Attention High School students: Big Brother is watching you.

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**Frazzled**

Orkeosaurus wrote:I don't see how families who have never had their laptop's webcam activated can get money from the suit. Simply having the function on the laptop isn't going to count as an invasion of privacy, so there's no basis for awarding damages. It might be a violation of certain federal and state laws against wire-tapping (I think this is currently in debate; some experts are saying that even if a laptop was stolen activating the webcam would be in violation of the law, if the laptop was in a residence), but they're not going to get any money from that (as that would be handled by criminal proceedings).

Thats likely correct. However the usage of this device:1. may never have been recorded (bad as everyone can now claim) or 2. discovery may show a pattern of wide use.

**Emperors Faithful**

I really don't see why this is being handled in a Civil Court at all.

Surely, if privacy laws have been broken, it should be handled in a criminal court?

And, like Orkeo said, there really isn't much they can get in the way of damages.

**Golden Eyed Scout**

God, I really didn't think I could get more pissed off with school systems(and their failure), and then this happens. Great job people.
You made me hate you even more.

**SagesStone**

Kanluwen wrote:Spoken like someone who wears a tinfoil hat.

IT Networking student currently working on a diploma at the moment actually

But, yeah it's really paranoid both ways. Both with this ineffective and rather stupid security system and trying to figure out what could have possibly convinced them it was a good idea.
If they were really so paranoid they could track it anyway without the camera and stop stuff like this happening (IE. Them being found out).

But this thread is really going in circles, isn't it?

**Kanluwen**

This thread was going downhill from the start when people leapt to the assumption that it was related to child pornography

And just because you're in a rational career doesn't mean you don't wear a tinfoil hat! Plenty of (potentially) respectable scientists could easily fall into the tinfoil hat camp.

**SagesStone**

I guess it's possible

Luckily I'm not paranoid like that anyway.

Honestly though, they probably believed it was a good system.

Looking back, this thread started down that road on page one. So this thread has really just been going back and forth about it since then

I'm actually surprised it made it to page five.

**Snikkyd**

Whoa this is weird, it reminds me of this news story where some guy was whacking off in a Library. They made a huge deal about it, even though no one would have even noticed if they hadn't got it on tape.

Also, why is child pornography coming up? This doesn't seem to have much to do with it, unless thats what he was looking at. , which I doubt.

**Kilkrazy**

Golden Eyed Scout wrote:God, I really didn't think I could get more pissed off with school systems(and their failure), and then this happens. Great job people.
You made me hate you even more.

So many things make you hate people even more, you need to feel the love...

**Kanluwen**

Snikkyd wrote:Whoa this is weird, it reminds me of this news story where some guy was whacking off in a Library. They made a huge deal about it, even though no one would have even noticed if they hadn't got it on tape.

Also, why is child pornography coming up? This doesn't seem to have much to do with it, unless thats what he was looking at. , which I doubt.

Child pornography came up because the article was really non-specific other than the student was caught in a compromising position.

Given that it's an underage male student--the assumption came as he was caught masturbating.

**Emperors Faithful**

Instead he was smoking a joint. Although you don't really need both hands to do that so maybe...

**Wrexasaur**

kanwulen wrote:Given that it's an underage male student--the assumption came as he was caught masturbating.

Pun intended, I assume.

I will try to keep track of this story. Hopefully people who made the critical mistakes, will be the ones held accountable. It would be sad to hear that the district was drained of it's resources, as you mentioned before, that could spell the end of these types of programs universally.