Privacy by Martin Dowding

Author:Martin Dowding [Dowding, Martin R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Published: 2011-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Surveillance at Home and School

In a less universal but even more intrusive example of surveillance by “authorities,” a case of completely unwarranted eavesdropping came to light in 2010 in a school district outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In what the Lower Merion School District claimed to be an effort to locate stolen or lost laptop computers, school officials activated Web cameras on computers loaned to students, regardless of where they were (even in students’ bedrooms), regardless of whether the computer was reported lost or not. An investigation was carried out by the FBI and local police. The case went to the courts after a family discovered that their son had been photographed while asleep at home, and it was determined that staff of the school district’s information technology department had taken at least 50,000 photographs.

PC Magazine columnist John C. Dvorak responded to the controversy with a brief but pithy warning about the ethics of the school’s behavior. Dvorak closed his article “Society of Surveillance”20 by saying, “My advice to people using loaned computers like this is to always assume that there is some sort of spyware planted. . . . Just assume you’re being watched and heard, because you probably are.”21 This is a fitting introduction to the next section of this chapter about closed-circuit TV.

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