In Philadelphia there is a school district that secretly captured about 56,000 webcam photos and screen shots from the laptops that were given out to high school students. Blake Robbins, sophomore, was one of the students who were being tracked by this "tracking program" every 15 minutes. Within the 56,000 photos that were taken about 400 times during a 15-day period. Many of the photos would consist of students daily lifestyle which includes sleeping/dressing, screen shots of instant messages/video chats amongst one and another. As part of the lawsuit, a federal judge is set to begin a confidential process of showing parents the images that were captured of their children. Then within weeks the school district will release a written report on an internal investigation.
Having a tracking program on each individual's laptop provides students with no privacy at all. No only do the student himself feel insecure, but also the people that he is associating with over instant messaging/video chat. I find it outrageous that a school district would do such thing, and i dont really think this is much different from spying on your own students in the gym locker rooms. Are there any positive sides of this "tracking program"?!
Monday, April 19, 2010
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4 comments:
Ya, this sounds like a total invasion of privacy. They are basically playing the role of big brother. This is just as bad if not worse than those computer hackers that take pictures of un-noticing females.
Wait this sounds like something from a movie. First how did students even get these laptops? where they given to them for free? but besides the point i dont really see this as legal because of the students rights to privacy with out the parents knowledge at all.
that is super creepy and i do not see much benefit in this due to the fact that parents should watch their children while schools should teach them.
The "positive" intent of the program is to monitor the students' behavior to insure that they don't do anything inappropriate outside of school. But there are several problems: 1) the most obvious one is that the school's jurisdiction ends outside of school property and 2) because of the exclusionary rule incorporated in Mapp vs. Ohio, any evidence that the school turns in to the police would be completely inadmissable in court.
This is a total invasion of privacy.. I would not want teachers looking at me without me knowing. in fact i dont waant most people looking at me uknowingly.
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