Quis custodiet ipsos custodes

By now most people have heard of the situation in Lower Merion PA where a student was given a laptop and information from that laptop was used to discipline the kid for something he did at home. There are a lot of vague areas about this story so I’m going to try to stick to what we know for certain, anything else only furthers the hysteria which is bound to follow.

We know that the laptops given to the students had software installed on them which was able to access the webcam and monitor the system in case of theft to allow them to be recovered. We know that a student was disciplined for an action either view through the camera or from an image taken with the laptop camera. This image was obtained through the use of this software by a school official or teacher.  Other students have reported seeing the camera led activity indicator turn on for no reason, although this is just heresay at this point Read the rest of this entry »