School allegedly uses students' laptop webcams for espionage, lawsuit ensues
By Ross Miller 
posted February 18th 2010 5:49PM
posted February 18th 2010 5:49PM
The school district has yet to respond to the accusations, so at this point we've only got the plaintiff's side of the story -- for all we know this kid took a picture of himself and somehow accidentally uploaded it on the school network. Then again, some purported Lower Merion students just emailed Gizmodo and claimed that their MacBooks' green webcam lights went on at random times, but they were told by IT support that it was just a technical glitch. Holy alleged invasion of privacy, Batman, this could get mighty interesting. PDF of the complaint available below.
Update: The Lower Merion School District superintendent Christopher McGinley has issued an official response on its website, acknowledging "a security feature intended to track lost, stolen and missing laptops." Going further, he says the district " has not used the tracking feature or web cam for any other purpose or in any other manner whatsoever" but that the matter is "under review."
[Thanks, Yossi]
@Aerilus
Your an idiot, Macs dont run a bios, they use EFI. Dont be a moron.
@JedixJarf Don't you mean "you're" and idiot, idiot?
@formetopoopon
Don't you mean you're "an" id...never mind.
I am going to say this ONCE:
Being in IT, I am well aware of the implications in privacy invasion... also being in IT (and forced to interact with these types of people), I also know that in this case, there is some twisted FSCK in Pennsylvania with a TON of inappropriate pictures and/or videos of underage girls (and possibly boys, depending on the level of depravity) in various stages of undress, courtesy the the Lower Merion school district.
If I were a parent in that district, I would demand immediate termination of the entire school board--basically anyone in the chain who made the decision to install and utilize this function. I would also demand immediate investigations into every single person with even trivial control of the remote camera activation software, up to and including immediate seizure of any and all data storage devices related to, or owned by the same.
I guarantee there is now a child porn ring housed in Pennsylvania because of this, and if law enforcement doesn't step in--and I mean HARD, some poor teenage girl is going to have some traumatizing revelation in a decade or so when those images begin trickling into the web.
I used to go to a school who handed out laptops to students (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunderson_High_School), but back then they were iBook G4's not the webcam equipped Macbook's. I am completely enraged the school can simply shit on the students' rights to privacy. If my school ever did that, heads would've rolled.
wth?a macbook pro??that looks like a 15 inch too.thats about 1600 to 1800$ hell i wouldn't even send a student home with a calculator.
@snowrid3r
The school gives out the old white MacBooks, not the newer unibody ones.
"Uhh...sir, I hate to inform you but your kid was behaving inappropriately in your room while you were away on the following days..."
Class today we are going to learn about ethics.
Let's start by everyone taking out there laptops.
Only the naive and foolish believe they have privacy.
Tell me son, how many lights do you see on your laptop?
@Coombes Sometimes there are three and sometimes three is four sir.
@Coombes
"THERE... ARE... FOUR... LIGHTS!"
This is why i bought my laptop without a webcam, not because i couldn't afford one :(
Reminds me of Enemy of the State and Eagle Eye... O.o
It's not only naive kids that don't know that nothing is secret on the internet. It's also naive administrators. The watchers are just as easily exposed as the watchees.
Lol this is sort of funny a security measure in case its stolen or lost how is activating a web cam gonna help finding it unless they are going to use some FBI data base which is still slim or they have a GPS integrated in it to.Thats bull school is using that for cover up having key-loggers and random web cam activation what if I'm watching...... well the happy time..i can only imagine going to school next day and then they call u to the principle's office and tell u your expelled for rocking out with the glock out.(i can only imagine going to the parents and telling them that i got expelled for watching it.) And how the @^%&%$ do they effort a mac for a individual student the only mac's we have in school is in broadcasting for video and advanced photography class.Which is like 20 for 150-200 students that have that class. if id get a laptop from school and find out they have been spying on me id set it on fire Torch it or something like that http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHBDtxBr09A start at 50 sec.
@KKore there are problems that you can use to snap a shot of the thief. that's what they are trying to claim that this was. and that periodically they confirm that the laptops are still in the appropriate home. which doesn't make sense cause I might take it to the library, a friends, or on my weekend trip to Grandma's in NYC. so when it's not at school or in my house they think that it was stolen and fire up the cam.
also, in the case of this kid that was suspended or whatever, I wonder if they were told about this whole camera thing up front and that it would be turned on and if it happened to catch something you could be punished for it. I bet not. so would this count as an illegal search and seizure etc.
If one laptop was used to watch one child outside of the school for one second, everyone involved should be fired and sued. This is absolutely unacceptable.
What anyone does in their home should be kept there. Its one thing to have an invasion of our digital privacy, but our expectation for privacy shouldn't be too high on facebook, twitter, and various forums. Our expectations of privacy in our homes should be near absolute.
This law suit may come as a surprise to New York Public School IS-339. They were recently featured on PBS's Frontline "Digital Nation" Episode. They openly state that, "The assistant principal spends part of each day remotely monitoring what the kids are doing on their (school issued) laptops." Here's a link to the video;
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/view/
The remote monitoring is discussed at 33:39 into the program.
@tricky2000 but is he remotely watching the camera or merely watching what's on the screen. in other words, the browser history, what apps are running etc. you can do that without the cam being turned on.
and are they up front about this watching and how any wrong doing on a school issued laptop is punishable as if you were at school.
Can't even beat your meat with a little laptop pr0n without big brother watching! GEESH!! What's this world coming to.
That's fantastic. How do I enable this on my macs?
I love the public school system. Money well spent...
Someone is trying to see teenage girls in their bedrooms.
keep in mind that we don't know how the images were found. Since the hardware is the schools property anything on it is their property and responsibility. The user of the laptop needs to follow any rules that are part of getting the hardware. Now if the school obtained these images through the use of some utility then they are guilty of abuse of power. Always use someone elses property as if you were in the middle of a crowd and in the view of all.
ah man, Lower Merion, you guys are DONE. You know why? Parents tear teachers' heads off when little Johnny gets a B on a test, what do you think they're gonna do when they found out the laptop you gave LJ has been spying on him and probably your family at home?? Just close the whole school district, re-zone the kids, and save yourselves the time, money, frustration, and embarrassment. I wonder if this security feature goes higher up the ranks...?
What some people seem to be missing is that the laptops were school issued. No different than if you were issued a cell phone, desktop, or laptop by your employer. They can check your call, text, internet history, or any kind of paranoid security measures on it.
fuck the POLICE! aka principles
Big brother is watching Ò¿Ó
I may be in the minority, but i see nothing wrong with this.
It's the school's laptop, you don't like it, buy your own.
You should have to sign a contract when you get the laptop from the school that states that the school can do as they please with it.
Why wasn't I issued a laptop in school. Damn kids today.
WOW.
All seniors at my high school have been given MacBooks this year. I usually only use it at school since I have a MacBook Pro at home, but I am definitely putting a sticker or something over my school laptop's webcam and watching out for the green light beside the webcam. I would NOT put this past the IT guys at my school. This stuff is crazy!
@tehryanhollis
One more thing.
How would I go about checking for a program like this on my school assigned computer?
and this story wasn't labeled apple, why?