're saying that, in Germany, if a nine-year-old walks home from the playground and decides to pick up a stick and scratch up the paint on my car, and I'm somehow able to find out and prove that this kid did it, I can't hold either the kid or their parents responsible, and have to pay out of my own pocket to get it repaired? That's... retarded.

Unless the courts take the approach that the school is 'in loco parentis' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_loco_parentis), that is they have similar rights to when the kids are under their supervision.

They can claim that since laptops are not tracked via GPS so it is hard to know where the kids are (at home or at school). So they can just brush this off as an 'oops' or demand that all laptops have tracking chips in them. Or they can always blame the sysadmin and just say "we told him to spy only when kids are at school, but he goofed off, so we'll just fire him" basically scapegoating one person.

Now I am not defending them, as this is a completely outrageous violation of so many rights. I am just thinking of what lies they might use in court to justify this.

And where was the IT leader for the school in all of this? This is where professional responsibility has to come into play. He or she has a responsibility to be aware of what's right and wrong, and installing and activating remote spycam software is so very definitely wrong; I don't even have the words.

It is pointless to seek professional responsibity among IT staff when the people who hired them don't have any. Anyone having responsability wouldn't have lasted there anyway.

It's okay to spy on your kids by your arguments at best.

It's not okay for anyone to spy on anyone else's kids though.

This really lowers ones faith in mankind. What on earth possessed these people? There must have been at least three people with knowledge of this and probably more. None of them thought it was enough of a problem to speak out against it and make a racket if necessary? I can understand one person having a crazy thought and I can imagine him convincing a second. But as soon as a third found out, the whole affair should have been seen for what it was: an invasion of privacy.

Don't just sit there fuming - do something.

You can contact the school board's directors at capitalcomments@lmsd.org or call (610) 645-1800

If you believe that a criminal act may have been committed, you can contact the Montgomery County District Attorney at KKasopsk@montcopa.org or call (610) 278-3090

It seems a bit irresponsible to me to encourage people not directly involved to call the authorities over this. Surely they have been made aware, if only by the media. Often times (again, not a lawyer, so I don't know how to nail this down), charges and complaints can only be filed by those directly victimized by a crime. If people followed your suggestion, then the DA's office would soon be flooded with redundant, useless and perhaps counter-productive communications.

The DA's office provides a form on their website to report a crime - they are actively inviting people to report illegal activity. DAs only prosecute where they believe it is in the public interest to do so.

Would you call the cops if you saw a guy on the corner of your street dealing drugs? Would you do something if you heard your neighbour beating his wife? If you would, then why stay silent just because the criminals are a school board?

It is our democratic duty to speak up. It is our duty as citizens to apply pressure to those in power to do the right thing.

What do you think the Christian right would do if they got wind that a school was, for instance, permitting it's students to view pornography? They would be calling the DA, calling the school board, calling their senator in huge numbers and rightly so - that's how you achieve change in a democracy.

It's not irresponsible to do your democratic duty.

> It's not irresponsible to do your democratic duty.

It goes beyond democracy. It's about the rule of law and making sure law gets enforced.

From the Philadelphia Inquirer: "This is the first we have heard of this lawsuit being filed and the plaintiff's allegations," he said today. "However, we can categorically state that we are - and have always been - committed to protecting the privacy of our students."

"Our district was one of the first to provide free laptops to all of our high school students," Young said. "This initiative has been incredibly successful and well received in our school community."

"We have referred this matter to our attorneys for appropriate legal action and plan to communicate with parents and students with more information as it becomes available."

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/20100218_Suit__Sc...

On one hand I really hope the original story is false/overblown, like perhaps the kid was using his webcam in a public setting online and the administrators were simply monitoring. (Which is weird, but not as weird as full-control spying)

On the other hand, if it turns out that the story is overblown, I am getting really, really, really, really tired of web outlets yanking my libertarian chain. True abuse needs to be confronted. If this is baseless rumor or purposeful link-baiting, it does more to hurt privacy (by making people used to such accusations) than the administrators ever may have done.

Best case scenario for school district:

Prove via FBI or forensic information security audit team that there was no monitoring software of any kind, no remote monitoring, no logging. Prove that the assistant principal did not know what he/she was talking about when she was directly questioned by the parent.

Prove there was no conspiracy to monitor students in their bedrooms. Prove (this is hard) that the assistant principal obtained the incriminating photo by illegally searching their hard drive. Provide settlement in six figures with half of proceeds going to subsidize free laptop program for inner city Philadelphia.

Put assistant principal on leave, supply black electrical tape fee-free, remove any Remote Desktop capabilities in the OS. Hold press conference with state attorney general in two weeks to jointly demonstrate total innocence.

Worst case: TV crews camped out on Lower Merion High School campus for weeks.

The only thing I don't believe is how a school district could afford to develop such sophisticated software.

Taxes.

Dunno where you're from, but I've never seen government-sponsored software that actually worked properly.

(I remember reading the unemployment insurance website for Illinois once... it only works in IE. Error page: http://www.ides.state.il.us/idclaim/alert.asp )

I knew some folks who worked at a neighboring school district and while laptops never went home with the children, Remote Desktop screen caps of the sleazy superintendent engaged in affairs with teachers and potential new hires were taken. From the stories I hear, the administration in most PA public school systems is disgustingly corrupt.

Yeah, I can believe that, PA seems to have a lot of fantastically corrupt public officials. This is after all the state with the "cash for kids" scheme, where judges took bribes/extorted money from a private prison and in turn threw thousands of kids into it, plenty completely innocent (e.g. one in a case for publishing a web page that was derogatory towards a teacher). If it wasn't all involving Democrats, it would be worldwide headline news, instead the judges were allowed to plea bargain to quite modest tax evasion charges.

I wonder if these laptops had a recording light by the camera like most. Wouldn't this have been an immediate tip-off to everyone? Disabling the recording light (if this happened) would have required some effort as well...

I would hope that recording lights are hardware operated, so that they cannot be disabled via software. When the camera is on, the light is on.

i've long had an irrational fear that someone would compromise my computer and upload some modified firmware to the camera that would allow it to record without illuminating the light.

i always keep a piece of electrical tape over the cameras on my computers now.

</tinfoil_hat>

Uhh...which laptops have a recording light on them? Mine certainly does not.

Macs

My Asus laptop has one. It's small and green, and if it weren't there, I would always be paranoid that my laptop was spying on me.

All Macs that have cameras do. And it shows to the OS as a USB sensor. Obviously there must be ways to turn it on without lighting the light,

The camera LED is wired in series to the camera sensor itself. You can't power the camera without having the LED turn on.

Conversely, you can't turn on the camera LED without having the camera powered.

This is true of new MacBooks, I have been told it is not true of all models of Macs.

Another problem fixed with duct tape!

There's still the microphone...

But this sort of thing makes me glad Apple at least hardwires an LED which turns on when the camera is in use on all Macs.

Watch out for the telescreens, comrades!

I wonder what offense the child committed at home that got him in trouble with the school?

They won't tell us that, because of privacy concerns :P

Allegedly selling drugs. The "child" claims he was photographed holding "Mike and Ike candy": "Official: FBI probing Pa. school webcam spy case" (an AP story): http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02...

The referenced article has been changed by the AP; look here for how to get the original: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1139404

Sounds like someone in school administration sat in on the highschool students' reading of 1984 and picked up a few ideas.

Speaking of school's control and observation of kids not on their premises, wasn't there a case a while back where a kid skipped school and later appeared on TV holding a "Bush sucks!" protest sign? My memory is fuzzy on this, but it seems like the courts upheld the right of the school to punish the kid? Anybody got a link for that case?

Extrapolating from what I don't know into things I can't even speculate on (I love the internet), what if these administrators saw the same kids engaging in obscene political action, like defiling election signs or something? Or witnessed a murder? If I remember correctly, even police who are authorized to eavesdrop are bound by all kinds of rules about what they can observe and what they're forced to take action on.

Found it -- it was the kid who displayed the sign "Bong hits for Jesus" and the school administrators were supported in suppressing free speech at a school-sponsored event. I love that kid!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_v._Frederick

Also for those interested in learning more about the control schools have over free speech, here's a great PDF http://breitlinks.com/freespeechpdf/speech.pdf

I guess the point I was getting to was this: if a kid is at home on a school laptop, supposedly only doing schoolwork, is that a school-sponsored event? Would any activity constitute a school-sponsored event? Do school administrators have an obligation to report any crimes they may see when using this? If not, could they be considered accomplices? I would think not, but I'm not sure.

Not only is this an awful invasion of privacy, it muddles up the public sector deep in the heart of all sorts of other individual rights. So if the courts were to rule this legal (which I find highly unlikely) it would make a mess out of all sorts of other laws. In my opinion.

If a district employee came home with the student, while I was there, with my permission, and helped him or observed his work, I'd be OK with that. Again, with my permission and knowledge.

If the same employee was peeking through the window ...

Technology enabled spying seems to be completely ubiquitous now. Maybe new laws can be passed, but given recent history I'm not optimistic about that. Probably the best strategy is to try to encourage more equiveillance.

As an immediate workaround if you are the parent of one of the children with these laptops:

i) Complain to the school. Make sure your complaint is formally registered (not just verbal on the phone).

ii) Install an operating system onto the laptop yourself, to ensure that there is nothing untoward installed in the background. Preferably use some linux distro, or if you are an ardent Windows fan take a backup image after a new installation which can easily be restored later to overwrite any nasties which may have been installed later.

Update: http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/02/19/laptop.suit/index.html?h...

This takes things one giant leap further, but my cousin in high school already has his personal email and home web browsing read by a team of school monitors, thanks to the provision of a laptop by his public high school.

Of course, his parents are unlikely to buy him his own laptop since he's already got one, so what does he need another one for?

What's stopping him from buying his own laptop?

Cost?

Money. Students in high school may not have enough money to buy a laptop.

Go mow some lawns for a couple weeks... A few hundred dollars isn't all that hard to come by.

This is such a "let them eat cake" attitude. A few hundred dollars is a lot to come by for some people, especially at that age.

I guess that attitude comes from the fact that I've always had to buy my own cake in life. My parents provided me with food, clothing, a place to live, and other "necessities". They never bought me a laptop, a cell phone, a car, or any of the dozens of other things that teenagers seem to feel entitled to these days.

Fine, and good for you. Opportunities aren't uniform, though, and there are students who don't even have those necessities you mention, and have to work for those. I likewise was fortunate to have the opportunity to make my own money at a young age, and so I don't begrudge you that. What I take exception to is the implication that all students have such opportunities, are aware of them, and enjoy the familial stability required to exploit opportunities as they arise.

The student the OP mentioned was given a laptop by the school. I fail to see how a _second_ laptop is anything other than a luxury.

I take exception to the implication that the student's parents are stupid for not seeing the _obvious_ need for a _second_ laptop.

That's a violation of various computer misuse laws. Get him to file a police complaint.

How is that a violation? I assume the school actually owns the laptop, and the monitoring is disclosed up front.

Intercepting communications is definitely illegal.

They can certainly have limits on what the laptop could be used for etc. and perhaps filter traffic. Possibly even track the URL's (depending on what the contract says). But reading personal emails will definitely be illegal.

When I go into a company to investigate one of their employee's you have to be very careful not to go near any personal email etc.

You should make him an Ubuntu Live CD/USB for home use.

https://gmail.google.com - Make sure you're getting Google's SSL cert and not the schools. For private browsing there is Tor.

Better to just work around the system. If you try to change it you'll be flagged as a criminal or terrorist and they'll start watching you more closely.

Move along student/citizen... nothing to see here.

All this proves is that the several countries (USA, UK, others) have legal systems that are inconsistent, at least in the formal systems sense. Starting with "laws" as axioms, and some set of rules of deduction, you can get anywhere: Person X is a pedophile, Student Z behaves improperly on Mars, etc etc.

I see a lot of child pornography arguments being made, but what if this was a work laptop that you brought home and your boss spied on you?

Would that be okay?

Wait till a school administrator gets the bright idea of doing the same thing on school-issued iPhones and other mobile devices.

Schools are issuing iPhones?

Meh. Maybe I meant iPods. Too eager to get my flippant comment posted, I guess.

If this violated child pornography laws, we will get the remarkable outcome that a school system is not allowed within 2500 feet of a school. So it's not all bad!

Should set some interesting precedent. If this isn't child pornography, spying, unlawful wiretapping, etc... then I don't know what is.

Given the role that schools have played in destroying the lives of some children by getting authorities involved in "sexting" cases, it would be especially ironic if this spying program produced child pornography charges. After all, in many cases, intent isn't required-- people have been arrested for having malware download child porn without the user's authorization or knowledge. Given that precedent, doing something like this and accidentally gathering child porn by taking an irresponsible and already likely illegal action would seem to be enough for the courts. Not being a lawyer, I don't know if this intuition is correct, but it would be an interesting precedent, no doubt.

> reople have been arrested for having malware download child porn without the user's authorization or knowledge

Do you have a citation for that, out of interest.

It's considered something of a myth within LE and I wasn't aware a case like that actually existed.

Sadly, I don't have the citation off the top of my head. For all I know, I could've fallen for an urban legend. If I have, sorry for being gullible!

It's cool - I do believe you. [You'll always get suspicion over that story because it is the #1 most common defence (and ironically easy to disprove)]

I'd always be interested to see if it actually happened though - it would be useful research.

How is it easy to disprove? The trojan could delete itself after downloading CP. Should be impossible to reconstruct what happened exactly.

Of course there is an upper limit to how provable it is. But that is fairly elaborate malware your describing (because if that is all it did it should be fairly apparent - it also has to fake fairly extensive use as well).

Mostly it is very easy to see the CP activity (dont forget were not just talking about images on the HDD here but actual activity indicative of behavior). If it were downloaded all together, with no references in, say, web history etc, no thumbnails and nothing in the cache files (which are FULL of rich information) then it would ring alarm bells :)

Eventually even the most elaborate malware will make a mistake with activity that is not "normal" - and the investigation is intensive enough to pick this up.

I don't think it would be hard. Just create a Windows application that hosts an IE ActiveX control and hides its main window. Or even better: When the user's screen saver is running, start a full-blown IE window and control it through Window messages. The traces would be identical to the case in which the user used IE himself.

Here is one such case: http://www.scmagazineus.com/malware-to-blame-for-porn-on-sta...

I also recall a case of a teacher whose school computer had malware that ended up displaying porn in the classroom who was arrested and faced up to 40 years in jail. I'm pretty sure she was acquitted.

Interesting. Do you know how/if I can get hold of the court documents relating to that?

If I remember right, she was forced to give up her teacher's license.

Search on teacher virus porn, e.g. http://www.daniweb.com/news/story219946.html

After the initial conviction was set aside, after 4 delays in sentencing, "[...] facing health problems, Amero pleaded guilty to one count of misdemeanor disorderly conduct, paying a $100 fine and losing her teaching license, just to settle the case."

Since when did surveillance == pornography? Is CCTV pornography? This story isn't even about pornography. Why are we talking about pornography?!

because child porn laws - or at least the perception of them - have become so disconnected from basic ideas like victim and intention that they appear completely arbitrary, associated with little more than unauthorised pictures of minors.

I believe it's because you basically handed a remotely activated camera to a teenager in the implicit knowledge that said remotely activated camera will be taken into the teenagers room where they're going to at some point be naked.

Placing a camera in someone's room is akin to placing it in a bathroom, because at some point someone's getting naked and how a group of adults didn't comprehend this speaks worlds about the quality of education provided by the school in question.

There's also the very concerning matter that 50% of the students are likely male, and ~90% of males access porn through the internet. This means that 45% of students likely used this computer to look at porn, which likely means at some point 45% of the students had their penis' out in front of the laptop in question, which has a remotely activated camera on it. This isn't even discussing the 1/3 of women who access porn via the internet. This isn't even discussing the fact that a percentage of these students likely used the cameras for video-sex with their partners (personal experience on that one).

I'm sorry this is either gross ignorance that should be as severely punished as possible or it's exactly as bad as this thread of comments has taken it, and it should be as severely punished as possible. Regardless the potential was there to use the system for child pornography, and if there are no records that any compromising pictures were taken, then the school and its board members got exceptionally lucky.

"Since when did surveillance == pornography?"

Since the camera was issued to accompany the student throughout their daily life: bedroom, changing the diaper of a toddler they are babysitting, bathroom, etc.

Everyone who even knew about the computer webcam spying should go to prison. The fact that this could have been used as spying for child pornography- should be treated as an attempt of attaining child pornography.

No it shouldn't. As long as there is no indication that there were sexual motives, than no accusations of sexual motives should be made. The invasion of our rights in the name of our children has gone far enough. You shouldn't gratuitously say anything that encourages child pornography hysteria. You are just saying it because it serves your point that these guys should be punished severely. However, not even these guys deserve to be branded as child pornographers if they aren't.

> As long as there is no indication that there were sexual motives, than no accusations of sexual motives should be made.

That's not how child porn laws work.

Laws should always be enforced most harshly against govt agents and folks who actually advocate the laws in question.

Govt employment is not a right and if someone is unwilling to accept heightened scrutiny, they can work for someone who is willing to accomodate that preference.

No, laws should be applied equally to everyone.

You should not be punished more harshly because you are a "government agent." What does your postal clerk have to do with some idiot congressman who passed too strict a law on child porn?

Why? Crimes against government agents are prosecuted far more severely than crimes against the common man. If you rob a post office at gunpoint, it's a federal felony, with more extreme punishments than if you rob a corner store at gunpoint. The law singles out government employees as being more important than the common man in terms of protection.

You've answered your own question. The law doesn't say government agents who engage in child pornography should be punished more severely than regular citizens. In the case of holding up a post office at gunpoint, it's not applying the law differently because the law is different.

FWIW, my understanding is that messing with the post in general is a federal crime. It has nothing to do with the government employee being more 'important' than the common man; that's just an unintended side effect.

> The law doesn't say government agents who engage in child pornography should be punished more severely than regular citizens.

We know. We think that the law is wrong.

Note that DAs tend to give their fellow govt employees, especially police, a pass, so in practice the law is easier on govt employees. It's a trifecta of tribal, lobbying by govt employees, and "one hand washes the other".

> It has nothing to do with the government employee being more 'important' than the common man; that's just an unintended side effect.

Actually, it's quite intended. Look into the history of how those laws came about. They were lobbied for by govt employees.

And then there's the fact that DAs tend to go hard whenever a fellow govt employee is a victim. It's the same trifecta.

Postal workers shouldn't necessarily be blamed for pornography laws, but that doesn't mean government agents should be treated equally.

Highway patrol officers who break traffic laws without using lights and sirens should be punished more severely than a first-time offender who is a normal citizen. Cops who abuse their power need to serve prison time.

With great power comes great responsibility.

We give our public school teachers a lot of power over the lives of our kids, by entrusting our kids to them for several hours a day. If they abuse the public trust, the potential for damage is much higher, and the punishment should be correspondingly more severe.

If we let our schools enact zero-tolerance policies for punishing our kids, we have the right to enact zero-tolerance laws for them f*ing with our kids' lives.

"If they abuse the public trust, the potential for damage is much higher, and the punishment should be correspondingly more severe."

I don't disagree, but that's not what the law says. Get it into a law, and then reality will match up with your belief.

I hate to think what would happen to a police officer serving serious time in a normal prison.

Govt workers typically have great authority to impose things on other people. For example, school officials can suspend students.

If they're not up to being held to a higher standard, they're not up to having authority.

Plus, enforcing more harshly on them brings attention to bad laws.

Like I said, if they're unwilling to accept this, if they want to be treated like an ordinary citizen, they can quit govt work and become one. No one is forcing them to work for govt.

Some government workers have great authority to impose things on people, but I don't know if I'd agree that it's typical.

> Some government workers have great authority to impose things on people, but I don't know if I'd agree that it's typical.

Every paper-pusher can make your life a living hell. Every teacher and adminstrator can punish your kid. And, I haven't even mentioned police, DAs, judges, and folks who are supposed to exercise discretion.

Janitors and the equivalent are about the only govt employees who don't have considerable power. They're a small minority of govt workers.

the problem is not "government"; the problem is "power". it is power that is being abused. whether that power comes through the government, or through other means is largely irrelevant.

i wish americans would understand this. that they don't means that abuses of power are treated in two completely different ways here. if it's the government, it's bad. if it's anything else (which typically means a private company) then it's "you shouldn't expect anything else you naive fool".

> the problem is not "government"; the problem is "power". it is power that is being abused. whether that power comes through the government, or through other means is largely irrelevant.

Except that it's not, because govt power is qualitatively different. A company can't throw you in jail. All that a company can do is refuse to deal with you.

> i wish americans would understand this.

I wish that non-Americans actually understood power.

Real power is when someone can do something to me or stop other people from dealing with me. It isn't when they refuse to deal with me.

you're still skewing things.

all that matters is power. the distinction you make above can easily be handled in terms of power: someone who can throw you in prison has more power over you than someone who cannot. restricting that to "government" adds blinders. for example, it takes the focus away from those that pay lobbyists to enact and enforce certain rules. by focussing on power and those that wield it you are freed from distortions like that.

it's no different to any other field: focussing on the abstract concept lets you handle more cases. talking about "oop" is often more useful than talking about "java"; focussing on "government" rather than "power" is the same mistake as confusing java with (all of) object oriented programming.

of course, java is (probably) the largest oo language, just as the us government is (probably) the largest source of power. but that doesn't stop the more abstract approach from being more useful.

> all that matters is power. the distinction you make above can easily be handled in terms of power: someone who can throw you in prison has more power over you than someone who cannot. restricting that to "government" adds blinders.

Since the power to throw me into jail is restricted to govts ....

> of course, java is (probably) the largest oo language, just as the us government is (probably) the largest source of power. but that doesn't stop the more abstract approach from being more useful.

As I've shown, govt power is qualitativively different.

Moreover, you're trying to use "they have power too" to ignore govt power.

And, interestingly enough, almost all of the examples of corporate power are actually govt acting on behalf of govt. And yet, you seem to think that more govt, that ignoring govt power, will solve those problems....

Yes, abstractions are useful. Yours is an excuse to ignore the big power problems of the world.

>Govt workers typically have great authority to impose things on other people. For example, school officials can suspend students.

Government workers generally don't exercise their own authority in these respects they apply the local rules and laws. I don't know how USA school boards run so I can't say for sure this is true in the school situation however.

"As long as there is no indication that there were sexual motives, than no accusations of sexual motives should be made."

I think the argument is that secretly videotaping children within their own homes is inherently sexual. And even if it isn't, this seems like a clear violation of Roe v Wade.

There doesn't appear to be a claim in the complaint regarding any child pornography laws yet. But who knows--that may change if new photos turn up during discovery.

Here's some thoughts on the Fourth Amendment illegal search claim, at least:

There is this 2001 case, Kyllo v. United States, that held it illegal for the police to use a thermal scanner to detect heat lamps in a guy's house (the heat lamps being used to grow marijuana). The Supreme Court held, in an opinion by Justice Scalia:

"Where...the Government uses a device that is not in general public use, to explore details of the home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion, the surveillance is a 'search' and is presumptively unreasonable without a warrant."

Seems to me this case falls pretty squarely within the Kyllo rule. Maybe webcams are in public use, but a spy program connected to a webcam and operated by someone other than the possessor of the computer would probably not be. The webcam photos were of the inside of a home, and those photos could not have otherwise been taken without going inside the home.

That's with regard to a crime, however, not a school policy.

You may very well be allowed to die your hair blue, have a "legalize weed" bumper sticker on your guitar case, or an explicit novel in your backpack off campus, but if you do any of those things on-campus you violate school rules and can be punished.

Furthermore, even things you do off-campus can violate your school's code of conduct (writing about how much your teacher sucks publicly on Facebook), and you can be punished at school.

The school, however, can not violate the law in order to learn about actions which are against the school's code of conduct.

Where the lines are drawn as to what activities done off-campus that can be punished on campus (such as talking badly about your teacher) is a legally contentious issue right now. Here is a basic writeup of one currently ongoing case: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/02/student-susp...

(And obviously, IANAL).

There is this 2001 case, Kyllo v. United States, that held it illegal for the police to use a thermal scanner to detect heat lamps

I don't think that's precisely correct. It's not illegal -- the cops aren't going to be sent to jail. It just makes the evidence inadmissible.

And that subtlety makes all the difference in this application.

An unlawful search is illegal. Whether the cop go to jail depends on if they're convicted of a criminal law.

Usually an illegal search is brought up as a defense by the person who was searched and is now being charged with evidence obtained in the search. The issue in these cases is whether the fruits of the illegal search should be used against the person who was searched. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusionary_rule)

An illegal search is in all cases a violation of a right and therefore the person who was searched has a legal remedy. This is the basis of the suit by the students against the school (see the pdf at the bottom of the article.)

An unlawful search is illegal. Whether the cop go to jail depends on if they're convicted of a criminal law.

As far as I'm aware this never happens, or at least I've never heard of it. But then, IANAL.

Not that I disbelieve you, but I'm curious. Can you cite some real-life cases where officers that poked their noses where they ought not have later been prosecuted and actually been punished? My guess is that they'll be protected by qualified immunity. (but then, that immunity probably isn't available in the case at hand)

Anecdote: I have a friend who was handing out pamphlets in front of the post office on Tax Day. He was arrested and later sued for 1st Amendment violations. He won his case against the town, but the prosecution against the officers failed because they thought they were doing the right thing (with no acknowledgment of the fact that their job makes it critical for them to have this knowledge).

Fair enough, I should have been more precise with my language.

Section 1983 says that a violation of a constitutional right gives rise to a civil remedy for damages. A violation of the Fourth Amendment right is such a violation of a constitutional right. If the school officials, being officers of the state, did not comply with the rule in Kyllo, then they would be in violation of the Fourth Amendment, so they could be liable for damages under section 1983.

The officials could defend on the grounds of qualified immunity. However, to win on this defense, the officers must show that the law was not "clearly established." The argument I would make is that Kyllo is clearly established, so qualified immunity would not apply.

The Wikipedia article on section 1983 provides some examples of its uses:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_1983

There is a small sentence at the bottom of the complaint that says they will amend if any qualifying picts / information is produced.

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