A high school in suburban Philadelphia was slapped with a civil suit by the parents of a teen student. The school notified the teen's parents that their son had engaged in improper behavior and had photographic evidence of such.
The problem?
The school provided all students with laptops. With webcams. That the school could - and did - remotely turn on and monitor even when the laptop was not in use. The "improper behavior" was photographed in the teen's bedroom. (The complaint does not specify the nature of the behavior, though based on that there is no mention of another photographed party and solo sexual conduct is not illegal, I'm going to venture that the student was snapped drinking or rolling a joint.)
Purportedly, the webcams were part of a security system to attempt to recover a stolen computer. That's fine...if the webcams are turned on only when the student reports it stolen. And I'm fine with the school monitoring general computer usage; it is their property, after all. (I vehemently disagred with laptop usage in law school, let alone high school, but that is a whole other matter.) But to photograph students who are not on school property or on a school-sponsored trip is insane.
The truly scary part of all this is that the school had no qualms about showing the photo to the parents. I see it as analogous to those "stupid criminal" stories where someone calls 911 to report his marijuana missing. Skimming through some news articles' comments, there are those who think that the webcams are justified if they capture abuse or illegal activity. I tell you, my forehead has gone black and blue from all the smacking. Lately the good ol' Fourth Amendment has been looking rather like Swiss cheese, but...seriously? Can anyone out there really claim with a straight face that a teen does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in his own bedroom?
Or that the webcame might invade the privacy of other household members? High schoolers rarely live alone.
Personally, I call for a search of the school's remote monitoring system. (I'm not tech-y; I'm sure there is a name for it.) Given that the webcams could be turned on remotely even with the computer off, that laptops are often kept in the bedroom with the screen open, and that the bedroom hosts all sorts of unclothed activity, the school must have at least a few pieces of child pornography.
This whole thing makes my skin crawl. That some people think this is perfectly reasonable and justified. That more and more people have little to no grasp of their Constitution or rely on legal shows - that are as legally accurate as House is medically accurate - to misexplain it for them. That the Constitution has taken some serious beating in the past ten or so years. That children are potentially being photographed in their underwear...or less. That we, as a society, have lost our collective sense of common decency, propriety, and respect for the privacy of others.
If you or your child have a webcam, go stick a piece of tape over the lens. You never know who is watching, when, and what images they are saving.
3 comments:
Hard to even know what to say when one reads stuff like this. I wondered reading this if it were an attempt by the school at blackmail? Your thoughts?
wow, that is insane! Yes definatly agree on the privacy issue. But even bigger is the child porn idea behind this. High school, ie. a minor, can be watched in their room by someone else in the school. So if that was the case and found, wouldn't those people monitoring be arrested for child porn?
Mrs. C - Interesting. I didn't think of that. There have been a few incidents in high schools in this area where the schools have been overstepping their bounds, like suspending a student for doing something illegal (drinking, usually) off school property and off school time, so I just assumed it was yet another instance of the school trying to dictate what a student does outside the classroom. The more I think about, my head just spins. Last I read, there is now a federal wiretapping investigation underway. Should get interesting.
Dragon - I don't know. I do know that child porn is a very strict area and the definition of what consititutes child porn is becoming increasingly broad.
Post a Comment