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UPDATED 11:00 EST / FEBRUARY 22 2010

Pennsylvania School Spying Somehow Getting a Pass in the Media

image The Pennsylvania case shows how even well-intentioned plans can go awry if officials fail to understand the technology and its potential consequences, privacy experts said. Compromising images from inside a student’s bedroom could fall into the hands of rogue school staff or otherwise be spread across the Internet, they said.

[From Pa. school official defended in webcam spy case – San Jose Mercury News]

It also demonstrates how well-intentioned plans can go awry when officials fail to exercise any, you know, common sense.

I also found this revelation rather amusing…

No one had complained before Harriton High School student Blake Robbins and his parents, Michael and Holly Robbins, filed their lawsuit Tuesday, he said.

No one complained because it’s appears that no one outside of the officials who authorized this system and the IT people, who should have been the first to object, knew about the remote capability. It is incomprehensible to suggest that if parents were made aware of this remote capability that they would have permitted it in their homes. It was only the overreach of school officials that revealed the existence of the remote webcam that is at the center of this lawsuit. 

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