http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBnud2lPIuk
YOU MUST WATCH THIS VIDEO!!
This is so not okay. A public school remotely turned on the webcam of a school issued laptop and watched a boy in the privacy of his on home. The school admitted to turning on various students' webcams 40 times, and they claim it was for security reasons. What security reasons would that be when students are at home? Once students leave school property, I do not think they have the right to be monitoring/watching students activity in their home; regardless, if it is via a school issued laptop. This story reminds me of an episode of Criminal Minds, called Revelations, where a serial killer watched his victims on the Internet via their webcams. In order to gain access to the victims' computers he would call them and pretend to be an IT guy. Not only would he get the necessary codes to hack into the peoples computers, but he would also get all their personal information (i.e. home address). The serial killer used the webcams to watch the victims, and plan accordingly as to when the best time to show up at their home and kill them was. He watched them sleep, change, even caught them inappropriate acts (which is how he justified killing some of them). After seeing that episode I started to keep a post it over my webcam because now I'm paranoid that someone could be watching me, and that is just an extremely unsettling and creepy thought.
Wow Kristen, this really shocked me! I think that the school definitely blurred the lines between what should be public and private. This is when the internet pessimist in my truly comes out. I cannot help but think that acts such as these can truly endanger people.
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