https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_School...> Robbins v. Lower Merion School District is a federal class action lawsuit,[2] brought in February 2010 on behalf of students of two high schools in Lower Merion Township, a suburb of Philadelphia.[3] In October 2010, the school district agreed to pay $610,000 to settle the Robbins and parallel Hasan lawsuits against it.[1]
> The suit alleged that, in what was dubbed the "WebcamGate" scandal, the schools secretly spied on the students while they were in the privacy of their homes.[4][5] School authorities surreptitiously and remotely activated webcams embedded in school-issued laptops the students were using at home.[6][7] After the suit was brought, the school district, of which the two high schools are part, revealed that it had secretly taken more than 66,000 images.[8][9] The suit charged that in doing so the district infringed on its students' privacy rights.[6][10][11] A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction, ordering the school district to stop its secret webcam monitoring, and ordered the district to pay the plaintiffs' attorney fees.[12][13][14]
> The lawsuit was filed after 15-year-old high school sophomore (second year student) Blake Robbins was disciplined at school for his behavior in his home.
Acknowledging that the school was found to have been in the wrong and that the courts came down on the side of privacy, is the company which sold the school district the software they used to violate privacy guilty of anything? Should it be?
The company involved:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HEAT_LANrev
... said its software was intended to be used for theft recovery. Easier to recover stolen goods if the laptop can surreptitiously take pictures of its surroundings and send them home, see? Is that software inherently bad, like the software you're talking about is? It could certainly be used for the same thing.