The Glade 4.0

Wow.

Wow doesn't begin to express my reaction to this article, though this comment from the linked page comes close..

I think we should automatically assume the school officials are pedophiles.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Wow. This is one of those situations when you can't decide which part is the dumbest. Is it:

A) That the school district was spying on their (underage!) students?

or

B) That they let it become known that they were doing this by volunteering the information?

Justice would be if they can prove that someone had the camera tuned in while a student was getting dressed, and nail them to the wall on child pornography charges.


I do too. Not because there's any evidence that they are, mind you; just because this caliber of stupid is pretty much asking for it.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

GOOMH.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Ayup-yup.

Here is an interesting question. Do you think the administrators were logging into these laptops after hours at the school while getting paid or do you find it more likely that they remote logged in from their homes on their personal time?

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I find it likely that administrators are salaried employees, and as such don't punch a clock to clearly delineate "work time" from "not-work time".

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

I lived in Lower Merion, live a block away right now. They've been sepdning for the last 15 years, borrowing form foreign funds on all sorts of "pretty up the area and do nothing for the people" programs - this doesn't surprise me.

Two days after teh snowstorm when the roads were cleared tehy spent a few hundred thousand dollars hiring snow compressors to take the ugly dirty snow piles from the edge of the sidewalk and the road.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

jesus

RACISM!

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Grenade 3 Sports Drink. It's fire in the hole.. Your hole!

Hilarity ensues.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I sincerely hope the school district gets flooped in the pooter over this. "improper behavior in his home" makes it none of the school's gorram business.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

Can't believe I've heard nothing about this in the local news.

Unbelievable that the school thinks it has the right to do this.

Darksiege:

LOL. Flopped in the pooter.

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

Lower Merion is right near where I lived. I can easily see this happening anywhere in that entire county. I wouldn't have been surprised if it had happened to me in high school if school laptops with webcams had existed then.

Someone needs to go to jail.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

This is the best freudian typo ever.

Ars Technica has a follow-up article this morning about the whole incident.

Partial quoting here:

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Who said it was Freudian?

I actually can see it happening almost anywhere. School districts are made up of amateur politicians and amateur lawyers with no oversite from other government, and they operate on the principle that the first goal is to avoid getting sued, or any bad publicity. Like the OP said, they are absolutely paranoid that a school computer might be used for anything "inappropriate".

What's obviously happened here is that they've taken the principle that since it's their computer they can monitor how it's used to mean that they can monitor the activities of the student any time the computer is turned on merely because the student has their computer.

It's essentially "warrantless wiretapping" except that it's even worse bcause it's not even directed at people suspected of being involved in anything, its directed at minors, they haven't even tried to legally justify it to anyone in any way before doing it, and worst of all, it uses this call to "improve education with better technology" as a smokescreen to slip this in on people.

People need to start demanding that the school turn over all monitoring records to the parents at the end of the school year detailing what information was gathered and when, and that webcams be disabled or not present on school computers. This is not just an invasion of privacy, it is an attempt by the school to usurp control of discipline in the home from the parent.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

What DE said.

But it is still downright creepy, along with being illegal and immoral.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

Ok, it's tough to do, but even setting aside the whole surveilance thing, how in the hell do they justify jurisdiction over what kids do outside of school? I mean, if my kid were legally caught "misbehaving" outside of school, and the school punished him for it, I'd still have a shit-fit.

Depends on the offense. If the kid murdered another student or a staff member - yes, extreme example - I think the school would be perfectly justified in expelling his/her tusch. Not that it would matter much, as the kid would most likely be incarcerated or a cooling corpse somewhere.

On a lesser note, if a kid is caught joyriding, shoplifting, or some other misdemeanor or felon offense, the school - upon being notified of such - would normally have the right to revoke privileges or rights to participate in certain activities. If the star quarterback is caught stealing a car, and all of a sudden he is no longer on the football team. I could deal with that.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

If he's not, that means he was acquitted, or otherwise returned to society. School = society. I hope you're not suggesting we should kick these people out of school? That's a good way to ensure they'll remain criminals.



See above. You're either punished by the criminal justice system or you're released.

I think at the very least the parents should be taking the laptops back to the schools and telling the administration where they can plug in the power adapters.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

Arathain, employers, both government and private, when they are considering employing you, look for your arrest record, not your conviction record. I just got a job and they specifically background checked me for an arrest record. If employers everywhere will punish you when the criminal justice system won't, why not schools?

Arathain, there is still the concept of bail. If the kid has been released on bail and is awaiting trial, the concept of innocent until proven guilty does not keep a school or other public entity from taking temporary measures awaiting the outcome of a trial.

There is also the difference between criminal guilt and civil guilt. Most famously, after the Simpson Murders, OJ was still liable for civil penalties delivered under a different later trial even though he was not proven criminally guilty.

There is also custom and tradition of the stripping of honors and privileges by a secondary body after guilt is established by a court.

None of this has anything to do with the ridiculous monitoring of cameras in the laptops issued by the schools. The guilt there is the administrations, not the students.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

There's also those unjustly accused That get punished by secondary institutions. Remember the Duke rape victims.

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History of the Condom
In 1272, the Muslim Arabs invented the condom, using a goat's lower intestine.
In 1873, the British somewhat refined the idea, by taking the intestine out of the goat first.