ON EDIT *Just so people know, I had made this post as an OP without realizing someone else had beat me to it and asked that the two threads be combined since they're basically the same, so that's why it's in this thread now as a reply. Sorry folks, I'm usually pretty good at not doing a dupe.
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http://www.philly.com/inquirer/currents/92030359.htmlPosted on Sun, Apr. 25, 2010
Head Strong: Web cam violated third-party rightsBy Michael SmerconishMore significant were the additional images Haltzman permitted me to review. No, not the image of Robbins shirtless. Or the one in which he's asleep in front of the laptop. Most shocking were the ones showing the faces or worded Internet postings of individuals with whom Robbins was communicating.
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Their images represent a gross violation of privacy akin to listening in on a private telephone communication between two individuals, at least one of whom has absolutely no idea of the presence of an interloper. That's the real outrage in this case, how the privacy of innocent third parties - classmates, friends, family members, and parents - was compromised.
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Who gave Lower Merion the right to intrude on those communications? Regardless of whether Blake Robbins stole a computer (there appears to be no evidence that he did), whether he is a problem student, whether he missed a required insurance payment, whether his parents owe Peco money, or any of the other Main Line buzz that has surrounded this case, it was inexcusable for the school district to invade the privacy of third parties en route to violating that of Blake Robbins.
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A different listener had a better analogy. What if Comcast did what Lower Merion did? What if someone was delinquent with a cable payment or lost a cable box, and Comcast threw a switch and took a peek at what was going on in front of that box sitting on top of your TV? There would be hell to pay, and appropriately so.
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A point that's been largely overlooked in this invasion of privacy issue is that of those people who's privacy was grossly invaded merely because they communicated with students through their school issued laptops where those communications were spied on by the school. According to the article, the tracking system took TWO images every 15 minutes while the computer was on and the tracking was activated - one image was taken by the webcam and the second image was a screen capture of whatever was happening on the computer at that time.
Most of this story is about the webcam images, but little has been said about the screen capture images. There were screen capture images that included emails or IM chats of third parties whose private communications were also violated. Webcam images violated third parties as well since the spycam took a photo of whatever and WHOever happened to be in the frame at the time, but for some reason not much of anything has been said about screen captures of private communications. This is the first time I've seen anything said in any article about what other privacy violations were going on that didn't involve the webcam.
As an aside, since a lot of the article is more of a summary of the issue particularly in the beginning of the article, I picked out some of the more interesting bits especially considering that most people here don't seem to read an entire linked article.