We Teach the Children: School district watching students with webcams?

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techs

Lifer
Sep 26, 2000
28,561
4
0
Besides, the Patriot Act has NOTHING to do with this thread.

Stop posting.

Pay attention.
Read up on Fascism.
Read up on Neo-Con.
Read up on DicK Cheney.

Then you can come back and post something useful.
 

shiner

Lifer
Jul 18, 2000
17,116
1
0
Pay attention.
Read up on Fascism.
Read up on Neo-Con.
Read up on DicK Cheney.

Then you can come back and post something useful.

You need to lay off the whole bu bu bush/neo-con crap. You're getting to the point where if someone says "I like oatmeal raisin cookies" you start calling them neo-cons, Bush lovers(the President not the good stuff), etc....
 
Mar 11, 2004
22,802
5,200
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Welcome to DicK Cheneys America.

I bet when they signed for the laptop the contract allowed this.

Both parties are using the extremist Patriot Act to justify all kinds of snooping.

Pay attention.
Read up on Fascism.
Read up on Neo-Con.
Read up on DicK Cheney.

Then you can come back and post something useful.

Go back and look at your own posts, and then take your own advice. You've posted nothing useful in this thread, just a bunch of dickhead P&N trolling.
 

child of wonder

Diamond Member
Aug 31, 2006
8,307
175
106
It traveled over the internet. Distribution charge should also apply.

So does the school downloading naked pictures of the students from their laptops count towards the student's ISP bandwidth cap or the school's?

This is important information in case they want to use Hulu or Youtube before their billing cycle ends.
 

waggy

No Lifer
Dec 14, 2000
68,145
10
81
Pay attention.
Read up on Fascism.
Read up on Neo-Con.
Read up on DicK Cheney.

Then you can come back and post something useful.

christ you are a idiot.

This has nothing to do with Cheney or the patriot act. go back to trolling P&N
 

frostedflakes

Diamond Member
Mar 1, 2005
7,925
1
0
Wow, lol. How could the school think this was a good idea?

It's really none of their business what students do in their own home and off school property anyway. They were really overreaching here.
 

Fayd

Diamond Member
Jun 28, 2001
7,971
2
76
www.manwhoring.com
Actually I can, there have been many schools issuing laptops now and I got some hands on experience with one of my cousins machine. The OS was 'locked down' and once I booted it to a Windows PE image (why they didn't password the BIOS I have no idea.) there was monitoring software on it that could grab screen shots and the like. It was very similar to the university that I went to where the support desk / teachers could take over and view your screen or 'disable' the machine etc.

My guess is the program had the ability to work the webcam and either a) they forgot to mention it. b) snooping administrator X did a "I wonder what this button does" on the monitoring system and went at it.

wow that's messed up.

wonder how hard it'd be to disable the snooping software.
 

Patranus

Diamond Member
Apr 15, 2007
9,280
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Not really sure what the problem is.
The laptops are property of the school.
 

waggy

No Lifer
Dec 14, 2000
68,145
10
81
You're not sure what the problem is?

Really?

Wow!

You're now #2 on my list of people to never take seriously.

its not a surprise the idiot don't' get it. Only thing that surprises me is he is not bashing it because dems passed it.
 

frostedflakes

Diamond Member
Mar 1, 2005
7,925
1
0
Not really sure what the problem is.
The laptops are property of the school.
I can understand the lack of expectation of privacy when it comes to school lockers and stuff like that. I don't see how bringing school property home gives the school the right to spy on students in their home, though.

But I'm sure that's the argument that the school will use, that the laptops are school property. I don't see them getting far with that defense, though. They *might* have had a leg to stand on if there was some contract the parents signed that had a clause allowing this, but without that I don't see how they would even have a chance of winning this in court.
 

bignateyk

Lifer
Apr 22, 2002
11,288
7
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Not really sure what the problem is.
The laptops are property of the school.

Really?... Really? So you would be ok if comcast started putting microphones and webcams into their receivers to spy on customers?

Or your landlord putting hidden cams into your apartment?

Or hotels installing hidden cams into their bathrooms?
 

Zenmervolt

Elite member
Oct 22, 2000
24,510
13
81
Not really sure what the problem is.
The laptops are property of the school.

There is a difference between monitoring software that captures screen shots and websites visited and software that allows the laptop to be used as a surveillance camera.

I would have no problem with a school-issued laptop having filtering software or basic monitoring. However the idea that the school could turn the webcam on remotely goes far beyond that.

ZV
 

GTaudiophile

Lifer
Oct 24, 2000
29,776
31
81
Can we look at this from a strictly technical standpoint?

Student Jane takes her fancy laptop home and connects it to her home LAN via either WiFi or some other method.

What happens next?

Before Perv Principal John can "turn on" Jane's webcam, he would need to log into her laptop, yes? And to do this would need admin rights on the laptop and an IP from an ISP that more than likely issues dynamic IPs. How is John doing this? What about certain ports being blocked by the family's router/firewall? Unless...

If not the above, Jane's laptop, once connected to the internet, has special software that opens some sort of connection with the school/Principal John? If this is the correct scenerio, wouldn't such software be easy to detect? Could Principal John claim that the software was not installed by them but was instead malware of some sort? Did this software connect with the school via a VPN? Most likely not, so the content was exchanged via unsecure means, making the subject being viewed vulnerable to public viewing/hacking.

This just goes on and on on so many bad levels.
 
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spidey07

No Lifer
Aug 4, 2000
65,469
5
76
Can we look at this from a strictly technical standpoint?

Student Jane takes her fancy laptop home and connects it to her home LAN via either WiFi or some other method.

What happens next?

Before Perv Principal John can "turn on" Jane's webcam, he would need to log into her laptop, yes? And to do this would need an IP from an ISP that more than likely issues dynamic IPs. How is John doing this? Unless...

If not the above, Jane's laptop, once connected to the internet, has special software that opens some sort of connection with the school/Principal John? If this is the correct scenerio, wouldn't such software be easy to detect? Could Principal John claim that the software was not installed by them but was instead malware of some sort? Did this software connect with the school via a VPN? Most likely not, so the contect was exchanged via unsecure means, making the subject being viewed vulnerable to public viewing/hacking.

This just goes on and on on so many bad levels.

Most likely a call home application. Could be encrypted as well, likely not.
 

imagoon

Diamond Member
Feb 19, 2003
5,199
0
0
wow that's messed up.

wonder how hard it'd be to disable the snooping software.


Well the uniy stuff was all school owned so I would imagine it would cause issues. However this laptop my cousin was givens was 'her's' at least that is the way the blurb on it sounded. I would imagine if you wiped it and started over it would work fine, just you wouldn't get any support from the school on it. Or they would just reimage it back with the snooping software.

I also found that a piece of electrical tape took care of the camera also...
 

imagoon

Diamond Member
Feb 19, 2003
5,199
0
0
Can we look at this from a strictly technical standpoint?

Student Jane takes her fancy laptop home and connects it to her home LAN via either WiFi or some other method.

What happens next?

Before Perv Principal John can "turn on" Jane's webcam, he would need to log into her laptop, yes? And to do this would need an IP from an ISP that more than likely issues dynamic IPs. How is John doing this? Unless...

If not the above, Jane's laptop, once connected to the internet, has special software that opens some sort of connection with the school/Principal John? If this is the correct scenerio, wouldn't such software be easy to detect? Could Principal John claim that the software was not installed by them but was instead malware of some sort? Did this software connect with the school via a VPN? Most likely not, so the contect was exchanged via unsecure means, making the subject being viewed vulnerable to public viewing/hacking.

This just goes on and on on so many bad levels.


Most likely a call home application. Could be encrypted as well, likely not.

When Jane powers her machine on, the app goes out to the web and connects to the monitoring server. Perv Principle John logs in to the admin side of the site and accesses the laptop via the already open connection.


Pretty much how logmein.com and the like work.
 

sdifox

No Lifer
Sep 30, 2005
93,676
14,294
126
So does the school downloading naked pictures of the students from their laptops count towards the student's ISP bandwidth cap or the school's?

This is important information in case they want to use Hulu or Youtube before their billing cycle ends.

I meant the school district should also be charged with distributing child porn.
 

TheVrolok

Lifer
Dec 11, 2000
24,254
4,076
136
Yikes, this is not going to go well. So what's the penalty? Jail time for those directly responsible yes? I can't imagine taking money from the district would really be the best idea.
 

Cheesetogo

Diamond Member
Jan 26, 2005
3,815
3
81
Is there any proof that they were actually using this? I mean, I could see them having security software installed on all the laptops, and one of the abilities of the software being remote access, which in turn would allow for the use of the webcam.