School issues laptop, then uses it to spy on student

This is so mega creepy.

Many school districts are trying to ensure that children have the internet access they need for their schoolwork by issuing every child an identical laptop. In my opinion, done correctly, this is a laudable approach. Every child is guaranteed access, and (again, when done correctly) is provided with a controlled, protected, maintained internet environment, including someone taking care of things like antivirus for them, etc. Now, in order to make all that good maintenance stuff possible, one thing that a district can do is install the equivalent of a remote-access trojan that allows an administrator to reach into all of the district students' laptops and do the necessary maintenance on them from the comfort of the district's data center.

However, some bright person in a Pennsylvania school district took things a little farther. Ostensibly to protect against theft, they had webcams put into the laptops, so that if one were reported stolen, all they'd have to do (ha!) would be to turn on the remote administration, activate the webcam, have a little peek around, and with Holmes-like detective skills, immediately infer where they were, and voila! Track down the thief and retrieve the stolen goods.

I guess it got a little boring when no thefts were reported, so instead they chose to gather some...uh...information...about what kids were doing when their laptops were on. And surprise, surprise, "on November 11, an assistant principal at Harriton High School told the plaintiffs' son that he was caught engaging in "improper behavior" in his home and it was captured in an image via the webcam."

The sad thing is that I think we'll see a lot more of this sort of thing in the future.

Edited to add:

CNN says the school claims it didn't spy on the kid. FBI is checking things out. The fact remains, however, that the District Superintendent does admit that the capability was there to spy. "This feature was limited to taking a still image of the computer user and an image of the desktop in order to help locate the reported missing, lost, or stolen computer (this includes tracking down a loaner computer that, against regulations, might be taken off campus)."

In my opinion, having this capability is just a spying incident waiting to happen.