

Students in Laptop Spying case get to view 58k photos - J3L2404
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/05/judge-orders-students-be-shown-photos-in-laptop-spying-case.ars

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verisimilitude
What has struck me as most odd about this story is that I haven't heard any
national news organizations really pick this up and run with it. Why? Is this
story too hard to wedge into sound bytes? The dearth of coverage bothers me.

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djb_hackernews
I'll be amused that after some more investigation a pattern is found in the
files (name, date modified, etc) and it appears chunks of the pattern are
missing.

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ShabbyDoo
The patterns of who and when will also be notable. Were cheerleaders more
likely to have been watched?

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elblanco
So can they see all of the photos, or only theirs?

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plesn
I wonder if the LED of the webcam was on when they where spyed (and more
generally if you can disable those by software).

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jason_slack
I read several times that the light on the camera would come on periodically
and they were told it was bug in the software...They were MacBooks.

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ugh
As far as I know the camera LED in MacBooks is hardwired to the camera. You
can’t turn it off in software. If the camera gets power the LED gets power (as
it should be).

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jason_slack
right, but students were told it is a bug.. I dont know for sure, but probably
by that sys admin lady whos job it was to administer the laptops.

I dunno about you, but I just find this whole thing way to bizarre. How it was
found out, the magnitude, the fact that it seems one person has done all of
this.

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olefoo
> the fact that it seems one person has done all of this.

Uh, where did you get that? The spying software was installed as a matter of
school policy; it wasn't the act of a rogue admin deciding to wire up the
school laptops to feed their appetites. They had budget meetings where they
took notes about how much it would cost to purchase a site license that would
cover the installation of this software on all of the school computers;
everyone up to the school board participated in and signed off on this. It was
not a secret.

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carussell
It's possible jason_slack meant the whole thing was revealed due to one
student, Blake Robbins: [http://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/news/2010/02/school-under...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/news/2010/02/school-under-fire-for-spying-on-kid-via-webcam-at-
home.ars)

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bryanh
This may prevent wider embarrassment from, ahem, moments of pubescent
weakness...

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J3L2404
Indeed, and probably why the viewings will be students sans parents.

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michaelcampbell
From TFA:

> The students will be able to view the images with or without their parents,
> and request that the court block their parents from seeing "sensitive"
> photos if they so choose.

